According to the Central Weather Bureau, we’re get…
According to the Central Weather Bureau, we’re getting knocked around by tropical storm Bilis at the moment. Only we’re not. It’s been a rainy day, and it’s still a bit drizzly outside, but that’s all the action we’ve seen so far. Bilis is a strange storm, from the satellite pictures it looks like it’s been cut into section, like a particularly popular cake. Taipei has managed to be in the missing sections thus far, I guess, but even the sections that look fairly heavy-duty are just patches of rain.
It was too rainy for sword practice last night, so instead I went to Taipei 101 to visit the Page One bookstore. I just finished Kim Stanley Robinson’s excellent Antarctica, and couldn’t make a dent in Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions because it just seems inane, so I picked up a collection of Raymond Chandler detective stories, one of two I hadn’t read. I also bought a children’s book, The Four Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright, simply because Gone-away Lake and Return to Goneaway were my favorite books as a child. At least before I discovered Tolkien.
After the bookstore and taking some pictures of the world’s tallest building through the glass roofed walkway at Warner Village, I also watched Pixar’s latest movie, Cars. I liked it a lot. Each of Pixar’s animated stories has a theme to it, a lesson to be learned through the main characters, and this one is no different. Not at all preachy, but there are moments when you think to yourself “ahhh, yeah, I see…” Plus the animation is amazingly real. I’ve always been into cars and car-related stuff, though I realized at an early age that cars going around in circles just isn’t very interesting. Matchbox cars were my favorite toys. So I kind of had to see this movie, and I really enjoyed it.
I got out of the theater with only a few minutes to reach the MRT station before the last train. On the way, in a walkway, I approached a tall young fellow walking the other way. He didn’t move to let me through, and bumped me on the shoulder. I smelled alcohol, and lots of it. I turned and stared, which was apparently an insult as he rushed back and grabbed me by the backpack, trying to pull me backwards. As he did so, a man and woman walked right by and on to the station. Incredulous, I pulled free, saying, perhaps obviously, “Dude, I think you’re drunk.” He touched me on the chin, perhaps counting coup or something, and stalked off. Weird. I didn’t particularly want to pursue it, as he was bigger and drunker than me, and I still wanted to catch the last train, so I walked on to the station, passing the man and woman on the escalator.
“Thanks so much for your help,” I said. God knows what they were thinking I’d just done to the guy. Maybe they reacted, or maybe not. I didn’t look back to see. The whole thing put me in a foul mood. I’m usually slow to violence, even if I’m easily irritated. Part of me wanted to go back and kick his ass. Most of me just wanted to go home in one piece, however.
No days off work, due to Bilis’ general lack of organization. Just couldn’t get it’s shit together. I ran into Ron, and old co-worker and friend of mine, when I stopped off at Kuting for some shopping. He’s working at the Times again, doing features. You probably see his byline in the paper now and then. Ron’s just the latest in a string of people who have tried to leave Taiwan, but end up coming back. “It’s like the Hotel California,” he told me.
That terrible drunk young axxxe. Hey and you watched Cars!!!
Comment by DDED — July 14, 2006 @ 3:51 pm