It was still raining on the way down to Taichung yesterday afternoon, but it had more or less stopped by the time we reached the city. We checked into a motel of dubious repute (the directions were accompanied by a picture of a Chinese couple gettin’ it on, but it was cheap), and then headed down to have dinner with Doug, who used to work for the News. He took us to a nice, house-sized restaurant called FM or something like that. The food was something like “Northwestern Fusion”, whatever that means. Actually, it was delicious, and the bartender mixed us some pretty incredible drinks, one of which was a chocolate martini. Dean and I held the martini and tried to sound like Oscar Wildcat from Queer Duck.

Afterwards, Doug took us to a bar on one of Taichung’s many canals. It was called “Napoli”, and it was filled with young foreigners and a band whose main feature was pure volume. We took a table outside so we could talk. It was rather pleasant, actually. I wouldn’t mind living in Taichung again. It was where most of my first impressions of Taiwan were formed. Doug whisked us back to the Dubious Motel in his red BMW, and I was soaking in the commodious tub when I heard that the Queen Mum had died, and that there was another explosion in Israel, and I remembered why I don’t watch TV at home.

This morning we set off for Puli at around 10am. In the wrong direction. We had already gone several miles before we realized this, and stopped several times for directions involving a great deal of head-scratching and contradictions. Dean quickly became an expert at quick u-turns in traffic. Soon enough, however, we found the right road to Puli, where our friend Mark was getting married or engaged or something. Nobody knew exactly what he was doing. Even Mark himself wasn’t sure. The depressing mist covered most of the industrial ugliness until we reached the mountains. Entire halves of mountains were gone, relics of the 1999/9/21 earthquake, whose epicenter was near Puli.

The wedding/engagement/whatever was crowded with Chinese people, some of whom scowled at us as we entered. Mark’s parents had come all the way from England to attend. Some nervous officials made speeches in Taiwanese on the stage, some not quite sure which country Mark was from, and then we got down to the business at hand, i.e. the meal. All afternoon it had been raining on and off, but it was warm and lively inside the restaurant. I think the entire town was there. I couldn’t blame them. What else are you going to do in Puli on a Sunday afternoon, anyway?

After the meal we piled into cars and drove out to Mark’s inlaws’ place, which is an old brick factory on a nondescript river. It was facinating. Mark gave us a tour of the facilities, and the place seemed fit for a movie set, full of ladders, conveyer belts, mounds of clay, and a huge smokestack. Mark even plucked some leaves off a local plant for us to chew on. The factory has been abandoned since the quake of 99. It just sustained too much damage to repair. Mark’s inlaws are trying to sell it, but nobody seems interested in buying.

We hadn’t been there long when the ground began to undulate. It felt like we were standing on a giant waterbed. It only lasted a few seconds, and we thought no more of it. Once we were on our way back in the car, however, we turned on the radio and found out that a 6.8 quake had hit near Hualian, and Taipei had gotten a severe shaking, with several buildings having collapsed. Worse than that, however, was that two of the giant cranes atop the Taipei Financial Center, which is the monstrosity going up right next to where I work, actually fell off the top of the 50+ story-tall structure and crushed four people in their cars on the ground below. I called Kirk and he said that he had been at Warner Village when it happened, and he had seen the whole thing. “I kept thinking that this was impossible, what I was watching,” he told me over the phone. I realize that it was an Act of God and all that, but I still think they should investigate those cranes to see if there was anything man-made that contributed to their collapse. On any weekday, I could easily have been walking in the area where they fell. Scary stuff. I was thinking about it the whole way back to Taipei.

When I finally got home, I found that something was blocking the door of my room. I forced it open and was greeted with a picture of chaos. The shaking had toppled my CD tower, stereo speakers, some pottery and my old videocamera. The wreckage had piled up against my door, preventing me from easily opening it. One of my rear speakers, cord and all, had struck my turtles’ washbasin, knocking rocks all over the place, and shards of broken pottery were strewn all over the floor. It was amazing. This is the worst my room has been trashed from an earthquake in the two years I’ve been here. Thankfully my computer had stayed in its place, and nothing of value was really damaged. A few dents and dings is all.

