I wanted to take advantage of the bizarre absence of rain on Saturday to take a ride on my new crazy bike, but it would have to wait as the Muddy Basin Ramblers were putting on an appearance up on Yangmingshan at a party held by some employees of the American Institute in Taiwan. It was sort of a going-away party for one of their people who was being reposted.

Sandman and I hopped on the MRT and met the others, except for Thumper, who would be joining us later, at Jiantan Station. We piled into two cabs and proceeded up Yangde Avenue and up the mountain, and after several wrong turns we ended up at the police-guarded complex, a group of white US-suburban-style one-story houses, complete with large green lawns, picture windows without bars, driveways, and actual white picket fences. It was like a little piece of American 70’s-era suburbia in the middle of Taiwan. To say it felt odd was quite an understatement.

We unloaded and began to set up under a tent in the driveway of one of the houses. People, residents and guests that looked mostly American, were milling about, munching on snacks and talking. The crowd ranged from older people to children and scowling teenagers who, though they turned up their noses at our music, seemed interested in playing with the washtub bass. Mosquitoes the size of…well, very large mosquitoes attacked us. A group of men stood around a huge barbeque grill that looked as if it had been constructed from a rooftop water tank.

We decided to use one mic and to not mic the bass, as it seemed pretty loud as it was. When David said we should eat before playing, I made a beeline for the grill, but no hamburgers were forthcoming; all they had at that moment was chicken, and Sandman consumed a huge burned hunk of it. I had some good pasta salad and delicious tomatoes, though.

Since nobody was gathered around the “stage” tent, we walked over next to the grill where all the people were and started playing to get their attention. Then we went back and played two sets. I was feeling very tired, especially after eating, for some reason. My trumpet playing was pretty substandard, I have to admit, especially at first. At least the bass and baritone weren’t so bad. Afterwards I found that there are some very interesting people working at AIT. My friend and fellow Chinese student from my Tunghai days, Prince Roy, is scheduled to join their ranks this summer.

Before I knew it it was dark, and most of the guests were leaving, but David and Zoe started jamming again, and we all joined in. Due to the lateness of the hour, we were shown in one of the houses, which was beautiful inside with parquet floors and big windows looking out on the back lawn. I walked back and forth in the living room, which had wall-to-wall carpeting, feeling the floorboards creak under my socked feet. I haven’t experienced that sensation for many years, as all the buildings here are concrete, with tile floors.

One of the guys there, and older man with a mustache and glasses, used to play the euphonium years ago, so I let him play mine. He was pretty good, and you could tell it was something of a revelation for him. I hope he gets one of his own and keeps it up.

In between songs, I peeked into the huge kitchen, with two full-size refrigerators and a real oven/range. It even had an island in the middle. Amazing.

The jamming we did at that guy’s living room was a lot of fun. I was feeling better after some wine, and hopefully redeemed myself after my musical misadventures earlier that evening. However, by the time we wrapped up the MRT had stopped running, so Sandman, Zoe and I got into a cab, re-entered Taiwan, and began the long trek back to Xindian.

By the time I woke up this morning it was already afternoon. Fortunately it wasn’t too wet outside, so I took advantage of the weather to take a ride on my new crazy bike. I rode up the riverside as usual. The ride is a bit harsher than my old bike, due to a lack of shocks, but not too bad. Getting started on an uphill slope is pretty difficult, I found, and the steering takes some getting used to. I rode up around to the Dahan River until I hit construction, and then turned back. On my way back it began to rain heavily, so I took refuge underneath a bridge along with several other cyclists until it stopped. I got a few stares and comments on the bike along the way.

The crazy bike isn’t slow. I need to adjust the seat a bit and move the handlebars up a little to keep my knees from hitting them during turns, but it’s quite comfortable. My prostate sent me a little thank-you note at the end of the ride, though I may hear from my knees tomorrow.

Five years.

