09:51 am greencastle, june 30; 10:51 pm taipei, july 1

well...nothing else happened this evening of interest, besides me actually making it upstairs, postig a few...posts, putting those pictures up, and finding that my connection is *unbelievably slow*. like, dial-up speed. somebody must be hogging bandwidth *hxc*. that, or there's some problem somewhere down the line. meh. so, ah...as soon as they're actually up, they'll be here. and that should be it for...well, today. 'night/'morning.

04:34 am greencastle, june 30; 05:34 pm taipei, june 30

...and today, i have done little. slept until 10:30 or 11ish. then...lay around for a while not doing much, reading, got the tv fixed and watched some pictures moving on it, listening to some sounds. uhh...nothing of interest, really, on the tv; but i did finish "brightness falls from the air" last night just before i went to sleep, and so i started "strata" today. it's...really good so far, as i'd expected it to be, but also exceedingly familiar; so i've probably read it before, but i can't remember how it goes. that other book, though...was pretty disappointing. my dad read it many, many years ago, apparently, and thought it amazing, so he found it again and picked it up; flipped through it, then dumped it on me. well...it's an extraordinary story, but not too well written. i do like the voice in it, though; everything is told in the present whatever tense (you know, as opposed to narrative historic, or whatever it was; can't remember exactly what it's called.), i.e. "cory stares at kip as he begins yet another one of his 'tales,'" as opposed to "cory stared at kip as he began yet another one of his 'tales.'" i liked that a lot; i think like that, too, sometimes.

oh, wait; something important did happen today. first, as i was...doing something on my computer; probably rearranging stuff or writing a post or something...a stack of papers was brought to me to correct. wait...so yeah, that's when i turned my computer on, so's i could look up chinese words that i don't know to ensure correctness in the english. well, that wouldn't have taken long, but my mom showed up when i was about 2/3 done. she went to visit tao yuan, her home town, this morning, and got back rather early; furthermore, the bus she took stopped just a block or so away from where i'm staying, so she dropped by. we talked for a while, i finished correcting, and then we tried to get those dvd's i burned to work. unfortunately, they are largely a failure; first, the disc as a whole dvd project doesn't work--it doesn't read like a normal dvd, just a disc with tons of stuff on it. then, when i tried to play the clips anyways, they would only play in very small pieces; i think that's either because i've not enough memory or the disc drive can't read fast enough--it is full dv quality, after all, where only like half an hour of media will fit onto a whole 4.12 gb or however big dvd. well, so we tried going upstairs to attempt viewing on an actual dvd player, and that, too, failed. wouldn't even read. ah, well...most unfortunate. i'll have to figure something out.

...but while we were upstairs, daisy came out and talked to us for a bit, and i now have a definite teaching schedule for the next few weeks. lesse...i'll go grab it, because i'm sure you're so interested. all right. i'll be, aside from independent tutoring of others, teaching some sort of "story telling" class wednesdays from 12:50 to 1:50, ta'ing mondays and thursdays from 1:00 to 3:00, and leading a conversation class of sorts tuesdays and wednesdays from 1:00 to 3:00 and 2:00 to 4:00, respectively. means i'll have fridays, saturdays, and sundays off. *sigh*...if only i could land a job with work days like that after college--one that pays well, isn't too bad, and gives me three consecutive days off a week--specifically, those three. ideal, i say. i'm also supposed to keep some kind of "journals" for the classes. i'm...not really sure what that entails, but i'll see about that (surely) before i start. monday. hrm...woo. i'll be teaching up until the very last day before i leave--the nineteenth. is the last day of teaching, that is, for clarification. it should be really interesting--quite an experience--and pay moderately well, if not better than that. woohoo!

after we talked about that stuff for a while, my mom was really hungry, not having eaten any breakfast or lunch or anything, so she and i set out in search of decent food. well, we didn't do extremely well, but we found some really tasty street vendor stuff. well...it wasn't exactly street vendor food, but it was pretty dang close. open to the street, no seats, other stuff, general effect...whatever. bought a few meat buns (you know, filling in the middle surrounded by white dough stuff) and some drinks. you know, first time i've ever had *passionfruit slush*. oh, man. it was awesome. so good...and the buns were really good, too. so good, in fact, that we went back a little later and grabbed four more that i've taken back to my room for later enjoyment. oh, ate the stuff along with some mango cake thing and blueberry cheesecake in a local starbucks. it was alright.

