Short Story: 5 Beautiful Things Before Laundry

Short Story: 5 Beautiful Things Before Laundry

I was unsure about whether I should write about my job here in Taiwan and I decided against it. Bearing in mind the things I usually write about people, it’s probably not a good idea. The next thing you know I’m sat in the boss's office being told it’s inappropriate to nickname your boss ‘pig-headed wanker’ or describe your sexual fantasies about your co-workers in vivid detail on the Internet. Therefore I’m going to try to avoid discussing work in depth – we’ll just call it the 'money tree' and you will never need to know what it is I actually do there.

Just to clarify – my boss isn’t a pig-headed wanker and I do have sexual fantasies about co-workers.

The 'money tree' so far is hard work. We get up in the morning, we go to training, we stay there all day, we come back to the hotel to work and prepare for the next day, we go to bed, we get up in the morning, we go to training... You see how it goes.

I don’t have much time for personal thoughts and observations, my mind can’t roam where it wants to, I can’t take the time to stand and stare like William Henry Davies could. The colourful maze is kept locked out of the office doors.

I once met someone who locked the colours out like that. I never understood how they could be so disconnected from the world, how they could have become so oblivious to the beauty around them – but now I see.

I’ve been leaving work this week so drained and drilled that the colourful maze has just become the path to the hotel and my bed, the place where I close my eyes and shut the world out even more. People have become unimportant to me, food has become tasteless and I no longer have the pleasure of dreaming before I go to sleep. You know the dreams? You’re just enough awake to dream about the impossible dreams you want to dream, but just enough asleep for it to be real. I’ve lost that privilege and now I’m asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow.

We have finally been given the evening off, but the majority of this will be concentrated on the essentials – showering, doing some laundry, and removing my hair (you know it’s intense stuff if I haven’t practised my hair-removal routine for more than three days). However, I have to stop and let the world in for a second. Taiwan is still beautiful. If I can’t see it, it is I who lack beauty.

Therefore, I decided that I would write about five beautiful things I have experienced over the past few days. It’s like the five impossible things before breakfast, but instead, it’s five beautiful things before laundry.

Panjita’s moustache. No, it’s not that Panjita has been neglecting her hair-removal routine like I have (at least I hope she doesn’t normally have facial hair). In fact we don’t know where exactly the moustache came from. What we do know is that she has probably been wandering around work with it all day.

We were both exhausted, leaning against the walls of the elevator in silence & waiting for the 'bing' sound of the seventh floor. We’ve been sharing a hotel room but have hardly spoken to one another in days. We mumble at one another to say we’re going to bed or that we’re going to breakfast but other than that, conversation is using unnecessary energy which could be conserved for the 'money tree'. And the money tree is big on energy. Anything we do ‘needs more energy, guys’.

However, turning around to see your best friend’s fake moustache in the elevator mirror is definitely an energy-worthy moment. I can’t describe how hilarious it is to discover your friend has been floating around the office, socialising with other colleagues and strolling down the streets of Taipei with a black moustache-shaped line sitting above her top lip.

But the true beauty of it is the laughter between two friends, found in something so simple, which breaks the silence and brings you back to reality.

Being so hungry you can suddenly use chopsticks. You wouldn’t believe the hours I spent trying to learn how to use chopsticks before I came here. I remember Jelly turning around to me in her kitchen after she had made tofu and saying,"‘Po, please stop, just use a fork, watching you is hurting me." In my defence, that tofu stuff is really slippy, and I still can’t hold my knife and fork in the correct hands.

It’s amazing, that after months of failure, the skill suddenly comes to you when a bowl full of food is placed in front of you and you’re starving your ass off. I’ve talked before about how when I’m stressed I don’t eat. So don’t get me wrong, the 'money tree' isn’t stressful – it is in fact a lot of fun. But it’s a lot of fun which requires a lot of enthusiasm and, you got it, energy. By the time lunch comes I feel that I am going to eat my own feet. Not one grain of rice goes unmissed. My way of using chopsticks may be a little fucked up (I look kind of like Edward Scissor Hands), but, the food is shovelled in, and it’s something which makes me very proud.

Feeling safe. For many years I haven’t felt safe. I still jumped if a man unexpectedly came around the corner – even if it was just my boyfriend leaving the bathroom. I didn’t feel safe in Manchester, I didn’t feel safe in France, I didn’t feel safe in Germany and most of all, I definitely didn’t feel safe in the little village where my parents lived in the Land of Fluorescent Poo.

Here, I feel safe.

There’s just an air of tranquillity everywhere. There are flashing lights, traffic rushing everywhere, people pushing past one another, beeping horns. I’ve not jumped once. I’ve been told you can leave your keys in your moped here and it will still be there, parked in the same spot, the next week. My boss left his wallet at the supermarket on pay day with his entire month’s pay packet inside. The shopkeeper frantically chased him two blocks down the street to give him it back. Knowing me, if there’s one person to get mugged in Taipei, it’s going to be me. But I’m not constantly looking over my shoulder, unless it’s for a crazy scooter driver appearing from the middle of nowhere and speeding through the red traffic lights. Panjita and I even managed to accidentally walk into the red light district earlier (because if there’s anything rude and dirty out there Po will always find it) . But we weren’t intimidated at all.

Speaking Mandarin. I think if you can say you speak Mandarin, you’re pretty much on the same podium as a rocket scientist or brain surgeon. Okay, so we can just order an ice coffee or a mango smoothie, but it’s pretty impressive. And the people are just so excited to hear you. They’re probably thinking (phew, I thought I was going to have to speak English there for a second), but they are just so supportive. Panjita’s great, she’s willing to try and say anything she can and practises on everyone. I hold back a bit more; I’m a bit embarrassed. In France I’d try and speak French and I could see the expression on their faces – ‘look at this stupid English girl butchering our language'. In Germany, I’d speak German, but you know the Germans, anything you can do, I can do better, and they’d come back at me in perfect English.

After wondering around with a black moustache on her face all day, Panjita has passed the embarrassment phase and is happy to copy whatever people say – even the woman in the elevator telling us it’s the seventh floor.

I’m now quite cautious, I can imagine Panjita creeping across to my bed in the middle of the night with a black marker pen whilst I’m zonked out in a dreamless sleep, just to make us even. She’s probably still waiting for revenge after I made the Chinese symbol of death in her bowl of rice with her chopsticks as she went to pay the restaurant bill.

Knowing that you once again can do your own laundry.