Category: Personal

Whaaaaaaaaaat? Well today, Mama took us to the acupuncturist, with Mike saying he wanted to get a check up on his back and other things. This acupuncturist we visited last time, and he cured Jessica’s bad arm (tweaked nerve) with two needles. He’s so popular that about 50 people were jammed into his waiting room to see him. You better not cherish your privacy too much when going to the Taiwanese doctor here: people are lining up while you’re being examined, or are laying down nearby with needles sticking out of them. Plus, if you like the smell of ganja–and who doesn’t?–the moxibustion herbs will make you feel right at home. In this way, I got to hear all about Mike’s bad back and tweaked leg nerve, and he got to hear all about my…well, I won’t tell you, but those that have stayed over my house know what’s wrong with me. My problems didn’t require needles this time–I was kinda disappointed–and so I was prescribed some herbs instead. Mike got 15 minutes of needles in his gluteous and then, when we went to go see him, a bit of a deep tissue butt massage. Excuse me! I said and immediately started talking about football.
Mama took us to the Chia-yi City God Temple, which is nearly 200 years old (young for a temple here). Mama was had prayed for us before Mike and I came, now we had to return the favor and shake insense at the various dieties inside the blackened temple. Pantheism is pretty cool when there’s little houses of the holy to go visit, full of sculptures and no preachers to bother you.
I went to fill my prescription for my lenses downtown and brought with me the one my eye doctor wrote out in June. But when the assistant in the glasses store gave me a sample of it, the lenses were totally wrong, as if I was a farsighted person, not one with a stigmatism. It didn’t make sense; surely the doctor’s writing wasn’t that bad?
No matter, because the guy in the shop took me in the back and reexamined my eyes. When I looked in the machine to check my eyes, I could see a small photo of a hot air balloon above a road. It gave me something to stare at, I guess. The glasses would be ready by 8 p.m. Cost: $15. Blow me, Lenscrafters.
We also checked out Chia-yi’s best department store, Idee. Well, it’s best because it has a decent bookstore up on floor 10: Eslite. They usually have a good CD listening booth, and indeed I wound up with three CDs of Norwegian triphop: Slowpho’s Hotel Sleep, Frost’s Melodica, and Subgud’s Xpander. I also picked up a copy of The Economist as I’m wont when I’m here–strange if you know me well.
Before the sun went down, we drove out to Baba’s farm, which he’s been keeping for several years. This season he’s had a bumper crop of cherry tomatoes, corn, Chinese string beans, and eggplant, and we went to help pick some for dinner. On the way, Baba stopped the van at one of the many roadside betelnut stands, so we could ogle the barely dressed girls who sell them here. Our girl was a bit homely with died blonde hair, but made up for it by wearing little else except a slip and a purple g-string. But then again, a closer inspection found scabby knees and something like white ointment smeared on her foot. Er…
Tonight we made a quick trip over to “Giraffe supermarket” so called because it is lorded over by a large giraffe head at the top of a thick light pole. We bought food and drink for the trip. I was tempted, I must say, by the asparagus juice I saw in the drinks section.
Then a quick trip to the night market at the back of the Carrefour supermarket, Chia-yi’s biggest. I had a cup of fresh watermelon juice for about 30 cents. At 10:30 tonight, the sisters from Taipei (Emi, Berry, and Mei Mei) came in by train, all set for our big family excursion to the East end of the island. My blogging may stop for a few days depending on Internet availability. Who knows. If I have no luck, I’ll be back in 3. Keep well, everyone!

