Last weekend was apparently a good time for weddings, according to Chinese astrologers. Chinese couples like to get married in the latter half of the year, due to local customs, so there’s always a bit of a rush in the fall and winter. I went to two weddings, one on Friday and one on Saturday.

The one on Friday was that of a former co-worker at TVBS (which is currently under “investigation” by the government after it made some rather uncomfortably revealing reports on government scandals), Lee Jian-wei. He and I were both camera assistants back in the day, though he left the station and I got promoted to cameraman before quitting, but that’s a story for another time.

The banquet was held at the Santos Hotel on Chengde Road. I got off the MRT a bit early and spent some time taking pictures of the pedestrian overpass before heading over. It had been a long time since I’d seen any of my old co-workers, and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.

It turned out that none of my former co-workers were able to make it, and I ended up sitting at a table full of people I didn’t know for the whole thing. It was a rather economic affair, with the MC announcing specials and advertisements for the hotel’s services the whole time. Little “gift coupons” were located under the tablecloths. The food was ok, though. The whole time they had a mushy video playing over and over again of how Jian-wei and his new wife met, and by the time I left I was getting really sick of the repeating music.

The wedding on Saturday night was that of Azuma, a friend who has helped us out a lot with filming over the last few years. It was a much ritzier affair, held at the Grand Formosa Regent Ballroom and involving hundreds of tables and mirrored ceilings. Really professional photos of the happy couple were being projected on two large screens on either side of the huge room. Oldies were being played, good oldies, that is.

The actual marriage ceremony had taken place in Guam, and nicely edited video of it was shown as well. Although I was wearing a dress shirt, neither Dean nor I wore a tie, and I felt a bit underdressed among all the glittery celebreties. Not the first time, though.

It being Azuma’s wedding, there were large unwiedly lightsabers and congratulations from Darth Vader on video. They also played the video Dean and I made, though many people still commented that Dean looks like Jonathan Frakes, and thankfully nobody mentioned my appearance in the film.

The food was pretty good, and there was plenty of wine as well. Azuma nearly broke down in tears during his speech, which was touching. Although theirs is an arranged marriage, they obviously really love each other.

Weddings often inspire conflicting feelings in me. On the one hand, I find all the ceremony somewhat annoying, yet on the other, I’m also reminded that I most likely won’t ever be able to have one myself. I’ve resigned myself to this, but now and then it still sticks in my craw.

The weather’s been gray and gloomy the past few days, though it was nice all last week. Hard to believe it’s almost November already. Last night the Muddy Basin Ramblers, all except Thumper, who is in the South mountain climbing or something, got together at the Sandcastle for some jamming and delicious homemade soup courtesy of Sandman’s wife Jojo. We’re going to be playing at around 4pm at the Blues Bash 2 on the fifth at the Breeze Center. Hopefully it won’t be as cold as the first one, held in Taichung earlier this year.

All in all, things are good, if a bit hectic at times. As the man said, I can’t complain, but sometimes I still do. Wouldn’t be much of a journal otherwise, now would it?

I just got word that one of my photographs is now an album cover. Cool. The music’s not bad, either.

The other day I decided to explore the mountainside just beyond the suspension bridge and the teahouse, behind the row of houses where Chris and the kitten now live. I walked up the path accompanied by a yellow dog I see around the area a lot. At the top of the stairs was a pile of rubble from a demolished pavilion, as well as a building that apparently used to be a temple building. Inside a group of rather poor-looking people were gathered around a makeshift kitchen, i.e. a wok over burning wooden fittings recovered from the rubble. “Rest”, a euphemism for “Sex area”, was scrawled on one wall with a grafitti arrow pointing to the second floor. The wok was filled with a bubbling brown concoction.

“Don’t go up that path, it’s dangerous,” one of the people warned me, saying the area was full of snakes that would be out sunning themselves. “Walk loudly to scare them away,” he advised. I did, using a walking stick to thrash about. There were more ruined buildings and a greenhouse just down the path. The marble path was broken up by tree roots. Apparently the area was quite developed at some point in the past. The stairs leading up to the site of the old amusement park were blocked by a felled tree, so I kept going straight, but that path soon deteriorated and got really spooky, so I turned back and took the lower path that ran along the water’s edge.

This path was a little more tidy, and soon I found myself in front of the old house, the only house visible from the suspension bridge. I’d heard that the place was haunted. It had been built by a family for the elderly parents to retire in, and then it was a hotel, and then it had been abandoned for a number of years. Guys took their girlfriends there to scare them into making out in the dark, or so I’d been told.