The streets near my office will still be closed tomorrow, so I don’t know how I am going to get to work. Wouldn’t it be cool if the window blinds are stuck in the “up” position? The Vampires would just blame me, however. I also hope that Office Turtle is ok.

I got an email today from the International Festival of Cinema and Technology. They have accepted The End for their festival in Toronto.

!

This is so cool. My reaction was basically “You’re kidding! No shit! Toronto?” Although it’s unlikely that I’ll have the funds to actually go, I would still like to, just to see one of my films at a real festival. Then again, there’s always the old Groucho Marxist instinct, i.e., how prominent could any film festival that wanted to show one of my films be? Ach, I’m not going to think about that, though. I’m just happy to have gotten this letter.

Back here in Taiwan, the weather this Saturday morn is cold, gray and rainy. In a couple of hours Dean and I will be heading down to Taichung for a couple of days to attend our mutual friend and former co-worker Mark’s wedding in Puli. I haven’t been down to Taichung in a while. Should be interesting to see how it’s changed since I last saw it. It’s been even longer since I was in Puli, not far from Sun Moon Lake, which I swam across over ten years ago. Damn near took me ten years to cross the thing, too. Hopefully the area will stay earthquake-free for another 97 years, since the 99/9/21 quake supposedly only happens once every century. If not, at least I’ll get some interesting pictures.

I was all ready to make the trip to Sanchung in the rain this morning. I got my documents together and stopped by the government offices on the corner near me to make sure I had everything, but the lady there said I needed a certain document from Harry, so I called him. He is in Kaohsiung, however, cleaning graves along with everyone else, and won’t be back until next week. So I couldn’t move my residency over there today. Now I’ll have to arrange that sometime next week instead.

I still felt like going out, so I took the MRT over to the West Gate District and bought a little radio receiver, a new backpack and some shirts. There was one orange shirt at the store with a picture of Adolf Hitler, the word “iconoclast” and other words of praise. I was tempted to get it just so I could take a picture and post it here, but I didn’t want to actually spend money on it. I pity the poor Taiwanese person who does eventually buy it and wear it in the presence of any westerners. “Why are they staring at me,” they will wonder, and then, “Why are they picking up those baseball bats and walking over here?”

The rain showed no signs of stopping, so I went to the Rainbow sauna. It was just the kind of weather for a visit to the sauna, and I felt like a nice hot shower followed by groping in a darkened steam room. I stayed until about 10, and then Kirk, who I met at the sauna, accompanied me to the West Gate Friday’s for some dessert and drinks before we went to The Source, which was quite empty. The whole time Kirk was regaling me with tales of his Sauna Exploits. Both of them.

Dean can’t leave Taipei tomorrow until at least 3pm, so we won’t be getting into Taichung until later, probably enough time for dinner, but not much else. I had wanted to visit my old stomping grounds at Tunghai University, but it looks like we won’t have time for that. It will probably be raining anyway. Still, it will be good to get out of Dodge for a bit.

Just back from the Oriented thing. It was interesting, but I didn’t meet as many regular posters as I had expected to. Trader Vic’s is a rather cheesy sort of place, and the atmosphere wasn’t helped by the pseudo-Brazilian bongo music. Dean and I got there around 7pm, and only a handful of people had arrived. Later on droves of oriented-related crowds showed up, but apart from a couple of people I recognized, they were all strangers to me. I did see Cranky Laowai, Ironlady, Jaba and Maoman. We should have had those name tags like at a class reunion so that everyone would know who everyone else was. Instead, it was more like “Hey, are you the guy with whom I carried out a protracted and largely meaningless online argument lately?” “Well, I’m one of them. Could you be more specific?” “The thing about using the letter x on signs….” “Oh, that! Yeah! Ok, uh…yer a moron. Want a drink?”

It’s a good idea, though, don’t get me wrong. I wonder how having met some of the posters and moderators will affect the way people post in there, if it affects them at all. Probably not. Posting on Oriented is like getting into a car and heading into traffic; you lose the veneer of civility. Christine said that I wasn’t at all how she had imagined me to be. Well, I was nervous at the prospect of all of these people I knew but didn’t know I knew, if you know what I mean. I’m not usually that nice.

