I arrived a bit early at The Bones. It was still l…
I arrived a bit early at The Bones. It was still light out, so I walked around the neighborhood a bit. It’s located in the Minsheng Community, where I used to live in an apartment with an insane woman as my landlady. The insane landlady makes the Vampires look like Martha Stewart wannabes. I had recently screwed up my knee in a Wushu accident and was on crutches, and therefore unable to descend stairs, so I had friends bringing me food to eat. Insane Landlady didn’t like all of this company, and threw me out on the 2nd of the month, just after she got that month’s rent from me. I was out of a job due to my injury, couldn’t walk, and she threw me out. That night I called every friend I knew in North America and caught up with all of them over the course of several hours.
The neighborhood hasn’t changed much since then. The trees along Minsheng E. Road are a lot bigger, but that’s about it. The alleyways to the north are still dark and mysterious, mostly old residential buildings lining narrow streets. Very nice. Chen Shui-bian used to live in that area, I think.
At 7:30 I couldn’t put it off any longer, so I went inside the restaurant and was directed to a raised platform area at the back of the restaurant where a few people had gathered. I looked around and was surprised that that was the venue, just an empty back room with a few chairs along the walls. It felt strange, like being confined to a hallway. More people arrived, including some I knew, but I felt awkward the whole time. After taking a couple of pictures for possible entry to the Mirror Project, I decided to have dinner in the restaurant proper along with Berta and Maoman, who showed up fashionably late, and Cranky Laowai, who was even more fashionable in his lateness. It was fun, though. I’m not good at mingling in pools of fashionable people, but I do like sitting down with some friends and just chatting over food and drink. Later one Berta introduced me to Alex, who is from Panama. Alex claimed to be a poor student, but his suave dinner jacket, yellow waistcoat, gold ring and necklace as well as his well-oiled, slicked back hair indicated a more affluent, or at least more interesting background.
I should have gone directly to bed last night, but instead I got online and chatted a bit, mostly venting about my job. Work today wasn’t a thrill, either. I turned in my passport. Yes, I’ve decided that, since they’re going to charge me not to go to Bali, I might as well go, and just hope that I get there and back in one piece. One live, sentient piece would be even better. But sitting in the office, looking at the sunny pictures of the resort where we’re supposedly going to stay just made me ache to go, so I thought, fuck it. I’ll go. It’s not the best argument in the world, and probably wouldn’t hold up very well in court, but it works for me.
I met Tim, from the English Digest Magazine, after work today. We walked over to the studio and chatted on the way. Tim is from Toronto, although he was born in Taiwan. He’s rather shy, but funny. At the studio, which he had a bit of trouble finding as he doesn’t go there often, he put on a sample of the simple English-teaching program for me to hear. It sounded like the guy had just drunk a bottle of Lysol mixed with Coke. He was practically delirious. I told Tim I could never, ever, muster that kind of enthusiasm, but he said it was ok, I could just talk normally. It went pretty smoothly, actually. Afterwards Tim’s company treated me to dinner at Grandma Nitti’s, and I ran into Fish, whom I haven’t seen in a long time. Fish is headed back to Vancouver in a couple of months.
Mindcrime might be coming up tomorrow afternoon. I plan to spend the morning being horizontal. I rained all day today, which should help the drought situation, but it will probably be sunny tomorrow. What we really need is a good, Nari-like typhoon, hopefully without the casualties this time, though.
