- The pollution in Taipei makes for amazing sunsets
- Seeing a C-130 military plane lift-off while waiting for the bus on Chongqing North Road, against the cloudy sky, framed by buildings to either side.
- Two plastic bags were playing on the wind like horny drunk flies.
- Empty spaces are the most dangerous.
- Taipei's closest native equivalent to malls are built under highway overpasses.
- FA-MAS replica BB gun in Ximending.
- Taiwanese women actually wear that stuff!
- All the wedding-photo places on Aiguo East Rd. -- to face Chiang Kai-shek? A tax incentive for beautiful women near el commandante?
- Rackety patty-cake.
- Two Iranian guys acting nice, then asking me to get them US visas
- Ai-lien's amazingly cute niece, and her dinosaur picture
- My purple Thai pankou shirt always gives me purple back-dirt
- The cool interior of the chafang in Dajia
- The excellent soup at that chafang in Ilan with Joleen
- Subconscious Restaurant
- Belly Grming Room = Paris Grooming Salon?
- Hello Kitty everywhere! Help!
- Bush-sculpture (what's that called? losing my English) at park on Dunhua North
- The Taiwan Fertilizer Building
- 4x4 Ladas -- whole clubs of 'em!
- Hilton employees doing their monthly ghost-money burning, in full uniform
- People sitting on incomplete highway sections -- protesting?
- Cartoons on cell-phone cells
- "God will take revenge on Taipei for building a park instead of a church"
- Super-strict white-haired old bus driver who actually chased down somebody who tried to sneak off without paying the fare
- Cabbie with "shuai" written on his rearview in nasty blue calligraphy
- Double-rotored helicopter flying over train station area
- Anti-Japanese protest at the building which now houses Chengpin
- The building near Wuxingjie that looks like an emperor + hat
- Korean women's amazing makeup
- My Korean-raised Taiwanese student's (Iris') immaculate make-up -- she called it her "cockroach" outfit (holding up two braids)
- Malai Kofta and Guru Nanak in that Chungking Mansions restaurant -- changed the decor, but not the guru -- hope business is good
- Lack of humidity at the Peak
- chili dog, curly fries and large coke at hardee's
- Van, the disappearing lesbian
- Collen, the nice English guy at the Hostile Hostel
- That psychotic next door at the Hostile Hostel
- I look like Shirley MacLaine?
- Larisa, the other disappearing lesbian (Chinese lit, alt music, very cool but >poof!<)
- Reading Mission Child -- Rahel?
- Taco House -- pre, during and post-Molly
- Fuchikoma model
- Celine is so beautiful but such a bad manager
- seeing David Wu at Sex A go-Go -- wow is he short but cute
- Weiqi place on Wuxingjie -- betel-nut chewer, English pressure
- Zhongyuanjie in Jilong
- Buying platforms and Winston for myself on Christmas eve, lonely at the night market
- Going to Red Top with Nongwei and Suzanne
- Jiufeng, the weird Taiwan TS
- Losing Claire
- Finding Claire again
- Celine's wedding banquet -- me bowing out early
- I look like Jamie Lee Curtis?
- Fang Ronghuang and the weird weekend of the orch
- Too much from BP to note here....
- Jerry the American who-knows-what desperate to meet Tg folks
- Finding Moku
- Taiwanese gamers are at least as fickle as Americans, but every bit as nerdy
- "Children English Program" -- aargh!
- Talking with Joseph about theodicy
- 'Janinnfer' -- weirdo foreigner-groupie with terrible English
- The brief appearance of Weixuan in my life
- Briefly living with Lika
- Looking for qipaos for Jenny's wedding
- Living full-time that spring break
- What to do when I go back to school? If I go back?
- Winnie said the same thing my dad did, but so much more nicely
- Carly's death soon after I arrived -- teaching about Judaism for her
- Taiwanese people don't know how to walk!
- The art of the one-day trip to Hong Kong
- I hate mosquitoes!