It looks as if Fubu.com ain’t showing itself any time soon, so what the hell, here are two views of the Virtual Poagao lounging around in Virtual Underwear, or at least as close as I could get with the Virtual Self Generator. Pathetic, really.

In a typical Taiwanese spring fashion, the weather can’t seem to decide exactly what it wants to do; it’s bright one day and gloomy the next. It started out sunny and warm today but then degenerated into haze and then clouds and mist. Dean and I were impressed today at lunch when our food at Ruby Tuesday’s came within 5 minutes of our ordering it until we found that, in their rush to provide us with prompt service, they had forgotten to actually cook the food. Still, the raw Teriyaki Chicken wasn’t bad. In fact, it was among the best raw chicken dishes I’ve ever eaten.

We spent most of the time talking about our respective movie ideas. Yesterday I spent a similar lunchtime discussing film ideas with Paul, tall Paul from the play last year. Everyone is thinking of doing a movie, it seems. I don’t blame them; it’s a fun thing to think about. But it’s even more fun to do, and hopefully I will be doing it soon. I plan to photocopy the news articles from the Times and TVBS Weekly to include in my queries, compile a list of publishers and agents, and then begin stuffing everything in bottles and setting them adrift in the South China Sea. I might use email as well.

I’ve finally got a new monitor! Perhaps the Big Boss actually took my hint the other day and ordered the IT department to get off of its collective ass and start issuing equipment to those who actually need it. Of course, my system felt that this was too good to be true and promptly began to direct me to various random websites when I clicked on a link. Now, when I indicate that I want to go to, say, google.com, it takes me to a Russian email server. Yahoo.com has been replaced by the splash page of breakdancer in New Jersey who harbors Amish tendencies. And clicking on cnn.com gains me access to Latvia’s national budget control. What’s the currency there worth these days, by the way? Luckily Blogger.com is still Blogger, although for all I know these words are appearing on the giant Trinitron in Times Square and/or Budapest.

Tomorrow, 2/28, is a holiday for us, but not the government offices, so I will use it to travel out to Sanchung and change my official residency out there. I have a deep dislike of Sanchung, but I haven’t been over there in a while. Perhaps it has improved. It could happen, I guess.

Tonight is the oriented anonymous meeting for addicts of that site. The only thing I know for sure about it is that it involves food, which is promising. I hear it might involve talking to people as well.

The sun made a welcome appearance today. It felt almost like summer, and some of the workmen downstairs even went shirtless. A couple of days ago I actually woke up and watched the sunrise from my balcony, something I usually only do in the summer. The streets of Taipei are at their quietest at about 4 or 5 in the morning, and my room is at its best without the sound of traffic booming along downstairs; the perfect time to sit out on my balcony and watch the clouds undergo the transition from night to day. Then I went back to sleep and had a hard time getting up again at 8:30, when I usually get up.

I went and made a Virtual Poagao, but he’s just standing there in his underwear, and the fubu.com site isn’t working. The only other options for clothing are places like Land’s End and some other similar shit, neither of which matches my usual attire. So I’ll either wait for the Fubu stuff to get back up or succumb to the insistent clamor of my readers to see me in all of my virtual glory in virtual underpants, which by the way are gray boxers.

I just watched The Great Escape, which was impressive until the Great Escape actually happened. Then the story kind of fell apart, and then gathered itself back together again at the end. The chase scenes were rather bizarre, with the Germans using magic to pop up wherever the escaped prisoners went. All in all a great movie, albeit directionless at times.

A crowd of Oriented.org posters in Taiwan are getting together for dinner this Thursday evening at Trader Vic’s on Minsheng E. Road. I’m not sure if I want to go. I probably will, more out of curiosity than any actual need to further discuss the kinds of idiotic issues we usually argue about in the forums there. I feel like bringing my sword, however, just in case anyone mentions test cases involving the SFPT.

In other news, Harry said that I could register my residence at his place in Sanchung again, for now at least. Also, Billy called and told me that he wants me to go with him to film kiwis in New Zealand for a week or so at the end of next month. Sounds delicious.

