Category: Uncategorized

here are a couple of images of my first pair of new shoes. they are black and red “hot rod” shoes made by joe’s garb. which evidently is no more, as their website pages redirect and/or comes up with errors.
from poking around online, joe’s garb was a mid-range brand based on shoes designed by esquivel. it was around and active in the early 2000’s. esquivel also made high end shoes, and evidently he caught the attention of the right people and became well known for his shoe designs (and expensive ones at that). so i guess the joe’s garb line was shuttered at that point.
anyway, here are a couple of pics of my shoes before they get all scuffed to hell, taken in my ’55 bel air. first, lounging in the front seat:

then, behind the wheel:

joe’s garb made at least two color combos in the men’s model, and i actually wanted the black and white version. but when the pickings are slim, sometimes you have to compromise. (just don’t tell the ladies you say that about them. and they won’t tell you they say that too.)

the shots and pills appear to have worked. my sinuses feel as normal as they usually do (which is still probably not quite normal), and my sleep patterns have gotten back to as “normal” as they usually are.
i went back to the doctor on monday morning for the results of my blood test(s). no mono, nothing abnormal except the expected elevated cholesterol levels (overall a bit high, bad cholesterol too high, good cholesterol too low). the doctor was able to utilize his years of experience in studying and understanding the human body to deduce this: i’m overweight and should exercise. i was shocked. shocked, i tell you! however, unlike my ex-wife’s year-old analysis of the root cause of my body weight, he didn’t come to the conclusion i am overweight due to “self-loathing”. he seemed to think it might be because i eat too much of too many rich/fatty foods, don’t exercise, and lead a sedentary lifestyle. what a quack, huh? seriously though, my ex has proven she does struggle with issues directly tying her body in harmful and unhealthy ways to her self-perception, -value, and -worth. unfortunately, i don’t think she can be fair or rational about me regarding this issue. maybe others too, but pretty definitely not me. that may be the way her horse and cart works, but she’s got the cart in front of the horse for me. i don’t manipulate my weight to match the way i feel about myself (either in a rational and healthy way, or an irrational and harmful way). although i would like to weigh less, the “short cuts” are rife with problems (and many of them rather scary), and the legit ways to do it don’t seem as enticing or enjoyable as being able to eat the things i like and not having to devote chunks of time to being bored exercising, even though the end result would be nice, good for me, and help my opinion of how others perceive me. of course, shaving more often, paying to get my hair did, and wearing nicer clothes might do that too. perhaps my cost-benefit analysis is out of whack, but i know i’m not alone in the world. i doubt most people smoke because they hate themselves either…but maybe i’m the crazy one.
completely off-topic: for the last week or two, i keep hearing some bird outside of my house. sometimes when it sings, it sounds just like that bit of the song “peanut butter jelly time” where it goes “where he at, where he at” “there he go, there he go”. (i.e., the tones the bird sings are the same.) then i get the stupid song stuck in my head. thanks, bird.
this past friday evening was the geek gathering. i had to go straight from work, so i didn’t really get to do some stuff for the gathering i’d planned to. but i did drop by the house and pick up kojo’s books and the toothbrush i brought back from taiwan for jamie (it was a hotel disposable toothbrush and toothpaste set, and the toothpaste was called “j. me”). i need to step outside my normal bounds of waiting for people to come talk to me. there are sometimes people i’d like to meet and maybe get to know, but i rarely take it upon myself to make it happen.
saturday i was woken about 9am by brad calling to see if i wanted to go riding. brad and i met up with four other guys and we rode around the tomball area for a couple of hours. then a couple split and the four of us left rode to washington-on-the-brazos. afterward i hung out at brad’s and talked for an hour or two, then we rode around some more and eventually ended up at antidote for some coffee. from there i met the potts at a five guys burgers (which i’d never eaten at, but is good) and then went to their house and hung out until late.
i was planning on buying some new sha sha shoes (different color, same style — i wanted the black flames on white shoes), but once i started trying to buy them i figured out they must not be making them anymore because they were hard to find and i couldn’t find my size. ain’t that how it always is…i search around forever disappointed with my choices until i find something cool, then it’s not available or not in my size or whatever. even my second and third choices were not working out. so i gave up on the sha-sha’s.
i’ll use that as a segue to talk about my recent emotional struggling. you see, this last week was significant for a couple of reasons: [1] friday was the hrc’s birthday, and [2] the same week was a two-year marker of sorts. so those things just gave me extra reason to think about the loss of her in my life, and the current lack of anything new. when my mind is positive (which isn’t that often:) i like to imagine she bailed on me by quietly slipping away because she knew she didn’t have the ability to be the woman she felt i deserve. i mean, after all the things she told me and said about me and such, just ceasing to care about even interacting with me at all seems rather incongruent. but as samuel jackson (as jules…a bit of a coincidence) says in pulp fiction: “and i’d like that. but that sh!t ain’t the truth.” i don’t know the truth obviously, but i imagine it’s not really any reason that’s good to/for me. whatever. the problem for me is i’m not one to cut and run and move on. i’m slow to commit / get into things, but once i do it runs deep. i can’t just move on. i have a hard time giving up, accepting loss, and forgetting about it. (see: the time invested in me trying to deal with and get over tamara and my marriage.) still, i guess it’s probably for the best. it’d just have been nice if something good could have come out of it. (other than the time itself.) i think, like jennifer before her, i was really good to julia. (it’d be nice if i could find someone to actually legitimately appreciate that, and me.) still, as much as there were so many things i really loved about the hrc, she probably would have consumed and destroyed me. (that doesn’t change the fact such a thing is kind of my ideal relationship i guess…watch true romance to better understand.)
back to the shoes…i thought about buying some new vans old skool shoes, but as usual i can’t find color combos i like that much. you can make custom ones on their website, but the end price is about $85. i’m still trying to decide if i can make myself believe having canvas shoes custom-designed (the color choices) by me is worth that. i do think the ones i made look pretty cool though. we’ll see. in the meantime, i did manage to find some shoes that compete with the sha-sha’s so i ordered them. as well as three retro-50’s / lounge / rockabilly / greaser button-down shirts. then i ordered a new pair of doc marten’s. then i ordered a new pair of motorcycle boots, as i haven’t had any motorcycle boots in some time. i’ll provide more info about all of these once they come in.
a couple of days ago when i was looking for vans i went by soundwaves to see what they had in-store. nothing exciting. but i did pick up a couple of cds:

