BFF

My BFFs from college - like Sex and the City except we look like normal people,
don't live in New York and don't sleep around
(this is at my wedding - they're all bridesmaids)

So, recently I've gotten some bad family-related news. I don't really want to give too many details, but it's illness-related, not so serious that I have to move home (which is not a realistic option anyway, although if necessary I would make it happen), not anything terminal, but definitely not good. We've been through it once before, but it's stressful no matter what.

If I don't update as often, it's not because I've got no free time - although often, I don't - but when dealing with stress like this, I might feel like leaving writing alone except for the occasional "cool thing I did on the weekend" or restaurant review. Which is too bad, because I'm still working on a post countering a lot of terrible things I hear said in the expat community about Taiwanese men.

So, with this illness in the family to deal with, I've realized something. I'm very happily married and have an active social life that includes both expat and local friends of both genders (not a lot of people can say that, I've found). I always have something social to do, someone I can call, people to invite places or have coffee with. On weekends when I don't do anything social other than hang with my wonderful husband, it's by choice.

And yet, there's something I don't have: a best girlfriend in Taiwan. Someone I can call up for a moment's notice to get coffee or a 3pm margarita - no joke, I've done that, Taiwan and my job in general are great that way - and complain with, cry on the shoulder of, joke with, go nuts with.

I have a lot of good female friends - I meet up and have frank discussions and fun times with other female bloggers, I go to Taiwanese opera and talk about cultural differences with Sasha, I talk frankly about personal matters and make dirty jokes with Cathy, I complain about work with Aliya, and I'm very close to my sister (who also lives in Taipei), but I don't have anyone who I *know* would call me if they needed someone to drop everything to come over in a crisis, or who would be the first person I'd think to call if a crisis were to hit me. I mean, my sister would come, but at other times she runs with her own younger buxiban teaching crowd, being in her mid-twenties and single and all.

You can accuse me of being too girly if you want, but I do think this kind of BFF friendship is an important part of being a woman, even an adult woman, even a married woman. Yes, of course, in any crisis the first person I'd call would be my husband, but there's something about having a BFF who you can also call - like your girl-husband (or, as one very close pair of friends call themselves, "Wife", as in "WIFE! Skype date!") - because sometimes you just need another woman's perspective. I have been blessed with the best husband on Earth - I really mean that, I do not believe it is possible to find a more wonderful, supportive and good-to-the-core man, and this is not hyperbole - so I'm not talking about someone I can call up to whine about Man Problems, Sex and the City style. Maybe 8 years ago, but not now. I'm talking about, well, that female perspective. The unconditional mutual love and support of someone you are not legally bound to, who enjoys things like shopping and crafts (which, awesome as he is, Brendan unsurprisingly does not really relish or, well, do at all).

Someone you can go wedding dress fabric shopping with, get your hair done with, and drink those all-important 3pm margaritas with.

There's just something about that dynamic - mostly drinking caffeine or alcohol, eating delicious, or deliciously awful food - making crude vagina jokes and BSing, but knowing they'd be there for you, no questions asked, if something really bad happened. Having someone who also possesses lady parts and lady hormones and lady hobbies to talk to, who isn't afraid to get personal.

I'm really not joking. It's Margarita O'Clock!

With my Taiwanese girlfriends, they rule, but they don't generally talk as much about very personal matters (like, oh, sex) - with the exception of one I know. They definitely don't drink as much (no margaritas! Waaaah). I have some awesome expat female friends but we're all very busy people with mismatched schedules, and beyond that, well, there just aren't a lot of expat women in Asia. Certainly not in Taipei, and those who are around are often older and married to men here on business - trailing spouses.

I'm not a trailing spouse so I don't do playdates or coffee mornings. I mean, what is this "morning" of which you speak? Is that even a time? Who does that? "Coffee morning" to me is when I roll out of bed at 9:30am and pour myself some coffee from the kitchen. If I don't have work that day I put whiskey in it, although I try to limit that because I'm not a total train wreck. I'm not gonna haul my ass to Starbucks at that godawful hour). In my younger days I might drink that coffee with whoever was crashed out on my couch from the night before, and we'd sort of mumble pleasantries at each other through bleary-eyed light hangovers. Now I'm much more domestic. I have a living room that doesn't have random people sleeping in it. I haven't had a hangover since January - and even then, it was because I was invited to an annual party and getting a bit sloshed is a requirement at those things. Ah, to hit one's thirties...