- Aaron, the Dilbert book, "Happy Hanukah" and winning Albert at the Joy christmas party
- My group of high-level students -- buds while it lasted
- Trends: Pokemon, jellyfish dyed blue, hello kitty, Hong Dou! (chua-chua chua-chua...), danta (Portuguese custard tarts), tamagochi, fishing simulators (a very brief trend), ramen, 1950's-style push skateboards, "You think too much," Pink Panther, South Park,
- Nights at Lanti's place -- the gaming mecca while it lasted
- Palace Museum with Claire and guai-guai
- Babysitting for Wen with Justine -- couldn't find "Big Thumb" daycare
- Seeing Warren and Wen in their Hilton room that one time -- Warren getting Justine to open a bottle herself -- telling warren about BP
- Book runs to Hong Kong
- The stinky, cursing and bad-English spouting jerks at BB Shufang -- but the extremely nice management
- The disappearance of Suzanne with my Classical Chinese textbook and dictionary
- Lai Fenlan and her weirdnesses and her mother
- That Spanish guy chatting me up at Witches' Pub -- the very nice manager there who always asks me why I don't dress up more often
- The wonderful lemon ice cream at that restaurant next to Borderland
- Getting to know Moonjade He, manager (?) of Tequila Sunrise
- Chengpin, the bookstore you love to hate -- SF? What's SF? Offering to put it in order for them...
- That nice woman at the makeup store at Tonghua; the perfect shade of purple nail polish
- "qingqu dian" lovely euphemism, that -- almost as good as "anmo bang"
- Conversations with Misa -- at the 24hr steak place, and at my place after she came back to Taiwan with legal probs
- Internet cafe runs to Tianmu
- This side of Tianmu Beilu is for dressing up, this is for other
- The crazy summer, going out often and actually sometimes drinking with the coworkers
- Hummers all the time, or at least more than in any city I've lived in.
- The "Reunify China" characters are falling apart.
- Gezaixi blaring at my window.
- Going to Danshui with Linda.
- Going to Yangmingshan with Linda.
- Linda and Angela helping me get ready for my date with max, then being the perfect lesbians in the place to watch out for me
- Dildoes freely visible and for sale at Huaxi night market; Angela gawking.
- "Yes, we're the renyaos over here!" -- xiaoyemao
- Lots of Taiwanese people have limps -- results of Thalidomide? Otherwise why?
- Sidewalk tiles designed to guide blind people, but inconsistently maintained and thus utterly useless
- Playing and goofing around with that deaf girl and her mother on the MRT
- To make sure buildings to be built actually sell all their units, and to reassure people looking to buy units, Taiwanese builders always make little showplaces on the site of the future building to snag customers, then later take the showplaces down when the units are all sold and the building is actually going to start
- Umbrellas with little collapsible sheaths built into the tip
- The unselfconsciously greedy way in which old Taiwanese people butt in line and hurry onto buses
- Guys from the real estate office downstairs go outside next to the temple to smoke
- Escalators in the MRT are almost out of service more often than they're in
- Taiwanese always sounds so sarcastic
- Seeing Wang Dan walking with a group of Taiwanese students near Taida
- Broken glass bottles or razor wire atop most walls and fences
- The barking dogs next door and their abusive owners
- Seeing that one MTV (Channel V?) VJ woman talking to the owner of the fruit shop on the street near the bus stops
- Satellite news vans frequently parked on the street near that skyscraper with the T-Zone store
- Mutant pineapple on offer to Difu Yingong
- Frequent wedding photo sessions at the park on the corner of Zhongcheng and Zhongshan
- The blatant sexism of the Shaozu car ad on the corner of Jinshan and Ren'ai
- That shop on Jinshan decorated totally with hubcaps
- A Tuesday with little to do, wandering down Heping -- an almost-beautiful sunset, checking out little shops, seeing Meifeng
- Woman on the MRT wearing cats'-eye sunglasses and chanting her "nanwu amituofo's"
- Sleepy bus driver missing stops and yet testy
- "Omnipotent notebook"
- Jehovah's Witnesses -- even being in Taiwan doesn't offer immunity
- Xinxin bus venting exhaust into the passenger compartment
- Christian Chinese-style gravesite
- Jigong si -- truly in the style of its namesake (sloppy and random)
- Hiked all the way to the top and it was Jiang Jieshi, dammit!
