I got stood up by a real estate agent yesterday at noon. I took my lunch break between jobs to go down to Xindian and look at a place. The agent said to meet him at 12:30. In fact, I had already seen the place the night before, since I had been in the area after a meeting with Tall Paul and Darrell with the commercial clients. By coincidence, when I found the place the owner and her son were inside, awaiting another potential tenant. The other guy was a foreigner, so they naturally thought I was him. I went in and looked around, but was disappointed to find that they had gotten rid of both the front and rear balconies to create more interior space. As is usual in these older apartments, the kitchen was a bizarre mix of old layout covered with new surfaces.

Eventually the other guy showed up and I had to explain my presence there. I didn’t particularly like the place anyway, though the price was ok. I still wanted to see it during daylight, so I planned to keep the original appointment with the agent. He never showed, though, so screw it.

Last night I got a call from another agent, who said he’d found the perfect place for me. Yeah, sure, I thought, but nonetheless I went down again to have a look. Surprisingly enough, the place he showed me is quite nice, and I’m thinking of taking it. More on this later, when various issues have been decided. I’m not in a hurry to move, particularly during Ghost Month, which kicked off yesterday.

我上禮拜租了一台250cc 種行機車, 騎了一整天, 結果好爽真的想買一台. 但是要買的話要二十幾萬元. 還是先買攝影器材吧.

昨天一整天都在新店找房子. 走路走了好幾公里, 到處留名片. 有看到一些滿不錯的公寓, 但是樓層高了點就是. 不曉得台北市中心會不會有一樣便宜的房子. 可能嗎. 每一位房東講完電話, 約初來後,看到我本人就會嚇到,

I’m filling in at my old company for a couple of weeks, starting today. It was fun to be back in the old office, though I’m on a different, relatively Vampire-free floor now. They’re still using Windows 98 on tiny monitors, and Lotus Notes is still the old, crashy version, but it’s only temporary so I don’t mind too much. Lot of people I knew from before have left, but there are still some familiar faces here and there. As I was walking past the half-finished Taipei101 mall on my way to the MRT station afterwards I realized that the area is looking more and more like a slice of a typical US city these days.

The shoot on Saturday went pretty well. Basic stuff, but fun to do as we’re all friends. I got to see Darrell’s new digs, which are really nice, right along the riverside park. He said I could move into his old place, and I’m considering it, but of course this has prompted an intense reconnoitering of the local rental market over the last couple of days. I’ve come across a few nice apartments as well as some awful ones. It’s funny how blatant some of the agents can be. We’d be standing in an apartment that is literally shaking with traffic noise, and the agent would say something like “Don’t you love how quiet it is?”

Another interesting thing is the widespread belief that single people don’t need entire apartments. Everyone says “Oh, you want just a single room, right?” However, I’ve switched my focus this time from single rooms, which tend to come furnished and with trash disposal services and guards at the main doorway, to looking for entire apartments in older buildings. Oftentimes when I call up someone asking about an apartment with 2 or 3 rooms, they ask how many people would be living there. When I tell them it’s just me, they tend to say it’s ‘not suitable’. So far I haven’t had anyone turn me down upon seeing me in person and discovering that I’m not ethnically Chinese, which is good. Looking for a place is far easier with a mobile phone, but it still takes a lot of walking, especially as many people simply rent places out themselves without bothering with a realtor. Still, it’s a good opportunity to come across neat little areas of town I’ve never come across before.

The Chinese journal is back up thanks to Wayne’s help in the comments section. Now if I could only get the Chinese journal archives working…

The Lady X Wrap Party went well. People arrived in waves, necessitating multiple viewings of the VCD Dean made for everyone. He did a really impressive job on the jacket design. We sat around a munched on things and talked smack about the other episodes until it was time to catch the last train home. I really need to get the DVD version done soon.

Wednesday was looking like the day Typhoon Imbudo would choose to screw up our weather, so I decided to change my plans and rent the Hornet on Monday instead. I made a few calls and cleared my schedule before riding down to the rental place. There I had to sign several forms to sign saying that if I damaged the bike, not only would I have to pay for repairs, but I’d have to pay rent for all the time it was out of commission. It was 10:30 before I set off north on the silver motorcycle. My first impression was that it was surprisingly easy to maneuver through traffic. Once I got the hang of the greater weight it was easier and more confidence inspiring than the bike I ride every day. It still didn’t seem all that much more powerful than what I was used to.