My point: we younger-but-not-too-young, say early thirties, female expats are thin on the ground. There are millions of great Taiwanese women to befriend, but there are cultural differences to account for as well.

And, as a result, I'm feeling like I could really use a BFF.

No Apology, No Way

Not too long ago, my sister told me about an incident at work in which both she and a Taiwanese coworker had independently made mistakes on similar projects (test-writing, I believe). When told that she'd messed up, my sister apologized and said she'd get right on fixing the error. She noted that her coworker did not - she said "Oh, uh, OK" and fixed it. I, too, thought it was odd to not apologize for a minor error that is clearly your fault,  but let it go. Then, at my job, I asked for a certain worksheet I'd created for them years ago to be prepared for my use for an upcoming seminar. In the intervening time they'd "lost" the digital file somehow, so I had to re-create the worksheet. They didn't actually tell me that they didn't have it until the night before, which put pressure on me (despite my asking many times for confirmation). Instead of "we're sorry" or "we apologize", I got a "I have checked with ______ and we do not have the worksheet you requested". I replied and said I was disappointed and felt their actions were unprofessional, and noted that when dealing with foreigners, it smoothes office relations quite a bit to own up to your mistakes and apologize. I'm blunt like that. I got no reply.

It got me thinking: is this a thing? I think it is, but I only have two anecdotes to back me up. In the US if you say you're sorry for some internal office screw-up and then present a solution and work to make it right, people will generally drop it, if not forget about it altogether. As though those two words are like memory erasers: "oh she screwed up...but she owned it, she apologized and we all make mistakes. So let's forget about it." In Taiwan, maybe apologizing causes you to lose too much face? Or admitting that yes, you made a mistake will cause people to remember and criticize you rather than forget? That if you mess up, the tacit social agreement is that you won't admit it and others won't draw attention to it? That it's not the smoother-over of interpersonal interactions the way it is back home?

Which would be fine if everyone lived by that rule, but we don't. In offices where you have to deal with foreigners, either in-house or from abroad, you need to know these things, because the average foreigner won't understand that cultural difference and will feel miffed and annoyed at the lack of apology or even recognition and ownership of the mistake. Not owning it will cause that person to remember it, not forget about it. They might not say anything, but the feeling is there and it does jeopardize relations.

It makes me wonder if I should be teaching this in my business etiquette class...

Linferiority Complex

I was chatting with a student about this article, in which an Asian-American writer, while thrilled with the sudden superstardom of Jeremy Lin, was simultaneously worried that Lin's ascent would make his life harder. Why? Because Lin actually embodies many of the stereotypes associated with Asians and Asian-Americans (and Asian-wherever-elses). You know, smart, humble, hard-working, loves his mom, a team player - the writer even argues that the fact that he loves Jesus, too, fits with the stereotype. He laments that this could cause a redoubling of such beliefs about those of Asian heritage - especially Asian men - and admits openly to wondering secretly if there will ever be a "cool" Asian-American role model , you know, a stereotype-flaunter who, as one friend put it, "snorts cocaine off a Kardashian's ass". (Sorry moms).

(Not that I think that's cool.  But it does flaunt stereotypes of Asian and Asian-American men).

So, the student thought about it - I didn't use the Kardashian sentence, by the way - and finally said "but that's OK!"

"Why?"

"Because it's good to be hard-working, smart and humble. Why not?"

"Well, those are good things, but they're also stereotypes of Asians in the US."

"Maybe, but they are good stereotypes. So that's good! I hope everyone thinks Asians are hard-working smart and humble. I hope we can all be."

...err. I'm chalking this one up to culture differences. I know many Taiwanese people who would completely understand the modern American aversion to stereotypes, and those who are aware of such stereotypes enough to know not only that such profiling can be a problem, but why. I can kind of see how many others in Taiwan (and the rest of Asia), would genuinely not see anything wrong with everyone thinking they are all smart, hard-working humble folks who love their parents, because that's what they want people to think of them. It's just such a fundamentally different way of relating to these stereotypes from, well, from pretty much every Asian-American I know. There seems to be a fundamental difference in understanding of whether and how a "good" stereotype can still be "bad".

On Rice: My Deep Dark Secret

Here is where I admit my dark secret.

I love inviting my Taiwanese friends over and cooking a dinner that involves serving rice.

All the food goes out on the table, including one pot on a cooling rack, with potholders on the top and bottom, wrapped in a clean dishcloth.

When they ask where the rice cooker is, I whip off the dishcloth to reveal a typical cooking pot with cooked rice inside, that I made on the stove.

