good people are everywhere
Man. Nothing like a trip across the world to breathe some life back into these near-dead typing fingers. I've been working on a blog surplus this entire week, constantly shifting content from one entry to a buffered rough of the next day's because they are too long. It's good for me because it gives me some confidence in my writing again, and I guess it's good for anyone (there are people, right?) who reads this because you have more junk to waste your time on.
Sharaun left the US this morning, and last night before she left she was IMing me at work every 10 seconds to ask a question about what she should bring. Yes, Sharaun, they have shampoo in Taiwan, and it's not even made out of nuts or berries. And yes, they have shaving cream, the island is not overrun with unshorn sasquatches (sasquai?). Oh, and yes, they have irons here - I mean it's true that, up until last year, they would simply make a weekly pilgrimage to the dragon's cave and leave their clothes overnight so his fiery breath would smooth out all the wrinkles (which, incidentally, are caused by small evil clothes-wrinkling spirits and can be warded off with a concoction of mud, grass, and dung applied to the scrotum each evening). After this discussion had tailspun out of control, I decided to spice it up a bit:
Good one, right?
Last night I met some guy in the bar. He was from New York, and he spoke fluent, and excellent, Mandarin. I was impressed at the way he conversed with the bar staff. He was a large, Andre-the-Giant-ish looking man, with a goofy face and out-of-place looking black moustache that matched his curly and tousled black hair. He had a deep voice which I pegged as tobacco-induced. He was talking to Tracy and she was all smiles, but when she turned her back to him she screwed up her face in disgust as a signal to me that she wasn't that pleased with Mr. New York-can-speak-Mandarin. Later on the topic turned, as if often does here for some reason, to that of "fun" in Taipei. Of course, being like 90% of the Westerners here, Mr. NYCSM treats this city as his own sexual playground. He actually said to me, without so much as a flinch or hint of hesitation, that he considers these Taiwanese women to be, "... nothing but shit, but great for a fuck." Yeah.
If you know me, you know I can take just about anything with a smile... staying polite above all, while keeping my opinions to myself. I'm generally agreeable, and would rather listen to your crap and politely excuse myself in hopes of never seeing you again than invite drama and uncomfortable situations by openly disagreeing or challenging you. It's much easier for me to write you off as a buffoon who I'll never have the displeasure of meeting again than try and engage you with how my views differ from yours. But... all I could do in reaction to that was sit there stone-faced and say, "Damn, Mr. NYCSM. That's a little rough." He laughed. Having already noticed his wedding ring, shamelessly displayed, I got a bit confrontational (for me) and said, "So, you got a family back home in New York?" Mr. NYCSM replied, "Who knows. I've been trying to work up the nerve to call my wife and wish her a happy Mother's Day." Now, I guess that could mean a lot of things, but I took it to mean that he's forsaken his family to the point where he doesn't know if they'll be there when he gets back, or perhaps their relationship is bad enough that saying they're "waiting for him" is just an unknown.
Ten minutes of conversation and I hated this man. He's been coming to Asia for twenty-five years and "... knows where to find trouble in every city you can think of." I could almost see the slime oozing from his skin, smell the foul scent of rotten. The guy was so deplorable to me, I nearly left. But in the end, I held my own and stayed at the bar. Mr. NYCSM seemed extremely jealous of the way I seemed to be friends with the bar staff, and talked about going out with them later on during the week. I mean, here he is, he can speak Chinese, he can talk to them, he's been coming here for a quarter-century, and this fat be-sideburned young whippersnapper is having better luck making friends with the staff than he is. It was my small victory over his disgustingness.
As he finished his last flute of champagne (no kidding), he stood up and walked over to me. "What are you doing tonight," he asked. "Oh, tonight? I actually have plans with some friends." "I hope they're good plans," he said, insinuating. "Yeah, yeah they are," I replied. He went on, "I was thinking you and I could go find some trouble tonight." "Sorry, can't make it," I said, trying to sound as uninterested as possible. "Later this week then," he continued, "We'll do something special; go halvsies." "I'll let you know," I say, "What room are you in? I'll try and give you a call," anything to get him to just leave. Mr. NYCSM slips me his room number, and leaves me with a meaty handshake from his huge paw. As soon as he leaves, Tracy comes to me and says, "He is your friend?" "No," I reply, "I hate him." "Good," she says, "He is very dirty." And so, we agree.
