Water Falls

The boy looked around at his surroundings. He appeared to be on a boat, in the middle of a large body of water.

Ludicrous, he thought to himself. How he came into this situation, he had no idea.

The boat drifted lazily along. The skies were grey and cloudy, hinting at a coming storm. The heat and humidity was unbearable, the feeling one gets when the rain is about to fall, yet refuses to.

And still the boy sat in the boat, drifting wherever the wind took him.

Stupid, he thought to himself. Where was his oar? How did he manage to strand himself out here in the middle of nowhere? Why was he all alone in an empty boat, with not even an oar to help him navigate?

A bottle floated by him.

Interesting, he thought to himself. Where did the bottle come from?

He leaned over the edge of his boat, his hands gripping the sides tightly. He was afraid to fall in after all. He couldn't remember the last time he had been in the water.

His hand grasped the handle of the bottle, a little water kissing his hand. He gasped, the water was so cold, yet it was so refreshing.

Ahh! he thought to himself. Was this bottle worth it? He weighed it in his hand, the smoothness of the glass a comfort to his sweaty palms. There was a cork in it and upon closer examination, a message in the bottle.

He pulled the cork out. With a loud pop, a piece of paper drifted out of the bottle.

01001001 00100000 01100100 01101111 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00101110

He blinked once. He blinked twice. The message was unreadable, a slew of numbers that made no sense.

He flipped the paper over. On the back there was a small message written in the corner. Simply put, it said

Enjoy what time you have in the water.

The boy thought about it. He had been afraid to touch the water for a while now, instead choosing to sit in his boat. Where it was safe. Where he couldn't get wet.

But he realized, the water had changed from when he had last been in it. It wasn't the hostile waters he had known earlier. It wasn't the whirlpools which had tossed and turned and spun him in circles till he was dizzy. It wasn't geysers that had shot him into the air and had him come crashing down violently.

Instead, these waters seemed gentle. Seemed calm. Looking at the storm clouds in the horizon, he knew that these waters wouldn't last. That soon, the storm clouds would come and force him back into the boat. He knew what kind of water was good now though...so, for the time being...

He jumped in.

My Lucky Coin

I have a lucky coin.

Every morning, when I wake up, I ask myself if I still feel the same way like I did when I went to bed the previous night. Then, I flip the coin.

If the coin comes up heads, I still feel the same way.

If the coin ever comes up tails, I'll keep flipping the coin till it comes up heads.

So far though, the coin has always been heads.

Orientation

I'm writing this Friday night here in Taipei, the first time I've actually spent more than an hour at my place before needing to go to bed in about two weeks.

Needless to say, it's been a crazy wild two weeks.

Real quick. The program I'm doing my internship at the Taipei Zoo is called Taiwan Tech Trek. Every year for the last four years, Taiwanese people from overseas have participated in this program, which seeks to educate those who were born elsewhere about what life is like working in Taiwan. Yes, they do indeed hope that some of us do stay afterwards...and I have heard stories of one or two people actually staying here to work after participating in this program.

I had to admit, I entered the program nervous and scared. It had been a while since I was introduced to that many new people at the same time and the idea that I would be living and hanging out with the same group of people for four whole days (including nights) made me more than a little nervous.

Needless to say, I had a bunch of fun, meeting Taiwanese people from all places! There were people from Canada, Argentina, Chile, and of course, America!

I would post photos, but unfortunately my internet here in Taiwan is really slow...but you can see photographs of people and what I've been doing on Facebook! People should be posting their photos up.

I hope all of you at home are doing good. I miss you all!