I’d heard a lot of good things about Shure’s E4C in-ear headphones, so I went to a store on the third floor of a a building on Chongqing South Road to check them out. The place was quiet, with good track lighting and an air of fake exclusivity. The clerk responded to my query and brought a pair out. They looked big, bigger and heavier than my current Sony earphones. I reached for my iPod, saying, “Can I try them out?”

“No,” the clerk said.

“No?” I was confused. “Why not?”

“Store policy,” the clerk said.

“So I can just look at them?”

“That’s right.”

“What if I buy them, listen to them and don’t like what I hear? Can I return them?” I asked.

“No. No returns.”

I looked around, expecting a camera crew to hop out and tell me I was on a variety show with 37 hosts in fake afros and huge microphones where they pull stunts on unsuspecting people, but no cameras were forthcoming.

“Well…I don’t know quite how to put this,” I said. “What is the point, exactly, of selling earphones that you can’t listen to or return?”

“Maybe that’s the way it works in the US, but we can’t do that in Taiwan.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s Taiwan.”

“That’s brilliant!” I laughed. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

One of the other customers was listening to our exchange, and offered some advice. “Why don’t you let him use some spare ear covers, then you wouldn’t technically be trying out the headphones, right?” The clerk nodded.

“Ok,” he said, and brought out some ear covers. “That’ll be NT$150.”

“NT$150?” I said.

“Yes.”

“For ear covers that I can only use on these earphones, which I otherwise cannot try out?”

“Yes.”

All hope of the pop-out camera crew had vanished by this point. These people genuinely believed what they were saying. No amount of sarcasm would arouse even the vaguest possibility in their minds that they weren’t alienating scores of willing customers. Perhaps that was what they wanted; exclusivity, even if it drove them out of business. Well, good luck, I thought on my way out.

I just finished reading Arthur C. Clarke’s Tales of Ten Worlds. I used to love Clarke’s books when I was a kid, especially 2001 and 2010, but this collection, published in 1963, is more depressing than interesting, because like many early science fiction pieces it extrapolates our progress in space exploration based on the momentum we had in the 60’s, momentum which failed in the 70s and has yet to recover. So all of the interplanetary travel, moon bases, travels to Mars and other planets simply aren’t feasible or possible given today’s prevailing attitudes. Oh, we could do it if we wanted to, we reassure ourselves, but why spend all that money if there are still problems like hunger and poverty on Earth?

Well, there will likely be such problems on Earth for the next few hundred years, if not longer. If you adopt that line of reasoning, we’ll never get off this planet. What if we’d never left Africa? A single storm or other natual calamity could have easily wiped the entire species out. The only difference is a matter of scale, and probability, which we don’t know enough about in any case to accurately predict our chances of survival on a planetary basis.

There are some areas where we’ve matched or even outstripped the visions of the 60’s. In one story, “The Road to the Sea”, which takes place many thousands of years in the future, we get this:

“On her breast Yradne was wearing a large group of jewels, suspended from her neck by a thin golden chain. It was quite a fine pendant, but there was nothing particularly unusual about it, and Brant wasted no time in saying so. Yradne smiled mysteriously and her fingers flickered toward her throat. Instantly the air was suffused with the sound of music…”

It seems Yrade has an iPod shuffle.

In another story in the nearer future, called “Into the Comet”, a spaceship, coincidentally named Challenger, is trapped inside the debris of a comet headed away from the sun because its main computer is down. The main character has an exchange with the head scientist about the matter:

“‘That’s ridiculous! The ship’s in perfect condition, we’ve plenty of food and fuel-and you tell me we’re all going to die just because we can’t do a few sums.’

‘A few sums!’ retorted Martens, with a trace of his old spirit. ‘A major navigational change, like the one needed to break away from the comet and put us on an orbit to Earth, involves about a hundred thousand separate calculations. Even the computer needs several minutes for the job.'”

Today, you could probably get your mobile phone to do the job for you if you had to (or, in a pinch, the microwave). My run-of-the-mill PC desktop is capable of several billion calculations per second.

And yet I’m not likely to see anything beyond the atmosphere of this, our one and only planet.

