I went to the bank today to see if I could adjust my interest rate on my housing loan, which has gotten a bit unruly lately. I had discussed my case with the woman at the bank, a Ms. Chen, many times on the phone, and she said I should come in to discuss the issue further and look at some different plans. This, however, necessitated a trip across town to the main Bank Sinopac office near the Far Eastern Hotel.

I walked over from the subway, found the place and was directed down to the basement level, where I found an empty reception desk, an empty help desk, and a generally dark, empty room. I peeked into the offices on either side and failed to arouse anyone’s interest. A single fellow in a tie chatted on the phone, leaning on the unmanned reception desk. “Wonderful service here,” I muttered. The guy on the phone glanced at me and continued chatting. I took out my phone and called Ms. Chen. “Are you here?” she asked.

“I’m downstairs,” I said.

“Ok, just go into the office on your right when you come in,” she said. I did so, and a woman approached me, while the other workers stared.

“I’m looking for Ms. Chen Xin-yue,” I said, and the woman burst out in giggles. She looked over at her co-workers and managed to point at Ms. Chen, who had stood up at the mention of her name. She looked at me, uncomprehending. “I’m here,” I said. “Me. I’m…uh, we had an appointment? I talked to you not five seconds ago?”

More giggles. “Oh!” Ms. Chen said, looking shocked and pointing me to a nearby desk, where I sat down and waited. As I did so, the entire section of office I’d just turned away from burst out into laughter.

Eventually the giggles died down and Ms. Chen came over. “Ok…” she said hesitantly, apparently unsure how to proceed. “Do you….do you have an ID card?”

You know I do, I thought. “Yes,” I said, and handed it over. She looked at it, then consulted her computer a while.

“You know, we could offer you a much better rate if you transferred all of your investments, funds and the like to us,” she said, saying “rate” in English. I declined, and she shrugged. After a while she asked me to sign a form. “Sign here to promise that you won’t pay off the loan within a year, and we’ll see if we can come up with a better rate.”

That’s it? I thought. “Could you at least give me a ballpark range?” I’d been led to believe on the phone that I could reduce my interest rate substantially and would be given several plans to choose from, but the figures she gave me were unimpressive at best, and would only last a year, after which the rate would go back up.

I mentioned the troubles I’d had at the bank previously, such as last month when the clerk asked me if I was positive I’d paid the payment the month before. I mentioned that many other banks have been calling me about switching my loan to them and giving quite attractive rates. Ms. Chen seemed at once skeptical and apologetic about these stories. “I’ll see what I can do, and we’ll get back to you with a solid figure,” she repeated, and then added. “Oh, and will you be staying in Taiwan long?”

I blinked, stared.

“Because you might leave, you see,” she went on. You must really, really not want my business, I thought as I walked out the door, up the stairs, in search of lunch.

AmCham’s TOPICS magazine has published an article by Steven Crook about English-language bloggers in Taiwan, including interviews with Michael Turton, Greg Talovich, Michael Turton, me, Jason Cox, Scott Sommers, Joanna Rees and Michael Turton. It’s an interesting article in that it seems bloggers sound different when they’re speaking to a reporter about their blogs than they do when they’re blogging. Perhaps this has something to do with being asked specific questions instead of just writing whatever comes to mind.

No deep revelations here, though. This account continues to be about trivial minutiae (and I’m sure there’s a blog out there with exactly that name; if there’s not, there should be), and I will prove it by telling you that I saw Speed Racer last night. I was a bit apprehensive, not only about the idea of making a feature-length movie about a 70’s cartoon that I remember enjoying as a child (my model Mach V was a favorite toy), but the potentially headache-inducing colors, especially in the LUX theater’s digital projection format. I needn’t have worried, however; Speed Racer is a fun, well-paced romp. Sure, it’s a long cartoon, but I’d rather the Wachowskis stick with this level of storytelling than venture back into the pseudo-deep-thought morass of the Matrix trilogy. This is a much simpler thing, a return to a long Saturday morning, stretched out on the big rope rug in the family room gazing up at the huge, dusty Zenith, reveling in the power of its three clunky channels.

