The weather was semi-nice yesterday when I got off work, so after a nice salmon bento lunch at my favorite restaurant on Chongqing South Road, I walked over to the park station and took the subway up to Zhishan Station. Chenbl thought an area over there might be good for a photowalk with students, so I wanted to take a look.

I exited the north gate of the station by the Ewhat Camera store, remembering fondly the days when I would go there to handle the latest models that I couldn’t afford. Then I walked over to the bus stop by the SOGO to hop on the 280 bus over to the area Chenbl had mentioned. I pay a monthly fee of NT$1,280 for all my bus and subway rides, a nifty deal that saves me a bit of money and also includes some free Youbike rides.

The area in question, however, was almost completely deserted when I arrived, as most areas with rich people tend to be. I can understand the reason, but I still find it a little sad that we are moving from general environments where people tend to interact, i.e. rowhouses with arcades, to more closed-off circumstances such as gated communities and apartment blocks. In fact, a lot more areas seem deserted than they used to, if I’m not imagining things. I skirted the edge of the mountainside, following drainage ditches by abandoned and newly built mansions. It was hot so I took off my sweater and stuffed it with some difficulty into my tiny bag. Occasionally a security guard on an e-scooter would ride by looking for illegally parked cars or whatever it is they do; otherwise nobody was around. Is this what people desire when they think of ideal living circumstances? Perhaps for a large  family it would be fine, but I imagine for a single person it would be mighty lonely.

I walked though the one old veterans’ community Chenbl had mentioned; again, nobody was around, nothing to see, really. So I walked back towards town on Dexing East Road. The weather became cloudy and misty, blustery and cold, so I stopped into the Takashimaya Department Store for a bit, looking halfheartedly for something I wouldn’t find downtown department stores, but there weren’t any surprises. It used to be that stores in the Tianmu area often held certain imported treats that weren’t sold elsewhere in Taipei, but that no longer seems to be the case, especially with the demise several years ago of the wonderful Wellman’s Market. Jake’s Country Kitchen also seems to have vanished, taking their exquisite pancakes with them. Perhaps there are other newer stores now that hold such things, and I just don’t know about them. I can’t bring myself to go onto expat forums to find out, because I’d have to thread the needle through all the BS those places are so full of for very little payback in the form of treats that I probably shouldn’t be eating anyway.

I walked through the alleys rather than the main road on my way back to Zhishan. It still has a fair amount of old two-story houses with yards, a testament to the long history of wealthy people living in the area. A quick glance on Google Maps will show you the swimming pool/movie star mansions dotting the hills above. Times may have changed, but the area still has that expat/bourgeoisie feel to it, with “bilingual” schools and kindergartens and international cuisine here and there. The bias towards the areas north of the city is still clear as opposed to the “sticks” south of town where I live. Each has its own appeal, though, I figure.

Despite the lack of people walking around those nicer neighborhoods, stores and restaurants in the vicinity were fairly crowded. So far we are still at Level 2 vis-a-vis the covid situation, so if things continue to be stable, our class will start up again in March. I have noted my continuing hypersensitivity to people coughing or not wearing masks, though. Smokers in particular seem to get a pass in this respect, as they do in many others for some strange reason, and some days I feel as if my appearance in any one space just makes the people there suddenly want to cough. Today as I crossed the bridge in the rain I saw a man standing holding his umbrella over another man, who was lying on the boards waving a hand and muttering something I couldn’t make out; I wasn’t sticking around to find out, and as an ambulance had just pulled up I figured they had the situation in hand.

It’s still anyone’s guess how the government will proceed in the face of the latest wave of covid cases, which, although significant for us, pales in the face of the scales of outbreaks seen in other countries at this point, even countries that have previously handled things quite well. If this were last summer I’d be predicting that we’d soon be going back to Level 3, but the authorities seem eager to keep things open, and vaccination levels seem to be climbing reasonably fast. Chenbl’s parents have both had their boosters, and we should be eligible to get ours soon. The CDC director,while still expressing hope that it can be contained, has also spoken on the distinct possibility of living with covid, so I suspect that contingency plans will incorporate that as well. We’ll see, I guess.