• the beat farmers – van go (curb)
• johnny cash – american vi: ain’t no grave (american)

today i am going into work late, so this morning i called the shop edelbrock had gotten in touch with for me. they told me i could bring the car today for them to look at, so i drove up there this morning. they’re near beltway 8 and 249, pretty far north-northwest. i got there, they came out, i turned on the car, all 3 of them said “yup, it’s the lifters”, i turned it off, i gave them my info, then i made the drive back home. he’s going to call edelbrock and then get them an estimate, so he’ll hopefully be calling me back pretty soon so i can drop the car off to get the work done.

i went to the doctor monday morning. i explained what was going on and that i figured i had a sinus infection, but was concerned my constant exhaustion and sleeping was more than just jet lag. i told him i thought it might be worse allergies to my cat after having been away from her for a couple of weeks, and that i didn’t think so but i wanted to be sure i wasn’t having a relapse of mono (as mono sucks). he looked me over and said he thought it was sinusitis and jet lag. he said jet lag can last a couple of weeks. so he gave me a shot of cortizone and an antibiotic shot, as well a z-pack antibiotic prescription. he also went ahead and had blood drawn to do a normal blood test as well as test for mono.
i went by h.e.b. and got the prescription filled, then — as they were on my way back to my house — i stopped by old navy and bought two new pair of blue jeans, and stopped by microcenter and bought a fairly cheap sata hard drive so i have one to put into my desktop at work. i’ve been waiting to get a second hand bigger hard drive from work, but one never has turned up, so i finally gave up and bought one myself.
i went into work after lunch. in the afternoon i had some conversations with a couple of my friends at work about my recent difficulties in dealing with life. i really don’t feel like i’ve got much that i’m content with or happy about right now. i mean as far as big picture things i care about. i’m not particularly happy with my opportunities at work, i don’t feel like i have any valid plans or goals for the future of my life, and while i enjoy having time alone i really hate being alone all the time — i miss companionship and closeness and intimacy, and i would like to be moving towards marriage and a family if possible. these things/feelings i don’t have and want tend to overwhelm me during the many hours i have to think about what i don’t have. i currently don’t have to worry about more basic things some people worry about like failing health, having working transportation, a job at all, having a roof over my head, food. i know i’m fortunate to not have to worry about these things, but it doesn’t make me feel better about the higher things i want but don’t have (some of which i don’t feel like i have much control over). ash mentioned in a comment that he refers to my way of thinking as “dtl: depressed terry logic”. i completely don’t deny there is truth to that. i want to have faith, i want to have hope, i want to believe, but i find it very easy to be self-critical and self-defeating. i have been that way most of my life. i think i’m a good person, when i view myself by my own standards i’m more likely to like myself — i just find it really easy to think negatively about myself when i’m considering how other people view me. or if not negative, then that they don’t think about me at all…that i have no value or meaning to most people around me…i’m just some odd background noise. and that tends to overwhelm my generally okay perception of myself by my own standards. someone recently mentioned to me (i think it was ash) that germans come across as stoic, but they are really very sensitive. i feel that way a lot. (i’m only “german” by heritage, but i still feel some level of kinship to aspects of the culture/people.) i think most people think i’m stoic, or stuck up, or don’t give a fsck about most things, but underneath i’m sensitive and emotional and scared of hurt and rejection. another friend, when talking to other people about me, used to trot out the old cliche: “still waters run the deepest”. i wouldn’t deny that.
anyway, after work i was still feeling pretty down, so i contacted jack and sue to see if one of them would be interested in having supper with me. sue was at work, but jack and the kids were “in town” so they met me at a chick-fil-a. jack and i talked while the kids played. talking doesn’t really ever seem to resolve anything for me, but it at least gets the stuff out of my head for awhile, and i have to explain myself to someone else. that forces me to collect my thoughts and see if they seem reasonable or not, and it also allows me to get someone else’s perspective.
i know some of my extremely heightened feelings of melancholy and depression could easily be related to my being sick, my sleep patterns being totally jacked, and post-vacation blues. (i don’t take long vacations much…well, almost never.) but i know even beyond the current intensity levels, these are all still issues that i wrestle with normally.
i went to bed around 1am and my sinuses were feeling some better. unfortunately, i woke up at 5am this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. but at least my sinuses don’t feel as messed up now as they had been.
shifting gears, while i was in taiwan i bid on and won an album on ebay. i got it in the mail a few days after i got back.

