Fili’s world

My new Mandarin skills have been somewhat helpful with my current guesthouse owners, but - it’s a bit shocking to realize that English here is more common than Mandarin. Most folks here speak Cantonese, which is a totally different dialect. I can’t really tell, but I have a hunch that Mandarin speaking folks are a lot different than the Cantonese folks, just by the way they use the language. Honestly, I believe one of the reasons why I adore Chinese as much as I do is because of Mandarin’s wonderful sound and flow with the cute Sh-Sh sounds and somewhat soft vocals. Cantonese is, ehh, how should we put it, not as vocally attractive. But, I am well aware, that even within the big dialects there are sub-dialects and Cantonese might sound different in other settings. Like, HongKong’s blooming Cantonese movie industry doesn’t sound like that. Anyways, I had a point somewhere… wait… wait… eh, yeah, so I sometimes have an easier time in Mandarin Taipei than in Cantonese-English HongKong.

Another major difference is that I didn’t quite remember what it feels like to be traveling alone, or just being alone. Taipei has become so familiar that this few days I feel like I’m on vacation from home, rather than continuing my trip. That feels weird. I might have felt the same thing with my dad after my two months in Vietnam with Jessy, but in Australia I could just drag myself after my dad who took care of everything and be lazy. The need to organize everything, think where to stay - what to do next - how to get food - the human need for a conversation every now and again in a different place. Oh, right, there was that week in Singapore, yeah, definitely, Singapore.

There are striking similarities between Singapore and Hong Kong in so many respects. Going through the HK history museum the comparisons just kept popping up. Admiration for the British contribution yet the search for a different identity (independence vs. going back to China), viewing the Japanese as the local German version - which is bit different than the Taiwanese view, industrialization, becoming very wealthy and prosperous. Both cities are amazing and full of endless possibilities. When I told people I’m going to HongKong for about a week I usually got in reply “A week? what’s there to do in HongKong for a week? two, three days tops”. It takes me two three days to just start understanding where I am, and a week is just when I feel comfortable enough and overcome the “what the hell is going on here?” feeling and the immediate jealousy that overtakes me. “I want this”, “I want that”, “why didn’t I come here before?”, “why don’t we have this in Israel/Taiwan?”, “I want to stay here more”, “if this is what Singapore/HongKong is like then I HAVE to see Beijin/Shanghai/Seoul/Tokyo/etc/etc” and it goes on and on. It doesn’t even stop while I’m sleeping because I vaguely remember the weirdest dreams and I can only imagine that with the paper walls that surround me my neighbors might keep hearing screams of “more! I want more!”, though interpretation is probably different than what they might have in mind.