In an effort to make up for my severe lack of recent progress, I spent most of today working on my book. The thing about this particular stage of editing is that I can no longer gauge my progress by word count. I’m polishing and tweaking now, and it looks as if the final copy will be around 250 pages long, but that’s no longer the point. The point is: will anyone want to read it? As I read through the thing, and I’m biased, not only because I lived it and wrote it, but I’ve been staring at the same damn stuff over and over again, sometimes I think “Who would want to read this?” Other times, of course, I think “Damn, this is great shit!” But in the end I lack the objectivity to really tell, especially with a project this big. It’s such a large piece I find it difficult to see it in its entirety. I could keep editing and tweaking such a large block of text indefinitely without any clear sign that it was “done.” Yet sooner or later, preferably sooner, I am going to have to wash my hands, set it adrift, and move on. That is, at least until I sell the movie rights and decide whether John Cusack is right to play me or not. After all, he did a pretty good job of capturing the essence of my time at the newspaper in Being John Malkovich:

I’m debating whether or not to call in sick tomorrow. I definitely don’t feel at all well today; my nose is stuffed up, and I’m beginning to cough and feel achey as well. Not good signs. I ended up emailing the director of the play yesterday and telling her that I was too sick again for rehearsal today, and anyway I have fallen so behind with everything that I couldn’t in good conscience keep calling myself a member of the cast, so I suggested that she find someone else while preparations are still at a fairly early stage. It’s too bad, as I enjoy acting, but circumstances just aren’t permitting me to be in this one. I might even have to call off the eye-zapping, or at least postpone it until I feel better. No matter what happens I think a visit to the doctor tomorrow would not go amiss. The worst thing is that I feel exhausted and tired but not at all sleepy. I just lay in bed feeling horrid, but without the blissful unawareness of actual sleep.

Whew, I’m stuffed. In the Australian sense, that is, i.e. I’m really tired after running around Taipei all day, not a good idea when recovering from a cold. Still I got a lot done.

First of all, I made an appointment for the morning of January 4th to get my eyes zapped. That’s right, gentle readers, Poagao is going to trust his vision to some stranger operating a machine in the hopes that he can avoid wearing contacts or glasses any more. I’ve asked around and gotten good references for this guy, so hopefully things will go smoothly. Keep your collective fingers crossed, though.

Then I took my laundry to three different places before I found one that wasn’t planning to be closed until Thursday for the New Year’s holiday. I realize I could save a few hundred NT a month if I did my own laundry, but there’s really no place to hang it out to dry, and our apartment isn’t equipped with a dryer. It was a nice day today, albeit a bit cold, so I walked down to the Taipower Bldg MRT station and took it up to the Train Station, where there’s a huge new Fnac. I was looking for Return to Castle Wolfenstein, but I didn’t find it there. Instead I found nearly everything else, since the store is pretty large, but not that. I did find it in the smaller computer shop next door, though, at a whopping NT$1,344. Still, I gotsta have it. It’s one of those gotsta things.

I went over to Eslite (no, that’s no mispelled) to look for a calendar and ran into Larry Dong, who used to work at the newspaper. He’s studying in New York now and is only in town for a few weeks. As is not unusual with people who used to work at the newspaper, Larry looks much better now that he’s not working there any more. We talked a bit but he was meeting friends so I went on inside to have an elevator door close in my face while the girl inside screamed and failed utterly to locate the “Open Door” button. I’m pretty sure that she’s one of those people who, every time their cell phone rings, takes up to 15 minutes to locate the “answer” button, while the phone broadcasts the Garbage Truck Theme to roughly the entire Taipei basin. What I don’t get is, since everyone I know and many I don’t all know and complain about the cell phone problem, how can there still be so many people out there so oblivious to it that they are still caught like deer in the headlights whenever their cell phone rings? This, I must admit, confounds me. Otherwise intelligent people are reduced to complete morons at the first few notes of “Jingle Bells” on their phones. Maybe there is something to that study which said that the electromagnetic waves do actually affect the brain.