• limited edition (976/1000) – adult. (ersatz audio)

it’s a 7″ vinyl with a fold-out poster piece of photographic art done by nicola (one half of the band). catalog ez017, released 2002. at this point, other than the decampment series (3 very limited edition 7″ vinyl pieces each with a full-color glossy photo by nicola, collectively telling a story, and not cheap), i’m missing about 4 or so of their releases, pretty much all of which are out of print and somewhat difficult to come across.
i also called edelbrock this last week on thursday or friday about the warranty work on my engine. they, of course, had dropped the ball again and not followed up with me at all during the two weeks i was out of the country, or the week before or after. they didn’t really even mention anything about not following up, they just said they couldn’t use the place they had originally planned on using. so they called around and found some other place, and i talked to the guy on friday, so i’m supposed to be driving the car up there (he’s way up north/nw on 249) soon to have him look at it and get an estimate for edelbrock. hopefully all that will go well.

i mention the potts often in my blog, because they are close friends and i hang out with them quite a bit. it’s not often i get to create links to something about them in the news. (okay, maybe ever, actually.)
jackson (the oldest son, 10 years old), a budding photographer — following in the footsteps of his old man — did an art piece for a stations of the cross installation for the xnihilo gallery (which is directly connected to the ecclesia church). they really got more than they bargained for, and the image has actually created some controversy. the houston chronicle ran an article about it today (monday): friction over young photography whiz’s art, plus the gallery has set up a blog about it: station 7 by jackson potts (the blog version has a bigger image, plus jackson’s explanation of why he chose what he did and what things represent)
i’ve discussed it with several friends and a number of them seemed unfavorable toward the content and intent, but i really think it has value as an artistic piece. plus it brings up a number of big questions about any number of things, which is really one aspect of what “good” art can/should do. instead of rewriting things, i’ll just repost my comment i left on the article on the chronicle website (which i doubt will win me many new friends, since as is my wont i tend to piss off everyone at some point while meandering longwindedly through all of the points i want to make…but i’m used to that, so oh well):
———-< my chron.com comment >———-
phliKtid wrote:
(disclaimers first: i am a close friend of the potts family, and have been good friends since before jackson was born. that said, i do not unilaterally support people just because they are my friends. believe me, my friends will vouch for that.)
outside of whether this is an appropriate piece for the specific church and their purpose and desires (disclaimer: i have no love loss for ecclesia, but it’s their bag), i want to talk about this as an art piece depicting a station of the cross in and of itself (which is what many people here seem to be commenting on, not its value specifically to the church’s context.)
the fact is, it makes a lot of sense as a modernization of the most basic theme of that station of the cross: an authority figure beating an innocent as a crowd passively watches. the process of logic is completely there. stripped of that context, as some people here seem to be doing (perhaps they have no clue what the stations of the cross are, or what that means for the purpose of the art pieces), it’s a cop beating a child. they don’t see the art, or the metaphors, or the symbolism — they see their own issues and fears and prejudices in the piece, and they knee-jerk react before they have time to process it in context it was created.
of course, isn’t that sort of one of the purposes of art? to confront and provoke thought? (although i do believe confrontational/offensive art without a good purpose is not good art. and i don’t think all art is all-ages appropriate.) otherwise it’s just thomas kincaid paintings and precious moments figures — cute pablum fluff saying nothing but “how cute/pretty/precious”. to me that doesn’t seem exactly accurate for pieces that are supposed to blatantly and specifically represent the story of the beating and crucifixion of christ.
perhaps for those people taking affront, jackson could take a picture of a naked, beaten, adult jewish man with a crown of thorns smiling, holding hands, and dancing with an easter bunny in a roman military uniform. that way they could have the station aspect *and* the happiness that is the true point of lent and easter. plus they could keep the event at a detached cultural reference point instead of having to confront it in a context that their minds can immediately relate to. (seriously…have these people seen some of the traditional stations of the crosses pieces)?
yeah, i’m kidding, i know they’d be pissed about that too. but it sort of makes a counterpoint to their reaction to this piece. how should one go about creating a modern interpretation of the stations of the cross? creating post-modern abstract “meditative” pieces is neato and all, but the stations of the cross sort of have a cultural and historical weight to them that really should be considered to, it seems to me.
to be honest though, the picture is somewhat inaccurately modernized. a roman guard would have been more of a military figure than a cop. and the romans were an outsider occupying the middle east. so, really, the figure doing the beating should have been in a u.s. military outfit — and the innocent christ figure should have been jewish / middle eastern. yes, that would have gone over *much* better. 🙂
better to just take a pic of black shadows and some red paint splatter and maybe a piece of some gold roman-ish looking helmet, tack on some lacquered text…maybe bible passages, or burned/manipulated pics of the traditional station of the cross imagery to the point they can’t really be made out, throw in some grape leaves and/or vines (for the symbolism), and the topper…a barely visible shadowy face of a haggard, bearded, homeless-looking man who looks sad which you can only see if you really look. oh, and a dove feather. perfecto! now let’s all meditate on christ being beaten by a military authority while a crowd watched. can’t you almost imagine the scene? (heh.)

