HAHAHAHAHAHA

HA HA HA HA HA HAHAHAHAHA

HAPPY X-MOS EVERYONE

The only reason I remembered that today was Christmas Eve/Christmas was because my wife was writing in her planner and asked what was today's date.

I love being free from that bullshit!

It's 5:27 AM

I think the frogs are singing in response to the rainspout, which has been dripping at a steady rhythm onto something loud below it for the last five hours, at least.

It didn't wake me up. I've just been up all night perusing tealit.com for affordable motorcycles and private English tutoring jobs.
The tutoring job market is vast but each individual opportunity is a small number of hours per week. To make decent money at it, I'm going to have to find multiple pupils per week, which means I think I might need a scheduling book. Fortunately there's a bookstore near where S and M work that sells stacks of crap like that, adorned with whatever variation of adorable as suits your fancy.

The dogs are competing with the frogs now. They started howling, but they couldn't keep it together and it degraded into barking. The dogs are louder of course, but after about a minute they get tired and the frogs resume their contemplative chorus.

Notes

I'm going to try to remember some things I've been meaning to record here. I should keep a notebook handy or something.

Some days ago there was a very small gecko in the kitchen when we came home. It was cute and extraordinarily lethargic so I brought it up into the warmth of our room and gave it a very shallow saucer of water (because the space heater dries out our room really bad). Over the next half hour it became much more energetic, and wanted nothing more than to get away from me, binocular and immense as I am. So I put it and its water dish next to the window, figuring it could probably find its way outside through a crack or something.

MOS Burger serves a variety of "rice burgers" which does not mean that the meat has been replaced with some clever rice substitute. It means that the bun has been replaced with rice. Not rice-bread, or some kind of rice-starch cleverness. Just rice. Formed into a bun shape.
It wasn't...bad? But I'm not ordering it again.
MOS Burger lacks a spicy chicken sandwich, and this is not something I can tolerate for very long.

I bought a helmet today. I'll let it speak for itself when I upload some pictures of it later, via webcam.

Speaking of pictures, I was hoping to purchase someone's used camera for 900NT, but they haven't emailed me back, so maybe that's not happening. Not spending that money is nice, but I'm disappointed. I would enjoy playing with a nice film camera again.

I'm still looking for a scooter, although I'm now also looking for a motorcycle, because I keep seeing these neat-looking old bikes around. Mark told me most of them are so old, they probably have about the same horsepower or less than a modern scooter. The next day I woke up realizing that when he'd told me that, it just made me like them more.
Something about outmoded machinery appeals to me, I find it almost "cute".

I keep hearing some kind of bird outside that sounds like an old modem connecting. Some jungle creature is sitting on a mossy bough late at night, illuminated in the dark by a glowing screen. There's a hot beverage sitting next to the monitor. The animal browses lazily. It's probably checking its e-mail, but there's nothing interesting in it.

I'm always saying that the present time is the barely remembered past upon which the fictional foundations of cyberpunk dystopias are built. Like, if you pick up Neuromancer, and then look outside your window, you can see that we are living inside the fictional world of the book, except it'll be another twenty years before the story about those characters starts. Maybe not even. It could go in ten. Seven years minimum, because it takes time to build space stations, and then more time for them to fall into disrepair.
It's weird to think that Case and Molly are children, right now. Johnny Mnemonic is eight years old, no idea what's waiting for him when he grows up. Not that anyone does, but you know. Or maybe that's the point, I don't know. Whatever. I don't understand literary movements.
Though I realized why cyberpunk has fallen out of fashion in recent years. Why it's been replaced by steam-fantasy and dieselpunk. I realized it today on the bus.