Here’s a question: Why aren’t these people in jail? (link via Kottke)

No, I don’t mean the tippers, I mean the waitstaff who decided they didn’t like their tips, took private credit card information and posted on the Internet. Has the concept of privacy in America become so tenuous and illusory that this kind of blatantly illegal action is somehow acceptable? Something tells me that waitstaff who are willing to do this kind of thing for “anything under 17%” probably got what they deserved in the tip department, though they’re lucky they’re still not incarcerated or fined, much less unemployed. The cooks, the busboys, and everyone else, they have to pay a certain amount, because they don’t get tips. Waitresses get tips, for some reason.

I never liked the whole dynamic that tipping causes. When I was in the states, I was never certain where I stood in my debt to the restaurant. Who am I to decide how much your staff is paid? Shouldn’t that be the job of the people who run the restaurant? It’s an awkward position to be in. I never know what people expect to get, what they’re going to do if they feel dissatisfied, whether I paid too little or too much; it pretty much ruins the experience of dining out in America. I do understand that the system in America demands that customers pay part of the waitstaff’s salary; it’s a great system for the restaurants; they can pay these employees squat and get away with it.

For everyone else involved, however, it sucks. I’m glad the custom of tipping hasn’t made it over here yet.

I was at Moss Burger last night in Yonghe, having some dinner before sword/tuishou practice, when I noticed that the woman and little girl sitting nearby getting rather special service. Usually, you go to the counter downstairs, they take your order, give you what they can do immediately, along with a number for the cooked part of your meal to deliver when it’s done. But an extremely solicitous employee was upstairs explaining each and every item on the menu to the woman, who in turn was trying to barter on the prices and deals available. This went on for about 15 minutes, with the employee often apologizing and nearly getting down on his knees and knocking his forehead on the floor. I wondered it the woman had found a finger in her salad or something. More likely she’s just extremely rich and/or some local gangster’s wife.

It’s hard to describe how to know if you’re in a gangster hangout here; usually it’s just a feeling you get when you walk into a place. You just know. Sure, some gangster types are generally identifiable, though many westerners I know tend to identify just about any Taiwanese man as a gangster, either from stereotypes or a general dislike of Taiwanese men. But there’s something very cool and yet a bit tense about a gangster-friendly bar or restaurant. Pretentious, to be sure, cocky and yet furtive in their arrogance. There are definitely degrees of hoodlum infestation as well as many levels of class within the system, but you can usually tell the difference between a normal place a gangster just happens to be using, and a joint they call their own. Due to the general lack of law enforcement, the sector of society tends to be at once a bigger as well as a more obvious part of society than it is in the west. It’s origins go back even further than legitimate government, and many people here see it as an integral, inevitable and even indispensible part of everyday life. Some foreigners seem to think that gangsters are all either mainlanders or southerners or cab drivers or whatever, but it seems to me that the whole spectrum of society is included (gangster dentists? flower-store hoodlums? Why not?), a kind of mirror universe, though that may imply greater separation between the two than really exists.

After foolishly thinking that I’d get there quicker by taxi instead of the subway, I arrived at the train station with just enough time to get on the train before it left. It was a Fuxing train rather than the straight-trip Ziqiang train, so it took a long time to get to Tainan. I chatted with Duncan, Zoe, Blair and Jeff, read, and took pictures of the train on the way down to pass the time. The air outside was thick with smoke from freshly harvest rice fields. I wondered if the farmers were moving up their harvest schedule due to the approaching typhoon. Sitting in front of me and Blair were two elementary school-aged kids, one boy and one girl. They were brother and sister, and after staring at us for a time from between the seats, they decided to talk to Blair. They would ask him all kinds of questions, but they seemed afraid of me. When they asked me where I was from, I said, “Taipei.”

“No, that’s impossible!” they said.

“It says it right here on my ticket,” I said.

“No, where are you really from,” the girl asked.

“Mexico. I was born in a small village and raised by bandits,” I said. Blair started to snicker.

“Yeah, I see now,” the boy said, sagely. “You do look Mexican.”

“And your Chinese has a Spanish accent, too!” the girl added. The pair then looked questioningly at Blair who had begun to laugh openly.

We got to Tainan about 5:30, and exited the old white station into a sweltering heat while Duncan called Jim, the boss at The Armory, to come pick us up. In the meantime I sat on a bench that was radiating heat from the day’s sun and listened to Zoe talk about her experiences in Europe. Jim arrived in his van soon after, and we drove to the bar.

