Julie lies to me about distance and time. We’re flying near Alaska, miles away from Asia, and our final destination, Taiwan. “Are we almost there,” I ask. “Not far now,” she says. Never a more dishonest answer than when she tells me this a mere hour into the flight. It’s been a long, grueling day, and it’s not close to finished, but I’m with Julie, and it’s better to be with Julie on a grueling day than without her on an ordinary one. I promised myself I wouldn’t complain about the trip, reporting only on the exciting parts and recording what I want to remember. I’m not off to a great start, but since it’s around 8pm Seattle time, I thought it was time for me to write something down for the day. Here it is.
Empty throbbing thoughts fill me head. That blankness, the one that waits in the middle of the blank page, threatens me. I won’t give in to it. I’ll continue writing and see if I can make anything of this day of travels. Trying to give form to nothingness as Julie slathers slime all over her face. She’s addicted to moisturizing her skin, as I’m addicted to distraction. Without it, she fears she’ll grow scaly; without my addiction, I fear I’ll grow interesting, and not in the good sense.
But I complain and I don’t say anything that’s worth saying. I’m going to let go. Let go of all the bars that stop me from saying what I’m thinking and weaving a story from mere strands of thoughts. It’s the place I find when my mind muddles with caffeine, not for the sake of focus, but for the alleviation of inhibitions. I’ve read more of Fortress of Solitude, a good Brooklyn book. The author (whose name I can never remember—at least not yet), has an uncanny ability to mimicry the past, to summon the spirit of a dead time and show it with all its pimples. Not the remembered glory or the reinvented glory, but a clean and honest possession, as if he was there writing about it only months and not decades after it happened. His voice is strong and his characters stronger. Even his story, a simple one when divested of its surroundings and strange characters, remains true to itself, but never predictable. It is life, from his fascination with obituaries as the reckoning of a person’s worth revealed only when they die, to his exploration of the black and white dichotomy, to his exploration of art through music and movies. He stinks of honesty.
Enough revealing other authors. That’s not why I write this. I write this to find a voice of my own, to tell my own story. I’m getting there. I feel I’m right at the edge, if I can get a push, it’ll come out. I have a great fascination with my potential energy, never enough inertia, however.
The Fascination with Covers
The peeling of the layers of bed for me is ritualistic. It is my nightly preparation for joining a secret club. It should go without saying that the bed must be made. Earlier in life, I did not understand this. Adolescents are not given the capacity to understand why a bed must be made, and adults are not given the capacity to explain it. It is something that must be done upon waking or before sleeping. You prepare the cocoon because it eases the mind. Order does that—it provides a calming influence on all around it, and the made bed is greatly affected by this.
What am I saying? This was not the bridge I hoped to jump off, or the truth I prayed to find. The words seem out of reach tonight, almost within grasp, but just outside. I have no ideas and no ways to explain them. I consternate about writing when I am in that calming space where writing should be easy, childish even. My headaches come and go depending on when I last napped, five minutes or two hours ago.
But that’s enough for today, or tomorrow, or whenever now is.
my first look at Julie's homeland
Someone stole Saturday. I remember Friday morning well because I left my house at five in the morning to make the first leg of my trip, SEA to LAX (when flying, you can only talk in code). And I vaguely remember Friday afternoon, with all the waiting for and then seeing Julie, but I don’t have any idea what happened to Saturday. All I know is that when I arrived in Taiwan, it was Sunday already. I’m writing this late Sunday night, so I don’t feel guilty posting this as a Saturday posting, but that doesn’t excuse what happened to Saturday. I might have to put on a reward to find the missing day.
It’s warm in Taiwan, around 70 degrees Fahrenheit when we landed on almost Sunday. The weather reminds me of Houston. It’s a bit humid and it rained, but the rain didn’t cool the air. Julie and I ventured to a 24-hour HK food place to eat what, for all purposes, was late-night dim sum, which was a good start to eating in Taiwan, especially after the horrendous airplane food. (Yes, I know I said that I wasn’t going to complain, but did you really think that was going to last more than a few paragraphs. This is David we’re talking about.)
Now I have a dilemma. It’s Sunday morning in Taiwan but only Saturday early evening in Seattle. Should I count this as part of the Stolen Saturday posting, or the Sunday posting? Such problems I have. We slept an amazing amount, considering we spent the previous 15 or so hours sleeping on an airplane. I forgot how nice it was to sleep on a bed. You grow accustomed to where ever you find yourself sleeping, and when that’s in a cramped, seated position, you forget there’s a possibility of sleeping horizontal.
Since I’ve already written something, and I’m hoping to have much more to write when I get home tonight, I’ll post this is as my Saturday entry.
We tried to fight it. We planned it all out: we would stay awake, not take any naps, and sleep at a normal time. It was going well as I boasted yesterday. We went to sleep at a respectable time last night, and started moving at around 9am, the right time. Things were going swimmingly (there’s a word you don’t see used much. In my sleep-muddled mind, it popped out. That’s why I like writing while sleepy, I find all these words, sayings, and descriptions that I either knew and used before or always wanted to use but didn’t know it),
We started early, Julie’s parents taking us to the Grand Hotel, which looks like a palace (you’ll see pictures when I get back—my site is limited on the uploading pictures front), a large hotel in the hills surrounding Taiwan. Its architecture and decoration is Chinese, with a large red roof, and a wonderful view of the surrounding hills and city. We saw our first view of 101, the world’s largest building. I pulled down some history to entertain you, since that’s what I’m here for: entertaining the likes of you. On April 20, 2004, Taipei 101 became the largest structure when measured from the structural or architectural top, which includes its spires, but excludes it antennas. (They have a terribly uninteresting debate about how to measure and decide on the tallest structure. People need to get lives, man.) Taipei 101 measures at 101 stories (hence the name, I’m guessing), but is really 106 stories, if you count the 5 basement levels, and rises 1,670 feet tall. We didn’t go up it, but I did get fancy pictures from different angles. It rained and was foggy, so the pictures aren’t clear, but the building is a goliath. In NYC and other big cities, it makes sense to have large buildings. They blend in with the surrounding buildings and while they’re taller, when compared to the neighboring buildings, they’re not oversized. In Taipei, there aren’t that many large (bigger than 20 or so floors) buildings. Taipei 101 is a bright, sore thumb, sticking out of a mostly flat city. It looks weird, almost gothic, and it is huge. But, to be fair, there is a reason for the largeness besides national pride. Taipei, like Manhattan and Tokyo, is on an island where space is at a premium, which creates opportunity to build up instead of out.
