taiwan poets that not only write. taiwan poets that do provide insight. while spending a few hours watching george, enid and carolyn pick out their glamour shots, we (as in the non-glamour shootable males) stumbled upon the work of literary giants, otherwise known as "the people who write poetry for the glamour shot flip books." we don't know who they are but their cute rhyming schemes and profound words will take your conscience to another level. a small selection follows.



fallen love

onto the sea

i sailed my boat

and prayed that it

would stay afloat



greatest love

whoever lives true life

will love true love

i'll love you till the ocean

is folded and hung up to dry



it's hard to find true love

i don't know when i can fall in with

the greatest sincerity of love

in the vicissitudes of life



beautiful dream is easily broken

confused rumor is cherished more

the affection presevere with

painfully and regret



presevere is not a spelling error. pre-severity is now a word i will use in my lexicon, you should use it too for all that it connotates.

pictures. of taiwan. and no. i am not infatuated with victor. he just happens to be in alot of my pictures. okay? shut it.

shopping. taipei is admittedly not the most cultural city in the world. despite some cool parks and buildings (the chiang kai shek memorial is dope), it's safe to assume that most people don't go to taiwan for the culture. they go for the shopping and the food. usually in that order. night market is to heaven as twin sister is to shopping. i'm a shopper too, i love to shop, i love to spend money i didn't earn. but some other people can only stomach so much shopping, i understand.



even though i didn't buy particularly much, i shopped alot. i like wandering in and out of stalls, winding around streets and shops, eyes scanning for an item to catch your attention. everything is so damn cheap in taiwan that you really can't resist buying. cell phone lighters? cigarette shaped lighters? got'em. pens? pencils? pins? got'em. cards that reveal naked women when you hold them up to a flame? got'em. well no. i didn't get'em. other people did. fifty four naked ugly chicks just didn't do it for me (the three of spades is officially the ugliest, most horrific girl. now you know.) great novelty item though. fake purses and real purses? got'em. shoes and clothing? george got'em.



my big prize was a brand spanking new blue digital camera (this color is not available in the states people). one that is so tiny you can hold it in one hand and still use chopsticks in the other. amazing but true. cost me a bundle but hey, i'm on vacation. my i-zone has now been replaced by a newer more technologically advanced toy. the joy that little camera will bring me, i can already sense it. why i never discovered the infinite happiness that comes hand in hand with digital camera ownership before this past week is well beyond me. so get ready to smile. or not, because we can take pictures over and over until i'm satisfied, now that i'm unconstrained by pricey film. if god is not spiritual in format he is at least digital in design.



oh, also got this incredible doraemon plush toy that can record a short voice message and play it back verbatim. that means repeating back to you in exactly the same words. YOUR words! technology is great ain't it? yee-haw. the only way to get this little treasure is by ordering food (but not necessarily eating food, that's optional) from kfc in taiwan. yes, i have an exclusive doraemon plush toy. pinch me if i'm still alive. lastly, found some taiwan university paraphenalia in the form of t-shirts. had to search long and hard for these items and without the help of victor's extended family, we probably wouldn't have gotten our taiwan university stuff. those taiwanese college kids have no school spirit. if i was attending the "harvard of taiwan," i would be daily rocking the loudiest gaudiest "tai da" t-shirt to declare my superiority. i mean, i would be the cream of the crop, from a country that makes little children study till their eyes bleed. rub that kind of excellence in when you can. shit. god made you dorky and slight for a reason dammit.



speaking of taiwan university. it is stunningly out of place in taipei. it is beautiful. the athletic facilities are new and grand. the main palmtree lined avenue is a postcard from ucla. it's so odd. to step onto this campus and be transported to a whole 'nother world. victor's uncle and aunt both attended tai da and they gave us an excellent and informative tour. i expected nothing like this. i expected brown or princeton or yale, dilapidated buildings fronting as the sole proprietors of human intelligence. but instead, i got a modern west coast campus rich in design and devoid of centuries old mildewy funk. i'm not bitter at yaleprincetonharvard btw. it's not like i even had a chance at those exclusively snooty schools. i'm just lobbing bombs at them for those of you who were rejected unjustly. you deserved to get in i'm sure. 1599 SATs and 4.99 GPAs?!?! you were robbed fo shizzle. all admitted until flat out denied, isn't that the american way? or maybe it was something about innocence and guilt. whatever. at least i can say i was never rejected by an ivy. suckers. if you should ever step foot on formosa, go to taiwan university, it's delectable.



