I was walking by a construction site on Boai Road this afternoon on my way to lunch. Various cranes and machinery were moving sluggishly around against an interesting sky, so I took a shot with my GF-1. Then I recomposed for another shot, but just after the shutter clicked, a hand flew up and nearly knocked the camera out of my hands. “What the hell?”

It was the security guard for the site. I stared at him. “You can’t take pictures of this,” he said.

“Are you a policeman, then?” I asked, looking him up and down.

“No, I’m security for this site.”

“That site, you mean,” I said, pointing at the boundary between the street and the lot he had jurisdiction over. “And you’re planning to stop me from taking pictures from the street…how?”

“Our company has instructed me not to let anyone photograph the site,” he said, his resolve beginning to weaken.

“I don’t work for your company, and I’m not on your property, so what the hell does that have to do with me?”

“My company said-”

“Whatever. If your company told you to kidnap some women off the street for an illegal all-night Twinkie-eating contest, would you do it?”

“Uh…”

“Let’s get something straight here: Not only do you have no right to stop me from taking pictures of their site, you ESPECIALLY do not have the right to touch my shit.” I was glaring at him angrily by this time, and he cringed.

“I didn’t mean to…I didn’t want to take your camera or anything, I was just…”

“You were just what?”

“It’s just, you moved too quickly…it was an accident!” The guy was near tears by this time. I thought of calling his boss over, or, barring that, a nearby policeman. But the cop who had been shuffling the illegal stands down the sidewalk a moment before had disappeared.

I decided to let it go as the security guard ran over to direct one of the huge trucks out into traffic. I’m no Thomas Hawk; photography is more important to me than confrontation or the resulting notoriety.

Chenbl says I should have just spoken in English the whole time to further confuse and intimidate the guard, but I couldn’t bring myself to do such a thing; In any case, I figured I scared him well enough as it was.

It’s time to simplify things around here. During the Great Blogging Trend of the last few years, I allowed things to get out of hand, planting separate blogs for all sorts of things. Well. I hardly write in any of them any more. The tuishou blog quickly became repetitive, and the film blog stopped when the film did. Now it’s been completely hacked and isn’t even approachable without a hazmat suit.

I haven’t written in the Chinese blog in a while, and this account has dwindled appreciably in recent months (years) as well. Why? I can’t tell you, for the same reasons I haven’t been writing much lately. In a nutshell, I’m stuck. Lord, I’m stuck in so many ways, it’s not even funny. This and that and the other…all stuck. And before you reach for the email button to fire off a missive to me reading something like: “It’s not MY fault you’re stuck on this/that/other thing!”…relax. I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about someone else and something else. And if you’re thinking of writing something like “It’s because you’re in Taiwan that all of these problems exist!”…yes, mother, I’ll move elsewhere and everything will be magically right, even though I will lose my jobs, steady income, health insurance, house and any friends I’ve made here. Right.

What was I talking about? Oh, yes: Simplification. I don’t need all of these blogs and other things. Just one, or maybe two in case I want to separate the languages, but really just one thing. A simple, clean, elegant template will suffice. Possibly black text on a neutral background. I should probably update my ancient version of Wordpress as well, if I could just figure out how to do that without erasing everything in the process (my version of Wordpress is so old that it precedes the auto-update function…joy).

I also really need a vacation. Our little musical jaunts around the island have been fine, but I require something with a little more oomph, involving a new place to explore on my own, just walking around and seeing what’s what, and contemplating various things at my leisure. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be likely to happen under my presently overly adhesive circumstances, barring some kind of beer-stealing, jetslide-activating outburst, to coin a meme.

We met up at the train station once again on Saturday morning, tickets in hand for a high-speed trip south to Kaohsiung. I always enjoy the bullet train. Once there we boarded a van that would take us out to Hengchun for the folk music festival where we were to play at 5 that afternoon. The driver was, uh, a bit capricious with his lane-changing, but he got us there in a reasonable amount of time.

We disembarked at the old city gate featured in the film Cape No. 7 to find a large stage erected in the middle of the square. As we approached this natural target, the guys setting it up told us, “It’s not for you. This is for the Father’s Day show.” One of them pointed at a small area by the old city wall. “Yours is over there.” It seemed that the organizers wanted approximately 27 bands to play, all at the same time, all around the city.