It struck me as I was walking around town today that Taipei looks magnitudes better than it did just a few years ago. Foreigners here like to knock Mayor Ma because most foreigners here are in love with the DPP and believe everything the Taipei Times tells them, i.e. hate Mayor Ma, the KMT and the PFP with uncompromising passion, but you have to admit that our mayor has done a bang-up job of improving this city. The new sidewalks look great, the streets are cleaner, traffic isn’t as bad as it used to be, and things just seem nicer all around. I hope Ma gets re-elected for another term as mayor. Barring that, I think he’d make a good vice president, too. Then again, Fozzie the Bear would seem like a good vice president after Annette Lu.

Rick returned my email. He commented on my excellent memory, but I’m pretty sure he has no idea who I am, which is just as well. I don’t think he’d appreciate exactly how I remember him so well.

It’s a cold, gray day outside. No matter where you stand, it feels like the edge of a large, empty desert plain. It feels like it’s been night all day. Everything has a temporary aura about it for some reason, probably the usual post-Christmas/post-birthday “Now what?” syndrome, an uncomfortable mix of lazy regret and relentless apathy. I just interviewed a girl who is applying for a position here as a secretary. She seemed scared to death of me, wringing her hands and stuttering her answers. I guess the weather is getting to other people as well. They’re playing elevator music, songs like “Love is Love” and “Say you, Say me” by The Fabulous 101 Strings, over the intercom. I wonder if I can get compensation for mental anguish out of this.

Another thing is the continuing incompleteness of my book. It looms over me and tinges everything I do with guilt and apprehension. Perhaps I can take advantage of the new year’s holiday to get a major chunk of editing done on it. I’m running out of excuses to continue torturing myself over it anyway. Even publishing the damn thing and seeing it flop would be better than not publishing it at all, if only slightly. I haven’t taken any pictures lately, either. Wallowing luxuriously in a vat of self-inflicted misery is very Russian of me. Or perhaps it’s a more Chinese. Or maybe it’s just me.

Sword practice again tonight. The class has been becoming more and more unstructured lately, and I wonder if I am going to have to find another place to study. The combination of having a cold and the holidays has conspired to keep me from getting a proper amount of exercise for the past few weeks. Hopefully I will be able to get rid of some of that mystical goo my teacher calls Yu that builds up if one doesn’t move around enough.

My friend Mindcrime has updated for the first time since July. At least he’s still alive, and seems to be doing well at the writing-for-money thing, which is more than I can say. Mindcrime usually lands on his feet. Good on him.

Bored at work this afternoon, I was browsing travel sites when I stumbled upon the travel website of Rick and Joyce Milelli. The reason this was a suprise is that in the early 80’s Rick, his little brother Jon and I were in the same boy scout troop, Troop 625, aka the “River Rats”, in Maitland, Florida. We also went to the same high school, but I didn’t see him around that much. In any case, my time with the scouts was a bit turbulent, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Rick remembers me as a real asshole, if indeed he remembers me at all. I certainly remember him, as he was the focus of one of my first crushes.

Scouts was my first brush with office politics and insane bosses, and I’m afraid to say I didn’t handle the situation in a very diplomatic fashion. Our scoutmaster was an ex-marine named Jack Champion, and he was fond of using various psychological tests on his charges, to see how they would react. He was also a bit of an egomaniac, and I butted heads with him several times when I was troop scribe. In the end, after missing a crucial emergency meeting (in which Jack basically yelled at everyone and threw three of the four patrols out of the troop) due to a prior commitment I refused to break, Jack stripped me of my rank of Star Scout, took away my office, took away my leadership corps status, etc, etc. After our little talk in which Jack told me what a little shit I was for defying him, I didn’t wait for formation. I just walked home from the shack down by Lake Minnehaha where we met and flushed the entire troop’s records down the toilet. And I never went back, to the particular dismay of my parents, who had recently bought me a tent for camping trips. I suppose it’s just as well that I didn’t get the chance to make a stink about the pseudo-Indian BS that admission into the Order of the Arrow involved.

Some of my friends who stayed in scouts later went on to become Eagle Scouts, and sometimes I would even sneak up into the organ loft of the church where the promotion ceremonies were held to watch without being detected. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had somehow managed to muster enough people skills to understand what was going on in that troop, but such thoughts are useless. I should face the fact that I’ll never know what would have been or could have been, and instead concentrate on the present.

