January 1, 2017

I was visiting someone who was living in a shipping container. I had to crawl through a small waist-height hole to get into their room. The other areas in the compound were defined as “open pads” or “common pads”.

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My mother and I had come back to the hotel room early to see my father with three escorts in the room. We found out that they were working with the hotel as my mother calmly put things away. I recalled seeing a webpage for their services on my dad’s phone before the trip.

Someone asked if new or recycled incense sticks were better since they were traditionally recycled. I reasoned that new incense must be better if we were basing their value on how strong of an aroma they provided per stick. However, I never got to explain my position before my mother asked another question pertaining to English: “what’s the difference between when I come back and if I come back?”

My uncle answered the question before she followed it up by asking where exactly we were. “Whereland, like Neverland”, he said.

“Or maybe it’s like Workerland?” my mother suggested.

“Where’s that? in Taitung?”

“It’s near Vanke (万科), they’ve made benches for motorbikes there”

“No, really”, she added after seeing my uncle’s disbelief.