Coming in May to a few straight weeks of sun, I thought I’d missed the plum rains down here in central Taiwan, but I was dead wrong.

We had about two weeks of rain at the beginning of the month, and now we have another round coming because of Typhoon Mekkhala’s landfall and a storm system or two coming from southeast China, I think.

At least all of Taichung is so well irrigated that every last drop of this water is getting funneled around the city into the surrounding farmland, and so efficiently you can barely tell it was raining when the weather pauses. That kind of planning is Taichung’s specialty, it seems like.

So now that it’s the weekend, I did what you do when it’s drizzling outside and relatively cool and I went to my favorite cafe here in Taichung’s downtown. I’m sitting somewhat by a window and looking out it from a distance. There are some books up here. The environment is relaxing as ever.

I sort of miss living downtown, but I don’t really miss the rental prices. I mean, I only spent a month in that other apartment and the building was all-new, but if I’d found something even more convenient and cheaper I really could’ve stayed.

Besides that, work is coming along extremely slowly, but I guess I don’t have much control over that. I’m just waiting for things – for this conference that I’m going to go to later this week, for price quotes for various parts, to have more questions to ask one of our contacts. It’s getting boring.

Last weekend, I went to Taipei to see a concert at the National Concert Hall conducted by one of my professors at home. It was pretty neat to have that experience, and the morning before the concert, I met with her to talk and get brunch.

When we met, I talked about what it is that I’ve been doing here, and she told me that, (I guess in her capacity as a patriotic 台北人), that I should find more work in the future up there. I’ve already been thinking about trying to apply to other labs, but I don’t have much to sell myself with because I’m still an undergrad.

After that, I went online and started looking at other labs at larger universities that might be focused more on something that I really want to do. I’ve decided pretty firmly by now that my preferred research direction is photovoltaics, and that that is a subject I would like to continue to gain experience in, so I started looking at photovoltaics labs.

But her contacts seem to lead to universities that might be too good for me, including NTU, so I’m not entirely sure how far that will take me. I sent her a pretty long message a few days ago in response to that conversation we had on Sunday, and now I feel a little bit bad and kind of like a burden. She has not responded yet. So, I guess we’ll see, but for now I’m doing what I can.

Tomorrow, also, I am scheduled to take the TOCFL. I’ve never taken an official language certification exam before, so it’ll be a new experience and probably humbling.

When I took the 快篩 “speedy screening” TOCFL test a few weeks ago, it told me that I scored B1 for both reading and writing, which would be nice to get on the actual test. I met someone else, too, who told me that he got B1 for both on the same test and only got A2 on the actual exam, which is concerning for my prospects, I think.

I really hope to get B2. That would definitely make me happy enough not to want to retake. I don’t really want to have to retake regardless, and the only thing that will make me consider testing a second time is if I get A1 or A2 on the exam. I do have a fairly functional ability to listen and read, but writing and talking are difficult.

Luckily for me, writing and talking are not on this exam. So tonight I’ll just have to sit down and do some reading and listening to some articles and podcasts, which I started doing just last night, and hope that that cramming is enough preparation given my (technically 7 years) of prior Chinese-language study experience.

It’s surprising, though, how little practice I get in public here. It’s probably because I’m back to living near a university, but most people in the vicinity either speak great English, or really, really want to speak English with people who are obviously of some type of European descent.

What’s also interesting is that the most predominant Western influence here is American. I mean, of course, considering the several decades of military presence at midcentury and the fact that the KMT regime was basically a US puppet regime in the days of the China lobby. But most people still see me and my friends and immediately and correctly guess our nationality as American.

It’s probably because I can’t break that habit of trying to lean on everything around me at all times.

And it’s also difficult to get in Mandarin practice because I think some people here interpret a foreigner trying to speak Mandarin with them as some kind of talking down to them – like, since learning English is such a core skill here, that if a foreigner comes and doesn’t want to speak English with you, that you’ve somehow failed at a basic skill. Maybe I’m thinking about this too much. But I’d obviously rather not think about it.

And a lot of the time, there are still plenty of people that don’t speak English, and I don’t want to have to start in Mandarin whenever I walk into any establishment and then guess the quality of the person’s English and then potentially accidentally insult them. Apparently, it’s that complicated.

But somehow, despite language culture here being hard to read, my Mandarin ability has survived. And that’s great. I’m pretty deep into the sunk-cost fallacy stage of learning something that you love but aren’t great at, and I can’t have spent this many years studying just to lose it all whenever I stop caring.

Once I take the TOCFL, hopefully I get a good score. That will give me enough confidence to stop worrying about it for as long as is nice for my irrational worries complex.

I read a Taipei Times article earlier about a US servicemember who came back to Taiwan after having served there for five years in the days of the CCK air force base (the seemingly singular significant thing to ever be located in Taichung).

He seemed to really have had great memories of the city that I still don’t know as well as I could, but as someone who grew up in the rural parts of New England, know better than any major city at home, and it’s cool that the article was just full of descriptions of decent memories and positive transformation.

It made me kind of rethink all of the negative associations with living here, even for a pretty short time, that have been building in my head.

Like, a lot of what seems new to me here is probably more just me getting used to regular aspects of everyday life in a different type of place. I’ve never lived in a city before, so the occasional rude interaction or embarrassment all seem like pretty reasonable things to learn to tolerate.

And honestly, most of what I don’t like about being here are things that just have to do with me being young. Like, I’ve just been a little bit depressed lately. I’ve been pretty lonely, since I don’t have too many friends here and the ones that I do have are busy or away, and the two friends that I’m with here now seem to be feeling a similar way, and commiseration only goes so far.

There’s just a certain depressive mood that builds up all of the annoyances in your head and bottles them up at the front so that you feel just that much more miserable. And lately, I’ve been coming out of it, I think by just choosing not to think or care so much about things that are out of my control or just not worth my effort.

I keep telling myself that the reason why I decided to come here was because I knew it would teach me some life lessons. That opportunities to step out of your comfort zone don’t always just appear, so when they do, I should probably take them. And that’s probably valid.

But it has taken me a very long time to calm down and just be okay with the awkward social interactions and the slow work and the occasional embarrassment of myself or someone else.

And also with the fact that I just can’t read everything and everyone that lives here, and that every city has history and preconceived notions in the air that aren’t all immediately obvious, even if they’re about you.

One of the friends that I’ve made through the university here but don’t work with or see very often invited me back to a card games club type thing that meets in the top floor of a cafe every few evenings.

I didn’t go when she reminded me about it after I ran into her at a bus stop about a month ago, but seeing as me and my friends have both been looking for more to do lately, I might start going. Sounds like an apt enough third place to me.

Anyway, thank you for the read again. I might soon gain enough confidence to stop writing only about my own life and maybe find some more interesting projects to share.

I’ll be back sometime!