Storms sweep over Taipei at around 3 or 4 every af…
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.