That’s Chia as in “chai tea” not as in “Chia pet.” As in the city where Jessica’s parents are and where she grew up.
Before that, Mike and I set out to pick up breakfast from the corner shop while the ladies got ready. We got, um, a bit lost, and when we did find the place, they were closing after the breakfast rush (other places stay open all day).
We returned to the nearby shopping area we went yesterday so Mike could pick up some glasses he’d ordered. Unlike in the States, prescription lenses come free with the frames on purchase. I finally wound up buying some frames of my own, months after snapping mine in half and freaking people out when they didn’t recognize me. So soon I’ll be updating the website logo. However, I decided to wait on the lenses, as we won’t be in Taipei for long.
Emi took us on a long busride across the city, passing the Taipei 101 skyscraper, currently the tallest building in the world…I think. I thought we were going to stop, but instead we continued to this area on the other side of the city…so the women could continue shopping in a wholesale clothes district. Blimey. Mike and I opted to go sit in a park and chat.
We became a bit late, rushed back via a scary taxi ride, then shlepped our cases downstairs to another taxi and rushed over to the bus station to catch a coach down to Chia-yi (one way ticket, luxury seats, 3 hour trip: $8). On the way down we were played two videos against our will: “Kill Me Again” (Selma Blair saved from suicide by handsome bankrobber) and “The Weight of Water” (Katherine Bigelow’s little-seen time-jumping tale which hopes that the tale of murder in a fishing village a hundered years ago can compete for our attention with shots of an oily Liz Hurley in a white bikini).
So we turned up around 7:30 and Baba (Dad) picked us up in his mini-van. Currently, Baba tends a family farm as something of a hobby, and Mama volunteers at the hospital down the road. She is also learning sign language to lead karaoke for the deaf (yes, I know that sounds strange. When she practices it looks like a cross between a hula dance and performance art.) Mama did teach me one non-karaoke phrase: “Chen Shui-bien [the president] is an idiot.”
Their house is off of one of the main roads in the city, not far from any number of tiny stalls serving food, boba tea, and more. They’re also right next to a park, so after we ate dinner, all of us headed over there and strolled around the perimeter several times (Mama’s routine.)
(While writing this, I just got bitten by a bloody huge mosquito. Though I was able to kill it, leaving a mess of bug guts and my precious blood on my finger, I still got bit, and now it hurts like a sumbitch. Time to bust out the Chinese red oil medicine.)
Even at around 9:30 the park is bustling (could you imagine this in the States?) A group of ladies are in one paved section practicing ballroom dancing for health. In another a similar large group is doing yoga. All this is organized by the city. Dotting the perimeter are groups of old men playing Chinese chess. Sure, some look a bit, er, drunk, but hey, they’re not shooting smack! By one corner, somebody has set up a pickup truck-based stall and is doing a good business selling coffee. When Starbucks opened stores here some years ago, coffee was mostly a) instant or b) already expensive, served in fancy shops desperately trying to look French. Now it has hit the “stall” level of familiarity. Cool.

Sleeping from nine until 8 cured my jet lag, I believe. For some reason it took ages for everybody to get ready and get out. We kept making tentative trips outside–to get breakfast, to go to the bank around the corner–until finally getting out proper by 11. Mike and I were laden with the unanswerable question–where do you want to go? How should we know? I did mention the brand new Ferris Wheel they’ve built along the river here, but we were told that was such a good idea that wouldn’t we prefer to go shopping a bit instead?
It seemed that the sisters were thinking of only one thing today: the obligatory trip northeast to Keelung (Taiwan’s major port city) and a visit to Dwaiyi (Auntie), Mama’s older sister. When Dwaiyi tagged along with Mama when she visited the states last January, Dwaiyi spent most of the time sleeping. We have a good photo album of the numerous and scenic places she slept.
Being Chinese, this was all about obligations. And also being Chinese, this was all about grudging obligations, things you have to do, not even want or like to do. Nobody really wanted to go, and so Lynn and Jessica started strategizing. Could we get out of there in 90 minutes (after a 30 minute trainride from Taipei)? Somebody was under the belief that we could just get them to accept tea and gift giving. (We were going up with two big bags of gifts from the States, as the Chinese tradition goes.)
On the way up, I checked out the surrounding architecture and decided that a)post-war modernism hasn’t done any favors to Taiwan and b) bathroom tile isn’t exactly best used as an exterior.
Back to Keelung. Anyway, we arrived at the apartment and soon Lynn busted in with her idea–a drink of tea and a (through gritted teeth) friendly chat and we’d be off. But Auntie and her son and daughter-in-law weren’t having it. Dinner was in the works, or at least threatened. Lynn tried to put her foot down. No, we had to leave soon. Auntie played her trump card and called her sister, and Mama got on the phone to give Lynn some hassle. It was a saving-face face off! At one point, the duaghter-in-law tried to move my bag into the guest bedroom to force me to stay, but I clutched it to my chest.
Jessica now stepped in as good cop to Lynn’s bad. Why not go out to eat nearby–that way we can eat and get away early enough. And so it was. The hostage situation ended a little into hour 2 and we went out to eat. You’ll see these photos soon enough but the highlight was a hotpot of blood sausage and intestines in a spicy broth that smelled like marinara sauce. Actually, the sauce was pretty good, and I don’t bring it up to say that Chinese food is all freaky.
We took the train home, sitting across from two drunk old men in various stages of leprosy.
Next up was another night market, one of the biggest, at Shulin. Here we met up with Jessica’s younger brother (and youngest of the six siblings) Peter, or as he now insists we call him when he’s in Taipei, Ken. Last time I was here he was doing his required two years in the army. Now he’s out and selling jewelry wholesale and wearing nice suits. I was full, so I didn’t grab much to eat at the market, but we did end the evening in a coffee shop nearby.
I fell right asleep when we got home and apparently woke the entire house up with my snoring.