Good people are everywhere I suppose, and so are bad people... it just helps to have an eye for the good ones. I couldn't live like that... it's just not me. I'm just a big pussy through and through.
Time's up. See ya.
the luxuries i’m afforded
If someone ever tells you that the food in Taiwan is no good, I want you to punch them flat on the mouth for me, OK? Because, honestly folks, the food in Taiwan is freakin' awesome. Take your hand, form it into a fist, pull back your arm, and clock 'em on the jaw while saying, "I strongly disagree with you."
Before I go any further, sometimes you just have to share a song. This is one of those songs. I can think of at least three short films set to this amazingly trippy number. That fast crossfading on the b-b-b-bah course... oh man.
I'm pretty sure I crashed the hotel's wireless router for my floor on Saturday night. I was simultaneously trying to download the latest O.C. and "preview" some new music - and the link just went down. It was acting flaky for about an hour after that, and I couldn't get a solid connection again until Sunday morning. This is the first time I've brought my normal "bandwidth habits" on the road with me, so to speak. I usually just hold off on my downloading while away - but this trip was long, and Ben suggested I just bring GrabIt! with me and be able to enjoy new tunes as if I were at home. I thought it was a brilliant idea. I then also went one step further and started BTing some US TV shows... so I'm confident I'll be giving the hotel a nice consistent bandwidth spike for these 11 days.
One of my worst I'm-in-Taiwan fears has come true - I've come down with a cold while here. Now, it's nothing horrendous, more of the annoying head-clod type. But it's enough give me reason to sleep for all but 6 hours of my Saturday. I don't think, as I did earlier, that this is just a reaction to my cigarette binge; I rather think that this bug was waiting in the wings... being suppressed by my normally indomitable immune system, which it caught weakened and sleeping after the cigarettes. So I walked over to the local drugstore (I found one that sells Western medicine) and picked up some Panadol. Now, my Latin's a little rusty, but I know that pana means "all" or maybe "every," and I think dol means "pain" or maybe "sickness." So, using my SAT root-word reasoning skills, I decided this was the medicine for me. Turns out I was right, there's an insert in the package that has some English - and the pills are an all-cure cold/flu type thing with some vitamin C to boot. I started taking them, maybe that's what made me so sleepy yesterday. I'm hoping they can knock this thing out over the weekend (of which there remains only today, but I'm still optimistic).
I'll tell you something about me, I like to whistle. You can ask me wife, I whistle all the time. Whereas most people sing along to songs while they drive, I whistle along. Apparently, Chinese legend says that whistling after midnight (or maybe just at night, I could have misunderstood) is perceived to be "calling ghosts." So, every time one of my local buddies catches me whistling happily after the sun's gone down - they shush me and say, "ghosts!" I just thought that was cool, so I'd mention it... it doesn't really round out a paragraph well, but what can I do?
Another cool thing that's happened to me on this trip? OK: somehow, I befriended the night-shift housekeeping manager at the hotel. He's a round man in this mid-thirties, and looks consistently beat down. Whenever I see him, he's always dressed for work, which, being cleaning, means a scrubby tucked-in t-shirt, grungy pants, and some thick-soled work shoes. His hair is always damp from sweat and disheveled, and he has always, and I mean always, got a fat mushy mouthful of chewed up betel nut, his teeth and tongue stained dark red. He often stops by the bar after a couple hours on shift, always chewing betel nut, and orders two tall mugs of orange juice while he enjoys a cigarette.
One night, I was sitting at the bar as he made his usual appearance, and he started talking to Tracy and she introduced me to him. The bar staff call him, and all the other maintenance workers, A-Pe, a word in Chinese which means eldest uncle on your father's side, but they use it without the actual blood-relation (I think we all have an "uncle" or "aunt" that's really just a parents' friend, right?) Anyway, he pulled out his little bag of betel nut to refresh the spent wad, and jokingly offered me one. Tracy then mentioned to him, in Taiwanese, that I had in fact tried betel nut on one of my visits here. This made A-Pe perk up in disbelief, and then he really pushed the betel nut on me, I suppose thinking, "I'll see if this white boy is what he says he is." So, reluctantly, and because I was the center of attention, I took the nut, asked for a cup to spit in, bit off the nut's "cap" and spit it into the cup, and tossed the whole leaf-wrapped thing into my mouth with a loud crunch.
