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Bon Journal

Worlds apart

My father updated me on my relatives in Taiwan. My cousins all live with or live near their parents - my father's sisters and brothers.

By Chinese tradition, my cousins are pious - as they are by their parents' side. My father has to travel around the world to visit me, my brother, and my sister. For a seventy-year old man, he is adventurous. For us thirty-something kids, we are not pious.

We lead such different lives from each other, and especially compared to our cousins.

For a time-challenged individual like myself, I don't understand how anyone has time to watch television. I don't remember the last time I waste a day doing nothing.

My father is making a big deal of getting over his jet lag. Yet for me, it is a as common as the sun rising each morning.

Many cousins don't work, not because they don't have to, but because they cannot find work. Other cousins can't find girlfriends (because they don't have work.) I'm not sure whether it's because they live at home that they don't need to work, or vice versa. Whatever the case, I consider living at home - if a place called home still exists - a luxury.

Doing nothing is a luxury I can yet afford.

Not having to work is a luxury I can only imagine.

Our relatives probably pity my father that we live so far away and that we have to work for a living. But at least, defends my father, we are realising our potential. And through email, he gets a taste of the richness and diversity of our pursuits.

14 July 2001

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