A dreary Monday, in many respects. It’s cool, almost wintery, and everything is dark grey.

The weather over the weekend was nice, cool enough that only one of the hallway mahjong-playing guys hadn’t put a shirt on. I took the MRT down to Xindian to see Sandy and Jojo at Chez Sandcastle. We sat out on his porch drinking glasses of chilled wine and chatting. Sandy lended me several books, some of which are supposedly “so awful you just have to read them”. The neighboring apartment blocks leaned over us; we talked of surrepticiously covering them with kudzu. In the distance was the muted gobbling of weekend tourists milling around in swan-shaped paddleboats, so many that there was only the occasional glimpse of the actual Xindian River from the suspension bridge. I hear it’s actually pleasant on weekdays.

That night I came back into the city and went to see Reign of Fire with Mindcrime and H.G. Janice. It was an interesting film, but seemed to lack some crucial story element I couldn’t put my finger on. It was over too soon, and didn’t develop enough of the characters. Mindcrime felt it was more of a comic book telling, but I still felt something vital was missing from the film, but I’m not going to give myself a headache over it.

Rooms looked at this weekend: two. One was a small place, part of a larger apartment that had been divided into rooms. I opened the curtains and discovered a brick wall behind them. “Picky, ain’t ya?” the agent said when I mentioned this to him. The second room was a rooftop place right next to the place my friend Fish used to live. I know for a fact that Fish’s roommates had the habit of holding loud parties, so that’s out. It’s ok, though. I can wait. My boxes are still more or less packed, but I can stay where I am for now.

*pause for earthquake*

Back to today and reasons for its dreariness, though. This afternoon after lunch I came back to my room and began to gather up Trial Kitten’s things. I scooped out her litterbox and packed up her kitty food. She saw this, of course, and looked up at me with big, questioning eyes. I had promised her to a co-worker of mine, a guy who has a larger apartment and a family. He’s been looking for a cat for some time now, so I told him he could have mine.

It was raining outside. I packed her into the carrier and caught a cab to work. I held the cage up to the window so that she could see the traffic, but she kept mewing anyway. When I got here I handed her over to her new owner, told him some of her habits and tendencies, etc. She seemed to take to him, especially when he opened up a can of tuna for her.

So that’s it. Yes, I know, I’m a bastard for not keeping the cat. Like this is news.

Dean, Mindcrime, Norman Peltier (yes, that Peltier. Leonard’s cousin, apparently), and I met up at the Shannon on Wednesday night after work to celebrate Mindcrime’s recent job freedom. I had two glasses of wine on my own, then a third and fourth on the insistence of my friends, and a fifth because Norm was buying. Usually after I swear I’m never drinking again I actually don’t for at least a week or two. Not this time, though. I’m afraid that we were on the loud side, earning dirty looks from the group of businessmen at the next table. The food was excellent, though. It just keeps getting better, and their Irish Lamb Stew is truly wonderful.

Today was one of Those Days, the kind when nothing seems to go right. I got up and played around with Trial Kitten until it was time to go to work, but I just missed the train, just missed all the crossing lights, and then just missed the elevator, twice, resulting in me being five minutes late. Usually I’m on time, but there’s not much to do and nobody to see that I got there on time. But today, of course, as I was five minutes late, a small group of people, each one wanting me to do something urgent like translate an important international treaty, had gathered at my desk. Great. I spent a couple extra hours making sure the translation was reasonably error-free, lest Taiwan be overrun with squirrels or something due to my negligance.

After work I went to the Oriented Happy Happy Kon-tiki Hour. Or rather, I met up with Dean and Mindcrime at the Teahouse, where Dean was just getting over finding a roach in his tea, before setting out on a long, exhaustive tour of the area, featuring walking in large circles following inane directions for over an hour before running into Berta, who directed us to the correct address, which was nowhere near where we had thought it was. The restaurant across from the place was suitably named “The Lost Restaurant”. It’s like the bermuda triangle of restaurants.

