I have a good job. The people there treat me very well, no one bosses me around, I can determine my own lunch time and be liberal about when I come in in the mornings. I have a permanent connection to the Internet and I can read if I don’t have anything else to do. The benefits are good and it is stable, easy work that I can do well.

I have, however, come to loathe my job in recent days. I know it’s irrational. I have seen far worse jobs, pictures of workers hauling mud out of huge pits, etc. I have been unemployed and poor before, anxious to do anything, anything at all…so I should know better. Intellectually, I know that I have a good job, one that pays the bills and lets me live in an ok fashion…I can’t figure out what about the job is making me so miserable. Perhaps it is because I am not doing anything, really, I am not calling on any creative forces, nor am I asked to develop myself in any fashion. Perhaps it is another part of my life that I am deeply dissatisfied with. Perhaps the past few days have just been bad days. Or perhaps I need to take the plunge and just do what I want to be doing…

But I have a sense about these things. I can sense the very stirrings of a beginning of the end. Part frustration on my part, reflected in my actions, part others’ attitude toward me, I can feel things “slipping” in a way I have experienced all too many times in the past. I will, of course, try to hang on for a while more. In any case, I have to take off at least two weeks before September 25th, possibly even four weeks, a whole month around that time. Where should I go? I could go to Australia, except it would be winter there. How is Australia in the winter? Could I rent a motorcycle and drive up the west coast from Perth? I could also go to Europe, visit Mia and Graham in London, maybe see Matt in Spain, see France and Germany…I don’t know. Or I could go to Canada with Dean. Or I could go get my Ultralight license in the Philippines, except I would like to do that with a group of friends rather than by myself. Or go see Mindcrime in St.Louis, if indeed he is still there at that time. Does anyone have any suggestions?

I have an idea for a “Battle-brella”. You see, Taiwan’s sidewalks are both narrow and crowded, and when it rains, which it often does, everyone carries umbrellas, and these umbrellas are used as weapons against the people walking in the opposite direction. If I had a “battle-brella”, I could walk in confidence that the reinforced frame and hidden blades of my umbrella would instantly and uncompromisingly emerge victorious from any confrontation with a competing, garden-variety umbrella.

The Taipei skyline visible from my balcony over Ta-an park has become quite attractive lately as more and more buildings are being lit up. The weather is nice and cool today, slightly cloudy and a very pleasant change from the constant mugginess of the last week or so.

I’ve started to really read other people’s blogs, and it is strange how, whereas when you met someone, it was usually their physical appearance and mannerisms that you saw first. The famous first impression people are always talking about. But now, I get to read their thoughts, descriptions of their daily lives, moods, etc., all before I meet them IRL, if ever. I suppose that this kind of understanding of a person is as equally lopsided as only knowing their physical presence without getting to know how they think. Both are important factors in actually knowing someone. Yet I still wonder what this kind of shift will do to our accepted social infrastructure. There must be hundreds of thousands of blogs out there by now…we really need some way to sift through them all, so people can find the kind of stuff they’re looking for without resorting to chance. But I suppose that is much like people meet IRL, by chance.

It was windy and drizzling last night, but I rode over to 45 anyway. Dean was already there, and we were soon joined by Steve and Irene as the place filled up. It turns out that Andy’s director friend is actually my old friend Chen Yi-wen. We worked together on Mahjong years and years ago, but I haven’t seen him since. He acted in Huang Ming-chuan’s “The Man from the West as well. I told him I would like to help out on his next film, since I know I would appreciate any help I could get on my films, which pretty much rely on the generousity and spare time of my friends and other desperate individuals. We talked for a while, but there were too many people in the group and it kept breaking up into two- and three-person conversations. I’m not too comfortable in this kind of situation, as I never know to whom I am supposed to be listening, and I get nervous as I try to determine who is talking to whom. This happens with just about any group over four people, it seems. Will I ever get the hang of this, or is it a genetic thing that some people are just born with?

Thanks to Dean’s MP3 collection, I have the theme to ‘Lost in Space’ permanently installed inside my brain. Thanks, Dean.

I have determined that the guy who runs the car repair store located downstairs from where I live owns, at the most, five articles of clothing (This is assuming that he wears underwear). In the summertime he wears a white tank top. In spring and autumn he wears a red, short-sleeve polo with grease stains on it. In the winter, no matter how cold it gets, he wears a dark blue zip-up jacket over the red shirt. He also wears pants and, occasionally, shoes.

