If you’ve been living under rock, you might not have heard that Canon is releasing a new 5D mark II digital SLR soon. I’ve been happy with my aging 20D for the last several years, but lately I’m being sorely tempted by newer, better cameras as of late, full-frame cameras with high-ISO performance such as the new 5D and Nikon’s new D700. I am a bit disappointed that Canon has gone the megapixel-stuffing route, as frankly, 21 megapixels is scary. Reviews of the new 15-megapixel 50D have shown that cramming all those megapixels onto the cropped sensor has resulted in image quality the same or even worse than than the 40D in many areas. I’m hoping the new 5D doesn’t follow the same path, and pre-production samples thus far don’t seem too bad. Of course there’s always the larger, heavier D700, but I’ve never really liked the look of digital Nikons quite as much as Canon; it’s a subjective thing that I can’t really explain. Perhaps an original 5D would suite me just fine, if I could get past the tiny, low-res screen. Then again, the new model has video capabilities, which I like because I could use it on trips instead of having to rely on my little SD800’s video function.

Of course, no matter what full-frame camera I get, I will have to decide on new lenses, as my current Sigma 17-70 and my beloved Canon EF-S 10-22 don’t cover a full-frame sensor. The Canon equivalent is the highly rated and supremely expensive 16-35 f2.8L, which is twice as heavy and over twice as expensive as Canon’s 17-40 f4L. Are one millimeter and one f-stop worth that much money and weight? I experimented with someone else’s 17-40L the last time I was at CKS Hall, and I have to say that I missed the extra-wide aspect a lot, no matter how many noises I make about relying too much on wide-angle shots and wanting to divulge myself of such gimmicks. Sure, 40mm on the tele end of the lens would be nice for street photography, able to get in a little closer than 35mm without changing lenses. But then again, you need a faster lens to catch that action, and I plan to use a fast 50mm prime for that anyway, either my current cheapo f1.8 or a f1.4. Both are small and light; I find that having a certain focal length on a zoom lens is far removed from having a prime at only that focal length on my camera. I frame things in that focal length in my mind’s eye in the latter case, whereas with a zoom I think in terms of the lens’ extremes.

Night photography is also very important to me, and f2.8 would definitely come in handy for a lot of my photography. A usable range up to ISO6400 along with f2.8 should let me catch a lot of shots I have trouble getting now, and with a 50mm f1.4 night street photography should become much more interesting as well.

Then again, maybe I should be like the people inhabiting the various camera discussion sites who constantly drool over and wonder about the “Next Big Things Coming Out Soon We Hear From Our Sources” (which are inevitably some guy in a storeroom somewhere), complain endlessly about them when they come out before returning to the drooling stage. These people can’t believe that the next Nicony doesn’t actually go out on its own tripod to take pictures for you while you sit at home, (what a ripoff!) and they’re totally going to sell all their gear and buy a Canikon system.

Ok, enough of that. I’m going to go out and take some pictures.

I’ve just now gotten around to uploading pictures from Double Ten Day. That’s how far behind I am, photography-wise.

On that day, I took the MRT up to CKS Hall Station, where I was going to meet some friends to go watch the parade near the Presidential Office. The morning light was nice, shining through the clouds over the hall, so I found some nice puddles to get the scene with its reflections, and sat down to take some shots with my 20D. After I took a couple of shots, I noticed the sound of approaching footsteps. A middle-aged woman draped with two cameras, including a Canon 5D and a 1DmkIII as well as numerous top-grade L-class lenses and bags, ran over and sat beside me to take some shots of her own. I commented on her camera collection, but she just shook her head. “These cameras just don’t last!” she said. “I’ve had to take them in for shutter repair twice in the past few years!” Then she aimed the 5D at the hall with the reflection and promptly fired off what I would conservatively estimate as approximately 663 rapid-fire shots of the basically static scene. Then she changed composition slightly and fired off another few hundred shots, effectively explaining just how her shutter wore out so frequently.

I joined my friends, but we weren’t able to get through the police cordon by the East Gate. Disappointed, my friends decided to go elsewhere, but I stuck around with the aim of getting some breakfast in a nearby alley. Afterwards, I found that Chongqing South Road was easily accessed, so I made my way through the crowd taking pictures of the floats and people. At one point I ran into our movie fight choreographer Eddie Tsai, who was part of the parade as well. The day was perfect for a parade, and the scene was lively, with policemen chatting with aborigine kids, giant balloons and people in furry costumes sweating on top of floats as they waited for their turn in the parade.

