Is that a overly exaggerated title? Possibly. But after my sister mentioned it to me, it kinda stuck with me for a while (a tad better than we're doomed, I guess).

So the presidential election has come and gone, and the party I support lost ... pretty badly. I'm not surprised, but you know, there's always that ounce of hope, and when that hope is dashed, you can't help but feel sad, frustrated, angry, and confused. So that's how I felt after I heard. The confused part comes from wondering what it is that I'm missing. Obviously, the majority of the people all see the same thing or they wouldn't have voted for the same candidate, so what was I missing? Why couldn't I see what it is they're seeing in this future president? Was I the one that had been brainwashed? Was my view on things too narrow? I'm still not too sure, but I think I'm starting to see things a bit better.

The funny thing is how I heard that we'd lost. We were splurging, well, I was splurging, on clothes for work after we went to vote. And I was so into it that I'd forgotten about the presidential election. Then, my dad calls, from Belgium, to tell us that we're pretty much out of the game. It was after I'd just spent quite a bit of money on clothes, so that was even more depressing. Aih. The rest of the night was quite lackluster on our part - tired and disappointed. I just kept asking why? why? why? Was the majority of Taiwanese people blind or was it just me?

Post-shopping, I proceeded to go home and get into an argument with an old friend about the election. That made my night even better. Well, it wasn't really an argument because I ended up yelling at the screen more than typing to my friend my thoughts on him and his reasons. Obviously it wouldn't have boded well for our friendship if I had actually written what I was thinking, hence the yelling at the screen. Ugh, never good to talk about politics with friends who aren't on the same thought path as you, especially nowadays. Just can't seem to see from each other's perspectives because we're so set in our own ways already.

Anyway, three days have gone by since the results and my belief that we're doomed. And I guess I've come to accept the results (what else can I do?) after talking to another friend who, although blue, has the ability to calm me down and think rationally and my dad. Thank God for people calmer and more rational than me. For some reason, I just lose my temper and mind when it comes to politics. I'm normally not like this! I swear!

I guess, change isn't necessarily bad, and no matter how much I dislike this new president, it doesn't mean he can't do good things for Taiwan. I just hope he doesn't end up taking our country back to the way things were before and lose all the democratic processes we've gained since. Hope he can bring the country together so we're no longer squabbling about the stupidest things and actually get things done. Hope he can rebuild the diplomatic ties we've lost or build new ones (although that's gotta be hard with all the pressure from China). Hope he can make our economy better and our unemployment rate go down (although it's not just us with this problem nowadays. What he can do is limited , but he shouldn't be promising things that might not be possible). Hope he can do something that'll ease our cross-strait relationship but not at the expense of the Taiwanese pride that we have here. All these hopes. Hope he can live up to it. Guess only time will tell and show what this new president is made of. Maybe he'll prove my negative view of him wrong. But then again, maybe not.




That being said, though, I still get mad when I hear about the two-sided faces of the people in Taiwan. Stop holding one person to a certain ideal and if he does something that fails that ideal, bashing him on it, and then forgiving the other person when he makes the same mistake and fails to live up to that same ideal. That's hypocritical, wrong, and unfair. How's that for cryptic?

Something I learned from all this. We need to learn to listen to each other more, instead of constantly talking over one another, and we also need to learn to understand different points of views, instead of always thinking we're right. Even if we are right, there's nothing wrong about learning about why the other side thinks differently from us. Through listening comes understanding, through understanding comes acceptance (not necessarily agreement, but accepting that this person is also a person, just one with a different view).

Here's to the next four years. Just don't be too over-confident.