February 28, 2016

we were sitting in front of the television and my father was registering me for Taiwan’s military draft. My mother was surprised and thought it was really clever of him to register online instead of by mail. For some reason my dad filled in my sex as Female on the form so I asked him why. “Why not?” he responded and said that it didn’t really matter. I was really confused as I was sure that this would have consequences during my time in service. Furthermore, our information was going to be displayed on large “flags” before our training.

We walked across the empty parking lot as the sun was rising and the air was still cool. “Look at the form” my father said while vaguely pointing ahead of us. I couldn’t tell what he meant and assumed that he was referring to the sprouting bushes as spring was returning. When we looked over the incline, we saw tens of cars, which were presumably being towed, stacked onto trucks and driving off. “That company must be making a fortune” my father remarked.

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We were dismissed from our brief meeting around the polished wooden table with a comment that we smelled nice. I wasn’t quite sure when would be the right time to tell the leader about my lacking literacy proficiency in Chinese. It turned out that the first four weeks of training was a course in an “introduction to society”. We watched a short film that gave an overview of what we were going to do. It was essentially going to be a “vacation” where we went around the city like “normal” and “adjusted” people. There would be lessons on how to properly eat at restaurants and order food. We were to learn how to navigate the city by public transportation and learn how to ride a motorcycle. I mentally checked if I had my driver’s license with me at this point. And finally there was also a section where we would learn how to manage the bureaucratic paperwork that we would eventually all have to do at some point in our lives.