From the looks of it, it had recently been renovated, but nobody was living there. The renovation was still incomplete, I found as I peeked in the windows. A huge spider skittered along the wall as I walked by the front door. The interior seemed rather swank and contained temple-like fittings, buddhas and even possibly a picture of Christ in the upper windows, I think. I walked around back to find a locked gate. There were no bars on the windows. It would have been easy enough to get inside, but I didn’t try.

The place seemed nice enough in the daylight, nicely located on a little inlet, though the boats were rotting and the grass had grown over the dock. Some other nearby structures had been demolished recently. It would make a nice little estate for a family, but I don’t think I’d like to live there alone. Not with that network of derelict paths and rusting, empty lighpoles all over the mountain.

I wonder what it used to be like. The entire side of the mountain must have been lit up with pathways and little buildings. Now it’s all jungle. Something must have happened to make the vicinity one big taboo, something bigger than just the death of a couple of construction workers tearing down the amusement park, which is all I know about from Sandman’s tales. Was there a mass murder? Did some well-known Taoist priest come out and say the area was evil because he slipped on someone’s spilled fruit drink? Did people just get tired of climbing hills in general? The dogs and cats seem completely fine with the area, as well as the poor people I saw. It’s a mystery I’m going to have to investigate further one of these days.

Last weekend was a long one for me. It started on Friday evening, as I was headed home to do storyboarding for the shoot in Yangmei on Sunday. It was raining. I crossed the suspension bridge after getting off the MRT I heard a mewing sound, and I spotted a little kitten running around the middle of the bridge. It was white with black spots and, unlike most stray kittens, approached every passerby, but nobody paid any attention to it. I stopped to look at it, and it ran over to take shelter from the pelting rain under my umbrella, rubbing around my legs and effectively trapping me. Clever kitten, I thought. It knew exactly how to use its feline wiles to enslave me to its purpose.

Obviously I couldn’t just leave it there, but I didn’t know from which end of the bridge it had come from. There are stray cat societies on both sides. I was going home, though, and I knew a friend of mine, Chris, who had expressed interest in getting a kitten. I picked it up and carried it across, and it didn’t protest at all. The door downstairs was open, so I could get to Chris’ balcony, but she wasn’t home. I called her, and she said she wouldn’t be home until much later. Hours and hours later, in fact. And I was getting bitten by mosquitoes. The kitten was dry and relatively safe under the balcony’s cover, but it was obviously starving. I cleaned out a nearby ashtray and filled it with water, but there was no food. I had to get to an appointment, but I didn’t want the kitten to wander out again. Chris said I probably shouldn’t slip it in the window, but I could use the clothes washer. Seeing no other alternative, I put it inside the washer and closed the lid so it wouldn’t get out, and wrote a sign saying “Kitten Inside” to put on top.

A while later, when I was done and after I had contacted Sandman and Jojo about the situation, I went back to check on it. When I opened the lid the kitten was asleep at the bottom of the washer, but it awoke and started mewing again, sounding a lot like a rusty hinge. I had just taken it out and sat down with it when a couple of men, both Asians, came up the stairs, one older guy and one young guy with no shirt on. The older fellow seemed bemused, while the young guy was hopping mad. He was complaining in poor Chinese to the older guy, who was apparently the landlord, about the washing machine situation. When he saw me holding the kitten, he nearly blew his top.

“Did you put that kitten in there?” he blurted. “Did you?” His tone was very accusatory. He seemed mad that I would treat a kitten in such a fashion.

“Yeah, I did,” I said. I thought he was going to hit me, the way he glared. “I didn’t have any other place to put it while I was away,” I explained. He paced about for a little bit as I sat with the kitten, petting it and hushing it. It was licking itself a lot.

“Ok, just be honest with me, dude,” the shirtless young man said. “Did you put the kitten in there to keep me from using the washer?”

“Huh? What are you talking about? I don’t even know who you are.” Ah-ha, so he was upset that he couldn’t wash his clothes. The kitten’s welfare wasn’t in his mind at all. He and the landlord left, and I heard the young guy saying to him, “I want to move out! I can’t take this any more!” But because of his accent and poor tones, the landlord didn’t understand him or at least pretended not to understand him.

I turned my attention back to the kitten, who by now was making itself comfortable on my lap. I noticed then that it had a nasty puncture wound in its belly that it kept licking, and it limped when it walked. I also noticed that it was a female. Jojo and Sandman arrived soon after with kitty food and the greater portion of Jojo’s birthday cake. Jojo saw the spot of black on the kitten’s head, and promptly named it “Xiao Maozi” or “Little Hat”. It was around midnight when Chris got home, and she took to the kitten right away.

