Poagao for President!

Now, with President Chen’s official approval, I can begin my campaign to become president of the ROC. Remember, a vote for Poagao is a vote for Creative yet Surprisingly Lazy Leadership in the finest philosophical Taoist tradition of just leaving thing the hell alone: “An effective leader does nothing, but under his leadership, everything gets done.” See? It’s the perfect job!

In other news, an online zine called Delusions of Adequacy wants me to write a monthly column for them on stuff from Taiwan. Sounds fun. If I can spare enough time from my busy election campaign, I just might do it.

In still more news, the professor from Cornell wrote me back this morning and said “your best prospect for publication would be an English (or possibly a Chinese) version of your text published on Taiwan.” In other words: “We don’t like your book. Stop bothering us.” Simply put, the English-speaking market in Taiwan is not large enough to support an English-language edition book, and the Chinese market, at least the female part of it that constitutes the acquisition managerial staffs, just isn’t interested in army stuff.

Oh, well. I’m still going to create a web page on here just for the book. That’ll show ’em!

I’ve recently been in contact with a professor of Asian Studies at Cornell University. He is interested in my book and after he read the proposal and sample chapter I sent him, he wrote “Please send the best chapter . . . that which most fully captures your understanding of Taiwan military society and culture or that best brings out issues of cultural clash.”

So I went through the book, choose another likely chapter, and sent it. Sooner or later, however, I am going to have to start really emailing queries to publishers and agents, since the local publishers representatives at the expo, curiously mostly males, who expressed interest, took my proposal back to their bosses, who, curiously again, are all females, who all feel that they are not interested (surprise!) in a story about the Taiwanese army.

I need to rework this site a bit, since for some reason iFilm has “lost” my films and the links on that page no longer work. As soon as the Damn Book gets published, I want to get started on my next film, so I’ll be making a page for that as well. I was also thinking of making a page especially for the Damn Book itself, just for the hell of it. And I might put in archives of the News page, since I only update it when the mood strikes me and leaves a nasty mark.

It’s winter here in Taipei once again, cold and dark. It feels like last night never ended, that the sun just never came up today at all. Xiao Bing came over yesterday to give me my income tax reports and tell me more about the registration situation. Basically, I am going to have to find another place to register my residency before the month is out, which is a bit of a pain. Xiao Bing also told me that he and the post office he works at are being sued by some government official who was out to get them. It seems that he wanted to withdraw money from his son’s account (post offices here double as banks, in case you didn’t know) but didn’t tell Xiao Bing, so guess who gets the blame when the password doesn’t work? Yep. The official is apparently in charge of a watchdog agency, but he must be in the mafia’s pocket if all he can do is try to catch post office tellers by mixing up passbooks when there are are obviously much bigger fish to fry….COUGHLo FuzhuCOUGH

One or more of my films will be shown at the upcoming Urban Nomad Film Festival. I have no idea which one or even if more than one will be shown. I guess I should attend and find out. It’s this weekend and will last for three days, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Who knows? It might be fun.

Office Window Fun

When I waltz in to work in the morning at around 9:30 or 10:00, all of the window blinds are down and shut, so I dutifully go around and open them, letting the sunlight and nice view of the mountains in, thus letting everyone enjoy our new environment.

Until about noon, that is, when the Vampires arrive. The Vampires are the (almost always) female managers who snagged the window-side cubicles but shrink away from sunlight as it will shrivel them up into little dustballs. They tend to dress all in black and wear sunglasses indoors so that you suspect they’re glaring at you. In a cycle of ever-increasing vehemence, the Vampires will stride immediately over to the blinds and then ineptly slam them shut with a bang that grows louder with each passing day. Soon I’m going to be found and punished with leeches, I’m sure, but I’m willing to take that chance, since these windows are the whole office’s, not just theirs, and there’s no reason the rest of us peons can’t enjoy the light when they’re not here.

Plus I do really enjoy the little production they make about closing the blinds when they come in every day. The Vampires are just so cute when they’re annoyed.

There’s good news and bad news today. The good news is that Billy treated me to a sumptuous Japanese meal at one of those sushi express places near his office. We talked about the travel show; he seems optimistic about it. He even showed me the Sony VX2000 camera he bought yesterday, and I managed not to drool all over it. And since the week he wants to spend in Holland and France has a bunch of holidays, so that I wouldn’t have to take so much time off from work, so that seems to be working out. He balked at the price I named for my services, but basically I’ll take whatever he offers as long as it’s reasonable. He said he’d call.

The bad news is that Xiao Bing called and said that in order to save a lot on taxes, he could no longer let me keep my residency at his place in Taipei. I have no idea where I am going to move it, though. I might have to move into a place where I can actually keep my residency with me, which is a pain, but then again I have been making a lot of noise about moving lately, and I have a few months in which to decide. So perhaps it’s not such bad news after all, but the impetus I need to find another place where the air is better and I can have a cat. Still haven’t decided whether I should try for a place a bit out of the city or not. Rental prices are probably lower now since everyone’s still in a recession frame of mind. Moving is a bitch, though, especially when you have as much junk lying around as I do.