As it looked like a nice day on Saturday, I met up with Chenbl at Songshan Station to hop on a train to Keelung to scout potential photography walks with students if next semester happens. Only this time we didn’t go all the way to Keelung, but got off one stop early, at Sankeng, a narrow station in the valley the train follows before it opens up into the city. The weather in Keelung was cloudy, but at least it wasn’t raining, as it often is there. We took the fenced-in walkway towards the city and found ourselves at a railway crossing bordered by two alleys, one creepily dark with shadowy figures moving around inside, and another, leading back towards the station. We took the latter and passed several small rooms, pink fluorescent light spilling out into the alley, each inhabited by an apparently young woman; it was a red light district, but nobody spoke to us or called out.

After some tasty egg-based snacks at a restaurant that claimed to have been opened in 1938, the same year both of our fathers were born, we walked across the tracks and up the hill, passing an abandoned Catholic church, mold growing on the cross on the metal gate. Inside I spotted the discarded box of a synthesizer among the detritus. I wonder how long it’s been abandoned, and what happened to the people who founded it. A religious statue had been built along the street nearby. Most of the houses on the hillside seemed to be abandoned as well, but from the little gardens and terraces it seemed that someone had once seen great potential in living there, though the place seemed quite humid, and the smoke and noise from the old trains constantly passing back in the day would seem to have been unpleasant at best.

We came back down the hill as there was no way on except for mountain paths, and found a Japanese-era tunnel, along the length of which were mounted old photographs of the Japanese military base that had been located in the area in the early 1900s. Closely shorn soldiers stared from the pictures as they stood in their barracks doing various tasks. The ceiling of the tunnel was less than six feet high, and I kept having to duck as we traversed its length.

Dense alleyways lay on the other side of the tunnel as we approached the city. I’d never really explored this part of Keelung before, and it’s quite interesting. We passed under the massive highway bridge, which used to be home to a large market but is now full of people playing sports, and though another street market as we skirted the hillside through the alleys.

An old building in Keelung

Dusk was falling as we passed by a the huge, Hong Kong-esque Guanghua housing complex and arrived at the river, covered by a highway branch, that we’d seen from a bus on a previous trip. I’ve always been interested in how rivers interact with urban environments, and this was a rather sad example as rivers are too often ignored here, cemented away and forgotten about. Cats abounded, which Chenbl says is a sign of decay while dogs represent prosperity, but as I like cats in general I couldn’t complain; indeed I greeted every one as I usually do, and most were quite gracious about it. I feel like I should keep some cat treats on me though.

We approached an unusually shaped building that seemed to be literally falling apart, featuring several interesting shades of light and a market downstairs, rusted rebar poking out of the frames. People still lived there, though. We then followed the underground stream through the neighborhoods, picking up its traces every so often as it reappeared here and there, often frequented by birds and rats, occasioned by temples, streams of wastewater pouring in from showers, laundromats, kitchens and who knows what else. Every time I’m in Keelung I wonder what living there would be like on a day-to-day basis. Commuting would be a pain, though, at least until they run a subway line out there. It’s a special place, no doubt.

Hungry and tired, we made our way to the Miaokou market, where a guard monitoring the crowds sprayed disinfectant on my hands and camera lens just for good measure. Inside, we lumbered up a flight of steep stairs for a meal of dry noodles, spinach and hot pork soup. It was nice to sit down after a day of walking and climbing, but the throngs of people at the market unsettled me considering the looming prospect of Omicron. I’ve been wearing K94 masks lately for their greater coverage, but it seems more and more people, especially smokers and older people, are just not bothering any more.

After dinner we had some bitter tea from a stand. “Don’t give that to him!” the stand operator scolded Chenbl as he handed me my drink, but I just drank it while staring blankly at the operator.

“It’s ok, he’s fine with it,” Chenbl explained, needlessly. We then walked back towards the harbor, to the new train station. The site of the old station is still swathed in construction; I have no idea what they’re doing to do with it. If it were up to me I’d build a recreation of the old Japanese-era station and make it a tourism/cultural center. That’s just me though.

