It’s been really nice having the entire apartment to myself the past few days. The other people in the apartment as starting to return, so I can’t just keep my door open all the time and let the refreshingly traffic fume-free breeze through. Nor can I keep playing loud jazz music late at night when I’m in the shower, which has significantly more water pressure when I’m the only one here. Chinese New Year’s in Taipei this year was a significant improvement over previous years. Enough places were open so it wasn’t hard to find food, the weather’s been good so far, and I’ve gotten a bit of work done.

I’ve been thinking that it would be really nice to have a little place of my own, like a small apartment or studio, even if it’s not in the city proper. But I have to get my damn book published and see how it does before I can make proper plans for my next step, which could be anything.

The weather was quite nice yesterday and even nicer today. It’s tempting me to stray from my original plan to hammer out my damn book proposal, but I’ll probably just take an extended walk around lunch to compensate. Dean should be getting back in town today, hopefully bearing the only Dunkin’ Donuts available in the region.

When I was at Bret’s party I came across an ad for a webtoon called Queer Duck. At first I thought it was horribly stereotypical, but after watching a couple of episodes, I rather like it. It’s funny, and the last episode is even a bit touching. But now I can’t get the frickin theme song out of my head! “Queer Duck…he’s intellectual…Queer Duck…he’s homosexual…Queer Duck….”

Ok, enough ducking around. To work!

A call from Chen Ye-hui woke me up from the first uncovered-eye sleep I’ve had since The Zapping this morning. He came over and gave me a nice back massage. He knows how to do that kind of thing from being a doctor in Hong Kong. Unfortunately he left his needles behind this time.

As I walked back from taking Ye-hui to the MRT station, I got a call from Graham. He wanted to go up to Yangmingshan today, as the weather was so nice. At first I said no, since I wanted to work on my book, but he cajoled me into agreeing to meet him at his place. I filled up my motorcycle, dusty after a month without riding it, and rode on over. It was good to be out riding again.

Graham had borrowed a motorcycle, a 150cc Kwangyang “Custom”, from one of his coworkers, and we proceeded up the mountain road, stopping briefly at the visitor’s center to inquire as to just where we might find a drink machine and cows. Graham wanted to see cows, just because one doesn’t usually see cows in Taipei. We were directed to Qingtiangang, up the mountain and around another. It got really cold, and Graham’s motorcycle stalled a couple of times before we got to the carpark where the path that supposedly led to the cows began. It was paved with roughly hewn stones. About half an hour into the hike we came across some cows grazing on a hillside. It was 5:30 by the time we reached Qingtiangang, which is a grassy hillside meadow with a nice view of Yangmingshan and the Tamshui River down below. I laid down and took in the scenery while Graham tried to figure out how to turn off the flash on his camera.

On the way back we saw a sign reading “This way to the Waterfall”, so we followed it down and down, through a valley. It was getting dark, but the sound of the waterfall seemed near, so we kept going. And going. We met a few people going the opposite direction, and Graham’s map seemed to indicate the the path would lead us back to the road, which was at least lit.

But it was not to be. We did find the waterfall, but by that time it was too dark to see much of it. We snapped a couple of pictures in vain anyway, and then continued on. The path, however, had other plans. It ended in a wash of mud that was clearly too dangerous to negotiate at night, and it was already night, and the path back was unlit as well.

We had no choice, so we turned back up. It was rough going, and Graham didn’t help matters by commenting that he heard the sound of “something very big and slithery” in the grass next to the path. Hiking uphill in the dark was twice as slow and arduous as coming down in the light had been. I could have sworn that I saw a couple of animals on the side of the path, watching us as we walked past. In the end I had to use the keychain light that Dean brought back from Canada to see where we were going.

