A few days ago I was wondering when this long, hot summer was going to end. Then it suddenly got cool and rainy, and now it’s just cool and pleasant. Fall feels really good this time around, though summer might have more in store for us. When I got off the MRT for sword practice last night, I realized that northern and southern Taipei smell quite different. Perhaps that is why some people take to certain parts of the city, i.e. because the local smells attract them and cause them to feel more warmly to places than they normally would.

Speaking of smells, I’ve cooking with gas now in my new apartment, and so far it’s proved much better than cooking with an electric stove. I grew up with electric stoves; the only gas ones I remember were at my grandmother’s place in Ardmore, Oklahoma. Even my other grandparents had electric stoves, I think. Grandma always claimed that cooking with gas was better, and now I know why, not only for cooking, but for heating water as well. Instant heat, none of this warming-up business. And so far it hasn’t blown up, which is good, too. It would be nice to have a gas line in there instead of relying on large, ungainly bottles, but I can’t be too picky. The apartment is shaping up nicely. It’s just about as nice as it’s going to get, except for maybe some curtains, plants and posters. On a nice day I can open up all the windows and get a cross-breeze going.

We had a little banquet for our Tai-chi teacher on Saturday after Tuishou practice. It was at the ritzy Howard Plaza restaurant underneath the opera hall at the CKS Memorial. Since we’re coming up on Double Ten Day, a lot of groups were practicing their shows in the square. The biggest of these groups was the Taijimen, or Tai-chi Gate society. They were dressed in white, waving flags, sounding horns and marching around in formation. Tai-chi Gate is almost quasi-military in its organization. Just joining requires a huge amount of money, probably around NT$60,000 or more, and the group has quite a large political influence, though little to do with actual Tai-chi.

During the lunch we were talking about the Tai-chi Gate people, and one of our number said “We should keep our voices down, they might hear us talking about them.”

“Yes, they outnumber us,” I said. It was a joke, meant to recall something out of a Hong Kong gangster flick, but everyone nodded seriously. I guess you don’t mess with the Tai-chi Gate gang.

I was in a questionable mood when I got home last night. I had copied the final Lady X version onto DVDs at Milifilm, and onto tape. The tape image was almost unwatchable due to a strange jumping shudder phenomenon, and the files on the DVDs, which I gave to Mindcrime so he can do the DVD version, caused his Powerbook to physically attack him. When I tried to import the .avi file into the Canopus Raptor editing software, it would only import nine minutes and twenty-six seconds. I opened of Vegas 4. Same thing. I could open up the whole thing in Premiere, but Premiere and my camera are not on speaking terms. I tried to get online by my adsl decided it was a good time to stop working as well.

It was just about then that I spotted a movement in the roach trap next to my computer. A baby gecko had gotten himself stuck in the thing. I spread roach traps throughout my new apartment, expecting to fill them quickly, since I’m so close to the mountains, etc., and this is what I find? Baby Geckos? Having grown up in Florida, Geckos are welcome in my house, much more welcome than roaches. I was definitely sending the wrong message to the Gecko community with all of those roach traps.

The video failures, the trapped gecko, and strange computer behavior combined with having just consumed several glasses of Coke at Dean’s that night pushed me over the edge, and I just stormed around my apartment for several minutes muttering profanities. Well, shouting them, actually. Consider it a free lesson in English-language cursing for the entire neighborhood. Then I got a knife and pried the gecko off the trap, mangling one of its feet in the process, but it couldn’t be helped. I set it free on the balcony next to a dead roach in case it was hungry, but it vanished, so I guess it wasn’t too bad off. Today I was half an hour late to work, but I managed to work out the videotape problems by copying straight from my camera to VCR at Tall Paul’s office, and hopefully burning the DVD-ROMs with Macs will solve the DVD problems.