shit. this is getting way long. oh well, how often do i have interesting things to blog about? read on.



food was delicious, as expected. my only goal was to get good food in taiwan. and that wish was fulfilled quite adequately. the bread stores were delicious. the bread was excellent too. the seven-elevens had fruit flavored milk and other cool drinks that i didn't even know i missed from my youth. not to mention warcraft three hanging off the shelves, which is seriously taking convenience to a whole new level. i love taiwan. i had many many bowls of beef noodle soup at various eateries. and buns of all shapes and sizes. well, most shapes and sizes, not all. many things were eaten and there's no need to bore you with the past contents of my bowels. let's just say that if food were this cheap in the states, i would be a hulking one hundred fifty pound road grater. alas, i live in the land of five dollar fried rice and weigh only not so much. academic slackerdom and clean air in exchange for a few pounds of superficial bulk and muscle? tough choice but i'll go with slackerdom and clean air for one hundred. actually, two hundred now that trebeck has upped the ante.



clubbing in taiwan was done only 2wice. once on new year's eve with je-yi and louis and another time post-new years. both times nothing special to write home about. but exciting enough to warrant blogging about (what isn't really?). we went to "plush," one of the few clubs that played good hip hop, or so we heard. everyone passed out at enid's for new year's so it was just me and my crap awful mandarin in a cab to meet up with louis and je-yi. we got to plush late, decided not to go in, cruised the "living mall" and then went into the club after the new year had passed. a sidenote: the living mall is dope as hell. a giant ball of a shopping mecca, it is pretty damn unique and it was mad crowded, with people bungee jumping off the rafters during new years. go see the mall, it's open twenty four hours, although that seems like slight overkill, even in a consumerist culture. in contrast to the "living mall" braggadocio, me and victor went on a monday night and the place was dead as a doorknob. anyhow, we missed the hip hop portion of new year's eve and the second hand smoke was terrifying (although strangely, my first hand smoke was fine). poor ventilation and FOB-stank? yes please, may i have another? but new years was cool, got to clink some plastic glasses (filled with suspiciously non-alchoholic coke and alchohol) with je-yi and louis to ring in 2003, on foreign soil no less, and how often does that happen? more than once a lifetime let's hope.



clubbing anywhere is bound to be the same. especially if you're narrow minded and frequent predominantly asian nation hip hop parlaying clubs back home like i do. shorter people, less rhythm, tighter pants, lots of inane bouncing, older crowd. that was plush and taiwan clubbing in a nutshell. music wasn't half bad. between sets of techno the DJs had some good hip hop on when we went out again on friday night. we were even swindled into drinking heineken to score some metallic heineken cd cases. if anything, the techno was wack as hell (think techno beats mixed with your 70/80s favorites, for one solid hour) and the hip hop was good. it was interesting watching the guys in the corner who dressed "hip hop thuggish." i wondered if they knew hip hop or just used it. probably the latter. i'm done with clubbing. no sense in it for me. no joy, just pain. like sunshine and rain...... had a blast dancing on friday though.



i saw many relatives. and that was interesting. many thoughts on the existence of relatives and my relations with them, but that will have to wait for another time and a clearer head.



i've realized that in leading this charmed life of mine, where every day is fruitcake and candy land, i don't fully appreciate the concept of "vacation." speak to me in a few, after i've been ground to a stub by workday hours, and then we'll see if i think twelve days out of the country was only "good and not great." we're related, ricky schroeder and i. can't you see the family resemblance?



hope everyone had a hale and hearty new year. back to the grind.

take me home country roads. to the place i belong. west virginia mountain momma. taiwan. how to speak of it. for one, i was there too long. too long is now officially defined as anything over a week. if i can't do it in five days, i probably don't want to do it anyway. that's the new rule of thumb for traveling. the other one is, i need beaches, and sunshine. then again, perhaps i was mixing up the notions of traveling and vacation, because there is a difference. traveling is for business, or for enrichment and new experiences. vacation is for fun. it's not that i had a bad time, i had a good time. it wasn't mind blasting, rip-roaring fun (especially after george, enid, carolyn left) but it was a time. beats out sitting on my ass in san diego for two weeks, that's for sure.



