I got to the ICRT studios this morning at about 9, and Rick Monday was still bustling around with the controls as Bill Thissen read the news next door. Apparently Bill gets up really early to prepare the news and then stays on to exchange banter with Rick throughout his show between news and traffic reports. I sat down and waited for my cue while the morning show started up and various announcements were read through. My part didn’t start until after 9:30 or so, and I wasn’t quite prepared for the first question, i.e., how I ended up in the Taiwanese army, even though I’d been given fair warning. There was also something wrong with my microphone settings, as my voice wasn’t loud enough. After I relaxed a bit everything went quite well. Bill brought in some tea and coffee from downstairs, and then he sat in on parts of the interview. Occasionally we’d go to music and just chat among ourselves. Even though I’d left a message on forumosa.com for people to call in and harass me, nobody did. Instead we got a handful of curious emails. Rick really pushed the English-language publishing angle, and I hope it bears fruit of some kind. All in all I enjoyed myself, and the three hours went really quickly. It’s not a bad gig they have there.

After lunch I went home and, on a whim, called Sho, who had called me out of the blue a few days ago to ask if I wanted to go out for drinks some time. It turns out he’s filling in for a friend at a small clothing store just a few doors down from where I live, so I went over to give him a copy of my book. We chatted for a while and then went to the Rose coffee shop, an upscale pseudo-English tearoom. I’d never been in one of those store before, as they look really expensive, with faux ivory columns, red carpets, leather chairs, etc. In fact, it wouldn’t be too bad for the extra scene we’ve been thinking about putting in to the Lady X film now that it’s a two-parter. Hmm.

It turned out it wasn’t all that expensive, though. Sho was wearing a white wife-beater, which rather stood out among the well-dressed patrons. It didn’t help when he started talking about his experiences doing strip shows in Japan and how guys would write their phone numbers on the money they threw at him. At one point in the conversation I looked around and realized we’d apparently scared everyone away; the place was completely empty. We had a good chat, though. “Surely you have a stage name,” I said at one point. “They don’t just call you ‘Sho the Male Stripper’ do they?” He said no and told me his stage name, which I don’t recall exactly except it has three characters, two of which are gang (‘steel’) and pao (‘bubble’ or ‘to copulate’, I’m not sure which).

I really should go to sword practice tonight, as I’ve missed several classes already, but I’m still feeling rather tired these days. I also really need to do my laundry before I have to go to the laundromat wearing a paper bag.

It’s cloudy and cool outside, totally unlike a summer day in a tropical clime. Spring is usually this wierd here, but it also usually evens out into hot summer days by the end of May. Not this year. It’s still jacket weather here, even though it’s almost June. It’s not helping my current sore throat either. I went to the clinic next to my office yesterday after work to have it looked at. I figured it was reasonably safe as it’s almost always deserted, and the staff were wearing face shields. The doctor told me my throat was infected and gave me some medicine to make me loopy enough to not care about being sick. As I never had a fever, he said, it wasn’t SARS. That’s good to know, but I’ll be glad when this is all overwith. The doctor told me that Adventist Hospital was refusing patients with SARS-like symptoms.

My boss at the library job called me into the office yesterday. I knew it was bad news, of course. They’re “restructuring” and this of course means they’re going to have to let me go after another couple of weeks. He was very sorry and said he would try to get me re-hired, but I’m certainly not going to count on it. While I hate to lose the extra income, something tells me it’s going to be a moot point soon. Perhaps change is afoot, or perhaps deep down I just want it to be. I was reading my old journal entries from my trip to Australia in October/November 2001. Good times, those, so different from my life these days. I need another trip, or even a move. Perhaps after the movie is done I will begin making plans in that direction.

My taxes are due by the end of the month as well; need to get that done. I hate having to fill out the little form, but at least I’ll probably end up paying less in taxes this year as I didn’t make as much last year as I did in past years. I had my palm read one time and, while I’m supposed to live a long, long time, I will also never make a lot of money. So far it’s held up.

