I got through another Lunar New Years in Taiwan. It's something I dread from several months prior as something I really don't want to face. If you're alone and solitary in Taiwan, you'll really feel it during the Lunar New Year when families get together for gatherings and feasts.

The floor I live on has been just me for the entire week. I avoid contact with my neighbors at all costs, but there is a psychological effect when they're suddenly not there. This past week with no one else here, I've felt cabin fever creeping up and put in an extra effort into mindfulness and realizing these are just insubstantial mental formations.

I noticed more intense mental chatter in my head more intensely and put my index finger to my lips and go, "Shhh...." to the chatter. Shut the fuck up, brain.

For the first three days of the Lunar New Year, everyone gathers with family and just about everything closes. The only things open are the convenient stores and Western fast food joints, otherwise people like me would starve and be competing with cockroaches and rats for scraps on the floor.

More shops start opening during the next three days, but aside from travel hubs, it's still pretty quiet. I think the first three days are about family, then the next three days are about returning home and getting together with friends. Just observing, I don't know if that's true.

My family in Kaohsiung didn't bother calling to wonder if I was heading south for New Years. Maybe they learned from last year, when I mistook the date of the New Years and thought my uncle was calling me out of obligation as an afterthought and declined, when really he was calling me two days in advance.

More likely they just assumed I wouldn't go south as I didn't visit at all in 2011. Furthermore my parents were just in Taiwan for the presidential elections a few weeks ago, and I didn't accompany them to Kaohsiung. They'd always welcome me, but have no reason to believe I'd go.

And I got through yet another meeting with my parents. I met them at the airport and accompanied them while they were in Taipei, and then I met them when they took the High Speed Rail going to the airport to return to the U.S.

Man, this blog is starting to bore the hell out of me.