You’ve probably heard about the Uncanny Valley phenomenon, which describes how people are comfortable with obvious robots and fine with obvious people, but are seriously creeped out by robots who are almost indistinguishable from humans. As I was watching some foreigners interacting with Taiwanese people the other day, I began to wonder if there is a corresponding phenomenon with spoken Chinese (as well as other languages). That is to say, many native Chinese speakers seem to go into a kind of “foreigner mode” when speaking with non-native speakers, dumbing down their grammar and slowing their speed, taking pains to put things as plainly as possible. They may even not realize that they are doing this, or see it as the obvious thing to do in such a situation. When speaking with other native Chinese speakers, a greater fluency occurs, of course. What I’m wondering is if there is a point in between these two states, something neither-here-nor-there, that causes confusion and even discomfort for native Chinese speakers, i.e. an Uncanny Chinese Valley?

From the Wiki page: “If the entity is ‘almost human’, then the non-human characteristics will be the ones that stand out, leading to a feeling of “strangeness” in the human viewer. In other words, a robot stuck inside the uncanny valley is no longer being judged by the standards of a robot doing a good job at pretending to be human, but is instead being judged by the standards of a human doing a terrible job at acting like a normal person.”

In the Chinese Uncanny Valley, then, at least according to the above theory, the confusion would arise from the native Chinese speaker seeing the other person as either a foreigner doing a good job at pretending to be Chinese (“Oh, your Chinese is so good!”), as opposed to seeing them as a really slow, difficult Chinese person.

I think relatively homogeneous societies where language and ethnicity are closely associated, like many in Asia, are where such a phenomenon would be the most easily spotted. When I’m chatting online or talking on the phone with a native Chinese speaker, there is no hesitation or discomfort, although eventually if we talk long enough it’s likely that I will make a mistake that lets them know I’m not a native speaker, but sometimes while talking face-to-face, I occasionally sense a certain amount of confusion in the other person. Most of my Taiwanese friends don’t have this problem with me, but when I meet someone new, they usually start out in the default “foreigner mode” and then move into this zone of discomfort, and are either so freaked out they can’t deal with me, or they overcome it and things smooth over (my sparkling personality doesn’t really help in this regard either, I admit).

I’m not sure how much of this has to do with reconciling an obviously non-ethnically Chinese person speaking the language, and how much it has to do with the level of Chinese that is being used, but it seems to me that, for many native Chinese speakers, dealing with a foreigner who speaks basic or intermediate Chinese comes across as an easier task than dealing with someone who speaks well enough to almost (but not quite) be taken as a native speaker. Perhaps it has something to do with the way people like to have things (and people) neatly and simply categorized in their minds, which, added to a longstanding association between ethnicity and language, interferes with such categorizations and causes this phenomenon. I’m neither a psychologist nor a language expert, so I really have no idea. It’s an interesting concept, though.

I was notified today that I’m actually eligible for a Mexican passport, though I haven’t set foot in Mexico in 39 years. The catch is that I can’t get it here, as Mexico has no formal embassy in Taiwan, so I would have to actually make a trip there to pick it up. I would like to have a second passport besides my ROC one, and it seems the US is not in a very generous mood when it comes to handing out green cards these days. Plus, I do have a couple of friends in Mexico, including a fellow student from film school who keeps urging me to go there to make films with him.

I really don’t think I could afford such a trip any time soon, though, not to mention taking that much vacation time. Also, my Spanish is crap. If I did go, I’d probably run out of money and have to rely on El Mono Severo to win food money in the wrestling ring. Still, “Mexican-Taiwanese” has an interesting ring to it, and I’m already pretty much used to curious stares at airports. Then again, there’s my future political career here to consider. Will voters in the 2016 polls care that I was once not only a US citizen, but a Mexican citizen as well? It might be the one thing that will let Vincent Siew and Su Zhen-chang get the upper hand over a potential Poagao presidency.

