Christmas Eve was kind of depressing as I was working overtime until past 8pm, after which I was tired so I just went home and ate some pamlets while watching Episode IV on videotape. Experience the Pathetic Yet Still True Lifestyle Details of Poagao! I know.

Christmas turned out considerably better, though. Harry and James came over, and we took a hike around the area across the river, up on the hill next to Bitan where the amusement park used to be. All that’s left are some concrete pavillions, some rusted out bumber cars and a few pieces of merry-go-round. Someone had set up a little shrine for the people who died on the ferris wheel in the accident that no doubt led to the park’s abandonment over a decade ago.

I was really tired after the hike as my tonsils simply refuse to get better, so I took a nap before heading over to Darrell’s and Judy’s for their Christmas dinner party. I was in a black mood at first, but the combination of sparkling conversation, excellent food and an almost frightening array of candles cheered me up considerably. The turkey and dressing, combined with cranberry sauce, green beans and mashed potatoes with gravy were all every bit as good as I remember from Christmas meals growing up in the States.

At one point everyone started to sing Happy Birthday and I wondered briefly whose birthday it was before remembering that it was mine. Judy made a chocolate cheesecake so rich it could have fed a small third-world nation for a year. I counted the candles I had just blown out: 13. “Wow, 13 already,” I said.

“Soon you’ll start to take an interest in girls,” Darrell said.

“I was wondering when that would happen,” I replied.

We sat around and chatted about this and that, the Gallant Dogs alternating between looking desperate for the slices of apple pie in our laps and curling up on the sofa. Judy served cranberry tea, and Darrell put in “25th Hour”, a Spike Lee film, but I had to leave in order to catch the last train to Xindian.

It was a nice Christmas after all, and not a bad birthday, either.

‘Twas a weekend of Christmas parties. Saturday night I met Harry and James at Kunyang Station to go to Brett and Alan’s party out in Xizhi. We do this every year, but this time four of the guests got together to sing acapella for us in Mandarin, Taiwanese and English. It was astounding how beautifully they sounded. The food was excellent, too, including Virginia ham, a pot o’ yam stuff and cheesecake. I ate too much, of course. I’ve been getting quite a few comments about how much more ‘bearish’ I look these days (translation: I’m getting fat again). Well, that’s what New Year’s resolutions are for, right? I’ll start right after I eat everything in my refrigerator.

On Sunday Harry, Mark and I went tremple-touring again, this time to the Taiping Temple across the river near the Sandcastle. The Taiping Temple is huge, with several floors and courtyards. It’s only 30 years old, but seems much older from the amount of incense-related grime on the walls and ceilings. I took some video and pictures of it that may turn out quite nicely. Hopefully I’ll be able to gain ftp access to my new webspace (I got poagao.com, btw) soon so I can start putting up my little videos.

That night I took the train a few stops up to Jingmei for a tree-decorating get-together at Darrell’s and Judy’s place. They got one of those plastic trees that remind of the plastic tree I grew up with (my parents are still using it, I believe). It ended up looking quite nice, even if we weren’t able to string popcorn due to the presence of the dogs. We did learn how to get dogs to floss, however, and that’s always good to know. Later we watched a Very Special Muppet Christmas Darrell downloaded. Maybe on Christmas we can watch the Star Wars Christmas special. Talk about vintage holiday programming.

I’m working full time again this week, taking over for a friend at my old company. When I got there this morning I was surprised to see a line of people spilling out the doors of Warner Village, even though they weren’t due to open until much later. On a Monday, no less. I suppose they’re waiting to buy tickets to the Return of the King. I would love to see it right now, but I dislike frenzied crowds, so I’ll wait a while before I see it. Part of me doesn’t even want to see the non-extended version, but it’s a small part and easily outvoted.

Speaking of votes, I got an email, obviously part of a mass email campaign, last night from Corbett Wall of 3q2u.com. He is urging everyone to vote for his blog in the Taiwan category of the Asia Weblogs Awards:

Dear Friends,

Thanks a million in advance, and 3q3q3q2u!

Corbett sure has a shipload of friends, because he shot up to the number 1 spot almost immediately. This doesn’t surprise me at all, as it was destined to be all about who has the most friends, and not about an objective judgement of the quality of any one website. That’s just the way things work, especially on the Internet. In any case, it’s not worth losing any sleep over. I thought it was funny he would email me about it, though.

The weather today has been brilliant, in sharp contrast to the gloomy, shivering cold of the last week. Judy was nice enough to make some curtains for my bedroom, and it really makes quite a lot of difference. Namely, it’s harder to get up in the mornings as there’s much less light spilling in, but they look really spiffy.

See, isn’t this general list of mundane matters much better than me ranting about politics and giving you all upset stomachs? I figure there’s not much point in political discussion on this journal, as most of the people who read it have a hard time digesting my point of view; I’ll probably just try to keep that stuff more in the Chinese-language blog. It’s just going to get worse as we approach the elections in any case.

*’3q2u’, if the ‘3’ is read as the Chinese ‘san’ comes out sounding like “Thank you to you”. I’m not sure if this constitutes being “‘thank you to you’ in Chinese”, though.

我在右下方放了一個按鈕, 是為了給大家機會投我的票…

甚麼票呢. 就是亞洲網路日記競選比賽. 我的英文日記有出來選, 然後這個中文日記也可以選 ‘最佳亞洲語言當外文的日記’. 其實, 選上不選上倒是沒有什麼關係. 看

I helped film a corporate interview for Citibank this afternoon at the Fubon building on Renai Road. Classy offices with high-tech stainless-steel blinds, rows of white cubicles separated by doors with electronic locking devices. The audio connection but a bit dodgy and we had to refilm bits afterwards, but all in all it went smoothly enough. I wouldn’t mind doing more of this kind of work if it is profitable enough, and it seems to be, based on this experience and the work Darrell, Tall Paul, Da Shan and I did a few months ago. This time around I was just helping out Tobie, a production guy who works at ULead and does freelance stuff. Tobie also happens to be friends with a woman who just got back from filming a documentary about the Palestinians. This woman is a good friend of Peter Mah, who worked with me at the newspaper, and now has a website featuring his photography and other interesting stuff. Small world. Well, big world, small island.