Another gray, rainy day. The office is depressing today, without even a hint of daylight. I walked over to Aurora at lunch to return Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, as it doesn’t work on my sytem. I plan to exchange it for Command & Conquer: Renegade Province. It’s going to be the next Big Thing, I tells ya.

I love First-person Shooters and Flight simulators, but more for the realistic environments than the actual combat involved, I have to admit. I would love a combination of the two, where I can fly around in my WWII fighter, then land, walk around the base, talk with people and maybe shoot them in the ankles. Someday AI and memory advances will let such an experience be realistic enough to make people feel guilty about it.

I was in a bit of a rush to get back to work after returning the game, so I broke down and ate at Burger King at Warner Village, which is strange in that they broadcast radio spots for the store in the store. What exactly is the purpose of this? If you’re already there eating, why do you need to listen to some woman have an orgasm over Burger King’s newest potato-based foodstuff? Probably the result of some obtuse marketing research.

The latest meme is, of course, the Virtual Self models I’ve seen at several blogs. I’m waiting for Tom to do one, and perhaps Darren as well, although not a single one I’ve seen has looked in the least like the person they are supposed to represent. I suppose I’ll try to put something together that looks vaguely like me in case anyone’s interested; just don’t hold me responsible for any loss of appetite this may cause.

Yeah, today’s the Oscars. Rah. I told my mate Simon that they were bollocks, and would remain bollocks until I personally won one. I can handle a little words-eating in that extremely unlikely case, I think. Oscar, shmoscar. I just want to make films. Sure, I love a good party as much as the next guy in most cases, but if getting a little golden statue is the be-all and end-all of your filmmaking career rather than actual filmmaking, then screwed priorities tend to lead to films that compromise too much, give in to the vaguarities of the mythical lowest common denominator, so that you end up trying to please a lot of people very little or a few people a lot, when you should really just be trying to please yourself and those you respect. If that includes your audience, excellent, but I still believe that the core of filmmaking lies in realizing one’s inner vision on the big screen rather than everyone else’s.

Okay, enough ranting. If I ever win an Oscar feel free to throw these words back in my face.

I finished a rough translation of the Damn Book‘s sample chapter and will try to get it into proper shape to give to local publishers so they can laugh at my 6th-grade level Chinese writing skills.

A recent observation: “Uh…”, “Um…”, and “Actually” are all new versions of ye olde traditional “Duh!” I find people who start a sentence with the former to be incredibly annoying, either in online forums or in real-life conversations. I think I’ll just stick with “Duh!” It’s simple and to-the-point. Plus I’m used to it.

It’s been cloudy and rainy the entire weekend. I stayed in and slept most of Saturday, but then roused myself to get up and walk around the neighborhood in a feeble attempt to look for another place to live. One of the ads on the community bulletin board near Shi-da had a familiar address on it; it was located right across the alley from where I used to live in 1991-2. As I walked over there to have a look, I passed through the vegetable market near Heping E. Road, a rather disgusting area. Then I passed a funeral, then an old lady describing in needless detail her vomiting habits to another old lady who was nodding appreciatively, as if this were some fine art, and then a couple of mating cats. By the time I reached the old alley I used to live it, I wasn’t feeling too keen on the area, so I passed on and strolled towards Fuhsing S. Road. I seemed to recall that my friend Richard lived around there somewhere, so I gave him a call, and he wasn’t doing anything, so I went over. He lives in a nice individual room at the top of a small building with no elevator and stairs made for dwarves, but he has a nice balcony and quiet surroundings, which are nice. He pays a bit more than I do, but it’s not half bad.

We went out for some noodles and ran into some South African friends of his (he is from South Africa, by the way), who were on their way to a wedding get together, so we joined them, even though I was a total stranger. They were very nice, but I didn’t feel like I belonged there, so I excused myself and came back home feeling much better for having been with people. Sometimes you need some human contact to pull yourself out of a cloudy-weekend stupor. At least I do.

I spent most of today resting as well, but when heavy rain began to fall this afternoon, I thought what better time to test out my new shoes, so I set out for the new Quizno’s on Heping E. Rd near the intersection with Dunhua S. Rd. The shoes did a great job of keeping my feet dry, but they are dangerously slippery on smooth surfaces. Hopefully normal wear will rectify that aspect, but in the meantime I’m going to have to be really careful I don’t fall flat on my face.