I’d thought that Spring was upon us, but these past few days, Winter has returned for a parting shot. The workers down on the shores of Bitan had better get a move on, or all their work will be washed away by the first typhoon if they’re not ready for it. At least it’s good sleeping weather; I’m usually woken up around 8am by the various streams surrounding the Water Curtain Cave, but when they subside I then go back to sleep until at least 11. Yeah, it’s a hard life.

Oh, and btw happy April Fool’s Day, damnit.

I’ve been experimenting lately with restricting myself to just one lens on my 20D, the cheapest, lightest, most basic one I have, namely the 50mm 1.8 prime that you can pick up for next to nothing. The reason I’ve been doing this is not just for greater portability; after all, a larger zoom isn’t really that big a difference when you’re carrying it in a bag. What I really wanted to do was see what happens when I purposely limit myself to a single focal length. The last time I did such a thing was when I had my first camera, a fully manual Pentax K1000 with only the basic 50mm lens, back in the 80’s, and it seems to me as if I have been relying too much on varying focal lengths, especially wide-angle shots. Sure, my popularity on Flickr will probably drop, but hopefully I’ll learn something useful in the process.

Of course, with the cropped sensor on my 20D, the 50mm is actually an 80mm lens, but this is perfect for people photography, another area where I need more practice. Most of my photos feature dark empty streets with maybe a person or two in the frame as a kind of punctuation rather than the subject. It’s not that I don’t see people photo possibilities when I’m walking around; rather, I’m too slow and too self-conscious to actually capture them. It seems to me that as soon as someone catches me eye, they are somehow automatically alerted to my presence. I am seen as a threat, and they retreat in fear.

Part of this, of course, is probably due to my appearance, as I’ve been told that I can come across as a bit menacing to people who don’t know me (and even people who do know me). I think, however, that my attitude and reaction to the situation also has a lot to do with it. When I see a photo possibility, someone with an interesting face, for example, in a visually interesting environment, I have an internal reaction that translates into some external signs that the subject senses. They feel my attention and react to it. I need to find a way past this (or through it) if I am going to improve my people photography. For now, I have to work in crowded areas like political events and bus stations to get such shots. Wayne showed me some tricks for faster focusing, but the 50 1.8 is not a fast focuser; usually by the time I get a focus lock, be it on auto or manually, the would-be subject has already fled in terror. Wayne also recommended the Sigma 30mm 1.4, and if I were sure that I would be staying with the 20D I would definitely consider it, but I’m not going to buy any new glass until I find out just what’s going on with Canon’s lineup over the next few months.

Speaking of new cameras, Mike Johnson is wondering just why nobody’s making a “Decisive Moment Digital” camera, i.e. a simple, portable point-and-shoot camera with a large sensor and a fast prime lens. “a small, light, unobtrusive carry-around camera with great handling and world-class responsiveness, capable of being used in all manner of lighting conditions and yielding DSLR-quality results on the gallery wall,” he writes. “The 21st-century equivalent of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s stealthy street-shootin’ Leica.” I completely agree. I’d much rather have the kind of camera he’s talking about than the postage-stamp-sized sensors current p/s cameras have. I don’t need most of the bells and whistles like face detection or in-camera color processing and 14 gazillion megapixels that the manufacturers are feeding the masses.

I suspect the reason camera makers aren’t doing this is because they feel that “real” photographers already have huge DSLRs and wouldn’t go for them, while most people are happy to have a camera that captures the kids playing soccer and don’t care about image quality. I think, however, that “real” photographers would go for such a DMDC in droves, just to have it on them during the day when they don’t have their huge 1D or D3 or whatever weighing them down. Instead, ironically, they’ve been taking the point-and-shoot out of the running for such a demographic by actually worsening performance and image quality by cramming more and more “features” and megapixels onto smaller sensors with substandard glass, counting on in-camera processing to make them look semi-ok on the little LCD screen. As a result, photographers are combing through e-bay looking for p/s cameras from a few years ago, before these trends got so utterly ridiculous.