Tomorrow morning I’m supposed to be on the Rick Monday show on ICRT, from 9 to 12. I have no idea what this involves, really, since my radio antenna doesn’t work any more, but it should be interesting.

Malibu, a bar in the area of Taipei traditionally known as “The Combat Zone” from its reputation as the red-light district during the Vietnam war, was supposed to be nearly deserted on Saturday afternoon. Except for the mandatory reservation made for Mr. Murphy, who invited a dozen of his closest friends to have a small random party the very day we had scheduled for filming. We managed to get everything done by interrupting people and sometimes even moving patrons around for various shots. It was a bit nerve-wracking. One of said patrons was a bald American guy with a southern accent who insisted we shoot Dean. “Do you need someone who can fall on his head and be ok?” he kept saying. “Like, several times? Because I can you know.” We assured him we didn’t need such an individual at the moment but would contact him the moment we needed someone to fall on their head and be ok.

I woke up early this morning and drew the curtains only to be greeted with a view of rain. So much for the shoot. I called Maurice and cancelled. I’ve been feeling really tired lately and could use the rest. I went out for drinks at Hooters again with Mindcrime and Dean, and then out for a sandwich at a nearby IS Coffee with Harry and James later. Tomorrow I’m afraid I have to return to the Wonderful World of Work. I do wish that the weather would make up its mind about it being summer or not.

Just got back from filming the fight scene in an alley over on North Tihua St. Everything went very well, and the original lighting was so nice that all we needed was reflectors, provided helpfully by Da Shan and his assistant, to redirect the light from the streetlamp. The choreography worked quite well, and Shirzi was on hand to let Dean and Dolly know if they were doing anything untoward with his fight plans. Maurice operated the boom mic and helped operate various gadgets. Of course we gained a small audience of onlookers in the empty field next door, but everyone was friendly, especially the occasional scooter or pedestrian wanting to pass through the alley.

Unfortunately, it looks like rain on Sunday, when we planned to re-shoot some of the scenes from the car chase that didn’t quite work out. We might have to bump that down a week. Our next shoot is Saturday afternoon in the Zone. It’s an important scene; I hope it goes well. I’ve been feeling a bit tired lately, with a but of an irritable throat. No fever, though, so whatever it is, it’s not SARS. I took today off work though, just to rest up. After five hours of filming, though, I feel fine, even better than I did before we started. It’s nice to be able to concentrate on that and not think about anything else. Also, I’ve got a great crew, everyone there’s fun to work with.

We just got word from the Lady X executive producers that they want us to make ours a two-part episode, since a couple of people have pulled out. This shouldn’t be a problem I think; in fact, I know just where to cut it. With a little creative editing, it should work fine. I could even add a “Last week…on Lady X: Renegade Province (our tentative title until we think of something better).”

I saw Berta today for the first time in a long while. I dropped by her ritzy office near Warner Village to borrow her Walltigers CD. She’s off to the States soon to attend her brother’s graduation. Sounds nice; I could use a vacation myself. Got to get this movie done first, though.

I did the interview on the “Adam Club” radio show today. I tried not to rant too much, and I think it went a bit better than the last one. During the interview the host asked me what my plans for the future were. A few months ago I would have said I was definitely going to stay in Taiwan, but now? I have no idea. The deplorable state of affairs resulting from the government and general incompetence has forced me to start thinking about perhaps moving to another country at some point in the future. Back before the huge outbreaks, I was cursing the quarantine breakers, just because I knew this was going to happen as a result. And now there’s not much they can do. They had many chances to stop it, many more chances than other countries had, but even today the government can’t do anything but piss and moan about not getting into WHO. It’s just a political game to them; it’s as if they don’t even care that people are dying because they refused to take any concrete steps to enforce quarantines and upgrade hospital standards. Even now they’re continuing to do nothing, so who knows what’s going to happen in the future? It’s criminal negligence, pure and simple, but on a national scale.