Traffic seemed interminable due to the heat and one red light after another. It was a relief to finally pass through the tunnel to Zhishan Road near the movie village. The Hornet appreciated the legroom as well, and although the twisty bits required some shifting, it was by no means a struggle to get to the top of the mountain range separating the Taipei basin from the coastal areas of Wanli and Yehliu. It was cooler up in the mountains as well. I stopped several times to rest (and take pictures) as I wasn’t used to the heavy clutch or seating position of the bike. There was hardly anyone on the road, and I didn’t see much traffic until I hit the coast and turned northwest to proceed up around the top end of the island. The roads that run along the coast are straight and wide, so I opened up the bike to see what it could do.

It can do a lot. From a standing start, the bike can reach crazy speeds before you can say holy sh-, and the engine sounds wonderful as it goes about its job of launching you into orbit, reving happily right up to (and occasionally even through) the 15,000rpm redline. The huge tires, especially in the monoshock-equipped rear, provide exceptional stability at speed, and wafting along the highway at over 120kph is a rock-solid experience, no shudders, no squeaks, no clanks, no fuss. It was exilerating.

It was also too fast. I found myself at a seafood restaurant near the famous and touristy Underground Temple Full of Musty Statues within a matter of minutes. Half an hour later I was parked on the dock at Tamshui. I had expected the trip to take all day, and here I was nearly done at just after noon.

I sat in the shadow of the lightpost on the dock, watching the tourists boats come and go for a while. It was quite pleasant. Besides a wrapped-up fisherwoman, I was the only one there. After some consideration, I decided to head back up into the mountains, up into the cooler air at the top of Yangmingshan, or as close as I could get on a motorcycle. The coast road was quick work but still too hot. I knew from previous experience that the road from Tamshui up the mountain is nice and full of interesting curves, and it being a weekday I wouldn’t have to deal with too much traffic.

On the way up I slowly got used to the broader and shallower power band on the Hornet. My RZR is pretty anemic through most of the needle’s trip around the tach, but it was a sweet spot where the power spikes, almost like a turbo. But once I adjusted to the 4-stroke engine, it felt a lot more convenient. I had to shift less and less as I learned not only where the power was, but also how to lean the bike over in corners. It went over quite easily thanks to the wide tires.

At the top of the mountain I stopped at the lookout and listened to the chorus of cicadas and other insects. It was a truly lovely sound and caught me by surprise. There were a couple of other riders there looking down on Tamshui and the ocean, but no one said a word, as if we were in a sort of trance induced by the insects. Out in the ocean freighters seemed to be floating in the sky as the reflected sunlight on the water obscured the horizon.

The other lookout, on the city side of the peak, was crowded with day-trippers, mostly noisy older women complaining loudly about how noisey everyone else was and eager photographers snapping away at the view. A couple of people asked about the Hornet, and one old guy even asked if he could sit on it. He thought it was a litrebike for some reason. I guess it does look kind of hefty for its size. I can imagine that a litrebike would charge up the mountain with even more authority, but I can’t really understand how much authority one needs when charging up a mountain.

I sat on the lookout bench for a while, staring out over the city as rainstorms floated over it. The sun was beginning to set when I left. I took as many mountain roads as I could on the way down, ending up in Beitou, where I hit rush-hour traffic. The Hornet got a few stares and even some challengers on Da-du Road, which crosses the floodplain, but of course nothing could even compare with it. I was due back at the rental place at 8pm, and I rode around the city until after 8, reluctant to turn it back in. When I got on my own motorcycle and started riding home, I was shocked at the difference. My bike suddenly felt like a pile of loosely connected parts shedding bits of rust as they all clanked against each other. The brakes felt dangerously mushy and the steering vague. I’m afraid that riding it will never be the same.

It looks like Typhoon Imbudo is going to give us a miss, heading instead straight over to China. It’s been windy and fresh, the clouds practically scurrying across the sky all day. I’m still glad I got the chance to spend Monday tooling around on the Hornet. I even made a little 5Mb Quicktime movie from footage I took during the trip; it’s now in the Sight of the Moment slot. There’s also a few Mirror project pictures on the subject.

If I want to ride anything bigger in the future I have to get another license, which costs NT$8,000 including mandatory classes culminating in the examination itself. One guy told me now was the time to take the test, before they began changing the rules so that if you’re above a certain age and height you have to take the test on a certain category of motorcycle. I still don’t have that kind of money, and my left hand is still sore from working the heavy clutch on the Hornet. That said, I still wonder what it’s like to ride the CB400 super four…

Saw this on the front page of Blogger today:



Google Toolbar. You can get, for free, a browser toolbar that allows you to blog from any web page. Grab the beta version of the Google Toolbar with BlogThis! now.