A week or so ago I watched a movie in a theater for the first time in literally years. Chenbl had a couple of free tickets, so after work I met up with him for a lunch of questionable quality at the chicken place next to the previous location of the Vie Show Sun theater, which has sadly been torn down. It’s particularly sad because it was an IMAX theater, and now we have to go elsewhere, such as all the way out to the Miramar Cinemas for IMAX movies. Fortunately for us, the free tickets weren’t for the demolished Vie Show, but the Shin Kong theater in the old Lion Plaza building, that golden monstrosity on the corner of Xining and Wuchang Roads. The escalators up past the first few floors of little shops weren’t working, so we took the small, blue-lit elevator up to the completely empty lobby. The theater was big enough, but the projection and sound weren’t great. The movie was Spider-man: No Way Home, which was…fine. I mean, it was fun and entertaining, and the extended cameos were fun (though sadly missing my favorite version of Spider-man), but it became more about them than about the current Spidey’s character arc, which really only the first Tom Holland movie explored to any degree. I enjoyed the nostalgia, just as I also enjoyed The Matrix: Resurrections and Ghostbusters: Afterlife (Encanto is the best movie I’ve seen so far this year, though). But the whole time I was thinking: I’d rather be watching this at home. Note: I do not have a terribly big-screen TV, just a 16-year-old 37″ 720P set that cost a pretty penny in 2006 but now just emits static in one speaker whenever I watch Star Trek due to the ship’s engine rumble, so I tend to watch things on my iMac. But the point remains: I wonder if the age of theaters is on the wane, due to be something only old people remember.

My views on the future of theaters and public gatherings in general are perhaps biased by the steadily growing number of Omicron cases pouring in from everywhere but mostly the U.S. Americans seem to have just given up on any preventative measures and are just watching case numbers explode. Some Americans in Taiwan, well, white dudes in particular, it seems, think that Taiwan should just roll with it as well, pooh-poohing any attempt at controlling spread of the disease. But I’ve noticed an interesting, or perhaps obvious correlation: The expats who feel the most entitled to a consequence-free lifestyle here are the ones who rail the most against any kind of COVID-based regulations. “I can’t take another months-long lockdown!” I heard one such dude say, apparently unaware that we’ve never had a real lockdown, let alone one that lasted months. Most people just go along with it, but to him, it’s an egregious affront to the “freedom” to which he feels entitled.

Fortunately Omicron has yet to overwhelm our system, though it’s being sorely tested as so many incoming passengers have it these days. It has inspired more people to get vaccinated, though, and the government has changed the previous 5-month time between 2nd and 3rd shots to 12 weeks, meaning I can likely get a booster next month. Older people seem to be the holdouts, for the most part. It remains to be seen how the government and the CDC will alter their protocols to deal with the nature of this latest wave. We’ve scheduled the photography course to resume next semester, but we’ll have to see how things develop and where we are by March. One thing that helps immensely in planning photo-related excursions is the partial return of Google Maps’ 3D capability; this is wonderful for getting a feel for an area before actually going out to the area in question, I’m glad it’s back and I hope it is expanded more around Taiwan in the future.

I took advantage of the pre-Omicron state of affairs to finally meet up in person with Alexander Synaptic of Spectral Codex last week at a cafe in Xindian’s Dapinglin. I have long appreciated the wealth of information encapsulated in Xander’s online exploration pieces, and he has helped me out a lot with website advice, but we had never actually met IRL. He showed me an old map that showed that my old army base used to be an even older Japanese landing strip, which explains how the area “Big Flat Top” might have gotten its name in the first place.

In other news, I’ve been asked to perform in an ensemble paying tribute to the late Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five group. This is both an honor and a challenge, as I consider Satchmo to be the GOAT. I will need to put in some real work to get ready for that level of syncopation, range and just cool-ass 20’s jazz. Again, nobody knows where we’ll be by March; we’ll just have to see.

So, I realize that this site may seem stuck pinned to circa-2003 design, but it’s kinda grown on me over the decades. However, despite a mid-run refresh a la my friend Mark of the now-defunct Doubting To Shuo, it has over the intervening years become rather run-down and broken, code-wise, and my provider kept asking for more money to update it with new, more expensive packages. I did a bit of research and found that I was paying about three times more than I needed to to keep the site up and running. An online friend of mine generously offered to whip it into some kind of shape for the mere pittance of a cup of coffee, a copy of my book, and my somewhat-less-than-august presence, Covidian social conventions permitting. Now the basic house-cleaning is pretty much done, so allow me to go over some of what’s new under the hood, so to speak.

The one consistent part of this site from the beginning has been the blog, which was previously separated into several different blogs on Blogger and then WordPress. These have all been integrated into one main blog, which is now the landing page, with category options should a reader have an interest in, say, my attempts to engage in tuishou, or our little film projects, or my Chinese-language journal entries, etc. You can also explore various categories, such as entries involving exploits with the Ramblers, for instance, or musings/interactions with photography. I’ve also cautiously opened up the comments function again, though I doubt many people read these, if indeed many ever did…the thing these days seems to be the email newsletter, but in the end content is content, and I don’t do this for an audience or profit, but rather just to record various things I’m doing or thinking about.