Five years ago, as of yesterday, I began this account. I can’t say it seems like yesterday, since quite a lot has happened since then. If you took my last couple of entries and showed them to the 32-year-old me in April of 2001, I’d probably be a little surprised to find that I’d have moved out to Xindian and bought an apartment. I’d certainly be pleased at my employment situation, happy to see that I got the book published in Chinese, happy that I’m working on a feature film, as well as a member of a band. Happy to know that I’d adopted a cat and sad to find that she died. Not terribly surprised to find I’d written over 100,000 words on forumosa or uploaded over 1200 photos to Flickr. Probably dismayed that the only place I’d traveled to was Australia.

Perhaps most importantly, I’d be happy to find that I’ve made many good friends through this website, and pretty shocked to find that it was a major reason behind the loss of others who couldn’t deal with perceived disparities between the me presented here and the real-life me.

Many things have not changed: Both George W. Bush and Chen Shui-bian are still in office, for better or for worse. I’m still riding Gendouyun and haven’t replaced it with anything newer. I still dabble in Tai-chi and sword. I’m still single, still hoping.

I’m not going to make any predictions or express any hopes for the next five years, if this account lasts that long. I still enjoy writing it, venting, complaining, exulting, or just blogging about whatever I feel. Although I deliberately got rid of the comments and visitor statistics, I still hope that there are people out there who enjoy reading it.

I had planned to have another edition of News From the Renegade Province ready for the anniversary, but I haven’t had time to finish it just yet. Soon, though. I also need to update my links page, and I’m wondering about the necessity of the photography, film, contact, writing and other pages as well. Any advice is welcome, but one other thing that hasn’t changed in five years is my lack of knowlege concerning web design and HTML code.

I made the mistake of not setting my alarm when I finally arrived home from a Friday night film shoot and fell into bed at 4:30am. The Ramblers were supposed to meet up at the Kunyang MRT station at noon, so that we could take a cab out to the Dream Community in Xizhi in time for a sound check. I woke up at 11:30 to a brilliantly sunny, hot day outside my window. I had assumed that Nam, who was going to come over to pick up my new notebook to make some adjustments, would wake me up, but he was delayed. I was told that a taxi straight from Xindian to Xizhi would be NT$200-300, so I packed up , taking the computer and leaving the baritone to save time, and caught a cab.

An hour and NT$635 later, I arrived at the Dream Community. Apparently the cabbie’s claim to competence in All Things Xizhi didn’t pan out, and we took a wrong turn or two. I was the first band member to show up, so I sat down amongst the circus people and had some free fried curry rice while I waited for the others to arrive. The rice was good, and I chatted with a woman from the circus who turned out to be a stiltwalker, though I had her pegged as an elephant trainer for some reason.

The others arrived soon after, with Conor worryingly absent as nobody could get him on his mobile. We did a sound check, during which a light crashed to the ground. The sound guy was a bass player and gave me extra oomph, which I appreciated. Eventually Thumper and wife arrived, and he, Slim and I took a walk around the neighborhood. At the end of a row of two-story houses that looked to be about 30 years old was an abandoned unit facing a field of miscellaneous vegetables. It was very nicely situated, and I wondered why it was empty and decrepit as it seemd it would make a very nice place to live. As we talked and speculated from within a cloud of mosquitoes, Conor sauntered up with his amp and harmonicas.

As dusk fell, other bands began to play, and children and adults milled around the area. A row of stands had been set up nearby, selling ceramic flutes, aboriginal bows and arrow, and goats. I’m not sure if the goats were for sale, actually, but you could smell them from anywhere in the area. We did some practicing down by a stream so polluted it left the nearby grass a slimy black color, before taking the stage. It was a good gig, eventually; it took us a while to get into the groove, and the audience took a while to get into us. My bass was pretty much spot on, but my horn playing was really off for some reason. Maybe I don’t feel as comfortable playing outside. The sound feels too dry.

There was a magic show after us, which from what I could see above the crowds’ heads consisted of people in a red tent sticking their hands out and doing balancing tricks with glass balls. I lost interest and went to get some meat pies, which were very good. They were from New Zealand, the woman serving them told me. I took another walk around the neighborhood, wishing I had my good camera to take some night shots.

