Return to the Motherland, Part I: Nineteen Mosquito Bites and Counting

My old man is sitting behind me, relaxing in his boxers and enjoying a riveting battle in Cowboys and Aliens on HBO. We're doing our best to keep cool in his relatively cramped apartment in the Tianmu neighborhood of the Shilin district in Taipei. The sounds of scooters revving past wailing ambulances and a symphony of cicadas float through the air outside the window.

It's been twelve years since I was last on this humid, hot, stinking mess of an island where I was born. It's a mystical land where mosquitos eat you alive, you lose five pounds of water weight alone within an hour, and cockroaches the size of your ears occasionally scurry beneath your sandals on the sidewalks. And sometimes in the bathtub.

Naturally, I begged my parents to let me spend a month here.

The summer between first and second year of medical school in the United States is largely considered the last true summer ever for us. I've never spent any significant amount of time with my dad (at least, none that I can remember), since he has never lived with my mom, my sister, and me after we moved to California in 1992. He visits the U.S. once a year, typically during the Lunar New Year in February.(Yes, my parents are still married, though frankly I don't know how. Don't get me wrong, I'm really happy that they're still together. I simply don't understand it. They come from a different time, I suppose.) I wanted to make sure I got some quality time in with dad before it's too late.

Why has it been twelve years since I last came back, you ask? I could give you a bunch of excuses about SAT classes, volunteering, studying for MCAT, working, etc...actually, those sounds pretty good. Yeah, let's go with that.

Before I embarked on my thirteen-hour flight, I mentally prepared myself for everything my mother had warned me about. She made it sound as if the tiny cramped apartment, the frequent water outages, and of course, the heat and humidity were the worst things in the world. I really thought nothing of it. What's one month without the relative luxuries I had grown accustomed used to in the States? Dad has a shower and an air conditioner. Life could be far worse.

Indeed, his apartment isn't huge. Considering how good of a cook my father is, I was quite shocked to find that his kitchen (really, kitchenette) looks like this:

At least I don't have to cook for my father :(

This photo, in a nutshell, explains why he chooses to live in a such a cramped place, despite making more than enough money to live in relative comfort. Whatever he doesn't absolutely need, he saves and sends to my mother so she can live in the comfort of the San Francisco Bay Area. Again, old-school sacrifice for which I have no comprehension but the utmost respect.

Another peculiarity that even my mother didn't know about was the bathroom. There's a large crack in the bathtub, so we don't shower in there. Instead, we shower in the middle of the bathroom itself (which is only slightly larger than a shower stall anyway) using the long extension hose he hooked up to the bathtub faucet. The water mostly drains into the metal drain in the middle of the bathroom floor; the rest of the water gets mopped up with a blue-and-purple beach towel that went surreptitiously missing from my closet in California five years ago. What a jerk, that man.

The one thing I was not expecting was to share a bed with my dad for a month. That part alone was a little bit awkward, though I got over it quickly, since his bed is wide enough for three. Unfortunately, the man can snore. The first night, I couldn't tell if the sounds keeping me awake were coming from my dad's pharynx or a bunch of eighteen-wheelers all stalling at the same time while surrounded by gaggles of honking geese. Combine that with his frequent trips to the bathroom (benign prostatic hypertrophy happens to the best of us), and I've concluded that my father is secretly training me to get by on as little sleep as possible to help me prepare for nights on call. What a thoughtful guy.

View from the balcony of the apartment.
We live right above the old breakfast/beef noodle soup shop that we used to really love.

Every time I Skype with my dad, he complains about the misery of the weather, the pollution of the city, and above all, the loneliness of not being with his family. However, it's nice to see that despite all the complaining my father does, he still manages to find a little bit of solace in his one true hobby: the magic of cinema. My dad is a huge film buff, a common denominator we share that I believe is one of the stronger bonding points between us.

Look at this swag (i.e. free stuff that his patients give him).

My father, the film buff. (Plus the awesome The Dark Knight moleskine notebook that he gave me!)

LED Blu-Ray player + blank wall = "This is my personal movie theater. "
It's the simple things in life.