Cecil Planet: It seems so close, yet it is far

Today I was close to my life as a medical student.

It was in the third year of college I moved to the dormitory of the school of medicine. At the first semester, I was still on the waiting list to move in. Thus I stayed in my classmates' room sleeping on the floor. We lived in a small quad room while each of us had quite different biological clock. M was the top student in our class, he usually went to bed before 22 and got up at 5. He used to study in the morning, sometimes watched TV at the same time. Y was the opposite. He didn't study much until the day before the exam. He went to bed late, spent lots of time in front of the computer (just like me), sometimes hung around somewhere in Taipei till the end of the night. Owning a college life seemed more fun, he still got acceptable grades. G studied extremely hard. He had been used to be a cram as Y and me but became a medical knowledge pursuer since junior. Unlike M, G buried himself into serious reading from the evening to 1 or 2 o'clock at night. J was the normal type student. He studied regularly, and liked to play video games when he was free at night. So I was surrounded by those interesting people. There was always someone sleeping in the room and someone awake at any moment of the day. A bit tough for me because I had only a tiny space there, but mostly I was happy to have such great sidekicks to live with.

That was the time that I began to feel tired of Taipei. The pressure from school raised fiercely. My friendship with the guy I had a crush on ended unpleasantly. I had no confidence in my look and tried to save money for orthodontics and chin surgery ( and I received it after 4 years.)

My life was simple: going to the class, chatting all day at class, going back to the dormitory, buying food from the dormitory buffet restaurant, a convenient store, or the only street nearby that had food stalls for dinner, surfing the net, studying. In my memory, the sky was always cloudy. Probably becuase I was often in a blue mood during that period.

The street I used to buy dinner on..

But we did have fun time there. We had chocolate hotpot party, mahjong party, and movie night in that room.

Today I went back to my school for the conference of aesthetic medicine and the demonstration for opposition against the government's policy on Taiwan'a trade pact with China. The sky was so blue. I passed by the dormitory. Everything seemed so close, yet everything was far.

M got his Ph.D. degree in Japan and works as a postdoctoral researcher in New York. He plans to move back to Taiwan this year. G has been to the states for 5 years studying for Ph.D. too. He already had a paper published on Nature. He won't move back. J and Y both are brilliant doctor in internal medicine and family medicine at top hospitals in Taiwan. And I ? I am a ordinary doctor in a clinic, having someone I love, and plan to move to Europe to follow my heart in the future.

I walked in those hundreds of thousands of angry Taiwanese people. Those people were so lovely, and the ambiance was so peaceful. All they want is to make Taiwan a better country. Although my heart has flown to Europe, and in all probability I will move to the UK after several years, Taiwan is my homeland forever.