Prince Roy and I set out for Taichung in the bright, cool morning on Saturday. Driving a car up the on-ramp of a highway on such a morning is inordinately refreshing. PR is a good driver, but the further south we got, the more erratic and senseless the drivers seemed to get. Also, good radio stations were hard to find, and every time we’d get a good Taiwanese Nakashi cha-cha going on, it would vanish into static minutes later.

A few hours later, we were approaching the Chungkang Rd. Exit, which led up towards Tunghai University, where PR and I first met while studying there some two decades ago. The time of day, the angle of the light, and most of the view reminded me of the first time I approached the area, on a bus full of foreigners after a week or two in Taipei after my first arrival here. Looking back, I wish I’d taken the train on that trip, as I never got to leave from the old Taipei Train Station.

We drove up to the Utopia subdivision, where Daniel had already met up with our hosts, Reinhard and Xiao Mao, at their cafe just off Art Street. They were waiting for us at a sandwich shop, so we had lunch on the veranda. The area’s become quite nice over the years, with tree-lined lanes, interesting shops and restaurants. After the meal, we walked over to the Tunghai Campus, entering from the side gate by the auditorium and walking down through the campus.

The trees were the biggest difference, followed by all the new structures. The square where students erected a sympathetic Goddess of Liberty to copy the one in Tienanmen Square at the time is now shaded by a canopy of large trees that hadn’t even been planted when we were there. We walked down the slope between the oldest parts of the campus, flanked by the old Tang Dynasty-style buildings. I felt it was odd that, in 1955, people would be interested in building what appeared to be a Japanese-style university, but there’s probably a lot more to the story than I know. PR found the bell-tower not just incongruous, but downright ugly. I was trying to restrict my picture-taking. It’s just out of hand.

We found the old language center, from which we both fled after a short time to take regular university courses. All but one wing has been completely redone, causing PR to misidentify the location of the old classrooms and offices. Daniel took our picture in front of the non-restored bit, and I reenacted my dramatic exit from the department for my friend’s entertainment. We then purposely avoided the convenient new road to the dorms, choosing instead to cross the “Female Ghost Bridge” that had been the only route to the dorms from the main campus in the old days.

The old dorms that caused me so much dismay when I first laid eyes on them are still there, and only mildly refurbished. They are still all cement-floored, six-student rooms with no a/c and wooden slats for bunk beds. PR was a bit hazy on his experiences, but I immediately found all three of the rooms I’d lived in at the time. Now, of course, much better dorms have been constructed nearby, looking more like luxury hotels than anything else. I wonder how the students choose who gets to live where these days.

As we walked over to the local cafeteria, the site of some of the worst food either of us had encountered, it occurred to me that most of the current students probably hadn’t even been born when we were there. I told PR we should have a reunion; he said that we were. True enough, I guess; I didn’t hang out with many foreigners at the time, just PR sometimes, and Boogie, who was from Washington & Lee as well.

We walked down to the school store to find some Tunghai paraphernalia, but they didn’t have much. It seems that Taiwanese students don’t really get into the whole college paraphernalia thing. PR sees a huge market in this, but I think maybe they are tired of being forced to wear school insignia throughout their childhood and don’t want anything to do with such things after they can start choosing their own clothes.

A Farming-themed expo was being held by the gymnasium, and above the doors a banner had been hung that read: “Dances With Farmers”. We walked by the tennis courts, where PR spent a lot of time playing with the women’s team. He was taking short videos of various things and introducing the sights to his camera. I find it difficult to do that when I’m with other people.

We walked down towards the farming part of the campus, stopping at a store that used to be tiny and is now a Wellcome Market. I used to walk around that area quite a bit as a student, listening to Zhao Chuan songs on my Walkman and eating O’Smile peanut cookies from the tiny store.