A-Pe was dumbfounded. He stared at me in disbelief, red-tainted mouth hanging open. He spoke to Tracy, "He's like a professional!" Tracy translated, because A-Pe speaks not a word of English, but I laughed out loud as I mashed up the green thing. Now, I'm convinced that, after trying it multiple times, betel nut does absolutely nothing. Yes, it's true that minutes after biting into it you feel a wave of heat wash over your body, but from my experience it only lasts less than a minute. I have felt none of it's "keep you awake" properties that the locals tout. Regardless, this simple act of sharing A-Pe's betel nut has made us fast friends. Now every night A-Pe offers me betel nut. I've only taken him up once more after that first time, mostly because I felt bad for always turning him down - but he knows I've been feeling sick. He offers me cigarettes, which I've also been turning down, and he asks me questions through Tracy. He's a very, very, nice man... and I have the feeling that a story on his life would be ultimate interesting. He's very jovial, always smiling and laughing, and very physical, always putting his arm around you or slapping you on the back. I've come to really enjoy "talking" to him. His favorite questions for me seem to center around how many Taiwan beers it takes to get me drunk - he has this theory that he can out-drink me.
One night, A-Pe walked with me downstairs as I went to meet someone in the lobby, both of us chewing betel nut from the bag in his pocket. At one point, he turned and pointed to me, saying "you," then pointing to himself and saying nothing, then pointing to the bar where we'd just come from and saying "Tracy," then raising an imaginary bottle to his mouth and tilting his head back to gulp down the imaginary beer within it. I got the meaning immediately: A-Pe wanted to take me drinking (and of course bring along Tracy so that we could converse). I gladly accepted, in my terrible Chinese, with "hen hao, mei wenti," or "very good, no problem." So, sometime this week, when A-Pe's got a night off, I'm going to have a drinking contest with him. Don't think for one moment that I don't realize the awesome bloggable opportunity this presents. A drinking contest with a working-class Taiwanese man that I can't communicate with? I plan to take pictures and turn it into a small novella.
It's opportunities like that which make me realize how lucky I am to have a job that enables me to experience this kind of things. How beautifully unusual, and worthy of fond memories, is a chance like that? Maybe some would feel otherwise, but just being able to have such an otherworldly experience makes me glad to be here. I guess my college debt is good for something.
After watching the last two O.C.s I downloaded, I'm realizing that that dang show is nearly ahead of me. I mean, in the last one, they not only played the new Cribs, but they played a track off the Of Montreal album that I got not four days ago. I so want a job soundtracking that show.
Is this as big a deal as it sounds to me? Guess some folks think so.
Good... afternoon... or some shit... I can't figure this time zone thing out for the life of me.
three our fathers
I don't know how I didn't manage to post on Wednesday, I've been writing more than enough for a post-a-day - I'm just royally confused by the timezone thing and set Thursday's entry up to post that day instead of Wednesday. Whatever.
This morning I woke up feeling incrementally crappier than the past couple post-cigarette-binge days (for a weakling like me, five smokes constitutes a "binge"). My throat was sore and I had so much crap in my head and chest. So, before I hopped a cab into work I stopped in the 7-11 to look for some cold medicine. I was hoping for some Theraflu or Cold-Eze - but it seems they don't really sell medicines in the convenience stores here. I didn't even see Tylenol or Rolaids or anything with active ingredients. I did, however, see this:
It may be hard to see in that small picture, but it's a yellow box with a lot of Chinese writing. What caught my eye, however, were the little pictures in the bottom-right. The first one shows a man who has his hands up to his face, like he's tired or maybe even holding his sore throat. The second one actually shows a cigarette. Now, to me, this looked like a Chinese miracle cure for cigarette-sickness. On the bottom of the box they show two little pill capsules containing what looks like a brown powder. The price, 75NT, and the thought of being able to write about the stuff, made me buy it. So, when I got to work, I asked my Mandarin-speaking buddies what I had just bought. They said, "If you are working all day and tired, or weak from smoking, you take this for health." Bingo! It really is the Chinese miracle cure for cigarettes! I asked if they could tell exactly what the stuff in the pills was, to which they replied, "bean jelly." Great. The miracle cure for cigarettes is bean jelly. The Taiwanese people love them some beans. So, I think I wasted 75NT on some powdered bean junk that won't make me feel a lick better. I popped one anyway though, y'know, just in case.
