Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Expat Culture in Taiwan: Breaking yellow fever IV

The American girl, Denise, who John had taken for dinner had called him back after two weeks saying she had had time to think and she wanted to give things a go - The fundamental clash of ideologies they had over favorite colour could be resolved by agreeing to disagree.
That evening he was meeting her for dinner.
“Sorry, I am late!” he said.
“I have been waiting for 10 minutes,” she replied.
“Yeah, sorry,” he repeated.
“What does that tell you about what you think about me? How do you think I feel?” she hadn’t finished.
“Sorry! The traffic was bad. I’ll buy dinner.”
“You think you can buy me with dinner to make up? That is not the kind of relationship I am looking for.”
“Not my point. I was trying to make up.”
“Anyhow, we always split the check, that way we won’t complicate the relationship.”
“Your right!” He gave her a wink and a grin.
John had expected the sudden verbalization of feelings that a Taiwanese girl would have denied and then slowly made you apologize for by silent treatment. He was actually looking forward to that but Denise had too many feelings. Denise watched too much Sex and the City psycho-babble and now she needed to know how she felt about everything; to be in-touch with herself, aware of her feelings. Denise was also unquestionably smart, ambitious and quick to learn, meaning she had succeeded in this area beyond her wildest expectations, her understanding of her feelings taking on a momentum of their own. John admitted it was important to deal with one’s emotions, however, she appeared to look for emotions to deal with and be affected by; little things she could ignore, that wouldn’t scar her in future - events do have a pecking order of impact and the death of a relative did warrant downing tools and thinking again, but not every ‘fuck off’ or ambiguous response. There are always going to be trials and tribulations on a journey and if you stop to analyze how you feel about them all, you will never achieve anything; and then that lack of success proves to be a scar in itself. Sometimes you had to just give yourself a slap around the face and get on with it.
A few weeks later, after having to analyze the implications of his every move in terms of his ability to socialize with the opposite sex, he had had enough.
“You wouldn’t believe it,” said John. “Break up with the girl and the bitch gives me a head trip that your Maggie would have thought too much.
“Just goes to show for all the theorizing and cultural fuckin’ analysis it is the basic emotions that come to the fore when the economics of want kick-in - She was desperate, gonna miss her shag, and no amount of feminist teaching was gonna keep her mouth shut…Moaned about Taiwanese girls all the time, too!”

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