...well, i'm off to read more or eat dinner or something now. i think i'll see (get this construction) to what else barney is up. wait...up to what else barney is? oh, my...that's a good one. uhh, anyways, i'll see if barney is doing anything exclusively important--such as homework--later tonight. if not then, soon, i want to check out these "internet cafes" that actually exist in multitude and my price range around here. guy says that he also plays computer games (presumably on a lan network) at these "wang ka" (literally, "web cafe," so it's pretty close). 'kay.

oh, wait; i uploaded the rest of the pictures on my mom's camera, and i'm about to do those from mine; there were these cool waterfalls in those "twin towers" in which we ate, with a few other families, one of which was the li family. the train station was before we got on for that three hour trip, the bikes and statue were at the other end. most anywhere has about that many motor bikes, by the way...it's crazy. oh, and the "dinning" sign was also in some interiors store of those "twin towers." now, for my pictures, with brief explanations in another paragraph...

...unless, of course, something goes wrong, such as the camera requiring an only *very slightly* different cord. blaarg

09:31 am greencastle, june 29; 10:31 pm taipei, june 29

...*dang*it...and the album to which i was planning to listen is protected and won't let me do so. ugh, i hate it when they do that...

but more importantly, i caught up on a bunch of stuff today. talked to a few people, returned all necessary emails (there were a total of 22, a few more than half of which, i believe, were entitled responses), borrowed a server, found a few handy new programs, and was generally (imho) computer-productive. otherwise...i did very little. oh, wait, slept in. that was nice. then, this evening, i went to taipei 101--which, contrary to my belief, is fully built; it's just some of the floors that aren't in use or something, or they're still moving offices or shops or whatever in; something like that. i'm not really sure because my mom wasn't. but that's where we ate dinner and walked around for a few hours, and it was pretty cool. i believe...seven of every eight shops were designer clothes shops, three of four of which were strictly women's clothing, and the other fourth of which would have been mostly women's, but with some men's stuff. few watch stores, too.

the important places, besides food, were "your sony," a sony stuff store, with some unbelievably amazing electronics--credit-card sized and shaped cameras, cd jewel case sized cd players, 20 gb mp3 players probably 3/4 the size of an ipod mini, but 20 gbs...and the coolest cell phones i've ever seen. not to mention brilliant screens, ipod-sized video cameras, etraordinary laptops...just a whole bunch of really cool stuff. oh, and a ps2 in the corner, and big ads for the psp. if i've not mentioned it, i've seen a few around on the mrt.

the other important store, which we visited first, was a bookstore by the name of "page one." lesse...yes, i do believe i have an appropriate analogy: the music section of barnes and noble's is to tower records as the book section of barnes and noble's is to page one. unfortunately, their book selection didn't have anything that i could understand that i absolutely needed. of course, that didn't stop me from buying a book or two--one of which is pratchett's "strata," which i may have read long, long ago, but i've long since forgotten. it's the book (1981) that sets the scene for all the discworld ones, though. i remember "the dark side of the sun," another one of his earlier books, and it's definitely one of the best. i look forward to that one. the other book is by clive barker, an author of whom i've heard much but read nothing.

...and the first place that we visited was the food court. huge! not obscenely huge, but pretty darn big, it is. most of the resturants looked equally enticing, but there a few that stood out: those that served food on hot plates (or grills, or whatever) with some raw(ish) food that one could finish preparing on one's own. so we ordered from a cantonese place which put only slightly fried eggs--yolk still wholly runny--on top of our rice with numerous "side" dishes, though they were served on the rice. you know, how at a real chinese restaurant one gets a few dishes and eats them with the rice. like that, i'm just bad at describing it. oh, also had fresh guava juice. so...this "ba la" in chinese? i only realized today that that's what guava is--and i wouldn't have figured it out had we not walked into a supermarket and had i not seen the guava, then commented on it, then also noticed how it looked exactly like ba la. ah, well.

...oh, and so taipei 101 is huge, but we didn't get a chance to take pictures because i left the camera in my room. no matter, for we didn't have time to go to the top floor--the stores all closed at 9:30, and so we decided it was about time to head back. i'll definitely visit again, though, and see about that.

find out my teaching schedule (for daisy) tomorrow. should be good.

'bout done here, for now. off to read, especially now that i have seven or eight hundred more pages. woo!

pics, perhaps

try them

here.

from hua lien, only, and resized so's they fit somewhere.

sorry for the inconvenient having to go back and click on each successive one, though. well...i'd prefer that over those sites where people put up like 20 pictures and it takes (me) forever to load. meh.

08:21 am greencastle, june 28; 09:21 pm taipei, june 28

okay, so i'm kinda tired now, what with having woken up at like six this morning then having been walking around much of the day, wet, so i'm probably not yet going to post what i'm writing now, type up what i wrote yesterday, or even go upstairs to the fourteenth floor, where internet and video games happen. instead, i'll probably just write for a bit, read my book, then try to sleep--i'd forgotten in the 36 or however many hours how loud two three-year-olds can be. ugh.