Anyway, it’s odd how little pieces of our pasts pop up now and then, like unexpected mushrooms.

I posted the Indian Pacific story on my writing page, if you’d like to know just what went on during those three days on the train across Australia in late October when I wasn’t blogging. It was a very interesting experience.

This morning as I was riding to work I was almost pinned against a taxi by one of those Volkswagen Vanagons, painted silver and adorned with various kinds of racing paraphenalia, such as headlight covers, a spoiler, etc. Obviously one of those boy-racer types no doubt. Later on I passed the VW, and it ended up right behind me at the next stoplight. No sooner had the light turned green than the guy let loose with his horn and began moving towards me like he was going to hit me. I took off and he actually chased me through the heavy morning traffic, swerving quite dangerously. I managed to turn off through a pocket in the oncoming traffic onto the side street next to my office building, but he was right behind me as I did so, yelling “Fuck you!” at me as he passed.

I don’t know whether to laugh at this crazed idiot or be scared that he’ll track me down and kill me for actually having the nerve to pass him and then not run a red light so he can get through.

I don’t know what it was that took hold of my brain and shook it until I felt that going in to work on Christmas Eve with a bad cold would be a good idea, but my lawyers will be in touch with it. I think it spams, too. Fortunately there wasn’t much to do and I spent most of the day passed out on my desk before once again braving the bitingly cold wind on my motocycle ride home. Then I pretty much went home and immediately to bed. Well, ok, I fucked around online for a bit, but I still went to bed at around 9 or 10 pm.

I woke up really early on Christmas morning, no doubt a leftover reflex from childhood, before realizing that my entire gift-giving experience had already reached its climax the night before as I clicked on the “send” button for the Amazon gift certificates I sent to members of my family. My brother and his wife did send me some bright green compact x7 binoculars and a travel alarm clock. I suppose that all the opening-gifts-under-the-tree thing is for kids anyway.

Instead I worked on my Indian Pacific account all morning, gradually coming to the realization that the story is far too long to be considered by any newspaper, so I should either cut it to ribbons or see if there is some other more feasible format for it, besides damning it to almost total obscurity by including it in my Writing section.

Dean was holding a Christmas Party at his new place, so I took the MRT over, getting off when I saw the sickly green environment of Yung-chun Station. Dean was waiting upstairs at the Paris Paris (inventive naming by the people who brought you New York New York) department store. We went down to the supermarket to buy eggnog materials, fighting our way through crowds of elderly Chinese women vying over various pieces of cutlery.

Back at Dean’s place, Evil Cat was prowling about and seemed to express particular interest in destroying the fake Christmas Tree that Dean and Kay had bought. Whoever noticed Evil Cat beginning to climb the tree was obliged to grab the nearest available weapon and fire. Fortunately for the neighbors the nearest available weapon was usually a water pistol, as I left my swords at home.

We put in The Grinch VCD and started making the eggnog with vanilla ice cream, mocha coffee, whip cream, Bailey’s Irish Cream, Cinnamon, Nutmeg and generous sloshes of Bourbon, occasionally tasting it to see whether it resembled the eggnog of our mispent youths, which wasn’t really possible as that eggnog was the kind you buy in a carton at the superkmarket and contains no alcohol. However, the more alcohol we added, the more imaginative our taste buds became, and soon Chlorox would have tasted “Just like Mom Used To Make” and we declared our vat of brown liquid “Proper Eggnog”.

About that time our friend Eoghain arrived, bearing what he said was Champagne but later turned out to be Cognac. Then Jaime and Graham came in carrying all the makings of a fine evening in the form of Brown Russians. We listened to such Christmas favorites as “Mr. Hanky the Christmas Poo” and a funny song about Chanukah.

Dinner consisted of a turkey Dean had finagled from Malibu, stuffing from a package, cranberry sauce and real mashed potatoes with gravy. It was scrumptious, and we watched “A Blackadder Christmas Carol” on TV as we ate and sipped our eggnog and Brown Russians.