The weather was nice again today, but it is supposed to worsen tomorrow. I took a walk around the area during my lunch break today rather than eat. The area across Xinyi Road oozes rich people with little or no taste, but it’s quite nice in spite of that. I couldn’t live there, as one would need a car, but it’s nice to walk around in. Better than making my way through the throngs of schoolgirls at Warner Village every day. What is up with that? Don’t they have classes to go to or something? Damn.

I knew I shouldn’t have said anything about the nice weather. Someone up there must have heard me and decided to take it away, so now it’s cold and misty once again. Doh!

I was walking up Hsinsheng S. Road to go get some lunch when a familiar tune came wafting on the wind from the park. I walked over to find a wind ensemble playing the theme to Star Wars. They were obviously not professional, but they had a nice gutsy sound. It turns out that there were several local bands on the program, so I sat down to listen. The first band was mostly students, the second just people from the city, the third a bunch of self-proclaimed rich people, and the third mostly younger people. Afterwards I approached the conductor of the second band, which appeared to be one most likely to accept just anyone, and asked him what requirements there were to join. He asked me what I played, and I told him trumpet. He said they didn’t need any trumpet players. “Oh, I think you do,” I replied under my breath. Still, he did say that I could come check out one of their Friday rehearsals over in Wanhua. I think I might just do that. It’s been too long since I played in a group, and I miss it. Granted, I’d rather play bass in a rock band, but at least this way I don’t have to learn to play bass.

After the concert I proceeded to the nearest Subway for lunch, where I met an Australian bloke I recognized from Paul’s Keelung party. After we both finished and stepped out of the shop, two mormons rode by on bikes. I heaved a sigh of relief that they had missed us, but they apparently heard it and immediately circled back to corner us with Greetings from the Church of Latter-day Saints. As they waited for us to tell them our names, my friend held up a hand to momentarily fend them off, saying to me, “Do you want to just walk away? Because I don’t have a problem with this.” I said yes and did, feeling a bit guilty as the two mormons launched into their propaganda.

I did have an excuse, actually: sword practice, which has been moved to Sunday nights. It was good to get back into it after a few weeks of skipping it for various reasons, like the book fair and a bad back. It’s a bit far, especially for a Sunday, but at least I’m back into it. Not only are we going back over the sword forms and Tai-chi forms we learned before, now we’re starting in on the Yang Family Secret Style, which I want to learn just because it has a really cool name.

So all in all it’s been a really cool weekend, a substantial weekend, even though I technically didn’t get much done. Work looms tomorrow, but a nice bit o’ sleep lies between me and all that mess, so I’m not going to let it bother me tonight. No I’m not.

I was eating rice noodles and fried tofu down in the basement food court of the New York, New York department store at lunch today when, all of the sudden, all of the metal security doors came down. Surprised employees rushed to move various objects out of the way, but some of the doors nevertheless got caught on chairs and tables and came to a loud, grinding halt. Numerous men with baseball caps and walkie-talkies appeared and began solemnly appraising the situation, which appeared to be a mistake rather than the apparent result of a diamond heist attempt. I love the lunchtime entertainment at New York, New York.

Warner Village, I found when I was returning from lunch, is currently occupied by high school students. They arrived in school buses and are still in their uniforms, so it doesn’t seem to be some sort of mass hooky-playing thing. Unless they hijacked the buses, but the students didn’t seem part of any tense standoffs, so I assume their presence is legitimate. What kind of school decided on a field trip to the local movie theater, though? I wish my high school had done that kind of thing. Would have saved me the trouble of skipping class the illegal way.

I went to look at mobile phones at the Nokia shop and found that the 5210 is now out, but the clerk was really unenthusiastic about it. He pointed out that it wasn’t really waterproof and the buttons are hard to push. “I don’t really know why they bothered,” he said in a tone not unlike that of Marvin the Robot from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I repeated the clerk’s depressing spiel to some other prospective customers who seemed interested in buying the phone, but the clerk didn’t seem to mind when they made faces and left. Odd.

Dean, Gavin, Jerome, Jacques and I are getting together tonight at the Q-bar after work. I need to swing by home to pick up a tape of my films to hand over to Jacques so he can submit it to the Expo festival thing on Sunday. I would like to see Carl, too, seeing as he is one of the few people I know who can read my manuscript and let me know in no uncertain terms exactly what he thinks of it and how I can improve it. I’d like to get his input before I begin the Big Push for English-language publishing.

In other news, I got a call this afternoon from Billy, who runs a travel service called, appropriately, “Billy’s Travel Service”, and who used to host a travel show for Era TV back when I worked there as a cameraman. It seems that he has gotten a deal for another travel show, but the network isn’t giving him a cameraman, so he wants me to accompany him to places like Europe and New Zealand, all expenses paid, and use his new Sony VX2000 digital video camera to film the show for him, Lonely-Planet style. All he wants to know is how much money I want.

!

I’d have to take a week off of work, but I think I can arrange that. He wants to go at the end of this month or at the beginning of next month, which is pretty quick. I would have to also get familiar with the camera and other equipment, but I can manage that. It’s the camera I want to buy to make my own projects, after all.

It sounds like a lot of fun. I think I’ll do it. The world would expect nothing less from an international acclaimed personality.