There were several people sitting and eating at Quizno’s but the place was oddly quiet, as if someone had just said something really embarrasing, but the quiet continued after I made my order and sat down. I felt like I was having lunch in a library. The food wasn’t bad, but nowhere nearly as good as the Quizno’s I had in Sydney. It’s too bad they couldn’t get it right here. Unless they improve, I give them a couple of months before they go out of business.

I kept walking around the area after lunch, looking at all of the little parks. This is one thing Taipei has in abundance: little parks hidden among the neighborhoods, with small playgrounds and benches. I would love to live on one of them, in a small alleyway. Surely it’s not impossible to find an individual room with a decent balcony on one of those parks.

I made my way to sword practice as evening fell, although it had seemed like evening the entire day, and the approach of night was so gradual I couldn’t tell when it arrived. The reporter from TVBS Weekly was there with a photographer, and they took pictures as we practiced. I felt a bit nervous with them there, and the flash of the camera threw me a bit, so the pictures are probably going to come out really badly. The instructors seemed to really enjoy the publicity, however.

After class the reporter, photographer and I went to the Chunghsiao-Fuhsing MRT station for more photographs. We chatted a bit and then went out for Taiwanese food at a place called “Hao-ji” on Changchun St. The food was really good, especially the soft fried tofu. I got more comfortable talking with the reporter, who is just starting out in the society section after reporting on technology and business stories for a while. He’s a big fan of martial arts novels. “Do you write your articles like kung-fu novels?” I asked jokingly, but he nodded.

“Yes, I do. At least, people tell me I write like that.” He was serious.

“Well, as long as you don’t have me flying through forests with my sword,” I replied. He seemed alright. Hopefully the article will come across ok as well, but it might take a while before it’s done. A few weeks at least.

I’m sick of oriented.org. It used to be rather entertaining in a passing-a-car-wreck sort of way, but recently it’s become just one big conversation between Richard Hartzell and some guy in Las Vegas who is obsessed with the San Francisco Peace Treaty. He claims that, under this treaty, which neither the PRC nor the ROC signed or even attended the conference for, Taiwan is some sort of protected territory of the US military, which is sort of like Bolivia passing a law that says it owns Poland. And now, it seems that every single thread on the website eventually ends up a dialogue between these two, and how they can use the SFPT to gain more priveleges for Westerners in Taiwan. It’s so ludicrous that I feel some more articles for the next edition of the News from the Renegade Province coming on.

Speaking of wasting time, I added individual pages for each of my films on my film page, with more about the process of making them. Since Ifilm.com isn’t answering my queries as to why my films have vanished from their site, I thought I would add a little something to take their place. Enjoy.

Why I frequently change jobs: Reason #289:

One reason I like to have the window blinds open is that it provides light from somewhere other than our office lights, which shine directly down and make my monitor, which hails all the way from the era of the mighty IBM AT, virtually unreadable. All of the guys in my cubicle agree, so we generally keep the lights off and rely on any stray light the Vampires happen to accidentally allow to leak through the blinds.

So today when one of the administrative clones came in and turned on the lights we of course protested. She explained that this was the directive from the Big Boss, since a Fengshui Expert had suggested that we keep all the lights on all the time for the best, highest quality fengshui. Apparently we were getting economy-class fengshui before, the kind you get from the back of a Walmart store. Personally, I think it’s a clever ploy by the electric company, which probably pays fengshui experts to go around telling people to leave their lights on all the time. Remember, this is the same management that told us that they would cut our annual bonuses by half because of a mythical profit loss. And nobody complained then (except for me), so I doubt the sheep will have any problem at all with spending a shitload of extra money on electricity for good fengshui rather than actually unfreezing the salaries of its employees.