Later on James, who is a friend of Dean’s, came round with his wife and kid. James has been in Taiwan for five years. His wife and kid are Taiwanese. James does not speak Chinese and cannot understand what his son, who is three, is saying. All James knew how say to his kid was “I am American. You are Taiwanese.” How touching. At least the kid got some eggnog.

His wife was even more fun. Evil Cat was in the process of making a sneak attack on her hand as she tried to pet it, so I warned her in Chinese “Watch out, that cat will slash your hand open if you get too close.”

She just smiled and replied “Ooh, your Chinese is so good!” as she continued to fondle the cat, eventually shrieking as Evil Cat, true to form, ripped at her hand. I shrugged. I don’t know why I bother sometimes. There could be someone about to be bit by a bus here, and I could yell at them “Watch out for the bus! Run!” and they would just smile and say “Oh, your Chinese is so good!” right before they were smushed by the bus. I should prepare a paper bag to throw over my head in case of an emergency situation where I am called upon to make a stranger take me seriously.

We had rented a couple of episodes of “Absolutely Fabulous“, since I had never seen it before and was curious as to what all the fus was about. To be honest, I still don’t. I didn’t understand the humor and simply found it rather confusingly insipid. Probably says more about me than about the show, though.

Eventually James and his family left, along with Graham, Eogain and Jaime, but our numbers were soon replenished in the form of Fuad and his girlfriend, who tried to use sign language to communicate with me. I just stared at her, and later she complained to Fuad that I was “not a real talkative guy.” They left to catch the MRT home, and I left somewhat later, but they got lost and we all ended up on the subway together again. Police officers were strolling up and down the subway platforms at Taipei Main Station. I felt like I was floating everywhere I went by that point, and I fell asleep almost immediately after I got home.

Even I forgot that it was my birthday yesterday. Usually it’s everyone else that forgets. Oh, well. Selective memory and all that.

Unfortunately, I am back at work again today. Even more unfortunately, they’re still playing crappy Christmas tunes over the intercom, and I showered myself with dust and who knows what kind of chemicals earlier as I tried to dislodge one of the speakers embedded in the ceiling so I could stomp all over it until it stopped making those irritating noises. I hope Whiny Woman took notice, because she’s next.

Ugh. Three more days of this until the weekend.

I was feeling a little better last night so I decided to risk it and go to Brett’s party. I called up Kirk and we took the MRT to Kunyang Station to meet up with Harry and his British friend James, who is the curator of a Chinese antique museum on Renai Rd. Needless to say, Harry and James were late, so Kirk and I sat in the freezing station to wait for them, muttering curses under our respective breaths and trying not to be arrested for vagrancy.

Eventually they did show up and we proceeded in a taxi out to Brett’s and Alan’s apartment, which is located in a ritzy complex just past Academia Cynica Rd. There were lots of people there, including Lorenzo, of Billy’s Travel. Brett had cooked a ham and other delicious cuisine, and we sat around and talked over a nice background of traditional Christmas tunes sung by great jazz singers from the 30s and 40s. It was a lot of fun, although I notice that there seemed to be more couples than usual. This is probably a result of the same group of people getting together over the years added to the fact that people tend to engage in relationships (except for me, of course). Duh.

Sorry, this cold medicine is making me a bit loopy. You see, after I had been at the party for a few hours, my cold came back with a vengeance. I caught a ride home with Lorenzo and his boyfriend, and just passed out, except that I kept waking up all night, such was my discomfort. Oh, well. Looks like today is going to be a repeat of yesterday, except I don’t plan to go out again. There’s play practice today but I don’t think sitting outside on the roof of Grandma Nitti’s is going to help the situation. If I’m not better by tomorrow I think I might call in sick. It sucked enough to be sick in the comfort of one’s own home, but to be sick in an office environment would just be too awful.

In recent news, Lee Teng-hui thinks the capital should be moved to the south, where he claims the “mainstream” lives (what is the mainstream’s address, I wonder?). This guy has completely lost it, I think. He’s trying to draw battle lines for another civil war based on the differences between mainlanders and Taiwanese that pertain pretty much only to his generation more than to my own and the younger people; what can he be thinking? Is he nostalgic for “the good old days”? When I met him and talked to him many years ago, he seemed so nice, just like someone’s grandfather, but now he seemd to be trying to start a war. I do wish that retired politicians would stay out of politics. Mao Ze-dong had done a pretty nice job of bringing China out of the Dynastic Cycle, only to plunge back in when he didn’t see things going his way. The result was the Cultural Revolution and untold suffering. What is it with these guys?

