Yesterday turned out to be a beautiful day, unusually bright and clear, so I decided to dust off Gendouyun and ride up to The Village, the Xizhi complex where such famous personalities as Alien and Maoman can be seen and, on occasion, talked to. When I fired up my bike, however, a cloud of blue smoke erupted from the tailpipe, no doubt a result of my having not started the engine in over a month. Five minutes later it was running fine, though. On the way a guy on an FZR challenged me to a race over the Minchuan Bridge. I really shouldn’t do this kind of thing, but it irks me that everyone who buys an FZR thinks he’s actually buying a racing bike instead of an underpowered turtle with a racing bike shell. Now I’ll be the first to admit defeat at the mere sight of anything over 500cc, but in the sub-150cc world, a four stroke engine is no match for an equivalent two-stroke engine. Mine isn’t even a 150; it’s 135cc and 14 years old to boot, and still had no problem blowing the mirrors off the FZR. I needed to clean out the ole pipes in any case, just to get the gunk out after leaving it idle for so long.

God, I sound like I’m 16 again.

Anyway, the rest of the ride out to The Village was nice, especially going through Neihu and seeing all of the newly constructed high-falutin’ apartment complexes popping up everywhere. When I arrived at my destination I had to park outside and walk down to Maoman’s place as I was unescorted. The Maoman residence was being prepared for a surprise baby shower, however, so we walked over to Alien’s flat, which is located in back and higher up, with a nice view of rolling hills and valleys to the northeast of the complex. Lots of people were sitting around eating, drinking, talking, posing, etc., so a few of us decided to take advantage of the indoor heated pools and the saunas downstairs. After that we watched some TV and chatted a bit at both places. The whole atmosphere was friendly and relaxed, and for the first time it felt a little bit like Christmas. Some people had strung lights around their balconies, and both Maoman and Alien had nice Christmas trees all decorated. It’s easy to forget that you’re in Taiwan in The Village, which is I suppose mostly the point of the place for many of its residents.

I wonder what it would be like to live alone in such a place, though. Maoman had some friends over from other apartments and we decided to visit one. As we exited the elevator, however, we all became aware of a powerful stench. I sincerely hoped it was restricted to the hallway, but when our host opened his door, our worst fears were realized: he had two beagles, a wife in denial about being Taiwanese, and insufficient common sense to deal with any of them. The dogs weren’t trained at all and pissed on the floor when they saw unfamiliar faces. All of the windows were closed, even though it was pleasant outside and the place was on the top floor. We looked around abit; I survived by hanging off the balcony most of the time, which you’d think would have tipped him off there was something amiss. We left as soon as we felt we could get out of there without seeming too rude, or at least before we started hurling quite impolitely on our host’s sofa.

Before I left I chatted with Alien and her boyfriend Xiao Shan until after midnight. Their little apartment is quite nice, though she warned me that the wind could get annoying at times. All in all it was a nice time. I needed to get out of the city on such a beautiful day, and I even managed to get out without being accosted by any giant white balloons. Can’t ask for much more than that.

This week’s li’l video, weighing in at just 2.3Mb, is meant to convey scooter madness! I took it from the pedestrian overpass just north of the train station tonight after going shopping at the hideously crowded Mitsukoshi Department Store for an element on which I hope to cook someday. I passed by the Japanese “Cute Elephant” model in favor of a Philips model that has little flashing red lights under it to give the impression that you are actually preparing your meal over a brake light you stole from someone’s car. I understand it also cooks things.

Lots of Christmas tunes these days, you hear them in stores here more and more these days. Used to be Christmas was barely heard of, much less observed in Taiwan, but then the News from on high was delivered by HBO, and one of the messages in the news was that Americans love Christmas, so those Taiwanese with any sense of fashion slavishness picked it up as well. Now we’ve got the music, the decorations, the trees, the fake snow, etc. Don’t have the seasonal cheer, though. Have to wait for Chinese New Year for that particular mood.

So it still doesn’t feel too much like Christmas, and listening to Christmas tunes in your cramped little apartment by yourself as you surf the net and write in your blog is just depressing.

