09:42 am greencastle, july 2; 10:42 pm taipei, july 2

...and oh, man, has stuff happened. it's probably best to try to stick to chronology, but i can't garuntee too much accuracy there--there isn't a square centimeter of unwritten-upon skin on the palm side of my left hand, and it even runs onto the bottom part, below my pinky; the side of my hand.

so...friday. first thing i did was wake up unhappily, really tired (it was like eight o'-bloody-clock). then i ate some stuff, showered, did general morning stuff, and sat down to attempt something of a plan for my tutoring of john. well...so i mentioned that those dvds i burned didn't work, right? and how i thought that it was because the full dv quality at which the clips were saved was too high and the drive couldn't read the disk fast enough, right? well, so i decided to try to copy the video file itself from one of them to see if it'd work from my hard drive. hah...of course, because it's full dv and huge, i don't have enough space...you know, the whole under a gb left thing, right? so i went and uninstalled a few programs, including those such as diablo, which i've not played in a long time and don't plan on playing any time extremely soon, and got a little over 3.7 gb free, total. (defragged later, twice, too; and doing disk cleanup right now, compressing old files, which should free up a fair amount more than two more gbs. woohoo!) of course, the good clips, from target and everything, which would be really boring split up, were like 3.95 gb...so i ended up copying over the stuff my mom filmed at a voice thing. meh. john didn't seem to understand much, but it was also kinda hard to hear, so...ah, well. he had a friend of his over, too, by the way; his name is isaac (i found out today, that is), and he just graduated form college. he hopes to go to the u.s. in a year or so for graduate school, economics or something. meh. oh, and so for the rest of the time, besides those nine or ten minutes of film, i just tried to keep speaking english with john and isaac. i'm not really sure what they wanted out of the "tutoring session," but i tried...meh. after that, i ate there, then john's younger sister, his mother, and the three of us went to xin dian, where we walked around looking at a bunch of small street-side shops (guang jie, the chinese; you know, just walking around the streets looking at stuff; i may have tried to explain this before.), found small minigame-esque things, such as throwing darts at balloons (i was pretty good), those basketball machines where you have to make as many goals within a time limit (meh), and air hockey (three letters: p, w, and i'll let you guess the last.). also played that one type of game where you get a whole bunch of balls and you have to shoot them up pinball style, then they fall down, hitting rungs or nails or whatever on the way, sending them to different places, and you try to get them to fall into high-scoring holes or whatever at the bottom. john, his sister, and i tried this, with...uhh...probably twenty or so balls each, and we got a combined score of 456 or something like that; i think we broke 400, anyways. i was in the high hundreds, she was in the low hundreds, and john...almost broke it. had fun, though. oh, and there was some sort of ddr/parappa/donkey konga style game, only you have to beat a traditional chinese drum thing when the marks come along on the screen. john sister tried it, but i didn't. it looked kinda interesting, though. grabbed some weird (but alright) ice cream, and, after a bit, we crossed some river, upon which xin dian largely is, jumped into a pedal boat, and took an hour to relax on the river, spending at least half of it not doing anything besides drifting in the wind and current. it was pretty cool, and on one side there was a sort of (rather dirty and littered) shore of, largely, rocks, and on the other side, there was a very green forest and rocks (also very green). it made for a decent view, but i didn't have my camera that day...dag. ah, well. then we guang'd a little more on the other side (oh, after walking across a large suspension bridge to get from xin dian to the other side of the river, that is) and, despite the fact that i'm forgetting what else we did (surely something), we headed back to our separate residences.

hardly the end of the day, though. what, one whole day in a "paragraph?" pssht. got back to my room and sat down for a few minutes (that's when i set my compy to defrag), took half a breather and had to run back out to meet my mom and tim good, another prof who's doing asain or chinese theatre or something. well so i was supposed to meet them

--oh, wait, had it not been for those inscriptions upon mine sinister hand, i'd've forgotten. well, so, one of the small things that i wanted to mention and was afraid i'd forget is drinks. specifically, a certain "apple sidra" and some other "ruby" or something. had both for the first (in memoria) time yesterday. well, now...one of the first thoughts that went through my head when i tried the apple sidra stuff was, "oh, man. betsy's going to be so proud (or impressed, or something) that i found a replacement for rockstar." man...it's *good*, though. it tastes almost the same as rockstar, but it's pretty much just unusually sweet apple cider when flat. exactly as many chemical additives as there are calories in water. well...good, normal water, anyways. once again, in case you missed it, that stuff is *good*. the other highly notable drink was this "ruby" stuff that comes in green, strangely shaped bottles. the neck is a weird shape; imagine a normal coke, beer, champagne, or whatever bottle of that shape, but of clay or something moldable. now squeeze the neck with two fingertips on opposite sides such that it almost seals it off. that's pretty much it. why the weird shape? why, the top is kept shut by a marble, of course, that one must push down in order to stick a straw in to drink the stuff. so you end up with a strangely shaped glass bottle with a marble between the lid and about half way down the neck. i definitely kept the bottle, and imma see about bringing a few unopened ones back, if i can get the opening thing, too. it's...so cool. the drink itself just tastes like bubblegum or something; not that good. it's the *experience*, though; you know.