The buses here have two flatscreens mounted inside, one at the front, and another closer to the back. They show nothing but advertisements, and they even have a little volume. The reason I don't find this irritating might have something to do with being immune to the ad thanks to the language barrier. But it's also because they amuse me.
They frequently start playing a new ad before the previous one has finished, interrupting it completely. Over half of the ads are obviously flash animations, even displaying "click here to start" and "replay?" buttons that you can't click because it's not interactive, and they're poorly animated. Today, the rear monitor was failing badly and it made me smile.
The picture would distort and bend sideways, like every other horizontal line of the image was moving in opposite directions. Then the vertical hold would slip and the image would ride up a couple times. The picture would black out entirely for a second and then barely reconnect through a haze of visual noise. All while mockingly echoed by the front monitor which was having no problems at all.
When I got off the bus I paid for my fare by passing my wallet near a brightly colored logo on a white plastic machine by the door as I disembarked.
And I thought, I just lived a proto-cyberpunk moment. I mean my whole life is currently that, wireless internet on a laptop in a rundown dojo up a mountain on the outskirts of Taipei. But specifically with the public transportation/flickering flatscreen ad/casual RFID transaction.

Anyway, that's why I think the cyberpunk genre no longer holds as broad a sway as it used to; it's no longer relevant as fiction because it's no longer fiction. That might be oversimplifying, but I'm sure everyone gets what I'm trying to say.

I 've been looking for some images of the kind of motorcycle I'm interested in on the side here, but I just found this instead.

I just spent an ungodly amount of time sitting in this awful metal folding chair (it has a pillow) looking for what the hell kind of motorcycle I keep seeing in town. I learned from a forum for expatriates in Taiwan that apparently some waiguoren think the locals associate certain motorcycles with Taiwanese farmers, a.k.a. hicks. Therefore if you, as a waiguoren, ride a motorcycle instead of a scooter, Taiwanese people will associate you with rubber boots and bad teeth.
This sounds to me like perpetuating stereotypes out of the white-guilt fear that someone from an alien culture might frown at you. If I were a local, I'd ride whatever the fuck I wanted, based on what appealed to me. Avoiding certain behaviors just because some simpleton might cast a sideways glance is... it's stupid! People will think whatever the fuck they think, and the only way people will learn not to be closed-minded is to drag their expectations into the light, kicking and screaming, and show them the light.

AND I'd like to note here that I haven't seen anyone who was really that judgmental. It's part of the culture here, different body language, different manners, different customs. People bitch and complain and tell you you're doing it wrong here. It doesn't mean shit, they're just making conversation. I really doubt if I ride a farmer motorcycle to work, that anyone at all would look at what I was riding as opposed to the waiguoren riding it.
Maybe, maybe someone might bring it up in a desperate attempt at making conversation, but to the point of actually disapproving? They'd have to give a shit first!

I hate it when stupid, gaijin, waiguoren, cracker-ass whities treat other people with any more or less respect than they would give to someone of their own phenotype.

Okay now I'm ranting. It's 8:50AM here. I can tell I'm tired when I cease grouping paragraphs loosely by topic, and also when my brain silently says to no one, "Dude we should totally get high."
Like...what? I don't even get high. And who am I talking to? It's not like I said it out loud, but it was obviously a comment aimed at a second party, and furthermore one which expects a response, but there's no one to respond, since it was only said silently inside my brain.

Oh good, it seemd like a mountain wind blew that stupid bee away. I kept thinking there was a mosquito buzzing in my ear, but it turned out there was a really persistent bee trying to get in my window like, over and over. God damn. I really should sleep.
Oh yeah, Mark found a near-dead Gecko in my room today, but it wasn't the same one. He gave it some water, like I did, but he said that made it move less. But I think that's just because it was cold water. It's probably fine now. Or dead. Which is like fine, but less...less somehow. I just fell asleep at the keyboard. I'm going to go crawl into bed.

Oh, by the way, here's an amusing bit of Chinese for those with a ...series of tubes...just ffell aslee again. Anyway:
The infamous "do not want" is
buyao
I think...? Good night. Morning. HA HA I'M IN THE FUTURE.

I keep remembering things and then forgetting them.

I know there's more I want to write down here, but I keep forgetting what it is.

The top floor is very cold. We've spent the last few days cruising commercial districts looking for an affordable suit for me to wear to work, because I think it would look super classy. Wode taitai got me a Snorlax pin that I think will look nice on the lapel.