A few days after that we went up to Neihu to the National Taiwan College of Performing Arts. The students range from elementary-school students all the way to university-level. We watched some of the younger children performing flawless backflips and other acrobatics during classes. “About two thirds will end up dropping out,” our guide said. I couldn’t blame them; the training is very rigorous; students in the US would sue the hell out of any school that asked them to anything like that. One can’t deny that the results of the training are impressive, though. Most of the old Kung-fu theater stars of decades past came from this school and others like it, she told us. Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao and Sammo Hung underwent the same training. It made me wonder what kind of a future these kids have, in this age of computer-generated stuntmen and flashy editing. There’s some serious talent there, and it would be a shame to see it go to waste.

We went backstage at the campus theater to get our faces painted by two guys who specialize in the art. I, of course, chose Monkey. Out on stage, students were performing acrobatics involving tables, flowerpots and dishes for a handful of Japanese tourists in the otherwise empty theater. “The last administration wasn’t very keen on funding what it sees as a ‘Chinese’ art,” we were told, “even though many of the operas are conducted in Minnan.”

On each side of the stage were printed slogans: “The stage is your classroom,” and “The audience is your teacher.” The staff provided me with the whole Monkey get-up, including a staff! Maybe it was something in the regalia, but suddenly I felt like jumping around on the stage and put on a little show.

That next show was the “Flooding the Golden Mountain Temple” scene from the White Snake opera, and it was brilliant. The two guys who had painted our faces were part of the production, water devils twirling through complicated flight paths in the air above the wooden floor of the stage. It was an amazing show, full of action, sound and color. We clapped as hard as we could to try to make up for the silent, empty seats.

Three older men showed up at practice today at CKS Hall. We’ve moved from the opera house down onto a grassy field by one of the lakes due to construction work. The three men were from Tainan, Teacher X told me later, and were part of a group of people studying tuishou by themselves without a teacher down there. The three, Seven-Samurai-like, had come up to Taipei to seek out a real teacher. Presumably their village isn’t under siege by bandits.

Teacher X talked with them and gave them a few lessons. For some reason. No Lose Guy decided to impart a few lessons of his own, with less than stellar results (let’s just say his nickname isn’t a terribly great description of the encounter).

The three had their pictures taken with us and then left. I talked with Teacher X about a group with no teacher, how that could possibly work. I also asked him about the Hung-men group, which I’d seen on a Discovery Channel program recently. “It’s a KMT-group, founded back in the days of Sun Yat-sen,” he told me. “They’re a good organization; they help each other out.” I was surprised to hear this from Teacher X as he is generally as pro-DPP as they come, but then again I shouldn’t be surprised to find a more subtle understanding of this society from him as compared to English teachers who can only hiss and spit whenever the KMT is mentioned.

Politics aside, the day was clear and bright, with a refreshing breeze. Teacher X taught me some more form moves, including a rather difficult one that involves quite a bit of knee work. I’ll have to get used to that one gradually, I think. “When doing tuishou, remember that you have many joints in your body,” he told me. “Usually, flexibility in just one is all you need to deal with anything your opponent can throw at you. Of course, two or more is even better.”

I didn’t get to do any tuishou, unfortunately. After the others left, I went through the sword form a couple of times, more difficult on the uneven ground, and then went to take pictures of the floats for the upcoming Dream Community parade, which was starting from Liberty Square.

Last week I attended an open meeting concerning future renovation plans for the Bitan area, where I live, at the culture center near the city government building. A few dozen people attended, including a few familiar faces such as the short-shorts guy who runs the restaurant near the bridge and some other residents and vendors, as well as some county and city government representatives.

A hefty, bespectacled engineer with long hair gave a presentation on the plan, which mainly entails repaving the streets and painting a few walls. There were a couple of good ideas mentioned, such as simplifying the intersection of Guangming Street and Beixin Road, and adding more trees to barren areas. On the whole, however, it was generally useless additions to the streets, such as “portable trees” and replacing the old ugly signs with new ugly signs.

Predictably, some of the government officials got up and stumped for votes by appealing to the lowest common denominator. “We can’t ask the illegal chicken abattoir to become a coffee shop!” they said, in effect. “That would be a waste of money!”

When it came time for public opinion, there were various rants and complaints that all the tourists went to Danshui instead of Bitan, and those that did simply walked across the bridge and then came back without visiting anything. One idiot of a woman even took issue with the utterly bewildering “Please don’t linger on the bridge (which is the main attraction and the entire reason anyone would come down to Bitan in the first place)” signs. “Those signs aren’t enough; people are still lingering on the bridge!” she cried, oblivious to the contradiction in her words.