Shrugs all around. We’re used to it. A trip to the nearest 7-Eleven (located quickly with Google Maps) later, we were sitting under the mosquito-infested trees while a fat, bald girl in a pink jumpsuit scolded Sandy Wee for spilling his drink all over the table. Slim thought she must be some kind of all-knowing medium. Conor climbed the rocks by the park, and an old man stared at us from his electric barcalounger.

The weather was fine, interesting clouds rushing overhead thanks to a tropical depression forming out in the ocean to the west. Our stage was directly behind a row of beeping pachinko machines. Our quick soundcheck melded into the start of the show, as only one young woman was really involved in managing the show, and the crowd consisted of several people sitting on scooters by the side of the road, and the bald medium girl, now in a green jumpsuit.

As we played, occasional squalls of rain came and went. Our music mixed with the pachinko machines as well as the band over at the Father’s Day stage. I was feeling alright, mellow and into the groove of things. It was good to get out of Taipei, and I was with my friends, doing what I liked to do.

After six the rain picked up, the Father’s Day Orchestra threatened to overwhelm us, and David’s voice was flagging. We’d done our show, and that was it; we disbanded, and Slim and Thumper disappeared. As they do.

The capricious van driver took the rest of us to a restaurant on the outskirts of town, a regular-looking place that could have been someone’s house, including alter and living room. The food was good, though, featuring local yam leaves, vermicelli and fried rice.  A couple of other foreigners joined us, including Jason Green and his wife.

I was waiting for some more delicious vermicelli when the driver got itchy and wanted to leave; he’d eaten and wanted to go. Now. So I stuffed my face with whatever was left on the table, and we proceeded on, crossing dark fields to our hotel on the coast. Or hotels, I should say; David, Robyn, Sandy, Jojo and Sandy Wee were at one place, while I was next door, and Conor and Kat were at yet another place, all located within a small community across the road from the beach.

After settling in (I had one small room, which was nice, but…small. Good enough for one though), we went down to the dark beach, where Sandy and Conor decided to go for a swim. I walked up the beach a bit, letting my eyes get used to the darkness, as the star-filled skies were clear enough to see the Milky Way. Venus, or possibly Jupiter, was brilliant, outshining all the other points of light by a good margin. It was magical.

Magic of another sort was happening up at the beach, as Kat caught Sandy and a quite-naked Conor in various compromising poses with her camera, no doubt planning an expose in the next Apple Daily.

Later on, after the others went prudently to bed, Conor, Kat and I walked down the road to Jonathan’s, where Slim was recuperating from the day. Jonathan rents the place for a pittance. We sat outside in front chatting. Well, others chatted. Slim was in full stream-of-consciousness mode. Conor told me that Thumper had missed the last train and was sleeping at the station. The news made me tired, and we walked back over the bridge making waterdrop noises to amuse the various ghosts. “I want to do something outrageous!” Kat said. But she didn’t. Or maybe she did, when nobody could see.

I was awoken the next morning by the chirping of a gecko above my bed. The air conditioning was aimed directly at my head, which didn’t make for the best of nights. The pillow was also too high, and there was hardly any water pressure in the shower. I was glad to see the gecko, though; I suspect it was on duty eating various insects all night.

Outside, the others hadn’t woken up, so I plodded up the hill looking at the rest of the little community. I came across an old lady sitting in the shade. She was old enough that she didn’t really do Mandarin, so we spoke in Minnan. She said she’d lived there all her life, before then-President Chiang Ching-kuo decided to construct the group of villas for the fishermen of the nearby village.

Eventually the cries of Sandy Wee alerted us to the fact that breakfast was imminent. A kiwi smoothie accompanied my omelet and toast; delicious. David was decompressing after a long, hard week of feature-writing, and all of us luxuriated in not having anything specific to do that day.

After breakfast we wandered down to the beach for a dip. Easy dipping was off the schedule, however; delighted surfers, mostly well-built young men, told us that, due to the tropical depression, recent rainfall and other conditions, the waves that day were spectacularly big. They all rushed out to take advantage of this bounty, while we just swam around being walloped repeatedly by enormous walls of water. They seemed to come in threes or fours and were a lot of fun, but tiring after a while. I swallowed so much salt water it made me thirsty.

I walked over to the river mouth and found the water there unpleasantly warm. Dark clouds were rolling in by that point, and we began to think about the trip back. The driver this time was far more professional and efficient, taking a series of detours that included a stop for gas and tasty sesame baozi, as we traversed gloomy fields and orchards trying to avoid the weekend crush of Kaohsiung-bound traffic. The raindrops squiggled across the windshield, pushed by the wind into movement resembling microscopic organisms.

