Things always come up on unplanned weekends. This morning as I was cleaning up a flood I inadvertantly caused by poking a hole in the washbasin where I keep my turtles, Steve called. He wanted his CD’s back and suggested we meet. As I had no plans, I suggested lunch at Grandma Nitti’s and a hike afterwards, so we said we’d meet at 1:30. I was late, of course, and Steve had already started eating by the time I got there. The meal wasn’t bad, but it was nice to escape the crowd of mostly foreigners loudly enjoying their weekends.

We took the MRT up to the Jiantan Station and proceeded up into the hills behind the Grand Hotel. I’d been up there before, but not as far as Steve had. We passed groups of Taiwanese people exercising, playing ball and listening to blaring music on portable radios. As we proceeded, there were fewer and fewer people, and the wooden walkway degraded into a dirt path with stones set down the middle. I took a few shots of the city through the haze. Once, when Steve and I had taken off our shirts and were sitting by the side of the path, a couple of older women walked past and glared at us with a mixture of horror and disgust. I guess I could be in better shape.

By the time we reached the Christian cemetary, the sun was low in the sky and all of the mosquitoes deflected by my generous dousing of “Off” went straight for Steve, who was pointing out how some of the graves seemed to have been broken out of rather than broken into. I told you Steve was eerie.

On our way down the mountain we passed through a complex of buildings belonging to a local betelnut farmer. His bathtub was out on the patio and chickens ran in and out of the house. It looked quite ideal, surrounded by bamboo and betelnut trees (the government has recently announced that it is going to cut down all the illegal betelnut trees to avoid undue soil erosion. I hope they remember to plant something in their place). As we reached the road a group of loud woman began screeching with laughter at our presence. “Look! Foreigners!” they screamed in Taiwanese. “They’re walking out of the cemetary! Why would they walk all that way? It’s so strange!”

Hoping to explain our presence, I replied “We walked over from behind the Grand Hotel.” But this just set off a torrent of hilarious incredulity that a foreigner could speak Mandarin. I considered telling them to watch what they said in Taiwanese, since I understand that as well. I decided, however, that that would have been just asking for even more trouble, so we just turned around and kept walking, past a new, well-advertised apartment building ironically called “Secret Garden”, down past a military base to Bei-an Road. There we took a bus back to the train station.

“Are you hungry?” Steve asked, to which I replied “A bit.” We then decided to see if we could get out on the roof of the Asiaworld department store building, which is right next to the Mitsukoshi building. We took the elevator to the 24th floor and then walked up to the 27th floor. As soon as Steve tried to open the door to the roof, a piercing alarm sounded. Visions of police squads filled our heads, but we decided to see if any of the other four roof exits were open.

None of the were, of course, but the stairwells were rather bizarre. I have no idea what they were doing in those stairwells, but it seemed to involve bodily fluids in some capacity, as there were splotches of red trailing down the walls, ending abruptly in a large red stain. Next to it was a similar pattern, but in black. “The only thing scarier than bloodstains are wierdly colored bloodstains,” Steve commented. I think it might have had something to do with an obviously dead dot-com on the 25th floor. I imagine the last days must have been terrifying.

We went back down and started looking for a Muslim restaurant Steve remembered going to on Bo-ai Road, but this search was just as futile as our search for an open door to the Asiaworld roof, so we settled for wonton noodles at a shop where the owner suspected us of being German. As we ate, he rode a scooter inside the restaurant and parked it next to us. Then he went outside and rode another one in. And another. Soon we were surrounded by scooters the owner had parked inside the restaurant, which more resembled a parking lot by that point. Actually, I noticed yet another swastika, this time emblazoned on the gas tank of a motorcyle on the street near the restaurant. Swastikas are big in Taiwan. I think this one is definitely not Buddhist, although I wonder why the guy also had a flag from down under stuck on his bike as well.

Steve left to catch a bus home, so I went to the 2/28 park and snapped a couple of photos before getting on the MRT back to the Taipower building. It is now almost one o’clock in the morning, so I doubt I will be going out again tonight, much as I’d like to find that new place, the “G-something” and meet some people. I’ve added a banner graphic to my Cast of Characters page, and updated the member list as well. I think I’ve done enough for one day.

Apparently, I killed Diva. I found her floating dead in the washbasin last night. “Shit!” I muttered as I dumped her corpse in the bushes downstairs. So today after work I went to the pet store to get a new companion for Jacques, and I told the women who ran the store one of my turtles had died.

“So you want a replacement turtle?” she asked.

