I do feel lonely but still path my own life at a comfortable temple. Sometimes I'm awoken in self-pity, realizing there's not another pillow beside me. But we all do what we have to at sunrise.
As the Meetup activity grows in Taiwan, I start hanging out with like-minded people.
A realization strikes me, “Damn, I know not just a little of everything.”
At my first karaoke meetup, I sat beside the host who passionately showed me how to use the iPad to order songs, and said, “I don't know how to see the already ordered songs list, though.”
I glanced down the screen and touched a button with a red 15, and there was the list. She was so amazed that she shouted how smart(?) I was, and people around us were nodding.
Come on, it's been over a decade since I went to a karaoke bar. I have imagined how dumb I would act in a 2025 karaoke bar.
It's fairly obvious the red 15 signifies how many songs were ordered.
First, it's impossible for a karaoke bar with only 15 songs to choose from. Second, this bar wasn't named after 15, nor were there 15 people in this room. After further chatting, she's already 38 and has hosted a karaoke meetup at this bar several times.
The other time was in a backpackers’ hostel in Bratislava. Across my bed was a New Yorker reading a PAPER book!
Call me a dinosaur, but I appreciate people carrying wisdom written on paper while traveling. So, of course, I showered him with my emotional praise.
He said, “Oh, yeah. This is my favorite book so far.” “What’s about?”I asked, curious.
“Well, it is difficult to explain this book for an English second language speaker.” He replied.
That's true, so I said nonchalantly, “Try me.”
“It's about Nihilism.” He said simply, supposing that I wouldn't be able to ask further questions.
“Nil means zero, right?” I chirped with a thrilling excitement of going to learn something from him, “So I guess it's a philosophy opposite to Existenism”
He stared at me in silence, and then shrugging his shoulders, said, “Well, I'm not sure what ‘nil’ means…”
Later he told me he's gonna work on his application for PhD program at a nearby coffeehouse.
Composed, I said, “Good luck with your work.” However, my mind was screaming, “How can you explain the knowledge inside the book when you don’t even know what a word means outside it, which is its cover?”
Yeah, I'm proud of learning what I like. I won't bother you if you're annoyed by my accent. I won’t stop sharing things here and on Medium over comments like, “Why don't you write/rap/sing in your language?”
I love doing this ‘No business’ work, and I love learning anything while knowing I will still have A LOT to learn in this limited life.
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