sounds familiar Musing on the present. Reminiscing about the past. Posturing for the future.

hammertime

Taiwan. Again. I'll write today's entry in the style of "5th grade essay." Intro paragraph over.

Of Taiwanese Hookers and Hundred-Dollar Grape Juice
An Essay by Dave

One day when I was in Taiwan last night, me and some buds (poor grammar intentional) just wanted to go have a good time. We went to some food, where I ate a fish head, tail, and even eyeballs! After the meal, all my friends and I decided we should to go the big street market to look for some things to buy. I like the big street market very much, mostly the booths that sell boiled animal entrails skewered on sticks because they are funny and gross to me. I try not to laugh, because this is this man's profession to sell this gross stuff! Anyway, we get many good jokes from the big street market, and are always giggling at the stinky smells that are all over in the air and on the people. Probably the most funny are the shirts by GIOGIO ARAMNI and shoes by PUWA.

After shopping at the market, I ended up buying a cheap ballcap and some of my favorite cologne (probably fake like everything here). Now my friends and I are getting tired of the crowded stinky marketplace, and the hot weather is making us sweat. Someone says, "Let's go to where they have karaoke!" and the rest of the crew says, "Yes!" We climb in taxis and ask for a good place for "singing, drinks, and pretty girls." The first place we go is guarded by several yucky men with small headphones in their ears. The yucky men are very happy to see us and all jump up to lead us upstairs. Soon, we hear that this kind of special karaoke is very expensive, almost $70USD per hour, per person. I bet the reason for this is that it's not really karaoke at all, it's mostly $70 for the sex that you can have with women while you karaoke. Since we are not really looking for sex right now, we move along trying to find a more better karaoke. Surprise! We are in the part of town where everything comes with sex! Everywhere we go there are more yucky men grabbing arms and saying "very happy ending!!" I think we should go to a new place, so we get in another taxi.

This time we make it more clear, "karaoke, drinks, girls, and no sex." "Hmmm..." thinks the Taiwanese man.. "... no sex?" It seems maybe this kind of karaoke doesn't exist. But our driver was very cool and young with a ponytail and emo glasses, so he suggests a better place. It's a bar, says the driver, where girls can come sit and talk to you while your drink beer - and guess what, no sex! We think, "This sounds great!" and start going. We arrive at the intersection of a couple small alleys, and there are bars everywhere! All the bars have some women standing outside saying things like, "Come have beer here, only $100NT and we are the best!" The first bar we go to is very normal, with many pretty girls who flirt with us from behind the bar. We stay for a beer and then decide maybe we should look around some more of the bars. I think this is where the idea went wrong, because we should have stayed at the normal bar.

As we walk down the street, some not-pretty girl runs up to me to bring me to her bar (the best bar, of course). She has some teeth, and some are not in the right places where teeth should be. Eventually, we do go into Megan's bar (Megan is her name, she told me already). As soon as we sit down, we realize this is a special bar. For each of us guys, one girl comes and sits next to us. Our beer comes to the table, and the girls start to talk to us about all kinds of boring things! Soon, they ask for a drink - and we decide we will buy them a round. Megan, my girl, the one with the teeth, leaves and brings back three very small silver cups with some dark red wine or other liquor for the three girls. We also have Candy who is from Vietnam and is actually very pretty, and some other girl who I think has the same dentist as my girl Megan - none. To be funny, we call my girl, Megan, "Hammertime" because it looks like someone took a hammer to her grill. Don't worry, it's OK because she has no idea what this means - thankfully words like "gap-toothed" and "death-breath" aren't understood by our new friends.

Soon, the girls finish their thimbles of drink, and ask for another round. We agree, since by now we are having a great time calling them names to their smiling faces and pretending to be different people who are very important inventors from Australia and the Himalayas, again, this is all OK because they barely know what we are saying so who's going to tell them we don't travel the world in yachts? One time, a smart friend of mine finally asks the girls how much their tiny drinks are making us spend. His girl, who has a ugly-tie with my girl, says that we are paying $400NT for each little drink. My smart friend maths-out that this means these few drops of stuff are almost $15USD each! Wow!, we wonder what this surely strong liquor is, and ask if we can taste it to find out why it's so good. Now guess what? The secret comes out! It's only grape juice! The girls drink tiny drinks of grape juice for $15USD each and pretend to get drunk while we really do get drunk. What a good business idea! By the time we left we were into that bar for $5000NT, over one-hundred bucks...