Needless to say, I didn’t get any storyboarding done that night. I had some leftover cake for a snack and went to bed. The next morning I had a little more, and immediately regretted it, as my stomach rebelled to the extent that I couldn’t leave my apartment all morning. I spent my time outside the bathroom doing storyboarding. It was Daniel Pearl Memorial Day, and The Muddy Basin Ramblers were playing two gigs that afternoon and evening. I had wanted to see the other acts, but I felt horrible and had to finish the storyboards, so I waited until right before I had to leave before I got dressed, loaded myself up with the euphonium, trumpet and washtub bass and headed out to Treasure Hill, where the event was being held.

There were a lot of people there, many of whom I knew, or who at least knew me. I wasn’t in the best of moods, however, and avoided talking with most everyone. We set up after Sky Burial, a rock band wearing white face makeup, and started playing. The sound guys seemed on top of everything, and people heard the washtub, if not the euphonium. At one point Slim started singing about the Xindian River. It sounded pretty nice, what he was doing, so I added a bassline, and soon everyone joined in. We made up the song right then and there, on stage. It was extremely cool.

After the Ramblers finished, I also played the bass for Tarry Bush, which was a pleasure as always, but tiring. My pen, which I use to pluck the bass, was showing signs of distress and the rubbing of the rope ate through it. Cracks were appearing around the washer that runs through the hole in the washtub as well. I had visions of it failing spectularly, the washers bursting through the plastic and hitting me in the face as I hit a high note, so I kept it down in the lower notes most of the time.

After we were done, I walked around a bit and drank some water. Slim and Thumper had gone ahead over to Witches, so David, Sandman, myself and Mark, who was playing accordion with us that night, caught a cab over to our second show that night. It was hard to fit all our stuff in the cab, and the cabbie kept saing “So much stuff you’ve got there! So much stuff!” We dumped our stuff at Witches, which was still full of diners at that point, and headed to the track on the NTU campus across the street for a warm-up jam.

Tarry Bush was on first, but we did one song as a sound test before anything else. The dining tables had been moved away. My stomach was feeling better, and I even helped Slim eat his pork chop and rice with no ill effects. I think I may be becoming lactose intolerant, or at least Taiwan-style birthday-cake-intolerant.

The sound at Witches was sweet, at least for the first few songs. I could hear the bass very well, and was thus able to get all the notes right, even if I was confused about the tempo at a couple of points. My pen, however, burst, covering my hand with ink, so I had to get another pen to play the bass with. I’d use my finger, but the effect isn’t as nice, and besides, it rubs my finger raw after a while.

The Ramblers came up next, and we have enough new music that we didn’t have to repeat any songs from the Daniel Pearl gig. We even got the euphonium properly miced, although the stage was so crowded we kept bumping into each other.

By the end of the show I was pretty tired, and I had to get up early the next morning for our shoot in Yangmei. I had a couple pieces of bread and planned to hop in a cab, but the fellas were off at the track playing again, so I went and played a little with them. It was just too much, though, and I had to leave early because if I didn’t, I’d have been there until dawn. At least that’s what usually happens.

As for the Yangmei shoot, I will post about that in the production journal as soon as I have captured the footage. Needless to say, I was completely exhausted by late Sunday night. What a weekend.

Last month our friend and cast member Azuma announced his wedding and asked Dean and I to film a little video of each of us saying congratulations so they could play it at the wedding. Of course, we’re all Star Wars/Star Trek/Indiana Jones geeks, so Dean and I decided to write a little skit that involved as much geekery as possible without actually using golden idols and huge boulders, since we knew Azuma would get a kick out of it.

Here’s what we came up with. It took us an afternoon to do in a patch of jungle near Dean’s house. Shirzi helped out by acting as Sword-wielding Bad Guy with Evil Laugh. We were nearly devoured by the mosquitoes, and it was really hot, but we had fun doing it, if not carrying the stuff up the mountain.

Last weekend was the Migration Music Festival, which was fun, if not as fun as last year, mostly due to bad weather and a preponderence of accordians. Afterwards we all jammed into Peshawar and did some jamming with Tarry Bush, which was fun. We stayed into the wee hours the next morning, just as the typhoon really started to roar. Sunday was spent listening to the wind and recovering from the night before. The Muddy Basin Ramblers apparently stand a good chance of being invited back next year, which would be cool, if the weather holds anyway. Our next show will be in the late afternoon of the 15th at Treasure Hill for the Daniel Perl Day activities being held there, and then later that night at Witches near NTU. That will be a busy day. I’m looking forward to hearing Slim play his new trombone, though.

Hard to believe it’s October already. The wonderful weather has returned, though the weather bureau is pessimistic about it lasting. A week after my computer’s motherboard went, my TV died, perhaps in sympathy. It had been going fuzzy and taking longer and longer to warm up into a watchable state, so I knew the end was coming. While it kind of sucks having to shell out for a new set, at least I can get a warranty this time.