Afterwards I went out to get a mirror for our bar shoot this weekend. Tomorrow night we’re doing the fight scene, hopefully. Things are deteriorating so fast I hope we can get everything done by this weekend. A SARS case was discovered in the GIO complex where Dean works, so he’s going to take the next couple of days off. I plan to ask my bosses if I can telecommute, and if they say no…I dunno. Perhaps take a leave of absence or something.

I took my computer down to T-zone last night and got a new power rig put in as the old one was broken. It took long enough, and since I tried to defragment my almost-full hard drive everything’s slowed down. At least it works now, after a fashion. I just hope it keeps working. I hope everything keeps working.

After I got home last night, all ready to whip up a panlet or omcake, depending on how much Bisquick spilled into the bowl of eggs, I hit the on switch on my computer and went over to pick out a DVD for dinner-watching duty. Then I realized that my computer wasn’t doing anything. All of the peripheral stuff, my scanner, printer, monitor, etc., were on and working, but my computer gave no sign. Cursing, I opened up the beige box and checked the wires, but nothing seemed amiss. Yet still no response. Nice timing, huh? Now I’m going to have to take it to the shop and hope it’s nothing major. I really can’t afford a new computer right now.

Not that there’s much to report at the moment anyway. The SARS situation is worsening, but anyone could see that that was going to happen; anyone except for the government that is. They’re still locked in meetings, whining about not getting into WHO and adamantly refusing to do one single thing to help the situation. “Because we didn’t have those kinds of data and procedures from the WHO, that is the reason why we had the hospital outbreak a few weeks ago,” Joseph Wu, Taiwan Presidential Advisor, said, lying through his teeth. What a fucking idiot. The hospital outbreaks were due to incompetence and negligence and had nothing to do with our being part of WHO or not. Taiwan might as well be an anarchy for all practical purposes. “Taiwanarchy” was one name I saw suggested on Forumosa this morning.

We’re going to try and transfer the rest of the footage tonight to Mindcrime’s Powerbook, which has just survived a nasty coffee-spillage. With luck all of the principal photography can be done by the end of this week. After that, I won’t need to rely on getting shots and coordinating people so much; I’ll have the raw material to cut into a film. And, provided I have a computer to work with, I could do that from my room, downtown Edinburgh or Western Australia if need be.

Dean, Mindcrime and I had lunch at the Ever-so-manly Shannon this afternoon. I don’t know what we were thinking; lunch at the Shannon is iffy at best. Coincidentally, Maoman and V were having lunch next door at Dan Ryan’s, which is probably a much better choice. Predictably our chicken sandwiches took forever to arrive, and when they did they were cold and served on burnt baguettes that required several hundred foot-pounds of pressure to break apart much less eat. I complained to the manager, who was not only dressed as a civilian and carrying a purse, but who walked with a distinct limp as well, and she returned my money. I’m glad she didn’t argue the point, because I would have had to give her The Glare. Or perhaps I already did. I can never tell.

After hearing Mindcrime bash The Matrix Reloaded all weekend, I decided to go see it this morning. I thought that an earlier showing would be better to escape the idiots with cell phones, but I discovered instead that idiots will talk on their cellphones no matter what showing you go to. As an added bonus, there was even a couple making out a few rows back from me, and periodically I’d hear loud sucking sounds coming from their seats, though they themselves weren’t visible. Between the smulching sounds and Cellphone Guy I was distracted from parts of the movie.

Still, it wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t as good as the first one, but then that would be hard to do, since the Wachowskis can’t really repeat the discoveries made in the first film over and over again. I suspect that the second movie would have been better if the first one hadn’t made such a big fuss and given the sequels so much pretention to live up to. I think the filmmakers incorrectly identified the major attractions of the first film, and plugged the second with factors that were merely sugar-coating in the first, without the actual substance behind that coating, which was what made it a good movie. Things like the fight scenes, the flying around, the multiple taking-off and putting-on of various characters’ sunglasses, etc. got really old after the first hundred times. The wire/CG-fu looked fake and unimpressive because it was obvious that the actors weren’t doing these things at all, much less under their own power, which was what made old Hong Kong Kung-fu flicks so impressive. The attempts at “deep” philosophy felt like they were inserted at the last minute, the whole “I love swearing in French” thing was unnecessary, and the writing felt like it was written the night before shooting. It’s hard to believe that it took them four years to make this movie, and nobody ever noticed any of these problems. I suppose they were too busy planning the pre-war rave in Zion. Sheesh.

