Absolutely Not Your Monkey
終於搬好最後的東西了, 房東很小氣得給我算房租算到昨天, 還扣了三千元查水電. 停車位還沒有組出去, 每天不租就吃虧. 天氣越來越冷, 又一直下雨. 除了昨晚表演心情不錯的那段時間, 心情都很壞. 二月大部分都是這樣, 但今年的二月真的很過度的壞.
台安的醫生給我藥吃, 但他也說恐怕還是要開小刀, 看看裡面, 在修一下. 我滿怕開刀, 但好像沒有第二個選擇. 下禮拜再去看再說吧.
新家大致上滿舒服. 我今天一整天臥在裡面,
I finally cleared all of the leftover garbage from my old place yesterday. The landlady, being the tightfisted miser that she is, charged me rent up until that day, on top of holding a few thousand back for utilities, even though utilities are never much more than a thousand. In any case, I waited for the garbage truck, tossed the stuff in, got on my bicycle and rode back over the bridge to my new home.
A pretty nice place is taking shape inside of the Lofty Sky Palace, as I’ve decided to call my latest abode. It’s still a mess, but no messier than my old place when it really needed cleaning. As the temperature took another rainy, drizzly plunge today, I spent all day unpacking the last of the boxes, making multiple trips down to the garbage room on B1 to throw away the mushy wet cardboard. With the exception of singing garbage trucks, riverside Karaoke and the occasional whining dog, it’s pretty quiet. White noise from the highway is always around, but it was at my old place as well.
In other news, the doctor at Adventist Hospital gave me some medicine for my knee, though he predicted he’d still have to do an arthroscopic exam. When I winced, he said, “Don’t worry, we’ll let you watch it on TV after you come out of the initial sedation!” Wonderful.
Last night the Muddy Basin Ramblers had a gig at a company party for a local law firm. Well, perhaps “local” isn’t the right word, as the crowd was half full of foreign faces. I saw quite a few people I knew there, including Peter Balfry and The Taipei Kid (who, I might add, was neither insanely drunk nor drunkenly insane). The party was held at the top of the Death Star Mall at Lawry’s steakhouse. Those of you in the states may scoff, but Lawry’s is a big deal here, and if our dinners hadn’t been on the house, we’d have ended up paying NT$1800 for each one. The best part of the meal, IMHO, was the dessert. I would have had two meals, but, oddly enough, they were out of everything but steak. The place was so full of carved wood and chandeliers I felt like I was on the Titanic, and at the beginning I was a little worried that we’d have a tough time entertaining such a staid, high-brow crowd.
David obviously didn’t have any such concerns, and even though Tim and Dana weren’t there, we still managed to do a fair bit of house-rocking. By the end of our set, which was supposed to be just 30 minutes but ended up at over an hour, the crowd seemed to be really into it. Many people commented on the “historic” meeting between myself and Robin Winkler, the firm’s head, though I’m sure that two ex-American ROC citizens have been in the same room before last night.
It may have been the wine, the music, the company or some combination of the three, but I felt better last night than I have in a long time, and I stayed up late last night after Sandman and Jojo dropped me off, just savoring the mood. All this month, true to the band’s name, I’ve felt like I’ve been slogging through elbow-deep basin mud, and I really needed…something. February is a brutal month in Taiwan. Though it’s the shortest month, the constant rain, cold and lack of sunlight make it feel more like the longest. Add that to all of the other shit I’ve been struggling to deal with, and you’ve got one long-ass month.
First post from the new place. My old place is empty, just like I found it. It’s odd to walk through those empty rooms, footsteps echoing, and think that nobody will ever know what went on there but me. I miss it already.
The new place is still a mess, boxes and things strewn everywhere, but I’ve managed to make some progress. My old landlady won’t give me my deposit back until I clear out all of the garbage from the old place, which isn’t going to be fun. It’s all in bags, of course, but I have to lug it all down to the main road for the garbage trucks on Friday. My knee doesn’t seem to be getting better; in fact my other leg’s getting tired and sore now for some reason, so I suppose I should see a doctor.
Fireworks have been going off down at the bridge all night, and everyone’s holding little lanterns for Lantern Festival. I had dinner at the vegetarian Buddhist place downstairs. A grey striped cat, almost a kitten, was running around the place with a bow tied to her collar. Her fur was very soft, and she was curious about everything. Outside the full moon was shining through the clouds a bit. Very nice. I took a few pictures, but it will be a while before I get the place in good enough shape to do a new “This is Where I Live” page.
As I packed my things up I soon realized the amount of stuff I’ve bought since I moved into this cavernous place. When I arrived in August of 2003, everything I owned fit comfortably in my smallest bedroom, where I am sitting now, surrounded by boxes.
