The Coin and the Dome Light - Two Happy Stories from Taiwan

Over the past couple of years I have typically written longer/heavier posts and have several drafts of that sort which may eventually see the light of publishment. But on this warm Spring evening after a very long posting hiatus, I'm writing about a couple of incidents recently which reminded me how life is more pleasant when we look out for each other.

A high speed train rolling into sunny Hsinchu

The Necessary Coin

The first incident took place after a long day of productive meetings, a few weeks ago as I write this. Our baby isn't the worst sleeper I've heard of, but by somewhere around one month my wife and I had been experiencing all sorts of different flavors of sleep-deprivation, which added a bit of spice to my responsibility of chairing this particular meeting for the first time and also taking all the minutes. The trip up to the big city had been smooth, and I'd arrived at the high speed rail station in time to snag a Japanese-style pork and shredded cabbage sandwich to eat on the train along with a cup of coffee. 

All the meetings went well, but after a sequence of "traveling to the capital-morning meeting-lunch meeting-afternoon meeting" I was tired in that late afternoon way, and looking forward to heading home. The train back down the coast was peaceful and sunny, and I could let my thoughts wander for a bit. After arriving at the high speed rail station north of our city and taking a few pictures outside in the good light, I needed to retrieve my car from the big north lot by the station's local railway link. Some parking lots here are automated with cameras, others give you parking tokens, but either way it's typically a smooth process, except for one particular cursed parking garage which I may share about in a future post someday. 

As I neared the payment kiosk for this particular lot--located under loftily elevated tracks so that occasionally a high speed train thundered far overhead on its way up or down the coast--I noticed a long queue of people. Never a good sign. Of the twin machines inside the kiosk, only one was functioning, and I took up my position in line beside the other. The line moved quickly, but as we waited a young man mostly dressed in black behind me said something loudly. After removing my headphones to make sure he wasn't addressing me, I realized he had a bluetooth phone and was talking to someone on the other end while staring into space in my direction, a thing which happens less frequently here than in the U.S.

Then it was my turn to pay, and to my consternation the ample pocket of change I was carrying turned out to be a little too exactly right; I was down to 5 'pennies' (Small copper-colored coins worth 1 NT, short for New Taiwan Dollar, about 3.6 cents apiece in U.S. currency). This was precisely the right amount remaining to pay, but the machine only took 5NT coins or larger. After verifying I had no more coins in my backpack, I had two options; hike to the car on the other side of the parking lot and back while everyone else waited for me, or see if anyone would swap me 5 "pennies" for a "nickel." 

I turned around to face the line that was slowly but inevitably lengthening behind me, and noticed to my surprise that the man in black was already holding out a 5NT coin in his hand. He must have seen the balance on the screen as I was digging around in my backpack. However he couldn't see that I had found the five smaller coins, and thus was simply going to offer me the 5NT so that I could pay and the line could move on. 

I thanked him repeatedly in Mandarin and dumped the five 1 NT coins into his hand as I took the 5 NT coin, and his face showed surprise as he counted the coins, not expecting for the gift to suddenly be a trade. Not everyone would have done that, but Taiwan is the sort of place where it can happen.

A corner fruit market, on an evening of much-needed rain

The Observant Guard

That previous incident came at the beginning of a long busy stretch, which has really more or less continued until the time of this writing. One day earlier this week, I found myself down in our community's underground parking garage. It has room for maybe 80-100 cars, and in one complicatedly-musty-smelling corner are the recycling pails for sorting out the various kinds of plastics, glass, paper, etc. In a more straightforwardly-foul-smelling room, foulness depending on the day of the week, are the big garbage bins and smaller set of "kitchen scrap" tubs which ostensibly get collected and converted into hog feed for pig farmers. 

I was down there on this occasion neither to carry small, pungent bags of things like papaya peelings, onion skins, and egg shells to the scrap tubs, nor large, translucent-pink plastic sacks jostling with fish bones, old face masks, seaweed-almond snack wrappers and way too many baby diapers to the garbage bins, nor even oil-stained, stiff paper lunch takeout boxes, rinsed-out yogurt tubs, gingerly clinking glass oil and soy sauce jars, or humble styrofoam fruit nets to their appropriate recycling pails, but because I was looking around in my car for a printed-out insurance bill. I felt I had already paid it, but wanted to make sure before the end of the month. Having searched the car to no avail, and my sleep-deprived brain filled with other hypothetical places it could be, I accidentally left the dome light on as I left. 

Fast forward to a blessedly rainy evening the next day. I pronounce it blessed because we are in a very serious drought in Taiwan, as all the typhoons missed us last year, and the big reservoirs thus didn't get filled with the vast flood of rainwater those storms drop over Taiwan each summer as they crash into its high mountain ranges and begin to break up. Even all the rain on that day across the big island only served to get back 1 day of national water needs, but with Taiwan's second largest city already cutting water off for 2 days every week, a day's worth of water was very welcome.

I have a habit of reading to my wife and baby before we sleep, which we did through the pregnancy as well, something we credit for the baby seeming to instantly recognize my voice once she was born.  Having worked our way through literary continents like the entire LotR trilogy, we are currently reading the very innocuous Willows in Winter, a heartfelt, many-decades-later sequel to the Wind in the Willows. As I elaborated on the regress of Mr. Toad into the self-aggrandizing schemes he had seemed to renounce at the end of Wind of the Willows and our daughter drifted into a comfortable, milk-drunk daze, I suddenly got a message on my phone and also received a phone call. The message was my landlord telling me the building guard had noticed the vehicle in his unit's parking spot (my car) had an inside light on and contacted him, and the call was from the apartment community front desk, phoning me to make sure I knew to go turn it off. (They had my number because they needed it for my car tag registration for the community lot)

The light had been on for more than 24 hours by that point; I hadn't been back to the car since then as some of my work is done online from home and most errands can be accomplished by walking, the more so as public parking spots are a pain to find. I was grateful, however, to find the light only a little dimmer than before, and the car started right up. After driving a short circuit around our community area just in case, I picked up some cashews and a pork floss* pastry on the way back and returned to our apartment through the night rain, which had by now diminished to a mist. Please pray we'll get more soon.

(*- Pork floss is finely-shredded pork which looks almost exactly like the wood shavings you dump out of an old-fashioned pencil sharpener, and on my first visit to Taiwan I pronounced it based on the appearance and taste to be exactly that, but it's grown on me in the years since, as have many things here.) 

Life and ministry in Taiwan, while sometimes tiring and stressful for reasons beyond our control, is always interesting and often inspiring. I hope these two brief anecdotes give a glimpse into our day-to-day life in which we encounter God's blessings in many small ways. Taiwan is a good place to live, and if traveling had not become a complicated proposition in these troubled days, I would encourage all of you to visit soon. I hope you may yet do so in the future.