I noticed on the MRT today that they’ve slowed down the English part of the station announcements, making the normally ordinary woman’s voice so lethargic it borders on androgeny. I wonder, were people complaining that she was speaking too quickly? From what I remember, the Hong Kong MTR didn’t resort to such measures. Then again, the MTR also pronounced the Cantonese names with ridiculous ‘foreign’ accents, a practice the MRT here thankfully gave up a long time ago after people like Maoman went and complained to Mayor Ma about it.

Here we go again: I am loath to turn on the TV because I know it’s going to be full of anxious-looking newscasters repeating over and over how they don’t know how much peril everyone might be in because some asshat ‘doctor’ went and infected himself with SARS. The ‘doctor’ lives in Xindian (of course), and some of my friends have been telling me not to “walk around chaotically”, but when I ask them exactly how I’m supposed to do that, they can’t exactly say. All I know is that if I am walking around and encounter members of the ‘doctor’s family who should be in quarantine but decided to go shopping instead (asshats tend to beget other asshats, says Darwin), I will put on a mask, gloves and a surgical suit before knocking them on their asses and kicking them in front of one of the many gravel trucks that frequent the Bei-yi highway. Harsh? Maybe, but I’m sure the government will help reimburse the gravel truck drivers for any damage their trucks may sustain.

Wendy wrote a nice guest entry at Sour Bob today concerning people and their identities as bloggers. To be specific, how blogs only reflect certain aspects of a blogger’s life. You’d think from reading, say, Ernie’s blog, that his life was composed of constantly ensuing hilarity. I don’t know one way or the other, but I suspect from the time he spends on AIM that the hilarity doesn’t go on 24/7. But that’s cool. At least he has a boyfriend.

Likewise, many people tell me I come across completely differently in this account than I do in real life. Usually after hearing this I wonder who the hapless reader in question would prefer to hang with, TC or Poagao? I’ve been told that the stuff I write about, as well as the way I write about it are all just wrong WRONG WRONG! Other people who seem to enjoy the site would find spending time with the live version of me almost as boring as other people’s vacation pictures. I can’t say I really care because it is after all a weblog and can’t be taken seriously.

Yet people do. Against all reason, they inexplicably persist in wasting hours of their time fuming about something as vapid as the term “metrosexual”. They act as if something I wrote and didn’t even take the time to spell-check is a watershed event that alters their perception not only of me, but of life, the universe and everything. The only reason I’m writing this particular passage is that I don’t have anything to do right now. And, yes, I’m thinking about it to take my mind off how lunch is disagreeing with my stomach (Ow.)

In any case, this problem is self-resolving, as after the contents of this site piss off all my real-life friends, and all the people I’ve met online realize it’s all just smoke and mirrors, that Poagao doesn’t really exist, no one will be left to be offended. An elegant solution, if I do say so myself. Next on the agenda: World Domination!

Ok, ok, so I’m ranting. I blame Christmas. That, and the fact that this will be my 187th one on this planet. To be completely honest, I enjoy writing this account. I enjoy being able to say what’s on my mind, more or less, without having to conform to other people’s ideas of who I am or who I should be, or whether I’ll be taken the wrong way. Yeah, it’s intellectual cowardice in a way, but at least it’s not a total surrender; I’ve found that one of the worst things you can do is assume other people know you better than you can ever know yourself. Here endith the rant.

In other, non-rantworthy news, I helped Tall Paul and Darrell film the TADS production of Withnail & I last Saturday. I had never actually seen it, so I ended up winging most of the camerawork. At the very least they’ll get some sort of souvenier tape out of it. With three cameras, however, I should hope something a little more professional would result. The place was packed, and the actors did a great job. Most notably, Rowan Hunter as Withnail was amazing.

Still working on the extra webspace. I’ve been editing a few travel clips together for when I do add that section to my site. They will include mocking hikers on the hill out in back of my place, Harry and I exchanging witty banter as we cross the Xindian River on a rather small boat, a reckless dash to Wulai via motorcycle, being chased by model helicopters on my bicycle, my recent trip to Taichung, etc. They are all taken with my over-two-years-old Canon S300 digital camera, which means that they are composed of clips no longer than 20 seconds, and I can’t adjust the zoom or aperture when the thing is taking video. They’re also only an eensy 120×160 pixels in size. I checked out Canon’s latest offerings at Fnac (which, I’ve learned, is French for ‘phlegmy sneeze’*) the other day, and found that the S400 has almost the same lack of capabilities in this respect. In fact, the only improvement I could see was higher resolution. The 2.1 megapixels I have now are perfectly adequate for now in any case. The 20-second limit may well have something to do with the memory card size (128Mb), and it’s no big deal to work around. The movie function does sap battery power, however, so while lengths will vary, none of these things are going to be very long. You’re welcome.

It’s sunny these days, but another cold front is on its way, threatening to take us into single-digit temperatures just before Christmas. No doubt my current throat infection will be happy to hear this. Granted, I’m talking centigrade single digits, but hey, I was raised in sweltry southern climes.

*Fnac actually stands for ‘Fonds national d’art contemporain’, which Google translates as “the sound a French person makes when dismissing U.S. economic policies.” I knew it!