I feel terrible. My throat is killing me and I have no energy. I doubt if I'll be in good enough shape to go to the Christmas party tonight, dammit. I went to the doctor yesterday during my lunch break and was told that the eye drops couldn't have possibly infected my throat and tonsils. He gave me a little bag of pills, but no antibiotics. I realize I should trust the doctor and not demand antibiotics every time I get sick, but it does seem to me that I always start out on non-antibiotic medicine and then end up on antibiotics, sometimes several different kinds. Hopefully that won't happen this time. I went and bought a couple bottles of "Super Supau", which is basically just a sports drink, i.e. sugar water, but my old commanding officer from back in the army used to swear it was just the thing for curing a cold.

I was feeling pretty bad by the time I got off work last night, so I skipped sword practice, even though my teacher said she was going to bring in the award from the competition a couple of months ago. I'll just have to pick it up some other time. I'm not terribly interested in the award anyway. My room is too cluttered as it is. Today I'm just going to stay in and try to recuperate as much as possible, or just ride it out. It's around 10 degrees outside so it's a good day to stay indoors anyway.

Yesterday at work I got a call from my old friend Billy, who is one of the travel agents I use. He and and a sexy older guy from the Dominican Republic named Lorenzo work at his office, called, simply enough, Billy's Travel Agency. I met Billy when I was a cameraman on a travel show he used to host at the Era network. Once I was part of a crew on a trip to Singapore and Indonesia for the show, which was a lot of fun.

That was years ago, however. I have long since left the TV industry, but Billy has apparently nailed down a deal with CTV for another travel show. They are going to give him studio time but no crew for the actual episodes, so Billy want me to come with him and be his cameraman. I don't know when all of this is, but it might fit in with my plans for after Chinese New Years. If I could get some sort of part-time editing job that would cover my expenses, and then spend the rest of time doing things that I'd rather be doing, it might just work out. Still, everything is still in the embyonic stage so I can only wait and see how things develop. What I really need to do now is get my damn book finished!
etched by at 10:18 AM

Dave gets hate mail. Shauna gets hate mail (unfortunately she took that post down). Where's my hate mail? The most hateful mail I get usually starts out with "Hey, Paogoa! We *heart* your site! Do you have massive debt? We have a platinum Bank of Nuzburia credit card for you! Use it to see chesty girls with improbable names licking household items!"

I don't feel so well. The eye drops the doc gave me last night ended up in my throat (yeah, joke all you want, but they do need to improve their aim) and now it's incredibly sore. I don't know if it's a cold or some sort of allergic reaction to the drops, but it's a pain and really unnecessary as it's the weekend already, dammit. I know it's a freezing 10 degrees celsius outside, but I've got an article to write, a party to go to and a rehearsal this weekend, so I really don't need the cold, thanks. "Excuse me? I'd like to return this cold? You see, it's just not me. Can I exchange it for something a little more Christmas-y?"

Speaking of things that aren't so Christmas-y, Tom's boss, a miserable excuse for homo sapiens named Carl, fired him just a week before Christmas. If you're in the Bay area and happen upon Carl, feel free to spit liberally all over this wretch and then mail his well-salived bodice to Antarctica. Just tell him I sent you.
etched by at 1:23 PM

Randall has submitted his site to the Webby Awards. I have a few problems with the Webby awards. First of all, they have a "problem dealing with Internet Explorer: Please use another browser." Second of all, the page is full of obvious grammatical mistakes. Third, and most important of all, just entering one website costs a cool US$100.

Now why should I care what a bunch of people who can't even make their website compliant to IE, can't be bothered to proofread their content, and are money-grubbing bastards think of my website?

I just got back from the eye doctor, who did something to make my pupils so huge I scare people even more than I usually do, and everything is rather fuzzy. Staring at a computer screen is probably not the best thing for me to do right now.
etched by at 10:08 PM

This morning I resorted to taking a taxi to work because I didn't want to be too late and get yelled at again. Traffic was terrible as usual, and as we sat unmoving on the Jianguo Overpass a really nice Taiwanese song came on the radio. I listened for a while, then askd the cabbie what song it was.

