My Taiwan Adventure

This morning I woke up to the sound of a jack hammer. What's noteworthy about that? Well, to be honest, nothing. Every morning I wake up to the sound of a jack hammer. This morning instead of thinking "Give me a break!" I was thinking "Don't those guys ever get a day off?" It represents a shifting of my mindset from "me, me, me," to something else. So, amidst the hustle and bustle of jack hammers, yapping dogs and laughing children I make my cross the courtyard trek to 7-11 to pick up a can of Ovaltine.

I remember trying Ovaltine as a kid. My great-grandfather offered it to me in a tiny orange house with a white picket fence. The sky was always blue with big, puffy, cartoon clouds. I would play with the wooden puzzles in the living room even though I could never solve them until my Baba would call "siddi and yeasta". (Hey I was only 5 or 6 - don't fault the spelling.) She didn't know any English and my tiny self only remembered her saying "sit and eat." I wonder if she had culture shock going to Canada like I am here in Taiwan.

The day my Geido allowed me to try Ovaltine was the same as another day in that house. It smelled of mothballs and I was playing with a set of miniature flags. One was white with a blue Star of David and I think the other one was blue and yellow - the Ukrainian flag. Geido was boiling water in the kitchen on a glass-topped stove. The shiny appliance was painted with big starbursts that were so fun to trace with my childhood finger. I was always told not to, but how could you resist a clean surface with geometric shapes? He communicated through gestures that I could have some too. The jar opened under his hand with a pleasant aroma, cutting through the naphthalene overtones of the house. I watched as he put the magic crystals in the hot water and stirred. After a few moments of sitting politely on my plastic covered kitchen chair, I took a sip. It was horribly bitter awful stuff.

There is a list in my head titled "Things I Hate" and as a child of 5 or 6 Ovaltine became list occupant number one. I forgot about Ovaltine for years after we moved from Saskatchewan. I really believed it no longer existed when I hit adult-hood. When I came to Taiwan I was shocked to see tins of it in the heated beverage section of 7-11. My friend Jeremy told me that it was great but I didn't believe him. Anything on the top of my list couldn't be good.

A week ago I wanted something different to drink. I was a little cold and a little tired and I thought "Ovaltine" might be worth another try. There was no Geido, he's buried now, and there were no mothballs or little flags, just me and a 7-11 clerk inside from the endless drizzling rain. I looked at the orange and blue tin skeptically and chuckled at my memories. The tin was 5 NT cheaper that a smaller can of coffee so I fished out my choice and put a cardboard hand protector on the hot tin (No McDonald's lawsuits here folks.), and proceeded to take a chance on "Things I Hate."

This morning I'm sitting on a hard plastic chair with the sound of jack hammers thundering through the air and eating some cold raisin toast and drinking my blue and orange tin of Ovaltine. Things I Hate is minus the number one object.

T. Destiny

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