The ending was abrupt of course, in the unresolved way Back to the Future II was, so I guess I need to hold judgement until I’ve seen the third movie. Still, in spite of the drawbacks, parts of the movie were quite good. The mere sound of the lucious Ducati motorcycle engine was wonderful, and I’m all about car chases no matter what movie they’re in as long as they’re reasonably well done. I can also forgive their not including Tank from the first movie after seeing his fine-ass replacement Link, whom I look forward to seeing more of in the next movie.

The weather today is nice, sunny and hot of course, now that our shooting schedule is sufficiently screwed up. I just hope it holds. We’re aiming for Thursday night, which should be long enough for most of the bruises from rehearsal to heal, but hopefully not so long that everyone’s forgotten their moves. Well, Shirzi will be on hand to, ah….remind them. With a pointy stick! Mwahaha.

They passed out forms at work today. Basically it’s a list of questions asking if you have SARS, and there’s a box to check “Yes” and “No”. This must be part of the government’s “Get Tough on SARS” campaign. Brilliant! Of course everyone is going to check “No”. They also handed out packages of cheap masks, which will work much better than Beijing’s strategy of actually trying to deal with the disease. Now we all have great confidence in the Taiwan government!

Not.

我們為了我們最近在拍的短片做了一張的動作廣告. 歡迎自取在

In an effort to do something productive with his time since tonight’s shoot was cancelled due to rain, Dean has come up with a new banner for our episode of the Lady X series. Feel free to use it.

I’ve been fooling around with the boundaries separating pancakes and omlets, heretical though this may seem. It all came about after I became tired of plain omlets and was wondering what to do with this huge box of Bisquick I bought a while ago. The instructions claimed I could make 742 pancakes with two eggs, but it didn’t say what fraction of an egg I could use to make a more reasonable amount, so I’ve been testing random ratios of Bisquick and Egg and have so far come out with several varieties of what I call either “panlets” or “omcakes” that actually aren’t bad when you put enough cheese and spaghetti sauce on them. Then again, you could say much the same thing about a boiled mop.

Of course SARS is continuing to spread in Taiwan, despite the change in the government facade of leadership. How could it not? Taiwan is basically an anarchy, with no viable government, very little infrastructure, and a population full of amoral individuals who not only have no concept of civic pride, but also lack any kind of reasoning ability or empathy for anyone but themselves. On Mother’s Day, when we were filming the car chase, thousands of people, including it seems many infected people who should have been in quarantine, traveled around the islands to see and infect their families. How thoughtful! All the government has done to date is argue about who should resign over the mess instead of actually trying to take care of it. The measures other countries have taken are largely working to contain the epidemic, but in a place like Taiwan/China, government ineptitude, lack of any social infrastructure and general incompetence are working together to make sure SARS keeps spreading here. For example, many private businesses are giving their employees the option of working at home and telecommuting. As I work for the government, where the rules and lack of flexibility mean no such option is allowed, even if it’s not only plausible but much safer. The hospitals here work just like the government, so you can see why all of their so-called “measures” are implemented in a half-ass way if at all.

We all knew this about Taiwan, of course. I imagine for many people the prospect of a working anarchy was one of the reasons they came here. I can’t say I’m surprised at the recent developments, just intensely disappointed; not only in Taiwan but in myself for thinking Taiwan could rise to meet such a challenge.

It’s still raining outside, so I called off the shoot tonight. I really wanted to get it overwith, and now everyone’s going to have a week to forget all the stuff they learned last night before we can shoot again. It sucks, but there’s no controlling the weather. And it would probably be better for the actors to let their bruises heal before they have to do it again and again for the camera. I would really like to get all the footage in the can as soon as possibly so that, in the event of a island- or city-wide stoppage I can just stay in and edit everything. After that, who knows?