“I was actually under the impression that turtles lived for hundreds of years,” I said.

“If you take care of them they might. How often do you change their water?”

“You’re supposed to change their water?”

“Well, yeah, unless you want them to die from swimming in their own toxic waste.”

So I killed Diva by forcing her to drown in her own piss. Sometimes I disgust even myself.

The new guy is quite active, constantly wanting to get out of the basin, like Jacques was when he first arrived. Newbie will learn the ropes soon enough, though. As long as I remember to change the water.

I got a really nice email from someone in Chicago, but they used an email address I could swear is not listed on this website. It’s rather puzzling. Nice to have fans, though, even if I have no idea where they got that email address. I would have thought, after adding my email address to each post, installing permanent links and even making my text visible for Netscape users, fer cryin’ out tears, that I would be flooded with fan mail, but the harsh reality that mine is simply one of millions of websites out there has crushed any such expections. Which is ok, because you know I really value not being mobbed by adorers in the street every time I go buy instant noodles at 7-Eleven.

Dean emailed and said he found a Rio Volt to buy for me in Canada. Now I will be able to take hundreds of songs with me wherever I go! Do you realize what this means? This means no more being subjected to Whiny Woman whining along to One Lisa!

And now I have this lovely, rehearsal-free, typhoon-free weekend lying before me….what, oh, what shall I do with it(besides wondering if I got that job or not)? Kirk can’t do anything because his grandmother died (she was 91 and died in her sleep) and according to Buddhist tradition their family can’t do much of anything for 49 days. I don’t want to see a movie on the weekend because it is too crowded. Ah, well, unplanned weekends are the best kind anyway.

My interview went….I don’t know how it went, actually. I got up, shaved, put on my wrinkled shirt and too-short tie, decided against argyle socks and went with plain black instead, stole a pair of dress shoes from one of the people who live in my apartment (they didn’t look like they were worn too often, so I figured I’d risk it), and went downstairs. When the old soldier guy who guards our building saw me in my monkey suit he smiled and clapped his hands, saying “You look marvelous!”

I crossed Hsinsheng South road on foot in the brilliant heat, and I was beginning to sweat before I finally hailed a cab. I felt a lot heavier in dress clothes than I usually do…I guess it’s because the clothes I usually wear are all really loose and baggy. I got to the place and strode up three flights of stairs while trying to adjust my shirt, which felt rather uncomfortable as I usually don’t tuck my shirts in. When I reached the office in question, they told me that the previous interview was still going on, and that I would have to wait. This was a bit worrying, as they were taking a lot more than the scheduled 20 minutes. At one point one of the interviewers actually rushed in and asked for another pot of water. What if they were really hitting it off with that candidate? There was nothing I could do but chat with some of the people in the office that I knew from working there before for a while before sitting down and watching the muted TV news. There was a story on about another school principle under investigation for conduct unbecoming of a school principle.

Finally the woman I would be working for came in and told me to follow her. I saw the previous candidate walk by the door as I left the room. As we went down the hall to the interview room, the woman commented “I’ve never seen you looking like this before.”

“I don’t think anyone has,” I replied.

There were three men sitting behind a table in the smallish interview room. “This is the one I told you about,” the woman explain to the men as I sat down. I greeted them in Chinese, and for the rest of the interview we all used Chinese, even though the position involves English editing. They asked me a few general questions about myself and what I thought of the job, how well I thought I could do it, how my previous experience could help me, etc.

Then they started to get political.

“What do you think of Chen Shui-bian? Is he better than previous presidents?” the head guy asked. “What strategy should Taiwan use this year to get back into the UN?”

I was a bit taken aback. I don’t like getting into politics with strangers, and this was a pretty sensitive situation. I dodged the questions a bit by recounting how much Taiwan had changed for the better in the last decade, and that I thought Taiwan should use a multi-faceted approach to gaining entry into the UN. I hoped they wouldn’t ask me who I voted for in the last election. Thankfully, they didn’t. I can’t gush very well about a candidate I didn’t vote for.

Was I getting the right message across? I had no idea. The interview ended promptly after the allotted 20 minutes, and I wondered why the last guy’s time had run over. What were they doing all that time? I asked the woman if she thought I should have spoken English, but she said that since I am fluent in both I might as well speak Chinese, as then the interviewers could ask me anything they wanted to. She also asked if I had left my current job. I said no, but I was thinking, why would I leave my current job before I’ve gotten something else?