i have to say, post-taiwan trip, i feel like i did alot. as i sit down to recap my time there, i feel like we did things all the time even if it was in short spurts. then again, trying to fill fourteen hours of the day can be a daunting task when one is as boring as i am. thanks to enid's tremendous hospitality, we had a place to stay in taipei for about a week (thanks enid!). her house is centrally located so we could pretty much get to anywhere in the city pretty quickly. this luxury has led me to the (probably false) conclusion that taipei is not a big city. taipei reminded me of new york a little too much, which wasn't entirely unexpected. urban vertical sprawl is urban vertical sprawl regardless of what language you slap onto the signs.



the subway system was nice. incredibly nice. clean, cheap, efficient and quick. like the bread stores. another big part of my trip. if someone could replicate taiwan bread and bring it here, i can guarantee sales of at least two breads a day for the next forty years. that's a verbal guarantee. and my word is as strong as oak. don't laugh.



the taiwan of my youth is now much cleaner. trash does not always litter the streets, trees process foul CO2 much more efficiently and sway in unison, cars whizz by less chaotically, people bump you with a tad more concern and care, scooters scooted semi-less-sporadically. i was impressed. i was expecting a dirty smelly old taiwan and all i really got was the smelly. even the weather was decently cooperative because we got a few days of beautiful sunshine in-between putrid rain and storm clouds. the air quality is terrible though. dust dust everywhere. and mites. (mites james!) my eyes were constantly itchy and scratchy. nothing can match the clean pure air of a world power like the united states i suppose. wearing contacts in taiwan is killer. poor chinese kids, caught up in the catch-22 of needing contacts to be cool but then being forced to gouge their eyes out every three seconds during decisive social moments.



the mosquitos won a few quick diversionary battles early on in our trip, but then we got wise to their guerilla tactics (or is that mosquirilla tactics? shoot me). victor theorized that showering before bed would help prevent bites. inventive georgette tried the no shower approach and indeed, victor was proven empirically and emphatically correct when george got stung all over the place. luckily, i escaped with only five or six huge bites on my face and none anywhere else. at least people wouldn't notice them right? bitch ass mosquitos. so glad i didn't visit taiwan during the summertime, that would have been all out war. victor killed a few perpetrators with an electric fly swatter the last couple of days so we came home conquering heroes. mosquito nets are a nice invention, props to whoever did that. and yes, the little green mentholatum nurse is your best friend in taiwan, no matter what anyone else tries to tell you. i'm gonna break down my trip below by sub-section, because you need to know. because we ain't going back to taiwan. as much of a necessary experience as it was, this time next year, we'll be chilling out in tahiti or the caribean, even if wild on says antartica is the next new hot spot.

alone together. medan pondered that phrase. it was all two people could ever be to each other, he supposed. alone. together. for the dreams and secrets of our heart may be spoken, but words are poor handmaidens. words can never fully say what we want them to say, for they fumble, stammer, and break the best porcelain. the best one can hope for is to find along the way somoene to share the path, content to walk in silence, for the heart communes best when it does not try to speak.

-dragons of a lost star-

son of antaeus. one of the giant sons of neptune, antaeus's strength was invincible so long as he remained in contact with his mother earth. once lifted from the earth and allowed again to touch it, his strength increased. the giant was slain by hercules in a wrestling match when hercules lifted him off the ground and crushed his ribs.



that's me now, when i travel anywhere. after a few days, a long weekend, i itch to go home, to return to my "mother earth." not that i'm not enjoying myself, but i start to get a little bored and complacent. not that i actually am bored. but just a feeling of "what to do what to do....." this really only applies to overseas traveling, when i go to new york or michigan, time is never enough. it's weird that displaced feeling when you are in another country but then feel like you've been there forever. i think i need to explore more of the little treasures of taiwan.



but i'm anti-sight seeing. i'm semi-pro shopping. i'm assuredly lazy. my eyes itch. i have mosquito bites all over my face. i'm definitively pro-food. this pretty much means the best environment for me is to be at home. i need other people to get me to go out and do things when i'm traveling. because everything that there is to do, i'm kind of ho and hum about. i wouldn't mind sitting around outside observing people all day (but then my companions would be bored). i think i'm an excellent third person to have along on a trip, but i may not function so well as the direct companion because i don't get super psyched to do much. i just chill and enjoy what comes. which makes me easy going but that can be mistaken as apathy. then again, i'm not altogether super excitable in general. don't let this dissuade you from inviting me to go somewhere though, i'm always game if you are.



exploits of "return to taiwan: a decade apart" to come later. i miss you. whoever you are. actually, no. not really. i haven't been gone enough to miss anybody. just things.

slugabed \SLUHG-uh-bed\, noun:

one who stays in bed until a late hour; a sluggard.