David sent me a link to an article that maybe explains why I like to go walking around, particularly with a camera. I don’t feel comfortable looking for pictures so much when I’m with a group of people, or in a social scene. I feel (even more) like some kind of misfit because I’d rather interrupt the conversation to take a shot than miss it. It sounds overly dramatic, but it’s like I’m seeing another dimension that most other people don’t, in a Sixth Sense creepy kind of way, except I don’t see dead people; I see pictures. Everywhere. And yes, they don’t even know they’re pictures.

When I first went digital, however, I thought I could shoot everything, but I was wrong; it has a real cost: time. I need to engage in more self-censoring, instead of just shooting everything that I see. Combing through so many mediocre shots just takes too long, and I already spend too much time each day staring at a screen. I know I can take a decent shot. Flickr and other sites are stuffed with millions of such shots. I need to see what else I can do.

I’ve been wandering around in a haze for the past week since I got back. Last Friday I went to the doctor when my cold wasn’t going away, and he gave me meds for a severe sinus and throat infection, pretty heavy meds, too. So there’s not much to report. Much of my trip detritus still litters the floor of my apartment where I dumped it when I got back, along with my laundry. I’m only getting a few photos up each day.

The weather here is cold -not Tokyo cold, but not exactly beach weather- and grey. There was some occasional sun over the weekend, but I was in no state to go out and enjoy it. My apologies to everyone who has invited me out recently; I’m just not in the mood, preferring to huddle in the Cave drinking hot ginger tea. I’ve been managing to make it in to work and back home each day, but that’s about it. I haven’t been to tai-chi practice in weeks. I stupidly tried some badminton on Monday night, but of course that turned out to be a really bad idea, one I’m still paying for.

So, some observations.

1. The Kenwood C711 in-ear earphones I bought in Tokyo are really good with the iPod, better than the Sennheiser CX300s or the Sony EX71s. The only way I was able to discern this was because electronics stores in Tokyo allow people to try things out, as there are no applicable reviews online, and hearing is highly subjective. The Shure e2cs everyone raves about online sound like utter crap to my ears. It’s a good thing I didn’t buy into the online reviews and tried them myself.

2. The more I think about it, the more I tend to think that maybe a great camera should be something we ignore instead of admire. When you see a fellow shooting with a little older point-and-shoot, maybe instead of thinking, “What the hell is he going to do with that?” we should instead be impressed that he’s trying to get good shots out of such a basic camera. When we see someone with a new full-frame DSLR, instead of being impressed, we should hold them up to much higher standards at the very least. I’m wondering if, before long, cameras will all be so advanced that no one will ever have to worry about exposure, aperture, shutter times, or any of that any more; everything will be taken care of. I can even imagine cameras that automatically compose shots for you or alert you to a photogenic person or situation in the vicinity. What will we think of people who have the first wave of such cameras in the future? Will we look up to them or just curse their relative purchasing power? Sometimes it seems like today we retain the vestiges of an era where only good photographers tended to have good cameras, but is that the case any more? I doubt it.

3. I’m thinking I really should just sell my motorcycle. It’s not that I particularly need the money; someone else would probably enjoy the bike a lot more than I have been, as I simply never ride it. I did just make a large house payment, though. And the trip needs to be paid for.

4. Surely Frank Hsieh has something more on Ma Ying-jeou than the fact that he had a green card when he was a student in the US? Or that his sister cheated on an exam in 1968? All of this hinting around that Ma is actually a closet US citizen just makes Hsieh look like an idiot. I had expected a much better campaign than this from him and the DPP. I am, however, still waiting for the usual pre-election weird thing to happen. We’ve got a month to go, though, so there’s plenty of time.

5. The high-rise apartments above the Xindian MRT station across the river from me have, I believe, finally topped out at a pretty lofty height. They’re huge. I’m wondering just how that monster is going to change the demographics of Bitan, with a large influx of office workers and upper-class families living in this previously mostly working-class neighborhood, not to mention with the ongoing renovation project of the riverbanks and the bridge. Hopefully we’ll at least get a Blockbuster or Asia1 video rental store out of the deal.