The bullet trains were completely booked, but we got open seating tickets and, after purchasing food from various sources, we got seats on a train back for Taipei. Conor was a bright, alarming shade of flaming pink, and David complained of sunburned shoulders. The trip was a swish and a click back to Taipei, and I crossed the bridge at Bitan just before they closed it off for repairs.

For the first time in a good while, the Muddy Basin Ramblers converged once again for a show, this time down in the wilds of Taichung County, at the ruins of the Dongshan Amusement Park, which was abandoned after the huge 9/21/1999 earthquake.

Usually Conor is the last to show up, but this time I was the last to arrive at the south exit of the train station where we’d arranged to meet, thanks to just missing a subway train. David rushed off to get tickets for the band and Chenbl, who was along for the ride. We caught the 12:36 bullet train, arriving at the Wurih Station in Taichung, where we eschewed the smaller taxis in favor of larger station wagons that could carry us in the fashion to which we, and by we I mean Sandy and his bottle of whiskey, are accustomed.

The Dongshan Amusement Park reminds me not a little of the old Xingfu Fun Fair at Bitan, before they tore the remains down several years ago: Vines, dull, flaking paint barely covering rusting, skeletal rides. A sad place. I kept thinking about the last day of the park’s operation, what everyone who worked there and played there felt and did. A few young foreigners were about setting up tents, as well as Landis, the organizer, who had hauled Conor as well as our gear out there in the back of his jeep.

The “stage” turned out to be the edge of a drained pool. The local wasp community took obvious umbrage at the encroachment on their territory (as well as their name) by the newcomers, and a large spider scrambled out of the stiflingly hot green room as we put our gear down.Outside, one of the pools held a mudlike concoction that was about 30% dead leaves, 40% water and 30% hippies.

Thumper raged about the sound guys, who were managing some impressively coordinated standing around as we went through a sound check that consisted mostly of ear-splitting feedback and the lead sound guy telling David how to turn the mic button on. Everything was loud and tinny except the bass, which…wasn’t.”Which way should I turn the mic, away from the speakers, I guess?” I asked one of them. “Whatever you like; it doesn’t matter,” he told me before another blast of feedback caused everyone to jump.

But there was no time for such niceties by that point; the show was beginning with a local band called “AWESOME SHIT.” It takes balls to call your band “AWESOME SHIT.” That, and maybe a burning need to compensate.

We held a little practice session of our own by the large gorilla, in front of the small carousel, and then split up to explore and get away from the incredibly loud sound of AWESOME SHIT. The park borders a small stream with a rickety suspension bridge. Partially submerged boats floated in moss-filled water, and a rusting monorail snaked though the branches above. Bats filled the skies, dodging at invisible prey, as, only a few feet above them, an apparently home-made white airplane flew, often sideways, over the park.  An ROC flag was painted on its tail, and each pass was lower and slower, until it stopped. I didn’t hear a crash, so I assume whoever it was made it down in one piece.

Chenbl and I decided to get some burgers for dinner, but this turned out to be problematic: the guy working the huge grill was having a minor breakdown as orders mounted. We ended waiting for over half an hour for our burgers, which turned out to be the “nearly impossible to eat” size that is so popular these days. When I was growing up, I remember burgers being much more manageable in size.You could hold a hamburger in your hands, and bite into it without straining your jaw muscles. And it was good. Damn, but I miss Steak ‘n Shake. Later on, Thumper and Slim reported that the burger guy had just given up and stopped serving people altogether.

We were on at 7pm. The number of young westerners wandering the park increased as night fell and tents went up in various nooks and crannies. As we took the stage, the lights came up, nearly blinding us. I quickly ran back to get some sunglasses, but they only provided a small amount of protection against the brilliance projected straight into my eyes. The audience was effectively invisible; it was like playing into a closet door.

When we started up our first song, Viola Lee, I was surprised to hear that Sandy wasn’t playing his usual part. In fact, I wasn’t sure just what he was playing; he did seem to be having an inordinately good time, jumping around the stage regardless of mic positions and rubbing up against David like an attention-starved cat.

Fortunately the sound situation had improved somewhat; I could hear the bass, anyway, and there was scattered applause from the closet. I had to keep on my toes throughout the show due to various, er, whiskey-induced missing of elements, to put it technically, but things turned out alright, if a bit sloppy. Ok, things were very sloppy. But it was ok; the closet seemed happy, and we haven’t played a gig in a while.

