15. How To Lose A Friend In Three Ways

To be continued, below...

So how many ways are there to lose a friend? Rumours have it that there are about ten, but here are the top three ways as i have discovered in taiwan.

1. The number 1 strategy to lose a friend is to talk about yourself whenever you can. To master this art, you have to be ever-thinking about what the talk topic has to do with yourself, and how you can apply it and fit yourself into the conversation. A typical conversation from the master:

master: so where did you go today?
friend: i went to a 'working house' store in near Taichung train station.
master: oh that one, yeah i know that one. me and my friends went there once to buy tapes and clothes. so where else did you go?
friend: well the science museum, i walked there after that.
master: you walked to the science museum? did you like it?
friend: yes i liked it, i really liked the rooftop display.
master: yeah, i remember when i went to the science museum and i dared my friends to hide inside while it closed. and my friends couldn't get out after that. oh, so funny.
friend: ohh...
master: but the funny thing is they had to spend the night there in their school uniform. i didn't want to ditch my friends either, so i went home to get a sleeping bag and slept near the museum window. that was just last year before the renovation.
friend: didn't your friends get mad?
master: yeah, but we do this all the time. one of our classmates can never get along with the other boys in the other class. and he always goes to throw rubbish or uneaten lunch into their home room after lunch. the teacher's expression was so funny.
friend: ...hmm...oh i went to see the native plant green house as well, that was good.
master: yeah...(silence)
friend: ...have you been there?
master: (eyes light up and takes a deep breath) I! blablabla...

Clearly here in this case study, the master is supposed to be a gracious and welcoming host, whose aim is to make the friend feel comfortable with a heart-warming chat. But what does she do? From the question asker, she becomes the question receiver, and she makes you wonder if all her questions are asked according to her own interests, so that as soon as a semi-satisfactory answer is given, she may take a deep breath and pounce on her own question - hard.

In taiwan, i talked to a very powerful girl who was keen and able to maintain a one way conversation. Every time i took a breath to speak some words, she would quickly cut me off with more tales about herself, leaving me to close my mouth and deflate air. By the time she ran out of things to interrupt me with, my face had turned red hot, maybe from all those breaths, but definitely from the build-up of intense frustration. And we talked for three and a bit hours that night.

2. The second most effective way is to show off your skills and abilities as a priority in friendship building. To master this art, you need to know how to avoid weaknesses to deliberately run into your strengths, while pulling others down in order to magnify yourself. Thus the main goal of a master is to surround himself with a group of people who awe at his skills and capabilities. Littly known to him, the culture of the group he creates is of self-interest, competition and jealousy. And little does he know, that deep down, people don't really care about your abilities. What matters to people is your sincerity.

"I remember the story of a taiwanese guy who dated a taiwanese girl. He was very excited to take her out to see a movie, though he wasn't too good with directions, and he lost his way. By the time they arrived at the cinema, the movie had already finished. Embarrassed he was, but he nervously asked her if she wanted to go to dinner. She said yes. At the end of the dinner, he discovered that he only had NT$100 in his wallet. He searched every single pocket for loose change, but still did not have enough. Neighbouring diners were turning their heads to look as they wondered what the fuss was all about. The guy stuttered to ask the girl whether she could lend him some money to pay for the dinner. The next day, the girl's parents invited the guy over to have a coffee. He was late by over three-quarters of an hour, the reason being that his motorbike had run out of petrol. By the time the parents greeted him outside the gate, he was huffing and puffing breathlessly beside his motorcycle with sweat dripping from his chin and helmet strap. In the end, the girl actually married the silly guy."

Just look at how hard he tried. If a girl did that to me, i may not marry her, but i would definitely nod my head and say to myself: "i want to be your friend." It's true that she doesn't know how to do anything. I could say that she is uncautious or even disorganized. But those things don't matter when there is true sincerity.

If it was a guy, it would be even better.

14. Double the Vision

I have never seen so many people pack into a single train station. Very shameful, my camera was not wide enough to capture all the people on the left squeezing down from the escalator and all the people on the right squeezing onto the escalator trying to get down.