The Armory is just a two-story roadside house, possibly a former storeage factory/residence near the park. There’s a nice little gardin in front, and it’s done up inside with all kinds of paraphernalia and snapshots stuck on the walls. A rickety spiral staircase leads to the upper floor, which seems to be made of plywood and has a nice-sized bar in the back.

We set up in the back of the first floor on a small dance floor and a rented sound system and figured out the sound before going out in search of snacks. I’d heard that the place did a good business; it was originally a foreigner bar and then gained a following in the local community, but people tended to show up late, so we had some waiting around to do.

After some dinner from the kitchen, we set up and started playing at around 10:30. I was really tired but a large glass of Coke perked me up a little. The place was filling up quickly. Periodically the sound would go out, and Jim would rush back to the sound system and try to fix the problem. Ear-piercing feedback would cause everyone in the place to duck as if being physically threatened. Other than that, though, it went well. I heard we sounded particularly good on the second floor. Many people commented on the washtub bass, and one guy invited us to a jam session at his place afterwards. He said he had a trumpet and a baritone there as well; I’d been wanting to try out a baritone since David started talking about maybe getting one for the Muddy Basin Ramblers.

Finally the sound system just conked out, and we decided not to fight it any longer and call it a night. I packed up and took a few pictures of the place. Out front a frighteningly thin girl was throwing up and crying, alternately. I’m pretty sure one symptom was the cause of the other, but I wasn’t sure which was which.

We left in the wee hours of the morning and went to the guy’s studio in a taxi. The place was a fourth floor walkup, a smallish apartment with lots of musical equipment and soundproofing on the walls and windows. About a dozen people were there, lying on the sofa, munching on snacks, and jamming on mostly electric instruments. I accompanied on trumpet for a while, then lead a session on bass with a bassline I wish I could remember. Seriously, it rocked; it went on so long I was dripping with sweat before I sent it home. Then I fiddled around on the keyboard for a bit. We played until after sunup, but you couldn’t tell because all the windows were covered with soundproofing. A small black-and-brown dog crept around nuzzling everyone’s legs, and occasionally one of two cats would dart through the barrage of music. Later when I went upstairs to check on the weather, I found them chasing each other on the roof.

We left at around 7am and went back to the house where several of the guys live, and crashed there. I woke up at around noon and opened the door to find a cat waiting for me. The cat was obviously expecting someone else and balked halfway into it’s entry. The others were up on the rooftop balcony talking and watching the weather. All I knew was that the typhoon was supposed to hit Taiwan; I didn’t know anything else because I didn’t have Internet access anywhere since I left home. The sky was dark and clouds rushed over us at an alarming rate, though. Spats of rain caused us to move our chairs further inside.

We went out for some tasty danbing and tea at the non-lavender-tea-carrying “Lavender Tea Shop”, and then went back to our lazy chatting on the rooftop. I found the trumpet and baritone in the hall downstairs. Both looked to be in pretty bad shape. Insects crawled out of the dusty, falling-apart baritone case as I opened it and took out the larger instrument. It was battered and tarnished, but once it was probably silver. I took it up on the roof and played along to the Ska music they had going on the stereo. It wasn’t too bad. I kind of liked it, even. I asked Jason, the owner, how much he wanted for it, but he was reluctant to sell it based on its sentimental value. He admitted he never played it, however, so he agreed to let me borrow it for a while.

So I was carrying three instruments with me now. The wind was picking up as we had lunch at a Greek restaurant, the best Greek cuisine I’ve had, I believe. The white stucco walls were covered in graffitti, and the kitchen was open to view, always a good sign, though there weren’t very many customers. We then went back to The Armory to settle up with Jim before getting on a wild chicken bus, the really comfy kind with barcaloungers and tv sets in each seat, back to Taipei. On the way we passed only one accident, but it looked a bit serious and ambulances were involved. The bus was flying through the stormy night, and I was a bit nervous about our speed. I still managed to get some sleep before we arrived. I had a vision of not being able to hail a cab due to the weather and jumped in the first one I saw, only realizing a few minutes later that Zoe and I could have shared what promised to be a long, expensive cab ride. I immediately felt terrible about my behavior and called Zoe, but she said it was ok. Zoe rocks, I must say.

