Coming to work this morning was rather interesting. First of all I was late, but that's pretty common for me. Then, as I was riding up Hsinsheng South Road, the sky opened up and huge raindrops began pelting me, so I swerved onto the sidewalk and under the overhang to get out of it. Luckily, I stopped right in front of a Yamaha motorcycle repair shop (these shops are actually about as common here as me being late to work), so I added some oil while I waited for the rain to let up. In about 15 minutes, it did, the fierce rays of the sun causing puddles to fizz and steam to rise from the wet asphalt.

I had turned onto Minsheng East Road and was headed for my office building when I saw a line of some sort snap up across the road in front of me. I was just beginning to brake when the line dropped to the ground again. As I passed I saw two guys dressed in yellow-and-orange outfits that could only be government- or circus-issue on either side of the four-lane road, holding the ends of a tape measure. About 100 feet down the road another group of similarly dressed men were huddled around a telescope-like surveying device on the median near my intersection. I stopped at the intersection and watched the guys raise and drop the tape measure across the road in between vehicles in the middle of the heavy morning traffic. I could just hear them saying to each other "I bet you NT$500 this guy'll brake." "You're on!" "Ha ha, I win..."

I recently realized that I have been putting all of my new photos at the bottom of my photo page, which is just stupid. People wanting to see if I have added any photos lately don't have time to scroll all the way down to the bottom, dammit! So in the future, I will put the new stuff at the top. I know...duh! Even "W" could have figured that one out.

Thanks to Tolerance.org's series of hidden bias tests, I now know that, besides a "slight automatic preference for black people", I am a relatively unbiased person (Link from Luke).

Good thing it wasn't about food, otherwise a "strong automatic preference for pop-tarts" on my part would no doubt have been confirmed.
etched by at 2:45 PM

I just went to see Kiss of the Dragon and came away rather disappointed. Piss-poor dialogue which served no other purpose than to let the audience know what was going on without showing anything, atrocious camerawork and editing, sappy music and a dubious storyline make this a waste of Jet Li's talent. His action was good, but not portrayed properly by the camera. If you want to see Jet Li in action, go see Once Upon a Time in China. Tsui Hark knows how to capture martial arts. In Kiss of the Dragon, it was as if the director simply assumed that western audiences would be impressed by anything you threw at them, and judging by the reviews I've seen, they could be right. It's pretty pathetic how the advent of so much technology in Hollywood has actually lowered audiences' expectations. The story could have been good, but lack of direction and almost lazy filmmaking ruined it, and that pisses me off, because I'd like to see Jet Li getting better treatment.

For some reason, I woke up really early this morning. The sun was just coming up, and I took some interesting cloud photos from my balcony. On my way to work, as I was stopped at a traffic light, I noticed a woman with a ski jacket, heavy pants, a scarf and puffy winter gloves on a scooter in front of me. It was bizarre, as she is just asking for heat stroke in this weather. Maybe she was The Invisible Woman or something. I really need to find a place to put my camera so I can whip it out and snatch shots from the saddle.

At lunch I called Boogie, and it turns out that he is still teaching English at the Minsheng Branch of Hess. He's been there for a long, long time, and he told me that it was as if time had stood still for him. It's right near where I go to sword class, so I might meet up with him on Friday after class. Ronnie, who I know from the News, also called me today and said he's having a party at his ex-ex-girlfriend's house in Muzha on Saturday night. I don't know what I'll be doing on Saturday, and I probably won't know anyone there, but I might still go.

After work I went up on the roof of our building and took some more pictures. It was a good cloud picture day. I'll post a few to my photo page later on.

I'm still stuck in this quandry about my job and my plans for the near future. It sounds like a really interesting opportunity, so I'll probably end up taking Doug up on his offer, as soon as he elaborates on a few questions I asked in my last email. The question is: can I do that job and still keep my present job? I might give it a whirl, but I doubt I will be able to. I suppose I could do a bit from the office, but I won't really know whether it is feasible until I try. This also means I might have to push my trip up or even call it off. Everything's up in the air all of the sudden, but I guess everyone could use a little shaking up now and then.
etched by at 11:57 PM

Just after I met Doug and his partner Donovan at 45 after work, my phone rang. It was Edward, whom Dean introduced me to a couple of months ago. Edward used to teach in Kuwait and is from Canada, a really nice guy, built like a bouncer and always friendly. He had read my last couple of posts about how I wanted someone to get stark raving drunk with and invited me to go out drinking, but I was already meeting with Doug, so I had to turn him down. I might have been a little too abrupt though, considering he was just trying to be nice, and I apologized when he called back.