We visited her parent’s properties that they’ve bought for their Buddhist foundation’s TV station, which are a few floors in a tall building next to Taipei 101. (The temporal order has been lost, so I’ll just throw down what we did, because of the creamy mix that I find my mind in.) We drove by Chiang Kai Chek’s house, the Palace museum, and Taipei’s version of Universal Studios (mostly Kung Fu movies) but decided, because of the rain and lack of parking, that Julie and I would visit them later in the week and take a taxi there. The drivers, from what I’ve seen, are good, better than I expected (my expectations were that the drivers would be Argentina-skilled, which are horrendous: traffic signals and directions are merely suggestive. I made the insightful comment (after writing that I remembered that all of my comments are insightful, so that makes the adjective superfluous—another great word) while visiting that “tort reform would do wonders for the roads”). Most people in Taipei, especially young people, don’t have cars. Instead, they take out their mopeds to go places. There are scooters everywhere, like bugs on a carcass. They park them on the sidewalks and in the streets, and on main drags—there may be fifty of them creeping to the front of the line, massing for the green, only to be overtaken by the yellow taxis and luxury cars that dominate the roads.
We also went to the Jade market, where, during the weekends, miles of aisles of Jade and other semi-precious rock vendors stake out small tables and yell, haggle, and dance to sell the many customers browsing their green treasures. The negotiations were intense, but we walked away, thanks to Julie’s mother, with an assortment of gifts for the family.
Eating. How can I forget eating? Julie has been telling me for a while that one of her goals is to “fatten me up.” She thinks I’m too skinny, and my face doesn’t look as good when it’s thin. (Can you believe how shallow she is?) She did her best today. We started at a standard hotel buffet. I’m sure you’ve been to these places: eggs, sausages, bacon, pastries, fruits, pancakes, combined with Asian fare, such as Congee soup, a clear broth with rice, with all the fixings, and other dishes, which I can’t remember. There was a lot of food, and it was buffet styles. I’ve given my thoughts on buffet before, and this food fell into the good food category, but I’m sure I didn’t get my moneys worth category. The second time we ate, we went to yet another hotel, this one across from their large condominium (the building also houses offices for the Buddhist association, which they rent out to them). This time, we had the lunch fare. I don’t remember what it was, but I wasn’t nearly as hungry, and although they cajoled me, I resisted. Since it’s around 1am, we’ll probably head to the Hong Kong dim sum place for a late, late dinner. There’s been too much food around me, and I’ve eaten little of it, not because it hasn’t been good, but because I’m a bad eater.
I started this by talking about the jetlag, but I’ve left you waiting until now. After everything we did today, we thought a quick nap at around 4pm would be appropriate. You see where this is going. We woke up around 1am from our nap, and I’ve typing away since then. After deciding I couldn’t sleep anymore without risking a terribly soar back and headache, I turned on my computer to start typing this musing. Julie woke up around then and asked what time it was. I told her it was 9am Seattle time, which, in her sleep-filled head she did the math, and proclaimed, “Great! That means its 5am Taipei time.” After wrenching my mind into some semblance of order, I remarked that, no, we’re not four hours behind Seattle, and we realized that we were paying for violating the written rule of jetlag fighting: “thou shall not napeth during the day or face the prospect of thy sleepethless night.”
I have to go now. Julie wants to eat again. Such a good eater.
We tried to get back to sleep and failed miserably. It is now around five in the morning, and we’ve made the executive decision (since decisions made by executive are usually more interesting) to give up. We’ll probably crash by midday but we’ll cross that bridge when we drive over it.
Instead of sleeping, we read. I finished the first of three books I brought on vacation. Idle time during vacations gives me the latitude to read as much as I want. I don’t know why I don’t feel that way when I’m home. It must come back to the distractions. When I’m abroad or traveling, there are fewer distractions, more time with my own thoughts and things that I want to talk about. When I’m at home, distractions surround me and I have few interesting topics. I wish vacations gave me permission to create, but that would be asking too much. Except for my daily tidings report, I’ve been quiet with nothing wandering the corridors of my sleep-fried brain. I’ll eat some yummy caffeine later in the week when we spend some time in one of the many coffee shops around here and see what pops out.
Quest: write a vignette based on nothing I know by researching. After finishing The Fortress of Solitude, I realized that there was no way the author could have known about everything he wrote (if he did, he’s had one incredibly dense life). He must have done a lot of research. By the way, the book was good, but the first third (it was divided into three sections, the first being the longest and the second lasting only a chapter) was much better than the latter parts. The author switched voices, and the new voice complained too much for the reader, or at least this reader, to enjoy. I now know what Julie was talking about when she mocked the first draft of the FBT and made me change it to create a less pathetic protagonist. The author also developed a music fetish in the later parts, spending countless pages describing the evolution of music, particularly blues and R&B, which bored the hell out of me. But the book is still worth reading, if you’re looking for a beautiful betrayal of childhood in 1970-80s Brooklyn.
I jotted down a few notes of what I wanted to talk about today. Yesterday, a few ideas escaped me during the day. I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: I have a terrible memory. I’ll think of an interesting or funny story that I want to share, and ten minutes after I think about it, it vanishes into the ether. That’s why I started carrying around the Moleskin again. Not to write in it—I’ve long since discovered that writing my words in longhand takes too long, with the slow writing and the electronic transcribing, and doesn’t save me anything. Instead of writing prose, I’ve started jotting down ideas that I want to write about. (I think I might have attempted this once before. I seem to have to try things repeatedly until they finally stick—like giving up television, or video games, which I’m still in the process of doing.) The last few days, I’ve had lots of energy to write, but nothing to say. If had remembered any of the clever ideas, my trip description might have been longer and more interesting. Yeah. That was funny to me also. Imagine that: long and interesting. I slay me!