The circular bar had no dance floor, yet the music was inexplicably loud. A small room in the back was filled with women in black posing amidst shrouds of cigarette smoke. I met such Internet personalities as Cranky Laowai and Alien, plus some other people, one of which was Corbett Wall, who had seen this website and wanted to meet the man responsible for this html travesty. I hadn’t eaten all day and wasn’t too satisfied by the finger food available, so we left the melee and went across the street to Ding Tai Feng for Xiaolongbao and fried rice with tea. It was just the thing after an evening in a pretentious, hard-to-find bar.

Hello, my name’s TC and I, uh, I’m a rental property addict. I just can’t stop looking at potential apartments. I might as well admit it here, rather than continue skulking around in denial. I know some of my readers, if there are any left, hate to hear me go on and on about this place or that place. Well, too bad. Go read one of the other bazillion blogs out there if you can’t stomach this one, because I need to vent.

This problem, as I’ve hinted at before, originated during the roughly 76% of my childhood spent looking at expensive houses that we couldn’t afford. But as of late, due to the fact that my old knee injury doesn’t appreciate all of the stress the stairs at the Chungking Mansions Taipei have been placing on it, I’ve become quite obsessed with looking at other options, leaving a swath of namecards at realtors across the city. Just today after work I went to one place on Heping E. Road to let them know I wasn’t interested in one of their places, but the lady was quite insistent. “So you’ll take it?” she asked, nodding agreeably not two seconds after I had told her I wasn’t overfond of the room.

“I don’t particularly like the neighborhood.”

“But one can only be a successful official when living in a peaceful residence,” she countered, using a Chinese saying.

“I’d rather ride a donkey to look for my horse,” I replied with another.

“I think you’re painting legs on a snake here.”

“The only snake is being reflected in my soup.” This went on for awhile, but I knew when she started shifting to old Taiwanese sayings that I was fighting a losing battle. “I’m going to take a walk around the neighborbood,” I said firmly, and as she tried to figure out what I was really trying to say with this apparently unknown ancient saying, I took advantage of the lull to beat a hasty retreat before I was drowned in irrelevant flowery rhetoric.

Recently I’ve been focusing on two rooms in particular. One is nearby, while another may not even exist and is supposed to be up for rent next month. The one nearby is good and has the advantage of actually existing, while the other would be even better as it’s near where I work, but I won’t even know if it’s available until next month, by which time the near one will surely have rented out. I suppose I can afford to wait, but the real estate lady was right when she said it’s difficult to get important things done if you’re not settled in somewhere. I’ll keep you posted on this facinating subject whether you like it or not.

In other news, Trial Kitten and I have reached a couple of important breakthroughs. First of all, I have been able to draw her out of hiding by opening and closing the wardrobe door over and over again, and we have established a rapport which involves her chasing an old sock around, stepping on the keyboard when I’m typingg, and then falling almost asleep in my lap before starting all over again. It also involves, for some strange reason, her pissing all over my furniture and then acting so teeth-grindingly cute just so I’ll know about it. I’m hoping that the cold-like symptoms I’m experiencing are not in fact signs that I am allergic to Trial Kitten. I suppose I’ll find out soon enough.

I left my apartment building this morning and, surprisingly enough, didn’t encounter sweat-inducing heat outside. It’s actually cool, almost long-sleeve weather. I knew such weather was on its way thanks to clues such as the Mid-Autumn Festival and the fact that two of the four guys who play mahjong in the hallway on weekends had shirts on yesterday; the cooler temperatures are a real relief after such a long, dry summer. I don’t like winter much, but Autumn is especially welcome this year.

I’ve been fighting to stay awake at work today. Trial Kitten kept me up most of last night, mewing and mewing until I turned on the light and got up, staying silent as I tried to figure out where she was, and then starting up again after I had given up and tried to go back to sleep. Cue endless cycle. Oddly enough opening the wardrobe door will elicit a plethora of eager mewing from Trial Kitten. Perhaps the sound reminds her of something. When I left this morning she was behind a shoe-table in the front hallway. Hopefully she’ll get used to the apartment soon. I have to admit I need to get used to the feeling of having a cat around as well. I figure I’ll give it a week or two, and if we haven’t come to some kind of understanding within that time, I’ll just take it back to the flower market for someone else to adopt.

