On the way to work today a woman sat down next to me on the subway train. At a peripheral glance she seemed about 20. Long black hair, heavy makeup, a tight black skirt and a gold blouse with transparent black sleeves. Shiny black high heels with golden bows on top. A little gaudy, but nothing particularly out of the ordinary.

A few moments later, however, I became aware of a heavy stench. I assumed the seat behind me was recently occupied by a sweaty construction worker who had spent all day repairing blocked sewer lines, but a glance around made me realize it was coming from the woman sitting beside me. Taking care not to stare openly, I took another look, and was surprised to see that her bare legs were covered with blue veins, her feet wrinkled and dry. Her hands, holding a shiny black purse, looked like the hands of an old woman.

A number of people got off at Kuting Station, and I switched seats to avoid the smell. From there I could see the woman’s face, and sure enough, under the makeup the face of an older woman, possibly about 60, showed through. She sat upright, her gaze kept slightly down, not looking at anyone but seemingly aware that her disguise might not be holding up as well as she had hoped. I wondered what the point of the act was. Was it for her job? Did she work in an office, living in fear of being forced to retire? But her attire suggested something more along the lines of a karaoke bar, one from several years ago. Did she perhaps sell betelnuts? From a distance, viewed through the dirty windshield of a little blue truck after a long day’s driving, she might seem alluring to a tired trucker. Or was she someone’s grandmother, with no means of support, raised in the rice fields but now forced to come to the big city and play the part of a much younger woman in order to feed her family?

I got off a Taipei Main Station, but the woman continued on, out towards Danshui and her date with the target of her mysterious ruse.

I was walking around the community on the other side of the hill out back yesterday morning when a dark red sedan drove past me and parked at the end of the road. A large white man dressed in a black T-shirt and shorts and long gray hair got out and looked at me as he walked back around the car. In my typical gorilla fashion, I glanced at him and then quickly looked away as I walked on by. When I looked back to make sure he wasn’t following me with a machete, he was walking back to his car.

I do this with just about everybody, sometimes even with people I know. It’s also the subject of much anger and frustration in places like Forumosa.com, with many foreigners accusing other foreigners of “living in their own special little world” and acting uppity and forgetting their place, etc. Typically, those complaints are reserved for small towns where foreigners are few in number and meeting one another is rarer. In Taipei, foreigners are everywhere and it’s not such a big deal, or shouldn’t be. I have to admit that I look at people when I’m walking down the street. A glance here and there, be they foreign or domestic. A glance, and then I’ll look away. If I’m in a particularly good mood, I’ll nod, smile or even mutter something vague, but I don’t understand the expectation that such interaction is required because I happen to look more like said passerby than other people in the vicinity.

Such expectations are usually defended with claims of “share cultural background or experiences” etc., but that would assume that most of the foreigners I meet on the street have the same background as I do, which would be unfair and overgeneralizing. Also “It’s just a friendly and nice thing to do,” which is fine except for the fact that I’m not always a friendly and nice person. And even if I were, whomever I’m addressing might not be. One time, many years ago, I was walking down an alley behind Zhongxiao East Road when I came upon an older foreign man squinting at a map and looking around, appearing for all the world as lost as if he were in the middle of the Sahara. I walked up and asked him if he needed any help finding something.

The look he gave me nearly caused me to step back. “There’s nothing you could help me with,” he spat.

After that, I figured that I’d just wait to be asked for help before offering any on my own volition. In any case, if you see me on the street and I ignore you like the big dumb ape I am, don’t take it personally. Now, if I stare at you and start following you around, then you might want to be concerned, as a potential beating and/or request for a dinner and a movie might ensue.

I was walking around the community on the other side of the hill out back yesterday morning when a dark red sedan drove past me and parked at the end of the road. A large white man dressed in a black T-shirt and shorts and long gray hair got out and looked at me as he walked back around the car. In my typical gorilla fashion, I glanced at him and then quickly looked away as I walked on by. When I looked back to make sure he wasn’t following me with a machete, he was walking back to his car.

I do this with just about everybody, sometimes even with people I know. It’s also the subject of much anger and frustration in places like Forumosa.com, with many foreigners accusing other foreigners of “living in their own special little world” and acting uppity and forgetting their place, etc. Typically, those complaints are reserved for small towns where foreigners are few in number and meeting one another is rarer. In Taipei, foreigners are everywhere and it’s not such a big deal, or shouldn’t be. I have to admit that I look at people when I’m walking down the street. A glance here and there, be they foreign or domestic. A glance, and then I’ll look away. If I’m in a particularly good mood, I’ll nod, smile or even mutter something vague, but I don’t understand the expectation that such interaction is required because I happen to look more like said passerby than other people in the vicinity.