This was at about 2:00am on the 1st day of 2007, where a lot of people had come out to the parliament square to celebrate the new year. This was at the final stage of going home. The initial stage of going home, which was walking out of parliament square, began at about 12:30am. In the process of going home, there wasn't one corner of any big city streets that allowed the space for a full-stretched yawn. The sufferers of course, were the vehicles that had happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. If there wasn't even enough space for a yawn, there wouldn't have been enough space to even open the door to get out and 'talk about it'.

Pedestrians on the paths were so slow, literally at the pace of snails, that after a while, even some old grandmas and grandpas could be seen rolling over head-high metal fences onto private property to gain a speed advantage via a clear path. This was pleasing to my eyes - I love to see people act out of desperation. I overheard an english man say to his taiwanese wife, in an english accent: "Goodness, i'm never coming here again..." And surely i didn't just hear that from only one non-taiwanese person that night. It wasn't a pleasant idea to sit 300 metres away from the centre of the action. Next time, it shall be a good time on a rice paddock 30km away from the city, having a picnic while watching the fireworks.

If you've ever attempted to stare at a space, and continue staring at that space, where a train passes by, you'll find that it is impossible to keep your eyeballs still, or fixed. Uncontrollably, the eyeballs would always flicker then readjust, and flicker then readjust over and over again as it helplessly follows the movement of the train. The only way to stop this from happening is to form a double vision while continuing to stare at the same spot. With the double vision, nothing else seems to be in focus, except for the focus of fixing upon the new vision. Now you are not scared of however many trains that go past or however fast they go past. This technique is also the secret to blinking contests. And if you're feeling as though everything in your life is moving so fast that you can barely keep up, or that challenges are non-stop and can only get tougher and tougher, then won't you ask God for a double portion of a vision to be poured out into your life.

Sam Hu

13. The Path of Giant Tree Countdowns

A well-known feature of Mount Ali is its giant trees forest. Some have been around for thousands of years, and in a certain section of the forest, there is a walk which counts down the giant trees in order of smallest to largest. A feature of the giant trees forest is its ability to enhance endorphin production via natural chemicals being taken into the body. Another feature of the giant trees forest is the exotic birds, which are supposed to make exotic sounds pleasing to my ears. But my favourite feature is the wildlife or a wildlife, or more specifically the dogs, which has dominated a large territories inside the forest primarily because people in the city don't want them to be running on the streets.

I always bring food with me wherever i go to add an extra sense to the experience, whatever it may be. The giant trees forest was no exception because it had already the senses of seeing, hearing, smelling and touching - tasting made me complete. But the result of eating too much is that you will have people scabbing off you. I don't like the word 'scabbing' because it gives rise to negative connotations such as 'stingy' and 'poor' on behalf of both the giver and getter. Therefore, eating too much will have people located thoughtfully and purposefully close to you for certain reasons. Not that anybody followed me around the giant trees forest, but that thought struck me when i spotted some dogs stalking me. Inside the path of giant tree countdowns, the dogs have clear advantages over me. They can communicate in their own language, they are not bound legally by the path and their dog holes are invisible to human eyes. Some of these dogs seem like they haven't eaten for days, and you don't even have to lift up their lips to see their growling teeth. But that didn't mean that they disrespected me in any way.

Close to the end of the count down, there were about five dogs following me. I thought that it was quite good of them to do so, so i sat down on a step to watch them. They too decided to sit down along the path around me in a semi-circle. It was nice of them to just sit down and spend some time with me on the path of giant tree countdowns, so i decided to spare some food. As soon as i reached my hands into my bag, all five dogs jumped up from their sitting positions and began to growl at their opponents. They swiftly split up into two teams, team one was to my left and team two was to my right, and they pivoted about so fast that i was beginning to get double vision as well as a little bit scared. So i pulled my hand out of my bag and was just about to stand up, when both the growling and the pivoting suddenly stopped. Intrigued by this behaviour, i reached to unzip my bag, and surely the double vision was happening again. After this cycle had happened a few times, i truly realised what it is like to be so powerful that something would be accomplished at a wave of a hand. But somehow, after another repetition of my hand moving up and down, the fighting had become uncontrollable. One dog was taken down by three others, and the he was dragged out and helped along out of the scene by his mate who was on his side. The three gave chase, and after a brief moment, i was left all alone. Interesting to know that dogs make alliances and defensive pacts with one another. They remain loyal to their team even when his team mate is on the losing side, and if only i had known more about the incident e.g. gender, age, blood line, history or hunger situation, it would have been touching story. For such loyalty and friendship, isn't it worthwhile sitting down to get to know some of them a little bit better?