As I passed the office door on my way out, I caught a glimpse of the next candidate, a young blond woman, sitting in the corner, as well as the previous candidate guy at the other end of the office. Both looked just a bit feral. I found the fact that the first guy was still there a bit strange…what was he doing there? I know, I’m paranoid; it’s worked for me so far.

So now all I can do is wait. They said they would let us know next week. In the meantime, I’m back here in my old office, using the soundtrack from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom to cover the Ono Lisa crap someone in the office is playing.

Okay, thanks again to Daniel, my Netscape problem is fixed. Now that the other half can read this account, I expect my popularity to soar immediately!

I just got back from seeing Planet of the Apes, and I have to say I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, Marky Mark can’t act his way out of a paper bag, the dialogue was inane, the story ridiculous, the “surprise ending” not much of a surprise and the totally unnecessary blond women was…well, totally unnecessary. But on the other hand, it’s fricken Planet of the Apes! There were planets! There were apes! Michael Clarke Duncan kicked ass! Gorillas everywhere!

Ok, so I’m a bit bipolar about the whole thing. Bottom line: if you’re really into apes, go see this movie. Otherwise….see it but check first to see if there’s really nothing else you’d rather watch on.

My interview is tomorrow morning. Apparently they are holding all four interviews back-to-back, so the candidates will likely get to meet each other. Maybe they’re hoping we get into a fight in the hallway, thus making their job easier by eliminating some if not all but one candidate. I went out last night and bought some dress pants, which look black but I suspect are really dark green in the sunlight. I dug up the old pre-tied tie from my army dress greens (no, I don’t know how to tie a tie…never really had to) and found a couple of white dress shirts. The problem is, one of the dress shirts was all wrinkled up, and I don’t own, much less know how to operate an iron. A-ha! I thought as I dug out a brand-new, unopened white shirt from my closet. But upon closer inspection, it turned out that the new shirt is even more wrinkled than the old one, but in that new-shirt kind of way, with a tic-tac-toe pattern of creases all over it. I’m sure all of the other candidates will be wearing spotless three-piece suits and Gucci shoes, dammit, they have to: Murphy’s Law. My advantage lies in the fact that I am a good editor and I have done this job before, having sat in for the guy who is leaving on several occasions in the past. Perhaps my experience will balance out the wrinkles on my shirt. One can hope, anyway.

It just come to my attention that Netscape users, when they visit this page, see only an ocean of black with a few blue links, but no visible text. I have no idea why this is, but I will fix it as soon as I can. In the meantime, those Netscape users who have figured out how to highlight text and are able to read this, just go download IE…just for me. Ok? Thanks.

There is this one slightly deranged-looking guy who sits on a pink scooter in front of a car battery shop across the street from our office. He always wears the same thing: tan shorts and white shoes with black socks. He is there when I come to work, and he is there when I go to lunch. He is still there, sitting on the same scooter, when I leave. Every day. And I thought I had an exciting life.

I went down to the West Gate district after work today to check and see if they were selling the Rio Volt yet…they were not, so if Dean can’t find one in Canada, I might be forced to buy a Creative Jukebox, which is way too expensive. There simply aren’t any other choices as far as MP3’s are concerned here.

I walked through the 2-28 Peace Park and took a few pictures, which I’ve added to my photo page. At one point a rough-looking fellow tried to get me to give him NT$100. Normally I don’t have a problem helping people, but there was something about this guy, a certain semi-malicious gleam in his eye, that made me hesitate. I know, I’m lame, but you’ve got to wonder why he chose me out of all the people around there. There aren’t nearly as many beggars and homeless people in Taiwan as there are in the US, so I’m not used to people I don’t know coming up to me on the street and asking me for money.

The area in front of the provincial museum at the main entrance to the 2-28 park at night is usually full of fortune tellers with books, charts, magnifying glasses and little light bulbs to illuminate their subjects’ faces. These old guys will tell your fortune for NT$1,000 (this might have gone up recently, I don’t know). I’ve never done it, since if it’s my destiny and there’s no avoiding it, why spoil the surprise? I never had any luck with horoscopes or the like…in fact in high school I came to believe that just reading my horoscope was bad luck, and I refused to read that page of the paper in the morning for fear of ruining my entire day. It was stupid, of course, but it had the same effect as if I were smart enough to not pay any attention to horoscopes at all, you see.