After waking up at 5am this morning, we rolled out of bed at around 8am to start our day. We went to a wonderful bakery where we bought rolls and sandwiches for breakfast, and flavored milk. Until this morning, I didn’t even know there was such a thing. Flavored milk comes in regular milk containers but, here’s the twist, they add a flavoring. This morning, Julie bought Apple Milk and (what we think was) Orange Milk. We weren’t sure about the second one since Julie’s command of the written Chinese language is, well, I don’t want to reveal all her deficiencies, but to give you an idea, she reads Chinese almost as well as I speak Spanish. The Apple Milk (I’ve decided to capitalize the name since it’s so strange I don’t know what to do with it) was quite tasty. It didn’t taste like apple juice mixed with milk, which would have been nasty. Instead, it tasted like milk with an apple aftertaste. It’s hard to explain, but a fascinating experience. The Orange Milk was a little less refined. Its aftertaste was more like the orange drinks that I used to buy in school. I’m not sure if anyone remembers, but the drinks came in small, plastic bottles with a foil top, cost twenty-five cents, and contained orange- (orange colored), or cherry- (red colored) flavored sugar water. If you take that sugar water and add milk, you’d end up with Orange or Apple Milk. My pastry, a buttery scone-type pastry with a yummy chocolate filling, was delicious, as was my fried pork sandwich. They cut the crusts off all the sandwiches, which wasn’t a big deal for me, but since Julie abhors crusts, she thought it was the greatest thing since, well, since sliced bread (I’m sorry, I had to go there—there was a armed cliché guard that wouldn’t let me not go there).
I know I’m focusing on food, but one of the biggest experiences I’ve had so far has been the food. Taipei has, if nothing else, a tremendous variety and amount of places to eat. There are food vendors in carts on almost every block and no two of them sell the same food. While walking around today, we visited an outdoor market, which reminded me of markets in Paris. Storefronts along three long blocks displayed their wares outside the sidewalks. There was raw fish, chickens (and, yes, I stayed away from all dead birds—the NY Times Sunday Magazine article on avian flu in Asia scared the crappies out of me. Luckily, there were no live birds to run away from), tremendous varieties of cooked and raw foods, clothing, jade, chotskys, school supplies, you name it, they were hocking it. I took some pictures, but you’ll have to wait for those as well.
We spent the rest of the day wandering the streets around the condo. There is plenty to see here, since the condo is in a central part of Taipei—don’t ask me which central part, since the geography, like most geographies, confuses me, but there are plenty of stalls, stores, malls, subways, and vendors in the neighborhood. While it rained a bit when we started out this morning, by midmorning, the sun burnt through the clouds and warmed the day into the balmy 70s. We would have walked more but I finally figured out why so many people wear surgical masks while walking around or riding their mopeds. Taipei, while generally a clean city, has an awful problem with pollution. The smoke put out by the mopeds, the cars, and industries clogs the city and makes breathing difficult. The overhanging buildings, which line most streets, allowing the pedestrians cover from the rain but trapping smog, exasperate this. It doesn’t help that mopeds have no problem driving up on the sidewalk to either park or cross traffic, releasing their noxious fumes into the semi-enclosed space. After a few hours of walking, we decided we needed a break. I recommended an oxygen bar, but they haven’t evolved far enough to open those. Taipei is still at the coffee house on every other block stage. (As a side note, the coffee shops appear to have replaced the yummy bubba-tea shops that Julie promised me. We’ve not found one place that sells the tea with tapioca balls.)
Buddhism is an important religion in Taiwan. As far as I have been able to tell, there are no bums or beggars in Taipei. Instead, there are Buddhist monks walking around in their orange outfits collecting money. My theory, and this is just a theory for now, is that these monks, who obviously know Kung Fu since, as far as I’ve learned from Hollywood and Hong Kong movies, all monks know Kung Fu, act as a gang to keep regular beggars off the street. Whenever one tries to make his move on a Buddhist monk’s territory, they meet the fists of fury or crane technique followed by stinging bee. Both the jade market and the outdoor market we visited today had one monk wandering the rows. To be fair, there was a strange woman in the Jade market seemingly asking for money, but since she never got any, I can’t know for sure what her intentions were. If she was successful, my feeling is that the Buddhist monk would have unleashed one of his flying palms of death. Speaking of fighting, there are many Buddhist sects in Taipei, each with its own “Master Teacher,” one of which works with Julie’s parent’s Buddhist association. When I learned there were other Master Teachers—just as in the movies, they always have disciples traveling with them—I began thinking of what happens when two of the Master Teachers get together. I’m sure you see where my mind is going with this. We’re talking epic Kung Fu battles. I’m sorry if all of this appears rascist, culturalist, religiousist, and/or ignorant, but that’s what movies taught me, and who am I to doubt or fight movies’ lessons?
Story idea: From a memory—going to the aquarium, mother gives money; spend all the money on buying gifts for sisters, none left for me. The hard lessons in life and money.
Because of the time difference, I had difficulty determining when to celebrate my thirty-first birthday, either using Taiwan time, which means today’s my birthday, or Seattle—or for that matter, NYC—time, which means tomorrow’s my birthday. To simplify the decision, I’ve decided to celebrate my birthday for two days. That way, whichever one is the “correct” day, I’ll have it covered. I’m thinking of traveling to Asia for my birthday more often (well, I was thinking about it until I remembered the flight. Have I talked about that yet?). Unlike last year’s birthday, this one is unimportant. I’m not sure why decade birthdays have such a milestone feel to them—it probably has something to do with the digits on our hands and feet—but they do. After receiving many AOL-based e-mail greetings (which were quite good—who says AOL can’t do anything well?), I managed to call my family this morning and basked in their birthday wishes. For the record, the call was for their own good: I did not want them to feel guilty for not talking to me on my birthday. This had nothing got do with me and my desire to feel special. Nothing at all.
Getting back to important topics, we slept through the night yesterday, finally shaking off the jetlag that has kept us in a bewildered state for most of our time here. It hasn’t made my trip bad, just dreamy, as if I’m searching for something and can’t quite put my finger on what it is. Thanks to Julie’s parents insisting we accompany them to dinner, we woke up from our ill-thought out late-evening nap and headed to a fancy French restaurant on top of the second tallest building in Taipei. While the restaurant did not revolve, the five-course meal made the room spin a bit afterwards. The food was decent but the décor and view made it an enjoyable evening. Waking up from the nap was painful, but because of it, our time clocks should finally be reset, and you won’t here me bitch about it anymore. Well, at least not until I return home on Sunday. Then I’m sure you’ll hear lots more complaining while I readjust to the right-coast time. Aren’t you the lucky ones?