PR wanted to catch the sunset from Taichung Harbor, so we walked back up the campus, pausing by the still-barbed-wire-encircled Women’s Dorms, the music department where I took many classes, and Luce Chapel, which is looking rather run-down these days. We then climbed the steps in front of the library, where I, PR and another students named Mitch used to park our motorcycles before class at the night school department in the morning. “Let’s go to Bieshu for dinner,” I said. We weren’t going to do that, but I just liked to say it, as it was something we were always saying back then. We walked up the broad path by the polluted stream between the campus and the industrial area next door. I was thinking it would be an interesting movie plot to have a portal somewhere on the campus that would take us back to, say, 1989. “I’m not sure I’d like to take that portal,” PR said. I had to agree.

The back gate is just just as magical now as it was then, though, at least to me. The first time I stepped through from the quiet, empty forest into the chaos of that street, I thought it miraculous. It still seems that way. Many of the old restaurants have since been replaced by fashionable clothing shops, but the spirit is the same.

On the way back to the cafe, we passed a curious collection of large plastic fish that looked like they had been used to decorate the ceilings of seafood restaurants throughout the city. The view down the hill was largely unchanged from that viewpoint, though the campus is now surrounded by high-priced apartment buildings.

We piled into PR’s Honda and drove down the mountain towards the sea, racing to catch the setting sun. Providence University, which was bare as a desert twenty years ago, is now covered in trees. The new Highway 3 overpass surprised me. Otherwise, everything seemed the same as when I took my first ride on the new-to-me 135cc Honda motorcycle down to the harbor, where I was warned by soldiers not to take pictures.

The harbor proved elusive, however. We drove and drove, nagged by the annoying woman’s voice issuing from Daniel’s GPS device to slow down. The sun dipped behind impenetrable clouds as we pulled into the parking lot by the fishing port at Wuchi. By the time we had walked to the shore and climbed up and over the wall of sand, it was gone. We sat for a while, taking pictures of each other and ducking to avoid huge, cumbersome flying insects, before walking back to the harbor, where a loudspeaker cranked to full volume blasted the area with frenetically annoying music that gave rise to homicidal urges. Perhaps it was so loud to cover up the high-pitched squealing of the pigs behind the restaurant, but the smell was so obvious I’m pretty sure people couldn’t miss them.

We walked through the unremarkable market, and then drove back up the hill to a restaurant for dinner. The waiter serving us looked about 15 years old, and the service was a bit addled. Still, the food, particularly the soup dumplings that Reinhard recommended, was all quite good. I was eager to try their sesame baozi, but found them not up to the quality of the kind we used to eat in the army. Then again, I’m biased.

After dinner we drove down Chungkang Road into town, a trip I used to make many times on my motorcycle, to meet up with Michael Turton and Sean Reilly at a bar called Bollywood. I ordered a green apple drink that tasted exactly like a gin and tonic. Michael had to leave a bit early, and Sean divvied up some delicious brownies before he, too, had to leave. It seems Taichung closes down a lot earlier than Taipei, or maybe it was just that area.

Back at the cafe, Reinhard and Xiao Mao allocated us three places to sleep. PR got the room upstairs, and Daniel got the old traditional Chinese bed in the shop, and I slept in the back room. The a/c was very loud, but I had to have it on because the room was pretty hot. I ended up sleeping for a couple of hours at a time, waking up, and then sleeping for another couple of hours. Needless to say, I was somewhat less than rested when morning came and the singing from the church next door overpowered even the noise from the a/c. After some delicious egg-cakes Reinhard bought nearby for breakfast, I went upstairs and took a good nap. When I came downstairs, a new visitor had arrived: Carol, a pregnant British woman who lives in Beijing. We chatted for a while, occasionally diving beneath the table to take pictures of Suancai (sauerkraut), Reinhard’s and Xiao Mao’s flat-faced cat.

It was another beautiful day up on the hill, but it got a bit hot when we drove down into the city for lunch at a restaurant called Fatty’s. The kitchen smelled wonderful. We sat at a table on the sidewalk in the mugginess. I ordered the Sicily pizza, which the waitress assured me was not at all spicy. Apparently “not at all spicy” is some sort of Sicilian code for “very spicy” as I could only have a couple of slices when it came. Even PR agreed that it was pretty spicy, and he’s no lightweight. I sampled other people’s meals instead. When the waitress came back, I mentioned the level of spiciness in the allegedly non-spicy pizza, she just shrugged, as if it just hadn’t occurred to her, and really didn’t matter anyway.

