I find myself in the same Swiss coffee shop as yesterday, alone this time. Doolies is taking a facial. We took haircuts earlier this morning, and my hair is punkier than ever. There’s something to be said for pink hair. I can’t say it, of course, but I’m sure people with pink hair talk about it, a lot.

We’re in Doolies’s parents’ apartment, and I’m typing up my little black book’s notes from my Swiss adventures. Doolies finds her cousin’s journals. They’re eight and nine years old, and are probably keeping the journals for their school in Dallas, or perhaps, like Doolies and her family, because they’re overachievers. Doolies reads the entries out loud. Their writing reminds me of my own words these past few days. They did this and that and this again. Then they slept. But before they finish describing each day, they pause and return to the beginning. They can’t resist starting at the exciting parts of their day, and once they exhaust the excitement, they slide back into the mundane: the brushing of the teeth, the haircuts. The New Yorker does this in its articles. It starts with an anecdote, and then, a few paragraphs or pages later, skids back for the history lessons. I guess all writing does that. Time is monotonous when viewed in a straight line. I wonder how we humans deal with it every day.

My family arrives tonight after what I imagine was a hellish journey: Buffalo to New York to Detroit to Osaka to Taipei. I have my own reasons for looking forward to their arrival. I want to speak English again. It’s only been two days, but isolation hit me harder and sooner this time. This is my fourth trip to Taiwan. We did the math yesterday, and Doolies initially didn’t believe I had visited four times. I had to show her my passport stamps to convince her. She was right to doubt me: my math skills, like my geographic skills, are not strong. I tend to make small errors that multiply the longer I use the incorrect calculations.

Part of my isolation, I realize, would be rectified if learned Chinese. My fear is even if I learn the basics of conversational Chinese, I still won’t have any enjoyable conversations. Knowing the basics of English doesn’t guarantee me many good English conversations. I’m all about amusing myself (and, with luck, others) during conversations. And without a strong grasp of the language, the only way I will amuse others is with my errors. I guess there are worse types of conversations than comedies of errors.

After eating a late lunch, I realize that some of my isolation might not have been because of Taiwan or my language skills, but because I was very hungry. Doolies keeps forgetting that like a small child, I grow moody if not regularly fed. Once I ate grilled fish and vegetable hand rolls, I felt (and acted) like a new man, no longer just the sulking boy-man.

I not only went to the same coffee shop as yesterday, I also sit at the same table, and eat the same vanilla ice cream and black coffee. What did improve: they play the best of Louis Armstrong on the radio. After I hear “It’s a Wonderful World” for the third time, I finally give in and make my way back to Doolies at the facial place. The buzz me in and I sit patiently in the lobby.

The coffee is making me anxious. It’s either that or the heat. It rained when we were at the beauty salon earlier in the morning. It was one of those hot weather downpours, where the sky opens up and rain slams the earth. It lasted a little less than an hour before clearing up. It washed away the heat for a good five minutes.

As I wait first in the Swiss coffee shop and then the salon, I start and finish Kurt Vonnegut’s Man without a country book. It’s a collection of essays he wrote in the later part of his life. Vonnegut is a bleeding-heart socialist. I very much respect him for his beliefs. As he lived through the younger Bush years and the Middle East wars, he became very disillusioned. Perhaps he was always disillusioned with our government and world. While many of his stories display a toxic pessimism, his essays bring that pessimism to a higher level. He seems to hate human beings, completely losing faith that we can do anything right. I like Vonnegut and I like his intelligence, and because of that, his words don’t bode well for the rest of us. My regret is he died before Bush left office. It is almost impossible for whoever takes his place to be worse. How is that for optimism?

And then my family arrived and we slept, but not before we brushed our teeth.