¡V Jason Shellen [7/1/2003 6:21:01 PM]

Well, whoop-dee-shit. Here’s a suggestion: Instead of adding bells and whistles to your product, why don’t you concentrate your efforts on fixing all that went wrong with the last “update”. I use the quotes of course because Blogger used to work better and was more reliable than it is now, and none of my queries at good ol’ Blogger Control have been viewed, much less answered. I hate to have to do it, but I’m thinking MT might be the way to go if this nonsense continues much longer. What a mess.

Last Friday after work I went down to the intersection of Roosevelt Road and keelung Road in search of a large motorcycle rental place I’d heard about. It wasn’t hard to find since you don’t usually spot so many litrebikes parked out in front of any other business. This one was right across the street from a police station, something they probably wouldn’t have dared do before our entry into WTO.

I walked inside, grateful for the limited air conditioning, and spoke with one of the young guys sitting behind the desk. I found out that renting a Honda Hornet for a day, not a 24-hour day but basically daytime hours, is about NT$1600 on weekdays. their cheapest rate. I can’t ride anything over 250cc anyway because I don’t have the extra license required. That, they told me, was easy to do, but taking the test costs several thousand NT$, and even then I can only rent a Honda CB400 super four. To rent even bigger bikes you have to join the club, which is still more money. It’s a pretty expensive hobby. One of the guys there started riding the bigger bikes only a few months ago, and he’s the proud owner of a Yamaha R1, one of only a handful in Taiwan. I can’t imagine how an R1 could not be overkill on the roads here, but according to those guys the appetite for more power is near insatiable. After I told them I rode an RZR they let me take a Hornet around the block to compare the difference. It was smooth, but it didn’t seem to have the kick even my little 135cc 2-stroke delivers. Still, I didn’t push it hard, and I suppose the power peaks in different places. If we aren’t in the middle of one of the typhoons in the area by this Wednesday, I might just take a Hornet on a little tour of the north coast, just to see how it does. With all of this hot weather, though, you knew we were going to start getting typhoons just lining up to get in here.

Typhoon or now, we’ve been arranging a somewhat belated wrap party for cast and crew of our Lady X episodes this coming Saturday night at Dean’s place. The series is up to Episode 7 now, and 8 should be coming out on the 23rd. Episode 7 take place in Orlando, Florida, where I went to high school, and I recognized some of the locations in the film. I had been wondering how on earth they would be able to make Orlando look interesting, but they did a fair job I guess. At least they didn’t include Disney or Seaworld. I suppose sooner or later we’re going to see Lady X in a black bikini, most likely in the Lady X: Hawaii episode.

Tall Paul, Darrell and I are going to meet tomorrow evening at the offices of the company down in Xindian that’s interested in us doing a commercial for them. We’ve got a decent idea; I hope they don’t have too many problems with it. We’ll see, in any case. It would be nice if they actually paid us as well.

I’ve updated the Photography page, adding not only two new pictures but a new banner as well. Enjoy.

I was at a bookstore yesterday, wandering around the magazine section looking at DV stuff, when I came across some of those Nice House magazines, like Places Extremely Rich People Live and Homes That Cost Crazy Money. Houses on the Riviera, people own their own island, shit like that. Next to this section was some kind of action/war/history section with a photo of a bunch of soldiers crawling up a beach. And although they didn’t look like they were having a great time, they didn’t look miserable. Granted, I’ve never crawled up a beach while being shot at, but having said that I have had a taste of the crawling-around-in-the-mud-with-a-gun kind of thing, and all of the sudden something dawned on me: I know myself well enough to realize that, if I lived in some incredible mansion on the Riviera or on my own island, I would most likely be sitting around worrying about stupid stuff just as much as I do now in my little apartment. I wouldn’t be any happier than I am now. But when you’re crawling through the mud, the needs you percieve suddenly become not only more basic and but extraordinarily more attainable as well as more satisfying. We have the assumption that a rich, easy life is better, better in absolute terms despite any variables such as personality, temperment, character, etc. Basically, the question is: where would you rather be? What would you rather be doing? What’s worth doing and what isn’t?