...but i'll start this one with this morning, because hopefully i'll have yesterday's up before i do this one. lesse...our hotel (about which i believe i've written, or, if not, i'll surely talk about on some other occasion) declined to provide anything that i enjoy for breakfast, much less anything much at all. perhaps...four selections of things that one could add to one's rice gruel, two of which were actually the same thing just prepared slightly differently. no meat, no decent veggies. i was very, very disappointed. did catch sight of an almost-dead cockroach and numerous other bugs, though. (which reminds me, a rat, yesterday, too, at the restaurant which served us our dinner and me my ai yu.) but we got out of the place around eightish with a new taxi driver/tour guide. he brought us to many, many an interesting place, including, among, of course, others, a primarily military, but also partly public, airport (we only looked from the car), an abby (which had a bunch of nuns doing such things as sewing their clothes, preparing the rice, making candles [that was pretty cool], making pottery, drying wood, etc.), and, most importantly, mountains.

these mountains were definitely the highlight of the entire hua lien trip. we walked around (unfortunately, on distinctly man-made--paved--paths) for a very, very long time, filming and taking pictures until the camera ran out of batteries. oh, wait, before this, we ate at some restaurant on one of the mountains. it had hua lien's specialty fish, whose name i can't remember; it was very good and had a slightly different texture from most fish i've eaten--it was more like, say, meat. chicken or something. there was also wild boar with green onions or something, and that dish was, also, of course, tasty. a few others, but not as noteworthy. saw a bunch of marble carvings and statues, for hua lien is also famous for (you know, besides the water show thing and the fish, that is) their granite and marble...mining, or whatever. can't...recall...meh. lots of limestone and stuff. extremely good carvings, of course.

...but back to the mountains. amazing. surround basically everything around hua lien. beautiful. serene. i loved it, especially the valleys, in which there ran a constant stream of swiftly running water, largely due to the highly enjoyable (for me, anyways) amounts of rain in the past few days, especially today. it was only raining when we got up and left, but it was definitely pouring later. with the entire mountain area getting so much rain in the past few days, there were huge waterfalls and temporary streams all over the place and the main river was significantly--meters--higher than normal. (which reminds me of another thing i missed; this morning, we pedal'd a boat out on a lake while it was raining, and i thought it really nice, but it'd've been immeasurably better with company that could also relax and enjoy the rain with me.) pictures all over. not a whole lot to say, just a lot at which to look. i'll do something about that...sometime. maybe tomorrow or something, if i head over to my mom's hotel, where she and her camera are. ah, well. i'm tired, and one of the girls has been in my room giving me a headache for a long time now, literally just standing there and screaming for about 1/3 of the time--no exagerration. so i'll turn in soon. later...

08:01 am greencastle, june 27; 09:01 pm taipei, june 27

and today we came to "hua lien," a sort of "county" or subdistrict of some sort of taiwan. we (my mom and i)'ll be staying here for perhaps two more days, but at least tomorrow, with one of those "old school friends" i'd mentioned before. man, so i didn't bring my computer, and you should see my handwriting; there are maybe three teachers that wouldn't flip out over it rigth now--i'd bet that mrs. kempf, at least, is suddenly and inexplicably waking up screaming and in a cold sweat. hah!

anyways, we took a real train to get here (and i realized that "mrt" stands for "mass rapid transit.") and it was an...approximately...let's say three hour ride--very comfortable and extremely scenic. took a few pics, read a bit, listend to a lot of mogwai; [mwahahaha, a brief edited part; less than twenty words, i assure you.]. think one of the things i'll have to do with this post is scan it or something, too; it's looking pretty good. i'll edit that one part out, though. no doubt...some of my "g"'s are definitely standing out, and it's pretty cool, methinks. ah...but where was i? oh, yeh. saw a whole bunch of extraordinarily green mountains, and kept thinking how great it'd be to hike or backpack them. we'll be hiking (or, says my mom, unfortunately, and kinda disappointingly, "walking") tomorrow, but probably not anywhere that rough. i think it'd be pretty dang cool to take a day trip up there, though, with a good friend--or just alone, to reax a bit. meh...

tonight, though, there happened a hwa lien "shui wu," literally "water dance." it was a relatively good water (hah, "water" is being used as a modifier, an [oh, man. i just realized that when writing, i wrote "and" there...so those typos that i make transfer over. oh, my...] adjective, so it's almost as if in the event that i wanted to make the water good, it'd have to be "well water." hypothetical syntactical pun? oh, noes!) show with entertaining lights and...music. including some song from "phantom of the opera." more pictures, i assure you.