Even though I was born in the Year of the Fiendishly Clever Monkey, I’ve always been a terrible liar. Ever since I was little people have always been able to tell when I’m not telling the truth, thus thwarting my natural monkeyish inclinations outside of a predilection for bananas. So after wasting precious hours trying to come up with a suitable poker face when I was about 6, I got another idea: since I was apparently already so good at seeming like I was lying, I would try to make people think I was lying when I really wasn’t.

This turned out to be ridiculously easy; I had found my niche. Everyone, especially my parents, was so used to knowing I was lying, they had no clue when I was actually telling the truth. I could get all of the inherent satisfaction of cheating people for only a fraction of the guilt. As an added plus, after a few episodes of events proving that I hadn’t indeed been lying when everyone thought I was, people began to get the idea that I might not be lying when it seemed that I was. Of course, at that point we would move somewhere else and I would have to start all over again, or I would move up a grade and have a whole new set of teachers’ minds to play with. One time in 8th or 9th grade, during a Civics class at Maitland Junior High School, the announcement was made over the intercom that all honor roll students should report to the cafeteria for photographs. After a couple of kids got up and left I made a most un-Honor-Roll-student-like show of gathering my things together, saying “Yep, well, I guess that’s me,” in a joking fashion. The teacher, Mrs. Evans or something like that, looked up and said “Sit down, TC, you’re not going anywhere.”

“But I’m on the honor roll, honest!” I said, halfway sitting down. Mrs. Evans or something just shot me a deprecating look. I put on my Innocent face, so she sighed and got up to look at the list of honor students. Sure enough, I was on it. Ha ha, fooled her, I thought at the time, but Mrs. Evans or something got her revenge, giving me such a low final grade in a class most students slept through and still got A’s that I was knocked right off of the honor roll that year.

Even though it didn’t always work, that way of thinking spawned other, similar types of behavior throughout my childhood. These included Acting like I Didn’t Know Things I Actually Knew a Great Deal About, Acting Like I Knew Things I Had No Clue About, and Being Extremely Unpopular Because I Was an Arrogant Ass. It got so that I had a hard time saying anything anyone would take seriously. Naturally, I hung out with other misanthropes like myself, as it was either that or sit by myself out in front of the school at lunch watching cars drive in and out of the parking lot, but of course this did nothing to encourage any further development of my social skills.

It wasn’t until college, when I left home and, eventually, the country for the first time, that I began to try and break the vicious cycle, since I had discovered that I needed a whole new set of defenses to deal with the Real World instead of just stuff at home. Surprisingly, it turned out that the Real World was far easier to deal with than my parents, and a lot of my natural defenses built up over the years I spent at home were rendered completely useless. It’s just as well, though. Maintaining them would have been too costly.

Anyway, that was all years ago. I have no idea why I bring it up today. Perhaps it’s because today is Friday the 13th and my subconscious is trying to provide foreshadowing for an upcoming event it about which it has conveniently neglected to inform my conscious.

Or perhaps I just don’t have anything better to write about. Although I haven’t written anything since Monday, most of my time over the past few days has been spent watching the entire Band of Brothers DVD set. I was slack-jawed in admiration for most of this wonderful piece of work. If you haven’t seen it, see it. If you have, see it again, buy it. It’s a potent reminder of the debt we all owe that generation. I find it strange how many Americans and other expats here in Taiwan sing the praises of the their grandfathers in WWII while in the same breath complaining about all the old mainland soldiers. These guys fought longer and under even more desperate conditions than the guys in Europe, and they never even got to go home. Show a little respect.

Song Zhi-guo, aka “Uncle Song”, aka my old landlord from the last time I was living in this neighborhood years ago, invited me over today to chat. I’d been holed up in my apartment all day trying to get Premiere to actually edit clips without including, seemingly for its own amusement, little black frames with red X’s on them at random points in the footage. Also the girls at the Bossini store downstairs had fired up their amplifier so that they could harangue the entire block concerning the wonders of buying their merchandise. I went in and asked them to turn it down, and they did, but as soon as I walked away they turned it up again.

Uncle Song introduced me to his new wife, a small, lively woman from mainland China. They got married two years ago. In her late 40’s, she’s only two decades or so younger than Uncle Song. I sat down and looked at the tea and watermelon seeds that had been brought out in honor of my two-block trek over. My old room was in the back, a tiny place just big enough for a twin bed and a small desk, plus a bathroom barely large enough for one person to stand up inside. The one window looks out on someone else’s window, across the alley.

