40, 65

On one mid-August day, 1982, just one month short of my 25th birthday, I took my first-ever flight abroad, out of the country I was born and raised in, Taiwan, to a strange new land, America. First I studied, then I worked, got married, bought a house, ran businesses with bosses, clients, companies, young kids... then gradually eased out.

And just like that, 40 years have gone by. Not a tremendous long time, on a historical scale of things, but not too short either. 

Many things have changed, like:

Gasoline price was 91 cents per gallon. I remember hearing people say "so good to see the gas price drop below $1 again," as it fluctuated back and forth during those days. It is now more than $6/gallon in California.

Dow Jones Industrial was at around 1,000 points, before it took off and went through several bull markets to reach over 30,000 points (and finally seemed to start declining) recently.

But some things remain singularly unchanged (with good reasons):

In 1982, a Sony 19" color TV cost $499;
Nowadays, a Samsung 65" Smart 4K Crystal HDR UHD TV also costs $499.

Prince William was born in 1982;
He is still a prince today (except one generation closer to the throne).

And there were things that portended what was to come:

In 1982, the most popular emoticon was :-)
It is now , among 3600+ other emojis conforming to the Unicode Standard.

Time magazine's "Man of the Year, 1982" was a computer;
Today, people are beginning to suspect machines/AI are sentient.

America is still the land of opportunity (record high illegal immigrants still trying to bang in) and the most powerful country in the world, but I would never have imagined there would be a riot in its capital and people distrusting its democratic process or having foundational doubts about its democracy.

Taiwan, that tiny, beautiful island of my birthplace, is still under big bully China's existential threat, just like 40 years ago, but through it all, it has survived and thrived, economically and politically, built a semiconductor manufacturing company that makes 90% of the world's most sophisticated electronic chips, and a democracy whose politicians bicker every day on everything just like the Republicans and the Democrats do in the United States.

And lest I forget, in 1982, there was also a war started by one country invading another. On March 19, Argentina sent troops to occupy the Falkland Islands, a self-governing overseas territory of the United Kingdom in the South Atlantic Ocean. The UK sent its Royal Navy, RAF and the Army to retake possession of the islands in three months. Britain won, Mrs. Thatcher won. Let's hope Mr. Zelensky and his people win this time, too.

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And I turned 65 in the middle of this month. Unlike turning 50 or 60—those magical year-marks that seem to carry proverbial wisdom or symbolic meanings—such in-between age progression seems insignificant, except this time, by law, age 65 means I become officially a "senior citizen", and am eligible for Medicare.

So I signed up with a Medicare insurance plan and went on to see the primary care doctor I selected for the first time.

Dr. Lu was eight years my junior and also came from Taiwan, arriving in the US around the same time as I (a couple years earlier than I, actually) when he was 15 years young. He didn't really speak Mandarin Chinese or Taiwanese but seemed friendly and chatty enough so I asked how he ended up here.

It's a bit unusual story, he said. You see, his father was sort of a child prodigy who was sent to a seminary school to become a minister. However, he showed no interest in studying what they taught but a great talent for languages, picking up English and French and various Southeast Asian languages expediently just by conversing with people from various parts of the world working at the school. So instead of keeping him there, they sent him over to the UK to study linguistics and law, then to the US where he worked as a military lawyer, then for a US airbase in Taiwan when he returned to his mother country and got married and had family, before he took them to the US in the early 1980's when Dr. Lu was 15, where he studied medicine and became a physician...

Dr. Lu's father had since passed away, but his mom, who is in her 80's now, has never been back to Taiwan since they moved here over 40 years ago. He was going to take her back there for a visit a couple years ago, but then came the COVID pandemic, and now she's got symptoms of Parkinson's, so the trip doesn't seem possible for her any more.

But Dr. Lu still plans on going to Taiwan once the pandemic restrictions are lifted, with his girl friend, who is a Caucasian woman he met after his wife passed away some ten years ago and who is very fond of and eager to visit Taiwan, according to Dr. Lu.

"I wish my mom could go with us, so she could show us the places where we grew up..." said Dr. Lu, who grew up in the same city as I did.

"Maybe I could show you some places if you did go and we met there next time," I imagine I'd say to him next time I visit his office.