...and finally, i had (most notably) papaya milk and "ai yu" again. not contemporaneously, of course. the former was really just papaya pureed with water and condensed milk added, though i don't think it has the water when well made...but it was pretty good. (and i just realized that i neglected to mention that the water show was on a lake. it was. or, perhaps, "it's true, you know...so watch yourself." *cough cough*) the latter, "ai yu," is jello-esque gelatin floating in some kind of sweet flavored beverage, usually lemon. i had mine in ice shavings with lemon syrup stuff and one whole freshly squeezed lemon. very good.

...and so that's really all that happened today. we're staying in this hotel that seems as if it was once really, really nice, but is now rather...unkempt. very unfortunately. they even have some bikes that one may borrow, but they're very old, rusty, cobwebby, aireless-tired [sic] bikes. still used them. packed light for this trip--no compy. that's why i'm writing this entry/post out. [must have forgotten that i'd mentioned that...] meh. out.

oh, and i just realized eariler today (and just now that i spelled "earlier" as "eariler" right there, in handwriting [sic]. definitely. i'll leave that and this in.)...that i have trouble concnetrating on exactly one thing; i need to be doing at least two, or, at the very least, thinking. meh.

08:54 am greencastle, june 26; 09:54 pm taipei, june 26

video games, hallucinations, shops, chili's. those are the things that i thought i'd have to relate. no, lies; i'd thought of more as i was out and going stuff (sic; going places and doing stuff.), but i've, of course, forgotten.

video games, though. more of them happened today with barney (aside from the swimming--oh, and i'm so out of shape, that after just a few hundred meters [<200] of fly, my back muscles [trapezius, i believe, to be exact, if i'm correct] were kind of sore--the next day that is; from the first time i went out swimming. i'm so out of shape now that my sprints suck...ugh. oh, and, of course, i'm fat.), pwnage included in every game i'd played before (including "anubis z.oe.," which is just "z.o.e., the second runner" in the states.), and only some wins in games with which i am unfamiliar. and we have some dance pads, but no ddr. there's beatmania, but it doesn't quite work. ah, well.

...but so then when i was coming back to the fourth floor, where i'm staying and fooding (mostly, when around), barney and i were talking for a bit before he headed up and each of us rinsed the pool water off in our respective bathrooms, i would have (stronger than could have) sworn that there was really loud music of some variety playing in the apartment. like, i was having trouble hearing barney and had to talk over it. i couldn't even concentrate. so then after he left, i walked in to try to find the source, and i discovered a stereo with some decent speakers (actually, apparently the same one that we have at home, above our tv, displaying approximatly 9:03 right now. approximately, for i'd be amazed if it's that accurate.). that stereo, though? it was definitely off. and there was definitely nobody else home. i have absolutely no idea what happened there, but it definitely upset(s) me.

shops, though. i saw a whole freaking lot of them today, and learned (from john, one of the guys i'm going to tutor; he's like a year older than me.) that one of the things taiwanese kids don't do...is hang out around stores like we do. you know, good-natured loitering. i...was very disappointed. and still am, i suppose. hrm. i suddenly find that i'm extremely tired, but i'll try to get some more stuff out so's that i don't forget it all. eh. ah, yes. so there are these two specific buildings about which i'm speaking, which the people call "twin towers." no "the." they're...what...like forty stories tall, really cool, and really high-class. one is a hotel, the other is partly a mall, and there are connecting parts which are also largely malls. the majority of the buildings (from just a few stories up for the mall one, and maybe significantly higher in the hotel, but that side may be no more than residence; i'm not entirely sure.) are offices. i'm at least sure that the top floor (hold on, i just realized i never explained the situation; my bad. my mom and two other pairs of her old school friends, respective married couples, got together for dinner tonight and everybody brought along all of their children. john is one of these.) of the hotel side is an open-air pool. so, walking around this mall, i saw some interesting stuff, but it was all (mostly) artsy stuff, modern art. some contemporary furniture, too. and i saw these really cool glass figurines, and i thought that they'd be perfect for zach or jane or somebody, but when i looked closer, i realized that there were about two too many digits on them...sorry. i'll find something, though, don't worry. also saw one specific clothing store with some really, really cool women's stuff--dresses, blouses, and skirts. all were silk (or some kind of really nice material), thin/cool, and cool. lime green, robin's egg blue, black, all somehow made soft colors. any of it would have looked so much more beautiful on betsy.

afterward (ate dinner beneath these twin towers, too, in a pretty fancy restaurant...in which i was wearing flip flops, my mom not having told me about this part. ugh.), driving back, we passed approximately fifty billion more stores, many of which were clothing stores that seemed relatively interesting. oh, and a chili's. that was...a relatively large surprise. i'd not've expected them to expand to taiwan, but i suppose...whatever works.

hey, funny story, i'm still tired. 'night.

