I went to the bicycle exhibit this morning at the …
I went to the bicycle exhibit this morning at the WTC to see if they were selling any recumbent bikes and to pick up a new saddle a friend from Forumosa had waiting for me. The saddle seems nice; I’ll have to see if it makes everything south of the border go numb, as has been my experience with other saddles to date. I also found some recumbent bicycles, but they were either in the experimental stage, too expensive, or out of stock that wasn’t going to be replenished any time soon.
There were two classes of foreigners at the event. An inordinate amount of very fit-looking foreigners paced the halls, regardless of age, sex, race, style…they were all the picture of health, walking advertisements for two-wheeled exercise. Made me glad I wear baggy clothes, they did. The other group consisted of harried looking businessmen in suits, some just tired, some slimy, some frenetically energetic in a way that suggested they had chemical help.
Tomorrow might be our last bit of nice weather before yet another (told you) cold front arrives, so I am planning to go out and try out the new saddle while I still can.
I was talking with a friend of mine at the Legislative Yuan this evening when he got handed a memo that President Chen wanted to address the Legislature about his ceasing/freezing/abolishing/however-you-translate-it the NUC and NUG. “Isn’t this just like them, to send out a memo on Friday at 8:30pm, after everyone’s gone home, and then demand an answer on Monday or Tuesday,” he said, exasperated. I get the feeling that these little games are always going on between the executive and legislative branches. The Legislature already held an interpellation session with Su where they could ask questions, but Chen normally just goes there to make speeches, refusing to deal with questions, so something tells me the lawmakers aren’t going to be too keen on the idea of giving Chen another platform for another “Look-what-I-did” speech about the NUC.
Then again, maybe our dear leader was just having the same kind of day as I was: It was a strange, almost kind of day, as if I was constantly running a step behind. I went to get my pants back from the tailor only to find that she’d put the buttons on the outside instead of the inside. I just missed subway trains all day; they were always just leaving the station as I walked in. I missed lunch because going to the bike show took too long. I was late for work as well as an appointment. The bookstore had every book in the Raymond Chandler section except the one I was looking for, The Little Sister (I got another one instead, purportedly his worst, Playback), the food court downstairs was just closing when I got there. Just missed the showing of a movie I wanted to see, and when I got home I found that I had enough gas left in the cannister for about two seconds of hot water.
So maybe Chen was just running behind and didn’t get the memo out until the last minute. It happens.
Speaking of reading, I just finished Timeline, by Michael Crichton. Before that I’d just finished Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News, and I found that, after reading Proulx, Crichton feels like reading Dick and Jane books. Things are going on, but everything that matters is abbreviated and skipped over, and you wonder what the story would feel like if the author could actually describe it properly.
