...but how can the broken branch bear fruit, how can the leaf torn away by the winds and dragged through the dust grow green again? and why, so young, such bitterness? What do I know? It was perhaps my destiny to live like this, weary before having borne any burden, out of breath before having run...

(Gustave Flaubert)

There was bamboo as I stepped off the bus this afternoon. In Epping there used to be bamboo all along the fence we shared with the neighbours mum didn't talk to. She didn't like them because they did nothing to get rid of all the bamboo along the fence. Mel and I used to play with it. We used to strip off the outer leaves and observe how it was made of sections on the inside. I went out there to play with it on my own one day. Mum came out into the backyard and tore me away from it and into the bathroom where she washed my hands and scolded me for playing with it. She had poisoned it that morning. How was I to know? I asked. She was angry. Fifteen years later I kind of understand now though.

I crossed the road and the front lawn of the ambulance station. In the country a male friend of my sister's seemed to be extra-friendly to me for some reason. He was an ambo. He came and sat right next to me several times, which made me uncomfortable as he was married and I didn't want to get the blame, being the female party, which I had experienced before. But I wanted to ask him about being an ambo. I didn't come straight out and ask him if he saw anything gruesome sometimes but he seemed to have a prepared speech about his work so I sat and nodded as I listened. He said it was a great job, not many accidents, alot of transfering of patients from one hospital to the other.

This site still gets 2 hits a day and I hardly write on it anymore! Must write more again. But it's not about Taiwan, what to do? It'll have to be about the pursual of my G.C.I.A. and complaints about future uni assignments etc.  ¶ 16:52