Thoughts on proximity...

30Nov10, 7am: Bodypump class at PURE with Kelvin... great work-out, especially my anterior deltoids... yowww-zaaaa! Had also planned for an evening yoga class in Taipei, but the others were too tired... may have to do a day of lots of walking on Wed. to get in my fitness for the day. Time to explore Taipei then!!!

But before that...

Interestingly, I'm finding myself taking on space, time, and now proximity... the apex of the triangle in my opinion, and the last, hardest concept for me to understand... not that I've got it down, but I'm working on it.

I find myself asking these questions, albeit silently in my head, to various strangers I encounter...

"Do you realize how close you are to me?"

"Do you realize that there are 500 people behind you trying to get by, and you're blocking the aisle because you are meandering side to side at a snail's pace?"

Ok, that second one was a bit more descriptive of my every day experiences; whereas the first was rather general and could be applied to just about any encounter in Asia, I'm finding.

When you live in such close proximity to people by no choice of your own, your definition of proximity gets smaller and smaller, I'm certain. Coming from the land of wide open spaces... Canada, even more so than the U.S., we do not understand that and our definition of proximity incorporates a much larger radius. In N. America, we can... most often... choose to live in a big city and be close to other people, or we can choose to live in more rural communities where our neighbours are sometimes 8km from us.

8km! That's 8,000m... or 800,000cm or 8,000,000mm!!! REALLY?

I've become at peace with time and space, but proximity is still weighing on me. At the gym Monday night, I was taking a new class, the BodyCombat class I mentioned in my last post. Wanting to get as much from the instructor as possible, I tend to pick a spot very close to the middle and front of the room. I arrived early to do so, and what happens, another woman comes and stands, literally, 60cm directly in front of me... not staggered at all, DIRECTLY in front of me, as if I were not even there! So my blood starts to simmer a bit and thoughts begin developing regarding the concept of proximity. I let it go for the time being and get in the best possible work-out I could, saving the ponderings for later.

On my flight from HKG to TPE, the guy sitting next to me was quite nice and struck up a conversation. I'm not sure what got the conversation going because while we were waiting on the tarmac, for what seemed like an hour, to take off, I dozed multiple times. So, I'm sure I wasn't the ideal-looking candidate for an in-depth, in-flight discussion. Anyway, as it happened, our discussion was amazing, but the entire time, his face was about 100mm from me... no joke... and he had just eaten his in-flight lunch of Chinese noodles... I'll stop there...

Proximity...

As I mentioned, we had a phenomenal conversation, which I'll talk about in my next post more in-depth, as it provoked a lot in me. The conversation was so worthwhile, I found myself asking myself to please forget about how close this guy's face is to me and take in the discussion... it was hard, but I did it, and it was worth it. For now, I think I'm coming to terms with a new acceptable definition of proximity, one that is realistic for me in Asia... it may not be 100% Asian-certified ;-) but it's good for the "Asian Jodie" for now.

Time is ticking and I have Taipei to see... jo sahn and joy geen for now!