A good high school friend, whom I haven’t seen in fifty years, has been living in Taiwan and is in poor health. Twenty-first century wonders and a genial relative enabled me to launch an email to try to reestablish connection

Herr von (Germanic Surname),

Wie geht es ihnen? (How are you?)

I better switch to English since mein Deutsch ist nicht so gut. (My German isn’t very good).

I’m excited to be in contact with you again and for that we can thank your lovely daughter, who often sits courtside at rousing games of the Golden State Warriors.

It sounds like you’re doing pretty well and I hope will use your email a little more since guys like Doug and Clint are jetsetters and like to stay in touch with people all over the world. Since retiring from full-time teaching in 2015, I’m pretty much confined to the Bay Area/Sacramento/LA corridor, and that’s pretty darn good, too. I still do some adult ESL tutoring and was writing daily until the aging process, that relentless bastard, clogged ninety percent of one of my coronary arteries and I had to have four stents and start taking medications that induce 1970-style-Sierra-Oaks hangovers. But I still walk every day and do calisthenics and am doing okay.

I moved to Bakersfield in 1991 for the adult ESL teaching job and thought I’d only be here a year or two but thirty-three years later I’m still ensconced (or trapped) in Baketown, which is far less cosmopolitan than the city you once called “Excremento.” It’s all relative.

Are you following Taiwan-China relations? Uncle Sam, as ever, is ready to militarily back a small opponent – think Ukraine – in order to poke a gigantic neighbor in the eye. That’s not to suggest China is your benevolent neighbor. I bet you know a lot about all this, and it would be fascinating to read your assessments.

What have you been reading? I know you’re fluent in German, Russian, Mandarin, and English. I assume, but don’t presume, that English is still your most creative and efficient language. In that regard, I sent your daughter a trade paperback of Hitler Here in English – the Czechs translated it but the Germans wouldn’t – as well as an edition of Anne Frank on Tour and Other Stories that I hope she will deliver to you in Taiwan next month and that you’re free to read or use as exotic paperweights.

Please unlimber your knuckles and fingers and send us some emails, in English. My Chinese is even more limited than my Deutsch.

Hasta la vista,

Tom