my sleep monday lasted from around 5pm until 7am tuesday (14 hours). i wouldn’t say it was quality sleep. i got up and took a shower, checked my email and such, then decided i’d lay down again. so around 10am i started sleeping again.
i got up around 5pm and met the potts at an ihop at washington and i-10. this was the first time i’d driven a vehicle in two weeks. it felt a bit odd. (i took my pickup.) the potts were going because ihop was giving away a free short stack of pancakes to anyone that day. the martin-webbers were there too (i’d met the daughters at the potts before, but never the parents), as was eric hartley. later, tiffany showed up (who used to work for jack, and i hadn’t seen in some time), and then later her fiancee showed up (whom i’d never met). all in all, there were about 8 adults at the table and as many kids (from just two families). i was the only one who got something to eat outside of the requisite short stack. my bill was as much as the rest of the table’s. and i left double my bill to help with a good tip. while we were there, it snowed outside for about 30 seconds. never saw it again.
jack came back with me in my pickup to my house. i picked up my laptop and did a final sync of my phone and camera to the laptop, then we went over to the potts house. i hung out there until around midnight or 1am, then came home. i got to bed around 2am.
wednesday i got up and went to work. part of the reason i’d gotten depressed in taiwan the second week was because i’d read an email from work detailing the various promotions and new job responsibilities. several times over the last couple of years i’ve tried to break into some new areas that seem interesting to me, but it’s never really happened. i’ve watched a lot of people go around me over the years. sometimes it doesn’t bother me, but for some time now i’ve felt like my position is becoming more and more marginalized. i knew about some of the goings on before i got the email, but not all of them. so that was upsetting. enough that i felt like just emailing them to tell them i was quitting when i got back to the u.s. but very rarely do i ever behave rashly, so i gave myself time to think about it and talk to people. anyway, i got to work and talked to a manager who is a friend and he didn’t seem to think things were like i saw them. i took his advice under consideration, but i didn’t buy it. i left work, then went and did the radio show. it was nice to see the guys and do the show again. i came home and went to bed. i had felt tired in the day, but i felt like things were normalizing as far as sleepiness and sleep pattern.
thursday at work there was a wrinkle thrown into the promotions/opportunities situation. our main aix guy, who had just gotten promoted from senior to lead, gave his two weeks’ notice. this left a huge hole in the aix world, and based on other moves that had just occurred i wondered if they would ask me about trying to get into that area. and they did. aix is big business, in demand, and usually good money. the problem is i don’t really care to do it. they trained all us unix guys in aix (a flavor of unix) a year or two ago, and i saw enough to feel i wasn’t too interested. i intentionally avoided getting involved in most aix-based projects. i prefer the feel and culture of linux and the bsds, or even mac os, to the aix mentality/culture. and if i take this, i’ll have to throw myself in head first. i was ready to immerse myself in exchange, ad, ocs, ms pki. i even stated interest at work a couple of times. but nothing ever came of it. now, instead, i’ve got this opportunity i’m not excited about. plus, i feel like if i don’t take it, i’ll be viewed as not stepping up and taking charge and grabbing opportunity and i’ll be even further marginalized at work. it all kind of sucks.
before i left work, chris came by to let me know they were going to be cooking out and hanging out that evening at his complex for his birthday. i planned to go, but when i got home i sat down at my computer to check mail and such and i fell asleep. at some point i groggily moved to my bed. around 8:30pm jack called and i woke up enough to have a half-coherent conversation with him. after that it was fitful sleep until about 4am, when i woke up and wasn’t as tired. i got up around 7am and shaved and took a shower. then around 8:30am i headed to work.
friday after work i took a nap for a few hours, then sue came by and we went to coffee groundz. they closed down at midnight, so we left. i got to bed around 1am. i was awake for awhile on and off around noon and early afternoon, but then i was asleep again and stayed that way until around 10am today. i basically lost saturday. so i’m beginning to think it’s not just jet lag. my sinuses have been messed up, so i probably have a sinus infection. i’m wondering if i’m having allergy problems after coming back, perhaps from my cat. she’s been desperate for attention since i got back and every time i’m in bed she sleeps close to my head. or maybe i’ve relapsed my mono from being too run-down and tired for too long. i don’t know. i just know i feel a serious lack of energy all the time.
also, during my extended sleep saturday and saturday night and sunday morning i had a series of bad dreams, one of them continuing through at least two points where i woke up for awhile. not scary dreams necessarily, just sad, depressing, and/or frightening. one involved a divorced friend and their kids, the multi-part one involved me and julia (the hrc). i don’t really need my mind creating new scenarios to make me angry, freaked out, upset, and sad — i’ve had plenty of those in real life over that stuff already, thanks. i’d kind of mostly dealt with the emotional fallout from the hrc (although i still miss her fairly often), but now all that stuff i had mostly resolved and/or put away has spilled out and is active in my head again.
man, some sleep would feel good right now. *sigh*
“all i ever wanted was a good job,
and some busfare,
and a rocket,
and a bomb”
–mike knott “rocket and a bomb”