After the show, the Ramblers scattered again. Slim disappeared into the Vagina Monologues Hut where he did some free-style scatting. Daring young foreigners pedaled along the rusty monorail above our heads, past the Pirates o’ Sodomy attraction while Sandy sat on a curb whining around hippies. Chenbl had sold only one CD due to the rampant poverty that no doubt ensued from buying too much beer.

We stayed to listen to Two Acres Plowed, which was improved immeasurably since their drum-machine days with the addition of a smokin’ hot fiddle, but we had to catch the train back up to Taipei.40 cramped, sweaty minutes later we were at the HSR station McDonalds slurping down ice cream and french fries before the smooth ride back to the Basin. I nodded off into a caramel-induced slumber on the train while Conor expounded on the meaning of economics-based employment, and before I knew it we’d arrived. Thumper, Conor, Chenbl and David bade farewell, while Sandy, Slim and I caught the subway.

“What do you do with that?” a Saudi Arabian woman asked me, pointing to the tub as we slid southwards.

“I’ll show you,” I said, setting up the bass and playing a few riffs, much to Slim’s amusement. Then I got out my trumpet, muted of course (I’m not an animal, you know) and played around to pass the time as Sandy waved to and fro to the motion of the car. Then it was the usual walk across the bridge and back to the Water Curtain Cave, where I fell asleep almost immediately.

People can be very possessive of their right and ability to define themselves, to be the sole arbiter of the world’s official view of them as a person, a view more desperately clung to the more insecure that person is and one more in danger of violation since the advent of ubiquitous social networking on the Internet.

Many people are confident enough in their appearance and the contexts of their lives to withstand such a challenge, but many more may not be so willing to see their image. We go through our lives not seeing ourselves as we are. Aside from the occasional mirror, we don’t even feature in our own world view; out of sight is out of mind, and our own appearance, once set in the morning before we leave the house, is simply not on the radar for many people. This isn’t a concern for some, but others may be, consciously or subconsciously, aware that they aren’t quite the person they want to be seen as, even perhaps obsessing over this gap in reality. The self they see in their minds is different from the self that others see, and since they don’t see themselves, the mind-self, the “residual self image” that Morpheus mentions in The Matrix where everyone looks cooler in their minds than in reality, takes precedence. For some people, this is the only way they get through the day, through their lives.

Even the most insecure of people cannot present the perfect outward appearance they seek to project all the time, however, so when you or I come by with a camera and just, without any warning, redefine them by our own criteria, seemingly merely by their happenstance appearance at the time, setting it in stone with concrete photographic evidence, it could seem like we did infringe upon something deeply held and personal. Suddenly, their real appearance bursts into reality in a way no accidentally caught glimpse in a reflective surface could, for this is a mirror that everyone is looking at. A video image may not show the sordid details, lost in a blur of movement, but an image won’t fail in this respect. And unlike a video, an image won’t end, letting us go back to our carefully modeled perceptions.

After failing to find a movie I wanted to see at Q-Square after work Friday (damn 3D flicks everywhere are ruining my chances to see a film that doesn’t give me a headache), I rented three DVDs to watch over the weekend: Quantum of Solace, The Handsome Suit, and Bodyguards and Assassins. It’s Saturday night now, and I’ve already finished all of them.

The latest James Bond flick was, to be frank, boring. Yes, yes, 007’s doing things his way and M gets to clean up the mess. Again. I’d had higher hopes for this as I liked Daniel Craig’s performance in the last one, Casino Royale. He’s really the first actor to grasp the nature of Bond since Connery, and reading Fleming’s books lately just shores up my opinion in this respect. But there was no soul to this one; it felt like the bits and pieces left over from the last film. The writers must be struggling for new material after going through each and every book and short story Fleming penned, and it shows. It may be just as well that the studio is having a hard time coming with a means to make another one. It’s a pity that Craig, probably the last Bond actor actually older than I am, might not get another chance to excel as Bond, but there are plenty of other things he can excel at, I’m sure.

Bodyguards and Assassins, I’d thought from the preview was just another historical kung-fu action piece, but it turned out to be a rather over-the-top tragic/patriotic piece where almost everyone dies in the end after trying to protect Sun Yat-sen on a trip to Hong Kong. It was well done, of course, but I wouldn’t have rented it if I’d known its true nature.  Donnie Yen is always interesting to watch, and were most of the other actors, with the exception of the annoying kid who played Lin Yu-tang’s son.