We spent our first real day in Taipei like we usually do: all getting our hair done by Emi, who has her own salon near Chungzhang Middle School (a stop on the MRT line). Lynn and Jessica got slightly new styles, Mike got a trim (his hair’s shot to start with) and I got my finally cut down to a nice short style. Emi has a way of making the two or three things that are possible to do with my hair look brand new.
We had our breakfast there too, brought from one of the thousands of stalls in the streets here: dan-bing with some hot milk tea on the side.
After the hair business which took up the whole morning, lunch was jiro-fan (shredded chicken over rice) from a place across the street. Weather changed during the day until it was very rainy and windy. Yet it was still slightly humid. To the Taiwanese, this is winter, so these people who live in 90 degree/90 percent humidity during the summer months, are wrapped up in thick coats. Mike and I are content with a t-shirt during the day and a light coat at night.
We made our way to Hsimen, one of the large shopping areas, and I have to say I’m kinda disappointed that, two years after my last visit, DVD hasn’t really took off as a format here. I don’t know the exact reasons, but VCD takes up quite a lot of shelf space. Apart from the usual Hollywood rubbish, there’s very little Chinese cinema available in anything other than dodgy looking cheapo versions. That is, except for the Shaw Brothers releases, and I have no idea where to start with those. More on this later–maybe I’m looking in the wrong area.
We met up later with all the sisters and were taken to a Thai restaurant called Patara. This was as empty as customers as one of those restaurants they visit on the “Blind Date” TV show, although it was decorated nicely. Food was so-so, and I’m sure it cost a lot as anything in Taiwan that doesn’t open onto the street does.
I was so exhausted with jet lag, that once we got back home I passed out around 9.
Among many dreams that I had was one in which I saw Ernest Borgnine, and debated getting his autograph.
Photos when I get the chance to find a “quiet time” to upload them.

Berry brings the stinky tofu
Originally uploaded by mills70.

The first thing I wanted to eat in Taiwan: stinky tofu.

Photos later folks, my cables are packed away in a case. Flight over was marked by heavy turbulence all the way through my viewing of Will Ferrel’s “Anchorman” film, and from the drunk Vietnamese man sitting behind me who randomly burst into song every 30 mins. At one point he was singing Guantanamera.
We (me, the missus, Jessica’s sister Lynn, and her hubbie Mike) are currently staying in the Taipei apartment of their other three sisters: Emi (hair designer), Berry (graphic designer), and Mei Mei (clothes designer). All designers, eh? Don’t ask me what my wife designs…
We just returned from our first trip outside (at 10 p.m. on a Sunday), which was to the Tong-Hua night market where I had some stinky tofu and some boba tea. Ahh yeah. You don’t see this business in most of America on a Sunday night.
Posters for The Incredibles are everywhere (as are their McDonalds tie-in), and I just saw my first poster for Stephen Chow’s latest film, “Kung Fu Hustle.” This isn’t out yet, I wonder if it’ll be out before we leave. Because I ain’t waiting two bloody years again for Mirahax to release a “version”.