Duh! You’re probably saying. What exactly dawned on me? Probably something I knew all along, but never really thought about before. Most people know what they want out of life, but I suspect that if you gave most people exactly what they thought they wanted, they would still end up unhappy. Not to go all Matrix or Fantasy Island on you, but knowing what it is you really want is to know your real self, and the more I think about it, the less obvious it seems. I won’t start ranting about the reasons people’s priorities are the way they are, but it seems that knowing yourself is not an easy thing to do, but it is probably one of the most valuable things you can do. And it’s not for the faint of heart, either, because I’m gradually coming to believe that what is really going on inside people’s minds is not only quite complicated, but a bit scary as well. I wonder if people have a subconscious fear that, deep down, we’re driven by much darker motives, baser motives than we care to admit.

Mind you, that doesn’t mean to say that if you’re not happy you won’t ever be, just that perhaps the things we set up in our minds as “this will make me happy” aren’t necessarily things that will satisfy us. You just have to truly know yourself, which is not an easy thing, and be brave enough to experiment until you find those things that have the power to sate whatever thirsts you may have.

I watched the top-ten finalists for the directors competition Project Greenlight yesterday. I was surprised not only at how wonderful some of the entries were, but also at how crap some of the other ones were. The biggest surprise, however, was that some of the really good ones didn’t win, while some of the crap ones did. I suppose this goes to show that, no matter what criteria you’re using to judge films, it’s not exactly an exact science; everyone has a different take on things. I suppose they all work on certain levels, but then again, everyone has different priorities when it comes to what they want to see on the screen. Again, different thirsts.

What? Would you rather I go walk around somewhere and tell you about it? It’s fucking hot outside, in case you didn’t know.

Anyway, for my latest Sound of the Moment, here is Zhang Zhen-yue’s “0204”. For the benefit of those who don’t understand Chinese, here’s my rough translation of the lyrics:

“0204” by Zhang Zhen-yue

*sound of woman whining sexual innuendo over the phone* (don’t be like that…look…underwear…aaah)

It’s been a month, I’m realizing that I’ve really lost it. Is it too much? I’ve spent all my money. I have to sit down on the street I’m so dizzy, and it hurts when I piss.

When I open my legs I realize that it was all an illusion. Just an illusion.

Spiffy, eh?

Estrogen Mall, part 37

It seems that Sogo is moving into the Taipei101 mall:

“Pacific Sogo Department Store and Taipei 101 Mall signed a tenancy agreement yesterday, setting the stage for Pacific Sogo to enter Taipei’s Hsinyi district, a neighborhood crowded with retail centers competing head-to-head.

Tetsu Inoue, general manager of Pacific Sogo, announced the sales target of NT$500 million in the first year for its 800-ping store on the second floor of Taipei 101 Mall. Dubbed as Sogo Beauty Plaza, it will target female office workers aged between 25 and 35, providing them with cosmetics and beauty products.”

I wonder if they’ll cut straight to the chase this time and post “No Men Allowed” signs on the doors. But then, I suppose that much is obvious. Still, one can hope that one day, shops like Radio Shack, Sharper Image, Camelot, or Tower Records will see the inside of a Taiwanese mall. A Krispy Kreme shop wouldn’t go amiss, either.*

It’s still baking hot, and even though we’re already setting temperature records it’s only going to get hotter, according to the weather bureau. I said it was tolerable at 4 or 5 yesterday, but I was wrong, since I was out walking around Heping East Road area looking for a music shop about that time yesterday and it was still pretty bad. After that I had dinner with Kirk over at Grandma Nitti’s, since I was over there returning The Mexican DVD anyway, and Nitti’s gives a 15% discount on Mondays. Unfortunately, not only do they not sell chili any longer, but their Oreo shakes are much less solid than they used to be.

*Does Dunkin Donuts even sell donuts anymore? The only reference to donuts on their website is the name; it appears they deal strictly in coffee these days. Tragic.

I know I was just asking for trouble by renting The Mexican, but I was in the mood for a Brad Pitt flick after seeing and liking Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas at the Estrogren Mall on Sunday. I knew from the previews that it featured a hitman who is gay, but after seeing the scene where said hitman is dancing on the bed and becoming the recipient of Julia Roberts’ pity, I was almost relieved when PowerDVD decided it would rather engage itself using 100% of my CPU’s capability than actually playing any more of the movie.

It is severely hot outside these days. Someone should issue a global announcement: Would whoever took the ozone layer please put it back? We won’t arrest you, we just want it back… Oh, sure, it looks nice out the window, but it’s only really habitable after 4 or 5 in the afternoon. What we need is a nice little typhoon to skirt by and give us some cloud cover, a little rain, and hopefully a day or two off from work.

