Yesterday was all about hanging out. I hung out with Mindcrime all afternoon in the Shi-da area before he went to see the play I saw on Saturday, and then I hung out with Kirk for the rest of the evening. Most of the day was spent whinging about how there was nothing to do, walking around, drinking tea at teashops, showing off mobile phones, and more walking around. Kirk and I went to the Jingjing (Gay) Bookstore over by the Taipower building; it’s grown from a single shop to a complex of three rainbow-adorned buildings, including a bookstore, a paraphernalia shop and a coffee shop, all brilliantly lit up in the midst of an ordinarily dark neighborhood. They sell magazines, books, Billy/Carlos/Tyrone dolls, movies, props, etc. Afterwards we walked around looking for Warcraft; Kirk was eager to play it after hearing Mindcrime describe its addictive nature. When we were having a snack at Nitti’s, I found that Kirk and Mindcrime share remarkably similar views of my Beckhamesque, Just-got-out-of-bed hairstyle. Or rather, they both make fun of it in much the same way.

My landlord and his brother spent this morning painting the new concrete around my new windows while I tried to figure out how to fit Alphadogah on one CD-ROM. Any compression I did seriously reduced the quality for some reason, and the MPEG2 compression split the file in two for video/audio, and Mindcrime’s Powerbook doesn’t recognize the video file’s .m2v extension for some reason. What a headache. I really need to just get a Mac for this kind of thing. I was trying to get Alphadogah into a more portable form so I could give it to the guys doing this year’s Urban Nomad thing, but so far no dice. Not that it would be a great loss for them, but it might be fun.

Seems like the Chinese version of my book is coming out tomorrow, at least according to Locus’ website, where I believe you can order books online, though I may be mistaken. While I’m not terribly excited about the cover design (how good could any cover with my face on it be?), it’s good to see it coming out finally. Now I get to see if Locus has any publicity at all planned, because I don’t feel like hawking the thing at night markets. I’ve got an interview with FTV on Thursday, but it’s for the relatively limited English-language news program and probably won’t be all that lengthy. This month’s This Month in Taiwan also has a piece on me, I think. Other than that not a whole lot of publicity going on.

In other news, the SARS thing is spreading, at least in the media. Public places seem a bit empty, but largely you couldn’t tell that there was anything amiss just walking down the street. I think I’ll be eating in more these days and avoiding the MRT if I can, but other than that and avoiding hospitals, I don’t really know what I can do without fleeing to the mountains or something.

In order to avoid a no doubt germ-laden MRT journey last night, I dusted off Gendoyun to ride down to meet up with Graham and other ex-News drones in the Shi-da area. The stage version of the Maltese Falcon, starring Dean, Rowan and other friends, was being put on at Peshawar, a pub I figured much too small to put on a play inside, much less an audience as well. Beforehand we had dinner at Grandma Nitti’s. I thought the food was good, while Graham felt that a dinner that consisted entirely of cheese was a bit lacking. The service was poor, everyone’s dishes coming mixed up with everyone else’s dishes, so that we had to rearrange all of our plates so that everyone had what they had ordered. Even the Oreo shakes weren’t as good as I remembered.

After we’d finished listening to Richard ameliorate Graham by explaining how one can get high on cheese based on experiences from his college days, we made our way over to Peshawar, which turned out to be packed far past its capacity. We managed to get seated on stools so close to the stage I wondered if we would at some point be asked to hand props to the actors or play small roles. The play itself took over an hour, but I didn’t mind as it was much better than I had expected it to be, with a far lower Wince Factor than I thought it would have. Dean as Joel Cairo and Rowan as the fat man were great, and the others weren’t bad either for the most part. The story was well-told, of course, though friends who hadn’t seen the movie mentioned that they had no idea what was going on at times. Although the space was too small, the lighting and scene changes were handled to great effect. Richard, who was sitting next to the speaker, jumped every time there was a sound cue.

Yesterday Chunghwa Telecom, or someone pretending to be Chunghwa Telecom, called me up and said they wanted to give me a faster Internet connection for free. Fine with me. It’s just a bit sudden, is all. I…I need time to adjust.