There’s a couple of women having a business discussion right next to my cubicle as I type this. It’s quite entertaining to listen to them throw unnecessary, meaningless English words into their Chinese conversation in a battle to impress each other (and most likely me as well, although I have to say it just makes me laugh). One of the women has the advantage of having a really loud, annoying cell phone ring, while the other is trying to eat an apple in a fashion which suggests that she say someone eat an apple on HBO once and is under the impression it looks really impressive. I think perhaps the program she saw with the impressive-looking apple eating perhaps left out the sound, since she looks a bit alarmed every time she pauses in mid-sentence to bite down and a loud “CHOMP!” resonates around the office, almost drowning out the other woman’s “Repeating First Half-measure of the Four Seasons” ring tone.

To be fair, some obnoxious guys also try to impress each other by inserting bad English into their conversations with each other. It’s just that this office is dominated by women, so they are the ones I see doing this the most.

Whiny Woman, who, it turns out, is quite the popular character in this account, was complaining earlier about how fat she was and that she needs more help for her diet, in addition to the weight-reduction tea. As I have mentioned before, Whiny Woman is a stick figure, but the woman she was talking to was nodding sympathetically. She was pretty upset, in a whiny way (you should hear her say “Gan!” (Fuck!) in her diadia (pouty) voice). I will never understand this wierd perception women have of themselves, so I responded to Whiny Woman’s dubious claim about her weight by saying “Fat? You call that fat?” Both women stopped and glared at me, so I just shook my head and went to lunch.

Hotmail has been really slow today. Is it the latest victim of that Code Red thing? Or is it just being Hotmail?

I just realized that I don’t have any dress shoes for my interview. I usually only own one pair of shoes at any given time, not counting those blue-and-white sandals that everyone has, and my current shoes are black nike running shoes that look okay from the front, but have shiny Buck Rogers-in-1983 heels. I suppose if one didn’t look too closely they could pass for corner-of-the-eye dress shoes, but if anyone takes a closer look, I’m screwed.

If I get this job, I will probably not have any vacation to take. If I don’t get it, I will have two weeks before September 19th and possibly two more weeks afterwards. I can also get a free trip to Hong Kong in September, but I have no idea where I could go for two weeks. Australia? Shanghai? London, maybe?

Oh, wait, I forgot that I’m not rich…Taichung, then? or Kaohsiung? Maybe Panchiao….

Yesterday consisted of a seemingly unending downpour of work. All of the documents were very long, very poorly written, and of course they were all urgent cases. This kind of torment is pretty rare at this job, but as the old adage goes, “When it rains, prepare a large flotation device and a handgun.”

The China Post recently mailed me a check for my last article, but when I took it to the bank to cash it, I realized that, while they had written all the characters in my name right, they were not in the correct order. So this morning before work I had to go up there to resolve the situation myself. It always depresses me to visit their offices, which are dark and dreary and full of unkempt desks topped with piles of anonymous papers stacked alarmingly high. Their printing presses are in the basement and nobody seems to be around, illiciting a vague feeling that the ghosts of copyeditors past are criticizing the grammer of one’s unspoken thoughts. Still, I would rather read their relatively unbiased product than the ill-conceived propaganda that comes out of the gleaming computerized offices of either the Taipei Times or the Taiwan News.

It seems official: the title of the next Star Wars movie is “Attack of the Clones.” I remember expressing disbelief to my friend Mindcrime when he told me that Episode I was going to be called “The Phantom Menace”, and I had the same feeling this time. I don’t remember feeling that there was anything wrong with “A New Hope”( who noticed that title at the time, anyway?), “The Empire Strikes Back” or “Return of the Jedi”, but then again I was a kid then. Perhaps it sounds better to younger ears. In any case, I am thinking that, since expectations for Episode II are so low, people will probably be more impressed with it than Episode I, for which expectations were unreasonably high. At least I hope this is the case, for the sake of Episode III: This is Where I Came In.

I need to get a new rear tire for my motorcycle, since both tires are original and the rear wheel get locked a lot more than the front wheel when I brake hard. I also have to keep my front shocks cleaner, since they leak shock fluid onto my disk brake and make it really oily and thus not a very good brake, which is turn causes me to bounce off of other people’s rear bumpers. I have no idea how much longer my bike will last, but as long as I only have to spend a couple thousand NT on it to keep it running, I will continue to do so rather than spend upwards of NT$50,000 for a new bike that I probably won’t even like as much.

Today as I made my way through the stifling heat to the G’day Cafe for some of their delicious chicken, I passed a group of guys standing around outside one of the public housing units. Every single one of them was really good looking. It was like a meeting of the “Guys TC Thinks are Really Good Looking” Club (which refused me membership, the bastards).