Uncle Song had two reasons for wanting to see me. One was that he has an empty room available and wants me to live there. I told him that I had already signed a lease and couldn’t get out of it without losing my deposit, and in any case I don’t think I’d want to live in that room, not while I’m still employed and can afford something better anyway.

The second, and far more disturbing reason behind the invitation was that Uncle Song and his wife knew “just the person” for me to marry and settle down with. She’s apparently a computer animation programmer in her late 30’s, living and working in Shenzhen, although she is from Henan originally. Her only problem, I was made to understand, is that she is too tall for most of the men there (she’s 175 cm tall). This was pointed out several times as an extremely attractive asset for me. “She’s really attractive and tall, much better looking than her picture. Did I mention that she’s tall?”

I told Uncle Song that I wasn’t really in the market for a wife just yet no matter how tall she was, but he insisted I think it over and give him a call if I changed my mind. I bade them farewell and made my way back home, stopping by Mr. Fish for a “Comparison Dinner” featuring both chicken and fish. The fish won. Then I walked back around the corner, catching the Bossini lady red-handed as she screamed into her microphone, causing passers-by to wince in pain. As soon as she saw me, she dropped the mic and shoved the amp behind a pillar with her foot and continued her haranging in an unamplified manner. I leaned against the wall and waited until she lost her voice, after which she got another girl from the store to come shout at people. This one lasted a bit longer. Going downstairs to hang out on their doorstep every time they fire up their loudspeaker’s a bit tiring; perhaps I should invest in one of those sniper rifle laser sights so I can harass them from the comfort of my living room, just across the park.

I’ve begun watching Band of Brothers, and I have to say it’s one of the most incredible, amazing shows I’ve ever seen. Great stuff. I’m looking forward to seeing the rest of the series, although I really should be filming the last shot for Alphadogah and finishing that up. All I need is one more shot, some software from Paul/Norman to clean up the audio, and it’ll be time for the next one, whatever that is. Oh, and work tomorrow. As I get more into the filmmaking frame of mind it’s easier and easier to forget I have a regular job. One of the days I’m going to forget to go in to work; it’s only a matter of time. I should prepare a list of excuses beforehand, just in case.

I’m thinking now that I don’t really like the shaved head of the little guy running across my masthead. Perhaps a crudely drawn hat is in order. I’m usually found wearing hats, especially when the weather’s cold, as it is now.

After lunch yesterday I was walking across the intersection of Zhongxiao East and Dunhua South Roads when I noticed a young man holding a poster. The poster read “Lee Ying-yuan (the DPP candidate for Taipei mayor, the election of which is today), promises that within two months of assuming office, he will return to the people all of the fees for traffic infractions levied during (current mayor) Ma Ying-jeou’s four years in office.”

“Where is the money for that going to come from?” I asked the young man, although I knew the answer: taxpayers in general would basically be subsidizing traffic violations committed by rich gangsters in Big Black Benzes. It was not a very subtle attempt at vote-buying. But the man just shook his head.

“I have no idea,” he said. “I was just paid to stand here and hold this sign for a few hours. I work at a gym across the street. Personally, I think Lee’s got a few screws loose.”

I’m so glad the elections are overwith, although Lee’s campaign has provided everyone with plenty to laugh at. His parades of trucks sporting flags on which were written “Ma” which had then been crossed out, points to a general lack of any platform at all, and the only proposal he’s made involves moving the Taipei Airport to Taoyuan, which, if you don’t know, is an entirely different city. I think Lee’s laughable campaign must be part of the DPP’s greater plan to ensure that Ma Ying-jeou remains in office and doesn’t challenge Chen Shui-bian in 2004 for the presidency. I’m fine with that; I think Ma’s done a good job overall, and at least his campaign wasn’t nearly as loud or tacky as Lee’s. Maybe “I can wait ’til 2008” should be Ma’s slogan, but he doesn’t really need one. All you have to do is have lived in Taipei for the past decade or so to see how much things have improved during Ma’s term, although admittedly most foreigners tend to lean towards the DPP for some reason.

Last night was spent cursing at Premiere, which had decided to not let me edit any more. I think it may have something to do with Quicktime, but I’m not sure exactly what’s wrong. Eventually I was called away by Dean, which was just as well as I was losing my voice from yelling at the computer, and another DPP rally was firing up outside my window. We met up at My Other Place and then went to the 70’s Airport Love Palace to have a few drinks and pizza with Graham et al.

