First order of business: bai bai (拜拜), an ancestor prayer/worship that is deeply seeded in Taiwanese culture. There are traditional times when people go to the temple to bai bai such as Ghost Month and Tomb Sweeping. Many Taiwanese practice what is a blend of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. The gods in the temples can be tied to one or all three belief systems. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, is the veneration of ancestors. The belief of an afterlife and that one’s ancestors are looking down and over us. Many people have a small ancestor worship space in their homes, usually the highest level of the residence. As my grandmother now has joined the ranks of those passed, now that we are home, it’s our time to bai bai to her.
Updating my to-do list. My magazines are all read through and tossed. Now that I have some movement within a larger property, I want to play around with the macro lens I bought a year ago and never really put to good use.
The house has an old stairmaster. Not a treadmill but still a way to get my steps in. I’m still holding to the 15,000 steps. I was surpassing that number in the hotel but here I have real stairs. Three flights of stairs multiple times daily.
Our relatives left fully stocked fridges in the home. My grandmother was hoarder of food items and the practice continued even after she stopped cooking for us. Mom kicked into cooking mode automatically. As much as I could help out, cooking traditional Taiwanese food just wasn’t my forte so I stuck to cleaning up. Mom is always an amazing cook, self-taught but I rarely had the opportunity to eat her Taiwanese cooking. In the States, the food was adapted to what ingredients were available. Our relatives also left a staple of frozen local specialties like zhong-zi, Chinese sausage, and mantao. I will be eating well.
By now, I’ve dropped a lot of hints about the level of tracking the Taiwanese government put on the quarantined individuals. Bottom line, they are tracking our cellphone signal. Those of use who had foreign numbers had to buy a local SIM card upon landing and attach it to our pre-flight health registration. That registration had to be done before departing our country of origin and includes having to upload our vaccination record.
On Day 3, my phone battery died and I forgot to plug it in the charger before it shut down. Sure enough, by the time the phone was charging and powered back on, the hotel called me. The hotel receptionist called to say they were having trouble reaching my phone and I was momentarily confused. “The phone you are calling to right now?” He said they weren’t able to reach me via the hotel line, which never work since I checked in. With him on the cellphone line, I fiddled around with the cords and plugged the hotel phone back in to confirm receiving a dial tone. We were doing a back and forth dance about phones not being on when the 💡 went off in me. I asked if this was about the fact that my phone battery died just recently? I then heard a chorus of “Ooooh” which keyed me into the likelihood that the police were physically in the lobby talking to the hotel staff. Sure enough, I then heard the hotel receptionist relay my explanation. Oops. 🙈 I got a reminder to keep my phone on *and* charged.
Today, I got the same message I got when I was in the taxi leaving Taipei.. “you have left your residence. Return immediately!” and that left me scratching my head. Given my tendency to drop phones, I have left the phone on a side table in the living room all day, walking over regularly just to make sure I didn’t miss any messages or call. Otherwise the phone has not moved at all. I told myself we’re about to find out how the follow through works here in the countryside.
6:30pm, dogs were barking, the landline ringing. Dad picked up and I could tell there was confusion abound. They asked for my uncle, the registered owner of the home. My father explain he is said individual’s brother-in-law and after some back and forth and yelling on my hearing-loss father’s part, we realized someone was literally standing at the gate and calling from there.
Yup, they sent reinforcements in the form of a solo provincial police officer to check on me. And we didn’t even know how to open the industrial motorized gate. It was already dark so mom was fumbling around for the remote than fumbling around the buttons of the remote to try to open the gate. We must have been a sorry sight. I can’t imagine what was going through the police officer’s mind, overhearing us yelling loudly at each other and trying to talk over one another. If anything, it might have assured him there was no way we violated quarantine by leaving the residence since we clearly simply did not know how to open the gate, let alone go out.
The police officer was surprised to find not one but three of us in quarantine. We explained we had the house to ourselves, my uncle opting to stay in the city. He asked specifically for the status of a phone number. Surprise. It was mine. Dad looked at me and said either “You are in trouble!” or “you are trouble!” He probably meant both! 🤣
We said we never left the residence and my phone, along with person, was home the whole time. In any case, he was already dispatched to check on me so there was no point arguing why their monitoring system thinks I left the residence other than to tell him we were here as required.
No oops on my part! I did nothing wrong! Stupid phone and stupid monitoring system 😜
Without Strings Tied 