June 10, 2023

I was at a fancy restaurant when I got a LINE message from my uncle. It was a video from a Taiwan news report about a local car crash. Apparently multiple cars were going at high speeds in the wrong direction on the freeway. I called him to ask what he meant by sending me that video.

He said that his car was among the many that got wrecked by the crash. He wanted me to apply for car insurance and pay it off. I told him that wasn’t how it worked but the call kept breaking up. After retrying the voice call through LINE multiple times to no avail I looked through my contact list in an attempt to find his phone number. I paced around the tables as I scrolled through the list until I found my aunt’s name misspelled - probably due to autocorrect.

I called their home phone and my cousin picked up. I told her that I needed to talk to her dad but once again the voice quality quickly degraded. I was laying on my belly next to the pool while demanding some kind of explanation over the phone. I was rolled up in a towel with part of it dangling in the water. I said I wouldn’t agree to taking any action until I knew what exactly was going on.