Whaaaaat? They always say. That's how you cook rice? You don't have a rice cooker? I've never seen that before!

"I cook rice like your great grandma did," I said. "The way my mom taught me."

"But...nobody does that. You can just get a rice cooker!"

I can...but it's too much fun to shock the pants off my friends. I mentioned this to someone and her reply was "Wow. Usually I think 'foreigners are not too strange' but when I hear that you cook rice this way, I think 'no, that really is very strange'!"

Big Diamond

Photo from here, not that I think you want to buy an engagement ring, but to
give credit for the photo

Not long ago, I was standing in a crowded MRT car as the train hurtled towards Zhongxiao Fuxing. I looked down at the guy in the seat directly in front of me. He was  quiet, self-contained, a bit nerdy, had the look of an engineer or first-year market analyst. Those ubiquitous black thick-framed glasses sat on his nose. I noticed that he was pallid, hunched forward a bit, and his hands were shaking.

I was about to ask if he was OK - mostly out of self-interest, because if he was as close to hurling as he looked, my shoes were right in the line of fire - until I looked again and noticed the handles of a small bag wound through his blood-drained, earthquake fingers.

A small, bright blue bag. From Tiffany. Inside was a ring box. And then I thought: awwwwwww. Even though I'm not the kind of girl who melts over diamonds, it was still sweet. I mean, he could have been buying his mother diamond earrings - this is the country where Listen To Your Mom (聽媽媽的話) became a hit song - but judging from his apparent need for a sick bag, my guess is that he was about to propose.

I wanted to then say "加油！" (good luck / you go!)  but didn't - didn't want to freak him out any more than he clearly already was.      

What got me thinking, though, was that diamond engagement rings are only a fairly recent thing in Taiwan and are still not all that common. Someone else commented on this story - saying ask your non-Westernized local friends if they bought or received a diamond engagement ring. They probably didn't, because it's not the "done thing" here the way it is in the USA.

But, you know, I was surprised. I did do just that even though I don't have a lot of married, non-Westernized local friends (I do have a few). The majority of those under age 40 said that yes, they did in fact buy their fiancee a diamond engagement ring. I mostly asked the men - I don't have that many married, non-Westernized Taiwanese female friends. They're generally single or at least unmarried. I do plan to ask a few, though.

One student I was chatting with said that his wife wouldn't marry him until he bought her a Cartier diamond ring (he's an executive at a well-known company, so don't feel too bad. He didn't scrimp and save and go without to do this). Two more admitted that they bought their wives or fiancees rings - both still from Cartier. So Cartier seems to be the default place to buy a ring if you're an under-40 upper middle class Taiwanese man about to get engaged.

My own engagement ring - I think I've posted it before. Check out the AWESOME DRAGON

The one person who said no, he did not buy his wife a diamond ring, was the student over 40. I didn't ask a friend of mine who is 40 because he married at about 20 - too long ago (back when it wasn't a "thing") and far too young and just starting out to be buying diamonds.

I was just surprised at how many "yes"s I got - I expected at least an equal number of "yes" and "no" answers, since there's no history of diamond marketing in Taiwan. All those LED-covered shiny "Bridal Diamond" stores you see - especially around Zhongxiao Dunhua, where Hearts on Fire's sign will make you go blind if you look at it directly - seem to be a new thing, not something that started gaining momentum in the early-to-mid 20th century as it did in the USA.

New as it is, it seems to be surging.

I can't say I'm happy about it: the diamond-is-the-only-acceptable-engagement-ring cult in the USA makes me a bit ill. People can like what they like and spend what they want on whatever they want and yes, diamonds are puuuuurty, but the marketing practices, the prices forced up as high as they are and the whole conflict diamond thing stirs great acrimony and sadness in me. I don't really want to see it come to Taiwan.

One thing that was great about living in Taiwan during my engagement was that nobody questioned the fact that I did not get - and did not choose, and would not have chosen - a diamond. In the US during our brief visit it wasn't a big deal, either, because I surround myself with awesome, loving people who wouldn't make shallow "but it's not a DIIIAAAMMMOOONNNDDD" remarks, but if I'd lived there for the entire engagement, someone who wasn't a friend or beloved relative probably would have said something like that - you can't be just around your loved ones 24/7. Sometimes you have to deal with others. Sometimes those others are great, sometimes they're, for lack of a better word, nincompoops.

But in Taiwan, it was totally cool. I didn't even really need a ring to be accepted as "engaged". No judgment, no problem. I would hate to see that eroded by Big Diamond.