10:40 pm greencastle, june 25; 11:40 am taipei, june 26

't's sunday. here, anyways. okay, that sushi a few days ago? it came along this...arg, i can't remember the word...but basically a belt. conveyor belt, there we go; similar to the ones in airports that carry luggage around. the tables are all stationed around this, and you can just grab whatever you want--including some stuff like cokes, wasabi sauce (free), gensing (free), or whatever. the bill is calculated by the number of plates you have--all the sushi comes on these small orange plates (usually about two pieces per plate), which you can also order, rather than just wait for to come around, and each plate costs (i think it was) NT$30. one u.s. dollar is about 30 or 31 new taiwan dollars, if i'm not mistaken.

...and so yesterday i really didn't do anything of interest; i just ran around a bunch with my mom seeing old friends of hers and whatnot. although in the morning, at like ten, i was supposed to meet her at a certain station of the mrt, which is taipei's mass transit system, but don't ask me what that stands for. anyways, i was supposed to meet her at ten, so i decided to get ready to leave at 9:15 and figured that by the time i got all my stuff together and made it out of the building, walked over to the mrt station closest, and found my way over to the designated (my mind unbiddenly went back to latin, but i consciously stopped that train of thought before it could be completed. yes! big step this is!) stop, and i remembered that we were to meet by the stop for the train that heads in the direction in which we were to travel. of course, because it was early morning, i wasn't thinking and actually got on the train and took it to the next stop, by which point i'd realized what i'd done and turned around. unfortunately, i also realized that i was like 25 minutes early, and so i stood around really awkwardly for a long while as some official guy who, i dunno, directs the people and makes sure they don't get too close or something. he kept watching me...especially when like three trains had gone by in each direction (the stops for going in both directions are right next to eachother) and i was still standing around...so i left and took a bunch of laps up and down stairs. eventually i wandered over to a map of the stations on a wall and stood there, where i could look quasi-purposeful, for a while; eventually my mom found me there. she was also kinda early, but not *quite* as early as i was...oh, well.

the rest of the day was exceedingly boring.

...but then at night, when i returned to the apartment, there was nobody home...there was, however, a note, which explained that the family'd gone out and would be back at elevenish. i found the note at ten. so, now having gotten a cell phone (borrowing a cell phone), i could call them and see when they'd be back. they said probably around 10:30 or so, and that i should go...uhh...in english, it's kinda like just wandering around the streets window shopping and mostly looking at stuff, maybe buying some. well...having bought some pastry custard things (just cooked and taken out of the oven probably less than four minutes before i got there, and still really, really hot), i sat around outside the apartment for a while and ate one, which was still really, really hot (and almost burned me) as i waited for them to return. it ended up taking until about 11:20...but i had whipped out my book by then and was reading, so it wasn't bad. kinda.

now listening to "brick," by the way...

around 11:45ish, probably, we headed up to the fourteenth floor, where there is not only the internet, but video games. apparently, tv is a huge thing around here...people spend large portions of their day watching it. i haven't yet, at "home," anyways, but i did a little while otherwise out. but i helped barney with his homework briefly, and then we gamed a bunch. hah...gamecube. he has a ps2, but it's broken. he's borrowed a friend's, but it doesn't have the right audio/visual cord thing and won't work. so we started off with some smash bros., and he and the computers definitely ganged up against me. i almost won, though; i just had way too much damage when it came down to him against me. i had the most kills by like four, but he barely out-lived me. second round, i totally pwned. three lives by the time i'd taken out one computer, two when i had barney and the other bot to one, killed the bot, tried to suicide/kill barney, failed, then just took him out. it was nice. seventeen kills of a possible eighteen--stock at six. i was pretty happy about that. little girls, of course, would occasionally insist upon playing themselves, and then we had to relinquish the controls for a short time. meh. then some double dash...where i could definitely out-race him. apparently he plays battle, though, and so we tried that out for a bit. uhh...so i won the first round, then not a lot after that. score climbed to 9-3 him after a bit, and i decided that i was losing way, way too much. so i turned it around to 9-12, me, and he got kinda upset. well, he won a few more, and i won a few more, and the score settled down to about 13-15 me at the end, between many rounds of all three types--two kinds of deathmatch and a sort of "king of the hill" type of game. it was pretty cool. finally, we were going to play some starfox, and we only had enough time for him to kinda explain it to me and for me to kill him once before it was like two and we decided to sleep. so i headed back down, was unhappy because i couldn't catch any wireless networks from downstairs (unprotected networks, that is), read a bit, and crashed.

now...i dunno what i'll do. maybe see about something. that's a new one, isn't it? "see about something..."