I jotted down a few more notes to talk about today. They weren’t as expansive as yesterdays, or as interesting, but I’ll get to them in a moment, first a recap of the day. We enjoyed a warm and mostly cloudless day, a bit of a difference from the “artic storm” that descended on the east coast, which resulted in Julie’s sister missing her flight here. We visited the National Palace Museum, which included a collection of ancient art, calligraphy, early writings, jade, pots and pans, paintings, and Buddhist relics. The Palace Museum is located on top of one of the many hills that surround Taipei, and the air is clear. For the first time since arriving, I breathed fresh, invigorating, non-toxic oxygen while outdoors. (The indoor air quality is much better thanks to the many air conditioners, which I’m sure only add to the outdoor pollution.)
While I enjoy visiting museums, there are types of art that interest me more than others. For example, I can’t stand pots and pans, and related artifacts. I don’t know why it is, but every time I visit an exhibit that has a vase, a pot, a pan, or something similar, I begin to look frantically for the door. The same things happen when I see anything ceramic or, and this is the worst, clothing. I’m sure it’s interesting (whatever that means—I read that interesting, like bad before it, has taken on a negative connotation, making my million-definitions for it less probable) to the clothing whores out there, but to me, I can’t imagine a more fitting torture for all the bad things I’ve done during this life than to lock me in a museum housing the entire history of clothing, from fig leaf to space-age jumpsuit, and force me to explore and read the histories until time itself feels pity and halts.
There were many good exhibits in the Palace Museum, including fascinating histories of calligraphy, writing, and early painting, and a wonderful collection of Buddhist statutes. Thanks to the no-camera rules, I wasn’t able to take many pictures, but if you’ve been to a museum with an Asian exhibit, you’ve probably seen a sampling of what the Palace Museum offered. That is, unless you’re a certain Asian studies person, who I’m sure would have found every last artifact of incredible historical and artistic value.
Now, I must talk about the bad part of the museum. I’m not referring to the jade thing-a-bobs or the large collection of ritualistic cook pots (I really can’t make this stuff up); I’m referring to the restaurant. There’s a small, modern coffee shop in the main part of the museum, but if you want to eat, there’s only one place to do it: a small building with the badly lettered restaurant sign. After getting up at the reasonable hour of 8am, we decided to breakfast at a different bakery. Julie once again indulged her Apple Milk whimsy, and while they didn’t have a chocolate filled croissant, I was satisfied by a creamy pastry and another fried pork sandwich. The pork part was completely accidental. I thought it was a fried chicken sandwich, since there’s nothing like fried chicken in the mornings. We brought the food to a nice little park near Julie’s home. Along the outer curb of the square park, they installed large, low U-shaped bars. If not for these bars, the park would have been inundated by mopeds. They’re like roaches here, filling every space along the sidewalks and streets.
After breakfast, as a small birthday gift to me, Julie and I spent many hours reading. I’m halfway through my second book, and I’m beginning to think that I didn’t bring enough to read. We might have to go searching for an English bookstore before our flight on Sunday. The new book, Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a light read. It goes by fast as movies go by fast, with a good story, archetypical characters, and fast-food style writing. It’s enjoyable, but except for the wonderful futuristic setting, there’s not much meat there. There’s something releasing about reading. When I’m in Seattle, I spend many hours alone, and although I love spending time with Julie, it’s hard for me to remedy my needs to be alone with my desire to be with Julie. Reading (and by extension writing) gives me the time alone, even if I’m lying next to Julie doing it.
By the time Julie’s father dropped us off at the museum, it was lunch time already, and we were hungry. The museum restaurant had a mildew smell, which should have tipped us off, but we were hungry. All the servers wore masks, probably to protect our food from their germs. As you’ll see, it didn’t work. We ordered a vegetable plate and a duck dish. The food wasn’t terribly impressive, but we were hungry and finished the vegetables and some of the rice. For drinks, they served lukewarm tea. I was thirsty and figured since the water was boiled, what harm could there be. Innocent are the babes that run through the fields barefoot. Innocent, I say. After lunch we took in all the exhibits the museum had to offer, and decided to take a walk to Taipei’s answer to Universal Studios. We never made it there, but from what Julie and her father said, they filmed many Kung Fu movies in the studio (they weren’t able to tell me if the Master Teachers fought there, although I did, of course, ask), and, this is where during the telling Julie’s father became very excited, they took your pictures after dressing you up in costumes, like a king and queen, or, I’m postulating here, Grimace and the Fry Guy. Halfway to walking to the studio, I felt a rumbling in my stomach. I thought that I would be able to make it to the studio, and I concentrated on that goal. After walking for another ten minutes, I began to realize that (a) we didn’t have a clue where the studio was and (b) I needed to use the bathroom, and I needed to use the bathroom bad. We walked for a few minutes when I made my plight known to Julie. I hightailed back to the Palace Museum, leaving Julie to fall far behind me, and made it (barely) to the conveniently located bathrooms.
I was in there for some time, and Julie, not realizing why I walked so quickly to get back, began to get worried. She was waiting outside the bathroom, and I heard her phone ring while in there. I assumed everything was okay and she would wait there. But Julie, you have to understand, gets paranoid sometimes. After fifteen minutes, she left the bathroom area and began backtracking, thinking I had somehow slipped past her. She was getting frantic at this time (I’ve recreated this part from Julie’s account) and began having crazy thoughts. She was thinking of having me paged, or calling he parents, or the police. Whatever would David do, a white man who doesn’t speak English, alone in Taiwan? While frantically trying to figure out what to do next, I finished my business—and it was a long, painful business. Julie wasn’t outside the bathroom like I expected, and she wasn’t by the Confucius statute outside the building either. I figured she probably went searching for me in the other buildings, and decided to wait her out. It would have been silly for me to wander aimlessly. I knew she’d be wandering since that’s what Julie does, wander aimlessly. I finally found her running up the stairs leading to the building, sweaty and confused looking, waving her cell phone in the air with a worried look on her face. I waved. And an innocent American tourist was saved from drifting through the streets of Taipei without his beautiful Taiwanese escort. Julie has since given me 1000 TK (new Taiwanese dollars) to carry around, and has instructed me, on the off-chance we get separated, to find a taxi and tell the driver to take me to the hotel that’s across from her parent’s condo. She feels better knowing that I won’t be wandering the streets, a confused white-man. What she has forgotten is that I tower over the inhabitants of this fine town. My stomach has since recovered, although it’s been delicate for most of the day. I don’t know if there’s anything worse than museum food. I don’t care what country you’re in. Captive audiences and no competition can do that. Long live capitalism and competition!