In any case, all of this is just semi-addled musing. I hope to be back on track soon-ish.

Despite all the rumors of a successor to Canon’s full-frame 5D DSLR, it appears that the new Rebel XSi/450D is all Canon’s going to give us before the next camera-foaling season this fall. The new Rebel packs 4 million more pixels onto a sensor a bit smaller than the one on my ancient 20D, ensuring larger prints and requiring more processing to make it work in low-light situations. It’s too bad that most camera companies are still promoting the myth that more megapixels=better images quality when in most situations the very opposite is true. But the Rebel’s ISO settings don’t even feature a 3200 setting, which I suppose is just as well, because it would most likely be too noisy to use.

After seeing Canon’s new crop of cameras, I’m still not seeing anything that tempts me to upgrade my current setup. The larger LCDs and live view options are nice, but not enough reason to spend the extra money on a 40D, which doesn’t seem to be that much of an improvement over the 20D. Frame rates don’t interest me in the slightest. Even the new point-and-shoots aren’t really much of an improvement over my little SD800IS, simply squeezing more megapixels onto the same, tiny sensor and trying to use processing to make up for horrible low-light performance. I can do that with software on my own, thanks; I’d rather have a decent image to start with and work from that.

The only way I’d want to upgrade would be if the price of the 5D continues to fall. At the moment it’s not much more expensive than the Nikon D300, which isn’t even a full frame camera, and it is virtually unmatched as far as low-light/high-ISO clarity goes, at least for something I consider to be a reasonable size and price. Canon makes most of its money on point-and-shoots and the Rebel line, I suspect, but I hope they continue to develop small full-frame DSLRs like the 5D in the future.

If I were to go full-frame, I’d have to give up my lovely Canon 10-22mm EF-S lens for wide shots, but I’ve been thinking that I rely overmuch on that lens anyway. I don’t know quite how to explain it, but sometimes I feel like my wide lens makes it too easy to get an interesting shot, that I’m somehow using it to replace rather than augment what I think of as “real” photography. By taking away that option, I’d be forcing myself to concentrate harder on composition at a certain focal range. I’m not really considering limiting myself to a single 35 or 50mm prime (though the idea has merit), but perhaps staying on this side of 16mm would actually help me learn to “see” better. I’ve already done this with telephoto lenses; maybe it’s time I did it with the superwides as well.

While we’re on the subject of photography, I’d like to know something: Why is it that so many photographers (i.e. photographers who are linked to around the net on places like Metafilter) use such horrible interfaces to display their work? Usually the quality of pictures themselves is unremarkable and no great loss as I figure I can find much better on flickr’s Explore, but occasionally I’ll come across a great photographer who chooses to punish viewers of his pictures in the most maddening fashion possible. It’s like drinking a succession of small glasses of vinegar laced with heroin.

Of course, flickr has its problems as well. Though having so many pictures and a good Interestingness algorithm works well most of the time, I’ve found that it’s quite pointless to join groups based on number of views, as the vast majority of pictures with thousands of views feature mostly blond women in bikinis, mostly blond women sitting at tables, and women of all hair colors lying on mostly white beds.

On a positive note, flickr does have an important lesson to teach anyone (like myself) who dwells excessively on different types of cameras: the camera finder. All you have to do is go to the list of cameras and pick any old model of crap camera, and flickr will show you a range of brilliant photography done with that very model. It’s a humbling experience, but hardly a surprise when you consider that most of the best photographers of the last century had very little to work with, equipment-wise.

There are even people who set out to “recreate” masterworks of great photographers, even making sure that the planet is in the right position when they make such attempts. I find it difficult, however, to recreate even my own photos, much less those of other people. I used to take my 20D back to the site of pictures I took with my SD800 and try to get “better” versions, but it never worked out. The emotional state of the photographer is just one of countless variables that go into making a picture, each next to impossible to replicate, so I don’t even try.