monday morning ash and i got up and took a cab to the bus terminal. it was 90nt and i paid with a 1000nt note, so i gave ash the 410nt and kept the 500nt bill for the airport. i figured he could use it, and i appreciated him dealing with me and spending money he normally wouldn’t while i was around. plus i didn’t have to worry about him losing face over it since he’s american. plus it was a fairly small amount. (unbeknown to him, i’d also slipped 2000nt under the food i’d left behind at his place.) we said our goodbyes and i got on the bus. then the driver asked me which terminal i was going to and i had no idea. fortunately, they had a list (in chinese), so when i told him continental/jla he was able to look it up and tell me. although i’m sure i could have figured it out at the airport. the drive took awhile, and i took a few pictures and some video of people driving into work in taipei (i.e., lots of scooters). i said goodbye to the betel nut (bin-lang) shops and the betel nut beauties/girls (bin-lang xi-shis) working them as we passed. i got to the airport.
i got checked in and had some time, so i bought a mango smoothie and some snack chips (fiery garlic doritos, seafood platter wavy lays, and…hot pepper giant squid? it didn’t have much in english on it other than the ingredient list) for a co-worker who’d asked for some weird chips. if i’d planned ahead, i could have gotten some other odder stuff i saw at the 7-11’s, but i never bought much of anything to bring back. i didn’t buy stuff for anyone else, or myself. i put the chips in my carry-on backpack and headed to my terminal.
i still had 30 minutes or so to wait, and the airport had free wifi, so i used the wifi with my iphone to call my parents via the skype app. thus the call cost me 0.02/min. not bad. (i used both google voice and skype during my trip — google voice for free text messages, and both google voice and skype for cheap calls to lines in the u.s. they were pretty nice to have, considering calls, data, and texting would have been insanely expensive via my regular phone. of course, i could only use them where i had wi-fi access to the net.)
the plane from taipei to narita was a 747-400, i think. i got a seat on 2nd deck, which i’d never flown on before. the 2nd deck was 3 seats on each side, separated by one aisle. i ended up being the only person on my side of the row. i set near the aisle. i was listening to the music channels they had available, when they played a song i’d heard played at least a couple of times in the clubs in taipei. i’m guessing it is or was popular in the u.s., but i’d never heard it before. anyway, the song will now be forever tied to clubs in taipei that westerners frequent. it’s “hotel room service” by miami-based latin rapper/artist pitbull. (i would say the song is probably nsfw…but i guess that depends on where you work 🙂 i started watching the bruce willis film surrogates, but the flight ended in the middle of the movie.
i got off at narita, went through a security check, took a bus to another terminal, got my boarding pass for continental, then proceeded to wait for a couple of hours. narita didn’t have free wi-fi. i heard on the paging system that the u.s. had enacted tighter security checks for flights into the u.s. when i went to get on the plane, i had to have my shoes and bag inspected and got wand-checked for metal. i think i had been put in the extra inspection line. this flight was on another 777, and it was pretty full. i had an aisle seat near the very back of the plane, and i saw no open seats. i watched whip it (drew barrymore film about flat-track roller derby), part of bullitt, listened to most of a best of album by the cure, watched another episode of “big bang theory”…and i don’t recall what else. i was hoping to sleep on the flight, but i didn’t sleep much. it was a d4mn long flight.
we made it into iah about 1:30pm local time. (fun with traveling: i left taipei at 10am mon feb 22nd, left narita at 5:30pm mon feb 22nd, and got into houston at 1:30pm mon feb 22nd.) i walked until i hit customs. the guy asked me why i’d gone to taiwan, what i did, what i was declaring, then welcomed me back to the u.s. it was kind of funny because he had that kind of serious/badass attitude that tends to go with being a cop or military or some kind of authority figure. i picked up my checked bag (which made it fine again) and headed outside.
i called jack, and he and the kids were already in the airport. it took them awhile to figure out where i was, but they eventually got to me and picked me up. they took me to chuy’s. after not much sleep for the last 24 hours and a stomach full of mexican food (cheese enchiladas, to be specific), i decided to head home for a nap. i set my alarm for 1.5 hours, since i wanted to try and readjust my sleep patterns to here. that didn’t work. i evidently hit the snooze button every 9 minutes for a couple of hours, and around 8:45pm i gave up and turned it off because i decided i could sleep through the night.