Doug and Donovan run a magazine in Taichung which details the various places where one can eat, drink and be merry in that fair city, in both Chinese and English. They are considering doing a Taipei edition and wanted to know if I would be willing to leave my present job in order to participate in such a venture. I have to admit, it is tempting, even though somewhat out of the blue, as I had thought I would be working at the new place part time and therefore have enough time to do both that and the magazine work, but I hadn't really considered the possibility of leaving my present position for the magazine. It would most certainly be a challenge, since I've never done anything like it before, and thus more interesting than my present job, but once I leave, I won't likely have a chance to go back if it doesn't work out. Also, I wouldn't be able to take a month off to tour Australia, as I had thought of doing. Hmmmmm.....it certainly bears further consideration.
etched by at 12:10 AM

Ok, so I didn't get completely smashed last night. I sure felt like it (still do, actually), but although I have some Romulan Ale stashed in my drawer just such an occasion, I didn't feel like doing it alone, with only my stuffed monkey and my turtles as an audience for my drunken rants, which are theoretically much more eloquent than my sober rants. Instead I tested the compatibility of Billie Holiday and the latest Half-life game. Verdict: not very. While both are effective at making me feel less depressed, they tend to work in different, mutually exclusive ways.

Xiao Bing did come over last night, and while he was able to empathize with being stuck in a certain job, working as he does at the post office, he's a family man and couldn't get drunk with me. Plus he was riding a scooter home to the wife and kids in Yonghe. Xiao Bing was one of the first people I met when I first came over here. He went to the same college as I did, Tunghai University in Taichung, although he majored in accounting and is now going to night school to learn about information technology. He knows html, and I suggested that he come up with a website, like mine, just for fun and a project to hone his web design skills. Ironically, however, he's too busy studying website design to design a website.

My heartfelt thanks, by the way, for the hundreds of emails I received expressing sympathy over my recent failed attempt to improve my employment situation. It was a real testament to the compassion and soul of those individuals who make up the Internet.

Someone once told me that sarcasm is the lowest form of humor. Shyeah!

I just got a call from Doug, who used to work as the News' "Man in Taichung" until the News went crazy and fired everyone who wasn't wearing a banana-leaf hat and slippers. He now manages a magazine down there. He is in Taipei now and we are going to meet up, along with a few other people, at 45 after work. Since I am stuck in this 10-6 job five days a week, I don't see how much I can help him with his endeavor to do a Taipei edition of his magazine, but I'll see what he wants and oblige as far as I can. Steve's book is out and hopefully he'll bring a few copies along as well.

It looks like I will be able to go on the company trip to Hong Kong and then take a month off to go to Australia. Cool. I hope it works out. There's a couple of webloggers I'd like to visit in Australia, as well as some other friends. What I'd really like to do is rent a decent-sized motorcycle and ride across an appreciable portion of the Australian coast, taking lots of pictures with my manual Nikon instead of my digital camera so I can run out of film in the middle of nowhere instead of running out of batteries in the middle of nowhere.

In other news, the inept IT department at my company has almost literally stepped aside and let the Code Red II virus infect our server, causing everyone's computers to crash even more frequently than before. I asked them why they didn't download the patch, and they told me "Well, we checked to see if we had the virus, and we didn't, so we didn't feel that we needed to download the patch." I think, when we move to our new offices next year, that we should do it at night and not tell the IT department where we're going. I really don't think we're in much danger of them finding us again, at least not while their heads are still up their asses.
etched by at 2:22 PM

I was feeling good this morning when I came into work. The weather today is nice, my sushi roll-and-kiwi juice breakfast tasted good, and traffice was fairly light. I got to my desk, turned on my computer and checked my email. There was a message from the woman at the place I want to work.

Sorry, we only have one position. Good luck.

I am not amused. Oh, I realize that it's not that bad. I already have a job, even if it doesn't pay very well and I hate it. It could be a lot worse. But I wonder if I wasn't being paranoid after all, that the guy who had the long interview and hung around the office afterwards did actually have some sort of connection. If not, he'd better be damn well qualified. His Chinese and Taiwanese had better be every bit as flawless as his native English, he'd better have been in Taiwan for at least 20 years, and been an editor for at least five of those years...but in reality it doesn't really matter. If my experience and abilities aren't good enough now, they never will be. This is as far as I can go in this direction, and this is not very far. I don't have the time right now to do what I want to do, and I have no way to making time without leaving this job, and if I leave this job, I won't have anywhere to go. The job I was going for was going to be my big Next Step, and now it's fallen through. I have no idea where I can go from here. Maybe that will be a good thing in the long run, but right now it just makes me feel miserable. I just feel like slipping into a crack somewhere and disappearing.