Still waiting for job news. I can’t imagine exactly what they’re spending so much time deliberating. Perhaps they’re reading this blog to see what kind of mess they’d be getting themselves into by hiring me. If so, the answer is: probably not a very big one. I’d risk it.

I’ve been enjoying a productive morning here at work by going through Lileks’ Motel Postcard page. Some of these pictures make me imagine what it would be like to step right back into 1953 or whenever and wander around. But then what would you do? After you’d gotten over all of the neat cars and the novelties of dress and speech and everything, what would you do? Make outrageous bets on what you vaguely remember about history? Try to be present at famous events?

Or would you just end up getting a job somewhere where you sit at a steel desk in an hot open office with no Internet thinking how depressing it is that you know exactly what is going to happen for the next 50 years?

That SARS thing is spreading, even if it’s not quite as horrible as it could have been, and it’s being under-reported thanks to the war. Quarantines in Hong Kong, alerts here and elsewhere. The people in my office were just talking about it. “The NT$50 masks are no good, only a NT$100 mask will stop infection,” one women was saying. Another spoke of a man sneezing on the subway this morning, only to be told by one of the managers, half-jokingly, to get out of the office. I suppose riding my motorcycle to work might not be a bad idea this afternoon. What’s worrying about this is the propensity of people here to come in to work even though they’re sick to “prove” their loyalty or some such crap. If I were the boss I’d fire people who came in to work sick. Of course, that’s probably one of the myriad reasons I’m not the boss.

Went over to the abode of my old landlord Johnny Lei and his wife Meng-hua, as well as their two sons the other night for a visit over dinner. It was fun. The older son, Maurice, aka Nian-en, was just born when I lived with them and Boogie about ten years ago up in the Minsheng District. Now they live on a quiet alley about a block away. They’d just gotten their first DVD player, and I became a minor hero when I offered to bring over Lilo & Stitch for them to watch sometime.

Johnny told me about a new coin laundromat open nearby on Civic Blvd. I went there tonight since everything in my room, including sheets, is covered in dust. One huge load of laundry only cost me NT$140, less than a third of what it costs to have the usual laundry place do it. And I don’t have to drop it off; I just have to wait until it’s done. These things are popping up all over Taipei, it seems. While I was waiting for my clothes to wash I saundered over to the Hot Pot place next door and played with the stray cat the owner had adopted as it stepped on random cash register keys. The owner said he knew the people who opened the laundromat, and that it was one of four they owned. It’s also a familiar feeling, going down to wash my clothes at one of those places. Reminds me of college, where my room was directly above the laundry. My roomie Gary Green and I knew this because the portable stereo music people listened to as they did their washing would come up through the hole in the bathroom floor into our suite.

Oh, I forgot to explain the dust: I’ve got new windows! They’re nice and cut down the noise quite a bit, but the installation resulted in my room looking like a volcano erupted nearby. The cement isn’t dry yet, either, so it’s pretty ugly and curtain-free, but I’m glad they finally got around to putting them in. The cauking smell is still strong; hopefully it’s not toxic. I should probably consider staying at a sauna for a night or two.

Not much blogging lately, I know. I’ve just recently been re-discovering how little there is on the Internet these days.

I had dinner with some friends, including Harry and James, at Skylark tonight. Skylark is advertised as “California Cuisine” as well as “Rich” and “healthy” on the menu, but I would describe the portions as “miniscule” and the food as “disappointing”. I had pepper pasta. It might have originally been some other flavor, but it was so doused in pepper I couldn’t tell. They must save a lot on dishwashing, because the food only covered about ten percent of the plates.

Afterwards, we went over to the newly purchased apartment of two of the people at dinner and talked for a bit. About 12 minutes after 10 p.m., Little P called. He was obviously laying on his bunk on base, unable to get to sleep after taps played. Nice of him to call.

I haven’t been writing for the past couple of days because I’ve spent most of the time asleep. Whether it’s my annual Spring cold or something else, I don’t know. I’ve just been really tired lately. The Oscars are supposed to be on tomorrow morning, but I don’t have a TV. Oh, well. The Academy Awards are depressing anyway. Nyah.