Our motorcycles were wet with condensation by the time we huffed into the carpark, and we had a few harrowing moments when Graham’s bike refused to start, but eventually we were on our way down the mountain and back to the 70’s Love Palace, where we share a pizza with Jaime and watched a documentary about the infamous “Tri-state Tornado” of 1925 while Evil Cat, who is staying at the Love Palace while Dean is in the Philippines, tried to catch fish from the fishtank. Graham had his camera all ready for when Evil Cat fell into the tank, but it didn’t happen. Not this time, anyway.

Tomorrow I will work on my book proposal. Or go to a sauna and soak my sore legs, depending on how I feel. Probably the sauna, or hot springs.

I’ve written almost 150,000 words in this journal so far. Twice as many as are in my book. Damn.

Happy Chinese New Year. It’s now the Year of the Horse. Fireworks are going off outside in the park. I remember the fireworks from when I lived in Hsinchu. My situation now is better than it was then. I just got back from an enjoyable evening at Bret’s, where four of us had a delicious dinner, chatting, wine and Queer as Folk DVDs. Queer as Folk put me off for the first few minutes, but then I started kind of getting into it, and now I want to watch the rest of the episodes, including the original British version, because I’m curious.

I’m feeling a bit down. I suppose that it’s a measure of how Chinese I’ve become that I feel more depressed coming home to an empty room on Chinese New Year’s than I do coming home to an empty room on Christmas/my birthday. But perhaps I would be depressed no matter what, and having a significant other might just make things worse. Perhaps if I tell myself that enough I’ll start to believe it, too.

I didn’t manage to get any work done again today, unfortunately. The more I think about it the more I doubt whether I’ll be able to accomplish anything at the book expo. I’ll still go, of course, because I have to try at least, but I really don’t know what I’m doing here. Completely out of my depth, in other words. How do other authors do it, apart from having faith that their works are worth selling? I have no clue.

I’m going to have to get a lot done tomorrow and the next day. Dean’s getting back on the 14th, and he promised to help me with my proposal, which is still not finished. To quote virtually every character in the Star Wars films, “I’ve got a back feeling about this.” Fortunately, I get a bad feeling about most things that actually turn out ok in the end. Come to think of it, things ended up ok for the people in Star Wars, too. Maybe they were on to something there.

In other news, it’s now officially a month since I got my eyes zapped. This means that I can now officially sleep without eye covers, wash my hair and face, and even perhaps ride my motorcycle, thus saving me lots of money in cab fares. I still need to keep my eyes from getting too tired by staring less at this monitor and more at yonder green hills. Or at least yonder billboards. Or just yonder.

I got on a brand-new train this afternoon at Taipei main station. It was spotless, mostly empty and headed for Keelung. I sat and munched on some Tim Tams that I had just procured at the station’s 7-Eleven while the scenery flashed by, but a strange noise from the seat behind me began to arouse my curiosity. It was a sort of swishing noise, the kind resulting from fast movement when one is wearing a certain kind of fabric. The swishing became more and more animated, and soon began to incorporate a slapping noise. I wondered if someone was having an epileptic fit, so I turned around to see, only to find two deaf people pausing in the middle of their animated sign-language conversation to stare back at me. Oops.

Right before we hit downtown Keelung, the train passed through a neighborhood. When I say passed through, I mean right through. The glass of the window was perhaps an inch away from various walls, porches and other parts of people’s houses. The track was tilted on a curve, but the engineer obviously felt that the curve should be taken very slowly, so we inched along, the cars tilting dangerously in the wrong direction. At one point we stopped altogether, and I was suddenly staring at a family taking their meal in their living room, which the train passed perilously close to. I motioned them to go on eating, and that we wouldn’t be long.

I took a cab from the train station out to the Ocean University and then trudged up to the top of the hill, where Paul my tall British friend and fellow thespian from “A Man for All Seasons”, lives with his wife. Both of them work at the university. They bought the house six years ago, and let me tell you it is a wonder. Ocean waves are visible crashing against the barrier on one side and Keelung Harbor lies to the other. The interior is comfortable and homey. They’ve worked hard to make the building, a former radio transmission station (Paul wanted to keep the huge antenna but had to discard it for safety reasons), into a livable home. Now they’ve got a friendly dog, two cats and a plethora of frogs in their garden to keep them company. It seems a nice existance up there. Moving in must have been a nightmare, but it looks like the hard work is really paying off. Paul plans to open up his production house up there in the future as well.

