some more pictures

the rest of which are at http://www.flickr.com/photos/keleos_maisie/.

 

so today i ate pizza. i wandered in and the silver jews were playing, and though i’m far from being a fan exactly, it made me feel better, so i stayed. (i got a hawaiian.) then jeff buckley, then blonde redhead… yesterday i ate mexican food. it was pretty good actually. (i got a burrito.) and yesterday afternoon i had the crazy fancy coffee. it’s like i’m in the west. but doing these things, at least the pizza and burrito, only serve to make me a little more out of place. so i think i should avoid these places. but the guy at the pizza place was very friendly and chatted about this and that, so maybe i’ll stop by again, in the interest of making a friend.

i’ve met so many people here, but i think i can say i don’t really have any friends here yet. but then that’s been true of me most everywhere i’ve been: it just takes a while. and more effort. and following through with things… for example, tonight: i’m supposed to join people for a chat. but i have lots of studying to do. so i shouldn’t go and at the same time i should. i’m always backing out of things, and it only makes things harder for me in the long run, so i think this means i need to become a yes person. no more buts. after church yesterday, i asked a woman where she bought her food. she told me and then, after chatting a while, suggested i come over to her house for dinner some day to eat with her and her daughters. we exchanged info. and the girl from the plane, kelsey, after we hung out one night, i never called her again… not with any ill intent at heart, but just because i’m still processing things, and trying to find a time when i have time to hang out again. too much thinking. it gets me in trouble. and the kids from the music club, i mean seriously, them most of all — i really just need to pick up the phone, ask them if they’ve eaten or if they’ve seen such and such movie / band, and invite them out. with a language barrier, it’s only a little harder than it is even without that barrier. but i need to make this place, this experience, this time, worthwhile.

 

so music is looking up. there is a taiwan music fest underway trying to promote non-mando-pop groups. so the festival is happening in different parts of taiwan, but (lucky me) mostly in taipei. and there’s going to be rock, indie, electronica, jazz, things like that. i’ve been looking up these bands on myspace and a couple of them seem pretty darn promising — most promising is this band called tizzy bac. their songs are somewhere along the lines of komeda — upbeat, kooky, but original. and a little noisy at times, and a little sweet at others. it works. and then there’s this poppy singer called peggy hsu who does it more her own way rather than the mass-produced sound of so many of the mando-pop acts. her songs get a little moody and weird at points. yay there is hope here after all in the music realm! because the more music i listen to that’s actually sung in chinese, the more i will learn.

link to tizzy bac on myspace

link to peggy hsu on myspace (i actually think this is something lisa would enjoy… there’s something ever so slightly tori-esque about her.. maybe it’s just that she mentions fairies, i don’t know…)

and then there was telephone booth, a taipei electronica group… they’re pretty cool too…

other groups are:
the white eyes (they love karen o, if that says anything)
i-go (electronica, very repetitive, but it works, i dig these guys)
orange doll (indie-rock/ “indie-rock”… they’re okay.. better than lots of others i’ve heard)
bird on a wire (super 80s/90sish sound.. i like them, they’re a little rough on the edges)

and then of course there is always dou wei, the impossible-to-find one. he is kind of my holy grail, haha! this is his website and these are a few songs of his on myspace, only he never updates and he won’t add you… i forget, it might just be a fan site, but it’s better than nothing.

. . .

i met an aboriginal girl the other day at the cafeteria by the library.her name is maria and she hoped i would help her practice speaking in spanish. my chinese is better than my spanish at this point but after telling her that i said i would be willing to try. and then she invited me to join her judo club. …they would slaughter me i think. maybe i’ll just go watch instead.

i also went to a coffee house today. it was rated best coffee in taipei in 2008. it was pricey. but they charge members less. and for some reason they charged me only half price too. and the coffee was an experience. they did it in the white porcelain cup thing with a filter, poured hot water from a copper watering jug that looked like some fancy thing you’d use to water your plants, and the coffee (which smelled great, kind of smokey) kept frothing/bubbling up and so the server would pour a round of water, let it run through, then do it again. it wasn’t very strong… strong enough though.. maybe it’s just that it wasn’t bitter, or harsh in any way. and there was no soot at the bottom either when i finished. it was like an 8 dollar cup of coffee, but i ended up paying 5 because they gave me a break for some reason. i might go back and try the espresso next time which is cheaper.