While driving to the museum, I observed a few more facets of the life here. This is a young city and it bustles with activity in the mornings. The mopeds are a sign of its youth. There is a great deal of energy when you look at the streets, the markets, and the shopping areas. Those thoughts seemed much more profound when I wrote them down—this was before I spoke about my bathroom activities. Oh, and about the title of today’s musing, it was the name of a Buddha at the museum. I was a little tipsy from the tea’s caffeine and my mouth was running in overdrive as I joked about the exhibits. “Call me Makahala” was (in my brilliant estimation) one of my more clever comments. Julie never did.
It’s late and I’m exhausted. We woke up before 6am—the legacy of jetlag—and we just arrived back at her parent’s condo at 9pm. Luckily, most of what we did is meticulously recorded in our photographs. I only need to add a few tidbits to round out the day.
After eating our customary bakery breakfast, we went with Julie’s mother to a studio to watch her rerecord the introduction and conclusion for a weekly lecture given by the Master Teacher for her satellite television station. The studio had many cool switches and levers, and Julie wouldn’t let me play with any of them. After ten takes of each section, I think she finally nailed it. When she made a mistake or didn’t like the take, she’d say, “NG,” meaning not good. I think it is secret Hollywood talk. In my estimation (since I’m in an estimating-type mood), I thought she nailed it after the first take, but what do I know, she was speaking Chinese after all. When I say ten takes, I wasn’t counting the rewinds when she made actual mistakes—just the finished NG versions. Ten of them. We spent at least eight of the recordings wandering the streets near the studio, where Julie found a shopping area. I dodged shopping with Julie and her mother yesterday by feigning it was my birthday, and she went without me to spend her mother’s money buying a third wardrobe. I wasn’t as lucky today, and while it was still early when we found the shopping area, many of the smaller stores were already opened. Man, I can’t even do shopping humor right tonight. You should give up now, nothing interesting here. I can’t seem to throw my brain into a gear, the engine is revving but I ain’t moving. And, as an added bonus, I couldn’t bear reading it after I finished, so you’re reading a low energy musing with no edits. Talk about lucky! (I think I used that line yesterday.)
We were driven to the studio by two camera guys from the television office. They ended up accompanying us through the rest of the day. One of them, I’ll call him droopy dog, took most of the photographs you’ll see. Droopy Dog spent fifteen years in Queens, NY. Although I assume he spoke flawless English, he was quiet. While the driver and main camera guy was polite, helpful, and easy to laugh, Droopy Dog was the opposite. He grunted and did little. We were able to get out of him that he was very happy to return to Taiwan from the states. Contrast this with a young kid we saw in the evening. He went out of his way to greet me, the white man who speaks English (there we go, while this musing is painful to write (and I’m sure read), at least I won’t forget which language I speak today). He said, “Where you from.” I told him Seattle. “I’m from LA,” he thought a moment. “We’re both west coasters. West coast, represent!” Okay, I made up the represent part, but it was strange how proud he was to be an Asian American visiting Taiwan. He wanted everyone, including the tall white dude, to know that, no, he wasn’t like the people around him, he was from America. Maybe I’m reading too much into it. It’s been a long day.
We ate dinner at a local hotel—Julie’s parents eat many meals at this hotel, which offers seven different dining experiences, ranging from Cantonese to Japanese to Taiwanese to Western to some other stuff I can’t remember—and one of the courses they ordered was Drunken Chicken. Julie’s grandmother made this dish for me before. It’s like chicken soup mixed with a gallon of rice wine. It’s as tasty as it sounds—if you’re an alcoholic. But Julie’s father really enjoys it, and they cook it at the table in the hotel. Being the polite guest that I am, I took a bowl full, ate the yummy noodles, and picked at the chicken. One of my rules of eating is that I believe if food is prepared for me, I shouldn’t have to do work to eat it. I’m willing—not happy but willing—to cut meat where necessary, but don’t ask me to put together fajitas or peel shrimp. There’s a reason I go out to eat, and it’s not to have to prepare my own food. The chicken in the Drunken Chicken soup is on the bone, either small, attached legs, wings, or other various chopped up parts. Not only are they soaking in the rice wine, but they’ve been soaking in it for some time, creating a highly flammable and alcoholic chicken, which also happens to be dry. I nibbled a bit, manipulated my soup so it look like I ate more than I did, and stopped eating it to focus on the more delicious aspects of dinner. After Julie told her mother that I did not want any more chicken because I didn’t even eat the chicken in my bowl, she promptly ordered me a fork and knife, sure that western utensils would make the chicken more palatable. The serving lady didn’t have to look to see where the utensils were going, like it’s not bad enough I’m a white guy.
I woke up with the beginnings of a cold this morning, sore throat and body aches. I sent Julie to search for medicine—she is a doctor, after all, and I figure she should be good for something. She brought back a bottle of children’s Dimetapp. Before I drank the four cups of yummy purple medicine, Julie’s grandmother suggested I eat Japanese herbal medicine. The medicine came in a sugar-sized packet, which, when torn open, looked like a packet of brown birdseeds. The only thing I understood on the Japanese-lettered box that the packet came in was a big C, which Julie assured me, meant the medicine had Vitamin C. I figured that out for myself and asked her what else was in it. Like a good doctor she said, don’t worry, it’s herbal medicine, it must be good for you. Her mother told me to take it with water, but I rarely take medicine with water. When you’re a professional medicine taker like me, water is unnecessary. I tore open the packet and poured it down my throat. The medicine had a pebble-like texture and was terribly dry, sticking to my tongue and the roof of my mouth. I ran to the kitchen and guzzled a glass of water. When mixed with water, the medicine turned thick, cement-like, but I managed to swallow it. It was strong medicine. Less than twenty-minutes later, it knocked out my congestion and me. I woke up an hour later, feeling drowsy, but much better.
