I’m all moved in, basically, and though I’ve done a little cleaning up, it’s still got a long way to go. I set up my TV and DVD player, put some things in the fridge, and cleaned the bathroom and kitchen a little, but just about everything else is still packed away in a mountain of boxes that makes the place feel really small. In fact, after the Lofty Sky Palace, it almost feels cave-like –a new name? The Water-curtain Cave, maybe? Hmm, I can hear the plumbing rather well– but that makes it sound worse than it is, really. The real test will be how well my neighbors can hear my shenanigans, i.e. DVD-watching and music-listening, and if they do, whether and what kind of fuss they’ll kick up about it. I can hear their goings on in their kitchen pretty well, but it doesn’t bother me particularly, but I don’t know how well they can hear me.

Today was a beautiful day, just as it was over the weekend, which helps a little as I’ve been feeling pretty down lately. On Saturday evening I went with Chris and Slim to a Thanksgiving dinner at their friend’s house. The place was near Wanlong MRT, the usual older apartment inhabited by foreigners. It had rounded walls, a narrow hallway and strangely sloping floors, but it was neat to the point of spartan standards. Jazz music played on the DVD player. The meal was delicious, real turkey and dressing, cranberry sauce, ham and pumpkin pie with kahlua-flavored whip on top. It really hit the spot, and I felt a bit better afterwards, if a bit too full and full of resolve to eat better after that little lapse.

The weekend was otherwise filled with looping on Saturday during the day and filming all day Sunday. We finished a sequence, but I can’t capture the footage until my computer’s all set up again and my hard-drive returned from Nam’s care, where it’s been for the past week while Nam tried to find something wrong with it to explain why it’s been acting up. In short, I didn’t get much of an opportunity to just rest up, and it’s difficult to do when everything’s in boxes and the mattress is on the floor. I’ve got a long list of things to do, like changing the locks, getting natural gas pipes hooked up, cleaning rugs, unpacking, etc. It’s probably good to keep busy, as long as it’s at my own pace.

Steven the Mover came over this morning and moved most of my stuff to the new place. I still have a few things over at the old place that I need to retrieve tonight or tomorrow. Since I don’t have a bed or dresser yet, I’ll have to sleep on the sofa for now. Last night I went to Wenchang St., aka Furniture Street, just south of Xinyi Road, in search of furniture, but all the shops were small and only had a couple of choices. Really light and really dark wood are all the rage now, but I’d like something in between. One shopowner suggested Wugu, but that’s too far, and besides I have unpleasant memories of Wugu after working there for a bit many years ago. He also suggested Jiuzhong Road in Neihu, aka the area near Costco.

I was in the neighborhood so I stopped in to try out The Frying Scotsman. At the counter I ran into fellow Forumosan Miltown Kid and his wife. We exchanged the usual passwords and secret handshakes and sat down to fish and chips, which were ok. In an attempt to give a highlight to the meal, I got a fried Mars Bar, but I still don’t get the point of a fried candy bar. Maybe you have to be Scottish, but all it was was a warm candy bar wrapped in batter, and not especially good. The fries were a bit cold, but the cook made up for it by being quite hot.

After dinner I grabbed a cab over to Neihu. Actually, I grabbed two cabs, because the first one didn’t know where I wanted to go. Once I got there I was faced with a plethora of large furniture stores, but the fashion rule of only light and dark wood was still in force. The third store had what I wanted, though it will take a week to get the furniture to my house. I took a long expensive cab ride back and spent the rest of the night packing.

Steven showed up early this morning, and it took two truckloads to get all my packed stuff over there, filling up the new place pretty full in the process. As the movers brought stuff in, an elderly woman walked in and looked the place over. “And you are…?” I asked, but got no answer. A few minutes later another woman walked in. “Are you renting?” she asked.

“No, I own it,” I replied. It felt good to say that. Then she asked me how much I paid and sniffed that it was way too much. Then another woman came in. She lives on another floor. Who knows how she found out someone was moving in; maybe she prowls the hallways looking for open doors to peek into. In any case, nobody asked to come in, nobody knocked; they just came in like they owned the place. I think I’ll keep the front door closed from now on.

Although all my stuff is in there, it’s hardly livable; everything’s in boxes, the rugs need cleaning, the floor mopping and the walls painting. Unfortunately I’m going to be busy all this weekend with filming and looping, but over the next couple of weeks I should be able to whip it into shape.