Such expectations are usually defended with claims of “share cultural background or experiences” etc., but that would assume that most of the foreigners I meet on the street have the same background as I do, which would be unfair and overgeneralizing. Also “It’s just a friendly and nice thing to do,” which is fine except for the fact that I’m not always a friendly and nice person. And even if I were, whomever I’m addressing might not be. One time, many years ago, I was walking down an alley behind Zhongxiao East Road when I came upon an older foreign man squinting at a map and looking around, appearing for all the world as lost as if he were in the middle of the Sahara. I walked up and asked him if he needed any help finding something.

The look he gave me nearly caused me to step back. “There’s nothing you could help me with,” he spat.

After that, I figured that I’d just wait to be asked for help before offering any on my own volition. In any case, if you see me on the street and I ignore you like the big dumb ape I am, don’t take it personally. Now, if I stare at you and start following you around, then you might want to be concerned, as a potential beating and/or request for a dinner and a movie might ensue.

I was late to a lunch date today. As I rode the subway into town, I thought about how this day would go if it were a couple of years down the road, and technology had kept up its current rate of development. My guess is my friends would look my position up on their GPS phones, see that I was still in Bitan, in my apartment, at noon. They’d see me leave, walk down the street, and then turn back to my apartment. My Twitter 2.0 service would flash “forgot my damn umbrella” and a real-time weather bureau layer would confirm that it was now pissing rain in my neighborhood. They’d watch me cross the bridge, just miss one train and wait for another, and then see me go one stop too far. T2.0 message: I’m tired of getting off at Taipei Main Station all the time. Then the little dot labeled “Poagao” on their screens, should they check it during their already-proceeding meal, would wander through some alleys in the vague direction of the restaurant, and (I’d like to think) they would make space for me at the table just before I walked in the door.

The rain in Bitan was incredible, I should add. I could see the heavy rain approaching and leaving, the white froth advancing in a line across the bridge at a good clip. My feet and legs were soaked, and it was a good test of my semi-waterproof shoes (verdict: kinda). To the north, the city was bathed in sunlight. The rain missed it completely.

But what I’m curious about is this: If everyone has access to our whereabouts, paths, even our hitherto-private musings typed into a wide-distribution services, will it make us more allowing for human nature? Before, we’d just come up with an excuse: “Traffic was bad” or “There was a sale on gold bullion” or “I was attacked by monkeys” or something that may or may not have happened. When it gets to the point where everyone can see what’s happening, and we all witness the chicanery that we all do and don’t tell anyone, will such shenanigans cease to be the social faux-pas that they currently are? Or will everyone just know, and not even bother mentioning them?

I guess we’re about to find out.

I was late to a lunch date today. As I rode the subway into town, I thought about how this day would go if it were a couple of years down the road, and technology had kept up its current rate of development. My guess is my friends would look my position up on their GPS phones, see that I was still in Bitan, in my apartment, at noon. They’d see me leave, walk down the street, and then turn back to my apartment. My Twitter 2.0 service would flash “forgot my damn umbrella” and a real-time weather bureau layer would confirm that it was now pissing rain in my neighborhood. They’d watch me cross the bridge, just miss one train and wait for another, and then see me go one stop too far. T2.0 message: I’m tired of getting off at Taipei Main Station all the time. Then the little dot labeled “Poagao” on their screens, should they check it during their already-proceeding meal, would wander through some alleys in the vague direction of the restaurant, and (I’d like to think) they would make space for me at the table just before I walked in the door.

The rain in Bitan was incredible, I should add. I could see the heavy rain approaching and leaving, the white froth advancing in a line across the bridge at a good clip. My feet and legs were soaked, and it was a good test of my semi-waterproof shoes (verdict: kinda). To the north, the city was bathed in sunlight. The rain missed it completely.