So anyway, I’ve been transferring these old tapes of mine from back when I was a kid, recorded with my partner in crime at the time, Gabe. I’m surprised and happy to say that these tapes are still in pretty good condition, at least listenable. I have about 35 or so and hold them very dear to me, as you might expect.
But last night I flipped over a tape and found that one side was completely blank. It somehow had been erased…when? I couldn’t figure it out. The tabs were popped out to protect against that sort of thing, so this must have happened years ago. But how? If I had done it, I surely would have remembered my complete stupidity and chastised myself accordingly. But I didn’t or haven’t.
What can I say? I just lost another 30 minutes of my childhood. Weep! This makes me nervous to go through the rest of the tapes. What other surprises lay in store?

I just noticed my friend Jesse Bellinger has a site up on the net. He used to work with me at the Independent, and now he’s got a little archive of his writing up. Here’s a sample of his work which just so happens to feature an illustration by moi that I’d completely forgotten about. Now all the man needs is a blog.

That standup chap William sent me a Gmail invite and now I’m seriously into it. After years of using the naff naff naff Yahoo mail interface, the Gmail system offers many answer-to-my-prayers features. The interface is simple and graphics-free, like the main Google web site. Yes, it does have text ads running down the right-hand side, but it took me several days to even notice them. And after I did notice them, I went back to ignoring them. My second favorite feature is its ability to remember frequently used addresses just like a regular email app. finally, it can collapse and expand back-and-forth exchanges, allowing for a continual thread on one screen.
I still have six invitations left. If any reader of this blog would like one, please drop me a line.

Jessica had the day free, so we made an impromptu trip to Los Angeles. First stop, IKEA, to buy a mattress for the new Lillehammer bed we got a few weeks ago. The bed replaced this fall-apart-voodoo-kenny futon bed we’ve been sleeping on for ages, the joints of which had fallen out. Sleeping on this old bed sounded like the creaky deck of the Flying Dutchman. So first I bought the frame, and for a stopgap measure, we had been using the old futon mattress until we came across top mattresses online. Now that at last is gone and our bed is dead comfortable. Like the Poang chair, just lying on it for a few seconds sucks the energy out of you.
Next stop: the Chinese mall off of Del Mar down in San Gabriel. Here we saw many ladies wearing these ridiculous sun-visors, called the Sunee, or something like that. Imagine a plastic sun visor, six inches long, and with the ability to tilt downward and cover the face. Hey, ladies, excuse me. This doesn’t look cool, it looks like you are wearing a welder’s mask. I tried to get a photo while we were there, but no luck. It seems like when it comes to rich Chinese women, irony and taste are X, the unknown value.
We didn’t come to see masks, we came to eat Dim Sum, which we did, at Sam Woo’s Seafood, a regular hangout of ours when we’re in the area.
Then a trip to Pasadena and the Norton Simon Museum. The latest exhibit was Rajput Paintings from the Ramesh and Urmil Kapoor Collection, amazing Indian paintings of scenes from epic poems like the Bhagavatapurana. All the paintings were watercolors and about the size of a 8×10 piece of paper. But what detail! You really needed a magnifying glass to appreciate it all. Neither the exhibition walls, nor the accompanying book (from what I could see) explained how these were created. The brushes must have been like those modelers use, two hairs thick. We were disappointed to see that, though the museum store sold to-scale digital prints of some of these, the quality was dreadful.
Also on display was some prints by Ynez Johnston, which the curator wanted to juxtapose with the Rajput paintings nextdoor. Listen to this malarkey: “Johnston’s unique style is characterized by recurring figures and shapes derived from both Eastern and Western cultures and ancient and modern times. As with miniature Rajput paintings, illuminated manuscripts and Chinese scrolls, Johnston’s art is intended for intimate viewing and affords an endless voyage of discovery.”
Load of old blunt pencil scrawls to me. Talk about suffering by comparison.
Back in Santa Barbara, we went into Montecito and ate at the Italian restaurant VaiVai. Good pizza. In a rare celebrity sighting for me, Michael Richards (“Seinfeld”‘s Kramer) sat at the table next to us along with who I took to be his daughter.