At the restaurant, I stuffed myself with the daily special and was rewarded with a free brownie and ice cream, which is the exact opposite of what I should be doing at this point, i.e. starving myself so that I can fit into some old dress pants for my interview on Friday. On my way back to the office after lunch, I saw that the really good looking guys carrying construction materials into one of the units. Turns out that they were actually just a group of workers refurbishing an apartment.

Ok, it seems like the permanent links and email functions are working. Vaguely appreciative grunts to Daniel and Tom for their gracious assistance and random thoughts concerning Star Wars: Episode II.

In other good news, my presence has been requested this Friday for an interview at the place I am hoping will hire me on as a part-time editor. I must have done something right despite the fact that I didn’t think I did very well on the editing test (either that or the bribe worked). In any case, it’s a pretty formal, shirt-and-tie sort of interview, which is a bit of a concern since I don’t remember if I even have a tie that isn’t one of those skinny 80’s ties that were in vogue the last time I was forced to wear one. It also means I am going to have to squash my 32-year-old ass into pants I haven’t worn since I was in my early 20’s, and I am quite a bit bigger than I was then. Well, life’s an adventure, ain’t it?

I am still in the process of adding permanent links, so while it says links down at the bottom of each post at the moment, they still don’t work. Sorry about the mess; I’ll get them working as soon as possible, and then my website will be perfect and I can proceed with my insideous plan to take over the world! Mwuhahahahaaa…ahem.

Dean is leaving with Kay tomorrow for two weeks in Canada for his sister’s wedding. Hopefully he will be able to pick up a Rio Volt CD/MP3 player for me when he’s there….actually, I should go down to the West Gate district just to check that they don’t have them there yet. It seems most of the Seasons Players are departing for all four corners of the earth. All except for me, at least for now, since everything is up in the air, as always. I suspect my euphoria over the play is eroding such that tomorrow will probably feel a lot like a normal weekday, or even a normal Monday. Blegh.

The theater last night was packed; lots of people I knew were there and many I didn’t. I put up the black posters I designed both downstairs and in front of the elevator, there was a good supply of bad whiskey back stage and a videocamera recording the whole thing, and I have to say I think we did a bang-up job. There was a snag at the end with the blinds being wrong, but otherwise it was a terrific performance by all involved. The Duke of Norfolk included the words “wanton hussy” in his lines where there was no wanton hussy before (the hussy in question is pretty wanton, actually), and King Henry tried to play human bowling by sliding in his socks across the stage into his waiting, and very much suprised, subjects. When Sir Thomas More then said “I fear your Majesty does more honor to this household than I fear this household can bear,” he sounded suprisingly sincere. Cromwell was ecstatic, running around backstage and hugging everyone in sight. It was great.

Unfortunately, Lady Alice sprained her ankle jumping for joy. It’s more likely she didn’t notice the concrete barrier straddling the sidewalk in front of the Stinky Beancurd shop downstairs (which is probably a clever way to get customers into the shop) and tripped over it. I don’t know what we are going to do for our last performance on closing night, which is tonight. She is resting at home now and I suppose we’ll find out later this afternoon whether she feels up to another performance. I hope so, because her part is rather pivotal, and no one else knows it.

Afterwards we all went to the Tavern, which is nearby, and then to the Tapas restaurant on Hoping W. Road, where Carl, Richard, Kevin and I drank wine and discussed various social issues. I had entertained thoughts of dealing with shallow people at The Source, but I was dead tired by that point, and the wine wasn’t helping, so instead I came back home around 3 a.m.and just crashed. Today Harry came over to deliver some of my outstanding traffic tickets, which are all still sent to his place, even though I moved my residency out of there years ago. We went to the Subway across the street for lunch, even though it is the worst Subway in the city as far as I know, with the laziest, most incompetent workers and the lowest level of quality. Still, it’s right here, so I eat there from time to time anyway.

Daniel, of tinyblog fame, has emailed me instructions for how to install permanant links on this thing, which I shall attempt to install soon, so if my text becomes unreadable for short periods of time, that’s just me tinkering under the hood a bit. I have considered implementing a comments section, but I wonder if that is really necessary. Are there really hordes of drooling readers out there, just itching to hold deep, provocative discussions about my every utterance? Seems just a tad unlikely, methinks. I think I’ll hold off on the comments section for now.

Christine, however, said some nice things about this site and wonders why more people don’t have their own websites and online journals. I think only a certain type of person keeps a journal, though, much less a public, online journal. And there are already hundreds of thousands if not millions of these sites, so I think they are actually pretty common, relatively speaking. There just don’t seem to be many here in Taiwan. I’m all ears if you want to prove me wrong, though.