Considering the current availability of songs and sounds on the Internet, I wonder if it would be practical to overlay familiar sounds to familiar songs. You know how certain songs remind you of a certain time and place, a moment you’d probably otherwise have long forgotten? But it’s still missing a certain something. Technology has yet to accomplish a machine that will manufacture the unique smells to recall the red ’65 Corvair Monza convertable my dad restored when we were living in Colorado to go along with the song “Downtown”, which I remember playing on the chrome-covered radio as we jaunted top-down about various sunny Denver suburbs. But what about background noises? For me, the 80′s song “Desert Moon” is not quite complete without the addition of school bus sounds, as that is where I first heard it, over and over, throughout my sophomore year of high school, so I can only imagine adding those noises (and possibly a burgundy “Members Only” jacket) would bring back even more memories of sitting on those evenly padded green seats, staring at the facinating Vietnamese kid who lived a few blocks away and always wore sunglasses. He was 19, which seemed so old to me then.

“Black Velveteen” by Lenny Kravitz would need the sounds of the ocean, jets flying overhead, and blonde people rollerblading to properly bring back the feeling of walking along Redondo Beach to Manhattan beach in LA in the late afternoon. “Carmelia” by some 80′s singer would need Taiwanese dorm noises, including guys slurping instant noodles and cicadas circa 1988. “That’s all” by Phil Collins would need the sound of a racing inline 6 from the Datsun 810 I drove in high school, while “The Brazilian” would go with several Filipinas chattering in Tagalog in a Hong Kong slum. Certain Baroque trumpet pieces could do with the faint thumping bass of lowriders who drive around certain areas of Brooklyn where I was staying in ’99.

Anyway, you get the picture. Such personal mixes of songs could work, but the background noises would be more effective if they changed with every playing, using random samples. At least until we get that smell machine working.

Interesting things I’ve seen recently:

*A well-dressed gangster type lying on a bench staring into space in front of the McCafe on Fuxing N. Road. He looked like he had just lost a fight, with a bloody lip and swollen eyes. Busy night, I guess.

*A taxi-scooter accident at the intersection of Heping and Xinsheng.

*A blueish light flicking around in the twilight darkness underneath one of the many bridges that cross over to Zhonghe. As I got closer I realized it was being waved about by an old man wearing only shorts. I had thought it was one of those glowsticks or something, but as I passed by I realized that it was a blowtorch he was spraying all over himself, without any apparent harm.

Our two commercial spots for the computer company have been on their website and playing at Computex for a while now, and they have yet to pay us. I was informed that they needed to copy our ID cards, so I went over there yesterday to do that. They told me that, not only would be probably not be paid anytime soon, but also, right as I was about to leave, an accounting person told me they needed copies of our bank books as well. Oh, thanks for letting us know so quickly, only a matter of months after we’ve delivered our product, on time thank you very much. The accounting person said she’d already told me all of this, in spite of the fact that I’d never talked to this person before. I was irked and probably too harsh on them, but it really stuck me as unprofessional. If I hadn’t gone over there they wouldn’t have even bothered telling us about their extra requirements, and simply not paid us. Even now it seems that is a likely outcome. Well, live and learn.

Shirzi is back in town for a few weeks. I invited him to sword practice last night but he declined. Perhaps next week. I met him, Dean and Cranky Laowai at The Brass Monkey last night after riding up to Taipei from the computer company. I’ve been riding my bike everywhere since I still have half a tank of gas and no more money on my MRT card. Financial sense? Me? Please.

I need to start taking notes at sword practice/tuishou practice. It seems that our teacher always has a lot of good instruction that I need to take down, but one of the things he’s told us is to stop thinking so much about it with our conscious thoughts, letting deeper instincts learn more instead. I think I need a lot more practice.