Right after I moved in I slept on the floor listening to the crickets through the open windows, and every noise echoed through the rooms. After a year and a half, however, I’ve accumulated all kinds of extra things: furniture, carpets, posters, and other knicknacks. I don’t even need the wooden double bed, the air conditioner or the bathroom mirror at the new place, but nobody wants any of it. Steven the Mover, who apparently won a bit of money betting on pool at the Forumosa Happy House O’ Flowing Drink last night, said he could help me move tonight if it’s not raining.
Thing is, it hasn’t stopped raining for a week. Seriously, there has not been a single pause to the downpour for a solid week, and there’s no sign of it stopping or even letting up. Temperatures have dropped to the single digits as well, making this weather my officially most hated weather ever, even apart from the inconvenience it’s causing me at the moment.
The Muddy Basin Ramblers gathered at David’s house last night for a rehearsal/recording session. David hooked up the mic to his computer and we recorded several tunes, possibly for the webpage. I drank hot ginger tea with cinnamon and whisky,and everyone had a great time listening to the recordings, especially the new songs. One new one David came up with recently, which we call ‘Song of Our Homeland’, went on for about 10 minutes, though it’s so catchy you’d never know it.
After Sandman and I caught a taxi back to the Sandcastle, he left for the Forumosa thing, while I came home to see about making a larger dent in the packing process. One my way in I slipped on the stairs, and now my knee is clicking in an extremely annoying fashion, like it used to after I injured it several years ago. Argh. It’s not painful, just extremely annoying and brings back memories of a pretty bad time. I was in my early 20s when I hurt it, and after a couple of operations in Hong Kong it seemed ok, even doing sword practice and playing badminton, but now…well, maybe it will get better on its own. In the meantime, argh.
No doubt you’ve either been wondering how my most recent house search had been going or dreading the day when I decide to write about it here. Well, that day’s today, so either gather around or click on through.
First of all, the rental market these days is quite strange. My landlady gave me a month to find a place, but when the month in question is February, you actually only have a couple of weeks, tops, because the rest of the time is going to be occupied by Chinese New Year-related activities, during which nobody will be showing houses or thinking of moving.
Still, you’d think finding a decent place in a couple of weeks would be possible, if difficult. I did the usual things, going round neighborhoods I wanted to live in, going to the Tsui Mama Housing Service, calling random friends up and asking if they knew of any suitable places.
After exhausting the usual channels and coming up empty, I resorted to rental agencies, where they charge you half a month’s rent if you rent one of their properties. It was then that I discovered that there was really hardly anything on the market, and what there was, if it wasn’t crap, was snatched up very quickly. 90% of the sparse listings were 5th floor walkups in crowded alleys. I saw one place that you literally had to open a rusty gate and descend into a ditch to get to. Another seemed ok, was on the 2nd floor, but what was that smell? Turns out it was located next to an open sewer, the kind they call “streams” here. Another place looked promising, though the 4-year-old building wasn’t completely finished and nobody was working on it. The landlady disappeared, wouldn’t return my calls or messages.
I went into high gear, spending nights poring over rental websites and jotting down numbers, and getting up early in the morning to go meet agents and visit places. Piles of agents’ namecards were strewn about my desk.
I felt I was getting closer. Twice, while looking at attractive apartments, the agent got a call that the place had been taken. All the agents I talked to felt the rentals were especially few and far between. No doubt this situation would change if I waited long enough, but I couldn’t wait; my landlady was calling me on a nearly daily basis, asking if I’d finalized my plans to move out so the new owner could take possession of my 33 pings of bliss. As usual, my lovely abode now seemed especially idyllic.
Every time I took the MRT, I saw the group of tall buildings across the river. I have several friends who live over there, and I enjoy crossing the suspension bridge. So, the next time I was in the neighborhood, which was a couple of days ago, I asked the guard at the gate of the highest, most extravagant looking building about rentals. I was expecting either outrageous prices or tiny cubbyholes, and there were some of those, but there was also one studio kind of in my price range, which the previous tennant had just vacated. I got the key and went up, past the pool, went up in gleaming elevators and through the marble hallway, unlocked the door and walked in.
Inside, I found myself in a large, open space, nearly two stories tall, with a large window overlooking the river and distant mountains. A modern-looking kitchen was off in a corner, with a little balcony beyond that. Stairs led up to a loft where a double bed was. A dusty ceiling fan hung over the space.
It seemed a little pricey, but it stuck in my head nonetheless. It came with a parking space or possibly two, space I could rent out and make the price much more reasonable, possibly even less than I am paying at the moment.
And all the other places I looked at were flawed in some serious way or another. The weather got cold and rainy again, and wandering the streets looking for little scraps of red paper scribbled with phone numbers plastered to lightpoles was getting really old. And my old landlady kept calling, saying I’d be fined if I stayed.