Jennifer, Julie’s sister, arrived this morning after a terrible travel experience. She flew from Boston, where she’s attending Har-vard—she’s the smart one of the family. She was supposed to arrive yesterday, but there was engine trouble on her first leg, from Boston to Newark, and when she arrived in Newark, she missed the next leg of Newark to Seattle. She spent the night with her sister, the middle one, Janie, who has an apartment near the U.N., and took the Newark to Seattle to Taipei flight the next day. She’s surprisingly refreshed and awake today, much more so than either Julie or I managed after our much shorter travel experience.
While visiting Shanghai last week, Julie’s father purchased a traditional-Chinese shirt. The shirt is black with black Chinese designs and wide buttons and loops running down its middle. I’m sure you’ve seen these shirts in Bruce Lee movies. Julie’s father liked the shirt and finally had a chance to wear it when we went to the hotel for dinner last night (don’t ask about Julie’s parents fascination with hotel food). When I woke up from my herbal medicine-induced nap, everyone was readying to go to lunch. Before we left, Julie’s father offered me his shirt, telling me that it would keep me warm and stop me from getting sicker because it was made of silk and therefore very warm and light.. (Julie and her parents believe you get sick from being cold. It’s the same belief held by most people in the world. While temperature is a factor on how well your immune system responds to attacks, it’s the viruses and bacteria that make you sick, not the weather.) While it is a nice looking shirt, I knew that I would look ridiculous—check that, more ridiculous—if I wore it. I was already fighting the white-man’s prejudice, and I don’t want to even think what would happen if they put me in a Chinese shirt.
We went to a vegetarian Chinese restaurant for lunch. The restaurant served the foods that the Chinese emperor ate, or at least that’s what the placemats said, and we all know placemats never lie. When we sat down, the waitress brought me an extra dish and a fork and knife to replace my chopsticks; clearly they had dealt with people like me before. All of the waitresses wore cheaper version of the traditional Chinese shirt that Julie’s father had offered me. I’m thinking not accepting the shirt was the smartest thing I’ve done since I arrived.
There were many starter dishes, some good, and some with beans—and by definition, not good. They served the main course in a crock pot with a heating element in its middle burning wood or coal or something. Air would flow in from a bottom element which held the cooking bowl, up through (what I assume) was an empty middle area of the cooking bowl, into a chimney heating element. Smoke would escape through the top, which had a flap over the opening, and ash would fall down the chimney part into the hole in the bottom. (Yes, I remember my deficiencies, but I keep trying to learn to describe things better.) The water touching the chimney heating element boiled, which heated the rest of the water. The soup was an herbal brew, dark colored and rich. The vegetables and noodles that the waitress placed in the pot were tasty, although the clear noodles were exceptionally long and almost impossible to scoop out of the donut-shaped cooking pot.
I’ve been to many countries where I didn’t know the language, but Taiwan is a unique travel experience for me because (a) its culture is different than western culture, and (b) I stick out like a throbbing thumb thanks to my height and whiteness. To compensate for this, I try to emulate the manners of this country as best I can, and look to Julie for help. Julie provided such help by telling me that you scoop the bean paste that came with soup into your soup bowl before eating it, which I happily did. Her parents laughed when they saw what I was doing. You were supposed to dip the vegetables in the paste, not add it to the soup. The paste clouded the soup and gave it a chewy consistency. Julie’s mother called over the waitress to bring me another bowl, which the waitress probably expected, seeing as if I can’t use chopsticks, I clearly don’t know how to properly eat soup.
After dessert, they served traditional sour-plum juice. The liquid was dark purple and thick, and tasted like a slightly sour prune juice, or what I imagine prune juice to taste like if I ever drank it. What was most memorable about it, however, was its distinct aftertaste. Just like prune juice, I never had occasion to eat mothballs, but if I did, I’m sure they’d leave the same taste in my mouth as the juice did.
After a restful afternoon and early evening, we went to Taipei 101’s neighborhood. I viewed 101 when I first arrived, the day was hazy and I saw it from a distance. My reaction was that 101 was an oversized monstrosity that didn’t fit in with the rest of the city. After getting close that has changed. While it’s still huge, I can appreciate its accomplishment and aesthetics more. Taipei 101 has a presence, like a mountain, and at night, when lit up with spotlights and blue-neon lights, it is impressive and beautiful. Even its gothic architecture seems right when you stand at its base.
The area around 101 is newly developed. The building itself isn’t even complete—they are still working on some of the office space and restaurants. Attached to 101 is a huge five-floor mall. Like everything in 101’s vicinity, the mall has plenty of open spaces. From any floor, you can glance casually through the huge openings cut out of the five floors, or stare up toward the ceiling, at least ten stories above you. In the states, a mall that size two days before Christmas would have been packed. Here, the mall was rather empty. I’m not sure if that was because it is relatively new or more expensive than other malls. The 101 mall is attached by a second-story sky bridge to the New York, New York mall. While we didn’t go inside that mall, from the looks of it, it was at least as large as 101. The area around 101 has been completely redeveloped. Originally, the area contained old, one-family houses. They’ve all been torn down and replaced by spacious parks, hotels, malls, and office buildings. What everything around there has in common is its openness and size. That’s what caused the change in opinion of 101. While the surrounding buildings aren’t anywhere near the height of 101, they make up for their shortness by their size and spaciousness.
Now, on to food—since that’s mostly what I do here: eat, eat, and eat—we ate in a Japanese restaurant inside the mall. Julie’s mother chose a seven-course meal—this is after eating a six-course meal for lunch. You can probably tell by the last couple of paragraphs that my brain is moving slowly. All the blood that should be supplying my brain with clever and insightful comments is pooling in my stomach, trying to make some sense of all the food. The problem with fattening me up, as Julie puts it, is that when I eat this much, my stomach hurts as it grows larger. Once I return to Seattle, its going to hurt as much when I don’t feed it as much and it shrinks. That’s why I like to eat the same amount every day—avoid growing and shrinking pains. We’re going to relax for a few hours before sleep time. Jennifer succumbed to her jetlag and fell asleep at around 3pm, missing dinner. We’re sure she’ll wake up in a few hours hungry. If Julie and I are still up, we’ll head for yet more food at the HK-style 24-hour restaurant. Yes. That means more eating.