When it was my turn, I took the microphone, walked up on the stage and pointed to a photograph from the presentation on the screen, a shot of the stairs leading to the suspension bridge with some computer-generated bushes. “The composition of this shot is interesting,” I said, “in that just out of frame on the right side is a giant trash dump.”

“More signs, repaving the streets, none of this means anything,” I told them. “The reason people go to Danshui is because the government up there has the guts to tear down illegal decrepit buildings and make it a neat, interesting place people want to go. If you want visitors, you’ve got to do the same thing. If you don’t have the balls to clean up the mess, don’t go around crying that nobody wants to come visit.”

“Why do people stop and turn around on the other side of the bridge? Are you blind?” I asked, hoping that there weren’t any actual blind people in the audience. “On one side, where there should be a beautiful mountainside, is a row of buildings of which only the front three feet are legal, but the government can’t do anything but put up a metal wall inside and call it fixed. On the other, where a park is supposed to be, are a bunch of rundown squatter’s buildings inhabited by people who have twice taken compensation money and simply refuse to leave, dragging down the property values and attractiveness of the entire area. Who, besides the squatters, wants to see that?”

There was a scattering of polite clapping as I took my seat, probably more of the “oh my god it can talk” variety than from people who actually agreed with me. As some of the squatters themselves were in the audience, I was half expecting some kind of outcry, but they probably didn’t take me seriously.

Afterwards was a presentation on the development plans for the Hemei Mountain paths, which was much more promising, as it involves improving the hiking paths on the hill and the inclusion of viewing platforms along the way, LED lights at night, and non-slip wooden stairs.

After the meeting several people came up to me and said they agreed with what I’d said on stage. Surprisingly, some of the vendors were among them. We gathered outside and vented about the situation for a while. “So who’s going to run for office so they can do something about this mess?” I asked them.

They pointed at me. Ha, right, I thought. Things must be even more desperate than I thought. In the end nothing much will happen; the plan will go ahead, money will be spent on stupid things that don’t work, and another stupid plan will follow in order to “fix” all the things that were wrong with the previous plan. Wash, rinse, recycle.

But Bitan still has its charm, despite all of this. At least that shouldn’t change (too much).

Last weekend the Muddy Basin Ramblers played at the opening of the new Mary Jane Pizza in Gongguan. It was a good time, though I didn’t get to eat as much pizza as I would have liked. Afterwords we went over to the NTU campus track stands to jam and chat until the wee hours of the morning. It was after 2am before I got to bed.

A mere three hours later I got up in order to catch the first subway train to Taipei Main Station, where I caught the first bullet train to Taichung at 6:30am. I was so sleep-addled that I forgot my change from the ticket vending machine. Hopefully some desperate individual got the extra NT$300 they needed for some reason. The ride was silky smooth as usual, but I didn’t dare nod off on the train for fear of ending up in Kaohsiung.

In Taichung I had some breakfast at the sleek, modern station’s Starbucks and then caught a free bus to the front gate of Tunghai University, where I met some friends. We then took a cab north along the ridge of the hills, which are covered with old military bunkers and tunnels, past the park and a couple of desolate military bases. Our objective was the Chio-tian Folk Drums & Arts Troupe headquarters, which turned out to be comprised of a small temple adorned with the trappings of a crude campus in the middle of a large, empty field. The students’ dormitories, cargo containers with windows carved in them, surround the small structure.

The head of the troupe, director Hsu Cheng-rong, started taking in children from underprivileged and troubled households in 1995, training them in various temple ceremonial rites and roles and giving them an outlet for their energies. He does all of this out of his own pocket.

We talked with Hsu and met some of the students, who go through rigorous training. Hsu said that if a student screws up, they have a choice: either leave the troupe forever or accept punishment, which is a “spanking,” but after Hsu had one of this students lie down in front of the temple alter to demonstrate, it looked more like preparations for a real beating. “That’s for serious mistakes,” he said, “Like stealing or fighting.”

Hsu thinks that the transition of temple-related activities to more mainstream entertainment venues is gradually gaining acceptance within society. “The Japanese didn’t like them because they were channels for civic unrest,” he said. “The old KMT didn’t like them for the same reason. But now things are looking up. People are becoming more confident in their culture, and they can appreciate the art within it.” The focus of the activities does seem to be moving in that direction. The group sees more shows for entertainment than actual temple ceremonies these days.