So I took the loft. Just signed the contract this evening. Steven the Mover has agreed to move the greater portion of my things over on Monday, the 21st, aka my last day. Talk about cutting things close. Still, as much of a pain as moving is, I’m excited about this new place.
Almost as excited as I am about not having to look for a place anymore.
Is it just me, or is what happened here blatantly obvious? Some rich, well-connected asshole’s wife goes out driving their Mercedes even though she doesn’t even have a driver’s license. She and another car collide head-on, probably due to her lack of driving skill. Her five-month-old son, which she didn’t bother to restrain, put in the back seat or even buy a carseat for, dies of his injuries. What does the rich, well-connected asshole do? He goes and finds the driver of the other car, who is the hospital recovering from his injuries, drags him to the morgue and has him beat to death in front of his own mother. The guy was beaten twice at the hospital, whose staff were either paid to shut up and not notify the police, or else (more likely) the police are in said asshole’s pocket and just didn’t bother trying to protect the guy after the first or even the second beating. Then he threatens the guy’s family to shut up about it, and denies any involvement to the press.
I know, I know, this kind of thing happens all the time in a country where the rule of law is trumped by personal relations. I suppose the fact that a story like this is even reported shows some kind of progress. It also goes to show that DPP politicians have learned more than legislative fighting technique from the KMT*.
In other, less interesting yet more personal news, I was surprised when I walked out my door into the stairwell at noon yesterday to find it was actually warmer than in my apartment. When I got downstairs and out in the alley, it was warmer still, warm and sunny, a perfect late spring day. The sky was blue and the sun was hot, but Taiwanese buildings hold the cold so well everyone out on the street was dressed for chilly weather, which means heavy jackets, scarves, mittens, and of course blue sandals. Even today, which was also sunny and warm, you could tell the buildings were full of leftover frigid air.
Hsinchu was depressing, which isn’t exactly news. The weather was typical new year’s gloom, and the happiest thought I could muster was a vague satisfaction that I don’t live there any more. It was good to see my adopted family, though, even though being called “Ah-Bei” makes me feel old and the questions as to when I’m getting married are becoming more annoying. I actually got a seat on the train down, but it was standing room only all the way back.
Carnivorous Teddy Bear also came up to visit for a couple of days, and we spent time shopping for clothes and computer equipment (I got a new external hard drive as my old one crapped out on me). We then tested the limits of Teddy’s carnivore nature by going to an all-you-can-eat spicy hotpot restaurant in Gongguan. As always, he ate so much it frightened me, but a nasty stomach ache an hour later proved him mortal after all.
On Sunday, when I should have been out looking for places to move, I went go-carting with Shirzi, Graham, Caleb and some other people. I didn’t manage to quite flip the cart completely over this time around, though I did get it up on the wall. Shirzi’s annoying habit of t-boning other drivers left me with a sore ribcage.
Ok, enough pussy-footing around the subject: It is now the 16th, which means I have five days to find a new place. My landlady called me at work yesterday wanting to know if I had arranged the move yet, and she also hinted that I’d be facing a financial penalty if I was seen as “squatting” here. I looked at a nice apartment in a curiously unfinished 4-year-old building up the hill a ways the other day, but oddly enough I can’t get back in touch with the landlady. Many of the other places I’ve seen listed were snapped up before I could call.
I know what you’re thinking: I’m cutting it rather close, right? Yeah, but I’m sure something will come up. I know finding something like I have now at this price is next to impossible in such a short time period, if at all, but I’ll find a place, somehow.
*Notice I don’t use “Chinese Nationalist Party”, a term invented by the Taipei Times. Yes, I realize that it’s a translation of the party’s official name, but that’s not what you go by, you go by what they call themselves, not what you personally feel they should be called. The KMT refers to itself in English as the Kuomintang. The People First Party isn’t a direct tranlation of its Chinese name, and you could translate the DPP’s name in any number of ways. Why people don’t understand that this is blatant editorializing on the Time’s part I’ll never know. I suppose these people think that the build-up of puff pieces on Frank Hsieh before he was “chosen” to become premier and the plethora of articles damning Mayor Ma before he goes up for the KMT chairmanship are mere coincidences as well.
And Wang Jin-pyng thinks Lien should stay on as KMT chair? What the hell? How badly does Lien have to screw up to make these idiots realize he’s doing much, much more harm than good for the party? Maybe he should lose another election or two, or put his feet in his mouth a few more times. Either Wang is an idiot, a complete toad, or a rather unsubtle subversive sent from the green camp. I vote toad.
The obligatory all-night fireworks are still going strong at 2 a.m. as I type this. I went down to Bitan earlier to see if there was anything worth taking pictures of, but besides a guy passed out on the suspension bridge being dragged away by three policemen, who were in turn ignoring kids who were setting off regular bombs on the wooden slats that were the only thing seperating them from a potentially nasty (for them) and entertaining (to watch) drop, there wasn’t much going on.