...okay. anyways, oh, wait, consulting my hand again, to make sure i'd not forgotten anything, reminded me that i had. convenient, no? well, as i was walking back to my place after leaving xin dian, i diagnosed myself with a very mild case of obsessive compulsive disorder. you see, there are a few small things that i always do, and must do, else it bothers me. much. [edit'd, for the sake of my integrity.]

...so back to that sentence that i was writing. ah...yes, that's right. so i'm to meet tim and my mom at a certain mrt station, right? unfortunately, my mom mentioned it only in passing and very briefly. fortunately, i remembered that i thought to myself that it was only three stations away from the main station, so i should be fine. anyways, i'm to be there at seven, but i arrive a few minutes late--like 7:05 or so. figure it won't really matter, right? my mom is usually late, so they may not even be there yet. so like ten minutes later, i start to worry a little more seriously (after all, how can i not worry when i'm late and the people who i'm supposed to meet aren't there yet?). am i at the wrong station? yeah, i'm probably at the wrong station. just relying on "three stations away from the main?" yeah, i'm sure i'm even getting that part right. oh, man...and we're going to watch a play; what'll happen, especially to our tickets? wait...maybe i got the time wrong? wasn't it 6:30? hrm...but then, just as likely 7:30, right? no worries, i hope. few minutes pass. aw, geez. then there're also the other three (or so) exits from this station; i told them to meet me at number one, but what if they forgot, or couldn't figure out which one that is, or didn't even realize that there are multiple exits and are standing just some other one? of course, by this time, i've become surrounded by some five or so smokers, and relocating definitely doesn't help. huh...so at like 7:45 or so, when i'm going crazy, because i also thought that the play was supposed to start at 7:30, and i'm thinking, what if my mom misunderstood, and thought i wasn't going to come? what if they *somehow* forgot that i'm coming along? what if, you know, i'm still at the wrong station, or any of the previous things has occurred? urrgh...this is highly distressing. then, finally, they show up. pssht...traffic, they say. an hour, sitting in it, they say. taxi driver went all over the place and even claimed not to know where the mrt station was before they made it, they say. fine, fine, whatever, but...arrrrgh. *horrible*. well...we ended up barely making it to the 8:00 performance on time, but it was pretty good. some aboriginese traditional dances which were surprisingly interesting, and they even grabbed a bunch of audience members at the end to dance along with the performers--including both my mom and me. (oh, right, one of my mom's really old students from back in wellesley met us there) of course, i'm an awful dancer, and it took me like three repetitions of the basic four-step to catch on--i kept being a beat behind. well...so i learned that if i ever attempt to dance again, i shouldn't try to dance and try to learn the moves at the same time; i have to step out for a second in order to catch on. it isn't hard then, though, and i figured out the general cycle by the third time of everything. it was really fun. intermission, then, and a sun wu kong (or however you want to romanize the monkey king's name) performance--he, his master, and two other disciples were travelling in search of some holy book or something and were accosted in a forest by some spiders (including the spider queen) wanting to eat the master's flesh--you know, for immortality, for he has a perfect body or something. well, sun wu kung is the only one that can see the spiders for what they really are when they are able to deceive everybody else with some simple disguises, and so he also has to go and rescue them and everything. lots of traditional kung fu fighting and the like; pretty good.

...and, by then, my head was splitting, between the being up early and walking around doing stuff all day, the constantly oppressive heat and humidity, the worrying, and hunger, not having eaten, really, anything since lunch about nine hours before then. but i barely made it back to my room before practically collapsing, dead, and with an almost-migraine. it persisted through the night, so i didn't sleep too well and woke up a few times through the night, headache persisting. i was mostly fine when i finally woke up for real, again at eight, but i was still really tired, so i stayed in bed for a good ten or fifteen minutes longer. it remained with me all day to a small extent, but it's still disagreeing with me. i'll probably be okay tomorrow; i'll sleep in a bit more.

