Somewhere within my computer at home, XP is now lurking. Victor and Kirk came over to the CMT yesterday after a Kirk’s-Family-in-Mainland-China-Photo-Showing Luncheon to spend an entire afternoon helping me reformat my hard drive and then install the nefarious OS, yea and verily the one I said I’d never use. Alas, I’ve mellowed over the months, and now I’m willing to give it a try, though I’m still a bit worried that once I get online it will try to blackmail me into sending my mortal soul to a post office box in Redmond.

The day had started out warm and sunny, but as we fiddled with the computer, it degenerated into a typical winter atmosphere, dark and drizzly. Kirk laughed at me shivering in my skater pants as we took the MRT up to the Estrogen Mall to see a movie. Nothing new was on, so I watched Road to Perdition again, since Kirk hadn’t seen it. I also introduced him to the Caramelly Caramel ice cream. On the way back we stopped off at a CD/Coffeehouse called CD/Coffeehouse and listened to 40’s Shanghai music. The staff were all huddled around one of the tables, seemingly plotting a movie, but the discussion became argumentative when one of the group, a largish woman, didn’t get her way with some shot of a hand.

It’s been a busy day at work, except I’ve done no actual work. Instead I’ve been running around getting things signed and notarized so that I can get paid. No surprise, really, and I don’t have a problem with it. Seems fitting for a Monday, actually.

Double Ten Day, the official National Day of the Republic of China on Taiwan, is coming up. Everyone gets the day off, and the major roads are being lined with shiny new flags (or shiny old flags. I can’t tell, really). There will be the usual parade, although the processions these days don’t seem nearly as grand as they used to be. Seems a pity, really. I think we need a holiday with huge military parades, tanks, planes flying over, ranks of military academy students, bands, and all that. Nowadays the parade seems to have shrunk to no more than a few aboriginal dance groups and some artist doing interpretive art inside an old refrigerator. At least we still get the day off.

Three new Mirror Project pictures.

I went over to Caves Bookstore Friday afternoon after work to get more of an overview of the kind of publishers who put out books on Taiwan. It seems that most of the books written about Taiwan that are not of a scholarly nature seem to be vanity press releases, i.e., the writer paid someone to print out a number of copies. On the surface, this doesn’t bode well for the damn book, but then again, there’s less competition, especially considering my subject matter. Every time I experience real doubt in the whole thing, I go back and read a bit of it, and my confidence returns. I think it’s a good little piece of writing, and even if it needs the professional editing touch only a publisher can provide, I still think it’s got potential.

An online friend of mine suggested I stop by a certain teashop called “Nook” just north of the northwest corner of Minchuan and Chengde Rds. It turned out to be a rather eclectic place, with an almost overwhelming abundance of cozy little touches everywhere. I sat down and ordered a Cinammon Oolong tea, which came with rather tasteless cookies delivered by the friendly staff. At another table, a very familiar woman was shouting at a friendly old man. I knew I’d seen her before somewhere, but I couldn’t recall where. She made cellphone calls and spoke even louder, her comments about how nasty the people she was apparently renting various apartments to echoing off the walls. The staff was cringing in the back. It wasn’t the best environment for reading or thinking at that particular moment, so I decided to leave.

I made my way down to the train station, lay down on the surprisingly sharp-edged grass of the park located more or less where the old train station used to be, and gazed up at the successively higher structures of the Hilton, Asiaworld and the Mitsukoshi buildings. Not many people use that park, which is rather recent. Instead, everyone seemed to be busy rushing around the crowded alleyways of the old downtown, making the emptiness where I was all the more peaceful. A guy in a little blue water truck drove around watering the plants without getting out of his vehicle, and a mother took snapshots of her little girl as the toddler rushed around the park. It would be a good place to go and write, if you had either a good battery for your laptop or an extremely long, waterproof extension cord.

That night Dean, Kay and I went to B&Q, the Home Depo of Taiwan, up in Shilin. I’d never been there, and he’s got to find materials to fix up his new place. It was impressive, and I found myself longing for a nice, new kitchen or bathroom. “Slap me out of it, Dean,” I said, and he complied by hitting me over the head with a handy jig-sawed moulding. We bought some paint and tiles and left before the allure of bright white ceramics could get another chance to enslave our fragile little minds.

Back at Dean’s place, I was rewarded for my helping carry stuff up the elevator-free building’s stairs with pizza and Simpsons episodes I’d never seen before. As we were fiddling with the VCR, a local program came up. The production values were, of course, horrid, and it featured the typical shouting man and crying woman. The woman’s wailing sounded familiar, and I looked up to see that it was the woman from the teashop. Of course. That was why she was being so obnoxious; she’s rich and famous.