I stopped on my way to the subway the other day, and, realizing that I had left a certain important item back in my room, uttered an impassioned “Frell!” It was about that time I realized that I am probably a little too into Farscape.

I got an email from one of the guys at Blog You! This account is apparently in line to be reviewed at some as-yet undetermined point in the future. One of the cool things about Tom and Ed is that they rate weblogs in terms of Sutherlands. Four Donald Sutherlands is the best, while one Keifer is the worst one can get. Sounds fair to me. Plus, I think Tom is kind of sexy.

The woman in the cubicle next to me spends about 98% of her time discussing her kids on the phone in that typical whiny voice Chinese women use, either habitually or when they want something. I don’t know how they do it without hurting their throats.She cannot spend more than a minute without picking up the phone and talking about her kids. I hope the party with whom she is discussing these details is a relatively sane individual, or else one of these days we are going to have a murder on our hands. Occasionally one of her bosses will come up and say something work-related to her, but as soon as they’re gone, she goes back to discussing her kids on the phone. I can’t complain, really, because here I am discussing her in this journal while I am supposed to be editing an incredibly boring, whiny statistics report(Waaah! The Economy is bad! Let’s stop investing in anything and fire people, maybe that’ll make it go away! Waaah!). But wait! Yes I can, because at least I am not spewing vapidity randomly across a public office. No, that would be too easy. I am spewing vapidity online! Cybervapidity! The scourge of the Internet! Is this really what you want your precious bandwidth being used for?

If you’re still here, apparently so. Ok, then.

My buddy Mindcrime is currently making a cross-country jaunt across America with his girlfriend. After months of the rare update, he is posting to his site pretty much every day, or at least until he gets to St.Louis, where no doubt he will enlighten us concerning the various faults of that fair city’s people.

Steve just called and said he is going to meet up with a couple of friends and friends of friends, including a movie director, at 45 tonight. This could be interesting. The reason I say this, aside from the obvious, is that, before 45 was made into a bar, it was an old, traditional Chinese house, and back when I was working with Edward Yang and Hayashi Kaisho on “The Breath“, we appropriated the second story of this particular old house for a scene in the movie. Appropriately enough, it was a bar scene, and many of the crew, including myself, were asked to play the drunken partygoers. We were even supplied with real alcohol to help us get into the proper mood. I remember expressing concern that I was wearing the same clothes as I had for another scene I was in, a jail scene down in Tainan, but nobody seemed to see a problem with it. My hair was also just getting over my first mohawk back then, too. Ah, youth.

In the meantime, I am stuck here, as usual, cringing every time I save a Word document, hesitating, lest the Blue Screen o’ Death sear my eyes as punishment(as if the repetitive, unoriginal Chinese love songs blasting from the back of the office weren’t enough!) for trying to force our antiquated LAN to actually transfer information! I am such an infidel.

Despite the fact that there was no blue to be seen in the sky, it was sunny and hot in a muggy way designed to make one sweat as much as possible. The climb up Kuanyin Mountain yesterday turned out to be more tasking than any of us had predicted. First we met at the Taipei train station, and then took a bus through Sanchung(shudder) and then north towards Bali(no, not that Bali). We climbed a long ways up and realized that Kuanyin Mountain is not just one peak. There is a reason that it looks like the profile of the goddess from afar, and that is because it is a multitude of peaks, some of them quite steep. Consequently, when we came across a sign saying “To Kuanyin Mtn”, it pointed downhill to the bus stop. So, in an effort to keep things simple, we figured we would just try going Up until we couldn’t go Up any more, and then we would go Down.

The path up the mountain peak we chose consisted of seemingly endless concrete steps. Periodically we had to stop and rest. I was sweating buckets from the heat and humidity. People were coming down the path, everyone from old men to kids. One of the kids pointed to us and said “Look, pa! Americans!” Steve, being British, corrected the boy, saying “No, we’re not Americans. We’re aliens.”

“Look, pa! Aliens!” the little boy shouted pointing even more fervently in our direction.

We stopped at a pavillion where a woman had some “Super Supao” sports drinks(i.e. sugar water) floating in a pan full of luke-warm water. Every time she ran out she would go unlock a steel door and get some more. The steel door was the only thing protecting her Supao stash. The other four sides of the enclosure consisted of vegetation.