and so today was really busy with the same respective groups of people again. still had to be out at about nine, when i met john and isaac again (john's dad picked us up) and we went to the opposite side of taipei, dan shui. it's a port and has a plethora of small shops right on the street, so we were around there for a very long while. ate, too. oh, wait; my bad, again. sorry. before we went to dan shui, we (besides stopping along the way several times and taking pictures) went to a museum. this museum had a huge exhibit on the aboriginese taiwanese people, specifically, those of the "shi san hang" tribe. it was pretty interesting. also a few general exhibits on all kinds of ancient peoples; pompeiians, egyptians, indians, and a few more. including...a discovery box! in which they had replicas of things that you could feel. and...lsd! woo! no...they had the part of the song where all the beatles sing is "lucy in the sky with diamonds" on loop in a general history section, talking about how drugs were a big thing among musicians around that time period. uhh...yeah...but the design of the building itself was really cool, too. it was kind of slanted, the whole thing, and you could walk up a few flights of stairs to the top, where there was another walkway over one part of the museum with a glass floor...and a sign that asks anybody wearing a skirt to walk along the solid side. after that, and some trouble finding the right bus, we headed for dan shui proper, taking a boat (with a picture or two) to get there. very cool, though. bought another thing or two, exluding some pretty cool food, including crystallized strawberries, prunes, and tomatoes. uhh...oh, yeah. had a really awkward conversation about religion, which consisted largely of "why don't you believe in jesus christ?" "uhh...i just don't...a bunch of my friends do, but my family doesn't go to church or anything." "okay...so do you want to learn about god?" "uhh...i think i'm fine, but thanks for the offer." "well, why don't you come to church with us tomorrow? oh, and my dad came straight from church to pick you up, by the way." "uhh...oh, man. um...maybe, we'll see. uhh..." ...and the like. (*crosses off another item on his hand*)

after dan shui, isaac had to go, and john and i went to this department store called sogo. let me just say...that it's amazing. no, lies; i'll say a lot more than that. it has so much name recognition merchandise that i was surprised that they had to sell anything to make a profit; one would think that the stores would pay them to take stuff and display it. but...there was a lot of cool stuff--clothes, accessories, whatever. i only had enough money for one pair of pants, though...but i think i'll go back tomorrow or some time in the near future; i saw some other stuff that i definitely want, including a really cool belt. and there were some very nice shorts and an amazing pair of long khaki pants with these bright purple, green, and orange zippers, but they cost like $120 after the 30% discount, so...i wasn't quite willing to spend money i didn't have. *my* pants, the ones that i bought, originally cost some $80, but i definitely only payed about $32. and i'm pretty happy about that, so i'm making sure that you find out. i'll wear them tomorrow to make sure they actually fit lengthwise as i walk; i tried them on, but didn't run around or anything. ah, well. probably should have bought shorts, seeing as i have so few, but i rather prefer long pants, except when running, or, perhaps, when playing ultimate. meh.

after sogo, when i had to leave to grab some dinner before yet more fine arts, john and i stopped in a convenient store to grab drinks, and he picked out some--get this--"lactic" flavored fanta. oh, man...i definitely let out a laugh or two to the side when i saw it, a little can with black and white cow spots all over it, but it was actually really good. "lactic" flavor isn't a very good description, but it's just a poor translation of a similar milk/yogurt drink thing--the fanta's just carbonated and probably more chemical.

...and then there was more trouble of the same sort as before at the mrt station, as my mom was late again--but only by like 20 minutes or so. well...it wasn't too bad. then we set off in search of tim's hotel, that we may pick him up on our way to food and then that night's play. huh...took us like half an hour, in part because my mom didn't trust taking a taxi, but mostly because we didn't know exactly where it was or how far away it was from the mrt station. ah, well...made it eventually, and decided to eat at a korean restaurant. wow, was it good. barbeque thing in the middle (not asl, though) upon which we placed strips of thinly sliced meat, which we could then put between pieces of cabbage to eat. it was extraordinary. also some exquisite oxen and tofu soups. however, we definitely suddenly realized that it was quarter past seven and we still had three dishes left to be taken out (i omitted quite a few), and so hastily got the check and jet. 'd. but not before getting one of the dishes, some amazing seafood, packed up for us. hopped into a taxi, found our way (after some delay in the wrong part of the building) to the theatre, and made it to our seats with much ado.

last (now) night was a traditional peking (perhaps; but then, quite likely from somewhere else, too) opera about monies adapted for children, and so it had much comedy and interesting exagerration. one notable part was how this old she-miser died; trying not to waste food and taking a bite out of some six-year-old cake...not a bright idea, clearly. it was definitely made out to have mold and a bunch of dust upon it, and her nephew ran away from it, but that apparently didn't stop her. pretty good stuff, though. i enjoyed it a lot, and the performances that we're watching later today i expect to be better yet. looking forward to that, and i'm looking forward to sleep, for now. new picture up from play with sun wu kung, of course. i wasn't feeling too hot by that point and so i'm looking kinda weird, but it's decent enough.

now, then. for some reason, not only was i strangely really looking forward to writing this entry/post, but yesterday i was strongly compelled to listen to dave matthews for a fair amount of time. curious...but no matter. sleep is the answer. sleep...is always the answer.