It looks more and more like events are conspiring to time the publication of the book with the war, now underway it seems. Whether or not this is some kind of marketing strategy the publisher dreamed up is anyone’s guess. Something tells me that more people are going to be glued to their TVs and computers in the coming weeks than browsing bookstores wondering what they should read next.

I went over to the publishers last night to have a look at the final draft and cover design. It looks pretty good, despite the fact that my ugly mug is on the cover. Actually, I find this quite amusing. I was asked if any of the guys I served with would recognize me from the picture, and I said they probably would. Hopefully the ones who still hold a grudge won’t, though. I’ll have to update my book page when I get a copy of the final cover and details on sales.

I was supposed to get new, sound-insulating windows today, but my landlord called me up at 8:30 and said the rain made it impossible. Oh yes, it’s been rainy and cold here for the past few days, typical for spring, and it looks like it’s not going to stop anytime soon. What is the most irritating about this is that I’m sure when it’s over we’ll still be in the middle of an official drought. Taiwan uses so much water, it seems, that it has to rain every day just to avoid a drought. At least the rain drives away the Dancing Women, Drumming People and Mr. Karaoke. I hated this kind of weather when I was in the army, since I had to be out in it all day, so I don’t mind it as much now, since I have the choice of dressing appropriately instead of waiting for orders concerning what I could and couldn’t wear.

Elsewise (I know, that’s not a word, but I’m tired of writing “In other news…), I had lunch yesterday with Mindcrime and Maoman at the New Bangkok Thai restaurant behind Sogo. The food was really good, but the portions were way too small, even if the rice was served in an ornately designed goblet that looked like it was made of Mithril. Afterwards, I got to see Maoman’s new 250cc Majesty scooter. Man, that thing is one big-assed scooter. It’s all ass. You could fit a family of three in the storage space if they kinda hunched over. Watching Maoman gingerly remove a piece of crate someone had leaned against his pride and joy made me wonder if I’d want the have to worry about parking an expensive, brand-new motorcycle on the streets here. There’s definitely something to be said for not having to worry about your piece-of-shit bike all the time. That said, there’s also something to be said for having a motorcycle that will start when you want it to and keep running for a reasonable length of time without breaking down.

I’ve got my third job interview this afternoon, which means donning Ze Zoot once again and facing yet another Boss. Wish me luck.

Wish us all luck.

I hadn’t done anything particularly interesting all day on Sunday, with the exception of going through some more editing exercises and practicing sword forms on the roof, so I decided to go take in an old movie at an even older theater with Jason, an American guy who stumbled on this account a few months back. We decided over tea at the Roach Teahouse to skip the whole “It’s such a pain being a gay Chinese in Australia” session. We ended up seeing The Tale of Genji at the Chungshan Hall in the West Gate District. It was a novel experience to watch an old Japanese movie from 1951 in a building originally built by the Japanese a few decades before the movie originally came out. It’s a huge space, ornately decorated with an old-fashioned balcony held up by columns.

Unfortunately, the movie itself was incredibly boring. The story consisted of Our Hero Genji, a polite fellow who goes around being an absolute bastard to everyone. The scene where he decides to take a strange girl he met on the road home with him was the most polite kidnapping I’ve ever seen. Basically the movie was a series of scenes involving various Japanese women dying on white beds surrounded by maids saying “Oh it sucks to be a woman”, and Genji sitting around saying “Oh it’s too bad,” followed by a pan to cherry blossoms. The happiest moment in the film for me was when I realized there were no possible plot points left and that they’d have to end the movie soon.

Work was busy today, with a rush translation job. Every time I get one of these jobs I doubt I can pull it off, and yet somehow I do, or at least the international incident hasn’t broken out yet. I should be getting new windows some time this week, a very welcome development as I still don’t know what my job situation is yet, so I wouldn’t know what price range of places to look at. I think it will be another week or two before I know what’s going on there. I’ll be pissed if I don’t get this job after all the trouble I’ve gone though to get it, though. I even bought a new watch, just for interviews, mainly because the watch I normally wear really doesn’t go with Ze Zuit. At all.

The guard downstairs tells me that there’s a gigalo on my floor, an American guy who “brings two or three Taiwanese girls home with him every day! Sometimes they do it in the elevator!”

“Do what?” I asked him.

