I spent most of yesterday trying to finish the edi…
I spent most of yesterday trying to finish the editing and sound work for Alphadogah. It’s not that big or difficult a project, but I wasted a lot of time just getting familiar with the workings of Adobe Premiere as well as Cool Edit Pro as I tried to clean up the sound and add music and titles. I think it’s pretty much done, however. It’s silly but fun. At one point my landlord came over to collect this month’s rent. There was, of course, yet another loud activity going on downstairs, and when he entered my room he said “Jeez, that’s loud. I never knew it was that loud here!” He went on to apologize for not warning me about the more-or-less constant cacophony and even told me that if I wanted to move out sometime after Chinese New Year he wouldn’t withold my deposit. His reasoning fpr the timing is that it’s considered bad luck to move house before or during Chinese New Year, and there would be a lot more places available then. In any case, it’s nice of him to make the offer. I don’t know what I’m going to do about the noise just yet, but it’s good to know that I could theoretically become known as “Poagao, Man of 1,000 Recent Apartments”.
The weather yesterday was cold and drizzly, good for staying home if your home isn’t being bombarded by aboriginal dance music interspersed by the haranging of vendors. It was so loud I had to turn my stereo up to 3/4 full volume, which is way too loud. The activity wrapped up in the evening and I went to rent a movie after dinner. I was just getting into it when Kirk called. He wanted to go out, and gave me a choice of The Source, Fresh, or the Taiwan Bear Club. I choose the latter even though I didn’t feel like going out (Kirk can be very persuasive, and he also wanted to make up for not joining us for the Christmas party). The Source is mostly empty these days, and I am usually not in the mood for the kind of crowd that hangs out at Fresh. Funky’s another alternative, it’s been around forever but remains relevant, but Kirk doesn’t like it there.
He was late, of course, so I was left milling awkwardly about outside the entrance, a one-man shiftless crowd. When he did show up he gave me a small red plastic bear for my birthday. “Not to seem unappreciative,” I said as I examined the gift, “but it has no eyes, or mouth even.”
“That’s what makes it so cute,” he explained.
“Ah.”
We then proceeded down into the basement-level bar. It was crowded and we had to take a table underneath one of the massive Karaoke speakers. This made conversation difficult and relegated us to sitting, drinking and watching the other parties, most of which consisted of at least five guys sitting around yelling at each other and playing drinking games. The greeters generally avoided us, coming over and sharing a hesitant beer now and then, but never engaging either of us in conversation. Kirk told me about school (he is graduating night school in May even though he’s only a year or so younger than I) and a possible new romance, and I told him that I should have dragged Dean and Mindcrime along in revenge for their inflicting the Hooters Stick-figure Experience on me, not once but several times. Oh well, I thought, there’s always next time. But when it came time to leave, we found to our dismay that the prices had gone up by a third, to almost NT$500 a person, so I doubt I’ll be going back there any time soon. I’ll just drag them to Funky instead. I prefer the Taiwan Bear Club mainly because it’s more purely Taiwanese than any of the other places, and also because you tend to get just normal guys hanging out there. But $500 is just ridiculous.
The noise downstairs continues even as I write this; I’m countering it with a surprisingly good Russian radio station that is doing a splendid job of reminding me exactly how much of that language I’ve forgotten. Right now I’m busy trying to digest a massive amount of Cream of Wheat. I haven’t eaten the real kind, the kind you actually cook instead of just pour hot water into, since I was a kid. Thus I misjudged the amount you’re supposed to put into the boiling water, producing roughly enough to feed a small government agency. I didn’t want to waste it, though; I forced myself to eat it all, so you’ll have to excuse me while I go lie down for a bit. It is verily a nice day, however, and I might take my recently purchased Fellowship of the Ring Extended Version DVD over to Dean’s to watch later.