 

wandering always pays off

after studying for a while tonight, i decided to go to gongguan district, one of the night markets near the school, to look for rainboots because i’m tired of having wet feet all the time. i walked around for a while, got good advice on where to get boots, and continued to wander the market. taipei is full of little alleys loaded with shops on top of each other, and stalls in front of shops, so that narrow streets are even narrower. at 10:30, everyone started packing up, so i instead started looking for music venues or coffee shops. (gongguan district is supposedly the rock and roll neighborhood, according to one tourbook.) i’d read about one cafe with live bands there, called riverside music cafe. i figured if there was one, there had to be more. so i wandered, and, well, most places over there were closed, but i ended up finding a cool-looking coffee shop. lots of people were in it so i figured it must be good. i got closer and saw that the majority of the clients (save for one young couple) were all big biker dudes and their ladies. lots of motorcycles parked out front. one guy had on a guns n’ roses shirt, which only made the place cooler. so i walked carefully between the motorcycles, in between the cluster of biker dudes out front, ordered an iced espresso from the girl, went inside, sat down and proceeded to work on homework. only me. next to me two guys were talking about importing or making products, not too sure. one guy was european, which made it look shady to me, but maybe it was all legit, so i just minded my own, and after a while of studying, got up to leave. the other guy next to euro-dude told me “bye!” and smiled, and, well since he was being friendly, i decided this was maybe one of the most likely places where people would know about rock music. so i asked him in chinese about the chinese rock music scene in taiwan. he understood me pretty well, and i as usual only sort of understood him. but i got the gist of it as being that there aren’t really many places for that here, nor a big scene (i figured as much), but to check at this one place or this other place. i sort of understood what he was talking about, but luckily he wrote down one of the places. now i just need to decipher his script and go to this place.

my life here is seriously one big treasure hunt.

 

i hear my lizard is getting fat. my parents seem to be doing alright with him. my mother has been taking care of his food (feeding the crickets and worms all kinds of delicious things: fruit, potatoes…).

in other news, i’m only having trouble in the sense that, after big group events, i find myself at home in my room, and feel extra lonely. at the events, i still feel a little alone, a little overwhelmed, and step back some so i can be with the bunch but also not too much.

so just now i plugged in my hard drive full of songs and chinese audio lessons and all my pictures. i thought i clicked on the “do nothing” button so that i could open what i wanted, but instead it opened up all my video files:

last last summer with john li and stephen looking at chickens;
myself and john as i give my mom a tutorial on how to use the digital camera;
john listening to some jazz;
julia and i as we play a game of dice (she was winning i think);
my sister sitting on the couch;
my brother at a show in sacramento;
driving in the car with john and noah as noah explains to me how to use the electronic dictionary he gave me;
a violent unknown event show (don’t remember doing this or even that song!)
(second song is one of the ones with a rad bass line and is kind of a darker song sort of and rob sings “whoa-whoa” into the mic, and the guitar goes up and down the neck)…

feeling a little less lonely now. 🙂

hurrah.

in other other news, my shoes just are not surviving this weather. my favorite brown hemp slip-ons with gold sequins galore have a hole at the toe, and my um rubber-soled waterproof shoes don’t seem to want to dry in the least, and today i practically was swimming in my black moccasin flats — they’re just dead, i think. so. time for sturdier shoes, i guess. shame, shame.

oh yeah. the typhoon was not so bad, or at least has not been anywhere near as bad as was expected. i worried for nothing, i guess. it was just extreeeeemely wet. like, everywhere you went was at least covered in an inch of water. some parts it was like two or three inches. yeah. but good times.

i’m actually finding that people here are not as young as i was expecting; some are pretty close to my age, which is really nice. yay old people! woooo!! go us!

 

church hopper

i had plans to go to church with a friend here. we were set to meet in the morning, but i was too true to form, and of course overslept and by the time i made it outside, he was gone. so i set off to find the church anyway. i think i asked over six people how to get there, BECAUSE i saw one church listed on the map in the mrt station, and so i asked the info clerks about it and they suggested i get off at this one stop and find out more about it there. so i did. the second info clerks told me where it was, how many blocks away and what was next to it. i walked and walked and wasn’t passing any church so i stood outside of a palace building (the national palace museum? possibly; still have to check) and looked confused for a minute. since the guards were just watching me, i asked them if they knew where it was, and then i got pointed down the road i was on some three blocks, was told to then turn right, down a block or so and there it would be. i go there and it’s methodist. i then ask the nice ladies outside if they know of a catholic church in the neighborhood. since they don’t speak very good english and they can tell i speak english, they ask passersby if they can help. so then there’s a crew of about six different people trying to figure out where the catholic church is. they decide that there is one in the direction i came from, only past the street i turned on from. they told me to take a bus so i did. they said get off in two stops, so when i saw the second stop approaching, i asked the bus driver to let me off. that wasn’t one of his stops though so he kept going. now i’m about three blocks beyond where i think i was supposed to be. i get off the bus (which is supposed to cost 15 yuan but cost me nothing because the smallest change i had was 100 yuan and the bus driver was nice) and walk back until i’m at the intersection i need to be at. at the intersection, i look up and just a little down the road i spot a building with a cross and a statue of jesus. yes! exciting! i walk faster and even take a picture of it so i can remember this moment that i worked hard to reach, and keep walking. when i get to the building, i see that it’s a seventh-day adventist church. i figure maybe i should cut my losses and go home, or maybe i should sit in on this service, because it’s christian in any case. so igo up. there’s something underway, but i can’t tell what so i leave. frustrated and still lost, i start walking home. mind you, it’s raining buckets all this time. but then after a minute i figure maybe there’s another one down this way, since so many people were talking to me about it, they really must have known what i was asking for, and so there just must be a catholic church this way. i keep walking and about four buildings down is what i was looking for. and mass is just about to start. awesome.