By now all the formalities of this social visit are over, and our troop of ladies are paying very good attention to us by holding our hands, and touching our shoulders, chest, and even thighs! I keep having to move around and stand up for no reason to avoid Hammertime's wandering hands and dragon-breath. To me, it's past time to go. Soon these women ask what room we are in at the hotel, we give room numbers of our other friends who decided not to come out with us, because we think that would be a hilarious joke on them. The whores give us their cellphone numbers just in case we want to call them while we're in town, we can call for anything - but mostly sex. By now we're glad we all have fake names and live in remote locations across the world. Since we are all three co-presidents of our big company, we decide we better leave and get some rest before making all our "inventions" tomorrow.

This is where the essay ends, but don't worry one day I will write about the after-party. For now thought, it's almost time for my turn up in front of these customers - presenting to a bunch of people who probably catch only about 60% of what I'm saying. No worries, no name-calling here.

Dave out.

I shaved for you

Taiwan. Again. Sitting here in the offices of one of our customers while another member of our traveling marketing troop presents up front. Marketing always gets to talk before engineering, it's just the way it goes. Figured it's as good a time as any to get a quick entry in. I was planning to write last night but I had my great "catch-up" sleep. You know, that night where you sleep like a corpse after traveling to a 15hr+ timezone. So far though, it's been good. Yummy food, decent beer, and ridicu-hot Florida-esque weather. Yay Taiwan.

For the flight over here, I thought I'd try something a little different this time. Usually, I just try and sleep as much as possible, and get through the 10hr trip with only a few crazy dreams and some bedhead. This time, I took a little while to load my laptop with both a classic NES emulator and a N64 emulator, along with a bunch of ROMs. I configured a cheap Wal Mart controller for the emulators, and boom - access to hundreds of old-school Nintendo games for the flight. Just like 5th grade again. Anyway, I started playing Zelda64 for the Nintendo64, which came out when I was college. Holy crap, I am now hopelessly addicted to this game. I played for nearly six hours on the plane and another couple in the hotel that night. And I find myself finding excuses to head up to the room for an hour and get some Zelda in. Hopefully I won't beat it before I leave here so I can have something to play on the flight back.

The more I come to Taiwan, the more comfortable I am here. I guess it just comes with a sense of familiarity, you know, getting used to you surroundings and the way things work. On Saturday we took the public transit (MRT) downtown to poke around, and it was no problem having done it before - even for a couple of white boys who don't speak the language. We headed down to Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world, and did some shopping. I hate shopping, but I love people-watching, especially in a foreign country, so it was OK. We've got a really good group of engineers and marketing brothers out here this time, so going out is always enjoyable no matter where we go.

Changing subjects, I was thinking before I left about what it's going to be like when the backyard is finally done. I mean done like done, done like I can lay out a hammock and look around the backyard while relaxed - instead of spotting a million little projects that still need to be done. That backyard has consumed my spare time like nothing else before, I think of it all the time. It's been a monumental project that I've given a lot of sweat and muscle too, and I'll kind of be sad to see it go. Although, it will be nice to have the option of yardwork-less weekends and evenings again.

The "desert island" beard I was growing is gone. That's right, in preparation for my trip, I mowed my face before leaving the other night after coming in from the yard. I had been planning to keep the shaggy unkempt mess as a vie for some respect while in Taiwan. See, at one point while my Taiwanese customers were here in the states, and I had neglected my shaving as I so often do, they told me I looked "much more handsome" with the "beard." So, I started growing a "desert island" beard - a beard which is purposely unmanaged and allowed to grow wild. Only problem is, my beard tends to want to "connect" to my chest hair, which isn't all that flattering. That and, my beard isn't really that conventional, I don't grow a single hair in the "soul patch" or moustache areas - smooth as a baby's butt. Which makes for a beard that's pretty unbalanced in favor of the neck, making my lack of chin all the more pronounced. Owell, it's gone now.

As much as I can, I'm going to try and write each day while I'm here. It's kinda hard, what with work each day and being addicted to Zelda64 in my free time, but y'know, I'm dedicated here folks. I need to keep my three or four readers abreast on what's going. Until tomorrow, or whatever, Dave out.