Gray, cloudy, rainy and not at all warm outside today. Luckily I work indoors; I’d hate to be stuck doing an outside job in weather like this.

I was at Ikea today looking at beds. I am doing this because I don’t have a bed, and I will need one shortly. The Lofty Sky Palace, being very Lofty, means I sleep on a mattress in the top level of the apartment. My neighbor David has an Ikea bed-on-stilts thing he says I can use if I like to save much-needed space, so I went to Ikea to check it out in action, and also to look over the other beds and setups there. In a nutshell: expensive, but not ugly. I couldn’t find any beds-on-stilts that I didn’t have to bend over to fit underneath, so I think that option’s out. I still need a bed, though.

Ikea has interesting setups that list what you can do with, say, three pings of space, but I couldn’t find any that fit my circumstances, and even if I did, I don’t like most of them, as they all seem designed for teenage girls.

One thing Ikea does have, however, is a cafeteria. I wasn’t originally planning on having lunch there, but after walking through the cold rain, the idea of a hot, cheap, steaming lunch served on real ceramic plates with real utensils really appealed to me. No lines, either, so I grabbed a tray and went over to pick out some steamed fish and veggies with mashed potatoes for NT$99.

It wasn’t bad. I usually grab some sashimi or curry pork for lunch, as they’re conveniently located in the underground subway station where I get off to go to work. Dinner is usually rhoti from Athula by the bridge, or else spaghetti or omelettes, the only two things I really know how to make at home. Having lunch at a cafeteria reminded me of going out to such places, only on a much larger scale, after church on Sundays when I was a kid. I never gave them much thought at the time, but now the idea seems pretty appetizing, though as I recall the lines were pretty long.

But no matter how much I write about the subject, the cold smell of rain remains outside my office window.

The Muddy Basin Ramblers now have their own blog. Between that and the production blog, I’m going to have limit my posting in this general blog to the inane and irrational events that I wrote about exclusively before all of this movie and band business came up. Thing is, back then I had basically nothing to do at work and passed the time by blogging about annoying people in my office, whereas today I’m rather busy at work and not so inclined to blog when I am not at the office, unless it’s a dreary cold day like today and I just got out of bed and don’t have much time to do anything before I have to go to work and be busy.

So, the big news now is that I’m buying an apartment. Buying, as in, like, becoming the owner of a small piece of Taiwan, having a place of my own, paying house payments instead of paying rent, painting my walls purple if I like…that kind of thing.

It may seem sudden, but I’ve been thinking about it for a while now. For one thing, I’ve become quite attached to the little neighborhood across the bridge that I live in now, and when some friends of mine told me about a place for sale literally next door, I went to see it out of curiosity. I’d seen places in the vicinity before, and they were all either way too small, way too expensive, right next to a graveyard, or sometimes even all three. But this place was ok, not too small, reasonably priced, facing away from the Karaoke Bastards but with no obvious graveyards in few, with a nice-sized balcony, one small bedroom, living/dining room, one bathroom with a real bathtub, etc. I looked into what I’d have to pay in monthly payments and it wasn’t that much more than I’m paying now in rent. So I thought, why not?

Of course plenty of reasons came to mind, but most of that was my fearmongering mind doing what it does best. It still seemed the sensible thing to do, so I did it. After forking out a few hundred thousand NT, some of which I raised by selling my powerbook and a camera lens, the rest savings and borrowings, we close in a couple of days. I’ll be leaving the Lofty Sky Palace and its wonderful views, sadly, but then again I won’t have to climb stairs inside my own apartment any more. I also won’t have to climb that little hill every day. And I’ll be able to sit out on my balcony and scare the neighbors, who won’t be able to complain to my landlord now. Ha!

Maurice, Dean and I were driving to a location we’d spotted a few weeks ago, a place where I could go up on a cliff and film Maurice hanging on to the roof of the van as it sped past, supposedly in Beijing in the script. It was an old community that had to have been built during or shortly after the Japanese colonial period. When we got there, however, all we found was an empty slope with a few bulldozers sitting around. A real Alanis-type of irony there, I think.

We went up the road further and found another place from which to film, and I got three good takes of Maurice on the roof. That accomplished, I climbed back down and set myself up in the passenger-side window to film Maurice up close as Dean drove along the road. Old people living in nearby houses just stared as we drove along.

