My friend Manny, an American living in Taoyuan, wa…
My friend Manny, an American living in Taoyuan, was up visiting yesterday, so after some intense swan-boating action at Bitan, I took him to see the Muddy Basin Ramblers at The Living Room. We were a bit late, but things were just getting started as we sat down at a table with Sandy’s wife Jojo and some other friends of theirs.
The Ramblers started slow, but as the evening progressed they just got better and better. Of course, Alcohol played a large role in both the performance and the audience’s perception of it, but I was sorry to see it end. On some sets Zoe would play the fiddle, and on some others some guy with a clarinet joined in. Dave Chen was amazing, and his steel guitar is a wonder to behold. The air was so full of cigarette smoke that my eyes stung, though.
The weather was so perfect today I tore myself away from my cheapo NT$38 Giant DVD(side A) and took Gendoyun on a little ride up into the mountains, just to run the engine a bit and get out of the house. I rode up the hills in Ankeng, past the water treatment plant, and up into the mountains along paths so steep I had to stay in first gear most of the time. I was surprised to see parasail swirling around in the sky above me.
When the pavement stopped I got off the bike and started hiking up to the peak of Lionhead Mountain. The wind was strong up there, and cool. I climbed until I was looking down on the paraglider, across rows of tidy, Americanesque housing complexes, all the way to downtown. Later, on my way back down, I passed an interesting house built over a waterfall. Taiwan’s answer to Frank Lloyd Wright, I suppose.
This evening “Norman Szabo”, Darrell and I filmed another Above & Below scene on a mountain road just across the river. It turned out it was so dark we probably could have filmed the scene in a large darkened room just as well, and without the mosquitos, millipedes and other insects that yearned to ruin our shoot by dropping unannounced on various actors’ heads during takes. I was still fun, though, and we had Athula’s delicious Rothi for dinner afterwards.
Altogether a delicious weekend, I must say; last week feels more like months ago. But damn I’m bushed. Sleep should come easy tonight.
PS: Doteasy tells me that once again I’m approaching my bandwidth limit for the month. Urgh. I need to do something about this sooner or later.