11:01 am greencastle, june 24; 12:01 pm taipei, june 25

...so that day that just finished a minute or two ago? it turned out like twenty times better than i'd thought it would. more interesting stuff happened than it looked like there were coming up--hence like fifty posts. those posts, by the way, as i believe i explained in one of the earlier ones (a long one...sorry...) are going to kinda be my journal, too. so...it's like...i'm wireless now, but their network doesn't reach down to my room, and i considered leeching off somebody else's, but that's kinda...bad...you know?

...but imma go now. oh, and i can't successfully do anything (worthwhile, whatsoever) with xanga right now; it seems the local server doesn't like them or something. ah, well...i'll need comments here, then, because blogger is (obviously and needlessly spoken...ly...) better. plus i'll get the comments in my gmail, eh? mwahahaha...gmail...

11:01 am greencastle, june 24; 12:01 pm taipei, june 25

...so that day that just finished a minute or two ago? it turned out like twenty times better than i'd thought it would. more interesting stuff happened than it looked like there were coming up--hence like fifty posts. those posts, by the way, as i believe i explained in one of the earlier ones (a long one...sorry...) are going to kinda be my journal, too. so...it's like...i'm wireless now, but their network doesn't reach down to my room, and i considered leeching off somebody else's, but that's kinda...bad...you know?

...but imma go now. oh, and i can't successfully do anything (worthwhile, whatsoever) with xanga right now; it seems the local server doesn't like them or something. ah, well...i'll need comments here, then, because blogger is (obviously and needlessly spoken...ly...) better. plus i'll get the comments in my gmail, eh? mwahahaha...gmail...

so yeah, this blog is now a journal for my taiwan trip. i'll prove it, too; check the title.

07:45 am greencastle, june 24; 08:45 pm taipei, june 24

...oh, wait. sushi is happening almost now. uhh...cool?

04:06 am greencastle, june 24; 05:06 pm taipei, june 24

movie plans fell through; sold out, apparently. i suppose that's something of a problem with huge populations and only one screen per theatre, eh? ah, well. barney says that maybe we can go some other time or something. today, the plans were because one of his friends was going away for a short while. see, he goes to this "european school" thing, which is attended by students from all over, or something. methinks the primary language is english, and other languages--french, german, chinese, whatever--are electives. one of his friends is heading off somewhere and they were putting together some movie thing to kinda see him off. ah, well.

...finished "the mote in god's eye," the niven and pournelle novel i'd brought. it...ended amazingly. i'll not bore anyone with the details (including myself; i just read the book, you know, and i often go over the book in brief in my head once it's been concluded.), but it was generally about first contact with another alien species, extraordinarily and unfathomably more developed than humans, but crippled by unavoidable periodic wars. and by "extraordinarily and unfathomably," i mean something along the lines of these aliens having records of civilization from millions (read: millions) of years ago, their most recent ascent from primitive environments alone being dated with five digits. in base twelve. so...roughly somewhere between twenty thousand years and two-hundred forty thousand.

uh oh, sushi-time soon, and i got off the phone having made some plans with my for the weekend and stuff, and i filled out that survey thing...and stuff. woo.

04:06 am greencastle, june 24; 05:06 pm taipei, june 24

movie plans fell through; sold out, apparently. i suppose that's something of a problem with huge populations and only one screen per theatre, eh? ah, well. barney says that maybe we can go some other time or something. today, the plans were because one of his friends was going away for a short while. see, he goes to this "european school" thing, which is attended by students from all over, or something. methinks the primary language is english, and other languages--french, german, chinese, whatever--are electives. one of his friends is heading off somewhere and they were putting together some movie thing to kinda see him off. ah, well.

...finished "the mote in god's eye," the niven and pournelle novel i'd brought. it...ended amazingly. i'll not bore anyone with the details (including myself; i just read the book, you know, and i often go over the book in brief in my head once it's been concluded.), but it was generally about first contact with another alien species, extraordinarily and unfathomably more developed than humans, but crippled by unavoidable periodic wars. and by "extraordinarily and unfathomably," i mean something along the lines of these aliens having records of civilization from millions (read: millions) of years ago, their most recent ascent from primitive environments alone being dated with five digits. in base twelve. so...roughly somewhere between twenty thousand years and two-hundred forty thousand.

uh oh, sushi-time soon, and i got off the phone having made some plans with my for the weekend and stuff, and i filled out that survey thing...and stuff. woo.