By the time we got to the top of that particular peak, the sound of the backhoe that was clearing off a peice of land next to the parth began to drown out the sound of the Karaoke echoing from the valley below. We spotted another, higher peak, the highest one in the vicinity, and headed towards it. Once there, we found a deck made out of sun-baked wood-like material whose slightly melted state betrayed its identity as plastic. From there we could have seen all of Taipei, Yangming Mountain, and Tamshui, if the mist/fog/pollution/whatever hadn’t draped everything in milky white. As it was, all we could catch was a glimpse of the river and Tamshui Township on the other side.

The hike down the other side was even harder than the hike up, but more isolated. The jungle-like setting and many interesting insects, including 7-inch long black-and-orange centipedes and the occasional crushed snake, make it enjoyable. My legs were aching by the time we reached the road, but the road down the moutain was every bit as steep as the path. We passed one curve, overlooking a small, polluted stream, where the barbed wire had been torn down and the remnants of ghost money littered the asphalt. No doubt it was the site on some fatal car accident not too long ago.

Finally we reached the road running along the bank of the river. Our plan had originally been to take the ferry over to Tamshui, have dinner, and then take the MRT back to the city, but, due to some bad communication, we ended up on a bus back through Sanchung(shudder), to the Train Station, where we had started out that morning.

After having some dinner and rather bad service at Friday’s and browsing a few electronics shops to see whether the Rio Volt has arrived here or not, I went to the 2-28 park to take some photos. The sun had set, and the presidential office was lit up quite brilliantly. If they would light up the provincial museum it would look great and give Kuanchien Road a real focal point. Maybe someday they’ll realize that.

I took the MRT back to the Taipower Bldg station and realized that I hadn’t finished my roll of film, so I went up on the pedestrian overpass on Roosevelt Road to take a few shots of the nighttime traffic. There was a girl wearing a white shirt and jeans standing there, staring out over the traffic. I ignored here and proceeded to set up some long-exposures. As I did so I head the girl crying. As I took my photos her crying grew more and more insistant, almost a wailing.

“I can’t take it anymore!” she said, over and over. As I finished the last shot and rolled my film back, I glanced over and saw that she had one leg over the railing. She saw me looking and got back down.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “TC, you should go over there and talk to her.” But you’re wrong. I have seen crazy women here before, and that would just be asking for trouble. I am not equipped to deal with this kind of situation. There is a reason people like this woman are avoided in Taiwan. My good friend Boogie even wrote a song about “Crazy Woman Number 5” or something like that (this was a long time before Lou Bega, by the way). If she did jump, though, it wouldn’t be just her, but the traffic below that would have been in trouble.

So I couldn’t just leave her there, so I went down to the nearest store, which sold appliances. I went in and asked the guy that worked there where the nearest police station was. He said three blocks. Damn, too far. So we went out and flagged down a passing police cruiser. The officers pulled over and turned on their flashing lights, which I thought probably wasn’t the best of ideas. They got out and went over to the overpass, one on each side.

Of course the girl saw all of this, I heard her screaming at them, but she left anyway. The officers came back and, shouting “It’s nothing!”, got in their car and drove off. I lingered a bit, seeing if she would come back, but I saw no sign of her.

Of course this was the moment that Melvin walked up. Melvin is my former boss from the newspaper I used to work at. He was just back from a symposium in Hong Kong, and we talked a bit as we walked through the Shi-da area.

By the time I got home, I was extremely ready for sleep. But I had told some friends of mine I would meet up with them later, so I took a shower and headed out to the Tavern, and then over to the Watershed to see my friend Ronnie, who was DJing there last night. The Watershed is nice, but it was a bit crowded and I was about to pass out, so I had to come back and crash.

The weather today is just like yesterday, but today I don’t plan to climb any mountains. Harry called and asked if I wanted to go to the beach, but I think I will stay in the city today. Right now I am enjoying my AC too much. Later I will go to the Jade market, drop off my film for processing, whatever…it’s a whatever kind of Sunday. Ants are literally invading my room. I thought that I had foiled them with the mosqito spray on my doorknob, but they have figured that one out already. Clever little creatures. I think I will feed them to my fish.