The most senior disciple there, a man of 30 with long, faintly reddish hair, painted our faces and dressed us up in various Eight Generals “Ba Jia Jiang” regalia, then taught us some of the moves, dances and poses, as well as some of the weapons the students have to wield. It’s much harder than it looks, I have to say. The regalia is heavy and thick, and the movements require a certain degree of agility and stamina. I was so impressed with the job the student had done on painting my face, I left it on after we left the center that afternoon.

Our next stop was the Taiwan Folk Village in Zhanghua, which was downright depressing after the hopeful nature of the dance troupe. The amusement park has gone the furthest it can towards closing down without actually closing down: Half of the attractions are closed, the buildings falling apart and covered in weeds. The once-impressive water park, featuring a water slide and a pirate ship affixed to the side of the building, is clogged with algae and overgrown. The only things left in operation are a few old-style structures selling trinkets and the second-rate theater where a magician saws women in half and allegedly Outer Mongolian wrestlers throw heavy objects at each other in front of a crowd of a dozen or so people. Apparently the park started making its money more from film crews than actual visitors at one point, and things just went downhill from there.

Since we were in Zhanghua, we stopped by the famous giant Buddha there for some pictures as dusk deepened, and then back to Taichung for dinner at a restaurant made to look like a kind of grotto. The sinks and urinals in the bathroom were so similar that men were using them interchangeably, I noticed as I finally removed the multicolored paint from my face before dinner. The kitchen was working fine, however; the food was excellent.

I was bushed, though, and caught a cab back out to the HSR station, where I took a direct train which saw me back in Taipei in less than an hour.It was an interesting day; it’s good to get out of town for a bit.

I’ve been going to class three times a week lately, and practicing during my daily hikes up the hill behind my house as well. All of the practices seem to flow together, though; it’s hard to describe any one thing.

Basically, I’ve been working on connecting. I am able to disconnect during tuishou, but connecting everything together takes more work. Little Mountain Pig said that ones arms should not move of their own accord, rather every movement should derive from the torso’s movement. I find this quite helpful, actually. Teacher Xu said that, most of the time, ones elbows stay around the 90-degree angle, whereas more goes on with the shoulders than most people realize. He also told me to get more in the habit of spreading my hands flat instead of cupped, as is natural. Apparently this helps with the whole connecting thing.

The construction fumes at the opera hall at CKS Memorial were overpowering last Saturday, so we adjourned to the park under some trees, which was nice. I twisted my leg practicing with the UPS guy, though. I really need to protect myself better with some of the more violent students, and not get into it with them so much. On the other hand, I think I deal with them better than used to.

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Google’s street view has recently been extended to include another one of the places I grew up: our house in El Lago, Texas, seen above.

I spent six long years in Texas in the late 70’s, from 2nd grade at Edward H. White Elementary through 6th at the hellish Seabrook Intermediate School (Home of the Spartans, where we had to wear purple gym outfits). I had been quite happy in Orlando prior to the move, but it seemed that my parents viewed their time in the Houston area prior to my birth as a kind of golden age they hoped to repeat. Also, my dad’s job as an aerospace engineer required it.

History was not to repeat itself, at least not as far as I was concerned. Houston, and America in general in the late 70s, was apparently a far cry from the heyday of Space-based optimism and good taste of the 60’s. I was yanked out of 1st grade at Dommrich Elementary halfway through the year and put into a dismal, dark, violent school in Texas where being the new kid just meant fresh meat for the other students. We moved first into a small house a block from the bay of Houston, but after nearly being flooded out during a hurricane (thanks to which our ’73 Pinto “Squire” Wagon rusted out enough that it didn’t end up being my first car) we moved to the two-story house, built in 1960, on Biscayne Blvd. shown above. We’d been looking at a dreary place across the street for some reason, as I recall, when we noticed the for sale sign. It was painted dark brown, with a red door. After we moved in we painted it mustard yellow, re-roofed it and eventually did something with the foundation that I never understood. The back yard was huge and full of trees as well as a semicircular garden, a portion of railed wooden fence and a tool shed. In the living room we put down puke-green carpet (a fortunate color as our Cairn Terrier Bobby often puked on it), with yellow linoleum in the kitchen, later replace with fake brick linoleum. The den, of course, was covered in wood, with a rope carpet coiled in front of our giant Zenith.