- "Wanko"
- Chaiwanese people actually lining up for the MRT
- Camera/sculpture at MRT
- Chatty old guy who ran off without a word at the appearance of a bus
- Chaiwanese clerks always answer "We don't have that," even when they do
- Buses always come in knots -- and if you miss the knot, you're SOL
- The new pedestrian mall part of the MRT -- blood all over the bathroom stall
- Cursed storefronts -- constantly changing businesses
- The haze of Taipei
- Hawkers' kiosks at Erge, glass broken and unlocked -- another half-assed scheme carried out in half-assed fashion
- Hordes of people in a jam back from Erge and Pinglin
- Traditional Chinese medicine advertised as anti-depressant
- Cixi beauty salon
- Taiwande Xin Zhuzhang -- Chen Shuibian
- "I want to beef noodles"
- Bobo the nuclear engineer
- You can open your stall today, but you can't actually begin to sell stuff until tomorrow
- Getting a cell phone call in the middle of a park
- That one's only 70 KG -- he's the small one (albino hunting dog)
- "Sea Cow"-brand jeans
- "We reach for the sky and neither does civilization"
- "My Stify"
- Psychotic cab driver with bad English listening to Korean music
- Buddhist monk on motorscooter with pink helmet
- Paicuike & Halei
- Caca sculpture store
- Mingqing furniture store, specializing in just that
- Yiligou
- Large Guanyin statue in Da'an park
- Highly professional woman cab driver with tons of stuff on her dashboard
- KMT-sponsored study room
- "Enter for indulgence"
- Teafields & Feicui Reservoir by bright moonlight
- Zhonghua Qiyuan
- Vast amounts of porn CD's at Guanghua
- "Why you just look exactly like me?"
- "Do you want to do"
- "Because there have Maidanglao's"
- Daruma, fu-dog and Mr. Burns on the dashboard
- Opticians often use mao in their names
- "Which road is Shida on?"
- Taiwanese guy with real mohawk at Tequila Sunrise
- Mitsuboshi company
- "Be myself"
- Song Chuyu campaign poster still up (as of December), near Jiantan MRT
- "Crouching tiger, hidden dragon" property development
- "Bian Bian Friend" -- cute shit, literally!
- "Be fuckers or die"
- Woman wearing shirt saying "Above all things" and featuring the chemical formula for testosterone
- Nice Buddhist cab driver named Que
- In Taiwan, if something is bad, they just label it the opposite -- call candy "nutritious," or call plastic "enivornmentally friendly," or call electrolysis "painless," or say "sorry" when you're clearly not, or "yici OK" for things that patently cannot be finished in one go, or call your shitty little shop "excellent" or "the best," or call an idiotic little plastic game "an intelligence-training tool"
- Insane anti-Semitic woman at Xuesheng Shuju
- Taizhong: Guy dying on the street while three people argue about it
- Taizhong: Monk by betel nut stand
- Taizhong: Huge funerary edifice adjoining obnoxious church, all across from night market
- Taizhong: Fairly nice underwear merchant
- Taizhong: Various types of slutwear and slutgear for sale at the night market
- Taizhong: Huge temple which cabbie didn't know the name of
- Taizhong: "God welth" Pachinko parlor
- Taizhong: Huang Shi (personal name!)
- Taizhong: Casual attitude re: helmets
- Taizhong: Comb-shaped jade ornament -- "Shushu fufu"
- Gaoxiong: "Ape shall not kill ape"
- Taizhong: Crosswalk running directly into... a bush.
- When I get home tonight
- What to have for dinner
- Super-cute, just extroverted kids at Tequila Sunrise
- Automatic toilet seat-covers at Chengpin; quickly broke down and thus worse than nothing
- Brazilian gemstone importer (?) in first floor of my building -- lots of white people hanging out
- Milk tea with perples that you need a thicker sucker to suck the pasta from
Wh? Frm zbg.
Whoah! I don't think I'll do that again! Okay, so you'd like to go back to my main page. Or maybe you'd like to see more weirdness like this?