I received the quickest rejection yet last night. …
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.