I am unbearably tired, to the point of having a little dull ache somewhere behind my eyes - my mind's way of telling me to get some rest I guess. I don't know about other guys, but for some reason when I'm in one of these hopelessly sleepy states, where my eyes are heavy and I'm barely able to focus, I tend to get an erection. Yeah, you heard me - I get my plump on when I'm nodding off. This is particularly unfortunate if I happen to be having a hard time staying awake during a customer meeting - and it's doubly bad if I'm dozing in the time before I have to get up and speak. It's like a flashback to the middle-school days of uninvited boners during class and being asked to come do something on the chalkboard (I never actually experienced that, but if TV sitcoms are accurate depictions of pubescent teenage life I'm probably the only one). Once again, though, the internet has come to my rescue by making me feel less a freak than I initially thought. Doing some research, I found this: "A man's penis becomes erect ("hard") in response to... deep relaxation...." Well I'll be damned, I'm normal
I often experience changing emotions when traveling, especially when I’m away from Sharaun for extended periods of time. There’s always that initial excitement from traveling and being somewhere different, with different things to do and see. And while I’ve always got a general “awareness” that I’m away from my wife, I sometimes feel it more acutely at random times while away. Like today, riding in a warm van to one of the customer visits, I just started feeling guilty for being away. Guilty for going out and doing things without her, and guilty for going out and doing those things with girls that aren’t her. That’s the crux of it really… spending time with the girls that I’ve befriended over here. If I do a little role reversal, and imagine her away on business in some foreign country and going out with some guyfriend I’d never met, I think it would indeed get under my skin. Not that there’s a lack of trust, and not that there’s a reason for there to be one, but love and jealousy are funny things. I don’t know quite where I’m going with this. I think I maybe just wanted to put down in writing my realization that one’s consideration for one’s significant other’s feelings should increase proportionally to one’s removal from that significant other’s presence. If you’re far away and free to do what you will, imagination is all that’s left for the one you left behind…
Wow. I did a really poor job trying to say what I was trying to say. But that’s OK, because I’m done with confessional and feel no better for it; I’ll just be glad when my wife gets here.
I'm telling you right now, you will hate this new album that I love. You really will. Oh man, I can just imagine everyone who hears this going, "Dude, what the hell is this?" But I gotta tell you, I really like it. I've enjoyed A Silver Mt. Zion's records before... they put a unique twist on the standard style of music I for some reason call "post apocalyptic." I really, really, don't know where that term came from - maybe Ben, maybe Pitchfork, but it fits well for the kind of music. Anyway, this is discord and minimalism at it's greatest, simply wonderful. Evil sounding at times, and just creepy at others... but also with a softer side. The songs are all just a bit uncomfortably too long, but in a good way. I can't explain it, but it's got a grating quality that makes it fun to listen to. Shut up. I know what I'm talking about. Shut up.
Off to enjoy my 1st weekend in Taiwan. Because I'm a day ahead of you. Jealous?
ni yo yan ma?
Again, an entry that spans a couple of days and makes no excuses for non-linearity. It's Thursday now in Taipei, and it's oppressively hot and humid. I must admit though, I've been faring better than usual considering the heat. I think I've developed some kind of mental kung-fu that protects me from the heat. I still loathe going outdoors, but when I do go outside, and even if I'm walking around the city, I use my mind-control to keep my usually open-floodgate style sweating to a minimum.