The weather got pretty nasty last night and early this mornng, making my big, untaped windows shudder and vibrate and filling Bitan to the brim, but it seems a lot better now. The typhoon ran into the coast around Hualian and seemed to stall there, massive mountains scraping it out from underneath. We’ll get some more rain from it, but it seems the wind and other violent behavior are pretty much overwith.

We shot some footage of Dean’s co-worker Nicolas as a French security guard on Tuesday, using the editing room in the building where we all work. The people in the department who are in charge of the place were very nice and accomodating, and it worked out pretty well. I transfered the footage to be played on the monitor to a dv tape they could play on their equipment. Dean had gone over it and made it look like a security camera.

Now, it seems that just about everyone is off jet-setting around the world for the next month. Dean and April are off to Canada, and most of the rest of the cast seems similarly occupied. What we’re going to try to take of during this period is the rooftop chase, hopefully something like the chases in the Dirty Harry Movies, but purportedly in Beijing. I have a few areas in mind to scout locations for this, but as yet I haven’t found a whole lot. If you know of any interesting rooftops in old Taipei neighborhoods that can be run and/or jumped over, let me know.

After everyone gets back, we’ll be trying to get all of Joshua’s scenes done, as he’s leaving later in the year. I’d like to get the whole thing done by the end of this year, but of course that depends on many factors.

Our first typhoon of the season appears to be on its way. Even if I didn’t have the Central Weather Bureau website on my favorites list, I’d have known about it from the moment I looked outside today. Typical pre-typhoon weather, breezy and extremely bright, good photography light that made me wish I had a good zoom lens. Usually Taipei is so dense and hazy one doesn’t really need to do much zoom shooting, but I could have used one today.

I’m meeting Duncan, Blair and Zoe at the train station tomorrow morning so we can go down to Tainan. Hopefully I’ll be back before the typhoon hits, but if not, I will at least have my washtub with me for cover and, if needed, flotation. Last night I went over to The Shannon to hear the band play and get a better idea of the bassline in some of the songs. Also, it was Creepy Susan’s last performance, and I’d never heard them before. They’re really loud. Whereas I had had to strain to hear Tarry Bush, I had to move back in the bar to hear Creepy Susan.

Alas, I was also reminded of why I don’t particularly like The Shannon. The crowd didn’t seem at all interested in the music; they seemed to think it was just background noise for them to shout over. This isn’t really The Shannon’s fault, but it made listening to the music a bit of a chore. I took some pictures for Alita and left early to catch the last train home.

Speaking of trains, I’ve realized that, in order to prevent people from rushing to trains that are about to leave, the MRT stops showing the time remaining before a train leaves and displays instead “Welcome to the MRT system” on the time-remaining sign. Now, whenever I see “Welcome to the MRT system”, I run even faster, because I know the train’s leaving soon. Well, no, I actually don’t. I just sigh, shake my head, maybe mutter an expletive, and get out a book to read while waiting for the next train.

I had an appointment in the city this morning, so I had some time to kill before work. I decided to splurge on NT$20 ticket to see the map exhibit at the History Museum on Guanqian Road. It was pretty cool to see how Taipei in particular developed into the shape it’s in today. I had no idea that the Japanese basically changed the course of the Keelung River, and that it once flowed right under the cliffs where Jiantan Station is today. Facinating stuff. They could have had more posters and postcards with old pictures, though. I’d have definitely bought some. Instead, they had the “Magic of Zamfir” or some such music for sale. Brilliant marketing strategy, that. “Hey, I’m in the mood for some pan flute, let’s go to the museum of history!”

The stars are out tonight, thanks to the approaching typhoon. Someone turned off the lights on the suspension bridge, perhaps so we could see the stars and moon better (though it’s more likely that someone just screwed up). I might try and get up early tomorrow to get more pictures. Yeah, right, sure I will.

Tarry Bush
Originally uploaded by Poagao.

I brought my pocket trumpet with me to Bongos last Saturday, as Tarry Bush was playing there and Zoe had invited us all to join in. As it turned out, however, they had no bassist with them, and I’d left my washtub at home. I was considering going to the local store and buying the materials to make another, and I even went to check (it would have been cheap and easy to do, actually) but David said he could bring his once he was finished with his work.

I played a bit on the trumpet and had some dinner while I listened to Tarry Bush’s first set. The music they play is really complicated, yet they do a great job. David showed up just after the start of the second set, and we started accompanying the group on bass. It was a great time, though the space is a bit small for any crowd over a dozen people.