Today’s been mostly wasted with laundry and pointless Internet surfing. The weather’s supposed to turn cold again soon, so I really should get some walking-about done before sundown. Whilst I’m out and about, take a look at the newest addition to the photography page.

I was wandering around the Estrogen Mall wasting time before the movie I wanted to see, Road to Perdition, started, when I ran into Mindcrime and HG Janice. They were both sick with colds, and so naturally wanted to eat curry at the mall food court, and then of course there’s that mafia hit order thing, which is always a good reason for a spur-of-the-moment outing. Turns out there wasn’t any curry available, so we went down for some Movenpick Caramelly Caramel ice cream, which was the most delicious ice cream I’ve had since the stuff I had at Baskin-Robbins after piano lessons in Texas when I was about 8.

Unfortunately, or fortunately in the long run since I shouldn’t be eating too much ice cream these days, some chemical combination in that flavor gave me a huge headache which grew over the next two hours as I watched the movie, which I still enjoyed immensely. The heavy-contrast cinematography made for a rich, dark experience, and the acting was excellent all around, especially Michael Jr. The only that that slightly bothered me was the seemingly rehashed soundtrack from American Beauty. It just didn’t seem to fit, somehow. Otherwise, the film was a real masterpiece. Ok, there’s my blurb.

My headache worsened after the movie, once I had time to pay more attention to it. I gulped down a panadol and spread Green Oil on my forehead while watching some red-shirted Taijimen dancers in the Liugongchuan Park behind Sogo before walking over to United Mix for dinner. It was an Avenue Night, as opposed to an Alley Night. Some nights I gravitate towards the homey, small-town feel of Taipei’s alley, looking into small shops and dodging scooters, but tonight I felt more like strolling down the broad sidewalks under the trees that line Dunhua South Road, looking in large department store windows and taking in the more modern aspect of the city’s nightscape. I even added a new picture that I took on the way to my photography page.

Kirk is back in Taiwan after visiting Shanghai for a week with his family. Hopefully he will have tales to tell and pictures to show on Sunday when he, Victor and I have lunch and wage a battle to upgrade my computer to the dreaded XP operating system. Actually, what usually happens is Victor will be slaving away fretting with the software while I hover and Kirk lays on my bed reading Chinese ghost novels and making smart remarks.

I received the quickest rejection yet last night. It was to one of my latest batch of query letters to U.S. literary agents for the damn book. Usually it takes at least a few hours, but one agency in particular was so eager to inform me of my rejection that they got their “Sorry, not for us” back to me even before the mailer daemon bounced back another query sent to an incorrect address at the same time. Either they have an auto-response program smart enough to detect lame queries, or someone was feeling really cranky.

I broke down and went to Nitti’s to enjoy one of their Oreo shakes this afternoon with Mindcrime. We were discussing queries and book deals, and the woman at the next table had to leave due to our extreme pretentiousness. Sorry about that, miss. Afterwards we went to the Silex Sci-fi/fantasy bookstore on Jinhua St. to do some research on a project, and then met up with who else but Dean and Graham at My Other Place. The whole time we were there one of the waitresses behind the bar kept clipping her nails. Click! Click! Click! It was driving me insane. “Isn’t that just a little unsanitary for a restaurant environment?” I asked the women gathered around her, but they just stared at me as if I’d suggested throwing one of them through the front window (the thought had occurred to me).

“It is a restaurant, and her nails are too long, so she’s clipping them. Duh!” one of them replied as the woman continued clipping her nails. Click! Click! Click! I envisioned tiny pieces of nail flying into all the drinks, plates, cups and whatever else they had behind the bar. Sickened by this thought, we decided to retire to O’Ginny’s for our actual meal. O’Ginny’s turned out to be quite a bit more posh than we had thought, and our leisurely attire attracted a few dark glances from the staff as we entered. Still, the fried rice wasn’t bad. Mindcrime had what was supposed to be Bangers and Mash but was actually Hot Dogs with Curly Ends. During our meal there was a commotion in the park outside. Ambulance lights came and went, and a crowd of people gathered, but by the time we exited everything was back to normal.

The other day I got a call from my old college roomie, Yu Long-tong. “Tong-ah”, as we called him, is getting his PhD now. Boogie calls him ‘that crazy guy’, and to tell the truth he was a little loony, although I think he just does it to get a rise out of people. We once sat at a protest in Taipei for several days straight back in 1990, wearing headbands and watching ourselves on the nightly news from the CKS Hall square. Tong-ah and I also got into a fight one time in our dorm room at Tunghai University. He attacked me with an electric fan which left a mark on my knee. To this day I can’t remember what started the fight. Probably concerned his playing Dan Hill tapes over and over again.

He seems to have mellowed over the years, however, and I look forward to meeting other college friends at his wedding banquet in Taipei at the end of the month. It’s also another reason to bring out Ze Zoot.