We considered driving out to Miaoli to some gardens there, but it seems that they stopped allowing people in at 4pm, so instead we walked around the area a bit, looking at the old two-story houses and yards. We ended up in one such place, which has been make into a somewhat modern teahouse. We all sat on the floor upstairs, which was occasionally frequented by cats, talking about the pros and cons of having an online presence, whether we are different IRL from how we appear online, etc. It was very pleasant. Taichung is very pleasant, actually. The pace is slower, and even on a weekend afternoon it seems halfway shut down, but it is nice. The appearance of the city may have changed a lot over the past two decades, but the spirit is much the same, and I like it. It’s too bad that they don’t have an MRT system, though.

But it was time to hit the road, as we were planning on having dinner at a Mexican place in Zhongli, so PR, Daniel and I saddled up and joined the long stream of cars heading towards the highway. As we drove, I began to wish I’d bought one of those gadgets that lets you broadcast your iPod to a nearby radio, as we had the same poor choice of music stations, and every time we found a good song, it was followed by 40 minutes of blather/advertising. Traffic was terrible, and it was after 8pm before we finally reached Zhongli. The restaurant, Sabroso, was packed with students, not surprising as it’s right by Zhongyuan University. At first I was afraid the service would be bad, as it took the woefully undermanned staff, which consisted of a couple of guys, to seat us. Also, I had a migraine coming on, so I wasn’t in the best of moods. I’d spent the past half hour with my eyes closed to avoid the flashing lights in my field of vision.

The meal made things much better. First of all, it came within a reasonable amount of time, but more importantly, it was really good. I ordered beef tacos and chicken tostados. The tacos were real tacos, soft triangles with toppings, not the rigid tacos gringos most people are familiar with. The tostados were even more delicious. PR was happy with the spiciness of his meal as well as the taste. I ate too much, and am still paying for it, but I’m glad I got to sample at least a few of the dishes there.

After dinner we dropped Daniel off and made our way back to the highway, and back to Taipei. This city always seems a little different every time you leave it, so it was good to get away for a bit. Now I’m back at home, amidst the native calls of the local jackhammers. Back to work.

The Tokyo video is finally up, both on Youtube and the new Vimeo page I just set up out of a mixture of curiosity and frustration with Youtube. It’s reallllly long and probably less interesting to people who aren’t me, but I like it. I think it’s a good record of my trip in any case. Vimeo, it turns out, not only has a larger screen with better resolution, the sound is much better, embedding doesn’t break my layout, and uploading is easier as well. I think I’ll be sticking with that.

Today was Labor Day here, a public holiday for all us oppressed workers, etc. I haven’t gotten out of the house yet today, and spent the time I didn’t waste trying to upload the video by doing laundry and other household stuff. But Prince Roy just called and said he was going to Sababa with some co-workers for dinner, so I’m heading over there for some dinner.

LATER: Dinner was good as usual, although they got my order wrong. We procured one of the veranda tables to take advantage of the nice cool evening air. As it’s work tomorrow, they couldn’t stay out too late. On our way over to CKS Hall, a plump and friendly black dog followed us, stopping with us at each intersection, until it convinced PR to buy it a sandwich. He ate the meat but not the bun (the dog, not PR).

Tomorrow: back to work. I’m now out of my little room and into the big cubicle farm, but in that context it’s a very nice seat. I may have to get some larger earphones, however, as I’m not yet used to the volume of regular office chatter. This weekend PR, Daniel and I are planning a trip down to Taichung and Tunghai to visit our old stomping grounds from when we were students there a couple of decades ago. I will try to refrain from taking too many pictures.

Enjoy the video:

12 Days in Tokyo from poagao on Vimeo.

First of all, before I start blathering on about my weekend, watch this video. Now, I used to tell people that everyone should visit New York City at least once, but I’m beginning to think I should change my advice. That person being arrested? It’s you.