My brother Kevin and I shared one of the upstairs bedrooms at first (the upper window on the right), but after our sister left for college at Stephen F. Austin University in Nacadoches, I got her old room (the one on the left), which was next to the attic over the garage and painted excessively blue. I’d have wondered if that had an influence on my personality or predilection for early blues, but Texas was more than enough of a reason all by itself.

Whereas in Florida I’d managed to make a few friends and had a pretty positive outlook on life, I was instantly and spectacularly unpopular in Texas. Uncaring teachers turned a blind eye to most of the fights I got into, and I got into plenty. I destroyed my lunchboxes by kicking them down the hall. I explored storm sewers and old graveyards with my Husky “Bandit” bmx bike during rainstorms. I failed English in 5th grade after my teacher, Mrs. Van Artsdalen, who was always sporting some kind of racquetball injury, seemed to have assumed that I had done a project that I actually hadn’t done, and I was disinclined to disabuse her of the notion, so I just went along. Not an ideal strategy. In fact, most of my strategies didn’t work out at the time. My strategy for losing a fight was to refuse to give in even though my attacker was straddling my head and beating my face, thus prolonging said beating.

At the end of one year at Ed White, I was ambushed by a group of kids who scattered my belongings over the adjacent field. As I was running around trying to gather the papers flying in the wind, an older man approached. When I explained what had happened, he cussed me out for making him think there was some kind of emergency. The ambush point was a sidewalk bottleneck in the neighborhood, the only way to get from one half of the neighborhood to the other. It was the point past which, if I could make it in time, I knew I’d be reasonably safe from, say, Russell Puchinski’s fists.

I spent most of my years on Biscayne Blvd alone, except for the occasional company of a small asthmatic boy named Richard Koester who laughed at my jokes. Both my parents worked, and soon enough my brother went to Texas A&M. I had a key to let myself in after school.

My years in Texas had an effect on my personality. I’d say they were the biggest influence, actually. I had become withdrawn and suspicious, disinclined to respond to other people. I figured that if I was to have no friends, I would just learn how to enjoy being alone. My parents even sent me in for counseling at the University of Houston, which produced nothing except a report detailing the fact that I liked riding by myself in the back of the Pinto. I hated having to wear cowboy boots and large belt buckles, I hated the mandatory square dance classes in gym, the sadistic coaches, the occasional suspensions and the visits to Principal Haas.

There were some good things, though, I have to admit, small things like my shiny “astronaut” jacket, and when the Shuttle Enterprise flew over our schoolyard on the back of a 747. Our cat, which bore the unimaginative moniker “Grey Kitty”. Christmas concerts at Jones Hall downtown, followed by hot cider at the old houses downtown. Reading Gone-away Lake while eating sandwiches in the backyard fort. Picking and eating berries by the field when I was able to get away from the bullies. Buying gum and MAD magazines at the U-Totem or the Stop-N-Go. Going down to the yacht sales yard with my dad and pretending that we were going to buy a huge boat. Saving up $1.29 for a new Matchbox car from Lack’s that I would lose in the mud of the foundation work around the house. Whenever I hear the song “The Things We Do for Love,” I’m brought back to a more ideal version of that time.

But these things were few and far between. The general reality, the day-to-day mean nature of the people around me just wore me down. The boys across the street ran over my sister’s kitten with a car, on purpose. My parents quarreled with her and my brother, both of whom were too much older than I to really be friends, and with our grandparents when they came to visit. I couldn’t get away from the bullies at school during the day, and I listened to my AM radio in bed at night. I read a lot and made recordings of TV show themes onto cassette tapes.

In fifth grade I was relentlessly bullied and then suddenly, mysteriously befriended by two kids, Steve Smith and Mike Kopel. But our strange friendship only lasted a few months, during which I never overcame my suspicion that it was all going to turn out to be a big joke; after sixth grade ended we moved back to Florida (I never told my new friends I was leaving; I just disappeared), a move I had been yearning for for what seemed like an eternity.

We moved back to Florida in 1981, which I saw as a dream come true. At that point, Florida had become a paradise in my mind, a place where I had had friends and good weather, not to mention Disney World. But things weren’t that simple. I wasn’t the same kid that had left Orlando in first grade. Though I didn’t get into nearly as many fights, I found myself having trouble making friends again. It wasn’t the paradise I had envisioned. The people there hadn’t changed; I had.

I suppose I should be happy that we did eventually move away. Who knows how I would have turned out if we had stayed. But then again maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference; after all, the damage had already been done.