My Travel Adventures

As students at a Taiwanese-affiliated institution, we at ICLP are having a week-long holiday from Thursday to Wednesday for the Chinese New Year. Taipei has been in a festive mood, with lanterns, firecrackers, and couplets, all red, adorning numerous buildings (but especially supermarkets). We were told that Taipei would empty during the holidays, with people returning home to celebrate with their families. It was an accurate prognosis. Especially on Friday, on New Year’s Eve, most stores were closed, the streets were empty, and the few people traversing them were by and large unchaperoned foreigners.

Last time I witnessed an election abroad was in 2016 in the USA. My whole suite sat in front of the TV that evening as the moderators on CNN, with mounting desperation, pinned their increasingly delusional hopes on an ever-shrinking number of uncounted votes in Florida. What an awful time.

I planned to return to Taiwan early in the morning on Monday, with the intention to begin classes immediately upon my arrival. The plan dissolved quite quickly when my flight from Prague to Paris was delayed by two hours, apparently caused by the plane’s late arrival and exacerbated by the necessity of changing a tyre.

To begin with, yes, I am aware that the new decade has technically not yet started, seeing as decades run from the year 1 to the year 10. However, given the fact that, for example, we very seldom think about the 1960s as excluding the year 1960 and including the year 1970, I believe I am justified in welcoming the new decade now.