The last band of the night, Soundclash, was very good, very tight and bouncy on stage. The trombone player in particular was all over the place. They’d obviously practiced a lot as the entire horn section played long passages all in unison. Sandman was particularly entranced with the band, as he’s really into Ska and Reggae stuff. I was surprised he didn’t jump on stage and start playing along. Dave encouraged me to do so, actually, but the band was so tight I felt I would just be making trouble if I did so.

Sandman and Jojo were gracious enough to give me a ride home. Xizhi’s nice enough, but Bitan, as Sandman remarked, is home. Though both places are on the edge of the city, Bitan feels a bit wilder and at the same time a bit more comforting for some reason. Perhaps things here are a bit more spread out. Perhaps it’s the geography. I don’t know, but I’m glad I settled here. Everyone else is welcome to move north, as far as I’m concerned. I’ll be ok down here.

No, this entry doesn’t involve saran wrap.

Cast and crew once again gathered at Dean’s apartment on Friday night. Our objective this time was to finish filming all of April’s scenes, little bits and pieces of several different scenes. To that end, Dean had gone to great lengths to build all the props and sets in and around his apartment, as you can see in the picture. He constructed a vent out of wood, a stand for my brass monkey, which plays a role early in the film, and a parachute rigging for April to hang off for green screen shots.

Our first task was to go over to a nearby office building, where we’d gotten permission to film in the lobby. I would have preferred to get it during the day, but we wanted to get everything done at once, and it happened to be night. The contrast during the day would have been difficult for the camera in any case. Paul and Darrell were waiting in the lobby as Dean, April, Shirzi and I arrived.

As it happened, someone was moving out of the building, so we had to time April walking in the door, across the lobby and into an elevator to avoid catching the movers in the shots. Ordinary movers would have not detracted from the shots. Movers who waved at the camera and yelled “Hallooo!!!” were less welcome. Shirzi waited inside an elevator and opened the doors for April while telling people who wanted to use the elevator that that particular one was “broken”. It was difficult, with all the mirrors around there, not to get my reflection anywhere in the shots.

Once that scene was in the can, we retired back to the playground scene at Dean’s, moving all the junk from an outside corner and dressing it like the interior of an elevator shaft. We’d been looking forever for a real elevator shaft, but it just never happened. I figured an unpainted concrete wall decorated with black rails and pipes would do just as well, so we did it there. April climbed a black rope from a “Batman” climbing kit. We tested the strength of the rope with all of Dean’s weight, so April was secure in the knowlege that she wouldn’t approach the breaking point. She was only a few inches off the ground anyway. The crew was in a line in the narrow alley, April in front, then Darrell with the microphone, and then me with the camera, followed by Dean, who was feeding April lines to respond to. One of Paul’s lights supplied what we hoped looked like elevator-shaft lighting, with April descending into shadow and then climbing back out of it.

After that was done, we moved inside and did the museum/monkey shots, with April approaching the brass statue and removing what will be digital effects at some point. We had planned on using a fire extinguisher, with Shirzi on the floor waiting to provide the effect, but the thing crapped out on us. Dean tried to use a pan of milk powder instead, but it looked just like milk powder being thrown in the air. We’ll see if we can do something with it in post. As always.

Then it was time for the vent, the showpiece of the evening. Dean did a really good job, and we got a lot of good shots of April climbing through the thing, looking through the grill, etc. Dean’s evil cat loved to play with the aluminum foil on the other end, and we kept having to shoo him away, lest we have to write one evil kitty into the script as some kind of feline vent defense system or something.

Next on the list was the parachute setup. It was getting rather late by this time, and Paul and Darrell had to leave. The rest of us set up green cloth over Dean’s mirrored wall and tried to get the lighting so that there were as few shadows as possible. Hopefully Darrell will be able to do something with these shots. April found a new respect for Star Wars prequel actors as she tried to react to invisible exploding zeppelins, missiles and flaming shrapnel all around her.