Harry and I went temple-hopping on Tuesday. The days have been starting out well, with sunlight and blue skies, but then descending into cold, rainy gloom in the afternoons. It was clear when we set out from Xindian, but had clouded over by the time we sat down in the newly opened square in front of Taipei Train Station with some take-out sushi.
By the time we got to Tianpao Temple, and old hangout of mine, it was beginning to rain. The temple was nearly deserted, as always. I took some pictures of wet temple paraphernalia, one of which is now the newest picture on my photo page. Others are up on my Flickr page as well.
Afterwards I went over to Xiao Shan’s place for a new year’s eve dinner with him, his family and friends. We chatted, listened to music, and gnawed chicken parts into famous movie monsters. One of Xiao Shan’s friends/co-workers showed me his ingenious fluorescent lighting system, which consists of light plugs and power units embedded in styrofoam boards. I managed to get parts of two boards to make my own system from.
I had to leave Xiao Shan’s at around 10 p.m. so I could go meet some famous Dalai-lama related “teacher” person Harry kept going on about. “Just remember, don’t underestimate him because of his appearance,” Harry cautioned me as we rode through the wet alleys of Sanchong on his scooter. “He looks like a fat, happy buddha, but he knows a lot.”
The elevator in the building that housed our destination smelled like incense, and when the door opened it looked as if the place were on fire, so much smoke was hanging in the hall. Buddhist chant music came from the apartment in question. Inside sat a few women, including Harry’s sister and the Teacher’s assistant, a woman in her 30s with the brown dye halfway grown out of her long hair. Various pieces of Buddhist literature, posters, candles and glow-in-the dark beads were scattered around the room. Apparently glow-in-the-dark tech is big with Buddhists this year. Everyone oohed and aahed when he turned off the lights and the poster backgrounds showed up in the dull green I remember from play skeleton toys when I was a kid at Halloween.
The Teacher was indeed fat and happy looking and wore glasses. He sat at the end of the table and seemed to indeed know quite a lot. He guessed how long I’ve been in Taiwan as well as my real English name, something even Harry doesn’t know. Still, he seemed to think the Minchuan West Road area was a nice place to live, so I still have my doubts about him.
We sat around, listened to more Buddhist smash hits, munched on peanut-coated puffballs and chatted until about 3 a.m., way past the MRT’s bedtime, so I crashed at Harry’s place last night instead of coming back. It reminded me of back when I was in the army, when I would crash at his place quite often when I was on leave.
The weather appeared quite nice again when I got up this afternoon, so we decided to visit Ba-li, but as we approached the Guandu Bridge, a San Francisco-style wall of cloud rode in from the north, enveloping us in cold mist once again. We visited the Fortune God temple, walked around a bit, laughed at the usual four-hour line for donuts, and decided the weather was too much. After some more sushi from my favorite sushi-train chain Sushi Express (home of coffe jello!) an experienced marred only by the annoying Chinese New Year music everyone is playing (the worst are the ones in English -what the hell were they thinking?), I came home on a suprisingly crowded subway, watched some Battlestar Gallactica (which I mostly like, except for some odd plot twists that have yet to make sense to me), and began writing this, one of the longest run-on sentences you’ll ever be glad your English teacher didn’t make you diagram in ninth grade.
Tomorrow my friend the Carnivorous Teddy Bear, or Ted, might be coming up for a visit. I think Wayne and a friend of his, John of Sinoplice fame, might be in town as well. In any case, it’s nice not to have a plan for once.
It’s the first day of our Chinese New Year vacation, which will last until the 14th. Most of my Taiwanese friends are spending the week with their extended families, and many of my foreign friends are off on vacation. Dean and Maurice, for example, took off today for Thailand, where Shirzi is as well. We had a bit of non-gloom this morning, but it came back around noon, and the forecast is for continued gloom and occasional despair for the next few days. One of the new pictures on my photo page pretty much sums up my mood at the moment: lanterns strung up by wires in the gloom, the whole scene poorly illuminated by a couple of streetlights.
I spent today looking for apartments, which ranged from nice places unfortunately well out of my price range to hovels so primitive I expected to see bison figures carved on the moldy walls. There’s not much chance of finding anything during the holiday, as everyone will be busy stuffing their faces and playing Mahjong, but I have to be out of my lovely apartment by the 20th, so I have to try anyway.
I’ve also added a new page to the site, indicated by the whiskey jug in the menu at right, for The Muddy Basin Ramblers, just to use until the group gets its own domain. I’ve put up some quotes about the band from various media as well as mp3s from our last performance. If everyone agrees, we might put up some photos, member info, history, etc. in the future.