I don't know why, but since coming to Taiwan this time I've been indulging in a cigarette or two each night. Sometimes this happens to me: I set the precedent one evening by breaking down a borrowing a smoke. Then, once people know I'm willing - they just won't stop offering. I've got to stop though, because I am just not made for smoking. I mean, it kills me. This morning I woke up with a dreadfully sore throat, and that kicked-in-the-chest feeling. I don't think it's the smoking itself, rather the havoc it wreaks on my sinuses. My sinuses are all allergy'd up anyway, and smoking just makes things much worse. I wake up all stuffed up and horking up gobs of brown goo... almost like a headcold, but completely brought about by the Marlboro man. I tried to make a stand last night, because I had already been feeling the cumulative effects of the past few days - but some Taiwanese cab driver insisted I pony up and take a fag. After that, he was passing out the betel nut and it was a regular working-class party in the taxi. Come to think of it, that guy was fun. But no, I'm done, you heard it from the source - no more cigarettes.
Every time I come to Taipei, I test the limits of what I dare to eat. I don't necessarily mean what actually comprises the meal, rather where the meal comes from. On this trip, I decided to finally throw caution to the wind and have some food from the street-vendors. The night markets are full of stainless-steel carts on wheels, behind which sweaty, unclean-looking men wearing A-frame t-shirts and smoking cigarettes that dangle dangerously long columns of ash as they stir their boiling pots or tend to hot skillets. The fare is varied: some kind of "tendon" soup, so-called "stinky" tofu, various parts of ducks, squids on sticks, sugared tomatoes with prawn-centers on a stick, you get the picture. Not all of it is unappealing though, I just like the shock value of mentioning only the oddball local stuff. Anyway, I've dined at a couple carts so far during this trip. I had duck wing, I had some kind of dessert made from shaved ice, gelatinous milk, and tapioca, and I returned to a donut vendor that Eric intro'd me to last time I was in town. I guess it's a pretty "safe" list, but the point is that I haven't gotten sick yet. There were a couple guys in the office today who opted to walk to McDonalds rather than join the rest of us folks for dumplings at the place down the road. Tsk tsk, where's your sense of adventure?
The past couple days I've been catching myself trying to imagine this city from Sharaun’s point of view. Watching the scooters swoop in and out of traffic like a reckless swarm of insects; noticing the familiar sights like 7-11, Circle-K, and Hooters; feeling alone because no one understands you and likewise you can't understand them. I've been desensitized to it, but it'll all be new for her. I don't know why I'm so excited about being able to see that, to watch her reaction to things. I guess it's partly because I feel like the all-knowing old hand at Taipei. Even tho I'm as green as any other American who's been to the city a few times and thinks they get it. I actually can't wait until she gets here, so much to show her.
I'm in the office now, got here around 8:30am. The 4am meeting bit went over much easier than I thought it would, it doesn't seem to have wrecked my sleeping - and I think I'm just about adjusted to the new timezone. I still want to sleep during the day, but that's on par with my normal level of lazy so I'm not too concerned. Somehow, I forgot to bring some headphones for the laptop, so I can't listen to any of the new stuff I've downloaded. Instead, I'm sitting here listening to tunes off my phone. Which is fine, really, but I think I’ll pick up a pair of headphones at the computer market. I have a hard time getting motivated to do day-to-day work when I'm here. I think it has something to do with being out of my element. Not sitting at my desk with my monitor and such. Working off the laptop screen with no external mouse and keyboard, I dunno. Just that feeling of not quite being where I usually am. I have to get totally absorbed in what I'm doing to be productive, which is sometimes hard to do.
Last night, as I tried to go back to sleep around 5am, I suddenly and randomly got an idea for what I want to do as my centerpiece prop this Halloween. For the last year I'd been thinking that I'd work on the witch again, making her actually fly around the yard this year - but I still see a lot of work in that one. The idea that came to me is relatively simple, which is good considering the success of the complicated witch implementation originally planned for last year, but I think the effect will be cool. I want to build a life-size coffin out of wood, stained to look nice and real, which will be propped up somewhere along the path to the front door. The lid will be able to open slightly, opening to show an eerie light and fog rolling out. While open, an arm will reach out toward the visitors, and then retreat back into the coffin, which will then close again. I think it'll be pretty easy: some wood, a couple windshield wiper motors, an el-cheapo fog machine from Wal Mart, some lights and the prop for the arm.
Finally, I see PF is hip to the Ponys. Good call PF, good call.