I put up a few pictures I took on Wednesday, adding them to the last entry. I also heeded Mindcrime’s advice and updated my little banner up top, in case you hadn’t noticed. I also put up a new video clip. This one depicts trying to make it through the underground exchange from the Ban-nan MRT line over to the Danshui-Xindian line. 3.2 megs of utter chaos.

The air yesterday was full of smoke, probably from burning rice fields. I couldn’t even see the mountains from my window, as I usually can. I took the MRT up to Beitou Station, walked underneath the elevated tracks up to the sign of the Two Hats in a Truck, whereupon I headed up the trail towards Miantian Mountain. On the way I passed an old sign pointing the way to Guo-an Buddhist Temple, so I turned left and walked up to take a look.

The temple looks very old, likely over a hundred years, and is made of stone. It might have been abandoned at one point, but it appears that very cheerful Buddhist volunteers are in the process of completely rennovating it, building wooden pavilions and new concrete steps around it. I followed a path behind the temple until it ran into the road again, just at the entrance to a gated community, the “White House Villas”. A foreign woman sat in front of the gatehouse reading an English-language newspaper. I sat on the road barrier and drank some water. Every so often a shuttle bus would drive up, and one of them produced a little foreign boy, apparently the one the woman had been waiting for. The security signs at the gate were all in English. It all looked rather desolate, located halfway up the mountain as it was, and I wondered what kind of isolated existance the people there led. The houses were quite nice, but the lack of people would take some getting used to, I’d think.

I continued up the mountain a ways and then came back down on another road, this one leading past more little communities of very nice houses, some with very nice cars parked in front, although I didn’t see a soul. Once, as I was taking another hiking path, I came across an abandoned traditional Taiwanese homestead. The roof of the place was gone, but it looked as if it was quite nice at one point. An empty ornamental pond gaped underneath the shadow of a dead tree. I uprooted all of the standing water containers lying around what was left of the front yard in the hope that I could prevent a small fraction of mosquito births, and in the process created a nice little torrant as the water spilled off the patio and down into the neighboring bamboo grove.

I was making my way to the Fuxinggang MRT station, which meant I had to walk through more crowded areas, seemingly full of kindergartens, as the sun began to set. At one point I passed the Beitou Tianbao Temple. Since the Wuji Tianbao Temple out past the trade center is one of my favorite temples, I decided to go have a look.

With the exception of backing onto a mountain, this Tianbao Temple was nothing like the other one. I walked into the courtyard and was immediately stared at by two groups of people on their knees at both of the side doors. The sound of shouting and incoherent cursing came from within. It sounded like they were in the middle of a divination of some kind, so I cancelled my plans for a bit of rest and water on the temple terrace and continued on my way, passing an interesting woodshop along the way. Hordes of Political Warfare College students were marching down a mountain road as I approached Zhongyang Road, section 3, past which the MRT station lay. The students were dressed in white, with the college badge embroidered on the front, and they seemed very happy and carefree, totally unlike most of the political warfare officers I encountered when I was in the army.

My feet and legs were quite sore from all the hiking by the time I reached the Arts Center for my sword lesson. I learned quite a bit of new moves this time, even though one of the other students, a woman who was obviously more advance than I, kept complaining that I sucked. I know I suck, that’s why I’m here, I wanted to tell her, but I held back and just ignored her. I also spent a lot of time wrestling with Plasticman, who gave me some good Tuishou instruction as well. But after a couple of hours of that, I was ready for bed. I couldn’t rest just yet, however, since Alien was having a party at Q-bar to celebrate her 40th birthday.

Everyone was there, Sandman, Maoman, Maurice, Alita, Rowan, a lot of folks I knew vaguely and many others I didn’t know at all. I didn’t touch the food or drink, as I had a rather bad time the last time I did that, and even if one had nothing to do with the other, and even if I probably built up some immunity to Typhoid, I’d rather just play it safe. We talked until the wee hours of the morning, but the attraction of a shower and bed grew strong enough to outweigh the attraction of staying any longer, so I bade everyone farewell and came home.

