To Josephine, from Taipei

 July 20, 1989

To Josephine, from Taipei

First, let me disabuse you of the common notion that everything works perfectly in Taiwan. It doesn’t. Three things have gone awry so far.

First, the weather. We flew in at the tail of a typhoon, and it looks like we’re about to run smack into another on our way out, but I can’t really bitch about that, can I? I just have to clutch my beads and hope that my shirt doesn’t end up drinking tea.

Second, a computer. They installed a brand new one, a COPAM, in the room upon our arrival (yes, this is a working trip all right) and, horror of horrors in this land of clones, the blasted thing refused to boot. Not their fault, though. It turned out the CPU was locked up. The resident nerd fixed that in a jiffy.

Third, we got lost. Our host wanted us to inspect one of his properties, an amusement park of sorts right beneath a dam in the city’s outskirts. Two problems: the driver didn’t know the way, and the directional signs weren’t where they should have been. As a result, we lost half a day just meandering about some pretty desolate and narrow byways.

Not that I was altogether unhappy, as our numerous detours gave me glimpses of day to day life in the countryside. These impressed me: the mountains were thickly wooded, every tiny patch of land as far as the eye could see was tilled, and there wasn’t a single “tambay” in sight anywhere.

Taipei itself, insofar as this brief visit allows me to tell, is a cross between Caloocan and Singapore. It strikes me as the quintessentially schizophrenic Asian city – occidental, organized and efficient on top, oriental, frenetic, and topsy-turvy at bottom. And humid as home.

Horrendous traffic jams on the freeways and main thoroughfares, where daredevil drivers of top of the line Japanese, American and European models and swarms of battered, puny scooters constantly try to outdo each other. Run-down tenement houses crowding humongous high rises. Tai Chi at dawn, Karaoke at dusk. Everywhere hordes of people in constant motion and great hurry. But at least the trees in the parks and lining the boulevards look healthy and happy.

Shopping here is decidedly an aggravation. The prices are astronomical, compounding which hardly anyone speaks English. A bane and a boon: though my pocket hurts, my sign language has improved.

Most items cost double if not triple what they do in Manila. In the hotel, a bottle of beer, Taiwan or Carlsberg, is around P80, a bottle of Coke P60. Outside, a cup of Blue Mountain coffee is P60 also, but at least it’s the genuine article. Really, Taipei is Tokyo with the price tags but without the quality, or Hongkong without either the range of choices or the haggling.

I can’t quite understand why so few speak the universal language. Not the giggly counter girls, nor the avuncular policemen, nor the septuagenarian (I swear) street sweepers. In our hotel, only the supervisors do, but only rudimentarily. And, of course, the Filipinos.

You’ll be happy to know there are some 40,000 of our tribe here now. Good news in that respect: we’re not openly disdained in these parts. I guess that’s because apart from the fact that our respective Chinese communities trade and cross-pollinate freely, Pinay maids in Taipei are not an ubiquitous, unruly breed as they are in Hongkong and elsewhere. Here, as the Brits say, we do not foul the footpaths. Not yet, anyway.

Otherwise, just a jumble of impressions:

The service on PAL compares favourably with that on China Airlines, which is still just about the stodgiest thing there is on wings: crime and fashion aren’t consuming passions: the “China Post” invariably looks like the handiwork of some campus publication staff, “sans” news, “sans” malice: department stores stay open until 9:30 p.m. and there are variety shows on TV close to midnight: not a single beggar or stray cat on the streets.

Can’t say it’s fun to live here, but safer than safe to do so it most certainly is. After home, this kind of anonymous dullness is refreshing.

In Praise of Benedict

 July 11, 1989

In Praise of Benedict

“Once there was a man who was revered for the holiness of his life. Benedict was his name, and he was also blessed with God’s grace.” Thus begins the Life and Miracles of St. Benedict, whose feast the Catholic Church celebrates tomorrow, written by Pope St. Gregory the Great, himself a Benedictine monk. Who indeed was Benedict, and how did he come to play such a vital role, not just in the history of the Church, but in the evolution of Western civilization?

Nothing we know of Benedict through his hagiographer Gregory prepares us for the disproportionate influence he has wielded on the course of religious and human events these past millennium and a half. He was born around 480 A.D., the scion of a noble Roman family. As a young student, he found life in the imperial capital so decadent and corrupt he decided to become a hermit and seek God. Subsequently, he established two monasteries for those who sought to follow his example. He died about 547 A.D. That is all.

But the age in which Benedict lived was one of conflict and violent change. The old Empire was dying. Barbarian armies under Attila, Alaric and Genseric had overrun the Italian peninsula, devastating everything in their path and all but extinguishing every vestige of Graeco-Roman culture. It was in such a setting that the way of life prescribed by Benedict for his monks started to assume crucial significance.

Strangely so, for all Benedict really wanted to do when he set down his Rule for monks was to provide them with a framework within which to pursue a regimen of ora et labora, work and prayer totally dedicated to God’s service, in an atmosphere of peace and quiet away from the hustle and bustle of secular living. But peace and quiet was precisely what the men and women of those troubled times most needed, and as all Europe plunged deeper into what we have come to know as the Dark Ages, it was the Benedict’s monasteries that they turned to for refuge and solace.

Order, strength, stability, security: in a world gone awry, these were the values these religious enclaves stood for, and their very construction made these values immediately apparent. Look at Monte Cassino, the second monastery Benedict founded on the summit of a mountain overlooking the road from Rome to Naples. The words massive, formidable, impregnable readily come to mind. Obviously built to last, it is now almost 1,500 years old!

This ancient edifice bears witness, not just to divine zeal and spiritual fortitude, but likewise to human  organization and achievement. For Benedict was both a man of God and a Roman – and, therefore, also a very practical man. God provides, but man lives by the sweat of his brow just the same.

Behind the high and thick walls of monasteries like Monte Cassino were not only seekers after perfection and holiness, but hardworking and highly skilled builders, craftsmen, artisans, cooks and farmers, not to mention scholars, musicians, and scientists, constituting a large family perfectly capable of looking after its own needs.

Not only did they preserve and copy the theological, philosophical, literary and scientific texts of classical antiquity. They also constructed edifices, cleared forests, built roads and bridges, cultivated fields, raised livestock, poultry and fish, spun yarn, fed and clothed the poor, healed the sick, welcomed pilgrims and strangers. All these, at a time when the rest of known humanity in the west merely struggled to stay alive.

The great libraries, the soaring cathedrals of England, the large farms of Germany, the great vineyards of France as well as the books, blocks of stone, and the crop strains, machines and implements used to organize them: they are the enduring legacy of that obscure genius who started out looking for God in wilderness and ended up saving the world of mankind.