But I can't do that. Right now I have to decide, since I'm stuck at this crappy job that's not crappy enough to leave without some better way of feeding myself, is whether I take two weeks and go somewhere (no idea where I could go for two weeks, actually) and then take the company trip to Hong Kong, or just take a month off and go to someplace like Australia or Europe, because I sure as hell can't take much more of this without a vacation of some sort. Looks like I'll be here when we move to our new offices over next door to the Warner Village Cinema next year, too. At least I'll be able to see more movies.

Xiao Bing is coming over tonight. I haven't seen him in a while, so it will be good to catch up, even though I'm probably not in the best of moods right now. If Dean were in the country I would go out drinking with him and get completely smashed, but he's not. Unfortunately I don't know too many other people I can get drunk with.

There's a guy whose English name is "Rocky" sitting nearby, and Whiny Woman works with him a lot. When she wants to talk to him she always whines "Hey, Rocky!"

Whiny Woman: Hey, Rocky! How'd you like see me pull this account out of my ass?"

Rocky: Again?

I just may start calling her Bullwinkle.
etched by at 11:44 AM

According to my stats, you don't like hearing about me going interesting places and doing interesting things as much as you like listening to me complain about lame A-listers and Whiny Woman whining along to Barry Manilow's greatest hits.

Sadists.

Speaking of sadists, the place where I had my interview last Friday hasn't been forthcoming on their decision, if indeed they've actually come to a decision. I need to know relatively soon so I can sign up for our company trip in September or, barring that, arrange some sort of vacation of my own. I'm going to need a good, long vacation if I stay at this job much longer.
etched by at 5:57 PM

Harry was going to come by this afternoon to drop off some CD's, so this morning I went and picked up my laundry, checked my receipts to see if I'd won NT$2 million (I didn't), organized my photos and had a little photoshopping fun with Dean, who actually used to be a security guard back in Canada.

At about 3:30, however, Harry called and said his stomach hurt, so he wouldn't be coming over. The weather outside was brilliant, and I didn't relish the thought of languishing in my room for the rest of the day, so I went out on my balcony, opened the window, and looked to see where I wanted to go. The hills of Beitou looked particularly inviting, and I hadn't been up there in a while, so there I went.

Every time I go to Beitou I wonder why I don't live there. Sure, it would take longer to get to work, but it's such a nice, peaceful place. Even before I got there, when the train to New Beitou opened its automatic doors, I could catch a whiff of the burnt sulphur from the hot springs. Water is omnipresent in Beitou...if the sound of babbling brooks drives you crazy, don't go. But if you're like me and find it the most pleasant sound you can imagine, Beitou is the place to be. Little streams are everywhere, crossed by tiny bridges and falling down minute waterfalls. After only walking for a few minutes, I had left the chaos of the city behind; it was quiet I was surprised to be able to hear the crunch of dead leaves under my feet. The air was fresher than in the city as well, and the smell of trees and water mixed in a rather pleasant fashion. I even found a Tallow tree, just like the ones we had in our front yard when I was growing up in Florida.

More people live in actual houses in Beitou, real structures with yards, garages and the like. Families stroll and people walk their dogs. I realize that it's prohibitively expensive to live up there, but it's nice to be able to walk around and at least imagine living there. At one point I was about to take a picture of myself in one of those corner warning mirrors when, all of the sudden, I heard the unusually low-pitched growling of a very large dog right behind me. By reflex my finger pressed the the camera button and I ended up with this shot of me wondering exactly what that thing is making snarling noises behind me. It turned out to be some kind of husky/german shepard mix, and its beef was apparently not with me, but with another dog down the street.

I left them at it and walked up past the houses to areas where farmers were tilling terraced fields, and then back down again. The sun was setting as I walked up the stream on the other side of the MRT station, past the traditional hot spring baths where I like to go bathe in the winter. They had redone the sidewalks since I was last there, with stones preventing cars from completely blocking pedestrians. They've even redone the drains, which are artful, swirly affairs designed to entertain as well as drain! I wonder if they actually work. A tour bus was making its way up the narrow road and I watched as it knocked the side mirror off of a toyota parked on the shoulder. The bus driver got out, made sure he had enough room to escape without further damaging the car, and then drove off.

As night falls upper Beitou becomes not a little spooky, as there are many old abandoned Japanese-style houses covered with decades of jungle-like vegetation lying in the darkness just out of the reach of the streetlights. I decided it was time to go back, but instead of taking the MRT at the New Beitou station, I set off along the winding concrete path built underneath the elevated line back to the Beitou station. Since the MRT follows the original Japanese railway tracks, the buildings are already built up around the line. The area beneath the MRT tracks is enclosed on both sides by the backs of mostly older buildings, and it almost feels like it is indoors. People sit outside the back of their shops on folding chairs, talking. Lots of cats can be seen slinking around. One man was watering the bushes down there, as apparently they never get any rainwater. Various colors, from the red of ancestral shrines to the fluorescent white of offices, spilled from windows along the way. I liked the outside-but-not-outside feel of it all. I will have to go back there during the day, just to see what it's like then.

