Two days ago marks four months since we packed up our home in Singapore and moved here to Taiwan.
In these four months, friends and family have often asked me about what I/we am/are doing in Taiwan, often referring to whether or not I have decided or started on work here. I always struggle to provide people with any kind of a good answer to the question, and I for the longest time I struggled to even articulate to myself why I was struggling to answer the question.
With some time to sort out the physical, tangible aspects of life along with time to examine some of the emotional, psychological and intangible aspects of life, I am perhaps finally able to think coherent thoughts and write a little about the move, and maybe just a little bit about what life has been like these last four months.
Physical, Tangible Aspects
We came to Taiwan with four suitcases worth of stuff from Singapore including a wok, pot, one knife, a molcajete amongst the other things one ought to bring(hello overweight baggage tab). When my mum found out that I packed selected items from my kitchen, she was highly amused (I think) and probably thought I was crazy, but I have absolutely no regrets and in fact would recommend it to anybody who is packing up your life and moving to another country for an extended period. It has saved me the trouble of buying new pieces (navigating online shopping can be quite a challenge in 繁體字 was/is enough of a deterrent most days), and perhaps most important of all, it makes the new space and life feel just that little bit more familiar.
Quarantine
After we arrived in Taiwan, we had to spend the first ten days in strict quarantine at an approved hotel, and another seven days under “self-health management”. (This has since been shortened to 3+4 situation currently I believe.) We chose to do the quarantine in Taoyuan where we could get more space for our buck. In the moment, life in quarantine did feel a little stifling and overly sedentary. However, in hindsight, it provided us with some time to ready ourselves for the work that needed to be done when we finally were released.
Overall, quarantine was spent trying not to over-eat without being wasteful, getting some movement in, attending online Thai Classes (for me, and story for another time), picking up calls from the local police, and trawling 591 (Property Guru equivalent) to try and understand the rental market and set up viewings for when we were released. We also had to book intermediate accommodation for after our release and before we found a place to rent. I also tried calling banks to try and figure out how we could prepare to set up accounts here so that we could hit the ground running once we were allowed to.
In retrospect, such an approach is truly quite Singaporean; this chronic need to NOT. WASTE. TIME; because I think most would agree that I am pretty chill on the bell curve of my peer group in Singapore and even I was getting my act together.
House-Hunting and Setting up Bank Account(s)
During our quarantine, we also decided that Taipei would be our first base mainly for how easy it would be to live without a car (and also access TPE for flights home or elsewhere). So when hard quarantine ended, we got ourselves into Taipei where we had booked a place to live in for a month as we hunted for an apartment. The stars aligned and we managed to secure the apartment within about a week of hunting and managed to cut our hotel stay short.
Settling the apartment also gave us a local address which makes opening a bank account about a million times easier. Banks here require you to go to a branch close to your home, and actually would like you to go to the one closest to your home (they also close at 3 or 330pm, but banking experiences also another story for another time). So a day after we signed the lease, we got a bank account set up and initiated getting some money over, because after we put down the deposit for the house, we were starting to have to count the money we had remaining. So I don’t know who else needs to hear this but when moving countries, bringing more money is probably wise.
The next few days/weeks were spent moving from hotel to the apartment after the handover and slowly getting the essentials for life because while the apartment did come partly furnished, there was still plenty that we needed (work tables, water kettle, rice cooker, dining table were top on our list).
The next few weeks saw us pop into many a Nitori and IKEA, subsequently spending too many hours assembling furniture as we gradually set up base in Taipei.
Emotional, Social, Intangible Aspects
Most people I know who have “moved abroad” move for work or school. I suppose in such arrangements, there is some kind of structure to their lives upon arriving and maybe even some built-in opportunities to meet new people in the new environment. In our case, we were transplants without a school or workplace to show up to. It is quite the privileged position to be in, but also meant that we had to find our own ways to “plug” ourselves into the society- to put oneself in a position to meet new people, to invest time and energy nurturing those friendships and to find community.
The Importance of Hobbies
The experience of finding community through our childhood/teenage hobbies has left me believing that one has to have some things one does outside of work. Four days after moving into our apartment, we went to our first badminton session. We have had to try out different groups, but it is through such sessions that we came to meet our first Singaporean friend here in Taipei.
Prior to the move, I had thought that I might make use of the self-declared sabbatical to reconnect with my high school love affair with ceramics. It took me some time, but when most of the mundane was settled, I finally got down to trying to find a studio with my limited language abilities, and finally got to my first session about two months after being released from quarantine. My time in the studio has not only allowed me to reconnect with ceramics, but it has also helped my language abilities, and perhaps most importantly has allowed us to form friendships with my studio-mates, many of whom are Taiwanese.
Identity
It is an interesting experience to be an ethnically Chinese Singaporean in Taiwan. In so many ways, it is not difficult to blend in- we don’t look too different, and we (arguably) speak the language. Yet in so many other ways, the juxtaposition of the differences particularly as they are being experienced for the first few times bring aspects of me and my identity into such sharp focus.
I have never given much thought to my Chinese ethnicity, and what parts of history I identified with. I know that my parents had immigrated from Malaysia to Singapore, and all my grandparents led their adult lives in Malaysia, but that was about all I knew and frankly cared about. I certainly never thought that I might have descended from persons who perhaps lived through the various Chinese dynasties, although, it seems, we must have.
I have certainly never thought anything about being Southeast Asian, but being here and feeling viscerally what feels familiar and somewhat closer to home has made me give more thought to our region than I ever have.
Being in the capital city of Taiwan during the escalating tensions in the Strait has also been… quite the experience. It brings to mind questions around nationhood, each country’s unique history that has led to the current state of global affairs. It was and to some extent still is mind-boggling how normal life feels in the day-to-day but read everywhere about possible impending danger. It perhaps is also an education on the various pieces and their levers on the global chessboard.
What Have I Been Doing
So getting back to this. What have I been doing.
I suppose one could say nothing much- I play badminton, I play with clay, I do chores from time to time; but I have also been feeling immense growth these last four months in the many moments during and between these activities.
Who knows what the coming months will look like, but still so grateful for the opportunity to be on this journey.