The links on the sidebar, long-neglected, had become a litany of 404 pages and a sad reminder of just how interesting and wonderfully individualistic the internet was back then, so I had to update that, and will try to keep it current. The photos link, which previously went to a page of snaps, then to my flickr, now points to my main Instagram account, which is more current even though the photos are still just tiny facsimiles of the shots. I don’t really write fake news stories any more, as the “real” news these days is just so literally incredible that 1) my stories might potentially be taken for genuine news, and 2) the impact isn’t there in any case. So I dumped the old ones into a tumblr for historic purposes, but I might just get rid of them entirely if and when I redo the site from the ground up.

I don’t have the list of “accomplishments”, publications, exhibitions, awards and the like…I figure if someone’s interested they can Google me, and also: Does anyone really enjoy reading those? Do people go to someone’s site and eagerly look for how many articles someone has gotten into SuperiorTaste magazine/website, or how many times they were featured on BokehDrool dot com? I have, to this day, precisely zero blue checks, and it actually feels kinda good. If you’re the type of person to be awed by such things, well, there’s the internet for you (gestures).

In the end, as in the beginning, this is just a blog, with very few bells and whistles. It works a little better now, thanks to my online friend who has said he prefers to remain anonymous. I’ve enjoyed penning my various thoughts and deeds in there for the last 21 years, and I hope y’all have enjoyed the ride so far.

So, it’s 2022 now. On the 31st I met up with Chenbl and some of my students at the City Hall bus station for a long-delayed outing. I got there first despite thinking I’d be late again, so I walked around and tried out some allegedly blueberry-flavored bread from the 7-Eleven there. The results of the analysis showed no evidence of blueberry flavor, alas. We caught a bus out to Badouzi and walked eastward along the coast, to the scenic railway platform facing the rocks on which fishermen braved the cold wind, splashed by the largish waves. I hopped down onto the tracks at the end, where I could see that trains weren’t using as they were covered in grass, but still, for those playing at home, I must stress the importance of not straying onto active train tracks for photography or any other purposes, really, basically because trains are huge, silent and deadly things, particularly if you’re not on them but around them.

We kept walking over to our destination, the photography exhibit on coal miners by Chang Chao-tang at the HOHO Base, a complex made largely of cargo containers that is operated by photographer Ching-tai Ho. The entrance to the exhibit was fraught with potential lawsuits as far as physical dangers went, perhaps to get visitors in the right frame of mind to appreciate the photos inside depicting the dangerous conditions under which the miners operated before the 80’s. There weren’t many photos, it being a small space, with quite a few repeating scenes, but it was a nice exhibit. The villages in the area tend to be populated by cats, and, true to form, one cat watched us approach through a window. When we eschewed the neighboring restaurant, out of which snaked a long line of people, for the HOHO art space/restaurant, we found a well-fed grey cat sitting on a bench near the cashier/chef, who was none other than Ching-tai Ho himself. I sat down to pet the cat, and she jumped onto my lap and sat down to be petted, which was probably the best thing that happened to me that day. It’s been too long since I had a contented cat sitting on my lap.

Brunch, had in the container upstairs, was delicious; they use good stock for their recipes, and the cinnamon tea and carrot cake filled up the corners nicely, all while looking out at the seascape opposite. I wish it were more convenient to get to; I can only imagine how he stays busy on weekdays.

We had planned to take the bus over to Keelung, but it had begun to drizzle, so we took the train to Ruifang and walked around there for a while before heading back to Taipei. Nobody was interested in fighting the NYE crowds, so it was good to get back to the Water Curtain Cave and get to bed just as the fireworks were dying down.

The students were asking about next semester’s class and if we were going to resume…all I could tell them was that we’d see where we were regarding the COVID situation at the time. I still expect that Omicron will eventually make its way into the general population here, and how the government will react is a question. Fortunately a good portion of the population has been vaccinated, but if we’re going to keep to a zero-covid strategy I’m not sure how that will work. The past weekend has seen record crowds out and about, not just here in Bitan but all over the country, it seems, and I wonder if everyone is thinking the same thing: Get out now before the shit hits the fan. But then again I’m fairly cynical about these things. And also it seems that other countries, at least the Western ones, seem to be rolling over and giving up. No masks, no mandates, parties galore, everyone just saying Fuck it and then claiming surprise at record infection numbers.

So what’s the plan for this year? The usual: No plan, really. Do things and hope things get done. Good things, anyway.