The Muddy Basin Ramblers are playing at the Dream …
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.