Saturday was spent in the camera shop district downtown with Tall Paul and Darrell looking for camera filters. We found that, while everyone seems to stock polarizers and UV filters, no-one has much else besides tacky diamond filters for that kalaidescope effect. Eventually we made our way over to the audio gizmo part of town, beyond the tax office building, and inside a large complex we found not only a distinct lack of air conditioning but an impressive array of Karaoke equipment. Paul mentioned that a certain company had seen the Lady X episodes and was possibly interested in asking us for help in doing a series of commercials for them. We’ll see.

I need to get away for a bit, I think. “Distant lands are not so far away,” as The Other Ones sing in their song Holiday. Apart from the fact that it’s totally contradictory, it makes sense.

Storms sweep over Taipei at around 3 or 4 every afternoon these days. Thunder, lightning, the whole show. It reminds me a lot of mid-summer weather in Florida. Every day at exactly 4:30 a huge black wall would move across the sky, and rain consisting of huge drops of water, drops that would smack you on the head like an egg thrown from an airplane, would come pelting down with incredible force. About half an hour later it would all stop, and the sun would come out again, causing the roads to steam. When I was at home I would run out into the back yard and just enjoy getting soaked by the storms, but later on when I was interning in the summers at my father’s company, the storms would come just as we were getting off from work, and it was a race to get to one’s car before they hit. If you managed, though, the storms were nice in that they cooled down the cars after baking in the hot Florida sun all day. The complex was encircled by a large, banked ring road, and since it was on private property, there were no speed limits, or at least no police to deal with, so many people went quite fast. One year, on my first day to work, I got into a race with a girl in a blue Honda. I managed to beat her to the point where the two lanes merged into one. I thought that was it, but of course when I got inside and was introduced to the people I would be working with that summer, one of the first questions I was asked by one of my new co-workers was “Say, do you drive a tan Datsun 810?” Of course, out of the tens of thousands of people who work there, I would be working in the girl in the blue Honda. Obviously, she wasn’t all that pissed off at me, or at the very least she managed to refrain from whacking me for the duration of the summer.

This month’s Forumosa Happy Happy Train Train Hour was last night at an oddly shaped bar called “Orange”, located just a couple of stops north of where I do sword practice. The building is shaped like a cheese whiz, with the bathrooms in the pointy bit, and sitting inside feels like riding in the front of a 747. Periodically an MRT train would rumble by, obliterating any conversations that might be taking place. The Forumosa people were on the roof, and I met a couple of people I had only known as usernames before. Bringing my sword along probably wasn’t the best idea, as people kept wanting to touch it. (“Dare thee touch my blade? You’ll have a taste of it before the night is through, ye rapscallions!”)

I traded Maoman three DVDs for a can of chicken and a ride home in the recently christened Maomobile. Taipei looks completely different from car than it does from astride a motorcycle. In a car you’re sort of floating by, while on a motorcycle you’re down inside of it.

Capricorn: (Dec. 22—Jan. 19)

It’s time to rid yourself of the fallacious belief that kids or animals or anyone else likes you.

I spent the latter half of Saturday walking around Tianmu, buying groceries, oogling the estates of extremely rich people, and just generally not sitting at home, which would have been too depressing. I didn’t want to go home, but one can only sit on the edge of a bridge and look at sewage for so long, so I eventually got on the train back downtown.

But I still didn’t want to go home, so I got off at Zhongshan Station and walked over to the Taiwan Bear Club, which was pretty empty when I got there. I sat there and watched crappy videos while the host, Black Pearl, made excuses to me about spending all his time with patrons who were a lot more fun to be around. He didn’t remember me, but I don’t blame him; it’s been a while since I was there last. Pretty much everyone was there with friends, and one party was getting quite raucous, so I left. I didn’t know where to go, so I just started walking, ending up a couple of hours later at a sauna, where I spent a relatively uneventful yet almost completely sleepless night.

Sunday was Berta’s birth brunch. I had promised her I would go. I did want to meet her little brother, who is in town to study Chinese, but I think the party would have been a lot more fun without me. As small a place as Berta’s apartment is, most of the other guests always managed to abandon whichever part I was in and congegrate in the part furthest away. I can’t say I blame them. Spirit’s been rather low lately. Movies only provide temporary escape from….from whatever it is. Hell, I don’t even know. Let’s just say that I’ve been writing a lot more in my private journal lately than in here.