12 October 2005

My favorite place in Taiwan

There is one place in Taiwan that stands out as my favorite place to be. I love hanging out at Kevin Pipe. I had the great opportunity to make friends with Kevin, the owner of the best pipe shop I've ever been in, when I lived in Kaohsiung. We used to spend many nights enjoying a smoke and a conversation. Kevin would close down the shop around 10 and we would often be there until 1 or 2 am. Every so often one of us would comment on the strangeness of a 25 yr old Canadian developing a valuable friendship with a 45 yr old Taiwanese man. I had the chance to go to Kevin's shop on the weekend and it was an awesome time. I took my friend Mike and we sat and chatted with Kevin into the night. I think part of the depth of our friendship comes from the fact that we can't chit-chat...my Chinese isn't good enough and his English isn't good enough to waste energy with small talk. We get right to the meat and it's awesome. I often share about my faith and philosophies on life and he shares about his culture, his marriage, his life, his business...In a lot of ways I wish I could cut through the small talk with so many English speakers...we waste a lot of energy on small talk and rarely develop friendships that get beyond the surface. I think that's one of my greatest regrets in life...I spent too much time developing small talk friendships and haven't invested enough getting deeper with people.

4 comments:

Melissa said...

I'm glad you have that place to go. It's important to have someone you can talk like that with. I wasn't sure if you ended up coming down here or not.

Anonymous said...

How's the weather over there?

SarahJ said...

I think all kinds of frienships are important. You need a balance of both. If you had all surface friendships, you'd go crazy because you'd have no one to talk to about serious things. On the other hand, if you had all serious friendships, you'd go crazy cuz sometimes you don't want to have a 10 hour conversation about the various meanings of life. Anyways, thats my opinion for the day!

Anonymous said...

i think that you an i share a relationship like this... i think the banana loaf brought us closer, that and the air port housing situation at hoop-it-up 2004.

loaf.

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