*rubs hands together gleefully in a James Bond Villain-esque manner*

Getting lots of requests for my T-shirt(no, not the one I’m wearing, the one I designed). I might have to make more…and if I do, I should probably put my URL on there and sell them through this website.

Ah, whatever.

On the way to work this morning, I saw a white garbage truck, with the phrase “We clean up Taipei” written in English on the side. The city garbage trucks here are big yellow things, though. Is this a rogue garbage truck? Does this have anything to do with recent sightings of policemen actually pulling people over for breaking traffic laws? Dean said that this is one of the signs of the apocalypse, while Carl tells me I must have been “on an exceedingly bad trip.”

Steve, Irene and I are going to climb Kuanyin mountain tomorrow. Well, half of it, anyway. We plan to take a bus up the first half. I’ve never been up it, even though it is a familar part of the Taipei skyline, with ridges at the top that, viewed from a certain angle, look like the profile of the goddess Kuan-yin. I hope it’s not too strenuous, because my stomach is still not feeling entirely better.

Henrik called me today at work, quite out of the blue. He’s been all over the world while I sat at the same cubicle for almost nine months. Makes me wonder…I know several foreigners who spent all their time in Taiwan complaining about it, and yet they always tend to come back after leaving for a while. Henrik isn’t like that, but it just occurred to me as I spoke with him. I had lunch with some foreign friends in the Zone today. “The Zone” is what they call the area near Minchuan and Zhongshan Roads. The full name is “The Combat Zone”, but most people call it “The Zone.” It used to be where all the US servicemen went to drink, carouse, etc., but now it is where all the expatriate businessmen go to get drunk and oogle the Chinese waitresses. It’s like a foreign ghetto in that way, a little pocket of foreigness in the middle of Taipei. I had lived here for many years before I experienced it myself, and it was quite a shock. Going there always makes me a little uncomfortable, as if this place shouldn’t exist, but it does. Lots of “Old China Hands” hang out there…there were some there today, guys who have been in Taiwan since before I was born, and yet many of whom never even bothered to learn Chinese. That bothers me, but I am not sure whether it is because I did bother to learn it and feel everyone should, or because I can’t imagine living in a country for so long and not even trying to learn the language, customs, etc…instead just hiding out in the office by day and the Zone by night. A part of me feels that these people are just being superior, but in the back of my mind I kind of pity them.

Or maybe that’s just me being superior.

Familiar things I found at Yesterdayland:

The Red “Emergency!” lunchbox I took to Edward H. White Elementary School in El Lago Texas, from 1975 to 1979. I think my parents were trying to tell me something.

My first ‘computer’, which I got in 1984, a Texas Instruments TI994A. Used almost exclusively to play Space Invaders, which, incidentally, is also available here.

The “Big Jim Rescue Rig.” I had one of these, although I never remember having Big Jim himself. I wonder how that happened?

Why do I smell beer in the office? Oh, that’s right, Heineken is available from the vending machine labelled “Sports Drink” on the side.

Since the fire department is inspecting the building today, no doubt in reaction to the big fire in Hsichih a while back, our office has taken the precautions of removing the glass front doors, opening all the stairwell doors, as well as pretty much all the doors in the office that are usually closed. This is wierd. It is like a different office. In addition, all of the printers have been disconnected. I have no idea how our printers constitute a fire hazard, but apparently they do. I personally consider Widows 98 a fire hazard, since, after a certain amount of exposure to the Blue Screen o’ Death, anyone is susceptable to the lure of arson.

The scary thing is that all of these precautions are only going to last one day. Tomorrow we will go back to our ordinary level of flammability.

Speaking of fire hazards, there are currently two apartments in my building where they are tearing down walls with jackhammers. Not only are our neighbors actively participating in the “Guess which is the supporting wall?” game, but the people directly upstairs have decided to join the fun. About 50 bags of brick fragments now adorn the sidewalk downstairs.

I don’t know what it is about sunny days. Good-looking guys just come out of the woodwork. First one of the guys in the office I like comes over to disconnect the printer, and, in order to keep from overtly drooling on my desk, I went to the bathroom and looked out the window, where one of the Indian waiters from the restaurant located behind our building is hanging out in the alley, clad only in pants and a tank top.

*drool*

Aw, knock it off.