Later that day we met up with Joshua, April, Paul and Darrell, who had been filming a pickup shot with April that morning. Then we headed over to the luxurious Xinyi District to finish the van scene. I finally got to use my polarizer to film through the windshield, and we used the clamp to get shots of the actors in the moving van. We got everything before the light failed, and this time I didn’t trip over anything, so all in all things went pretty well.

Since it was the last of Josh’s scenes, we went over to Chili’s for a celebration “Josh Wrap Party” and stuffed our faces with huge meals and desserts. It’s a milestone, and a much-needed one at this point. We’re close to having all of Maurice’s scenes done as well, and we need to work on getting April’s stuff done before she leaves Taiwan next year. In the meantime, Dean has to work on his thesis and I have to pick the best takes for Josh to do looping with at Darrell’s before he leaves Taiwan next month.

Next week we’re planning to go back down to Yangmei to finish the wild jeep shooting. Hopefully that will work as well as it did last time.

Blues Bash 2 was on Saturday, which dawned sunny and warm, especially for November. Sandman and I caught a cab from Bitan since we were loaded down with so much equipment. I need to get a luggage cart for all my instruments these days. By the time we got to the Estrogen Mall, where the event was being held, it was beginning to cloud over. A large red Budweiser stage truck was opened up in the square, and a few people were milling around a few stands. I was disappointed to learn that there was actually no barbeque at this one, something I’d been looking forward to. All they had was fried noodles in plastic cups, and of course there was a line at the Mister Donut. I went downstairs and bought some bread to fill me up.

On the stage was a group called the Beaver County Rangers, and they were great. I kept asking people if the group had an album, but apparently they’ve only just gotten together. Though the songs were rocking, there was a large empty space in front of the stage where nobody dared enter.

After the Rangers and some annoying patter from the foreign MC, we saw Les Chats Noir, which featured a really good trumpet player. More and more people began to arrive, mostly foreigners. Caleb and Shirzi arrived, as did Dean, as Boogie Chillin owned the stage. They were even better than last time, they were electric, they were the bomb, they were amazing. Shirzi, of course, brought some of the Japanese Chu-hi drinks he’s so fond of, in different flavors. I took a can up on the Budweiser stage with me, though we weren’t supposed to.

At first the sound guy gave us some trouble. “Can we get these mics in these places?” David asked him, showing him a chart.

“No, you can’t,” the sound guy replied, and seeing our incredulous expressions, added, “We can’t do that.”

“But all I need is to take a mic off the drum set and put it under the washtub,” I said. He just shook his head. Eventually, however, he relented and actually set about doing his job. I never did learn the reason for his truculance. Maybe he was pissed about the Chu-hi.

By now the sky was overcast, but the crowd was a lot bigger. Unfortunately, the foreign MC was now wearing a Taiwanese high school girl’s outfit, complete with short skirt and wig. I hadn’t thought he could be any more annoying, but somehow he managed. Our set went well, though, thanks to David thinking ahead and giving us the heads up early on for each song. I played trumpet on only one song, mostly euphonium and washtub bass during the set. In between songs I slugged down the Chu-hi sitting on the amp behind me.

After our set I was hungry again, so I broke down and went down to Mister Donut to stand in the 10-minute line. I was pretty irritated by the time I got to the counter and saw the last donut of the kind I liked being bought, so I released my anger by being hit by the sliding doors on the way out. Serves me right, I suppose. I’d bought three other kinds, anyway, and went to find Shirzi and more Chu-hi. I think cherry is the best flavor for that stuff. I talked to a cool Sri Lankan guy named Parthi who was filming the show on his little DV camera. I hope I didn’t say anything embarrassing; I was not a little drunk by that point.

The stars of the show came on, an Argentinian guy and a Japanese guy, and then the time we’d all been waiting for, the final jam. The stage was packed, most of us sharing microphones. We had three tenor saxes, including Sandman, but only one trumpet. I shared a mic with Thumper, but one of the harmonica players donated his so I could do solos and actually be heard. It was great.

After all the post-show walking around, back-slapping, tent-striking and walking about in a daze, we piled into taxis and went to the opening night of Bliss, the former Chocolate & Love. I got some Cantonese noodles, a glass of whiskey and CC, and talked to Jojo, Chris and Twonavels as a couple of cover bands played upstairs. Sandman wanted to do a jam session, along with Kevin Smith from the BC Rangers, but apparently the new soundproofing isn’t up to the job, so we left. I couldn’t stay up til dawn in any case, as I had to get up for filming the next day. More about that on the production journal soon.