The dogs have fierce competitors for food, so they have to adapt to the environment to be able to survive. The dogs in the photo have a house under the wooden path. Not a bad idea, because older dogs would have no reason to overtake it because even if they did, they would need to live inside with their arms at the same height as their head. And those longing eyes, tell me that they want me, but are too scared to come and get me.

It is a different story with bigger dogs though. If their longing eyes eye onto something, they will be all too happy to go and get it. I sat quite close to the door as i was eating at a hotpot restaurant on Mount Ali one night. The owner seemed kind to me when she stood outside her restaurant to finally pull me in to eat 'hotpot with all you can eat rice'. A hungry yet gentle dog sat outside the door of the restaurant and knowing that i had a hotpot, she snuck in with her front legs on the bench of the table, and her sniffing and highly vacuum-like nose high in the air. When the owner saw this, she told her gently to 'zou kai' (go away) because she didn't want to alarm all the other guests. The dog ran outside to avoid the scolding. After a while it happened again, and the owner was very apologetic towards me and asked her son to watch the counter so that she can keep an eye on the dog. It happened a third time, and this time the dog and i were talking and laughing over the hotpot. When the owner saw this and had not realised our relationship, she picked up something which closely resembled a plastic bag and heaved it at the dog with all her might as she followed through half a dozen steps. The dog immediately raced out of the restaurant, but after hearing no sound she turned around to see a piece of material float down towards the ground. The owner had a choice between customers and dogs. If the choice was dogs, she could easily close down the business to turn it into a dog house, while if the choice was customers, she would simply close the front door to keep the dog out. In the end, i spotted her secretly give a bowl of food to the dog to eat, a compromised decision. She didn't want to show the customers that dogs like to hang around and she definitely didn't want to hurt the dog. Her kindheartedness was her dilemma, and her dilemma (and the half a dozen step follow through) was our joke.

12. For Everything that is 'Nice'

In the last few days i have been to night markets, parks, mountains, sanctuaries, and i have encountered a lot of 'nice' things. You may ask, what is 'nice'? 'Nice' is something you see, or hear, or feel, or sense, which puts a smile to your face and a touch to your heart. And the result of that has you saying: "hmmm....how nice....."

On a visit to a famouse national park, i came across some geese walking along a concrete walkpath in the middle of the man-made lake. I decided to follow them along the path, since they were the only animals in the park. Waddle waddle we go along the path, until i realised that they were easing away from me. Here's something i found about geese. They calculate your momentum when you approach them. Because they value their own weight as large, as they are quite hard to budge even one on one with a person, they will study your speed of approach. If it is not too high, then they will feel very safe. I also felt very safe around them.

The old grandma next to me was saying to her granddaughter (or daughter, i couldn't tell): "Xiao xin, ta hui yao ren de! (Be careful it bites!)", but i didn't believe her. I gave the geese my finger, and after a few 'waaagn's, one bit me on the hand. The sensation was surprising yet calm. I do not recall the feeling but i could be sure that it did not hurt - because geese do not have teeth. When you pull up the skin of covering a dog's upper jaws, you reveal its fierce snarling teeth. And you say, impossible(!), how can something so innocent turn into something so nasty in just one hand movement? Try putting those teeth on a goose. When you lifted up its beak sides, did it surprise you?

The little girl in the picture seemed to be scared of the geese. But at the same time, by the encouragement of her mum and her want to play with the only animals in the park before it gets dark, she had no choice. In the picture, it may seem like she's turning around to say a caring goodbye to the geese, but in reality, out of her shyness, she was actually inching herself towards the pack very slowly - backwards! How nice...


Once she was close enough, her grandma decided to take a photo of her with a statue in the background. This was the way in taiwan. When you reach a certain destination you must take a photo of 'evidence' to show all your friends and relatives that you have been to a particular place. For example, when a tourist climbs a mountain, he doesn't necessarily take a photo with the surrounding landscapes, but he takes one with the plaque on the rock which says: "mount ali national park". It just lets me wonder what that photo the grandma took of her granddaughter at the same time i captured my photo, would look like. How i would give to see the awesome lakeside background, everything before that as well as an innocent, content smile, that would put a smile on my face and give a touch to my heart.