This morning I stopped at a gas station on my way to work. The attendant, as per my instruction, ‘filled it up.” How full, I didn’t realize until, upon returning to my motorcycle after stopping by the post office to check my mailbox, I found gasoline bubbling up out of my sun-heated gas tank, just as sure as if ole’ Jed Clampett had shot it while “lookin’ fer some food.” It was dripping down the sides and pooling in the fairing, so I had to clean it up as well as I could before resuming my commute, hoping that the bike didn’t burst into flames while I was on it. It’s parked downstair in the company parking lot now, and I still hope it doesn’t burst into flames any time soon. I don’t think I want to shell out the money for a new motorcycle, and besides, the selection here, restricted by law(via the motorcycle industry) to 150cc and below, isn’t exactly titillating. I hate scooters, which feel like chairs on little wheels, and I already have a chair on wheels. I am sitting in it now. But there are more scooters here in Taipei than anywhere else on the planet, or so I heard somewhere. In any case, it’s not hard to believe. By limiting engine size to under 150cc, the government, by caving in to the interests of the scooter industry, has actually harmed the environment, since, in order to get any power of an engine that size, you pretty much have to make it a 2-stroke engine, and 2-strokes pollute a lot more than 4-strokes. Thanks, Mr. Government Official! But he is probably on his monthly ski vacation in the fresh mountain air some other country that doesn’t have such stupid regulations.

I would really like to get a larger motorcycle, perhaps an R6 or CBR600, something in the 400-600cc range, but in reality the traffic of Taipei would make that somewhat cumbersome. They don’t turn as tight and they can’t fit between cars as well. Parking would be a bitch because they take up more space, and such a motorbike would probably be a target for thieves as well. Oh, but how nice it would be to be able to take advantage of that kind of engine in the mountains, or on a trip around the island! There are already a lot of illegal larger bikes out there, but they tend to travel in packs, and my bike is plenty fast for the city anyway. To be honest, there are a lot of better ways to spend my money than on a motorcycle like that. One can dream, though, right?

Went to the park after work…the sun was setting, and there was a Flamenco concert starting up on the stage out there. The crowd was trying to clap along, as Chinese crowds tend to do. Silly people, you can’t clap along to Flamenco!

I found a tree to lean back against, since I haven’t been feeling so well today, and sat down to listen, meanwhile rubbing green oil on my head for my headache. I’ve been spending too much time reading computer monitors, I think. Reading blogs when I am not working at the office, writing things here…is the recent Blogging trend related to the reality-TV trend? They’re practically the same thing, or they would be if reality TV were as it was advertised and not ridiculously gimmicked. But reading a Blog is like reading a book, but a book that is real, and happening right now, which is what makes many of them so interesting. Sometimes reality just beats anything you can make up.

When I find a blog I like, I usually go through all of the archives, until I can put new accounts into a context. But, as with any medium that is open to so many people, everyone is going to have to wade through a lot of garbage before they find the good stuff. And just what the good stuff is, of course, depends on the reader.

*yawn* I need to sleep.

They made me do overtime last night. I was here at the office until midnight, working on a pitch for today. I missed dinner but caught Farscape at Dean’s house, thankfully. The weather cooperated by being miserable and raining when I was in a hurry on my motorcycle to and from Dean’s house after telling the people at work that I had to have dinner. Well, I did. I just didn’t have it, is all. It’s my dinner hour, and I chose to spend it watching interesting aliens with Australian accents, dammit!

When I woke up this morning, however, I felt terrible. Just really, really low, and bad, not unlike I felt when I had a bad reaction to the anaesthetic after my knee operation at the Canossa hospital in Hong Kong. I was going to go to the hospitcal clinic after work today, but I don’t know if I will since I feel a bit better now…maybe it was something I ate, a rotten apple or stale instant oatmeal, from last night. I went to the T-shirt place this morning and handed over the graphic, although the quote was a bit more expensive than I had been told over the phone. Still, it will do. I refrained from putting the URL to this site on my T-shirt, though. If anyone thinks I should put it on there, let me know.

The weather is so nice today, sunny and clear(or as clear as Taipei gets without a nearby typhoon to help out). It feels like it should be a Friday, but it’s not. It’s a Wednesday, and a busy one at that. I still don’t feel too chipper but perhaps all I need is some dinner in the park and some rest.