Later in the evening, Paul put on a bit of his upcoming animated feature, a sort of cross between South Park and Shakespeare, and we also watched his short called “Goodbye Kitty”, which I am proud to say I had a hand in thinking up when we were backstage at the play. The food was excellent and refreshing, and although I tend to get a bit antsy when there’s too many people around, a good time was still had by all.

I took the electric train back to Taipei with Jacques, one of the translators at the newspaper where I used to work, and a French guy named Dennis. Dennis promptly fell asleep on the train, but Jacques and I talked about literature the whole way back. He knows a fellow who is into publishing and might be able to help me with my book.

When we pulled into the underground station at Taipei, a horde of travellers pushed onto the train before anyone could get off. Jacques and I fought our way through the crowd, earning a few dirty looks for our impertinance. One kid with anime-esque hair and what looked like goth make-up seemed to want to get off the train and kick my ass, but I guess he valued his schedule more than revenge.

My friend from Hong Kong, Chen Ye-hui, is going to be in town for the holidays. He is a therapist and has a little Chinese acupuncture shop in Sheungwan, and he’ll be visiting relatives here for new year’s. I met him when he was working at the hospital I stayed at for two months after I had a knee operation several years ago. That is an experience I’d rather forget, but Ye-hui is a nice guy and it will be nice seeing him again.

One of the many reasons I purchased the Star Trek: The Motion Picture DVD was to see this guy, whom I had a crush on, not in 1979 when the movie came out, but later, in the TV and videotape versions. I suspect that the actor’s name is Joshua Gallegos, and he is seen on the bridge several times. He has a station on the bridge but no lines, and I don’t think he was ever referred to by the major characters. He was just there, a walking drool promotion.

This is kind of a theme with me and movie characters, something that my friend Mindcrime often harrassed me over. I almost never find any of the main characters in movies attractive. If anyone catches my fancy it’s usually the dopey sidekick of some other peripheral character. I suppose this indicates that my standards of personal beauty are so bizarre that they are not shared by anyone, at least not anyone in Hollywood. Another example would be one of the completely lineless guys who rode up on a kid’s bicycle when Peoples Hernandez was being taken away in Shaft, and although I thought that Peoples was extremely foine, the guy on the kid’s bike had even him beat in my book.

Sorry, yesterday’s undressing-model experience was rather unsettling…just making sure I’m still a ‘mo.

So our Chinese New Year’s holiday has begun, and I have wasted an entire day already. My plan is to eventually become so bored with goofing off that I will have no choice but to do something productive. Hopefully the looming Book Expo will motivate me as well, but it feels not a little like I am back in school again with a due date for a report I have to write. I can still recall the feeling of waking up one morning and realizing some vital piece of homework was due that day, and that I had completely forgotten about. Ah, the memories!

I just saw Monsters, Inc. What a great movie! I would even go as far as to say it is the best thing Pixar has made yet. The animation was amazing, developed to the point where you forget you’re looking at animation, and the acting was wonderful. Perhaps I just needed to see something like this and my state of mind made me particularly amenable to this kind of film, but I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. Very, very well done. As far as pure enjoyment goes, it surpassed the Lord of the Rings by a fair bit, I thought.

There is a restaurant/bar thing on the ground floor of our new building called the “in house DJ lounge restaurant chillout experience” I’ve seen some of my co-workers in there, but I haven’t been in myself. It just sounds too wierd, though, so sooner or later I won’t be able to resist actually going in and seeing if it lives up to such an all-inclusive name. Does the attendant give you a choice, i.e., “Would sir like to Listen, Lounge, Dine, or just Chill?”