Considering the current availability of songs and sounds on the Internet, I wonder if it would be practical to overlay familiar sounds to familiar songs. You know how certain songs remind you of a certain time and place, a moment you’d probably otherwise have long forgotten? But it’s still missing a certain something. Technology has yet to accomplish a machine that will manufacture the unique smells to recall the red ’65 Corvair Monza convertable my dad restored when we were living in Colorado to go along with the song “Downtown”, which I remember playing on the chrome-covered radio as we jaunted top-down about various sunny Denver suburbs. But what about background noises? For me, the 80’s song “Desert Moon” is not quite complete without the addition of school bus sounds, as that is where I first heard it, over and over, throughout my sophomore year of high school, so I can only imagine adding those noises (and possibly a burgundy “Members Only” jacket) would bring back even more memories of sitting on those evenly padded green seats, staring at the facinating Vietnamese kid who lived a few blocks away and always wore sunglasses. He was 19, which seemed so old to me then.

“Black Velveteen” by Lenny Kravitz would need the sounds of the ocean, jets flying overhead, and blonde people rollerblading to properly bring back the feeling of walking along Redondo Beach to Manhattan beach in LA in the late afternoon. “Carmelia” by some 80’s singer would need Taiwanese dorm noises, including guys slurping instant noodles and cicadas circa 1988. “That’s all” by Phil Collins would need the sound of a racing inline 6 from the Datsun 810 I drove in high school, while “The Brazilian” would go with several Filipinas chattering in Tagalog in a Hong Kong slum. Certain Baroque trumpet pieces could do with the faint thumping bass of lowriders who drive around certain areas of Brooklyn where I was staying in ’99.

Anyway, you get the picture. Such personal mixes of songs could work, but the background noises would be more effective if they changed with every playing, using random samples. At least until we get that smell machine working.

昨天去我們幫忙拍廣告的那家電腦公司給他們複製我的身分證, 希望可以儘快拿到那份工作的薪水, 但是他們還在跟我們玩遊戲, 說他們還需要一些資料, 在一個月, 等等藉口. 我聽到就向他們發脾氣, 很可能又得罪到他們. 我這個人並不太適合面對客戶, 如果以後開一家製作公司的話, 真的很需要以為秘書幫我處理pr方面的事情.

最近非常缺錢, 連

Interesting things I’ve seen recently:

*A well-dressed gangster type lying on a bench staring into space in front of the McCafe on Fuxing N. Road. He looked like he had just lost a fight, with a bloody lip and swollen eyes. Busy night, I guess.

*A taxi-scooter accident at the intersection of Heping and Xinsheng.

*A blueish light flicking around in the twilight darkness underneath one of the many bridges that cross over to Zhonghe. As I got closer I realized it was being waved about by an old man wearing only shorts. I had thought it was one of those glowsticks or something, but as I passed by I realized that it was a blowtorch he was spraying all over himself, without any apparent harm.

Our two commercial spots for the computer company have been on their website and playing at Computex for a while now, and they have yet to pay us. I was informed that they needed to copy our ID cards, so I went over there yesterday to do that. They told me that, not only would be probably not be paid anytime soon, but also, right as I was about to leave, an accounting person told me they needed copies of our bank books as well. Oh, thanks for letting us know so quickly, only a matter of months after we’ve delivered our product, on time thank you very much. The accounting person said she’d already told me all of this, in spite of the fact that I’d never talked to this person before. I was irked and probably too harsh on them, but it really stuck me as unprofessional. If I hadn’t gone over there they wouldn’t have even bothered telling us about their extra requirements, and simply not paid us. Even now it seems that is a likely outcome. Well, live and learn.

Shirzi is back in town for a few weeks. I invited him to sword practice last night but he declined. Perhaps next week. I met him, Dean and Cranky Laowai at The Brass Monkey last night after riding up to Taipei from the computer company. I’ve been riding my bike everywhere since I still have half a tank of gas and no more money on my MRT card. Financial sense? Me? Please.

I need to start taking notes at sword practice/tuishou practice. It seems that our teacher always has a lot of good instruction that I need to take down, but one of the things he’s told us is to stop thinking so much about it with our conscious thoughts, letting deeper instincts learn more instead. I think I need a lot more practice.