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Showing posts with label essay/散文. Show all posts
Showing posts with label essay/散文. Show all posts

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Mr. Speedy, X-Ray Orderly

This is Mark's journal entry from his experience at Taipei Veterans' General Hospital the night before going in for surgery.

X-ray orderly shows up. Speaks no English. We agree that I am the guy on his sheet of paper. He mimes taking  a picture and motions for me to follow. He has candy-striped pink & white glasses.

He takes off down the hallway. A tall guy dressed in the same standard-issue outfit (blue for guys, pink for girls) seems to have been corralled as well. We follow Mr. Speedy down the hall to the elevators. Mr Speedy squeezes us into a crowd that's getting into that little lift. We go to down to the first floor and follow him left? No, right. Ok. Mr. Speedy squeezes between the wall and a moving gurney and takes off, leaving Tall Guy and me stuck in traffic.

We catch up with him at the counter. He says sit. We sit. A nice young lady with a quizzical expression is relieved when I say my Chinese name. Now her piece of paper makes sense!

A young guy in a lab coat helps me stand--no, not that way, the other way--for the X-ray. It's all done in a second.

Mr. Speedy says sit. I sit. Mr. Speedy says let's go. Tall Guy and I follow him right, no, left, to a different elevator.

The doors open. The elevator is a construction zone. We get in anyway. A lady who seemed to be waiting to get in doesn't get in. The doors close. The doors open. The waiting lady gingerly gets into the elevator. The doors close.

The lady pushes floor #7. Nothing.

Mr. Speedy pushes floor #7, wiggling his finger a little bit as he does so. Ah, now the number 7 is lit.

We go up. The lady gets off at the 7th floor. The doors close. We proceed to the 10th floor. Mr. Speedy breezes down the hallway. It looks familiar. Hey, this is General Surgery! We're back!

I guess...yeah, we're done.

Tall Guy and I find our way back to our rooms.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

The Candidate Responds 候選人的回覆

Since 2012 is an election year, I thought I'd post a rambling I did after being on an airplane for 20+ hours and finding myself jet-lagged in a Nike conference room somewhere in Asia.  --Mark
(more art here)

The Candidate Responds

I’m glad you asked that because I think it’s important that we talk about these things. Things like this need to be talked about and that’s what we’re here for. Issues of this nature are controversial because they inspire differing opinions on one or more sides, and it’s this very thing that I want to talk about today. We must define it clearly, completely, and in-depth.

And then we must take action. Now. I’m not talking tomorrow or next week. I’m talking now. My staff and I have put our heads together already and looked very seriously at the option of setting up a committee with the expressed purpose of quantifying our discussion readiness potential.