After Tai-chi practice on Saturday, I joined Daniel and Prince Roy for a nice lunch at the Yongkang Sababa. The weather was perfect for lounging and eating pitas on the veranda. We then went to check out the progress of our favorite teahouse, Wistaria. Unfortunately, not only was the old structure still closed for renovation, the opening was delayed until June. We walked up Xinsheng to its other location, in a quiet alley, and sat next to the front window, which looks out onto the small garden.

Unfortunately for us, peace and quiet was not to be had, due to a woman loudly “educating” a couple of foreigners at a table on the other side of the room. The foreigners were apparently still jetlagged from their trip. “THE TEA CEREMONY IS A CENTRAL PART OF OUR SPIRITUAL LIVES,” the woman orated. “IT IS SOMETHING WE PARTAKE OF EVERY DAY.” I fought the urge to shout, “ANCIENT CHINESE SECRET, HUH?” at her.

Despite the noise, the tea was very good. We got our favorite Iron Bodhisattva tea and some snacks and spent the next couple of hours chatting above the din. After night fell, we walked over to Chicago Pizza off Jianguo and took a couple of pizzas over to the Da-an Park amphitheater to eat as we watched workmen take down scaffolding from that night’s show. In the distance we could hear a constant drumming. I wondered how they could keep going without tiring out. After the pizza was gone, we walked over to take a look, and found a group of people doing Brazilian dance-fighting to a drumbeat.

The next day, Sunday, I decided to dust off the Crazy Bike, which had laid dormant in the bowels of my building all winter, and take a ride. I told myself it would be just a short ride, as I’d planned to get the Tokyo video done that day. The weather was just too nice, and it had been too long since I’d ridden. When I reached the confluence of the Xindian and Dahan Rivers, I turned west up the latter stream and crossed to the other side on the Xinhai Bridge. Then I began to wonder if they can extended the path. I told myself that I had come that far, and I might as well find out. The path ran between the train tracks and the river as I passed through Shulin, where I found that it had indeed been extended. I continued along the riverside, and found myself in downtown Yingge, across from the ceramics center. I’d set out at 1pm, and it was only 4pm, so I felt I could be back in Bitan by 7pm.

I was wrong. On the way back I began to get tired, and my knees began to ache. I stopped to chat with some drunken aborigines who having a party under a bridge, sharing a drink with them and plying them for hat-related information. I stopped on the bridge back to take pictures, and then at the site of the construction of a bridge across the meeting of the three rivers for still more pictures. At Gongguan I parked on the wooden walkway and laid on a bench to watch the stars for a bit.

It was well after 9pm by the time I got home, and after some spaghetti for dinner, all I wanted was a shower and bed. So much for productivity. Later I measured the distance I’d ridden with a map interface, which is probably not entirely accurate due to it’s straight-line distances, but it said I’d gone about 70 kilometers. It was a good ride, but I probably should have taken it a bit easier the first time out. Still, I now know that the path goes all the way to Yingge, so maybe next time I little exploring of that area would take the edge off the journey there and back.

I just got back from seeing The Forbidden Kingdom. My main reason for going to see it, besides liking martial arts films, was to see the historic first on-screen pairing of Jet Li and Jackie Chan. If the fight scene between the two is all you’re there for, you won’t be disappointed; I just about cried out in joy. In fact, most of the fight choreography in the film is good, thanks to Yuen Wo-ping, but Li and Chan’s stuff is just brilliant, especially for those of us who have seen countless movies by them both throughout their careers and wondering what they would look like fighting together.

Of course it’s all carefully orchestrated not to show a clear winner between the two. Even the the opening credits, their names appear at the same time, linked together by sharing the “J” at the beginning of their names on the screen. It’s obvious that the producers of the film took great pains to make sure the two got equal billing and screen time. In fact, it seems that the purported protagonist of the film, Jason Tripitikas, played by Michael Angarano, was pretty much ignored throughout. The result is that the story is not told from any particular point of view, and not even the director seems to care what the protagonist of the film is thinking in more than a cursory fashion.