Anyway, I’m loopy so don’t mind me. It’s my nap time.

I feel terrible. My throat is killing me and I have no energy. I doubt if I’ll be in good enough shape to go to the Christmas party tonight, dammit. I went to the doctor yesterday during my lunch break and was told that the eye drops couldn’t have possibly infected my throat and tonsils. He gave me a little bag of pills, but no antibiotics. I realize I should trust the doctor and not demand antibiotics every time I get sick, but it does seem to me that I always start out on non-antibiotic medicine and then end up on antibiotics, sometimes several different kinds. Hopefully that won’t happen this time. I went and bought a couple bottles of “Super Supau”, which is basically just a sports drink, i.e. sugar water, but my old commanding officer from back in the army used to swear it was just the thing for curing a cold.

I was feeling pretty bad by the time I got off work last night, so I skipped sword practice, even though my teacher said she was going to bring in the award from the competition a couple of months ago. I’ll just have to pick it up some other time. I’m not terribly interested in the award anyway. My room is too cluttered as it is. Today I’m just going to stay in and try to recuperate as much as possible, or just ride it out. It’s around 10 degrees outside so it’s a good day to stay indoors anyway.

Yesterday at work I got a call from my old friend Billy, who is one of the travel agents I use. He and and a sexy older guy from the Dominican Republic named Lorenzo work at his office, called, simply enough, Billy’s Travel Agency. I met Billy when I was a cameraman on a travel show he used to host at the Era network. Once I was part of a crew on a trip to Singapore and Indonesia for the show, which was a lot of fun.

That was years ago, however. I have long since left the TV industry, but Billy has apparently nailed down a deal with CTV for another travel show. They are going to give him studio time but no crew for the actual episodes, so Billy want me to come with him and be his cameraman. I don’t know when all of this is, but it might fit in with my plans for after Chinese New Years. If I could get some sort of part-time editing job that would cover my expenses, and then spend the rest of time doing things that I’d rather be doing, it might just work out. Still, everything is still in the embyonic stage so I can only wait and see how things develop. What I really need to do now is get my damn book finished!

Dave gets hate mail. Shauna gets hate mail (unfortunately she took that post down). Where’s my hate mail? The most hateful mail I get usually starts out with “Hey, Paogoa! We *heart* your site! Do you have massive debt? We have a platinum Bank of Nuzburia credit card for you! Use it to see chesty girls with improbable names licking household items!”

I don’t feel so well. The eye drops the doc gave me last night ended up in my throat (yeah, joke all you want, but they do need to improve their aim) and now it’s incredibly sore. I don’t know if it’s a cold or some sort of allergic reaction to the drops, but it’s a pain and really unnecessary as it’s the weekend already, dammit. I know it’s a freezing 10 degrees celsius outside, but I’ve got an article to write, a party to go to and a rehearsal this weekend, so I really don’t need the cold, thanks. “Excuse me? I’d like to return this cold? You see, it’s just not me. Can I exchange it for something a little more Christmas-y?”

Speaking of things that aren’t so Christmas-y, Tom‘s boss, a miserable excuse for homo sapiens named Carl, fired him just a week before Christmas. If you’re in the Bay area and happen upon Carl, feel free to spit liberally all over this wretch and then mail his well-salived bodice to Antarctica. Just tell him I sent you.

Randall has submitted his site to the Webby Awards. I have a few problems with the Webby awards. First of all, they have a “problem dealing with Internet Explorer: Please use another browser.” Second of all, the page is full of obvious grammatical mistakes. Third, and most important of all, just entering one website costs a cool US$100.

Now why should I care what a bunch of people who can’t even make their website compliant to IE, can’t be bothered to proofread their content, and are money-grubbing bastards think of my website?

I just got back from the eye doctor, who did something to make my pupils so huge I scare people even more than I usually do, and everything is rather fuzzy. Staring at a computer screen is probably not the best thing for me to do right now.