‘Tis the season for money spending, it seems:

-My computer has a new motherboard and CPU after I had some problems with the fan of the last one. It makes an appreciable difference in the amount of gore I can distinguish as I play Doom 3.

-I am now again officially camera-equipped. After a short purchasing drama last night, I traded in my old Nikon FM2 and lenses for a Canon 20D. It’s a big-ass mofo of a camera so I don’t know if I’ll be able to have it on me for every photo opp I come across, but damn is it nice. For everyday stuff, I broke down and got a replacement for the S300 I sold to Sandy a while ago. It’s tiny. So, you see, I’m compensating in both directions. Make of that what you will.

One of the guys at the store had heard of me, which was wierd because another guy on the fancy new pedestrian overpass on Zhonghua Road had recognized me from the Next article I was in last year. It was quite awkward, as I never know quite what to say when someone’s standing there looking at me expectantly, like I’m supposed to be entertaining or something.

I came across the work of Ruben Fleisher a while back in the form of this video, which I really like. In fact, I like just about all of his music videos, and even a couple of his commercials. Can’t say the same about his short films, though. Ugh. Dude’s house is kick-ass, but damn, who chose that color?

Shirzi’s up in Taipei waiting for his flight to the US, so he’ll be staying at the Poapad for a few days. He, Dean and I are going to discuss some movie stuff tonight after work. Hopefully I won’t get too sloshed in the process.

Winter arrived today, by the way. Yesterday it was summer, warm, sunny, all that, but we skipped straight to fall today with the whole depressing cold drizzle bit.

We had a little shake-up at practice last night. As I was warming up and going through a sword form on the grassy area next to the square where we do tui-shou practice, I noticed a couple of guys, one older guy in a white shirt that read “Taipei County” on it and a younger guy with a green shirt and glasses. I realized as they did their exercises that the younger guy was the older man’s student. I heard the older man make some typical comments to his student along the lines of “Look, even foreigners know how to use a sword!” I ignored them as I try to ignore all such comments, and kept on with my practice.

Not long after Mr. Xu, our teacher, had arrived and we were busy practicing tui-shou, the two others came over, all smiles, saying “Do you mind if we practice with you, teacher?” Mr. Xu said it was fine with him.

It soon became apparent that, despite the outsiders’ friendly demeanor, a challenge of sorts was being laid down. The older fellow went straight for Mr. Xu, while the younger one grappled with one of our students. Things got a little fast and furious, as their style was more suited to official tui-shou competition than ours, and was based more on straightforward force and rigidity than the complicated flexibility and trap-laying Mr. Xu teaches.

I tried not to stare, but everyone couldn’t help but wonder what was going to happen when two such different styles clashed. At first it seemed like the Taipei County guy had the upper hand, but at the last minute Mr. Xu would make some little move and the guy would go flying, either back or forward. Still, he didn’t win every match. It wouldn’t matter if he did, because I study with him not because he’s some kind of world champion, but because he’s a good man and his method of teaching makes a lot of sense to me.

Tui-shou ability, I have discovered, can’t be easily ranked. For example, I might be able to “defeat” one guy 90% of the time, while he can beat a third guy 90% of the time, but the third guy can still beat me 90% of the time. It’s all different. A lot of it is learning how your opponent works and adapting to it. Mr. Xu quickly learned what Taipei Country guy was up to, and soon he was giving the guy and his student tips on how to improve. Some of our students, especially Yang Qing-feng, who had a part in Clay Soldiers, made impressive performances as well. “I don’t think they were expecting a soft response, rather a hard one, and it surprised them,” he told me later, after the two had left.

“They’re the type who go around and learn a little bit here and a little bit there,” said Mr. Xu diplomatically. “They don’t make very good students, but we should welcome them as guests.”

Blogger seems to be acting up again…it will publish the post up to, say, 57%, and then just keep refreshing it at that number forever. You could leave it on for days and it would still say “Publishing….57%”. And thanks to Hinet’s incredibly long-lasting cache feature I have no idea if any of my recent posts are going up or not. Blogger says the problem is with Doteasy, while Doteasy says the problem is with Blogger. So basically unless I can figure out it on my own, this problem is not going to go away.