today ash and i got up and walked for awhile, eventually ending up at the ximending market. (at least i think that’s the one we went to.) this is i guess a trendy market for the younger people. there were lots of people there, and lots of shops. there were also a lot of street vendors, selling food, trinkets, purses, clothes, etc. and some street artists. i had a small corndog, as well as part of an onion pancake ash got. they were both good. we walked around this area for awhile. then we hopped on the mrt (subway) and took it to taipei 101.
once we got to taipei 101, we decided to eat lunch in the foot court area that is in the mall that is attached to the taipei 101 building. my legs and feet were already hurting quite a bit from all the walking i’d done the last few days, but i ended up walking around the foot court trying to find what i wanted to eat. i went to a dumpling place, but they had mostly seafood stuff. so i ended up going somewhere else and getting fried wontons. i also went to another shop and got a preztel dog and a lemonade to drink. the fried wontons were good. the preztel dog was fair. while we were eating i started talking about the trip thus far, and my original desires to consider this a trial toward a possible long-term move to some other country like russia. i had already been feeling down about things but was trying to do some stuff for my last day, but the conversation really bummed me out. at the end of it, i didn’t really care about doing anything. i mean anything. at all. period. so i told ash i didn’t want to go to the observation deck any more, and we could go have a beer or go home or whatever, as i didn’t care.
ash was a bit confused by my change in plans i guess, and didn’t really understand why. he also wanted to go to the observation deck. i told him he could go if he wanted, i didn’t care. so we ended up going to gordon biersch (where tim and i had gone) and had a beer. i had another winter bock.
the previous week ash and i had gone by a dr. marten’s store that was in the taipei 101 area when we ate at kiki’s, and i had decided it’d be kind of cool to buy some docs in taipei. the reason being, they last a number of years, so when i was wearing them i could say “i got these in taiwan.” so we walked over to the doc marten’s store. we went through a park, where they were preparing for the lantern festival. people were putting up lighted floats and such. i also learned at this point the new chinese year is the year of the tiger.
(aside: i later learned while the years cycle every 12 years (zodiac-ish), the aspect also changes, and this year just happens to be the year of…the white tiger! (you recall what i told you that was slang for, right?) well, that certainly makes me more excited about this coming year.)
well, we went to the store and i looked around and i couldn’t really find anything i was interested in. i guess i could have bought a generic pair of docs, but my heart wasn’t in it and i only wanted to buy a pair if they really stood out to me. and nothing did. so i left the store empty-handed.
we took the mrt (subway) back to ash’s place, then we went to meet esther for supper. she’d wanted to take us out for supper, so we went to a place that was sort of japanese-ish. the menu didn’t have much i was too excited about, but esther got a bunch of different stuff (trying to meet some of my taste interests). some of it ended up being pretty good. she was very friendly and nice, and also paid for the meal. at the end, she gave me a gift box that her family’s japanese-style bakery makes. i think they’re mostly used for wedding gifts or something. we thanked her and headed back to ash’s.
once there, i talked with ash a few hours about various things, including how i was feeling and why as far as being depressed. we kind of had to cut the conversation short because we were both tired, plus we had to get up early to get me to the bus for the airport the next morning.