Aside from the choreography, the music, cinematography, editing and art direction of the film are all excellent. The writing, however, is pretty awful, and the story told as an afterthought. If the people making the film had given Jason not only more lines, but better lines, even some character development that didn’t depend on other people making remarks about what we should have seen, it could have been a compelling story. Jason speaks gratingly poor Chinese throughout the movie, seemingly unrelated to the motions of his lips. Either Angarano’s Chinese was too fluent for him to be a “believable foreigner” or it was simply unintelligible and had to be looped, (but looped badly? Is there any reason for that? Maybe it’s just the Taiwan version that’s like that?). A few sardonic remarks. maybe in English, a couple of witty asides as he goes through his miraculous training, could have gone a long way in fleshing out his character. As it is, there’s simply nothing in the character to latch onto.

Chan and Li are the real stars of the film, and they both do a good job. Li makes a surprisingly good Monkey, I have to say. But in the end it feels more like an American Hollywood production with a pseudo-Chinese veneer than anything else. It could have been a great film, alas. Reports say that Jet Li and Jackie Chan enjoyed working together so much they’re thinking of doing more. I hope they get a chance to work with better writers and directors when they do so. Perhaps the US involvement in this project was considered “neutral ground” for the two stars to cooperate on, but I’d like to see what they can do under a Chinese director.

A few days ago this account marked seven years of mindless blather since my first post on April 22, 2001. I completely forgot, of course, but now at least I have an excuse to make an individual post about it instead of lumping it in with all the other boring minutae of my life.

Seven years! Even then, I was wondering where all the time went. Back then, I was living in a room in someone else’s apartment on Xinsheng South Road and working at Ogilvy & Mather. The world of my early 30s seems like a different world from today in my late 30s. I moved an average of once a year since then, though I’ve only worked at two other jobs during the same time….but I’m not in the mood for a nostalgia-fest at the moment. Things were good then; they’re even better now.

I am kind of curious if anyone had been reading this thing continuously from the beginning. As I managed to completely alienate the one friend who inspired me to create this site (ironically, the site was a major factor in said alienation), I doubt it. Actually, I’m pretty sure I lost most of my followers when O&M moved offices and took away my proximity to Whiny Woman. Sure, it saved my sanity, but it also killed my ratings. Ah, well.

I was watching Futurama on the subway last night when I felt someone tug at my shirt. I looked up to see a couple of woman staring at me; one of them held up a magazine, which turned out to be this month’s Taipei Pictorial, turned to the article about me. “Is this you?” they asked.

We chatted a bit, but it was clear that they had just picked up the magazine for light reading material and were just amazed by the coincidence of seeing someone from inside standing next to them. I’m still waiting for my copy in the mail, but I will look for some extra copies later today. The .pdf file can be downloaded here, if you can read Chinese. It’s kind of a puff piece, but nice.

Construction in my building has begun again; it’s forcing me to go to bed early, because there will be no sleep to be had after 8am. I’ve been working from home recently due to even more construction at the office. Between construction at work, construction at home, construction around the MRT, construction on the Bitan riverside, it feels like the whole world is being rebuilt. ‘Tis the season, I suppose.

I went down to Camera Street last night after work to check out the new Sigma DP1 I’ve been hearing so much about. The images I’ve seen online from the camera have been quite impressive, but many users were pointing out usability problems. After handling it and snapping a few shots, I have to say it does feel like an older camera, mostly in a good way, but not so much in step with the modern digital era. Some of the things people want in point-and-shoot cameras these days I would rather do without, things like face detection and color schemes. The DP1 is more like an old manual camera than a modern point-and-shoot. The worst thing about it, I thought, was the low-quality screen on the back. Focusing must be a bitch on that thing. Sigma has been updating the firmware, but I wonder how much they can do that way.

I’ve also been hoping for an announcement from Canon on the next generation of the 5D, but nothing so far but rumors. The 5D itself has dropped below NT$60,000 here now, dirt-cheap for such an amazing piece of equipment. Lenses, however, tend to keep their value. No doubt they are working on new ones to accompany newer models these days. Both should be announced no later than Photokina in the Fall. It just reinforces the feeling that everything is under construction, including cameras and even phones, with the 3G iPhone supposedly coming out soon as well as a new Panny HD video camera. Although I bet they don’t use jackhammers.