But what I’m curious about is this: If everyone has access to our whereabouts, paths, even our hitherto-private musings typed into a wide-distribution services, will it make us more allowing for human nature? Before, we’d just come up with an excuse: “Traffic was bad” or “There was a sale on gold bullion” or “I was attacked by monkeys” or something that may or may not have happened. When it gets to the point where everyone can see what’s happening, and we all witness the chicanery that we all do and don’t tell anyone, will such shenanigans cease to be the social faux-pas that they currently are? Or will everyone just know, and not even bother mentioning them?

I guess we’re about to find out.

Occasionally in Taiwan I encounter what I like to call the Airplane! treatment. For those of you who haven’t seen this brilliant 1980 movie, some of the jokes run thusly:

Rumack: You’d better tell the Captain we’ve got to land as soon as we can. This woman has to be gotten to a hospital.

Elaine Dickinson: A hospital? What is it?

Rumack: It’s a big building with patients, but that’s not important right now.

The Taiwan version of this usually involves a conversation with someone who possesses the intellectual knowledge that I speak Chinese but also has some sort of cognitive dissonance that prevents them from successfully internalizing that fact. They’re perfectly willing to speak with me in Chinese, but sometimes, out of the blue, they’ll feel the need to explain some perfectly obvious thing, reminding me of the Airplane! jokes.

Some Person: I won a clothes dryer at the office party, so my wife had a baby girl.

Me: So you’re saying the reason your wife had a girl instead of a boy was…

Some Person: It’s a machine that dries clothes.

Ok, so that might not be the best example, but you get the point. In any case, I wonder if the people I’m talking to, when they see me break out in laughter, think that I’m just ecstatic that I’ve finally learned the Chinese word for “clothes dryer” or whatever everyday thing we happen to be talking about.

It doesn’t happen that often; friends and people who know me well enough don’t usually do this, as they know I’ll ask them what something means if I don’t understand it. But when it does happen, I keep waiting for them to add “…but that’s not important right now.”

I was ready for bed last night when I got a call from Chris, who was heading over to Ziga Zaga at the Hyatt to meet up with Michael and some other people. Although sleep called, I figured after staying home all day doing laundry and tidying up for the new year, I wouldn’t mind getting out for a bit.

The crowd at the ritzy club consisted of the usual suspects: a mix of well-to-do white people, Taiwanese people dressed with questionable fashion sense intended to impart a sense of wealth and status more than taste, and a couple of black people. The band was from Europe and did a good job on most of the covers it played, though the sound system was pretty horrible.

We sat at a high table; Chris and her friend Alita would go dance periodically while Michael and I would stay and people-watch. A couple at a nearby table had embarked on a more-or-less constant lap dance, while an Asian girl stood staring at the stage and moving her hands in slow motion.

The restrooms were ambiguously labeled, as Chris found after walking into the men’s room by mistake (or so she claims). The men’s room door had a pear on it. I’m not sure what the women’s room door had on it; an apricot I think. I couldn’t be sure because any male person walking past the men’s room would immediately be confronted with a gremlin dressed in a hotel uniform. The gremlin would then tell the male person “Pear! PEAR! NOT APRICOT!” as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

The bar did have one of my favorite drinks, CC rye whiskey and ginger ale. Periodically Chris and Alita would overheat and go outside to cool down. I went with them one time at the end of the band’s last set so that I could watch people leaving. One fat woman stared at me as I sat on the pavement ouside. She was wearing purple slippers and suede pants, and I thought Jesus, if anyone should be stared at it’s her. But it was obviously not my crowd, so I just pointed and laughed as I usually do.

Speaking of pointing and laughing, I got a good laugh while shopping at SOGO for a new bathrobe. My old one, previously white, is now a dubious shade of yellow and needs replacing. Also, it doesn’t cover me as well as it used to. My employers give out bonuses of SOGO gift certificates in lieu of actual money, and I wanted to use the NT$1,000 I’d accumulated in one swell foop.

I looked at one terrycloth robe and asked how much it was. “NT$2,800” I was told.

“Yeah, ok,” I said, and kept walking. I then found one for NT$5,000 and chuckled at the clerk. I continued on to find one for NT$11,000. Then I found another that looked nice. Nothing special, just a terrycloth bathrobe. “How much is this?” I asked the saleslady.

“Oh, that one’s on sale!” she said brightly. I waited a moment but that’s all she said.

“And How Much Does It Cost?” I said, trying to enunciate clearly.

“NT$33,000.”

“BWAAAAHAAAAA!” I shouted, causing the entire floor to turn and stare. I didn’t say anything else, wiped my tears of hilarity on the bathrobe and departed.