The Handsome Suit, a Japanese film where an “ugly” guy gets to play at being “handsome” with the aid of a mechanical suit, was actually pretty fun; I liked the underlying message that most people are actually quite ugly, no matter what they look like on the outside. The film managed to take this sobering truth and gussy it up with lots of up-beat music and colors, but it came through anyway. I personally would prefer the main character’s original appearance to his “Handsome Suit” form, but I’m just strange like that. Again, I really should learn some Japanese instead of having to rely on subtitles for these films.

I don’t write here very often these days, obviously. Most of my scattered thoughts can be communicated through Twitter and Facebook, and though I don’t keep up with the site’s statistics, I suspect that viewership has largely disappeared as anything over 140 characters is now officially “long-winded.” But I still like to write, so although I feel that the whole blogging thing has run its course, those of us who began before everyone had a blog will most likely continue after it has become obsolete. Hard to believe I’ve been doing it for almost a decade.

It is another brilliant Monday following a rainy weekend. I’ve been trying to get a photobook project together recently, just a quick and dirty trial run for something more serious later on. I’ve also been getting feedback from some friends on my army book, which, after a bit more revision based on their feedback, should be ready to shop around. I rehearsed with Noname Yu and his band the other night, as he wanted some brass backing for some of his songs. I’m not sure how that’s working. I also watched the movie again for the first time since I finished editing it in 2008. I’d meant to just take a quick look and ended up watching the whole thing.

Today during my lunch break I was wandering around the site of the old Beef Noodle Street near Xining Road. As I ruminated on the sad state of affairs there, with only a couple of tarpon-festooned stalls hidden in the deep shadows under the thick banyan trees, I came across a team of workers emptying an old Japanese-era house of the several tons of detritus that had filled it over the decades. Old dishes, clothing, pillows, furniture, all being carted out into the street. I looked down at a  book on history with a cover that might once have been blue, and wondered who had owned it, who’d read it, who’d bought it at a bookstore and carried it home to put on their bookshelf. I thought of the books in my apartment; perhaps someday the book of Magnum photos I got the other day at Eslite will end up in a trashheap somewhere as well.

Yes, I’ve been a bit depressed lately. No doubt the weather, the changing of the seasons, has something to do with it. Relationship troubles as well, on which I won’t go into further detail here. I feel like I need a break, to go somewhere to recover, perhaps another sea voyage. I read recently of a ship, the Cosco Star, that plies the route from Keelung to Xiamen. It’s been a while since I explored a new place on my own.

But it will have to wait a bit longer; I’ve got too much going on at the moment.

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”  -Hamlet, Act I, scene V.

There’s been a lot of fuss over Photoshop’s new CS5 software, in that it apparently lets you manipulate photographs so easily and realistically that even the camera that took them wouldn’t recognize them afterward, if cameras were actual sentient beings that could hold intelligent conversations. Which they aren’t. Yet.

While I see no end to such trends in photomanipulation, which will seemingly replace actual photography, I think that photography will continue mainly due to one thing: Our imaginations. That and our ability to get what we want. Ok, two things, but they’re really the same.

The thing is, no matter how many times you’ve been to Disneyworld, our imaginations are sadly limited, often lacking when compared to reality. Getting what we want is often not as good as getting something else, something better that we hadn’t thought of. How many times have you gotten what you thought you wanted, only to find it somehow lacking? The reason for this is that we often don’t know exactly what it is about something that makes us like it. It could be some subtle combination we don’t consciously notice.

Some of the best filmmaking has come from filmmakers without the resources to put exactly what they want on the screen. They’ve been forced to tell their stories instead through other means, using what they have instead of creating what they think is best. Look at what happened when George Lucas could put his exact vision of Star Wars on the screen instead of being restricted by technology and budget.

The same goes for photography, I think. To me, the most boring photography is the kind you have to set up for, in studios, with lights all exactly so. The photographers get exactly what they want, and most of the time it’s boring. Even shooting outside the studio is boring when you have a set idea of what you want. It will only become even more so once you’re able to do this effectively in Photoshop.

But reality, comprised of “all the things in heaven and earth” as it is, almost always surpasses our imaginations. To me, truly inspiring photography comes from managing to somehow grasp some of this, using all of your talent and inspiration to wrangle it into an image that conveys even just a portion of the amazing things we all witness but few recognize, and even fewer can convey.