today tim, ash, and i went back to the first place i ate at here: formosa chang. this time i got something i’m more familiar with: rice with shredded pork, and some corn soup. (despite ash not liking it, corn soup is good. it’s kind of like corn chowder.) we then got on the rail to head to the national museum. we could take the mrt (subway) part of the way, but we had to take a bus the last part. while we were waiting, i ended up talking to a guy and his wife or girlfriend who are korean and were headed to the museum also.
at the museum, we stopped at a small restaurant and i had a cappuccino and tiramisu. it wasn’t really exactly what i normally have as tiramisu, but it was okay. we went into the museum and ash went off on his own to see stuff about ancient chinese writing (that’s part of what he’s specializing in at school). tim and i walked around together and looked at three floors of stuff: neolithic era stuff, ceramics, bronze, furniture, more modern work, etc. about the only stuff we skipped was some of the writing/calligraphy and treaty maps and such. there is some pretty cool stuff in the museum. i guess it is supposed to be one of the most impressive collections in the world.
we left the museum and went back to the mrt line. we ate at a dumpling place, which was very good. while there, we started having a theology discussion. i don’t have those conversations much anymore it feels like. tim is a former hardline lutheran, who is contemplating orthodoxy. ash is a fairly entrenched modern non-denominational type. i’m somewhere in the middle…or maybe off to the left or right…or maybe i just bounce around everywhere. we got back to the apartment and tim finished packing and we saw him off to the bus line. (his flight was sunday morning, but he wanted to sleep in a hotel near the airport so it’d be easier for him to get there on time.)
when we left the bus line, we were walking down a street and suddenly someone say “heeeeeyyyy!” turns out it was the korean couple. how bizarre is it that we would randomly run into each other in a completely different part of the city a number of hours later? weird. we talked to them a bit, then headed off to 45’s.
it was at this point that i finally started to completely lose it. there have been a few times here that i’ve been somewhat depressed about things, but i finally started to hit a wall. ash and i started to talk about it some, but then candy showed up so i didn’t really want to be depressed for everyone. i drank enough white russians that i got fuzzy though. candy left before we did. i had been planning on buying her some chocolate and/or wine to thank her for cooking for me, so ash and i went by a 24 hour grocery store and i bought some taiwanese red wine and a bottle of yellowtail cabernet sauvignon and a small toblerone. we were going to take it by her place (since it’s on the way walking), but in my drunkish fuzziness i decided i didn’t want to see anyone or deal with anything, i just wanted to go home and use the bathroom and go to sleep. so i kept walking even though ash was saying my name as i was walking away, and i got to ash’s place and used the bathroom and went to bed.
when it feels like there is no point in living, it’s nice to go to sleep.

we got up and were in the hotel until around noon. we left our bags with the hotel lobby staff and walked around some. we ended up stopping at a place and i had fried rice. it was good. we then walked over to a starbucks to figure out what we were doing. once again, it was cold and wet. most of the stuff to do in taichung was outdoors, and as a group we were generally tired and cold and unsure what to do. so after some discussion we decided to head back to taipei. i wanted to try and find a battery for my phone though, so we walked a couple of blocks and went into three small stores before we found one that had my battery. i bought it, then we headed back to the hotel. we got our bags and took a taxi to the high speed rail station. we got on the rail and headed to taipei. the only very exciting bit was i took the opportunity to use the bathroom, meaning i was pissing at ~160mph on the ground. not everyone can say that.
we got back to taipei and candy went her separate way and tim and ash and i headed back to ash’s apartment. later tim and ash wanted to go to a mexican food place, so we ended up going to tequila sunrise. the rice was pretty crappy but the beans were okay. i got the flauta and enchilada, and a strawberry margarita. the margarita had tequila in it, but the flavor overall wasn’t quite right. the flauta was pan-fried instead of deep-fried, but it was pretty good. except for tamales, i figure an enchilada is probably one of the easier items to mess up. this was a pretty good approximation. tim and ash kept telling me not to be too harsh, because they never get to have mexican food so it’s not fair for me to compare this to authentic tex-mex in their presence. a female friend of ash’s named esther met us at tequila sunrise after we’d finished eating, so ash and i split a fried ice cream. the ice cream was strawberry, but the deep-fried corn-flake-based shell seemed right.
from tequila sunrise we took a taxi to 45’s. except for tim, who was cold and tired and didn’t feel like being out anymore — he went back to the apartment. ash and esther and i hung out at 45’s, and esther gave ash/me a japanese desert her family makes (i guess they own a shop that makes this kind of stuff). it’s like a flattened ball of rice paste with flour or powdered sugar on the outside, then on the inside is a gooey, pasty filling made of something and green tea powder or something. it was okay, but i couldn’t get myself to eat the whole thing. esther left, then we were joined by a black american guy named devon that ash knows. he’s also pretty familiar with the underbelly of taiwan. we talked for some time, then we all headed over to roxy99. this time i didn’t really end up talking to anyone, and overall it wasn’t too fun or interesting. when we left we walked by some place where there were three slavic looking young people, two girls and a guy, and the guy — who looked like the russian boxer in the rocky movie — kept clocking me. every time i looked over at him he was staring laser beams into me. not sure what that was about. we headed home.

