Poagao's Journal

Absolutely Not Your Monkey

Oct 31 2003

Earlier this week I got a call from Da Shan, who i…

Earlier this week I got a call from Da Shan, who invited me out to hot pot near Ta Ping Ding. He sounded a bit drunk. I took the MRT over and found him, his little brother Xiao Shan, and a not-very-happy-looking Alien sitting at a large table in a corner of the restaurant. There were also several strangers at the table, including a rather boistrous, very drunk fellow with whom I shared two out of three characters in my name. Also at the table was a young women who was obviously trying to look nervous and out of place. I could tell that she was just back from the U.S. even before my friends told me.

Alien went out and bought some ice cream while the drunk guy with 2/3 of my name ranted and raged at the other people at the table. Da Shan told me that they were thinking of filming a comedy series, and they wanted me to be their cameraman.

“Just think, you could be hanging out with this kind of people if you were still working in the TV business, ” Alien told me, offering me some ice cream.

“I can think of worse, ” I replied. “I’d much rather hang out with these guys than go to an Oriented.com Happy Hour, for example. ”

I met a couple of the producers, we exchanged cards, etc., but it was becoming obvious that the drunk fellow wasn’t going to be happy unless he could go sing KTV with someone. Da Shan drove me and another guy who lives in Xindian home in his crappy little van. It was fun; I needed to get out.

Jason, a guy who I met when I was working at the newspaper several years ago, called me the other day. He’s finishing up his military service, and he wanted to tell me how much he appreciated my book. He said it helped him through some “negative” times. I’m glad it did him some good. Another guy in the army told me last night that he was writing his reports like I did in the book, repeating the same character over and over again. I did it out of frustration and boredom, while he did for laughs I guess. Apparently my book is a bigger hit with guys who are actually in the service than it is for the general public. I know, what a surprise.

I was walking around the Guang-hua Market area last night looking at audio cables when I ran into a couple of old co-workers from TVBS. One of them was “Assassin”, with whom I cris-crossed the island several times in the early 90’s filming travel shows. Most of the cameramen I worked with are doing more comfortable studio work these days, leaving the rough fieldwork for the younger guys I guess. I really should go pay them a visit one of these days.

I’m probably going to discontinue the “sound of the moment” and keep the “sight of the moment”. I figure you can find any song you like elsewhere, and I need the space. I will probably go through and clean up some of the older pictures referred to earlier in my blog, to get some more space back. So if you’re really interested in what my cubicle at my old company looked like, or some other historical detria, get it from the archives now, before it’s gone.

posted by Poagao at 4:08 am  

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