Last night we missed the last old people bus up the mountain, and so all three of us piled onto Mark's scooter. That was...exciting is a word. I thought we might topple off the road into the jungle below several times. The night road was quite dark. So, spooky.

The cold up here is a problem. The two things which most drastically affect my wife's condition are food and cold. But the cold keeps us trapped in the one heatable room in the dojo, preventing us from foraging forth for MOS Burgers or other delicious sustenance. I'd call it a vicious cycle, but it's not a cycle, it's just one awful thing sort of reinforcing a second, also awful thing.

I think if I had my own scooter, it would open up my teaching opportunities to a broader geographical range.

Tonight we are imposing a family-wide hammertime. The family being M, S, and myself. Hammertime being nodistractionstimetogetcreativeupinthis tiems naow.

I do not believe S's recovery can begin in earnest until we have a warm, comforting place to retire to after the day's activities. This is the highestmost priority for me, because the cold gets inside, it penetrates defenses completely and chills her core rather than her skin. She needs a deep warmth, all-encompassing and persistent.

Learning how to be in another country.

I live up a mountain in a dilapidated, unheated dojo. This is probably exactly as awesome as it sounds to you, personally. If that sounds awful, then you would hate the constant insect invasion, faulty plumbing, pervasive layer of grime, and the pack of wild dogs barking at you as you walk down the road to the bus stop.
If you think it sounds way cool then you would probably love the view in the morning from the second-floor bathroom overlooking the mountain-jungle and the town below. And the dogs are pretty cute in a disgusting, mangy sort of way. We seem to be honorary pack members, as the alpha is fond of herding us on our way to the bus stop.

To get into town, I have to walk down a winding mountain highway with no sidewalk to wait for the old-people bus, the small 3. Below the dojo, there's a retirement community. Almost every time I head into town, I share the bus with a bunch of old Taiwanese women. This is most amusing when the bus driver drives as though he is escaping hell. Not because the old ladies react to the driver's chaos, but because they do not.

I've been here a little over a week, and I'm frustrated with how little Chinese I know. I can read essentialy none at all. I might be able to point out certain characters, like "red" and "month" but that's hardly reading. However, being illiterate isn't that much of a problem when you can just ask people relevant questions.
I can ask questions, but so far I've understood the answer one time out of four.

I've gotten good at saying "thank you" and "sorry."
xiexie, duibuqi (pinyin)
shie-shie, dwaybuch'i (phonetically)

Wo is me. But it's pronounced "wuh." Ni is you, ta is someone else. He, she, it.
-men is the suffix for plural people, and -de is for possession (like 's).
Ta shi wode taitai. She is my wife. I don't know if my grammar is correct most of the time. Chinese grammar seems to work pretty well if you just sort of jam relevant concepts at each other.
Me hungry. You good? Not-good. Bu is very useful. It means "not" or is just generally negative. Wo bu mingbai. I not understand. I not want. The Modern Standard Chinese word for "no" is literally "not-yes."

Also the Chinese word for "food" or "meal" is fan (fahn) which means rice. Breakfast and lunch are literally "morning-rice" and "noon-rice."

There's a woman here who wants me to try out for a full-time job, and it's very far from the dojo, and I don't know if want. I probably don't. The dogs are barking fiercely at 3:50 AM. A member of one of the rival gangs robably roamed or peed where he shouldn't have. This is pretty normal. It doesn't wake me up anymore.

I would like to be teaching soon, and I probably will be by next week, I just hope I can get a not-full-time position with some junior-high or high-schoolers. I think I would do best in that environment. But I'm not going to be that picky. Today one of my friend's kids running-tackle-hugged him while shouting his name, then dragged him by the hand into his classroom so he could hurry up and start the day's lesson.

I'm tempted to take the full-time thing even though I know I can't get to it without transport (which I won't be able to afford without a paycheck), and I need enough free time to have a life, since that's one of the biggest reasons I came here. I'd be raking in money like mad, but that's not why I'm here. Working reasonable hours for a livable wage is why I'm here.

Anyway I don't think I have anything else to say right now. This has been a stream of consciousness as has likely been evident.

Xiexie, zaijian.
Shie-shie, dzai-jyen.