Andrew was worried about his neighbors complaining about the noise, so we wrapped it up around 8:30pm and went to Chocolate & Love on Xinyi Road. I’d never been there before, but the Saltwater Crocs were having their farewell concert, and they’d invited the ramblers to participate. We entered through the bar and proceeded up to the second floor, where the restaurant, kitchen and performance space are located. The place was decorated with some pretty neat pieces, including a traditional Chinese bed and door.

Most the gang were already there, so I sat down with Slim and Thumper while David went to help set up the sound for the crocs. Conor showed up soon after, and I lit into my first Long Island Ice Tea of the evening as well as my second meal. Salmon and potatoes, not bad.

The crocs took the stage and rocked away while David flitted around adjusting speakers and wires. Man, are they a loud band. They’re breaking up because Rodney, the drummer, is having a baby and settling down.

I was a bit sloshed by the time it was our turn. They were all amplified; even the trumpet was hard to hear, but I did my best though I haven’t picked it up since The Wall. Conor performed a wicked solo that blew everyone away. As usual. We went through several songs until they’d pretty much exhausted their repertoire as well as themselves. David wouldn’t hear of it, though. “Play something else, something you really love!” he cried. So the lead guitarist took the mic and sang:

“Hey, Jude…”

I couldn’t help it; I burst out laughing. Cruel, I know, but the alcohol had gone to my head and abolished any sense of shame. The song was a disaster, but we made something out of it.

We played one more rock song after that, and the deed was done. Everyone was packing up with who else but Rowan, fresh from Fresh, arrived. He was despondent from having had to resort to going to such a place, and we commiserated over yet more drinking about the lack of suitable venues in this town for men of our age and proclivities until we were tossed out at closing at 3am.
I managed to get up the next morning. Ok, noon. Ish. Sandman called and said he was going to explore the new mountain trail I’d told him about, the one DJ and I took a few weeks ago, so I went along.

We trekked to the top of the hill, past the site of the haunted abandoned amusement park, and up the trail to the platform, which Sandy deemed suitable for nighttime jamming. Then we walked back down the other side to the community there, where we drooled over the nice places. Jojo went right up to the railway-tie door of one place and knocked. When nobody answered, she called “Is anyone there?” Presently a man in a T-shirt opened the door, and we said we were looking for houses in the area and wanted to have a look at his. Graciously, he let us in.

Man, what a place. He’d redecorated the entire place with junk from trashyards, knocked down parts of walls, and he even had a backyard with a fishpond (Sandman’s photo). The only thing I didn’t like about the area, besides the difficulty involved in reaching it, were the high-tension electrical wires hanging above it. The guy even drove a Mini. Ideal.

In other news, Duncan had invited me to play bass for Tarry Bush at their gig in Tainan this Saturday night at The Armory. It’s been too long since I’ve been down that way, so I think I’ll go and check in on my friend Steve and his family while I’m there.

Ok, this is just out of hand. What started out as a quirky story of one man’s petty dissatisfaction is getting positively weird.

I knew that the Taipei Times is convinced that Lee Teng-hui is God Incarnate and that anyone who disagrees is positively evil. I knew that Richard Hartzell, since being thwarted in his goal of gaining ROC citizenship without having to give up his precious US citizenship, has been fixated on “bringing the mountain to Mohammed” by somehow twisting the omission of mention of Taiwan in the San Francisco Peace Treaty, which neither the ROC nor the PRC signed or were even invited, into an argument that Taiwan actually belongs to the US, thereby making Hartzell a “citizen” of sorts (I think he actually wants some kind of governor-general position in the new administration, but who knows what kind of fantasy is running around in that convoluted mind of his). I even knew that the TSU was using Hartzell to their own goal, although I’m not sure whether Hartzell knows he’s being used or not. You’d think it would be obvious, but a lot of things that should be obvious don’t seem to get through to this man.

So I shouldn’t be surprised when I open up the browser today and see this:

Status talks needed with US: Lee

UNRESOLVED: The former president said that discussions with the US were needed to settle the issue of Taiwan’s sovereignty, which has been ambiguous since WWII .

“In fact, Taiwan’s legal status has been uncertain since World War II, which has led the UN to reject Taiwan as a member and prevented Taiwan from participating in the international community and establishing relations with big countries,” Lee said.