This afternoon I was standing by the window looking at the mountains, as I am apt to do, when I noticed a group of people, including two foreign girls, downstairs by the Bridge To Nowhere. A group of photographers was taking pictures of the girls, so I assumed they were models of some sort. Then one of the assistants got out a sort of hula-hoop thing and put it around one of the models, who promptly began to undress. Man, if I weren’t a ‘mo I would have been a really happy camper. I don’t know how they missed an entire building full of people looking down at them when it was right there. Maybe they didn’t care. In that case they won’t mind me posting the pictures here. Hee!

Concerning the Great Shoe Debate, I decided to take Shauna’s advice (she being the fashion mogul that I know she is) and bought the Storm Pegasuses (Pegasi?). Thanks to all who contibuted to the discussion. It was truly enlightening.

Today is my last day of work before our Chinese New Year break, which starts tomorrow and lasts until the 18th. Eleven whole days to get my book into shape and a compelling proposal constructed before the Taipei International Book Exposition opens on the 19th. I will have to take 2 or 3 days off from work to attend, but that shouldn’t be too big a deal. This is important, after all, even though I have absolutely no clue as to how exactly one is supposed to get a book published. Mostly likely I’ll spend the greater portion of my time there wandering around wondering who the hell I should talk to.

Yesterday morning as I walked through Da-an Park on my way to the MRT I noticed a group of older people practicing Tai-chi Sword, apparently doing the same form that Seamus taught Dean and I so long ago, but different than the forms I’ve been learning more recently. This morning I saw them out there again, and I was thinking that I should leave early one morning and try to find out more about these people. They’re mostly older and mostly women, but any chance to learn more sword techniques is a good thing. At least in reasonable weather, which has been rather rare lately.

Last night I met up with former News-drone Graham, who is presently employed at the Times. The Times lately has been following the same path as the News did a couple of years ago, i.e. getting rid of the native English speakers on the copy desk and replacing them with cheaper Taiwanese copy editors, letting their parent organization’s political views take precedence over good objective reporting, etc. Maybe Graham is a cybernetic fabrication sent from the future to try and save the Times from the News’ fate. In that case, I should probably be nicer to him, no matter how hard he laughs at my shades and says I look like a thug.

Anyway, we repaired to the Tavern and were soon joined by other friends, including Brian Kennedy, who used to work at the News as well. Donovan, from Taichung, was also there and sported a roaring case of hiccups which he claimed were not in any fashion related to the series of empty Boddington’s glasses on his table. I don’t drink beer in general because it tends to taste terrible, but if I had to choose one it would be Boddington’s, just for the creamy texture. All in all, though, I’d rather have Bailey’s or Kahlua and half-n-half (slogan: Your arteries will love it!”).

Next Tuesday, a full month after I had my eyes zapped, I will be able to wash my hair and face properly for the first time in a month, sleep without eye covers, ride my motorcycle and perhaps even visit a sauna or two. I look forward to all of that.

Our reduced bonus ledgers were handed out yesterday, along with the Big Boss’ letter explaining that we aren’t doing so well. I circled the most blatant lies vigorously in red and drew a big question mark so that I can leave the letter on my desk for people to happen across. Did I reveal a company secret by suggesting we’re making more money this year than last year? Oops.

One of the DJs on the radio this morning mentioned that he witnessed Taipei’s first-ever car chase on Zhongxiao E. Road this morning. On my way to work a police car screamed by at high speed. Does this mean that Taipei’s policemen are officially allowed to have car chases now? Wow, add this to the coming entry into the market of larger motorcycles and watch you’ve got even more chaos than even Taiwanese drivers can handle, I think. Maybe I should start looking for a nice little place in the country. Maybe Beitou, Tamshui, Xindian or even Muzha. I know it may be asking too much, but I’d like a place of my own, near an MRT stop but also close to mountains and streams and the like. Someplace with a view but no road noise, fresh air and room for siamese cats. Oh, well, keep dreaming. There are more immediate problems at hand to be dealt with first, like my damn book and my next film project.