We did more touristy things today. I would let the pictures speak for themselves, but when we arrived at Cheng Kai Shek’s memorial—think Lincoln Memorial—my camera ran out of batteries. It had something to do with me not charging it last night. My decision was a rational one: we didn’t use the camera much yesterday, and, this is the important part, every time I charge the camera, I have to remove the battery, which, in turn, means I have to reset the date and time when I put it back in. This is a serious flaw in the camera. Had I remembered that the battery wasn’t really charged two nights ago (the charger has a red/green LED indicator showing the charge, but if you wiggle the battery the wrong way, it sometimes doesn’t charge and stays red, which it did two-nights ago). What this means is that in the middle of taking a picture of the ladies in traditional Chinese hats weeding the flowers, the camera stopped working, and pictures of the memorial and the changing of the guards were not to be. So sad.
Julie’s grandmother is making drunken chicken for dinner tonight, and we spent the first half of the day browsing a farmer’s market to buy the ingredients. We took plenty of pictures for your enjoyment. While walking through the market, I felt like I was walking downhill. I could see clearly over the locals’ heads to the far end of the market. I thought that was a clever observation and thought I’d share.
I was stopped in the street today by a university student who had an English assignment to interview five foreigners. I tried to push Julie toward him, explaining that while she looked Chinese, she was really American, but they wanted to talk exclusively to the tall white dude. I acquiesced and provided them with one word answers to all of their questions. My voice has been recorded and I fear that recording will one day surface to haunt me. I knew I should have created a pseudonym, but I wasn’t fast enough. When under pressure, my mind does not work well. Give me a couple of minutes, and I could have thought of clever and insightful comments to all of his questions. But, instead, I had to rely on, “We have lots of 7/11’s too,” in response to his query about my opinion on 7/11’s in Taipei. I mean, really, even if I had thought about it for hours, could I really have come up with a clever response to that? It’s too incredibly depressing to know that 7/11 makes it on a questionnaire by a University student studying English. Is that all we have to offer?
Other than that, I have little else to report. I know this is a disappointingly short entry, but there you have it. I’m off to eat drunken chicken and perhaps share in the chicken’s fate.
We were tourists today, fabulously productive tourists. During our all-day tour, we visited—and here I have to foreworn you that this is an honest reckoning—in excess of three-hundred sites. Or thereabouts. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Since it is the 25th of December, Merry Christmas to those that share that opinion.
Today is my last full day in Taiwan. At around six o’clock local time tomorrow, we head back to the states. I’ll try to give overall reflections on my trip before I leave. I would have waited until the airplane ride, but the seventy-dollar airplane/car/outlet adapter I bought for my computer, which I took instead of my existing outlet-only adapter, didn’t work and my computer hasn’t been charged in days (edit: Julie, being brilliant, realized that my laptop was a Toshiba, and her old laptop, now one of her father’s many computers, was sitting, charging in her living room. I’m happy to report that my laptop is charging contentedly waiting for me to type away tomorrow night). It now houses a few minutes of power. If not for Julie’s father’s fascination with all things computer and his large collection of peripherals around their house—some of which actually work—I wouldn’t have been able to write any of these entries. I didn’t want to wait until I landed at some late hour tomorrow (we’re making back all the time we lost on the way here—you remember, the “Where’s Saturday?” entry), and have to write an entry. I have a feeling I’m going to be very tired when I get home and the only thing that will be running through my simple mind will be, where are my video games, where are my video games. Oh, wait. I wasn’t supposed to say that aloud. I’m trying to hide my addiction, not force people to force me to acknowledge it, or something like that.
Getting back to my day, I took a few notes and many pictures to record the activities. Since I can’t share the photos with you yet, I’ll give you the highlights. The day was coordinated by Julie’s middle aunt and husband, which is how her family refers to her aunts and uncles: little aunt, middle aunt, little uncle, big uncle, etcetera, but in Chinese. Her mother is the oldest of six children, and she has a smattering of aunts and uncles and cousins to keep track of. I met the middle aunt yesterday at my and Jennifer’s birthday dinner (Jennifer’s birthday is a few days after mine). The middle aunt’s husband drove, and I was a little worried about his driving. His gray Camry displayed many dents and there was a part of the front bumper that was missing, as if someone had taken a large bite out of it. Their dog, a bad-mannered but surprisingly quiet Pomeranian, which they brought along in lieu of their children, was too small to have caused it. They found the dog at their doorstep a year ago and took it in. It’s a cute dog who likes the husband better than the wife, which probably has something to do with him feeding the dog. This was the second dog they found and kept from their doorstep. In Taiwan, when a dog comes to you door, it’s considered good luck to accept it. One explanation for this is that if you have a dog, you can feed it scraps. Wasting food is considered a bad thing, which, if you think about it, makes me an awful person. Perhaps it’s time for me to invest in a dog. Getting back to the condition of the car, without a mutt culprit, I figured the damage could only be caused by his driving. The story he told at dinner last night didn’t help things.
Before I tell it, I’ll set the stage. The middle aunt’s husband (he’s not the middle uncle, who is an entirely different person) was given the name Ronald by his English teacher, and I’ll use that to refer to him. (It’s not as bad as his wife, who the English teacher named Fifi—I think they give language teachers way too much power.) Ronald visited the states with his family once, about ten years ago. They’re planning to move there permanently once their papers settle in the next year or so, which is ten years after they first put them in, the papers that is. Part of the fault lies with the real middle uncle, who didn’t tell them for five years that he had made a mistake in filing the papers, but that’s another story. Ronald rented a car and drove while in the states. The first time the police pulled him over he didn’t know what the flashing lights on the police car meant. It wasn’t until the siren sounded that he figured they wanted him to pull to the side of the road. In Taiwan, Ronald claims, the driver gets out and hands his license to the policeman. If there’s one thing you don’t do in the states when you get pulled over, is get out of the vehicle. Although Ronald received a name from his English teacher, he did not receive much else, and his English is not terribly good. Ronald got out of the car and the officer ducked behind the police car door, his hand on his holster, screaming at Ronald to get back in the car. Ronald eventually understood what he was being told, and sat down, his hands grasping the steering wheel hard enough to leave marks the next day. Three more police cars pulled up, and only then did the cop approach the car and collect Ronald’s information.
