How I came to be in Taiwan

It all started the day I arrived home from Germany. I spent all day wishing I could go back to the airport and fly somewhere else again. So anyway I finished my HSC and went to uni. I enrolled in Chinese, Arabic, Psych, and something else. Arab World studies. So anyway, it was the first Friday of the year, and we had our first tute with Mr Keenan. While everyone was chatting before class a girl who was repeating the first unit told us about the dude that came first in Chinese, got a scholarship, then went to China, where noone understood him because his tones were messy.
So anyway THAT was the day I became determined to a) come first in Chinese, b) get a scholarship and c) go to China (and finally go overseas again) 0h and d) make sure I understood tones!.

This is what ran through my head everyday for the next year:
Come first=scholarship to China
with absolutely no variables or additional factors

From that day I was a character-learning machine, a little on the obsessive side, learning everything three times over to ace every test, until I forgot why I originally chose Chinese. It was the perfect plan. What a great place uni was - study hard, which was doable, and go overseas! It turned out what I was doing was called 'perfectionist performance'. Also, for a while I was suspected of deceiving them about previous Chinese learning experience, which is a big no-no in the Chinese studies department. So anyway, I ended up coming first but lo and behold I had in fact forgotten why I was doing it. Total cliche I know! Also, the marks for my other subjects were average coz all I cared about was acing Chinese.

At the beginning of second year, some scholarship applications came out, including the Taiwan MOE one. I knew absolutely nothing about it, only that it began with S and ended with cholarship. That was it. It had "plane ticket" written all over it. I also had no idea that competition was low - I expected there to be some level of glory involved so that I could show it off to the skeptical members of my family. The application was very involved, and time was running out, and because I believed it was competitive (sad, so sad), I decided not to bother. A week before the deadline a friend said I would get it if I applied so I made the last minute decision to go and get the HIV tests and the references and look up schools on the internet. I handed it all in and still believed there was some uncertainty to it all. So I totally forgot about Taiwan and never bothered to actually think about what kind of a place it was, which were the best schools, what people did there etc. In May I got an email from the TECO office saying "congratulations your application's been accepted". To me, it read "You are fantastic, and for this reason, we are rewarding you with a year of Chinese study in Taiwan." I rang people and screamed and cried and did the big hoorah and said "I got it, I got it!" like it was totally unexpected. It was the overnight-star routine. I was an official Scholarship Student! And more importantly, I was finally going back to the airport. It was an external scholarship, but I was invited to a fancy gathering for scholarship recipients within the uni. I had no idea about how sad it all must have looked from the outside.

It has been good to break away. A few of the biggest things I've half-learnt are a) how to take it easy b) not give a sh/t about prizes/glory c) figure out priorities. The last time Martin told me to "enjoy myself" was I swear the last time anyone will ever tell me that. Other stuff like half-understanding Chinese culture and speaking Chinese have come as added extras. Pretty decent ones, I'd say!
That's my confession of the week. Days of Our Lives theme song, and CUT!  ¶ 22:44