Two more pictures up at the Mirror Project, if you’re into that sort of thing. Also a special welcome to Berta and Maoman to the Cast of Characters. Their hard work and sacrifice over the years had absolutely nothing to do with their inclusion on this list; I just think they’re cool people.

Saturday was the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. Chances for seeing the full moon that night were not good, the weather people on TV were saying. I didn’t have any plans in particular until Little P called up and invited me over to his place for a family barbeque. I took a taxi over, passing a garbage-collecting frenzy, and found the entire P family gathered around a small charcoal barbeque placed in the alley in front of their home, just out of the way of the occasional passing car. The smells of beef, pork, chicken, green peppers, chicken hearts, squid, beans and corn on the cob filled the air. The sky was murky, no moon to be seen. I took a picture in the stainless-steel door to commemorate the event.

A few other guests arrived, some of whom I knew, some whom I’d never seen before. One fellow, a bloke from London named Sebastian, turned out to be another former cameraman. He’s here for a year studying Chinese on a scholarship at Shi-da. Little P’s little sister was prancing up and down the alley in what looked like the Russian sailor’s dance. She was going to be a ballerina, she said. She’s about 9. Occasionally Grandmother P would come out and frown at us. Later on, Papa P and Auntie P toasted us inside with Cinnemon and Gengseng wine, interspersed with Oolong tea. I practiced my Taiwanese with Papa P and another relative whose name I didn’t catch. It might have had something to do with the fact that said relative had only one tooth, the unfortunate placement of which confounded my attempts to understand his speech.

After the barbeque Little P, friend Bonnie, Sebastian and I went to 45, which seemed relatively gangster-free. I didn’t trust it to stay that way, though, so we headed over to Fresh, where I sat out on the rooftop balcony drinking red wine and finally caught a glimpse of the moon through the clouds, which supposedly is good luck.

I must have still been drunk when I finally managed to pull my hungover self out of bed this morning, as instead of doing anything useful or even sane, I walked over to the Jianguo Flower, picked out one of the many stray kittens they had on display there, and brought it home with me. It’s a trial kitten, to see if it takes to me, and vice-versa. Unfortunately, upon its release within the confines of my apartment, the black, white and orange animal immediately bolted to the nearest nook and hid, and I haven’t seen it since. I put out some food and water, set up a litter box, but it still won’t come out. It’s hiding behind my computer at the moment, hopefully not urinating into the circuitry. The cat websites say this is normal. We’ll see. If Trial Kitten and I cannot come to some sort of understanding by next weekend, I will consider the trial a failure and return it to the flower market. If it has, and it has refrained from destroying my apartment and eating my turtles, I might consider letting it stay. The horrors of Dean’s Evil Cat and the Ratbastard’s silent overlord Textured Cat Protein have made me wary to the dangers of cat-ownership, however, and I don’t intend to take any malarky from this cat.

I went downstairs to the sidewalk market this afternoon after work to get a strap on my backpack repaired. The stitching’s pretty heavy-duty, so the seamstress next door couldn’t do it, instead directing me to the shoe repair stand next to one of the fruit stands on the first floor of the Chungking Mansions Taipei.

“I was just about to leave,” the woman at the stand said as I sat down on a stool to wait. “You’d have missed me if you came five minutes later.” A small girl was asleep in a stroller next to us. The stand was made up of one ancient-looking sewing machine and all kinds of laces and thread. As the shoe repairwoman began to work on my backpack, a thin girl in even thinner clothes that looked like they were stolen from her grade school-age sister walked up and demanded that the woman re-sole a shoe. “Can it wait until tomorrow?” the repairwoman said. “My family’s going on vacation in a few minutes.”

“No! I need it done nooooow,” the girl whined loudly, waking up the baby in the stroller, who looked around sleepily. The girl fished out a suprisingly gaudy bejeweled shoe with a nasty point and thrust it in the repairwoman’s face.

“Gah!” I blurted out involuntarily at the sight of the hideous piece of footwear. The broken sole was the least of that shoe’s problems. Even worse was the thought that somewhere out there was another one just like it.