and it was in mandarin.
even better.

i found myself understanding parts of the service — enough that i want to go back to the mandarin service again.

the end.

 

some pictures

the free rice porridge (with sugar = super tasty), the awesome trees here, and…

🙂

 

in related news, a chinese/ taiwanese man in a wife-beater and shorts treated me to rice porridge. i’m assuming he worked at the restaurant i was at. either way, cheap dinner was even cheaper thanks to him. i tried to say no, but i think forcing the issue would have been rude on my part. this place which i went to yesterday and was great then, is now a favorite. yay nice people at eating establishments!

i haven’t been very good about updating with any real meat, let alone with pictures to accompany things. i keep leaving this for way late at night, and then i end up passing out while writing or uploading or something. i just have to say the school is gorgeous, the city has a million trees, i might return home a tree hugger through and through (sorry!), and night markets are cool and overwhelming, but quite possibly even better are the little streets swimming in restaurants and fruit stands and drink shops… and 7-11s of course. but yeah. there’s a food alley next to me, and it consists of about i don’t know four or five small streets, and boy could sf learn a thing or two about making the most of small spaces from these people.

i went to a club fair today. the neatest clubs which i might actually join were/are: a chinese music club (pipas, erhus, qin…), a cooking club (failed to mention this to john but i’d bet a million bucks he’s jealous) and a poetry club (complete with emo-looking long-haired pony-tailed bespectacled chinese boy). there was a nature club (hiking and camping and river-rafting, etc.) that looked cool, there was a tarot card club of all things too (solely card-reading, it looked like), and a warcraft or rpg club, complete with outfits, oh! and a supremely-little-girl-y doll/puppet club with three foot tall puppets with long blond hair and flowing gowns. that one was a little weird. it was a madhouse at this fair, seriously. too many to choose from.

tomorrow we have a typhoon coming and i’m not sure what to expect, so i’ve stocked up on some food in case it’s a bad one and people aren’t allowed outside. if we are, then my roommate and i have a library tour to go to, and i think i’ll be asking the engineering exchange student from mississippi i met the other night to show me where the catholic church in town is.

 

Food.

So. I totally ate me some pig’s blood cake the other night. It was at a stand with all kinds of meats, veggies and tofu things to be fried up, and well, I tried to be daring and choose things that looked unfamiliar to me but at least didn’t look like guts. So I end up with this. … It was salty. …I like salt. Pigs are apparently good all over. Eep.

And the homeless (or poor, or both) are ten times more depressing here than back in SF. I have to say, it makes me feel even less sensitive towards the people who live on the streets in California — the people here, they look like they haven’t eaten in months, not just days, and they’re often missing parts or are malformed. It’s painful to look at. The other night, we passed a man with just the upper half of his body, sprawled out on the sidewalk with a hat in front of him, and playing tunes on his harmonica. I wonder how other photographers get their shots without offending the locals — I think they just risk offending people and snap away, huh? I couldn’t bring myself to do that though.

I also have decided that, whereas in Santa Cruz, I got to go to school in a forest, practically, now here I get to go to a school that has parts that look and feel like a jungle. I like it here, and am adjusting well enough. My bicycle is fast becoming my best friend, and I’m wobbling a little less now.

i’ll attach some pics shortly.

 

today

the plan is/was:

visit the catholic church that’s near my dorm.

continue the hunt for the blue and white bicycle my friend donated to me. it’s a treasure hunt. i love it.

buy something. what? … oh, a bike lock, and a second converter. and food. definitely food. lots of food.

go to da-an forest park and take pictures and take my books and study some.

so i was so excited about having managed to purchase a phone yesterday, but today, i can tell i have phone messages on there, but i can’t get them out because the phone’s entirely in chinese, and i don’t know that much yet. arrrg!