It gets worse. A few days later, he’s driving with his family on a long stretch somewhere in Middle America, speeding. In the telling, his wife chimes in and defends Ronald by saying speeding was acceptable because the road was so long and straight, how could he help but speed. The police pulled behind him and turned on its lights and sirens. Ronald wasn’t sure if the police car, which was right behind him, wanted him to pull over or one of the other cars, so he weaved in front of the car next to him and accelerated—just to be sure. The police car followed him and he pulled over. After he stopped, the middle aunt told him to get out of the car to pay for the ticket. Ronald said, “No way. I’m not falling for that again.” I like Julie’s aunts—we met the small aunt, an elementary school principal, yesterday for lunch. They’re small, thin ladies with a lot of attitude and a young outlook on life. Ronald was very kind during the tour, staying in the car when we arrived at places where he knew we wouldn’t find parking (there are many such places in Taipei, which is probably why everyone drives a moped), and acting as tour guide and ordering yummy food everywhere else.
In the end, Ronald turned out to be a good driver, but my second impression wasn’t much better than my first. The first stop we made was a coffee shop for breakfast. Upon pulling over, I opened the door and placed a foot outside the door. At that moment, Ronald decided to pull the car forward, to make it easier for us to get out. I thankfully had not put weight on my foot and I pulled my leg inside as he started to roll. Things got better from there, but there were many windy roads as we made our way up the mountains surrounding Taipei, during which I was glad I was still feeling a little sick. It gave me the perfect excuse to close my eyes, rest my head on Julie’s shoulder, and sleep. Better than having to watch him drive the single lane, windy roads.
Unlike some places I’ve visited, such as Norway, most people in Taiwan do not speak English. Speaking English is more the exception than the rule. Julie has done an admirable job translating conversations for me, but I’ve discovered one boon to not understanding what people are saying. I have this thing about small talk: I really dislike it. I can say that now because I did research on it. There was a time when I thought that I didn’t like small talk because I wasn’t good at it, and if I learned how to effectively participate in small talk, I would be a more social person, the world would be better, cats and dogs would live in peace, etcetera. To this end, I bought books on it and researched it. What I discovered, after finishing the research and trying small talk was (a) it’s not too hard; and (b) I still hated it. Julie had a knack for translating only the interesting conversations, such as Ronald’s story. She skipped over the boring stuff, the small talk. In the week that I’ve been here, I haven’t had to suffer through any small talk. Small blessings are all I ask.
Intertwined with our tour today, we spent much of the day, yes, you guessed it, eating. As I mentioned before, and will probably mention again, Taiwanese people love to eat. Today, we ate at least five times. There are food places everywhere, especially in the outdoor food markets we visited. I was introduced to stinky tofu. Julie had talked about this food for weeks before I arrived here. It’s the Chinese answer to stinky cheese, one of my favorite food groups. I am not a fan of stinky tofu. The smell is rather noxious and the taste, it’s hard to explain. It tastes like grilled or fried tofu (depending on how they prepare it) but it has this scary aftertaste. We ate at a dive seafood place near the shore tonight, which turned out to be quite tasty, even forgiving the bottle cap openers attached by a string to each table. A few of the dishes had regular tofu, and while I usually like tofu in my dishes, every time I ate a tofu dish, all I could think of was the terrible stinky tofu aftertaste, and I couldn’t eat it. Perhaps it’s an acquired taste, although I’m not sure I’m ready to acquire it.
And lastly, before I succumb to the Dimetapp I took for my cold—I started sneezing like a crazy man while writing this entry, and had to down my four tablespoon dose to continue—I spoke about a French restaurant we visited on top of the second tallest building in Taipei, and I mentioned that the restaurant did not spin. As we were driving back, the middle aunt pointed out a tall building with a restaurant that did revolve. The funny thing about the building, though, was that the restaurant was not at the very top, but slightly below the top. On the top, you see, was a large garbage incinerator. Talk about yummy dinners.
I have nothing but muddled heads and complaints today. I’m sorry about that, but it’s been a long travel day and other than flying and waiting and flying and sitting, not much happened.
I’m stuck flying 30,000 feet over somewhere. I’m not sure where and I’m not sure why it refuses to end. It’s now almost 11am and I still have another three hours on this leg. Then I have another three hours on the LAX to SEA flight. I promised not to complain, but I’m going to make an exception here. There. I did it. See, it wasn’t that painful. It was just something that I had to do and I think I’m a better person for it. Now, if I can stop my right, front brain from pulsating somewhat painfully, I’ll be able to get things done, important things.
I spoke yesterday about summarizing my trip to Taiwan. I’ve given it some thought, and I’m not sure what I can say that I haven’t already said. It was fun, a bit long for my tastes—after four days, I tend to start missing my home and comfortable bed and the routine that is my life—but it was understandably long. I wouldn’t want to travel this far and stay for a few days. The flight is too damn long. Yes, I know, I did it again.
I planned to edit the Trophy vignette, but I can’t find the energy. It’s still early or late, or I’m very confused. Julie’s family claimed that the jetlag going in this direction was easier. I find that hard to believe, particularly based on how I’m feeling now, but time will tell as it has a way of doing.
I spent the last thirty minutes reading old entries I had saved on this computer, particularly the ones I wrote a week or so before November. I thought most of the vignettes I wrote then were quite good. I have to get back to telling a story every day. But for now, I have to find a way to survive the rest of this trip.
I made it to LAX. I now have to wait to get on an Alaskan airplane to Seattle. The problem with Alaska Air, for those of you lucky enough never to have flown this excuse for an airline, is that their planes never depart on time. There are four to five flights heading to Seattle today. The one that was supposed to have left at 2 (it’s now 4), it was just announced will be leaving at midnight. The next flight, the 4:25 on which I’m on the standby list, just arrived, and it will certainly not take off by 4:25. After over 11 hours on an airplane, it doesn’t much make a difference how much longer I have to wait. I’m content to sit here and read.
I’m wondering what happened to DFW in Oblivion, his newest collection of short stories. He’s one of my favorite authors, but his stories now seem—what would be a word DFW would appreciate—masturbatory. I’ll withhold final judgment until the end. I’m sure he’s waiting to pull a rabbit out of his hat. He does that: makes you read fifty pages broken up into three paragraphs (for the entire fifty pages), and when you to get to the end, you’re hysterically laughing (or crying) as he ties and explains his long-winded story together.
