02:23 am greencastle, july 4; 03:32 pm taipei, july 4

happy independence day, selfish and near-sighted americans.

no. but...it's really too bad that it's on a monday. well, for those of you back in the states, where stuff is happening on account of the occasion. *sniff* no fireworks for me.

on the other hand, it's been thundering a lot, and loudly, in the past few minutes. mebbe it'll rain or something; that'd be cool, too, because i don't have plans for the rest of the day and could just sit in my room (with a wall largely taken up by glass doors, but not much of a view...i'd be able to see the rain, though.), reading, just lying around, or whatever. or...mebbe i could head back to taipei 101 and try for the hundredth story, roughly. hrm...i'd probably have to leave pretty much now, assuming that the heaviest rain comes first and not for long. well...i'll see. if something like that happens, no doubt i'll write about it in today's post; however, this one is for yesterday; reasons why later. and, now that i mention it, i realize that i have been writing a post for each day, haven't i? but it seems like i've written so much! fifteen posts, total, excluding this one, unless i'm mistaken somewhere, somehow. no; that doesn't just seem like a lot, that is a lot, despite the fact that there are multiple...well, let's see. as notepad text files, they appear to be approximately...65.8 kb big. that...is a lot. means i've written more text that's appeared on my blogger than four times how much petey and i have spoken via yim. i wonder what that says about whom.

anyways, all i did of importance yesterday was watch two more plays--a wholly traditional peking opera and some newfangled take on that and politics. the former i probably enjoyed more, for i could understand a lot more of that by (ye gods, it's so simple to explain in my head, but harder in words...)...no, i'l try that again; i probably enjoyed the former more. that is likely largely because i understood fully what was happening a much higher percent of the time than in the latter. the costumes, though...wow. stunning. so, so colorful and glamorous, and the actors moved so elegantly in them. it was the story of some woman married to a great general, and, when the two of them fought/led armies together, they never lost. once, in a very difficult naval battle of sorts, she climbed a mountain and beat a great drum to revive morale in her troops, and they were victorious. the other play...was much harder to follow. it was called something like "the family that loves peking opera," and there was a huge cast of people, all able to either sing really well or do impressive stuff--flips, fight, whatever. but it was mostly about politics and drawing all these songs from other traditional texts and whatnot. memorable, though, was one man, who sang a woman's part--and if you've ever heard a peking opera, you'll get the significance. meh. it was relatively interesting regardless.

...i suddenly find that i'm to leave very shortly, and i had no idea. uhh...well, not a lot of interesting stuff happened besides that. except for small stuff...such as the couple that i saw, holding eachother while both on cell phones; i got a few snippets of conversation, and it was almost like they were talking to eachother...or this other couple, both wearing black shirts with plain white lettering: "not enough time to fcuk." oh, at in the food court of taipei 101 again--hot pot. it was pretty good. had that papaya milk again...and i was definitely right. this time, they added no water at all--besides less than forty grams of ice. just puree'd papaya and milk, including some dehydrated milk stuff. it was much, much better this time. lesse...ah, i've discovered the most annoying thing that the two twins can possibly do: they seem to greatly enjoy running in together and jumping up and down while screaming some short, unintelligible nonsense, and this absolutely drives me crazy. fortunately, shortly after they begin, they usually get yelled at to stop--not by me; i usually just smile and say a few words to them whenever they come in, then they laugh and run off, or something. and...the other stuff on my hand is stuff from today. so i'll do something about that tonight, probably, if i remember and have time. *now* i'm having fun.