You must be thinking of somewhere else...

Thursday morning, I got a message from a friend in Ohio:

"Hey, heard about the stabbings...praying for Taiwan tonight!"

At first, I thought maybe he was confusing an incident in Thailand, Vietnam, or mainland China, which have all been dealing with unrest lately.  When I checked the Taiwan News online though, I was shocked.  If you haven't heard, a student got on the Taipei MRT on Wednesday and started stabbing, killing four people.  CNN story  I know where that station is, I was there a few weeks ago, when Linda and I went to see the paper panda exhibit.  Everyone here is stunned, because this sort of thing doesn't happen in Taiwan.  There is very little violent crime, mostly petty theft, and guns are banned, except for use by police and military.  And the guys who maintain the ATM at the 7-11.  I learned that Friday, but that's another story.   I've never felt unsafe here. The upside is a lack of violence, there has never been a school shooting in Taiwan.  The downside is that students here, especially little boys, are fascinated by them, and I hate to think of what would ever happen if they somehow got their hands on a gun.
             The news media has reported that they are stepping up security at the MRT stations in Taipei of course, and  I noticed today on my way back from Zhunan that there are now visible police patrols in the TRA stations and on the trains themselves.  It's comforting, and at the same time, unsettling.  It's highly unusual, and you could tell on the train that the atmosphere was a little more tense. The Taiwanese are not used to it, and it's a reminder that things aren't 100% safe anymore.
             If I hadn't taken this job, I probably would have seen a blurb on the news, and probably wouldn't have had a second thought.  It's interesting how the world gets smaller and smaller as you travel.  It reminded me of 2004, when the train station in Madrid was bombed.  It wouldn't have mattered to me personally, but I had just come back from France, and had shared a dorm with 4 or 5 Spanish students that I got to know well.  This was pre-Facebook, so there were a ton of emails and AIMs sent, all the same message: "are you ok?"  And whatever happens in Taiwan in the future (earthquakes, typhoons, etc.) I'll probably be the same way.