The last thing to do involved tying April’s hands behind her back with what turned out to be extremely itchy twine. Between the twine, evil kitty’s flying fur and a fan, April spent most of the evening trying not to sneeze. She willingly slugged through it all, though, even as we worked into the wee hours of the morning. At long last we got everything done, so all she has to do now is the looping. Which means that I have to go through all of the footage and get at least one take of each of her scenes, just as I did with Josh before he left, get the footage to Darrell and then, probably over at least a couple of days, loop all of her lines. She’s leaving in August, so we have a little time yet.

Next on our list is more car scenes, which we’ll probably film at Sungshan Airport or at the train station. Now that April and Josh are done, we’ll be concentrating on the Legion of Doom contingent of our cast, namely Sandy, Rowan, Sarah, and a new actor.

The Muddy Basin Ramblers are playing at the Dream Community up in Xizhi this Saturday at about 5:45pm in an all-afternoon event called the “Global Rhythm Festival 2006”. Map and directions here. The weather forcast looks pretty decent for that day, so it should be a good time. We even practiced, if you call what we do “practice”. It’s more of a party with musical overtones, be it on the stage or at the Sandcastle. The only difference is really attire.

I was wondering as I crossed the bridge this evening, why do we say “Back and forth”? You have to go forth before you come back, so why don’t we say “Forth and back”? Sounds strange, doesn’t it? I’m sure there’s a reason I’m wondering about such inane things, but if I get sucked into wondering about that I’ll just end up wasting even more time than I already am.

Speaking of inane things, I’ve decided to sell my TV, pictured above. I’ve been liquidating a few things around the house in order to not go into too much debt buying other things. I’m getting a recumbent bicycle soon from a company in Taichung that makes the things, and tonight I just purchased an IBM (well, Lenovo now) Thinkpad X60 notebook, mainly for writing but also for travel, once I get around to travelling. It’s really light, only 1.4kg, has an 80-gig HD and a 1.83 duel-core processor. The best thing about it, besides the weight (about half the weight of my old Powerbook) is the feel of the keyboard, important for writing. I tried the Mac thing for a while, but I couldn’t keep up with the prices as I didn’t want to spring for a Mac desktop, and, well, basically, I couldn’t get used to the system. I realize it’s supposed to be more intuitive and user-friendly; perhaps I just don’t “get” the whole Mac thing. Especially on my budget.

I got my first laptop when I was working in China, on the company’s dime. I think it was a 386 or 486. I bought it in Hong Kong in ’93 and used it to keep track of shoe orders in Qingdao. It might even still be there. The second one I got after I returned to Taiwan, a piece of crap by a local company called “Chicony”, which might still be around. The store where I bought it promptly went out of business, just as Texas Instruments got out of the PC business almost immediately after I got a TI99 4A in the early 80’s. At least we got many miles of Space Invaders out of that thing.

Why not write at home or at the office? At the office I’m too busy, and once I’m home I don’t feel like writing, at least not anything of substance (this, obviously, doesn’t count). When I was attending college at Tunghai University in Taichung, I found myself studying, not in the dorm or in the library, but at Super Food Chicken, one of the five we had on campus at the time. Somehow in the din of the place I could concentrate much better on my homework. Weird. Anyway, I’ve been trying to get some new script ideas off the ground, as well as something special for my upcoming 5th-year blogging anniversary, so I need to be able to write when I’m out of the house.

Anyway, back to the TV. From the ad: Almost brand new 29″ Kolin HDTV HCT-291 Flat-screen CRT TV, progressive scan, hi-def ready with RGB component/S-video/AV ports. Paid NT$23,000 new at Tsan-kuen Electronics store, now asking NT$16,000. Still under warranty. You’ll have to move it.

In other news, I noticed at one point this morning that I could only see one fish in my fishbowl. Usually there are two. I thought the other one might be hiding in the plants, but I couldn’t find it. Realizing that it had tried to commit fish suicide, I looked in the area around the fishbowl and saw it lying motionless and dry on the table, under a notebook. How it got under the notebook I’ll never know. Thinking it was dead, I picked it up (famous last words in many situations), and it started flopping about, so I put it back in the water, where it swam around looking quite alive. When I got back home from work I was thinking how nice it was that the fish lived. Of course, when I looked in the tank, it was dead. Too long out of the water, I guess.