the plan for today was to take the train down to taichung, which is a city maybe 150km or so from taipei. feeling we probably needed to get an earlier start on the day, ash came over and brought taiwanese breakfast. which was sort of an omelette-ish sort of thing with something sort of like maybe spinach or something in the egg, as well as maybe rice paste…i don’t know. it was good.
we packed our stuff for a one or two day stay, then went by and picked up a friend of ash’s named candy (who is the girl who cooked supper the first full day i was here). we all went on the mrt (subway) to taipei main station, where we then bought tickets to take the high speed rail to taichung. you can take a normal train or the high speed, the high speed is about twice the price but half the time (and has only assigned seating). i’d never been on a high speed rail before. in addition to riding high speed rail, it also gave me a chance to see some of the land outside of taipei. the area the train travelled was somewhat hilly/mountainous, and also some tributaries/rivers with water running toward the ocean (we were traveling on the west side of the island).
we got to taichung and were picked up by two guys in a toyota suv. the driver is a friend of a classmate of ash’s, and is currently a student of ash as ash is teaching him english. they drove us to a place to eat in taichung. i had some meat that’s wrapped in a thick ball of rice paste and boiled, then when you order it they drop it in a bowl and cut an “x” in the top. i also had some rice noodle soup with meat. i didn’t eat the stuffed intestines. but i did eat some sausage, which has a casing made of intestinal lining. from there they took us by the hotel we’d be staying at. we checked it out and said “ok”. there were always several employees in the lobby of the hotel, and every time you walked in or our or whatever, they’d bow over and over and say “you good?” and “thanks” (in mandarin). it seemed more like japanese style to me than what i’d seen in taiwan. then they took us to get some bubble tea. usually i’ll get fruit smoothie or milk tea with bubbles (tapioca “pearls”), but this time they also had me add…it was a kind of clear jelly without much taste in long thick rope shape. i described them as clear snot worms. they were ok, but it’s kind of weird sucking on the straw and suddenly sucking something that keeps coming through the straw for longer than you’re used to. we went by a place where you get a traditional food item of taichung, which is the sun cake. but they were sold out.
as we were moving on, ash talked to them about beetle nut and me, so they stopped at a beetle nut shop. we were outside taipei, so the beetle nut shops had beetle nut girls. in other words, there was a very scantily clad girl in each beetle nut shop selling the beetle nut. we bought some and ash’s friend showed me how to eat it: you bite the top of the nut off and spit it out, then you pop the rest in your mouth and chew. the first time i spit it was a sickly yellow, sort of like bird vomit. the second time i spit it was a dark red, which is what it continued to be. within a minute or two it felt warm, and it wasn’t too long later i got lightheaded. before we drove off i spit it out, but i continued to have a buzz from it for awhile.
we drove to a mall and went to some place whose name i forget. it was a microbrewery with a mixture of typical bar/pub food and asian food. i had a large dunkel beer, plus i had some fries and a german sausage variety platter. when it came time to pay, they put the bill near me, so i put money to pay it all in and handed it to ash. well, one of the guys taking us around told the waitress in taiwanese (which none of us whities spoke, ash knowing a little) to leave our money and pay with theirs. when i figured out the ruse, i told ash that they shouldn’t have to, because i wanted to thank them for picking us up and driving us around. continuing my explanation because it wasn’t accepted, i told ash this was a type of service you’d pay for, and ash immediately gave me the smack down. you see, in most asian culture everything is about “face” — gaining face, losing face, etc. (it’s similar to concepts of honor in european cultures i guess, but a lot of that in the u.s. has become less pervasive than it used to be…remember duels?) so there are all kinds of expectations and ways of interacting and such. since ash was his teacher, and you are supposed to have ultimate respect for your teacher, he wanted to pay. ash said the rest of us weren’t his teacher, but he said they were friends of his teacher. plus if i paid he/they were losing face, and if he/they paid they were gaining face. anyway, being polite is different. so i felt stupid and like i’d done something wrong and there was no way i could talk my way out of it, even though i didn’t know what i was doing at the time.
we left there and wandering around a bit in the mall, then we headed over to a bar called “amuse”. they dropped us off there and left. you could order drinks individually, or you could pay 500nt and drink as many as you wanted off a set list. we did that. the drinks were okay, but they were pretty weak. while we were there a band showed up and started playing all kinds of songs, some asian and a lot of u.s. hits. they played modern pop stuff as well as older hits (like nirvana, lady gaga, etc.). we stayed there a few hours, then we got a cab back to the hotel.
the hotel was okay, but it didn’t have any heat. and as i said before, it’s been cold and raining all the time. it was down there too. and the hotel had no heat. the bed was hard and cold, but the comforter was good and the bed warmed up pretty fast. ash had decided he wanted something to eat, so he’d gone to walk to a 7-11 while tim and i went up to the hotel room. once tim and i got into bed and gotten warm, neither of us really wanted to get out to let ash in. so i said we could play “rock, paper, scissors” for it. tim immediately went to sleep. so i watched tv to wait for ash. and i waited. and waited. and waited. eventually i started falling asleep, then ash came in. (he just explained to me the desk lady let him in.) turns out he’d gotten lost for awhile.