Had a busy weekend, despite an upset stomach that wouldn’t go away. Rehearsal at Dean’s on Saturday, and then the Muddy Basin Ramblers did a gig up in Waishuangxi at a really nice mountain abode. We played on the patio, and I had a chance to see how my new black laquer/gold pocket trumpet performed. It looks really nice, but going back to the stradivarius for the second set felt really, really good. We played for something like three hours, though, so by the end I had only a little over an octave left, and it showed. Still, despite not being able to drink alcohol, it was a nice evening.

Yesterday Harry, Mark, Mario and I went to the Tianpao Temple, did the whole incense, walking around thing. Then we had some light lunch, dropped Mario off and headed up Yangmingshan to the hot springs. It was a brilliant blue day in Taipei, but as we crested the top of the mountain, we saw that the valleys below were filled with a sea of clouds. It was quite a sight.*

The hot springs were locked in fog, so driving was a bit precarious, but the hot water felt really good. I spent most of the time floating around in the mud pool. All too soon we had to leave, though, as the fog was getting thicker. We elected to skip going back to the city the way we’d come, instead continueing down the mountain and around the coast to Danshui. This took several hours due to traffic, but I didn’t mind.

Dinner in Danshui, along the banks of the river. Harry ate most of my meal, but what I had wasn’t bad, and I didn’t suffer any ill effects so I guess my stomach’s getting better. I wanted to walk around Danshui a bit, so Harry and Mark left in the car without me.

They’ve really done the waterfront up quite nicely, on both sides of the river. Business is booming, the river constantly traversed by the ferries going back and forth, and up to Fisherman’s Wharf. When I got near the MRT station a fat old guy with one tooth told me my fortune, i.e. I’d better get married soon.

The train ride back home took 54 minutes, the longest straight ride on the MRT system, for NT$54. A buck a minute. A long, hot shower didn’t quite rid me of the smell of sulphur, but bed felt pretty good just the same.

*Sorry about the lack of pictures this time; I am in the process of selling my old cameras and getting ready to upgrade, so I’m in between cameras at the moment.

Actual blogging? On this site? Who knew?

Remember that picture I had up here of the two rescue workers and the severed head? In my daily search for Maori Strip Wrestling on Google, I stumbled across this Japanese site, which is chock full o’ such pictures. Each link goes to a variety of interesting photoshop jobs, inexplicable Japanese signs, and several “how the hell did that happen?” jobs.

For more entertainment, go to Sorry Everybody and look at all the defeated apologists who hate America so much! Sure, they may look innocent enough, but the ever-vigilent US government is no doubt going to be keeping an eye on these poor, misguided people with no backbone and who would probably sell the country out if they had the chance and…ah, hell, send ‘em all to France! [/Oklahoman]

Jez and I went up to Tianmu on Thursday morning to see just what is up with Mister Donut. I brought my video camera with me for interviews. As usual, there was a line stretching down the block, even though it was a school/workday. So I started asking people what I wanted to know, mainly whether they’d had the donuts before, what was so good about them, and didn’t they have anything better to do?

An employee, a young girl with a microphone tasked with keeping the line orderly, warned the would-be customers of our presence. “Look out, there are two foreigners with a video camera. If you don’t want to be filmed, please turn away.” It because immediately apparent that she was the one who didn’t want to be filmed. As we approached the beginning of the line she strode up to another employee, a guy stationed just outside the doorway, and said, “They can’t film here. Do they know they can’t film here?” I was thinking of challenging her, as I was standing on a public sidewalk and could film any damn think I pleased, but we just nodded and went to another section of the line with our questions. At one point we actually cornered one person who had actually bought donuts, and so I got a look at them. They look and smell really good, I must say. I would have bought a couple off of her if I didn’t think the crowd would have rioted.

What did we find out? Most of the people in line had not indeed ever had the donuts before, which is amazing since they place has been open for over a month, and the lines have been just as long each and every day since. A couple of people had had the donuts before and liked them enough to line up again. Most of the students readily admitted to skipping class, and many of the older people were skipping work as well. One answer I hadn’t expected but makes sense was “I’m getting them for a friend/client/family member.” This came up surprisingly often, and I wondered if it were true, or if they were embarrassed to be caught standing in line for half a day. I tried to get the manager to admit arranging things so that the line would be as long as possible, but he wasn’t having any of it and kept insisting that it had to be that way.