Besides, even if you did manage to get something interesting, how would you describe it in a way that doesn’t sound pathetic? “Look, here’s a picture I took that’s the same place, time, season and focal length as an Ansel Adams picture! Aren’t I creative?”

Here we are in the much-anticipated year of 2008. In a way it seems too soon, but 2007 was wearing on me, and the new year seems to bring with it a sense of motion I’ve been missing as of late. Last night I met Harry at the Kunyang MRT station after work. We then cabbed it over to Bret and Alan’s Nangang apartment, where they had set up not only a delicious banquet featuring ham, but also a Dance Dance Revolution game on the big rear projection TV. It wasn’t as big a group as in years past. I’d hoped to talk to my Dominican friend Lorenzo about possibly spending Chinese New Year in Kyoto this year, but he wasn’t able to come this time. We toasted the new year with champagne and watched Taipei 101 consumed by fireworks on TV. It looked quite impressive, but I was glad I wasn’t out in the cold.

One of Bret’s friends drove us back downtown, through amazingly dense crowds to the intersection of Zhongxiao East and Dunhua South Roads. The streets were filled with cars, scooters and mostly young people, more than even rush-hour traffic before a holiday. Harry and I took one look at the long lines waiting to board the MRT and set off walking west along Zhongxiao. It was after 2am, and the streets were filled with people, and though most of the shops were closed, the few that were open were doing brisk business.

We walked to the Zhongxia0-Xinsheng MRT station and joined the long lines on the platform. Train after train, all filled with passengers, came and left with hardly any time between them. Eventually we managed to squeeze onto one and took it to the West Gate Station, where we planned to check out the activities at the Red House Theater Square. Many other people got off there as well; apparently it was a happening place to be on New Year’s Eve.

The atmosphere in the square behind the Red House Theater, however, was unnerving. There seemed to be a lot of “tourists” instead of the usual crowd, and there was a strange tension in the air. A group of loud foreigners walked past, one of them hitting me with his shoulder. Trash littered the ground, and trucks hauling things away shined their headlines across the scattered tables. I didn’t feel like staying; it wasn’t the same place. Harry picked up on it as well, and said he was going home.

Back at the subway station, I got a message from Eric that he was at The Source, so I stopped by there. When I sat down at the bar, I noticed a guy with his head in his hands. It was my neighbor Greg, who had apparently drunken himself into a stupor. Eric and I chatted, mostly about movies, and drank tequila until 5am.

The MRT was running 24 hours that night, so I walked down to the Kuting Station, buying some fruit on the way. McDonald’s was crowded with people, and traffic was still heavy in the pre-dawn chill. Back to Bitan, where I finally made it to bed sometime after 7am. It had been a long time since I’d stayed up to see the sunrise, but there wasn’t much of one this first day of the new year. Instead, it was cloudy and grey.

Still, I’m glad it’s 2008; it feels like this year has a great capacity for change, not just for me, but for the world in general. Presidential election in both Taiwan and the US are pivotal for both countries. Add to that the Beijing Olympics and several other global concerns. On a more personal level, it is my hope that I will be able to see the finished movie in a theater at some point this year, as well as the English-language version of my book in bookstores. While I’m at it, I’d like to spend some time traipsing the streets of cities like Paris and Prague, taking pictures to my heart’s content.

Upon a glance at new years past, however, it seems that all of the above goals are at least several years old. Each year I say I want to get the movie done, get my book published in English, and take a trip to Europe. It’s been so long. Should I even bother listing them any more? Still, I do feel that this year is going to be different. It has to be, for some reason I can’t put my finger on. Just a feeling.

We’ll see. I guess that’s the point.