It kind of makes me wonder if it works that way with people, too. Not literally, of course, but cross-culture-wise. I’ve known people who came here and went crazy after a while, and I always assumed they would end up ok if only they returned home, but now I’m not entirely sure of that theory. God knows how I’d cope with living in the states after living my entire adult life here in Taiwan.

Saturday was busy, but a good busy. I spent the morning and most of the afternoon filming at a nearby temple, and after a filling meal at Rosemary’s Kitchen with cast and crew, I went to the Sandcastle for some rehearsal with the Muddy Basin Ramblers. We have a show next weekend at the Dream Community in Xizhi, so we got some overdue practice in, and David also recorded 16 songs on his new recording setup, the main component of which is my old Powerbook, which I sold him some time ago. He let us listen to some of the stuff, and it sounds really good, practically album-level quality.

It had been a while since we last got together, for various reasons. Afterwards we retired to our friend Chris’s balcony overlooking Bitan. Gradually people left, until it was just me, Slim, and Chris. Rusty the cat was sleeping on my lap while Slim made faces at her, mocking her lack of opposable thumbs, when she bolted up to the edge of the balcony, scrambled for grip, and fell off the side. We heard a loud thump! as she hit the awning downstairs, and when I got to the edge to look, I saw a white streak heading off into the bushes. We went down to look for her, and I found her hiding in the bushes next to the bridge and brought her back upstairs, apparently unhurt. That’s two lives that cat has used up so far.

Last weekend I took a bus to check out Thumper’s burrow in the hills above Angkeng, the same hills I have a lovely view of from my rooftop. We walked around the community and talked about life in the mountains. It sounds a bit isolated to me, but then again a few years ago I would never have thought I’d be living out in Xindian. They’re building quite a few new complexes up there, and I suppose they’re nice for families, and apartment buildings are good for people who can’t afford any housing in the city, but I’d have an issue with all the stairs in any given building, I think. Thumper certainly has a nice front yard full of interesting plants and other things like a blue stone that shines red in the sun, though. I’d love to have a yard, but I’m happy I have a balcony, even though I had to get rid of a wasp’s nest last week. It was stuck on the railing. I found it when I was sitting on the lounge chair out there one night when I put my hand on the railing and felt a cocoon of dirt. Luckily no wasps stung me.

It got quite hot last week, with thunderstorms every day, but now it’s cold again. The guard downstairs told me I shouldn’t bother with the clothes dryers in the laundry, and to use the sun instead. “What sun?” I asked.

“Well, when there is sun. There’s usually sun by this time of year, but global warming’s screwed everything up,” he replied. Well, at least I get plenty of clean water from my dehumidifier.

The night before we were scheduled to film the temple interior scene, Dean told me he wanted to do his lines for that scene in Chinese, instead of in English as we had originally planned. For the first film I’d recorded the Chinese lines for him to practice, but obviously we didn’t have time for that this time. We were having dinner at JB’s and looking at storyboards at the time, so we took the script and translated all his lines into Chinese, and I wrote down the pinyin romanization for him to read the next day. I figured we’d just fix the inevitable pronunciation problems in post, which is more than Firefly did, anyway.

It was just a small thing, one of many small complications involved in doing a scene in two languages. This is in addition to filming in a temple, which means trying to be as discreet and low-key as possible. Actually, this is a big part of indie filmmaking, as we just don’t have the funds to close off any areas for filming, much less the money to hire enough extras to populate said areas. So far we’ve had both good and bad experiences at temples in Taiwan, from being made quite welcome to being refused entrance. We’d filmed an exterior at this one, the Taiping Temple in Bitan, and I knew the manager, Mr. Xie, so I didn’t think it would be a problem.

Another concern was an actress Maurice had found for us, an older Taiwanese woman to play a fortuneteller at the temple. I’d never met her and didn’t know anything about her. I was hoping she wasn’t one of those strange older Taiwanese woman who insists on dressing and being treated like a schoolgirl.

