October 2009
2 posts
Day 7: A new name (and beginning?)
I felt popular. Walking back from meditation I was once again called by cell phone. Fabian’s nearly inaudible voice this time. He told me that he found a solution for the internet and was coming to see me. Ok, fine. Nothing better than a call in the middle of the road to look like a future businessman in shorts.
Back home, I didn’t know what to do. Cleaning seemed to be the only option, but what?...
Day 6: Living in Neihu
A strange call woke me up. Once again I had to try to understand all the strange noises that came from the other side. But even when the words started to sound more like English, I didn’t understand a thing. It’s simply no use calling a tourist on jetlag. And for some reason I didn’t care what it was all about, as if the phone call never happened. I knew my number was passed down to some people...
September 2009
8 posts
Day 5: A sharing of experiences
The jetlag I left in Belgium finally caught up with me. I was glued to bed like a teenager that doesn’t want to wake up for school. Then again, I was a teen and going for another round of painful meditation is not that pleasant either. But it when coming here, it was not the jetlag that I was afraid for, I’ve learned from my trip to Paris that there is something far more terrifying. It is...
Day 4: Chasing after the Garbage
I thought that going immediately to the practice site would be a good idea. I even went early like usual to see how the park looks like in daylight. It has a lot of bending stone paths that pass between the tangle of the uncovered tree roots. Where there are no trees, one can find shelters that protect form the sun and the rain. And that is where I did my first 1-hour meditation in Taiwan. That is...
Day 3: A lesson in Chinese
My roommate Danny is gone. He just stepped out of the door after saying “goodbye and see you in five days”. I can’t really blame him for having a job which brings him all over the region, it’s just a bit inconvenient. I don’t know any Chinese whatsoever.
So when I had to open the door for the repairman (because I was not planning to stay without hot water), it felt a bit awkward to depict in a...
Day 2: Getting used to it
A fan is a man’s best friend in subtropical regions. One lives with it, sleeps with it. Nobody wants direct contact from it and neither for it to be too far. It’s basically like a pet that never lets you down, until it breaks down. I was given one for the night and afterwards, I was two steps away from giving it a name. I blame this sudden affection for fans to the lack of air conditioning.
...
Day 1: A New Place
It took me a while to get used to the surroundings. This hotel room is maybe the smallest liveable space I’ve ever been in. It was to me a mystery how they got the double bed in here. It occupied three quarters of the room, and it was flanked by three walls, with one side left open. In one free corner stands a large flat screen TV. Now that was comfortable. Of course, there comes a time when I...
Day 0-bis: The arrival
This flight was a really bad combination of jet-lag and flying against the sun. I left at noon from Amsterdam, I arrived in Bangkok in the morning and I haven’t slept an hour. The worst thing is, we didn’t even finish travelling. They just let us walk a bit around the terminal, making us find our way back to the gate as to give them enough time to clean the plane. Well, if we did arrive at...
Day 0: The Departure
My family stayed with me until the last second. That was a nice thing to do. It is strange how the realization hits in just before you walk down the queue. It’s not when you go on the plane, that’s just how they show it in movies to make it dramatic. The ‘This is it, no turning back’ moment came to me when I was in queue to passport control, showing my back to my loved ones. Going to them would...
Introduction
Hi, I’m Thomas Van den Bossche, a mere 18 years old and on the other side of the world. What I just said was the cause of some anxiety from mothers of my family and in my village back in Belgium, Europe. They would never have let their own little adult sons go all alone like that in this ever more dangerous world. But I feel confident after my one-month stay in Paris, and luckily, so does my own...