The repairwoman didn’t flinch. Apparently she was used to such pedestrian horrors. “Ok, come back in a few minutes, ok?” But the girl was already off browsing fruit. The baby’s gaze wandered until it settled on me, and she blinked in slight confusion. I was wondering how much it would cost to repair a backpack strap, figuring in my head how much money I had on me when the repairwoman said, “Ok, it’s done.”

“How much?”

“NT$20.” Cheap. I wondered how she managed to make any money, but then again, her husband worked elsewhere, and she didn’t have to pay any rent as she operated on the sidewalk. The stalls themselves go for at least NT$60k a month, the guy at the plant shop told me. Apparently a family of seven had up until recently been living out of a jewelry shop the size of the average American laundry room, and that includes the one tiny bathroom.

I also learned from one of the workmen installing the orange piping that it is for water drainage purposes, dashing any hopes I had about smoke diversion. Maybe next time.

In other news, Steve sent me a bit of interesting information concerning surnames in the US:

“It comes as little surprise that the most common surname in the U.S. (as of the 1990 census) was Smith, claiming 1.006% of the population, followed by Johnson (.810%), Williams (.699%), Jones (.0621%), Brown (.621%), Davis (.480%), Miller (.424%), Wilson (.339%), Moore (.312%) and in 10th place, Taylor (.311%). Some Asian Americans may be surprised to learn that no exclusively Asian surname figures in the top 200 surnames though Lee — which could be Korean or Chinese but is more likely to be English — is number 24 and is attached to .220% of the population, just behind Lewis and ahead of Walker. The only other surnames with Asian constituents among the top 100 are Young at number 28 and Long at number 86.

A major surprise is that Wong, often thought the most common Chinese surname, doesn’t even figure in the top 2000.”

Woohoo! #1448! Steve says he got this from “some obscure website”. Perfect.

The weather’s been strange lately, with brilliant days and sudden storms rushing in when you least expect it. I decided to paint my bathtub white to get it in step with all of the bathroom’s other appliances, who had been making fun of it. The sink of particularly cruel, while the toilet would just smirk. But now all three are gleaming white, even though the stench of a harsh mixture of epoxy and oil-based paint has almost certainly the added benefit of scaring away any insects who may be plotting an invasion of my apartment. Just for good measure on that front, after I finished painting the tub last night at about 2 a.m., I set off another roach bomb in the kitchen and spent the night at a sauna instead. Occasionally my stash of free sauna tickets does come in handy, but I really should save them for true emergencies; you just never know when you’re going to need a place to crash in the West Gate District, where the sauna in question, the Rainbow, is located.

This morning on my way from The Rainbow to the West Gate MRT Station I passed the old Red House Theater, which was recently rennovated. It’s become a museum/fruit bar and features many interesting old photographs of the district suspended inside a series of large fishtanks. And old movie projector, bearing a striking resemblance to the one used at the theater on base when I was in the army, stands guard at the entrance. It’s basically a small furnace attached to a lens, and the filament inside must be kept hot enough to glow bright enough to project the image onto the screen. Man, those things are hot to be around when they’re being used. I remember visiting the soldier in charge of operating the projector in the projection room, which was unbearably hot even in winter.

Speaking of movies, I finally saw XXX and liked it in spite of the seeming carelessness of its execution. Vin Diesel has some growing to do as an actor, but he managed pretty well, particularly in scenes with Samuel L. Jackson. I don’t know what is up with the recent trend of Goth Chicks as Love Interests, but it’s gotta stop. Sooner or later we’re going to have to return to Lauren Bacall, and I don’t think she’s up to it these days. I saw XXX at Warner Village, the site of my previous employment, since the Estrogen Mall didn’t have it. They’ve started putting the best trailers before the 15 minutes of commercials you have to sit though, so I miscalculated and missed the Two Towers preview. Damn. It wouldn’t be so bad it they were half-decent commercials, but I didn’t pay NT$285 to sit and watch bad teen actors pop zits to excruciatingly amateur electronic music on the big screen.