Until tomorrow, smoke-free.
broken sidewalks and exposed pipes
Some thoughts on Taiwan:
I like visiting this city. I like the people, the food, the atmosphere and the culture. And yes, I've said all that before. I don't, however, know if I could live here. When I make the mental shift and start thinking about this place as a primary residence rather than a temporary place, little things start popping out in my mind. The city is packed; packed with people, with scooters, with buildings... on and on. All of this stuff crammed into once place is kind of depressing to me. Some of the little things would also depress me I think. The fact that people wear masks over their mouth to protect them from the air pollution. The thin layer of grit and dirt that seems to coat things. I know, most of the things I'm complaining about are just "big city" characteristics. Taipei isn't really all that dirty, it's just that my uppity whitebread "planned community" back in California pays a lot more attention to public works. I'm not used to broken sidewalks or exposed pipes, I'm used to having things nice and neat with the ugly guts considerately hidden away from public eyes. These aren't big deals, mind you, just small little things that, overall, I think tend to bring me down over time. This could be due more to the fact that I'm a "country boy" at heart, and given a choice would live outside city walls every time.
One thing that I do like about Taiwan is the way these people embrace their technology. If something is cool and people will use it, they build or implement it and sell it in the open market. The whole invention-to-market seems much less restrictive than US. All the cellphones have every possible feature enabled, are completely unlocked to any one service provider, and you can buy SIM cards everywhere. It's much more intuitive, and it just works. If there's a demand for some computer gadget of questionable legality, for instance something that could be used to circumvent copyright law, producers don't blink while rushing said gadget to market for the public to decide. From my perspective, this willingness to meet consumers' needs acts to speed up the whole iterative process of technology advancement. Not being hindered by overly restrictive terms and conditions or attempts to cash in on current offerings by holding back new and useful items or services really lets the people judge what's good and what they will ultimately decide to pay for. This way, things that people actually perceive they want or need are naturally promoted over technology or services that people just plain don't give a crap about. Sure, maybe this model does give some more "working room" to those rogue users who plan to do illegal things with good and services, but I think the added usability and convenience it gives to your honest customer base is worth it.
I'll give you an example, when I bought my new Nokia phone in the US, it's locked to the Cingular network, and is feature-limited. No authorized Cingular stores sell any accessories for the phone, despite the fact it's been out in the states for quite some time now. You can't get cases, covers, headphones, etc. In Taiwan, the same Nokia phone can be bought at any of the millions of cellphone outlets, with no contract, completely unlocked, and with all the features originally built-in by Nokia turned on by default. Not only that, but there are any number of places, from streetside cart-vendors at the night market to more "official" feeling cellular retail outlets, where you can get all kinds of cool accessories for it. Your choices aren't limited to Nokia or Cingular branded expensive accessories, there are a myriad of Taiwan-made accessories which in many cases are not only cheaper but more fashionable or practical. I wish the US would start to handle technology like this, because when you compare the producer-consumer models, Taiwan is rabid for new stuff. In the states, I think we are less excited about new technology because it's often poorly supported, marketed, and overly restricted in the interest of the big corporate players. I think some Taiwan-style decentralization would be good for the US. I think people would eat up the idea of being able walk into any 7-11 and pick up a new SIM card for their mobile phone without signing a two year contract.
And that's it for now. I got up at 4am to call into an important meeting in the states, and I wanted wrap up this entry before going back to bed. I was able to download some of the US TV shows I'm missing while in Taiweezy, so I can keep up with what's going on with Ryan and Marissa (I know, I'm pathetic, but I still think it's cool that I can have an HDTV rip of a US show hours after it's broadcast). Also, I'm able to keep up with the latest in pirated MP3 goodness as well - so I'm not as entertainment-removed as I usually am (I made the right preparations since I knew this would be a longer trip). OK OK, I'm outta here. Back to sleep for a few hours before it's into the office.
i’m just here
When it comes to travel, I am a machine. I swoop down on airports like I own the places. I know which security line is usually the fastest, and I have my laptop out and pockets emptied as I saunter up. I have my passport out when they're gonna ask for it, I know which side of the plane seat 8H is on. I know where you can buy some chapstick if you're near gate 37 in the Tokyo airport. I know where the airline lounges are in each airport, and even got a familiar nod from the lady that run the international shuttle in San Fran. I think, when airport staff recognize you from your last trip - you've officially made earned the "seasoned" tag. When I fly business class, I now understand all the buttons and knobs on the seats. Which one scoots out my footrest, which one pops out the TV screen, where the blasted hidden tray table is, everything. I tuck my napkin in the neck of my shirt to eat my prosciutto and scallops. When I'm traveling, you can't fade me; you just can't fade me. And I guess that's a good thing, since I seem to be traveling a lot this year.