"I dunno," he said. He was one of those cabbies who don't like to talk a lot, but I suppose an apparent foreigner speaking Taiwanese with him piqued his interest. "It's the theme song of one of those soap operas, Ah-cheng, I think it's called."

"One of the Big Three 8 o'clock Soap Operas?" I asked, and he nodded. I haven't been into those things for years now, especially since I no longer have a TV in my room, and the TV in our living room makes everyone look like badly animated aliens. I used to get really addicted to them, though, despite their invariably awful production quality (an exception to that was the Hong Kong-produced Outlaws of the Marsh, which was on a few years aqo. It's also one of my favorite Chinese novels, so I'm biased). I should look into this one, though. No doubt it sucks, but I can at least look for the theme song.

When I got to work today (on time, I might add), I found that every cubicle had a small Christmas stocking pinned to one of its walls. Inside each was a stick of candy. When I opened up my inter-office email, there was a message from one of the IT guys. It read:

Look around you! There's cute little red stockings everywhere, see them? Also there's a piece of candy inside each one. In this cold Christmas season, we'll give you not only a warm feeling, but also a chance to make your dreams come true!
Everyone can play Santa this year. Here's how to play:
Do you have something to tell that special someone? Do you want to thank them? Is there something you would like to confess to them? Like your true feelings? Just write a note and include a small gift and put it into their cubicle stocking!

The funny thing about this is that I have a small crush on the IT guy who sent this email. Yeah, savor that irony.

Also, it's not that cold out. Yet. There are reports that mainland China is sending us a strong cold front for Christmas (or ROC Constitution Day, as it's officially known here), and it should arrive on Friday. Maybe this stocking will come in handy after all.
etched by at 5:24 PM

Thankfully, nothing was damaged or even knocked over in my room from the earthquake. Still, maybe I should consider arranging things so that they're a bit more stable in case a bigger one hits, because eventually a bigger one will hit.

My motorcycle has been parked out in the rain at the office for two days now, since I don't like to ride it in rain, especially the constant, cold downpour that has continued for the last couple of days. I'll bet it thinks that I'm punishing it for gouging my ankle the other day. At least it will be clean, but I'm a bit worried about the effect of 13 years' of rust on its frame. Hopefully it will last a bit longer, or at least not fail in anything resembling a catastrophic manner.
etched by at 10:16 PM

As if the recent cold, rainy weather and my resulting soggy shoes weren't bad enough, there was an earthquake this morning.

It didn't seem that strong at first. It started out with that slight tentative quiver that makes you wonder if maybe the seaweed tuna roll you had for breakfast wasn't such a brilliant idea. Then it got stronger, and other people began to say the magic word: Earthquake! I've been through stronger ones, of course, most notably the 9/21 quake in 99, and even after that, but this one seemed to last a long time. People ran to the stairwells and stood against the support pillars in our office. I stayed at my desk (damn I'm heroic: "Brave Editor Finishes Editing Insipid Feminine Product Commerical Script Despite Being Smushed by Falling Drink Machine in Quake"), but I did take the precaution of putting on my shoes just in case I had to run for it. I was waiting for the power to go off; a sure sign that it's a big quake in my book, but it stayed on, and eventually the quake died down. It was odd to see the buildings across the street swaying back and forth, but soon that stopped as well.

My concern now is that my room has been trashed again, since my building tends to sway rather aggresively in some quakes. It's not a terribly big problem as long as nothing of import is broken, but....but....it's the NOT KNOWING that's TEARING ME APART!

Sorry. Perhaps I should go home now.
etched by at 5:58 PM

Frightening things are afoot. That much we all know, but it seems to me that the whole 9/11 thing has caused a lot of people to believe they are justified in just turning off their brains so that other can do their thinking for them. My good friend Clar, who is responsible for international student affairs at a large US university, described what is going on at her school. Here are some excerpts from what she told me:

"It's so scary here right now. There have been leaks in the press that the government is compiling a list of all "suspected terrorist sympathizers", and it includes a University Pres. who gave a speech urging "peaceful solutions, and to not give in to hate."

"The most recent student (of several) to be picked up was taken from work, he was not allowed a phone call. for 4 days, he was in INS lockup (a wing of a state pen.) and his roommates, family, all thuoght he'd been mugged and killed. local police finally found him. INS didn't notify them, either. he was just taken."