“Make out! And none of the girls speak Chinese with him, it’s all English!”

“Wow,” I said, but he didn’t catch my sarcasm. I know, it’s hard to catch sometimes. Speaking of catching things, that atypical pneumonia thing is a bit worrying, innit? There’s three cases in Taiwan right now, I think, but it’s scary. They say it started on the mainland, so I think I’ll be avoiding standing too close to well-dressed older businessmen who look like they might have been managing their factories in mainland China recently. I’m glad to hear that Randall has moved out of crowded downtown Hong Kong to a nice country apartment complex. Perhaps I should follow his lead (without straying out of walking distance of the MRT, of course). This epidemic might also be a good excuse to go around wearing a mask, too, which would not only stop germs but get me better service at restaurants as well.

“Here kid, have a nice hot cup of shut-the-fuck-up.”

Oh, if only I were this clever.

I just got this email from Triggerstreet:

Dear Poagao,

Thank you,

TriggerStreet.com Support

Holy Senate Investigation Committee Batman! I knew that Triggerstreet was going downhill, instituting a whole range of senseless rules and regulations, but I never thought they would go this far! I’m at a loss as to how to ‘defend’ myself. Any suggestions? As I’ve felt fairly free to express myself in my reviews on that site in the past, I expect a whole lot more of these mails in the near future.

The review? Nothing nearly as rude and vicious as I had expected:

Don’t know quite what to think

Re: Sick Call

I read the FAQ and downloaded Realplayer One just to watch this, but it still looked like a slide show to me. It could have been an ok film…the music was uninspiring. I think the idea was good…from what I could tell the actor did a good job, but I can’t really comment on the editing because of the frame rate. — December 19, 2002 - 10:11 AM

And finally, the complaint itself: Complains about reviewing a slide show. The film was not a slide show and obviously not downloaded by realplayer correctly and not correctly reviewed.

Popped in to the Estrogen Mall last night on my way home from work to see if any interesting movies were out, and to my surprise, Star Trek: Nemesis was playing. In fact, a showing was starting right at that moment, so I bought a ticket and rushed upstairs to find myself the only patron in the largest theater in the complex. The previews had been playing to an empty room, and I had my pick of any seat in the house. So I sat down and watched, experiencing a little thrill of pleasure when the familiar theme music rolled out with the opening credits. It’s been a long time.

By the end of the flick I was generally pleased. Star Trek, as Dean says, is like sex. Any Star Trek is good, or at least better than no Star Trek. But this one was pretty good, I thought. Lots of nice battle scenes, nifty special effects, a relatively interesting story with a minimum of Troi (only one scene, which provided a nice bathroom break opportunity). Almost every scene felt eerily familiar, not rehashed, but definitely familiar. The villain’s motives were spotty at best, though. He could have been a lot stronger, but the genetics/environment theme was interesting. I did not particularly appreciate being made to think I’d get to see Worf nekkid at the wedding at the end and then not. A potential DVD extra, perhaps? One can hope.

All in all, though, I liked it. A good, solid Star Trek film, not the best in the series, certainly no Wrath of Khan or First Contact, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as Final Frontier or Insurrection, so I was happy. On my way out I ran into Mindcrime, who had tickets for the very next showing for himself and H.G. Janice. I was surprised to see them, as I knew they’d both seen it already. I might want to see it again as well, but I didn’t want to see it again at that particular moment. Knowing Taiwanese theaters, though, it will probably close within a week.

Yesterday afternoon I heard a wailing sound coming from the square downstairs. I didn’t pay too much attention to it as wailing sounds aren’t that uncommon when you have a public area where children and teenagers get together. But the wailing continued on such a hysterical note I finally went over to the window to see what was going on. Turns out that the noise was coming from a young Taiwanese woman who was rolling on the ground having an extremely bad fit. We’re talking Sigourney-Weaver-floatin’-in-the-air shit. Next to her stood a man who seemed resigned to this development; indeed, I think he’d seen it many times before. Periodically the girl would run over to a nearby trash can and start to dig through it, whereupon the man would rush in and pull her away. Cue more wailing and thrashing about, followed by another rush to the trash. Maybe he tore up her Publisher’s Clearing House entry or something.