Looking Down

It looks like I shall soon be returning home. Tomorrow morning looks likely. I want to forget this last week, but at the same time I know that I must remember.

It struck me this morning, staring out across a drab, grey, damp Tainan City, that I have been given a completely new vantage point from which to observe what is going on, literally and metaphorically. From up here, I can see the ongoing madness on the roads. To be fair, it’s nothing out of the ordinary for Taiwan, but there is one major concern brought in to sharper focus from up here. I’m talking ambulances.

This is a major hospital and, as one might expect, there is a steady flow of these white carriages, all siren-shouty and red-light flashy. I can see and hear them quite clearly, all the way up here. Unfortunately, down on the ground, there seems to be an inordiante number of drivers and riders who clearly have no concept of giving way and/or making space. God help them when they happen to be on board, where those few extra seconds delay may mean the difference between life and death. On the commonsense failure dial, this one ranks well up there, having been turned right up to eleven.

Otherwise, those who know me personally will be aware of my height. I spend my life looking down on people, especially here in the land of the almost nobody taller than me. If I’m honest, I tend to find myself looking down, wondering why people I don’t know are doing things I don’t understand, when they could do things differently with much more favourable consequences for everyone. I guess there’s an element of arrogance, and I have certainly been accused of that in the past, but I will go to my grave defending my good intentions. Actually, I see that arrogant is defined as “having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance or abilities”, so that doesn’t work for me. I’ve never had a sense of importance, so I suppose it’s more the case that I’m often misunderstood. I find myself looking at a problem and arriving at a solution with which you simply could not argue. Why would you do that? Why wouldn’t you do that? If I cannot come up with an answer to either of these posers, then my solution is sound. If I can find an alternative, then my solution is not introduced to an unwilling world. Simple. It’s why I get frustrated. I could save lives and prevent countless pointless injuries, not to mention the concomitant savings in respect of air pollution, medical services, man-hour losses, etc., etc., but I cannot – even at 6’4″ – be seen and heard in a crowd intent on looking out for Number One.

And yet. And yet, here I am being cared for by beautiful strangers who would not have the slightest concern about treating this balding, lanky, old waiguoren (外國人 – foreigner). The very same strangers I see down below, making their way to work, jumping lights, turning across oncoming traffic, failing to signal where appropriate, passing too close at too high a speed. Were I to offer them safety advice, they’d struggle to comprehend my good intentions. They have been trained to do what they do, not to listen to good advice and act on it for their own benefit. I feel so impotent. I certainly don’t feel important.

When I leave this place, I shall return to ground level for the first time in a week. My lofty position will be less pronounced. Just a handful of inches over your average Taiwanese, but I shall henceforth forever look up to those who have chosen nursing and medicine as their vocation. I have visited hospitals in the past, and have received treatment and tests before being sent packing, but I tended to slide in, avoid looking at any equipment or sick people or doctors or nurses or support staff, and then slide out again, considering it a success if I’d managed to avoid a faint. Model patient I am not. I will also be a little sad, as it occurs to me that in the days, weeks, months and years to come, should I bump in to any of my carers (doctors, nurses, cleaners, food bringers), I shan’t have the slightest idea who they are, and I’d feel bad about not expressing my thanks. These masks make us all anonymous and faceless. That’s a real shame.