Last night I had a strange dream. I was floating in the ocean next to the wrecked, barely floating half of an old steamship. I had the impression for some reason that it was the Titanic, except that for some reason, half of it had stayed afloat after breaking in two. But the water was warm and the ship much too small. Most of us survivors were in the water, trying to push it along, when we came under attack by an airplane, an old WWII-style one. Our leader climbed up on the ship and painted a sillouette of the plane breaking in two on the rusted metal plating, apparently in the hope that the pilot would see it, freak out and crash. It worked.

As this was happening, however, we came across the coast of the Philippines, which was odd since I had thought that we were in the North Atlantic, and the guy steering the ship didn't notice. We were shouting up to him to steer towards the lush green coast when the dream ended. I don't usually remember my dreams, but then again I don't think I usually have such bizarre ones.

Today began rather well. The weather is nice, and I was feeling good, completely recovered from my cold, so I rode my motorcycle in to work today, but after lunch I started to feel shitty again, so I might just skip sword practice tonight. They haven't been teaching anything new lately anyway, and I really should start looking for another class.

I've also been digging through the W&L Alumni website, looking for alums involved in publishing, of which there are quite a few. Since the Journalism School is pretty well-known, a lot of them are quite high up, mostly presidents, CEOs, chairmen, senior editors, etc., at large publishing companies including Random House, St. Martin's Press, Simon & Shuster, the Columbia and Princeton University Presses and Time-Warner-Fortune Magazine. The million-dollar question is: will any of them give me the time of day? And if so, what time will they give me?
etched by at 4:00 PM

Well, I'm back. Sort of. I'm back in the office, took the last of my medicine this morning, and I don't feel too bad just yet. Reality is slowly tearing back the cobwebs of the cold medicine-induced stupor I've been wandering around in for the past week. I took the precaution of not riding my motorcycle in case I suddenly fall asleep. I think I must have caught something similar if not in fact identical to Luke's Throat of Death.

It's still cold out, but at least it's nice and sunny. I feel like I've been away for a long time, which is a good thing. The bad thing is, in spite of the fact that we had four days off, various people still felt compelled to demonstrate their loyalty to the company by working during their vacations, so when I dragged myself in this morning my inbox was filled with work. These are the same people who refuse to take days off when they're sick, wanting instead to impress the bigwigs with their "loyalty", thereby stretching out a cold that would have gotten better in a day or two to two weeks of coughing and hacking all over the office so that everyone else is infected as well. When I say "You should take a day or two off to get better," I'm not being nice. I'm being selfish. I want you to stop being a walking source of potential infection in my vicinity.

I think my book is pretty much done. I say that because I really don't know what else to do to it besides publish it. It's not a great literary masterpiece, nor is it a terribly scholarly work, but it's there. I contacted a couple of people I know who might know something about getting things published, but otherwise, aside from combing the millions of publishing sites on the Internet for something useful, I don't know what else to do. Hopefully I can get in touch with the alumni office of my university and see whether there's anyone out there willing to help me out with this. Your suggestions are welcome as well, of course.

I've just discovered that I can search for stuff in my archives much more quickly using Google than by trying to guess when some particular thing happened. I'm pretty sure I'm the only Poagao on the Internet (so far, anyway), so really, if you want to know whether I've mentioned or discussed something on here, all you have to do is a google search for "Poagao" and whatever it is you're looking for. Neat-o stuff, kids. I do wish that the people looking for unclothed representations of a certain American-born Chinese "singer" whose name sounds like a breakfast cereal would stop bothering to look for them here, though. Geez, I hate being subtle.

We're supposed to be moving over to our new building, the one right next to the movie theater complex in the heart of the Fabulous Hsinyi District, on the weekend of the 19th/20th. Nobody has mentioned anything about it yet, which makes me suspicious. No doubt the company is too cheap to hire a moving company and wants us to do it all ourselves. "The economy is bad!" some manager will try to cite as his reasoning, right before I shove a dolly up his ass. Happy New Year!

And why is it that strange, random women from all over the world keep adding me to their ICQ lists? I was just added to the list of a 19-year-old Brazilian girl named "Silvana". Is Poagao All The Rage in Brazil? Am I The Cat's Pajamas in Croatia? Are girls in small villages in the Urals hanging on my every word, dying to know what stupid things Whiny Woman will utter today? (today's quote, as she was on the phone looking for pre-schools for her kid: "Are the students actually in a class together?")

I fear I have no choice but to arrive at the inescapable conclusion that I'm a chick magnet, which would be great if I weren't also a 'mo.

Ok, so maybe I'm not completely over this cold yet.
etched by at 4:37 PM

3000 Links to Kottke

I wish I could tell you all of the wonderful and exciting things I've been up to over this new year holiday, but I can't. All I've done is sleep and drink and eat in an effort to fight off this damn cold. The doctor on Tai-shun St. gave me little packets of pills that are keeping me nicely loopy, but I am going a little stir crazy after being holed in my room for so long. I know, there are worse places to be holed up in, but sometimes it seems that I have seen all of the Internet that I really want to, and am thus reduced to doing link searches on google to see who has the most links to their weblog (here's a hint: Kottke, with well over 3,000), and then wondering why. If I have, say, 30 people reading my site a day, that's sort of like 30 people knocking at my door or hollering "Sup!" from outside. And those are 30 people who, previous to my starting this thing, didn't know a thing about me. So it's all cool. I'd like to think that each of my readers gets that much more enjoyment from reading this.