I finished posting the Matsu photos, 165 out of 609 that I took during the three-day trip. I’ve inserted some of them into the blog posts on the subject if you want to scroll down a bit to take a look. A friend of mine who works at a magazine said they might be interested in using some of them for a related travel article.

Flickr has either generously introduced a wonderful new useful feature or shoved an unwelcome, distracting irritant down the throats of its paying users, depending on your point of view. Like it or not, however, videos are slowly making their way into the photo-sharing site so beloved by a huge number of people.

My first reaction to this development was one of dismay. I knew that Yahoo! was out to compete with Google’s Youtube by introducing the videos into the photo community that it bought a while back, and it didn’t seem like a good idea to throw another medium into the mix. And the whole “long photo” thing is just inane. I considered immediately deleting any contacts who put video into their streams, but then I wondered if I was overreacting. I am a filmmaker as well as a photographer, after all. Is video such a bad thing to include into the flickr experience?

I think it could be, but for reasons that are difficult to explain. Most of the negative reactions on flickr itself have been basic, simple and repetitive entreaties against the move, without much explanation involved. What really surprised me was the vitriol, ridicule and animosity with which these objections were met. “Quit yer whining,” “Just deal with it,” “snobs!” “crybabies,” “Knee-jerk reactionaries,” etc. Flickr staff were, of course, siding with the pro-video groups and removed and remonstrated the more radical anti-video elements, while allowing the pro-video insults and YouTube-level confrontations to continue for the most part. It was a far cry from the civilized, friendly debate that used to characterize flickr’s forums, as if the entire site had gone into “DeleteMe Group” mode.

Another thing that bothers me is how Flickr has implemented video, simply dumping it in among the pictures. It’s like a library had DVDs interspersed randomly among the books on the shelves. The videos are represented by small squares the same size as the photo icons, but with a tiny “play” triangle” in the bottom corner. They show up in Contacts’ Photos, Explore and Searches. Only by going into the settings can you make it so that they don’t all play automatically when you go to the page. Instead of photos, we now all have “content,” “things” and “items,” and the top of my page reads “Photos & video from Poagao” despite the absence of video. Also, the videos all have sound, which changes the Flickr experience quite a bit by itself. Long pictures with sound, perhaps the blurb on the intro page should read.

“Stop whining; All you have to do is not play the videos,” is a comment repeated often in the related threads. I suppose it may still be possible to maintain a semblance of the original flickr experience if you weed out all of your contacts who have video, but they’ll still pop up elsewhere. But what’s the real difference? Ah, this is where it becomes very difficult to put into words. When I browse a page of photos, I am in a certain mindset. My eyes see the small photo and instantly take it in, and I know immediately whether I want to click on the larger version. It’s a frame of mind that allows me to instantly process what I’m seeing and lets me browse through many photographs to find that one that gives me shivers down my spine, that emotional “oomph” that some photos kick you with you first lay eyes on them.

If video clips are interspersed throughout the page, however, I have to work harder just to differentiate and weed out the videos. Why? It’s not that I don’t want to watch the videos. They may be very good. But the little thumbnail simply can’t represent it; I have no idea what they are. It’s just one small frame, and I will have to click on it, wait for it to load, and watch it most of the way through before I even know what it is. It’s a whole different media and requires a different frame of mind. An equivalent would be mixing up Chinese and English words. I know both languages, but going back and forth from one to another all the time is difficult for me because I tend to have a Chinese-language mindset and an English-language mindset. Video pulls me out of my photography mindset.

This mindset is important to me; it’s the mode I use when I’m out taking pictures, seeing pictures and potential shots out in the ordinary world. It’s different from my film mindset, which I use when I’m directing a movie. In directing mode, I see motions, changes, progressive angles and many other things that are different from my photography mindset, which just sees composition and lighting, shadow and space. Before, Flickr was a place where I could envelope myself in this world, where I could safely stay in this mindset and appreciate the little surprises I came across within it. All of those wonderful photographs are still there, of course. I just can’t appreciate them from the point of view that I could before.