Yeah, the US rejected Taiwan because of the SFPT didn’t mention it. Uh-huh. And I suppose the Cairo Declaration, since it doesn’t suit your needs, doesn’t count, right? Thought so.

I’ve talked with some officials at AIT; they know about Hartzell and his looney campaign. They’re hoping they don’t have to give him any more attention than he’s already got by issuing a full denial of any connection between his claims and US policy. The mere mention of the possibility that the US is even considering claiming Taiwan as a military protectorate would gain us nothing but an armed response and, very quickly, a conflict with China. The US knows this. So does Beijing. And most of the reasonable officials in Taiwan know this as well.

So why should I care, you ask? Not just because it’s dangerous, stupid, and selfish of this man to put our safety and security in jeopardy for his own personal benefit, benefits he could reap just as easily if he had the guts to actually give up his US citizenship and immigrate. Sure, being attacked for no reason scares me, but I’d deal with it. But think about this: Hartzell, the TSU and some elements of the DPP are trying to convince the population at large that the US would jump right in and help Taiwan if Taiwan would only make a formal declaration of either independence or being formally part of the US. As most reasonable people know, America might aid us in an unprovoked attack. International opinion would hold some sway there, but more seriously, it would mean that China was willing to engage in military aggression without provocation.

If Taiwan were to make the first move, however, the US could and most likely would stay out of it. No matter what the radical greens would have you believe, such a move by Taiwan would be, to the international community, the first strike in the inevitable conflict. We would be seen as having brought it upon ourselves. The international community would be split, the US wants to avoid war with China if it possibly can. And it would.

And all of the white people in Taiwan, assumed to be American, would instantly be identifiable as symbols of the country that, after promising to help us fight China and defend us in our hour of need, simply decided to stand by and watch us go down in flames.

Yeah, they’ll just love Americans then. The streets might not be safe, but standing in line at the airport, clutching his US passport in his pudgy hand, I think Richard Hartzell would be just fine.

We’ve been doing little things here and there, and I’ve been too busy to really give them each updates. This last weekend, however, we got a major action sequence in the can: the car chase. I mean, every spy film should have at least one car chase. We added the challenge of lighting over the car chase in the last film, as this one takes place at night and involves more complicated manuevers. For example, in the still shot next to this paragraph, Dean is driving backwards as he shoots.

Ah, but I digress. Let’s start at the beginning:

On Friday, Dean and I hauled all our equipment from the office to the car rental place, where we picked up a couple of Toyotas, one Camry and one Vios. We’d been told the Vios had a sunroof, and I was looking forward to utilizing it for shooting. ‘Twas not to be, though. They said they had another car that had one, but it was way too expensive. Dean had cut out magnetic lettering for the Vios so it could be the security chase car. He also got a flashing, revolving red Kojak light for the top.

We drove down to the NTU campus gate where we were going to meet Paul, Darrell and Pierre, a friend of my friend Zoe’s. Pierre was going to play one of our pursuers, and since the scene purportedly takes place in France, we wanted some native French speakers. The other one was Nicholas, a co-worker of Dean’s. After a little drama when we lost Dean in traffic, we set off.

We drove through some of the afternoon thundershowers we’ve been having lately, up north to Danshui and past it to Shalun, where a network of broad, well-lit avenues lies waiting for development that never came out there. On the way we rented a scooter at a shop across the street from the Danshui MRT station. We’d gotten a call en route that Nicholas couldn’t make it, so we revised our plans accordingly by having Pierre speak into the radio instead.

We arrived to find very light traffic in the area; fireworks were going off constantly over on the nearby seashore. I had a look at my storyboards, and we started filming Pierre in the chase car. Paul and Darrell drove the “hero car”, as we called it. We used fluorescent lights attached to styrofoam boards, plugged into the cigarette lighter. They seemed to work well. Then we tried out the clamp, which is used to attach the camera to the window of a car. I think it’s meant for still cameras, and it made me a bit nervous to have my video camera up there, so I sat in the back seat and kept my hand on the strap in case anything happened. Nothing did.

We then set up for the “crash”, which I plan to create with reversed footage and angles. Dean set off a smoke bomb in the Vios’ engine compartment, and he must have known what he was doing, as the car didn’t, in fact, catch on fire.