For some reason our company has decided that neither of our elevators will stop at my floor. Is this a message, a way of them telling me to lose some goddamn weight? I don’t think so, as there are a lot fatter people than me on other floors where the elevator does stop. I think they made the decision like they make all of their decisions, i.e. it was taking too long for the elevator to reach the Big Boss’s Floor, which is the top floor, and the Big Boss didn’t like being reminded on a daily basis how her underlings eeked by on less than a 20th of her salary. The solution was simple and obvious: rewire the elevators so that Her Top-floorness wouldn’t run the risk of being exposed to the palpable waves of disgust emanating from her recent decision to cut our bonuses in half.

Bitter? Me? You betcha. Bitterness is what this site is all about, at least for the last paragraph or so. I also take issue with the people coming in here and closing all of the blinds on all the windows, even though there’s no possibility of strong sunlight due to the thick cloud cover and rain. Taiwanese people just don’t like to see out of the buildings they happen to be in. I suppose this is a result of traditional Chinese architecture all facing inwards and all, but geez, people, we have this wonderful view and nobody wants to look at it. All they want, I assume, is the prestige of having a desk with a view, not the view itself, sort of like Beijing wants the prestige of Taiwan as part of the PRC, but not all of the trouble having Taiwan would bring them.

I can’t believe I just made that analogy. If anyone with any political prowess is reading this, please disengage your detonators. I’m not always like this. I can make sense sometimes, if I try really, really hard.

*tries really, really hard*

Ok. Paul, by far the tallest of the actors in the play I was in a few months ago, is having a New Year’s Party at his home in Keelung on the 9th, and Bret is having one on New Year’s Eve at his and Alan’s apartment out in Nangang for everyone who has no family here with which to spend that important date. Got that?

*gives up on making any sense whatsoever* Whew!

Ok, back to the zaniness! It’s time to Pick Poagao’s Shoes! (applause)

Yes, I am torn between two kinds of shoes. You see, it’s been raining here every single day, with no end in sight, and I am sick of wet feet. Because of my old knee injury, I like bouncey shoes that don’t jar, so I’ve been wearing Nike Air shoes for a long time. Problem is, my present shoes like to go swimming in puddles without my permission.

I think it’s time we got to the contestants:

The Crested Butte. This questionably named shoe is an extremely ugly way to cover your feet, with a harder sole, but it is absofrickenlutely waterproof. We’re talking near walk-on-waterness here. It’s got cushioning but isn’t as bouncey as I’m used to. It’s also about NT$1,000 more than…

The Pegasus Storm. This shoe (have to click on the name) looks a lot better, feels better, but is only water resistant, i.e. “Winterized”, whatever that means. Will that be enough? I have no clue.

So anyway, there you have it. There are more suitable shoes on the menu, but none of them are sold here in Taiwan. Let me know if you think I should buy the Butte, the Pegasus, both, or neither. I know I should be worried about more important things than shoes, fer cryin’ out tears. That’s where you, both of you, come in, helping me with the more trivial decisions in my life, freeing up my schedule for more important things like movies, video games and elbowing people out of the way in the subway.

Next week: Which color 7-Eleven umbrella should Poagao buy?

Where did the weekend go? I can’t really recall much about Saturday except working on my book and running into a bunch of apparently sighted people with blind people’s sticks trying to cross a pedestrian bridge on Heping E. Road. I spent today walking around the Jianguo Flower Market in search of free kittens (don’t ask me why they give kittens away at a flower market. They just do), even though I haven’t yet decided to get one. Couldn’t find any there today anyway. Maybe it’s a Sign. I also took pictures of some sweaty cooks and added the one I liked the best to my long-neglected photo page. That page gets the most hits of any on this site, so I suppose I should pay more attention to keeping it fresh.

Dean and Kay are heading out of town to the Philippines on Tuesday, and most everyone I know is planning to leave soon as well for the Chinese New Year holiday. Taipei will become a ghost town for a week again. At least some places should stay open, unlike in years past when one couldn’t even find anything to eat for several days. Hopefully Dean will be able to pick up some Dunkin’ Donuts from the store in Manila on his way back.