Anyway, if you hadn't guessed by the exposition - I'm again in Taiwan. I got in Sunday night in the middle of a rainstorm that made for a bumpy landing. I didn't sleep well my first night, had problems nodding off - which is unusual for me. Maybe my body will actually fight the time change this time, instead of sucking it up like it usually does. But anyway, it's the morning here and I'm feeling beat. I think I'm going to cut out of the office early to go catch up on some Zs. For the first week I'm here, I'm actually staying at my buddy Eric's apartment instead of the usual hotel. Don't get me wrong, I'm still at the hotel bar every night. It's just that I struck an agreement with work to where if I save the cost of Sharaun's plane ticket out in hotel stay (which adds up to one week), they'll pick up the cost of her flight. Since Eric was out of town, he and Suzy graciously offered me the keys to their place for that week. It's a little different than staying in the hotel, but it's still close to work and is definitely homey.
I'm sitting here listening to this new album by The National, a group I downloaded and mentioned last week - but really only first "listened" to on the plane out. For some reason, walking down the moving sidewalks in the Tokyo airport with this album in the background made it sound perfect, awesome, and now I'm totally hooked on it. The songs are deceptively quiet and subdued, but are all really emotional and in some cases haunting. Anyway, it's a spectacular-awesome album, really. I don't know why I didn't take to it more immediately... but I'm just glad I had the trip over to really sit through it and appreciate it. I've been listening to it non-stop since somewhere over the Atlantic... and am nearly ready to call it the hallmark album for this trip. It's good for that too, kinda has a "Lost in Translation" feel to it. Luckily, you don't have to take my word for it and can listen to the whole album online at this site. If you only plan to listen to one track, make it "Abel." If you listen to two, check out "Lit Up." But don't be fooled by me throwing you a couple up-tempo numbers... listen to "Karen" for a dose of the lighter (and more poignantly perverse) side of the album.
I don't know about you guys, but when I have to do a #2 in a public restroom - I use those little tissue-paper seat covers. I don't know how effective they really are, and by that I mean that I'm not entirely sure what sort of "diseases" can absorb through the hairy skin of my butt and infect my bloodstream. I mean, I can understand catching some kinda skin fungus or something... but it's not like my actual anus is touching the nasty seat, it's the relatively thick and protective skin on my butt. Anyway, I use the paper things, even though I'd bet that microscopic "bad guys" that can penetrate my butt-skin could also likely penetrate this thin paper shield. Well anyway, I didn't start writing this to talk about why I use the things; I wrote this to talk about a problem I have using the things. Here's my complaint: I go into the stall, pull (first up, then down) one of the papers off the wall above the toilet, carefully punch out the perforated center section, and finally place the cover over the seat with great attention to coverage maximization. Then, I turn around to undo the pants and assume the position - and the damn automatic-flush toilet senses my movement as someone having finished their business. The toilet flushes, and sucks my tissue-paper cover down with it. So I always find myself trying to turn in such a way that the bulk of my body stays in front of the little sensor eye. I turn really fast, turn really slow, even try to hold my hand in front of the sensor... but sometimes you just can't escape it. Automation is great, except when it automates away my germ-protection.
This cobbled-together thing is getting posted now, just so I can clear the buffer and start with a clean slate.
Recent Posts
- tomorrow will worry about itself
- walker!
- the wind is refreshing
- still sometimes call it “home”
- 10 without fanfare
Random Posts
Recent Comments
Kelli Melin: We just got back from two weeks at the ranch in MT and we long to figure...
cynerator: well? what happened? or is it still in there, kinda like that rock you...
Dave: This made me happy, and also sad. Favorite comment in a long time.
Aimee: You could take that RV trip as a teacher… and you’d even have two...