07:22 am greecastle, june 24; 8:22 pm taipei, june 24

...so sushi died, too, and i'm having some noodles right now. wait, what kind of noodles are they, you ask? why, ramen noodles, of course. hah! bam! home-cooked, they took the noodles, boiled them with some greens, onions, meat things, made the soup, and served it...dinner. ramen. real food. yeah, that's right.

12:29 am greencastle, june 24; 01:29 pm taipei, june 24

currently listening to young team, mogwai. still haven't heard all of the album, partly because the cd lose and failed to play in the car's cd player. it read without problem in my computer (and ripped okay), so mp3 player, it is.

...got back from swimming a short time ago--with the twins, of course. well, only helped them float around with their floatie-arm-things, kickboards, and these foam things that they strapped to their backs to keep them afloat. so they were pretty much fine on their own, but i kinda led them around the pool a few times, then left them with the caretakers and swam a few laps. so this pool...wait, lemme check and see if i actually wrote about it or was just thinking about what i would say or what i could talk about. sec...mmkay, i did write a bit about it. the water comes up to...about...my chest, so that's probably a meter. and it must be 25 meters, because it's definitely more than that many yards. i think that, normally, i would be able to flip in the pool, but it's designed in a horrible oval shape (about three lanes wide--there are the black lines on the bottom), and if i were to try to swim in the middle where it would be mostly flat when i turn, there are these convenient pillars in the middle...ugh. you know, these pillars *built over the bloody lane marking lines.* i was pretty upset about that. no, wait; i am pretty upset about that. meh...not much i can do.

hey, so wanna hear something cool? my battery lasts like %20 longer when i don't have things like my firewall, virus scanner, etc. running. you know...stuff that i keep going in the background when i'm online. not surprising, but just thought i'd let you know.

...that mogwai? ambient rock, methinks. definitely. it's good, though. i like it.

hey, yeah, so if all goes according to plan, i'm going to watch a movie later today. and i was correct to those of you to whom i told about the movie theaters; they seem only to have one screen. makes sense, though, what with the extraordinary crowdedness. or density of everything, i suppose you could say...but where's the fun in making sense? or something...the movie, though. it's, apparently, made after an anime or a manga or something, and it stars jay, "the one," the biggest pop star in taiwan and probably china, but i'm not positive. the guy also, apparently, had an affair of some sort a short time ago, losing a large part of his fan base. now that he's expanding to movies in addition to his music, a lot of people are hoping that he fails now. hah...i'd almost feel bad for the guy, but i'm sure that even if i cared, it'd be against him.

...nope, i guess i can't quite get the kind of sigh that i want into text. something like...hnnnn. *sigh* will have to suffice. i'm kinda tired. tried to just look out the window and take in the scene earlier, but the little girls kept running up to me and asking at what i was looking. ah, well...mebbe i'll just take a nap or something.

plane post

i'm in taiwan. i have access to the net if i ask the people with whom i'm staying. there's this pretty cool kid named barney, and he's about a year younger than me. gotta go, and i have stuff to talk about...

here, some stuff i wrote on the plane, or something:

cake's cover of "i will survive" has been going through my head a bunch today.

...so it's like 11:20ish, i'm still on the la-taipei flight, and i'm really bored. i've actually almost finished half of the reading material i brought along (by volume), which would be kind of distressing were i not going to be busy for majority of my time in taiwan. uhh...yeh.

...so that relatively long xanga post that i wrote earlier and meant to port over to my blogger? yeah, it died most pitifully when i tried to ctrl+c it over, and realized too late that the computer did not, in fact, have a clipboard, so of course i can't copy and paste. isntantaneously (well, after it took me about 20 seconds to copy the entire bloody thing with the horrible, horrible mouse which tended to click *all the time* regardless of where one's hand was), my post became no more than a c. i was upset...

so i go over to blogger to try to recreate as much of it as i can, right? unless, of course, my time's about up and i can't use the terminal anymore...dag.

lesse...there were a few things that i'd actually meant to talk about, but (of course) i've forgotten exactly what they were. uhh...among other things, i decided that i don't have enough ben folds or the arcade fire (of course, among other (less amazing) artists). oh, right, so i'm at the computer lab editing those clips that we took in avon last week or whenever, and while they're copying or burning or whatever, i'm sitting there browsing the intarweb (with safari, of course; i'm on a mac!), and i discovered three important things: 1) i work really, really slowly without a right-click feature and a scroll wheel, 2) i use the control key almost as much as backspace--you know, to delete entire words or copy, paste, etc., and 3) that macs are really pretty and everything, but the smoothness of transitions between programs and the fluidity with which the finder lets you, say, select files and change the name is exceedingly slow--relative to my settings, at least. i was going through pictures and things, and whenever i wanted to change a poorly titled one (such as, say, something like DCP_0148), more often than not, i would click it once, wait a second, click again to change the name, and end up opening a new window of the preview program. this was extremely irritating on many occasions, if i haven't made it clear enough yet. yes, i'm totally rambling. i'm not even going to pretend to try to deny it.