I should have done work yesterday instead of galavanting around in the mountains. I should have done some work for the book, editing, all of that. At least I got out, something I was feeling the need for, and you got a bit of a story out of it as well, so I suppose it wasn’t a total loss.

Temple cat, teeeeemple cat….I was walking down Civic Blvd yesterday when I saw this cat nestled comfortably underneath one of the dragons that guard the entrance to the Fu-cheng Temple (that might not be the actual name: I didn’t take notes). Temple-guarding dragons are, by the way if you didn’t know, er, anatomically correct, a female on the left and a male on the right. The cat looked quite smug as it dozed under the male dragon.

Later, as I walked past a couple of drivers watching their owners’ Big Black Benzes outside a swanky Chinese restaurant near the Ren-ai/Dun-hua traffic circle, I heard one of them say to the other, “Yeah, a prostitute’s gotta be more than just tall, you have to be able to, you know, look at her!” He was making the International Sign for Breasts as he said this.

I continued on, since it was such a nice day, and tried to have lunch at United Mix, but the out-door dining experience was somewhat ruined by the construction going on across the alley, and the indoor experience wasn’t much better, with slow service and cold food. The smoothie was good, though.

I showed my rough edit of Alphadogah to Mindcrime and Dean last night, and they admitted it wasn’t too bad, though it still needs work. My main obstacle at the moment is getting the effects to stick. I can assign effects to clips, but they just go back to the way they were before I added them. I also need to figure out a way, via Premiere if possible but most likely from third-party software, to try and clean up the audio, to bring out the voices more and supress the background noise if I can. The quality of the Adobe help and tutorial programs is horrible. It’s all horribly vague when you need specifics and horribly specific when you don’t need details. To wit: “To edit a clip: First, edit the clip. Next, select what you want to do with it by moving your mouse to the “select button and pressing down on the left button of the mouse with moderate to high pressure. If you are left-handed…”

I’ve got a couple of songs by Wu Bai in my mind for the music, and some other effects could prove useful as well. Then I’ll slap some credits on, burn it to disc, and start another, hopefully better project. Today looks ripe for an excursion, and I have sword practice again tonight.

This morning on IM:

Poagao: http://esotericrabbit.blogspot.com/#intro

Poagao: Australian Filmmaking Prodigy Writes Blog

Poagao: He uses words like “Swellegant”

Mindcrime: loverly

Mindcrime: at least he doesn’t whine about his apartment 😛

Poagao: touche

MC’s got a point; I’ll just whine about filmmaking then: Last night I wrangled a rough edit of the short we’ve been working on from Premiere before going to bed at 2 a.m. The original title, 5 Minutes in Taipei is already out, as the entire short is less than four minutes long, so the tentative title at this point is Alphadogah*. I really enjoyed editing once I got the basic hang of it. Sure beats working on a Steenbeck table with knife and tape.

Some of the footage we shot later in the day has a different cast to it, and the audio seems to change as the day progresses as well. Tired actors, no doubt. (Note to self: Next time, buy coffee for actors towards end of shoot.) My previously wicked camera skillz are inexcusably rusty, and my unfamiliarity with the machine really shows. I was even zooming at some points, fer cryin’ out tears. Still, I think it’s workable and even mildly entertaining so far. My next Big Purchase shall have to be real audio equipment, a directional mic, casing and boom, although I might be able to borrow the boom.

The performances I got from Maurice and Leta on Saturday were great and really mix well with Dean‘s naturalistic slick-haired swagger and Maoman‘s portrayal of an inept newbie. I’ll have to start delving into Premiere’s bells and whistles now that I’ve got the basic editing stuff down (I think). I also need one final shot involving an alien from Episode IV, music and credits, and I’ll be set to start the next short, whatever that may be. I’m thinking something perhaps a bit more serious this time around. Something worth lugging a tripod around for every shot, with 16:9 shots worth lighting properly, etc. My perpetual goal is, of course, to do something that doesn’t suck quite as badly as the last thing I did. It sounds modest, but believe me, not sucking isn’t nearly as easy as it sounds.

*Al-pha-do-gah (ael’fe do’gaa) n. 1. The dominant foreigner or non-Chinese person within any given group of foreigners in Taiwan.

[via Latin from Greek, of Phoenician origin; related to Hebrew aleph, literally: ox and Fukienese term “Ah-do-gah” literally: protruding nose]