Moving to Taiwan? That's So Hype (And Other Attempts at a Hip State of Being)
In the Foreign Service jobs only last for two or three years, or four if you’re a total weirdo who wants to stay in the same place for basically forever, like people used to do when moving somewhere else required trading your children for a set of oxen, which wasn’t a bad trade if your kids had diphtheria anyway and the oxen were sturdy.
Towards the end of your assignment you have to “bid” on your follow on job. The bidding process is less like “bidding,” where you present a case for why you’re best for the job and the job is awarded to the most compelling bid, and more like “voodoo magic,” where you boil acacia wood and spider legs into boiling black licorice liquid, chant loudly in French creole laced with Elvish, and stick needles into a textile doll in the shape of Beetlejuice, and then someone in the “assignments division” in DC does something similar, and if your likeness appears in the smoke the job is yours.
“Did you say Beetlejuice? Say it twice more and I'll be even happier.”
I jest of course. There’s more to it than that, including circular dances, seances with Rutherford B. Hayes, and the sacrificial cheese-letting of seven Kraft dinners.
This bid season, fortune — and Rutherford B. Hayes and Beetlejuice — smiled on the Abu Halen family. We’ve been assigned to serve next in Taipei, Taiwan. I will study Mandarin for two years beforehand, and I’ll like it, if I know what’s good for me.
“Taiwan? Cool, I guess. Tryna scroll here.”
I never, ever pictured myself in Taiwan. No, that’s not entirely true. My college girlfriend was sent on her LDS mission to Taiwan and for a few months after her departure I very seriously considered changing majors to Chinese so that when she came home I’d be able to barely communicate with her in the caveman Mandarin you learn in first year university language courses, and then we’d switch to English wherein she’d ask me what sorts of jobs I realistically hoped to obtain with a degree in Chinese and I’d say P.F. Chang’s and then she’d say, “I'm sorry but this is not going to work out. It's not me, it's you.”
“I'll climb the highest mountain for hummus.”
But instead I majored in Arabic and I met Shannon and she asked me what sorts of jobs I realistically hoped to obtain with a degree in Arabic and I said hummus and she said, “Take me, you fool.” I haven’t really thought about Taiwan since those days.
And now here we are. What a funny little circle. It's taken me out through deserts and fog and holding little hands that grew and grew, and brought me back through jungles and mountains and strong, grown up arms that set me down back where I started. This is a good place to be.