It turned out I needn’t have worried. The woman I met at the temple on Saturday morning, Liqing, was very courteous and professional. She looked the part and did some fine acting for us. Mr. Xie was also fine with our being there, despite the fact that the head of the temple association was in the next room drinking tea. I had been hoping for sunshine and the resulting hazy shafts of light beaming down through the skylights, but instead a solid downpour outside endeavored to soak everyone and everything outside. I hoped that at least fewer people would be at the temple due to the inclement weather.

Nonetheless, the temple interior still looked very good, very atmospheric, and I decided against the added disruption of using lights, as the natural light, supplemented with candles, was good enough. Another advantage of digital video. I’d brought the dolly and got some nice tracking shots of Dean walking around the temple. Azuma was there as well, in his police uniform, and Maurice held the microphone in between getting water for Liqing. Darrell came along as well but had to leave early.

Shooting the scene went very slowly at first as Dean couldn’t understand Liqing’s lines. She couldn’t really understand him either, so nobody knew when their lines were; even with Shirzi there to prompt the actors we got lost very easily, so I decided to film all of Liqing’s lines at once, and then all of Dean’s lines, and then cut them together later. After that things went pretty smoothly, and I got some nice shots and fairly powerful moments in the can. Afterwards we ended up at Rosemary’s Kitchen, down by the river, with Maurice buying his customary wine with lunch. The rain, which had stopped when we were in the temple, resumed as soon as we were finished.

Next on the list is a cornucopia of April’s scenes, which we are going to attempt to wrap up in various corners of Dean’s house next Friday night after work. April’s leaving this summer, so we have to get all of her stuff done as soon as possible and get her looping done. After that and some car/airport scenes we’ll have most of the good guys’ stuff done and can concentrate mainly on our baddies.

Saturday was nice and warm, and I wanted to go for a bicycle ride, but unfortunately I’d already sold my bike in preparation for getting a new one, so I’m between bikes at the moment. So instead I took Gendouyun out for a jaunt through Ankeng, on the road to Sanxia, looking for metalworking factories that could make large air vents, the kind spies are always climbing through in movies. No such luck, however. We may have to use spray-painted cardboard boxes instead.

Afterwards, not wanting to sit around at home, I took the MRT up to Danshui again, looking for pictures, but for the life of me I couldn’t find anything. I felt completely uninspired. Danshui’s all pictured-out for me, I guess. For now. I ended up putting up some mediocre shots up on Flickr, but that was it.

I had an public TV interview on Sunday morning. They came to my place and asked all the usual questions so-called foreigners get asked here, plus some other, hard-to-answer ones like “Could you sum up Taiwan in one sentence?” They wanted some shots of me out of the house, so I invited them to visit a promo the Muddy Basin Ramblers were doing for the Taipei 101 climb-a-thon that afternoon. We gathered at The Tavern, huddled in the middle of the place surrounded by glaring TV screens, and shouted over the din at each other. Not the most pleasant dining experience, but nice if you’re into rugby I guess.

Lunch over, we spent the next hour or so on the steps of the adjacent pedestrian bridge playing an MBR version of the Rocky theme. Taipei 101 itself was flitting into and out of the low-flying clouds in the background as we climbed the steps for multiple takes. When we were done, some of us went back to the Tavern for some drinks, and met up later with the rest on the balcony of Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall for some more music. There was a short, older guy there with kung-fu shoes who looked really antsy, as if we were taking over his usual spot, which I suppose we very well might have been. He kept leaving and coming back, possibly expecting us to be gone when he did so.

The day felt oppressive. I thought it was just me, but the others assured me they were feeling it too. We played through the evening, and my attempts to play Sandman’s sax proved beyond a doubt that I am crap when it comes to playing woodwinds. I took a taxi with him and Slim back to Bitan for homemade curry chicken at our friend Chris’ place, where we spent the rest of the evening eating, drinking, and playing with Rusty the Now Full Fledged Cat. By the time I got home I knew I was coming down with something, though, and by Monday my throat had knives inside, sawing away whenever I swallowed.