Reading this story on one user’s discovery of what she felt was a critical flaw in a new e-book reader -mainly that she felt vaguely troubled by the fact that she didn’t know where she was in the book, how close to the end, etc.- reminded me how bound most of us are to the traditional construction and ensuing emotional needs involved in storytelling. When stories come in standard formats like a 250-page paperback novel, a half-hour TV show or a 90-minute movie, we base our expectations of what’s happening and what’s going to happen on where we are within the story. When I was watching American Gangster last Wednesday, there’s a scene involving a raid on a warehouse. I found myself looking at my watch to ascertain whether it would be successful; if we were at one point in the movie it would work, whereas if it were earlier than I thought, it probably wouldn’t. It turned out I was right. When I was watching Ratatouille, the winning of the restaurant felt like it came too soon, but it turned out that it was not the major obstacle in the plot, which differed from most Hollywood story-telling conventions in interesting ways. If this doesn’t make sense to you, surely you’ve encountered watching a TV show you know for a fact to last only a half-hour, minus commercials, and at some point it becomes plain that the plot cannot be resolved in time. Sure enough, it’s a two-parter. Tune in next week for the exciting conclusion!

It seems that a measure of our enjoyment of a story in any form is the reassurance of knowing where we are in the dramatic arc. This knowledge may remain on the subconscious level for the most part, but it’s definitely a part of the experience, perhaps a part we’ve come to take for granted. But as the e-book phenomenon shows, things are changing. With the advent of such technologies as well as more downloadable, variable-construct media being made available, it may seem like we’re in danger of losing our place in the story.

My guess, however, is that although the next generation will see things differently as a result of different constructs, the power of good storytelling will prove more resilient than the medium that conveys it. My hope is that, with the breakdown of set formats for our stories, as well as the inevitable fierce competition resulting from the ability of just about anyone to produce content, will result in even stronger, more dramatically engaging stories that pull us in and give us a sense of where we are without the need to for surreptitious glances at watches or the folded corners of tattered paperbacks.

Jorees has written an interesting post about life in Taiwan as a minority: Being an ‘other’ in Chinese culture

As you can imagine the pressure of dealing with everything regarding my current schedule has been a lot to deal with. One particular factor has also been getting to me. Being an ‘other’ in Chinese culture. When you are an ‘other’ you are different than the dominant socioeconomic majority. This can be defined through race, class, sex, or gender.In Taiwan I am ‘othered’ through language, culture, class, and race. My white skin is different. My nationality is different. My language is different. In addition, my job is high paying which many Chinese understandably resent. This ‘otherness’ is not always present. However, it has been adding to my stress level recently. As an ‘other’ my mistakes are more noted. More is expected to produce a success. I feel ‘othered’ in certain schools where I’ve worked and in a few graduate level classes. I am “othered” in subtle or not-so-subtle ways. Most commonly ignored during a social interaction. Or spoken to in Chinese when it is known that I will not understand. If I do try to speak Chinese what I say is not understood or mocked. Assignments or group work will not be explained to me in class as I am not part of the social ‘group’. My name will be miss pronounced or I will be referred to by another name on purpose.Part of this ‘othering’ has to do with the competitive attitude of graduate school and I was put through the same social duals during my M.A. at McGill. Social combat and competition are part of being a graduate student. Leaning to deal with high powered people is one of the unspoken lessons learned during a graduate degree. As the only English student in a Chinese program I also should not expect to have others look after me and should expect to be ‘othered’ due to cultural difference. But it still takes a lot out of me.It is also present in the workforce at certain language schools. Here I am not perceived as a person but as an ‘other’. This petty attitude of ‘othering’ usually comes down to simple economics. I make more money and come from another culture therefor my social worth is less. Often an authority figure at the school will not acknowledge my contribution to a class and small mistakes are constantly picked at. Some days, I find people can have a hot or cold attitude when it comes to dealing with me regardless of my behavior. Again this is because when you are an ‘other’ your actions or personality have little impact to the dominant majority culture. The culture does not see your actions but instead views your skin color. Your personality does not have value in comparison to your minority culture or language. As an ‘other’ you produce no impact accept for the purpose of being ‘othered’. Taiwan has given me many gifts and I feel very thankful for the professional opportunities here and my life in Asia. However, their is a dark underside to being a minority in Asia. Today I feel like making that small darkness heard.