In any case, I told the clone that I would be happy to switch monitors with the Big Boss, and then we could see if she still wanted all the lights on all the time after trading in her nice, big monitor for my little crappy one, but the clone just stared at me. There was an awkward silence, and you know exactly what happened next: The Big Boss, of course, was in the next cubicle over and caught the entire exchange. The reason I know this is that, as she walked past on her way back to the elevator, she shot a dark, warning glance in my direction. I am not one of the emasculated, hand-clapping yes-men that tend to flourish at this and many other office environments, so I think I wasn’t entirely popular in the first place, but this does not bode well for my continued employment here. Fortunately for me, perhaps, is the fact that another job opportunity has come up recently. Given my track record at the institution in question, however, I don’t think I have any reason to get my hopes up over it. It seems like everything is suddenly up in the air, which is what life is like, actually. We only forget this essential fact after being lulled into a false sense of security by staying in the same situation for too long.

Oh, well. At least it’s Friday.

I’ve been feeling guilty about not liking Hitchcock’s Vertigo, so last night I watched To Catch a Thief and was immediately won over. If there’s anything classier or more elegant than Cary Grant and Grace Kelly exchanging witty, unscripted banter as they whiz along a sunny mediterranean road in a classic Sunbeam Mark Alpine in 1955, I don’t know what it is. With delicious dialogue, stunning scenery and, uh, exquisite editing, the film felt remarkably light and snappy for its age, and more than makes up for the distress and confusion wrought by Vertigo.

And it’s Friday.

The Vampires are working together. Now, when one of them arrives at the office, she will go around and close all of the blinds, not just those at her own desk. Territorial creatures, vampires. Now they’re tying to kill me with Lisa Ono music. Cruel but effective punishment for my window blind-opening impudence. Fortunately I’ve noticed that one of The Vampires is raising baby prawns in a glass bowl full of water, and Office Turtle is looking a tad peckish.

My friend Bill Baum, formerly of ICRT, who now works at the Voice of America in Washington, DC, said that VOA wants to do a television spot on me. I don’t know whether it would be a good idea to do one now or after I’ve managed to publish the Damn Book. We’ll see. In another, more ironic, piece of news, TVBS Weekly wants to interview me for their magazine. The reason I feel that this is ironic is that I used to work for TVBS as a cameraman, until the company got so huge and bureaucratic I felt I had to leave. So I don’t entirely trust them, but I suppose if I’m careful I suppose it shouldn’t be too bad.

Last night I went to the Tsui Mama office and got a list of apartments in my price range. There was a foreign couple there trying to play the whole “I speak better Chinese than you” rigamarole, but, while I would have enjoyed that game several years ago, I’ve grown tired of the raised voices, the addition of the extra-long “ahhh”s and pseudo-Taiwanese accent, the sudden loud, contrived, useless banter with the waitress while studiously ignoring the offending party. These days I usually just go about my business and don’t pay any attention to the whole spectacle of forced casual competition that occurs whenever foreigners run into other foreigners here.

The more I think about it, in spite of the proximity to Shi-da and Shi-da foreigners (for surely they belong in a class by themselves), the more I appreciate where I live now. I like living on the park. I love the view and the convenience, and moving would be such a bother. I don’t want to spend any more than I do now on rent; in fact I wouldn’t mind spending less, but that would mean looking in places further from downtown. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to do a little apartment hunting and see what I come up with. In the meantime, however, I have to find someplace for my residency after I move it out of Xiao Bing‘s place.

I’ve added a link to the previous issue to my News page, and am working on another issue. I’ll be doing good to get three or four issues out a year, it seems. I considered asking for submissions, but I would have to be a truly hardcore cynic to believe that an appreciable amount of people have as twisted a sense of humor as is presently squatting in my subconscious.

This fellow describes a phenomenon I have seen lately but not been able to adequately describe. His obvious displeasure at his book being criticized aside, it’s facinating how any attempt to analyze post-9/11 events is often met with accusations of “siding with the enemy”. I’ve tried to hold such discussions with friends of mine who are normally very logical, reasonable people, but if I ever dare wonder as to the cause of the attacks, even without coming to any conclusions or even possibilities, I am immediately assaulted with a barrage of criticism and lables of traitorhood. My problem is, of course, that I’ve always been prone to thinking; ever since childhood my brain has had this unfortunate tendency to analyze things now and then. I should get some treatment for it or something.