What a weekend. I got little of what I had origina…
What a weekend. I got little of what I had originally planned to do done, but I managed to do quite a lot that I hadn’t planned at all. All I can do as I sit here in the wee hours of Monday morning is wonder at it all. I feel like I’ve changed the sheets on my life.
The weather on Saturday was perfect. It simply doesn’t get any better in Taipei than it was on Saturday. Fresh, clear, just the right temperature. I enjoyed it from my room as I fiddled around online and chatted with the bwg, but I couldn’t stand not being out in it, so I called up Kirk around 3 and we decided to go out to one of the teahouses in Maokong, which is out in in Mucha. We took the MRT to the Wanfang Community Station and then caught a cab up to the Maokong valley. For some reason, the cabbie dropped us off at the foot of the valley, so we walked up. And up, and up, until we found a suitable place, pitched rather precariously in a Swiss Family Robinson-style over the stream running down the middle of the valley. The waitress offered us some free cake and we sat out on the balcony over the stream and wondered aloud to each other what it would be like to live in such a place all year round. It was quite pleasant during the day, but after the sun set it got a bit chilly. We didn’t relish the thought of walking all the way back down, so we asked the owner if she could call us a cab.
“No problem,” she said. “I’ll just ask one of my girls to drive you down.” We were then taken on a harrowing dash back down the mountain in the dark by a surprisingly cheerful young lady who thought nothing of passing the other cars on blind curves at breathtaking speeds. We managed to reach the Zoo Station in one piece, though. They’ve built a mini-mall there, and so we wandered through, pausing of course to consider buying some Play-doh at the Toys-R-Us store, before taking the MRT back to the city.
Kirk wanted to go to the Taiwan Bear Club, so we wandered around looking for Tianjin Street for a while before finding the place, which is a traditional Taiwanese bar whose patrons are mostly heavy-set types with crew cuts, rugby shirts and backwards baseball caps. The host paid quite a bit of attention to Kirk, whose strong verbal skills were put to the test in deflecting the former’s advances. Both Kirk and I were hopelessly outclassed in the bear category, though, as we simply aren’t large enough. Ironically, the dance floor was so tiny that only a handful of largish men could dance at one time. You’d think they’d think of things like that when they design such a venue.
Sho called at around 1am or so and invited me over to his friends’ place near Youth Park for a midnight snack. I took a taxi over there, but somehow we ended up at my place. I won’t go into details, though. You’re just going to have to use your imagination. Let it suffice to say that things are moving along.
Sunday was spent mostly at home, and then at one of Sho’s friends’ birthday party over at the Youth Park apartment, which is on the first floor of one of the huge public housing units over there. Sho said he might move in to one of the rooms there, since one of them is moving out. The place was sparsely decorated, which was just as well as over 20 guys showed up. Sho was in the kitchen cooking Three-cup Chicken and seafood fried rice. We watched a pirated VCD version of Amelie and then played lude card games over dinner and cake. It was quite fun, but I was quite tired by 11, so I just went home and crashed. Too tired to think of a witty ending at the moment, so you’re going to have to think of one on your own.