My first thought on reading this was simply a snarky “Welcome to life as a minority,” something I got used to long ago, but then it got me to wondering if the situation in Taiwan today as a person of non-Chinese ethnicity is much different in this respect than it was 20 years ago. In other respects it has changed a lot, of course, in that it is much easier for such people to live here without integrating into the local society now than it was then. By this I mean mainly having access to the Internet as well as a wide range of Western and other non-Chinese media, entertainment, food, styles, and even languages than before.

In the late 1980’s, there was one MacDonald’s in Taipei, and virtually no other foreign cuisine options outside of Tienmu, where I never went. The MRT hadn’t even been thought of, and all transportation was via motorcycle or bus. It was all well before the Internet, of course, and letters from abroad would come once every few weeks. Exposure to Western stuff came in the form of a very limited selection of books from Caves and the occasional Hollywood movie from whence most Taiwanese people formed (and still seem to form) their views of what life outside Taiwan in American and European countries was like. Most foreigners that I knew at the time hung out with other foreigners for the most part, their only contact being their Taiwanese girlfriends (often resulting in hilariously feminine accents in their Chinese) but I don’t claim to have any authoritative knowledge on the subject because, as Prince Roy can attest, I pretty much avoided foreigners in a fairly religious fashion. This was a combination of insecurity on my part, a desire to learn more about and become more a part of the local society, and just plain stubbornness on my part.

Today, all of these things have changed drastically, and not just in the capital city. Over the last couple of decades, I’ve also become more secure in my own identity and place in this society. I wonder, however, if the current ease of access to attributes of their original culture causes people within the non-Chinese minorities here to feel more isolated from the people around them in daily life, which seems to be the case here (though I can’t be sure as this is pure assumption on my part). In fact, do such people even see themselves as minorities? It seems to me that some foreigners, especially white foreigners from white countries, still can’t bring themselves to realize that fact, even though they have lived here for a substantial period of time.

From the start, I never expected local people to take pains to adapt to what they thought were my limitations in this respect, but the fact that it bothered me when some people did so sounds similar to what Jorees is talking about here. However, it seems to me that most of this “othering” that Jorees mentions occurs in situations where non-Chinese are likely to be found, e.g. in an English-language teaching environment or at an international business. Outside of these environments, I’ve found it far easier to “just be a person” and a normal part of society. But I don’t expect people to mispronounce my name, and they hardly ever do as it is a fairly common Chinese name (though some Japanese people say it is also a normal Japanese name), and when they speak Chinese to me, I place all of the responsibility for understanding on myself. Occasionally I will encounter people who insist on treating me in that bizarre fashion that somehow combines a sense of fascination and revulsion with my very existence, but, as with any other unpleasant person, I can choose to stop associating with them and move on with my life.

Jorees’ difficulties aside, there is always going to be a natural pressure to conform to the society you live in, and there are always going to be people within a society who try to take advantage of perceived weaknesses in others. But all in all, this phenomenon is another reason to persist in integrating with the society we live in, at least to a certain degree that doesn’t result in the nagging personal discomfort that Jorees and many foreigners seem to be vulnerable to. Of course this is an oversimplification of the situation, as I am not a social studies expert or even actually social. But I still think that, just as the reason Taiwanese deal with foreigners the sometimes-odd ways they do today is the result of decades of imported entertainment sources combined with social exclusion on the part of foreign businessmen and soldiers with no interest in learning the language or culture, the way we deal with these issues will influence the way the average Taiwanese person deals with immigrants in the future.

I’ve been getting too many reminders lately, too many overdue notices, so to speak. Moving back into smaller quarters has disallowed me to continue shunning the cries emanating from various hidden corners of my life. There’s not much else to say, except that one can only cheat oneself so much before it becomes unbearable.