I postponed my eye-zapping another week so I don't have to worry about that (yet). One good thing about this is that I've had a bit of time to work on my book, which I think is almost ready for publication. I just need to find a literary agent. Let me know if you know anyone.

Dean and Graham tried to get me to come over to the 70's Airport Love Palace to bring in the new year, but I figured they could handle it without me, so I just stayed up until midnight, watched the fireworks over city hall from my window to 30s Chinese music, and went to bed. It was as nice a new year's eve as I could have hoped for, although a bit lonely. I shouldn't be spreading this cold around, though, so it was just as well.
etched by at 8:47 PM

In an effort to make up for my severe lack of recent progress, I spent most of today working on my book. The thing about this particular stage of editing is that I can no longer gauge my progress by word count. I'm polishing and tweaking now, and it looks as if the final copy will be around 250 pages long, but that's no longer the point. The point is: will anyone want to read it? As I read through the thing, and I'm biased, not only because I lived it and wrote it, but I've been staring at the same damn stuff over and over again, sometimes I think "Who would want to read this?" Other times, of course, I think "Damn, this is great shit!" But in the end I lack the objectivity to really tell, especially with a project this big. It's such a large piece I find it difficult to see it in its entirety. I could keep editing and tweaking such a large block of text indefinitely without any clear sign that it was "done." Yet sooner or later, preferably sooner, I am going to have to wash my hands, set it adrift, and move on. That is, at least until I sell the movie rights and decide whether John Cusack is right to play me or not. After all, he did a pretty good job of capturing the essence of my time at the newspaper in Being John Malkovich:



I'm debating whether or not to call in sick tomorrow. I definitely don't feel at all well today; my nose is stuffed up, and I'm beginning to cough and feel achey as well. Not good signs. I ended up emailing the director of the play yesterday and telling her that I was too sick again for rehearsal today, and anyway I have fallen so behind with everything that I couldn't in good conscience keep calling myself a member of the cast, so I suggested that she find someone else while preparations are still at a fairly early stage. It's too bad, as I enjoy acting, but circumstances just aren't permitting me to be in this one. I might even have to call off the eye-zapping, or at least postpone it until I feel better. No matter what happens I think a visit to the doctor tomorrow would not go amiss. The worst thing is that I feel exhausted and tired but not at all sleepy. I just lay in bed feeling horrid, but without the blissful unawareness of actual sleep.
etched by at 12:57 AM

Whew, I'm stuffed. In the Australian sense, that is, i.e. I'm really tired after running around Taipei all day, not a good idea when recovering from a cold. Still I got a lot done.

First of all, I made an appointment for the morning of January 4th to get my eyes zapped. That's right, gentle readers, Poagao is going to trust his vision to some stranger operating a machine in the hopes that he can avoid wearing contacts or glasses any more. I've asked around and gotten good references for this guy, so hopefully things will go smoothly. Keep your collective fingers crossed, though.

Then I took my laundry to three different places before I found one that wasn't planning to be closed until Thursday for the New Year's holiday. I realize I could save a few hundred NT a month if I did my own laundry, but there's really no place to hang it out to dry, and our apartment isn't equipped with a dryer. It was a nice day today, albeit a bit cold, so I walked down to the Taipower Bldg MRT station and took it up to the Train Station, where there's a huge new Fnac. I was looking for Return to Castle Wolfenstein, but I didn't find it there. Instead I found nearly everything else, since the store is pretty large, but not that. I did find it in the smaller computer shop next door, though, at a whopping NT$1,344. Still, I gotsta have it. It's one of those gotsta things.

I went over to Eslite (no, that's no mispelled) to look for a calendar and ran into Larry Dong, who used to work at the newspaper. He's studying in New York now and is only in town for a few weeks. As is not unusual with people who used to work at the newspaper, Larry looks much better now that he's not working there any more. We talked a bit but he was meeting friends so I went on inside to have an elevator door close in my face while the girl inside screamed and failed utterly to locate the "Open Door" button. I'm pretty sure that she's one of those people who, every time their cell phone rings, takes up to 15 minutes to locate the "answer" button, while the phone broadcasts the Garbage Truck Theme to roughly the entire Taipei basin. What I don't get is, since everyone I know and many I don't all know and complain about the cell phone problem, how can there still be so many people out there so oblivious to it that they are still caught like deer in the headlights whenever their cell phone rings? This, I must admit, confounds me. Otherwise intelligent people are reduced to complete morons at the first few notes of "Jingle Bells" on their phones. Maybe there is something to that study which said that the electromagnetic waves do actually affect the brain.

It struck me as I was walking around town today that Taipei looks magnitudes better than it did just a few years ago. Foreigners here like to knock Mayor Ma because most foreigners here are in love with the DPP and believe everything the Taipei Times tells them, i.e. hate Mayor Ma, the KMT and the PFP with uncompromising passion, but you have to admit that our mayor has done a bang-up job of improving this city. The new sidewalks look great, the streets are cleaner, traffic isn't as bad as it used to be, and things just seem nicer all around. I hope Ma gets re-elected for another term as mayor. Barring that, I think he'd make a good vice president, too. Then again, Fozzie the Bear would seem like a good vice president after Annette Lu.

Rick returned my email. He commented on my excellent memory, but I'm pretty sure he has no idea who I am, which is just as well. I don't think he'd appreciate exactly how I remember him so well.
etched by at 12:21 AM

Life is strange beyond words

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