"I should not have expected that we would have learned anything from the past...... I'm waiting for the interrment camps to start up. At first, I
thought that I'd be out of a job since it looked like they were gonna ban internaitonals, now it is clear that I'm going to be made a tool of the witch
hunt. The INS came to my office and requisitoned lists of students from "certain countries".

"The U.S. Patriot Act has **REPEALED** the Buckley AMendment (protecting student records), and it has NO TIME LIMIT. It doesn't say that these freedoms are suspended "for the duration of the war", it's forever. And nobody complained. anyone who questioned it was slammed in the media. They've loosened the rules protecting the privacy of phone calls. I don't know about e-mail and snail mail. they are setting up military tribunals."

"If it's an analogy that helps, the things that our students were picked up for - they were paperwork errors and minor violations. the kind of things that before the U.S. Patriot Act was passed were settled by filling out a form, paying a $120 fee to the INS and waiting 6 months for a response from the regional office. Now they're being picked up and put in jail. The student I told you about had let his grades slip and was on academic probation. that means he was not enrolled for a semester. the normal procedure is to file a form called an I-539 and attach proof that he got back in school the following semester, pay a $120 fee and get a letter to put in his file saying that he's back in INS good graces. Instead, he was jailed, and released on $3,000 bond. He's hired an attourney, and he'll have to go before an INS court this spring."

"It's like being a taxpayer, and all the previous years you've filed, if you make a calculation error, the IRS sends you a letter telling you to fix your
return, with a grace period in which to do it, and then one year, the exact same error lands you in jail, with no warning. scary."

As I said, frightening stuff.
etched by at 12:15 AM

Today didn't start out on a terribly good note. It was raining when I woke up inside my mosquito netting; I had smushed about a dozen mosquitoes last night, and a dozen more were waiting when I emerged from the protective white web. I took a few minutes to hunt them down and kill them, and now there are little splashes of blood, my blood, thank you very much, all over my walls and ceiling.

The rain seemed to have stopped by the time I headed out, so I got on my motorcycle and managed to miss the kickstart, instead gouging my ankle. The metal rod went straight through my jeans and sock and managed to draw blood.

"Aaaaaw, FUCK!" I said, arousing absolutely no attention as I am often heard saying this kind of thing. I had to re-park my bike and go back upstairs to bandage my ankle, then come back down and head to work. I drove slowly today as I had already seen too much of my own blood and I wasn't too anxious to see any more.

I arrived at the office at the same time as Terrence, one of my co-workers. I walked to my desk and piddled around on the computer to take my mind off of the pain in my ankle for a while before my phone rang. It was my boss, warning me about being late.

"Huh? I got here before 9:40, I'm sure," I said, but she wasn't having any of it. Apparently the Big Boss had wanted me to do something for her at 9:50 this morning and I wasn't there.

"In light of the fact that everyone's salaries are already frozen, we are conducting performance reviews. Your extravagance is exceeding the boundries of my patience," she said. Meaning what? I have no idea. Is the fact that our salaries are frozen even though we haven't been adversely affected by the Global Economic Boogeyman supposed to be some kind of incentive for me to get here on time?

I didn't want to argue, so I said ok, I'll try to do better. After hanging up I went to Terrence to confirm when we had arrived. "About 9:35," he told me. On time. Something tells me I need to get serious about finding another, hopefully better job. Me and the rest of the people on my links page.

The noise last night turned out to be coming from an aborigine concert rather than Ramadan-related festivities, I found when I went down to have a look. There was a good-sized crowd at the theater in the park, and Power Station was there along with several performers I didn't recognize. Midway through the concert it began to rain, though, and they lost a good half of their audience, which was a shame. Most of the songs were good, with the exception of their "We Are the World"-esque rendition of "Aborigines Will Always Be Aborigines". I decided to go back and watch The Godfather: Part 2.