I also saw the latest Austin Powers movie, which was as funny as the others and features a cockney rhyming slang bit between Michael Caine and Mike Meyers. The Taiwanese audience became strangely quiet when Fuk Mi and Fuk Yu came on screen. I could almost hear their confusion: Are they making fun of Chinese people? Or Japanese people? Should we be embarrassed? Then they figured out that the two sluts were indeed Japanese, and began laughing again.

I don’t think they should do any more of these films. They’ve done the trilogy, come full circle, and unless twenty years down the road someone wants to do more, I think this will be the end of it.

And speaking of ends, I’ve been wondering lately if I should give in to the Dark Side and upgrade to XP. I might be able to redeem my soul for this unspeakable act by puchasing a Mac, which I intend to do, but the ME I’m using at the moment is just becoming tiresome. I’m just sick of things not working. This was ok for the first decade of popular Internet/computer usage, but the novelty of having such a machine has long since worn off, and now we just want them to work. And they don’t. I don’t know how much simpler I can make it. All it needs to do is work, that’s all. Anyone listening?

A strange collection of large orange pipes has appeared on the stairway landings of the Chungking Mansions Taipei in recent days. I wonder if they are going to reroute everyone’s kitchen smoke to the outside of the building, where it belongs. I doubt, however, that it is anything nearly so clever. It’s probably just part of a plan to ‘modernize’ the image of the old place with strategically placed pieces of plastic in the hallways. I guess we take what we can get. The residents will most likely appropriate the pipes for their own uses, such as pumping even more kitchen smoke into the hallways or burning ever larger amounts of ghost money in the privacy of grease-laden kitchens. At least they’ll look modern doing it.

Juke was empty at brunch. Of the entire cast of the play, only Dean and I were there. No scripts, no reading, no discussion. It was the best rehearsal we’d had yet. Mindcrime was there but left in disgust when I was late. As if he didn’t know that I’m nearly always late to everything. In any case, he got revenge by putting my disembodied head all over his website. Doesn’t he know that this will generate so much publicity that I will become stronger than he ever imagined?

Sunday was dreary with the tired threat of rain. I walked around empty neighborhoods and somehow ended up near Sogo, where I was wandering aimlessly when Little P called. He was in town, having gotten leave earlier than he expected. We met at 45 and ended up at his place, where I spent the night. Mmm, a shower with water pressure and a night of cuddling followed by being shaken awake by a small earthquake this morning. There’s been quite a few little quakes recently. Makes me wonder what’s going on around here, techtonically speaking.

Little P spent today playing golf for some reason. I suppose it’s part of his Taiwanese gangster training. He’s going back to his base tomorrow morning, and will probably get some time off for the Moon Festival. He will po-dong soon. Po-dong, or Pua-dang in Taiwanese, is army-speak for having been in the army for a year and means, literally, “break though winter”. I can tell he’s really looking forward to it, and I don’t have the heart to tell him just how meaningless it is once you’re past it, how time slows down the closer you get to your discharge date. That was my experience, anyway; maybe it will be different for him.

Today as I was consuming a sandwich at a seat by the front window of a Subway near my office, a beggar with elephantitus walked by and stopped on the sidewalk in front of the store. He had small mattresses wrapped around his legs and wore nothing but a jacket and cut-off pajama bottoms, his engorged testicles swinging ponderously as he set down his begging bowl and lay down on the concrete. He glanced at me unemotionally as I sat there finishing my sandwich, as if he was just doing his thing, and I was just doing my thing. He lay there for maybe a minute before getting up and continuing down the street, perhaps to find a better spot.

“Dean, get over here,” I said. “There’s a place you should see.”

Dean and Kay’s lease is up soon, and they’ve been looking, unsuccessfully, for a new place. Their present apartment, while spacious, is rather dark and dreary, and I think the only one who likes it is Evil Cat, simply because the shadows afford greater ambush possibilities.

