Being in public health, I pay special attention to my health behavior.  Here are some

Healthy Habits I’ve Picked Up in Taiwan:

1.  Drinking coffee or black tea with every meal:  because restaurants never provide water, but they will provide these two caffeinated teeth-stainers free or at a huge discount with a meal.  If they do provide water, you usually don’t trust it.  The tea and coffee were made with this same water of course, but the dark color hides things.

 

2.  Spraying myself with Off every night before bed:  because I know too many people who get eaten alive during their sleep.  It happens to me once in a while; I spray myself each day for a week after that, then get careless and stop; then it happens again.  It’s crossed my mind that I may grow a third arm from all the dEET poisoning, but I’m trusting in the fact that dEET has not been shown scientifically to cause any harm to one’s health.  Mosquito-born Japanese encephalitis, on the other hand, has.

 

3.  Crossing streets within inches of moving traffic:  I found I needed to get over the fear of being close to moving vehicles when I realized if I didn’t, I would in fact never cross the street.  Plus it’s only at these times when you can finally get close enough to almost make out an outline of a person inside those 3%-tint car windows. 

I found the first trick is NOT to look questionably at the drivers/scooter-riders, with the expression, “Are you going, or are you going to let me go?”  Inevitably you get into the vroom-screech, start-stop game when you both simultaneously think the other is about to go.  Instead, you need to look straight ahead at your destination and walk purposefully at a quick steady pace, ignoring all moving things on either side of you.  Then, the drivers know exactly where you’re going and will time their movements according to yours, predicting the exact spot you’ll be and when, and they’ll turn either right in front or right behind you.  I call this trick Blind Faith.

            The second trick is The Hand.  I discovered this quite accidentally one day, as Ginger and I were about to cross a street.  I was telling her a story and put up my hand, like a policeman, as part of my story.  The car creeping next to us suddenly stopped and waited for us to go.  I’ve tried this a few more times and it always works.  It’s incredible.  While in NYC this gesture would be a signal for the driver to roll down his window and outleash expletives and firearms; in Taiwan the harried, impatient drivers suddenly turn meek and obedient at the sight of your hand. 

 

 

 

 4.  Taking lots of drugs.  In 5 months here I’ve already used my health insurance card 7 times, half of those times I came back with at least 4 different prescription drugs.  I only vaguely know what each is for, but when I pop them they work like magic.  Especially my really gross cough medicine, literally called “Brown Mixture #20”.  They work a lot better than my own combinations of drugs from home.  One night, sneezing, congested and aching, I took my Allegra for the allergies, Sudafed for the congestion, and Tylenol for my headache.  But they somehow must have cancelled each other out, because I remained sneezing, congested and achy all night.  The only med that kicked in was the “non-drowsy” part of my non-drowsy Sudafed (the only kind I had at the time), and I didn’t sleep all night.  

 

5.  Eating off the street:  'nuf said.