I haven’t looked at the footage yet, but there was a lot of wind and most of the audio is most likely unusable. Still, I might be able to put a li’l sumptin together from what I do have. I thought it might be nice to invest in a wind sock for the camera mic, but I went to the digital video expo today at the TWTC and found they were really expensive. NT$2700. They also had 16:9 adaptors for NT$30,000, steadicams for NT$18,000 (NT$45,000 with the flexible arm) and cranes for NT$110,000. I had contacted the guy at the booth before about equipment before deciding it was too expensive, and he said he liked my movies, at least the bits that he saw on the website.

This weekend’s forecast: busy as usual. We’re filming the kitchen scenes we didn’t get last weekend at Bongos early tomorrow morning. Then in the afternoon/evening MBR practice at the Sandcastle. Harry wants to go to the hot springs later tomorrow night, but I’m not entirely sure I want to go. Then on Sunday afternoon we’re meeting for more filming. And, of course, there are people coming to look at the apartment.

I got a visit from Amway this morning. I’d bought a product of theirs on the recommendation of my friend the bwg. Afterwards, I got The Schpiel, which was actually quite entertaining. After the Amway rep had finished cleaning several small spots of my kitchen with the Amway Everything Cleaner, we progressed to the Tooth Care section of the program. This involved rubbing toothpaste onto a piece of cardboard. “See, our brand is better than Darlie!” the girl said. Ah-HA, I thought, Darlie SUCKS! So I brought out my brand (Colgate), which managed to pass the test of sticking on her finger, but still took some of the paint off the cardboard, which is apparently not a good thing.

My dishwashing liquid, however, failed miserably. The shame! Still, all was not lost, as there are several two-inch patches of my countertop and toaster oven that will not need cleaning for several weeks.

The Amway rep finished by showing me pictures of her co-workers on (free!) vacations in Alaska wearing shiny necklaces and holding champagne on a cruise ship, mentioning that they made twice my salary.

“Sounds horrible,” I said. I was expecting a laugh or at least puzzlement, but she just kept going. At least, when she wasn’t being interrupted by the nearly constant ring of her cellphone.

The price of a glamorous Amway lifestyle, I guess.

The radio show on Sunday went off without too many hitches. We were rather rushed getting ready -my fault as the film shoot went later than I had expected. From the end of the shoot to the beginning of the radio show it was a mad rush putting film stuff away and getting radio show stuff out and arranged. Still, we managed to start on time, more or less. The music went ok, the actors were great and, with the exception of my completely forgetting to make the phone ring sound when I was supposed to, the sound effects were perfect. Will really did a good job as the announcer. Sandy was positively bubbling with excitement and eagerness to do another show, soon. I also think it would be cool to do more shows.

Afterwards we sat and listened to Zoe, Duncan and another guy whose name escapes me at the moment play really cool trio music, including “Heartbreak Hill”, “Jerusalem’s Ridge” and “Gypsy Dance”. By the way, I can find none of these songs anywhere online.

After that, Jez took us on a walking tour of the area around Wenzhou St. and Lane 76 which was actually a search for Bongo’s Restaurant, supposedly the home of exceptional fish and chips as well as good burgers. Eventually, after much griping about how cellphones, in this day and age, remain without map-generating GPS technology, we found it. Although the wait was cruel and long, the fish and chips were extraordinarily good. I had thought that the now-defunct Mr. Fish had good fish and chips. They did, but now I know where to find even better stuff, with putine on the side. Unfortunately it was too late by then to do any jamming, so we just scoffed at the people who are still lining up at Mister Donuts, a full month after the place opened. I told Jez I really wanted to go up there and get people on camera saying exactly why they were willing to wait 4 or 5 hours for donuts. I’d also like to ask the people who run the store why they’re not doing something about the situation, and whether they realize that as soon as the fashion fades, they’ll have lost not only the teeny bopper market, but also the people who might have actually gone there for donuts on a daily basis. Somehow, I doubt they do.

In other culinary news, it was a beautiful day today and I happened to be in the area, so I decided to try out the hot dogs at the much-acclaimed Gusto, near Da-an Park. Unfortunately it was closed, but while I was in the area I did happen to run into my old landlord, from back when I was living in the Sogo Locker.