Some have intimated the programs like CS5 will allow people to manufacture such works with their computers, but while this may work on the superficial level, I still think that our sights should be set higher, outside the limits of our philosophies.

I was sitting at the cafe today, trying to work on my book, when an elderly couple sat down next to me. I’d heard their loud conversation as they came up the stairs, but most of the old people there speak loudly.

Once they sat down, the woman began to wear the man down with a long, withering nagging session. It wasn’t just me, either; I’d bet most of the people in the room were worn down by it after just a short time. “You’ve got high blood sugar, high cholesterol,” she told him. “And you think you can work? You could die at any time, and then what?” Not a lot of it made sense as I didn’t know the background to the conversation, but the nagging, condescending tone of the woman grated. How could this man have put up with this for so many years? I wondered. Perhaps he just didn’t want to upset her and never told her the secrets in his heart, or perhaps he had just revealed them to her, expecting, hoping against hope, that maybe this time she would reveal some amount of compassion and sympathy for his plight. Either way, he was wrong. Did she know what she was doing to him, what she’d been doing all those years? But he could leave at any time, right? Yet for some reason it had become a choice between not being able to live without her and barely living with her.

I couldn’t keep working. I had to leave, lest the heaping pile of NO YOU CAN’T smother me as well as the rest of the room. It was a gray day outside, but I needed the fresh air.

The book is coming along fairly well, by the way; I’m over 80% done with this revision, and the word count is comfortably over 90,000. The last sections need more work than the earlier parts, however, so it’s taking more time and effort.

I walked over to the camera street instead of taking the MRT to my job in the afternoon like I usually do, trying to get the old woman’s soul-destroying tune out of my head. I was looking at prices of Leica M adapters for my GF1, but I was surprised to find a lens I’d been hankering after for months, just arrived today.

I didn’t buy it. Maybe the old woman was right. What a frightening thought.

A few months ago, shortly before the Chinese New Year holiday, I changed my schedule so that I’d be in the city all day instead of just going into work in the afternoons as I had before. I’d been working half days ever since I left my job at O&M so many years ago; the grand plan at the time was to be productive in other areas in my free time.

If you know me, you can imagine just how spectacularly that didn’t work. I’d stay up late each night, sleep in, and then spend the remainder of my mornings screwing around online and end up tired all the time, with nothing to show for it.

These day, however, I’m out the door around 8 or 9 a.m., and have a break from about noon to 2 or 3 p.m. in which I go to a cafe, have lunch and use my old Thinkpad to work on the English version of Counting Mantou, something I’ve neglected over the years for various reasons. Now I’ve decided to get it done once and for all.

I’ve been making a lot of progress, first going through and correcting all the mistakes a friend of mine found during proofreading, and the going through, most likely introducing a whole slew of new mistakes as I rewrite the whole damn book. I figure that my writing must have improved over the last seven or so years since I wrote it, and I might be able to make it a little more readable this time around. The challenge lies more in the latter portions of the story, since, as anyone who has done military service can tell you, the more outwardly exciting parts tend to be in the beginning. But I’ve managed to develop some internal themes that I’d neglected in the last version, and I’m happy with the direction it’s going. I’m even meeting a publishing agent from New York on Thursday to discuss it.

While I’m excited about it  being a better, more engaging story, I’d also really like to see it done, even if I have to self-publish it in the end. I haven’t touched the movie since I handed it off to Darrell in ‘08, and I have no excuse for not working on the book now. It’s not convenient to go back to Xindian for a couple of hours, and there’s really nothing else to do but work on the book.

Most of the time I go to a nearby Dante Cafe on Yanping South Road. The upstairs is always full of old veterans and their wives, some asleep, some shouting in loud mainland accents that bounce off the walls amidst a slight tinge of urine from the bathrooms, some simply staring into space. For some reason, I’ve always found it easier to concentrate on writing or studying in raucous environments full of strangers than in quiet places like libraries or at home. Back in my college days at Tunghai, I would always end up at one of the five Super Food Chicken joints on campus, sitting at a table in the corner going through characters on little pieces of paper.

All in all, though I feared that my new schedule would restrict my time in unwelcome ways, the new scenario has instead opened the door to a sense of accomplishment and purpose that I’ve missed for a long time, ever since I finished editing the movie. At the very least, when people ask me about the book, I can now honestly say, “I’m working on it.”