I could be wrong, but is this really the best choice for naming your coffee shop? I saw this shop on my way back home. I even got off the train just to take this picture.

So my unplanned weekend has actually turned out quite well. I had a feeling it might.
etched by at 11:19 PM

Things always come up on unplanned weekends. This morning as I was cleaning up a flood I inadvertantly caused by poking a hole in the washbasin where I keep my turtles, Steve called. He wanted his CD's back and suggested we meet. As I had no plans, I suggested lunch at Grandma Nitti's and a hike afterwards, so we said we'd meet at 1:30. I was late, of course, and Steve had already started eating by the time I got there. The meal wasn't bad, but it was nice to escape the crowd of mostly foreigners loudly enjoying their weekends.

We took the MRT up to the Jiantan Station and proceeded up into the hills behind the Grand Hotel. I'd been up there before, but not as far as Steve had. We passed groups of Taiwanese people exercising, playing ball and listening to blaring music on portable radios. As we proceeded, there were fewer and fewer people, and the wooden walkway degraded into a dirt path with stones set down the middle. I took a few shots of the city through the haze. Once, when Steve and I had taken off our shirts and were sitting by the side of the path, a couple of older women walked past and glared at us with a mixture of horror and disgust. I guess I could be in better shape.

By the time we reached the Christian cemetary, the sun was low in the sky and all of the mosquitoes deflected by my generous dousing of "Off" went straight for Steve, who was pointing out how some of the graves seemed to have been broken out of rather than broken into. I told you Steve was eerie.

On our way down the mountain we passed through a complex of buildings belonging to a local betelnut farmer. His bathtub was out on the patio and chickens ran in and out of the house. It looked quite ideal, surrounded by bamboo and betelnut trees (the government has recently announced that it is going to cut down all the illegal betelnut trees to avoid undue soil erosion. I hope they remember to plant something in their place). As we reached the road a group of loud woman began screeching with laughter at our presence. "Look! Foreigners!" they screamed in Taiwanese. "They're walking out of the cemetary! Why would they walk all that way? It's so strange!"

Hoping to explain our presence, I replied "We walked over from behind the Grand Hotel." But this just set off a torrent of hilarious incredulity that a foreigner could speak Mandarin. I considered telling them to watch what they said in Taiwanese, since I understand that as well. I decided, however, that that would have been just asking for even more trouble, so we just turned around and kept walking, past a new, well-advertised apartment building ironically called "Secret Garden", down past a military base to Bei-an Road. There we took a bus back to the train station.

"Are you hungry?" Steve asked, to which I replied "A bit." We then decided to see if we could get out on the roof of the Asiaworld department store building, which is right next to the Mitsukoshi building. We took the elevator to the 24th floor and then walked up to the 27th floor. As soon as Steve tried to open the door to the roof, a piercing alarm sounded. Visions of police squads filled our heads, but we decided to see if any of the other four roof exits were open.

None of the were, of course, but the stairwells were rather bizarre. I have no idea what they were doing in those stairwells, but it seemed to involve bodily fluids in some capacity, as there were splotches of red trailing down the walls, ending abruptly in a large red stain. Next to it was a similar pattern, but in black. "The only thing scarier than bloodstains are wierdly colored bloodstains," Steve commented. I think it might have had something to do with an obviously dead dot-com on the 25th floor. I imagine the last days must have been terrifying.

We went back down and started looking for a Muslim restaurant Steve remembered going to on Bo-ai Road, but this search was just as futile as our search for an open door to the Asiaworld roof, so we settled for wonton noodles at a shop where the owner suspected us of being German. As we ate, he rode a scooter inside the restaurant and parked it next to us. Then he went outside and rode another one in. And another. Soon we were surrounded by scooters the owner had parked inside the restaurant, which more resembled a parking lot by that point. Actually, I noticed yet another swastika, this time emblazoned on the gas tank of a motorcyle on the street near the restaurant. Swastikas are big in Taiwan. I think this one is definitely not Buddhist, although I wonder why the guy also had a flag from down under stuck on his bike as well.

Steve left to catch a bus home, so I went to the 2/28 park and snapped a couple of photos before getting on the MRT back to the Taipower building. It is now almost one o'clock in the morning, so I doubt I will be going out again tonight, much as I'd like to find that new place, the "G-something" and meet some people. I've added a banner graphic to my Cast of Characters page, and updated the member list as well. I think I've done enough for one day.
etched by at 12:48 AM

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