From Coming Home to Going Home

This morning I needed to run some errands, so despise the threat of typhoon I went out in the pouring hard rain. First I went to the nearby Taipei Fubon Bank where I opened my bank and security account, but was told that I needed to go to another office that handles stock trading. Therefore I walked for about 10 mins to get to another office, but was redirected to Fubon Security instead, which was about 5 mins away. I was not too happy about it since I was already soaking wet, but I tried to coop with the situation with the most positive — I told myself “raining is better than 90 degree.” Walked to the security office in rain again, but was told that I needed to go to the main office to access my record; the office where I was at was for stock trading not account services. By then I was semi-irritated, but what could I do?

This time I could not and did not want to walk to the 4^th Fubon office of the day, so had opt for a taxi just to be safe. Arrived the location and saw the sign of “To better serve you, Fubon security has moved to second floor in this building.” I walked up to the second floor but was told that I should go to the third floor. Got to third floor and found it awfully quiet; I asked a very beautiful receptionist who was busy and happily chatting on the phone. She looked very annoyed when I asked her about which office could help me, and she told me like it’s the Banking for Dummy “you should go to basement ah.” That “ah” tone indicated how “dummy” I was.

I left that quiet reception area and that beautiful girl with frustration and went to the basement; I was surprised that it only took less than 10 minutes to take care of my task. What a running around experience! Suddenly all the nightmares dealing with bureaucrats from past seem to hit a “refresh” button and all the horrifying memories all come back vividly.

On the way home, I past the JenAi Middle School where I had spent my miserable and dark teenage days. I saw a boy secretly climbing over the campus fence and I could not help but smiled about this scene. It’s raining so hard and where he planned to go in day like today? But again, its summer break but poor kids in Taiwan are stuck in school from 8 to 5 everyday, who can blame that boy to escape from school? Rain or no rain, nothing can stop a young and restless to seek freedom or escape from boredom.

I miss home – I mean the States, and this song came into my mind —

On the street below these walls
Where I used to walk
Now I can barely crawl…