During this, young punks on scooters would periodically tool by, lying down on their rides as they cruised along. Thankfully they didn’t take too great an interest in us. A large moving truck with guy on top chugged up to adjust some nearby signal lights. Occasionally a guy on a scooter laden with fishing equipment would pass us on his way down to the coast.

Paul was quite tired by this point, so I drove him and Pierre back to Danshui to get cab, while Dean and Darrell got some stunt shots. It was only when I was on my way back that I realized that for some shots we needed at least four people: two to drive the cars, one to drive the scooter, and one to shoot. Now we only had three.

No matter; we improvised. We filmed the two cars separately doing some things. Dean drove a car while I rode on the back of the scooter, driven by Darrell, and shot. Sometimes I sat backwards. Then Dean and I drove a car each while Darrell shot from the side of the road. At one point Dean was driving backwards, with me following a few feet away in the other car. We also took some corners at speed and did some straightaway, camera-in-the-middle-of-the-road stuff. We also hung the camera out of one car and filmed its side along with the other car. One time Dean was in the Vios, with Darrell driving the Camry, and I filmed and drove the scooter at the same time. It’s shaky, but it works.

It was about 4:30am by the time we finished what we had to do. We parked the scooter near the one solitary apartment complex nearby, and departed as the sky began to lighten. Dean took the Vios home with him, while I took the Camry, dropping Darrell off on the way. The sun had already risen by the time I got home and found a parking spot.

I slept until 10. So I was already a little tired by the time we met up again at Dean’s house the next afternoon. Shirzi decided to make an appearance, so he piled into the Camry along with me, Dean, April and Maurice; Paul and Darrell came along in Paul’s old Corona, as Dean had returned the Vios already. We were planning to use the Kojak light on Paul’s car instead.

We stopped at Athelia University in Danshui to shoot some shots of April sneaking around in her cat burgler outfit, but the guard at Danshui High invited us to take a stroll on that campus first, so we did. The cicadas are extremely loud out there.

The sun was setting, so we proceeded to the AU campus, where I set up, Shirzi and Dean looked for a place to film a grappling hook (they couldn’t find one), April reluctantly put on her heavy, hot gear, and Maurice sat down to what looked like a delicious salad.

I got some good shots of April, but after we were done, everyone was so hungry from seeing Maurice eat that we decided to have dinner down by the riverfront before heading out to shoot. We found a seafood restaurant and ordered mostly vegetarian fare. It wasn’t bad.

It was after 9pm by the time we finally got out to the shooting site. Since Paul wanted to leave early, we decided to get the pursuing shot first. This meant somehow attaching the camera to the hood of the Camry. We used bungie cords, a pillow and duct tape to rig something up, and then did a test. Condensation was fogging up the front window for some reason, so we had to turn off the A/C in the car. The actors were, of course, not thrilled at the prospect of doing the scene in a hot, jouncing car with madman Dean at the wheel. April got rather carsick, in fact. Luckily there were some shots we could get of Maurice while stationary, and April went to lie down on the side of the road. I have no idea what passers by were thinking when they saw this.

The test went well, so I pushed the record button, and off they went. The rest of us followed in Paul’s car with the Kojak light on top. I could see Dean throwing the car around rather violently. Later, when I watched the tape, I heard him say to April and Maurice before pulling over, “TC’s going to tell me to slow down.” Sure enough, I did. The camera was fine, though, and we got great results. The lights kept going out, however, and we found that the adaptor plug was actually melting and deforming in the cigarette lighter socket. Fortunately there was another socket we could use inside the center armrest.

We got some more clamp shots, some running shots and backwards driving/shooting shots. Darrell and Paul went home, and we wrapped up at around 2am or so. We drove out to Dazhi to drop April off, and then to Banqiao to drop Maurice off. By the time we got to Dean’s house, climbed his stairs and put the stuff away, I was really, really tired. I threw myself in a cab as the sun rose. This time I slept until 2pm this morning. Now check the posted date on this entry. Looks like I’m changing time zones, doesn’t it?

In the previous weeks we got some other scenes, such as one of April and a random Chinese fellow, played by former news co-worker named Vito, in an elevator. It’s supposedly in Beijing but in reality it’s in my building, as well as some pick-up shots of security guards, one played by another co-worker, Hyatt, etc. It’s hard to say exactly where we are in the production, but I think we’re around halfway done. We’ve got a lot done, but there’s still a lot to do.