I recently came across the photography of Joakim Eskildsen, and although I find most online photography sites pale in comparison with a simple search of Flickr’s Explore feature, this guy is amazing. His composition, colors, manipulation of light, emotion and presentation of people in their environments constitute, in my mind, real photography, something I’d forgotten in this age of digital photography. He uses a Pentax 6+7 film SLR with prime lenses, apparently.

I just finished watching Layer Cake, and was reminded how a real movie communicates with its audience, not through dialogue, which is almost ancillary to the story, but visually, viscerally pulling emotions out of the audience. And this, ladies and gentlemen, isn’t exactly that deep of a movie.

I was at the house of a friend who bought some CD’s of ours, and he put on an old Louis Armstrong album including some of the songs we play. When Louis plays, it’s like nobody ever played before, or ever will again.

During the move, I was going through my old stuff, throwing away some of it. I went through old journals from the 1990’s, when times were tough for me, when I was a struggling camera assistant trying to make it from month to month and moving house periodically, almost systematically, throughout the city. I also reread a bit of the English version of my book, recalling the words of my old colleague Carl Davies, spoken not long after I was hired at the China News, to the effect that I couldn’t write myself out of a paper bag. He was right, of course.

I woke up this morning at 5:59am, after only a few hours of sleep, thinking: what the hell am I doing? If I don’t get to the core of things now, it’s likely I never will. I can’t quite explain it, and I suspect I should stop trying and get on with things.

It’s Friday, the eighth anniversary of the big quake of ’99, and our fair island is about to embark on a four-day holiday for the Mid-Autumn Festival, which, considering the weather, will probably involve a lot of wet barbecuing going on under flimsy yellow plastic raincoats bought from 7-Eleven. I have no plans, really, other than lying low and getting a few things done. Oh, and playing at a wedding on Saturday up in Waishuangxi. Hopefully it will go better than the last wedding.

I finally finished uploading the photos from the Okinawa trip. I pretty much have the trip vidlet done, but I want to add some Okinawan music to the background, so I have to wait until I can get my hands on some of David’s Takashi CDs to use for that. It’s about 15 minutes long. No real plot or serious thought went into the editing, as usual. Just stuff I took on the trip, lots of windy noise and walking around.

Real events have recaptured my thoughts, which were dislocated for a time by the small-scale voyage, though lingering doubts about the certainly of my ideas may end up bearing fruit eventually. Someday, perhaps, I’ll look back and say, “Yes, now that I think about it, it was that cruise to Japan that started it all.”

Or not. Sorry to be so vague, but that’s all I have to give you for now.

Today before work I took 12 of my printed photos to a shop located in a triangular shanty with a corrugated tin roof on Heping East Road to get them framed for exhibition here and there, possibly including at Bobwundaye. The owner said I should be able to pick them up on Wednesday, after the holiday. Hopefully around that time or not long afterwards I will also receive a new mobile phone my friend Victor is sending me from Hong Kong.

I finished Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys, which is a delightful read in the tradition of American Gods, and started on The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon. While Gaiman is immediately entertaining, Chabon, like Irving, takes a while to get into, at least for me. This is annoying, but hopefully has more to do with my current mood than his writing. Subjectivity and all that.

On an completely unrelated note, I was listening to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue on the radio today (the slow, plodding harmonica version), and, not for the first time, wondered why the theme is played differently today than it was in the 1945 movie of the same name, which is billed as being quite authoritative on the subject, having been made only a few years after Gershwin’s death in 1937. The piece is played in the movie by Oscar Levant, renowned interpreter and virtuoso performer of Gershwin’s music. And it’s different, jarringly different. The 1945 version is jazzier, swingier and more engaging, and the modern version seems dumbed down in comparison. Who made the change and why? Which one is the original?

Finally, I had to laugh at a story on a pro-independence group criticizing Annette Lu’s latest comments. From this story:

On Wednesday, Lu said the logo of the UN campaign “looked like a pig snout.”

The group said that even if the logo did look like a pig snout, there was no need for Lu to criticize it publicly.