Now, to the vast majority of flickr users, the above is simply absurd, unintelligible at best and likely offensive to many, in that they feel that some lofty “mindspace” of mine shouldn’t get in between them and their ability to have videos of their children playing soccer next to their photos of their children playing soccer. This is probably the reason for the strange nature of the ongoing debate. Those of us who feel videos are taking something away are not only unable to express what it is we’re losing, even if we could, it’s an utterly alien concept to most of the people who use the site, one they’re not in the least interested in preserving, as they weren’t even aware of its existence in the first place.

As an experiment, I went to the streams of those who were pro-video and those who were anti-video, and while there were varying degrees of quality on both sides, it seemed that those most interested in video took pictures that could have been video stills, while the anti-video crowd seemed to take more all-encompassing works, photos that seemed better able to tell a story on their own.

When you come down to it, video is here to stay; Flickr is aiming to please most of its customers by adding it. For Yahoo! it’s actually a mildly encouraging sign after they raped and left for dead promising sites like Geocities and eGroups. What people say they want and what they really want, however, are often two different things. I wonder if anyone who clamored for video capabilities on Flickr will pause one day and think to themselves that, somehow, there’s something missing, something they just can’t put their finger on. Then again, probably not. It’s here to stay, and we might as well see what we can do with it.

The guy who ran the hostel knocked on my door at 8am with a bag of fried things and doujiang for breakfast. I was gathering my stuff together and stuffing it into my backpack, which fortunately can be expanded to accommodate the…wait a minute, I didn’t buy anything. Hmm….accommodate the instant noodles I was taking on the boat, then. Prince Roy was busy watching a black-and-white, blurry version of a baseball game in his room. The world outside was white with fog even thicker than the day before, and we heard the Taima ferry’s foghorn repeatedly as it tried to make its way into the area.

After settling our bills, we were driven down to the port, where a fairly large group of people, mostly soldiers, waited for the ferry, still making its presence known via foghorn. PR and I sat on the waterfront and watched it appear out of the fog and sidle up to the dock. Back inside, a short, bespectacled MP checked the soldiers’ papers as we lined up. MP’s are allowed to arrest up to three ranks above their own, so everyone from sergeant on down was at the mercy of the little private.

Once on board, we put our things away in our cabin, the very cabin we’d had on the trip out (this time sans interlopers), and went up top to watch the departure. I struck up a conversation with a soldier who turned out to be one of the few volunteers in the new experimental program. He told me that he makes NT$37,000 a month, and gets nine days’ leave in Taiwan every three months. He is in for five years and will be discharged at the rank of sergeant-major. Now, a year and a half in, he is a corporal. He was also born the year I arrived in Taiwan.

Fuao Port disappeared into the mist, and we slid along the surprisingly smooth seas with only a slight rocking. Perfect sleeping weather, so that’s what we did, getting up for a lunch of gooey microwaved curry rice in the restaurant. Then we went out and stood just below the bridge watching the ocean and wondering where all the garbage we saw on the water came from. PR thought there might be a wreck somewhere ahead.

The sun came out; we were making good time. Keelung came into view before 4pm, though it took us a while to weed our way through the harbor and dock. For a while, PR and I stood stupidly by the upper-deck exit, wondering when they were going to extend the gangway, before we realized that everyone was headed below to the car gate at the rear of the ship.

Keelung, and Taiwan, were pretty much as we’d left them, albeit about 15 degrees warmer. Summer came while we were away. Keelung, of course, is a depressing place to arrive, even from as undeveloped a place as Matsu, but my spirits were lifted somewhat by the atmosphere of the soldiers just starting their 9-day leave. We walked to the train station and caught a train back to Taipei. At each stop more and more students would crowd onto the train, and it struck me how different they seemed from the soldiers only a few years’ older.

An hour of cell-phone-related chatter later, PR and I parted ways in the MRT station, him to sort through the 478 photos he took, and me to sift through the 609 pictures I ended up with after deleting the obvious duds every night to save CF card space. Not that we were competing, but it will be interesting not only to read his version of the events I’ve described here, but to see the pictures he took as well.

And now, over 6,000 words later, we return to life as we know it. Just 15 degrees warmer.