Nike’s come out with a line of supposedly waterproof shoes. I need some. Taiwan is a very wet place, and I am tired of sloshing around in wet shoes. The only problem is that the waterproof shoes are also quite ugly. Oh, well. I’d include a link but Nike.com is one of the most confusing, hard-to-use sites I’ve ever seen. Let it suffice to say that the shoes in question are gold. Ugh. Hey, Nike, you know other people besides Michael Jackson want dry feet as well, you know? I’m seriously tempted to just buy a portable hair dryer to dry out my shoes and socks every time I leave my room rather that be seen wearing gold shoes.

I’m tired from walking all over the place, plus I’ve got a headache from watching the wormhole scene from the Star Trek: The Motion Picture DVD, so that’s all for now, kids. Tune in next time. That’s an order.

That was the crappiest Wei-ya party I believe I have ever witnessed. Since our venue was basically a tent stretched between the building front and the Bridge To Nowhere, rain leaked in and kept us and the floor wet. The electric cables for the sound and lights were immersed in a couple of inches of the wet stuff, and the wind blew right through the flimsy material. The entire staff was crammed inside, some people dressed up, some not. There was a little kitchen area set up in the back for the caterers to prepare the food.

Basically the whole evening consisted of idiotic speeches and even more idiotic shows, punctuated by prizes being picked from a box full of namecards. At one point the Big Boss got up on stage and basically said that we were only getting half of our bonuses this year, since “the economy is bad” and “the move was expensive”, etc. Now, I’ve seen our earnings reports and budgets for the last couple of fiscal years, and we’re earning more now than we ever have. We have lots of new business and plenty of old clients with big accounts. We’re not hurting. I can believe that the move was paid with by our bonuses, because it would be just like the company to treat us like shit like that, but the stuff about the economy, etc., is complete bullshit.

So I sat and drank several Boddingtons and lots of red wine as I watched my New Year’s bonus being given to other people in the form of the various prizes. 10,000 dollars here, 15,000 there, and that was it. One of the shows was a dominatrix/S&M show, which rather surprised me, or would have if I hadn’t have drank so much alcohol. Later on, after we all went back into the office, one of the big bosses, not The Big Boss, approached me and asked me if I were having a good time.

I can’t remember my exact words, but my reply went something like “No, I’m not having a very good time. I just can’t bring myself to appreciate my new year’s bonus being cut in half. I’ve seen our budgets and I know we have the money to pay full bonuses if we want to. But that’s ok. I’ll just go buy more lottery tickets.”

Saying this to one of the senior management types was no doubt a mistake, but I wasn’t sober and I certainly wasn’t thinking. I took out some of my frustration on the punching bag, slamming it into the wall behind it until I could sense that the guys playing pool next to me were getting scared. I figured I might as well stop before I broke something, so I went out and stand around in the middle of traffic for another half an hour before catching a taxi driven by a formula-1 wannabe who happened to be absorbed in a gripping TV drama at the time. He managed to take me home by looking at the road during commercials, though, and guessing the rest of the time, I assume. I briefly considered going out to a pub or something, but I figured that that would just depress me even more. What you need, I told myself as we careened through the streets at impressive speeds, is a good, long, cathartic blogging session. And so here I am.

Hopefully I’ll get over the fact that I’ve just been robbed of a huge sum of money and get on with more important things. What’s done is done, I guess. No use in worrying about it now. It’s just that after the move I was just beginning to feel a little good about my job and the company, and now any confidence I had has been destroyed. There’s really no point in being loyal to a company that treats their employees in this fashion.

In the meantime, the book, the book, the book. I’ve promised myself (again) that I will definitely have it done by the end of the Chinese New Year Holidays, which gives me this weekend plus 11 days. I’ll just have to do what I can in that time and hope it’s enough.