I haven't been able to find Tim Tams at any other Watson's besides the one near our office, so I went back there to stock up. I mentioned the Tim-Tam Gap to the girl at the counter, and she said "Yeah, we've been having trouble keeping them in stock since we first started selling them about a month ago." See? SEE? I mentioned the concept of peanut-butter Tim Tams to Simon, but all he said was "Eurgh! No." Oh, well. Just a thought.
etched by at 2:35 PM

Another wasted Saturday...ah, but it felt good to just stretch out on my bed and know that nothing was on my schedule for the entire day. So I doodled in my sketchbook, caught up on some reading, configured my webcam to broadcast The Poagao Channel (Channel 285680 on Earthcam TV) whenever I feel the need to become the object of visual voyeurism in addition to the literary voyeurism I usually subject myself to in this journal. I also watched The Godfather DVD I bought recently. The good stuff, 'twas.

This morning I was awoken at about 7am by someone shouting/singing in arabic nearby. I poked my head out the window to find Hsinsheng South Road filled with hundreds of people milling around. Then I realized that today was the day muslims can start eating again after fasting for Ramadan, and there was a huge celebration at the mosque next door. Various chants, which I assume went something like "Nothing like fasting to build an appetite" were traded between the crowds and the person on the loudspeaker. By 9am it had pretty much died down, and the sun came out.

I did get some writing done, but eventually I decided I had to take some advantage of the nice weather, particularly since it's all that much rarer in December, so I bought some sandwiches and walked down to the NTU campus to eat and read. The nice thing about NTU campus people is that they are so assured of their English ability that a foreign-looking person tends to be beneath their notice, which is nice.

After lunch I walked across Roosevelt Rd, aiming for the river. I passed a few empty apartment buildings and wondered why they were empty until I noticed the high-voltage power lines running behind them. I can't imagine living with that threatening hum 24 hours a day, either.

I kept walking towards the river, passing the amusingly named Drinking Water Museum, recalling the good old days back when there was actually potable drinking water in Taiwan. Further on down the road I passed a series of amusing murals depicting the various stages of a standard military obstacle course in a sort of anime-esque style painted clumsily on the wall underneath an elevated highway. The sounds of young men's voices came from behind the wall, and I stopped to take some pictures.

I was just snapping the last of the murals when one of the men, wearing the blue jumpsuit of an MP, came over and told me I couldn't take pictures of the murals. "What? Are there military secrets to found in these awful....uh, awfully cute paintings?" I asked him. He was about half a foot taller than me and looked quite stern, but sorry, I've served with MPs before and he didn't scare me. I was finished taking pictures anyway, so I just said "Ok, fine," and walked away. Just for your reference, here are the "top-secret" murals the MPs were so concerned about keeping me from photographing:

1. Start! This is the beginning of the obstacle course, if you hadn't noticed.

2. Barbed wire. Here's a hint: go underneath it.

3. What looks like log-rolling is really crossing over either shark- or small-mountain-infested water using gray logs. Secret: Grow extra arms. Shhh!

4. Pole-climbing. The trick to this is to hide behind the pole so the enemy won't see you.

5. Jumping over a log while running from a comically-depicted pursuing tank. I'd probably go around the log, but that's just me. I'm not quite sure how not having a mouth or nose is supposed to help here.

After I finished wandering around down by the always-depressing riverside park, Kirk called and said he wanted to go shopping for videogames, so we arranged to meet at T-zone. While I was waiting I watched the traffic and noticed two large-capacity imported bikes dodging through traffic. The problem with larger capacity motorcycles here is that everyone in Taiwan is used to having these little scooters they just drive flat-out all the time. People drive as fast as they can go, and that is going to have to change. Unfortunately, most of the people who are, at least initially, be able to afford the larger bikes are going to be rich young people, who tend to be the absolute worst drivers there are, probably due to a combination of belief that they are young and cannot die couple with a belief that they are rich and cannot get caught. Another problem is that police here are used to passing out tickets for such things are making a right turn on red rather than for dangerous driving or speeding.

All of this is either going to have to change, or traffic is going to get very bloody very fast. In the case of the latter, I might just shelve my plan to buy a new motorcycle and do what Kirk does; take the MRT and buses everywhere I go, unless it's out in the country somewhere.

When Kirk arrived, he showed me a reindeer antlers headband he bought for NT$100. It lit up and played "Jingle Bells" when he put it on. I told him it was the tackiest thing I'd seen all day, but I have to admit it did cheer me up.

It seems that the Ramadan festivities are still going on downstairs this evening in the form of music and other events. I like it.
etched by at 7:11 PM

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