Another Saturday
After Tai-chi practice on Saturday at CKS Hall, I called up Prince Roy to see what he was up to. As is his wont, he was planning to visit a couple of political rallies later, so after a particularly delicious lunch at the Yongkang Sababa, we walked back towards Hangzhou Road to see the DPP’s Women’s Day rally. On our way, however, we saw a bunch of people staring at a building. “What’s going on?” I asked some women peering out of a nearby shop.
“We don’t know,” they said. “We saw some people looking, so we’re looking, too.” Just then a motorcade pulled up to the building, and none other than Ma Ying-jeou stepped out and walked into the building. PR was hot on his heels, no doubt looking for another handshake picture to add to his collection. I followed the crowd down to the packed meeting room in the basement where Ma was speaking. Encouraging slogans were being shouted under a giant portrait of Sun Yat-sen. I spotted PR’s colorful hat near the middle of the room. Having gotten his picture, he was ready to leave.
We continued walking up the road to the Zhongxiao East Road intersection, where the Women’s Day rally was being held. Though most of the seats were empty, music was blasting out of huge speakers, and dancers were on the stage. Tables full of stuffed dolls and other figurines resembling Frank Hsieh and Su Tseng-chang had been set up nearby, as well as two rows of port-a-potties that were the exact shade of aquamarine the DPP has chosen as its campaign color.
PR and I walked up to the stage and watched the singing and dancing for a while as various groups from around Taiwan arrived and filled the seats. The crowd was mostly older women, and the line for the row of port-a-potties grew quite long. Yeh Chu-lan gave a speech, and I wondered if she felt at all disappointed that she didn’t get the VP candidate slot. In the crowd, old men who looked like they’d never seen a diploma held signs protesting the recognition of any such documents issued by Chinese universities.
I had to go back to Bitan by that point, though; the Muddy Basin Ramblers have a show next Friday at Bliss, so we needed a practice. The weather was nice enough that we could hold forth on the riverside, though only on our side of the river as the other side’s completely torn up. Getting home, putting my things away and gathering up my instruments seemed to take forever, and it was getting dark by the time I joined the other Ramblers down by the horseshoe. It was good to be jamming again, and David introduced some nice new tunes for us to chew on. Even at such an isolated spot we managed to draw small groups of people, some of whom took out their phones and called their friends: “Hey, you’ll never guess what I found by the riverside in Bitan! Foreigners! And they’re playing music! Yeah, I KNOW!”
“Could you speak up?” Thumper told the excited girl who was yapping on her phone two feet away. “I can’t quite hear everything you’re saying over the music.”
Later, we all went to Athula’s for our traditional post-jam rottis. Alas, he was again out of tuna. Oh, well; more fried rice at home, then. Still plowing through the endless gigabytes of Tokyo photos. Hopefully soon they’ll all be up, and the video done and posted too, and maybe then I’ll feel a little less behind with everything.
I enjoyed that lunch-actually would’ve been nice to get there a bit earlier, sit out on the deck and watch the world go by. We should make a habit of it. You should did enjoy that damn pita.
Comment by Prince Roy — March 13, 2008 @ 8:10 am
[…] been checking out as many political rallies and events as I can for both parties. Sometimes, even Poagao comes along. By the way, that reminds me, it would be fun to tag along with him to his voting station. To […]
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