...plane lands something like 10 pm taiwan time, so that's...what...9 am greencastle? yeah, i think that's right. the 22nd. taipei is 13 hours ahead of greencastle. i've already said that, too.

(changed desktops. if i take a screenshot, you'll probably see at least some of it.)

thinking about much better things i could be doing? what are you talking about? nothing i'd rather be doing than jumping headfirst into...something. for a month. totally not hanging out with a bunch of my friends who i'll probably not see for a very, very long time. meh. i should be more positive. i'm sure it'll work out, but i'm still really unsure of exactly how. hey, know what's funny? turns out i may not even be eating with the family with which i'm staying. i may be going out every day (every time i'm hungry) and finding some food elsewhere around the city. or something. transportation? i don't understand. well, probably just public transportation with one of the cards (got a yo-yo ka (card) last time i was in taiwan for this purpose; it's pronounced something like "io-io," if you're a classicist...). i'll also be getting a cell in a day or two. uhh...there's something about which i'm not sure if i've posted. presumably, in most of asia (and perhaps all of the rest of the world outside of the u.s., i'm not sure...but i certainly wouldn't put it past us to be farthest behind in this respect), one may simply buy any attractive cell phone, and one pays for any service of any company from there. one may buy chips or cards of some sort, which one may simply swipe through the phone, or put into it, or something, and one's account magically has minutes with whatever company produced that specific card/chip thing. meh. i've no idea what the rates are, too. hrm...

also thought about ultimate. i have no idea how many people around taipei play, much less can throw a disc. i'll certainly find out, i suppose. will also be swimming, if not running, too. there's supposed to be a pool in the apartment complex or whatever in which i'm staying, and, if it's appropriate, i think i'll be working out there at least every so often. perhaps. pssht...

uhh...methinks i'll try to figure out something else to do on my computer without the internet, now. it'll be hard, no doubt, but maybe, just maybe, i can do something more productive (or, at least, more interesting) than pulling junk out of the air.

which, of course, reminds me of something real about which i had planned to...talk? type? explain? detail? ...so monday i was up at like 7 or 8 or something, right? you know, to go to roy o. west of depauw, the main library, that i may use the macs to attempt to edit those few minutes of film we got in avon or wherever and burn them to dvd. well, so i didn't have breakfast because i got up late and wanted to get a good start, so i just went there and worked for a few hours. went home, mowed lawn, grabbed some stuff that i'd pack later, swung by high school for swimming stuff, set more stuff to burn, etc., etc., etc...in the afternoon, though, because i felt really bad about ditching karen several times in the recent past (sorry again...) and wanted to hang out with her more before i skip town, she follows suit (elsewhere, of course), and we both have school (college, later) and stuff, i swung by aliza's and hung out for a few minutes. then, of course, i rushed back home...to do more preparation. definitely didn't come close to getting everything appropriately done, though. packed and whatnot (mostly) my to-be-checked-in luggage (AUUGH, in latin that'd be really easy...stupid participles, or lack thereof in english...future passive, to be exact). jackie's party was alright, but methinks i'd have much preferred a small group of people, just a handful of close friends, having a more mellow, relaxing time. if we'd just hung around and chilled. meh. stayed up until like 2 (at the earliest). meant to get up at like 4, but i definitely woke up for one alarm, turned it off, and woke up a second time at 5, when we'd meant to leave...apparently my mom didn't go to sleep, though...she just totally lost track of time or something. and my dad didn't set his alarm. so we were all really rushed, especially me, who still had to pack all of his carry-on stuff...but i think all i've realized i forgot so far has been a few cds that i wanted and were in a different case. and a dvd or two...meh.

imma stop for now. by my computer's clock, i've been on for about 40 minutes. well...that's like a twelfth of how long the flight still had to go when i decided to boot up my compy. not bad...i suppose. hrm...

...no, nevermind.

btw, it's like 6:30 pm on the 23 here. 13 hours ahead, right?

from lax!

Current Mood/Status: uurrrggg...
Currently Doing: mostly waiting, but now hating this cmputer
Song of the Day:

AARRG, i definitely just wrote a decently-sized post, tried to copy it, and lost it because this bloody junk-station is running on some other, non-mac/pc os. that's really upsetting.

minut left, this cmpute sucks, defnitly scrwed my pos over like for tmes.

arrgh, now now i;m upset. mor soe other tie.