This was originally posted on blogger.

It’s been a long long time since I got to a blog post, so let’s go ahead and do it!

I landed in San Francisco around 11am on Wednesday. The line for immigration was extremely long, about one hour. Mostly American passport holders standing in the cue. In hindsight, I did go to the bathroom after de-boarding which probably cost me several minutes. But the important thing is that in Taiwan it wouldn’t matter. I could use the bathroom *and* get of the airport in a timely manner. Behind me a Asian-Canadian man commented, “we are just passing through, why do we have to wait so long in line!” I shrugged, powerlessly, and said, “welcome to America!”

In the line I listened to Barack Obama’s 2004 Democratic National Convention. It sure was interesting, hearing him talk about the ideas – the ideals – that led him to get elected president. “There is no liberal America, there is no conservative America – there is only the United States of America.” That one. I reflect now that even Obama has abandoned that “abiding faith” and the “audacity of hope” for a more a more “us vs them” get-out-to-vote push against The Donald. Watching the election cycle right now is like watching a basketball match, a close one where you don’t know who’s going to win.

I then fumbled around on the bay Area Rapid Transit. I had a precious 16 minutes to figure out how to set up a transit card in the Bay Area and connect it to a credit card. 16 minutes, because if I missed the train, there wouldn’t be another for half an hour (not so rapid, is it). Throughout the process, I worried about getting robbed on BART. I kept my belongings – essentially a whole life’s worth of possessions – close to my chest. No, honestly I didn’t have these fears when I was in college. I was cavalier about safety and perhaps rightly so, because as they say in China “you cannot avoid eating for fear of choking”. But anyways somehow the impression of America that you get in Taiwan is that it’s full of drugs, crime and robbery. The news is a dastardly place. The day-to-day reality of BART only involved two boys talking loudly in the back of the carriage (didn’t bother me, but that sort of thing doesn’t happen in Taiwan. I guess in Kaohsiung I am the equivalent of those boys).

I crashed when I arrived at my friend Leon’s house, and when I woke up it was dark. Cold, too. Bone-shiveringly cold. Cold enough that for the first time in about 6 months, I wore shoes to go on a walk outside. Leon’s house is in Albany, a cute town close to where I went to college. It’s been about fifteen months since I’ve been somewhere so cold. My days in London seem to have been forgotten. The only thing in my mind was how freely, in-comparison, I could walk around at night in Kaohsiung. Flip flops, a key and underwear was all I needed. Although societal standards also encourage you to wear a shirt and pants.

On my walk, I walked into a 7-Eleven. This is another past time in Taiwan; to duck out the heat, and maybe buy a carton of soy milk. American 7-Eleven was just as I remembered it: unremarkably, not so convenient. I didn’t feel moved to buy anything. But I did watch an interaction at the counter. A white guy, who reminded me of someone you’d meet at the Kaohsiung foreign bars (finally, something familiar) said “are you Seikh?” The man at the till was South Asian and said, “Seikh?” The white man continued, “Seikh. Like the religion.” The other man: “Oh, no I’m Muslim.” The white man said, “Oh, Muslims. Wow, awesome. I have a bunch of really good friends who are Muslim.”

These anecdotes are all to say that I feel like a total Taiwanese FOB (Fresh of the Boat). America feels unwieldy, expensive, unsafe. In three days, my Taiwanese permanent residence expires, which means I don’t have any legal status in the country. I’ve said goodbye to beloved friends there. And they all wished me luck going back to my country. But now I’m here, in the great US of A, and I feel remarkably out of my comfort zone. Everything is scary, different. Thank god I speak English, and have vestigial memory of aspects of this society. But after over two years living abroad, I feel again like I have a tenuous connection to this country.