The building next door to the Chungking Mansions Taipei, however, was advertising a small, 18-ping flat for 15k a month. It was a corner apartment, windows on two sides, 9th floor, bright, perfect for two people but too large and expensive for one…me, namely. I had called Dean Friday night after I saw it, but he wasn’t answering his phone. Now, Saturday morning, I waited at the MRT station for my friends to show up. We walked the hundred meters or so to the place and asked the elderly guard for the keys. He seemed confused, and at first we attributed it to his advanced age, but when we stepped out of the elevator on the 9th floor, we saw the reason for his stammering: Someone was already there. It was the landlady and a prospective tennant, another middle-aged Taiwanese woman.

In retrospect, perhaps we should have beat a strategic retreat at that point, but we hadn’t thought it out at that point. The moment we entered, eager looks on our faces, the prospective tennant became an actual tennant. Sorry, the place just rented. To her daughter. Just her daughter. Who hadn’t seen the place. Who might not even want a place. Who is probably living in Paris right now and will receive a letter from mommy informing her that she can move back to Taiwan as a suitable downtown apartment has been found.

Dean and Kay liked the area, though, so we spent the rest of the afternoon walking up and down alley after alley, hoping for a nice rooftop to make itself available. As we were walking we spotted a place to sit down and have some drinks. The name on the sign was in a curiously garbled font. “Blue…….Death?” I ventured, trying to make sense of it as we approached. “No, Beach! Blue Beach!”

“That would make slightly more sense,” Dean replied. The place had a glass floor with fish swimming around underneath. The bathroom sink consisted of a small waterfall splashing down some green rocks. It’s the kind of place where you’re constantly hesitating for hear of plunging into the water. Even the toilet, conveniently squat style, is placed as if floating in a strangely quiet plastic ocean. Unfortunately the food we had there was rather awful. I suppose we should have asked for fish instead of bagels and toast with our drinks (Kay’s “Blue Hawaii was distinctly and disturbingly Green), but I don’t think I would have enjoyed eating fish while be watched by said fish’s brothers and sisters. Blue Death, indeed.

It’s far easier, I have found, to shop for a larger apartment than a single-person one here, since Taiwanese society assumes that all single people, no matter extremely rich or extremely poor (there seems to be little room for the average here), want to live in crowded urban environments. When I was looking in Muzha a realtor told me that there simply weren’t any rooms for single people available. In the whole area, which is quite large actually. Even in Danshui there was little available, at least around the MRT. It seems that the MRT lines were laid out according to who wanted them the most, and for some reason the people that wanted the prestige of having an MRT station turned out to be families with cars.

I was exhausted, needless to say, when I went over to Sanmin Road for Taijiquan practice. More and more people are showing up there each time, and I wonder if the teacher can deal with them all as effectively as he can just a few people. I might want to start looking for a new teacher, someone somewhat closer to where I live.

After practice I realized that, with the exception of a particularly bad bagel at the partially flooded restaurant that afternoon while househunting, I hadn’t eaten all day, so I stopped off at the new, less-tacky Friday’s on Dun-hua N. Road. They’ve taken down something like 62% of the paraphernalia from the walls and tried to instill a mix of 40’s and 50’s decor, which is bizarre in itself, but slightly nicer on the eyes than the old style. It’s more of a Denny’s feeling now. Denny’s with Some Stuff on the Walls. And pictures of New York City, including the WTC, in the bathroom above the urinals.

Later on, feeling guilty about not getting Dean to the Apartment on Time, I called him to ask how the house search was proceeding. He said that they have found a place, a spacious rooftop, close to where they’re living now but much brighter. In a way it’s too bad; I had a good time walking around with them looking at places. I suppose this is a leftover from my childhood, when my parents would take out househunting every Sunday after church, even though we weren’t really seriously thinking of moving. We were always thinking of moving, though, and I enjoyed looking at strangers’ houses on sunny afternoons. As a result, however, I am always thinking of moving now, and moving’s kind of a bitch, especially when you’ve been here long enough to have accumulated a serious shitload of stuff that needs to be moved. It was ok back when I was relatively new here and didn’t have more than could be put in the trunk of a car, but now I need at least a truck, especially with all of this furniture. Perhaps the next time I move I should try to get rid of some of the stuff. And knowing me, that could be sooner rather than later.

As usual, not one for online quizzes, but tempted enough to try this one:

Heh. Surprise. Doyce clued me in to this one.