A Voice To Lead

I have lived in Taiwan for just over two months and have seen the president twice, though the first time was during a trip in February, before I lived here.

On Tuesday, the Taiwan Nursing Association gave a friend of mine, who is a nurse, an award. It was part of their big International Nurses Day celebration, “Nurses: A Voice To Lead, Nursing the World To Health”. They have a big ceremony every year, but this year came with a bigger bang, probably because a large chunk of the world is having a few medical problems. Nurses are generally treated with about as much respect as janitors, who also do an invaluable job. But this year, people are starting to appreciate what nurses do, if only temporarily. When the virus is gone and everyone is obsessed with the next big thing, I'm sure most people will treat nurses like crap again.

President Tsai Ing Wen gave a speech at the beginning of the ceremony and handed out a few awards. Having already seen her speak, I was not surprised by how calm and soothing her voice is, but I could not help but notice that her speech was about the nurses and not about herself. She never mentioned how popular she is, even though she won the last election in a landslide. She did not use the opportunity to attack her opponents, perceived enemies, the media or science and education. In fact, she seems to think science and education are a good thing. The most annoying part of her speech, to me, was that she had the entire thing memorized and yet was able to speak in coherent sentences. There were no teleprompters anywhere and she never looked down at notes or the lectern. It was either memorized or she was improvising. If the speech was improvised, then Tsai is a remarkably intelligent person. While she was praising the work that nurses do, I was wondering how a country with such diverse and occasionally volatile political opinions can so effortlessly have a worthwhile leader.

The ceremony reminded me of the Oscars. While the point was supposed to be recognizing a few people for their achievements, most of the time was used up by the host's inane chatter and too many song and dance numbers. I have nothing against song and dance numbers. I have made a decent living from them, but singing and dancing seems unnecessary when handing out awards to nurses. One of the songs at this particular award ceremony was by a high school a cappella group who were dressed like DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, for some reason. I wanted to be on their side since I know what it takes to sing on stage without any instrumental accompaniment, and this show was probably a great honor for them, but teenage a cappella groups around here are nothing like the Mills Brothers or Manhattan Transfer. Instead of harmony, they focus on “beatboxing” and a combination of rap and doing poor imitations of Mariah Carey. It was pretty bad.

While only a few people got awards personally handed to them by the president, a few hundred nurses were given plaques. That took a long time. Fortunately, they did not announce everyone's name. They lined up on stage in groups of eight, got their plaque, had their pictures taken, and went back to their seats. Names were printed in the program.

Since the president was involved, it was on the news that night. Rather than tell the people much of anything, the news showed the president posing for photographers with the head of the Taiwan Nursing Association and mentioned that this year is Florence Nightingale's 200th birthday. The nurses were the stars that night, but only for three hours.