10:09 am greencastle, july 15; 11:09 pm taipei, july 15

...and so here's the entry that i wrote for friday and saturday, when i was off in southern taiwan, rather than taipei--a name which derives it's former half (tai-) from the taiwan, and it's latter from the word for north. of course, anything not parenthetical but in brackets is a comment of mine from monday morning, taiepei time, at like two, when i'm actually typing all of this up.

(nostalgia is official [sic] a physical state of being, too, now.)

we took a plane, and then a car, to ping dong, on the southern end of taiwan yesterday. but first, in the morning, john, his mother, his friend, his sister, a friend of hers, his brother, and i went to the chiang kai-shek memorial building, together, too early in the monrning. that is, i stayed up until like 4:30 that morning, first talking to carl about random stuff, and then doing that whole...bloody..."slideshow" thing. actually, thought, it turned out i needed only to type up my notes and whatnot, bring the few pictures of class that i took together, and stick them all (magically) on a floppy for daisy (she preferred floppy to cd or email...*sigh*), so that ended up taking...altogether not too long. the hardest part was actually resizing the pictures right so that they would fit on the floppy. the text was only a few dozen kbs.

that memorial building, though...was definitely cool. i mean, it wasn't actually open in the morning, when we went, but there was definitely another 2005: world year of physics huge...thing with stuff with which to mess around. took pictures, and i'll show garner, maybe. ah...oh, and so we wandered around the vicinity, immediate, too, and there was a nice little pond thing with a bunch of trees, a few other buildings of minor interest, and...a huge, artificial slope like. see the picture(s). they're building a skiing/snowboarding slpe, ten stories tall, right there in the courtyard of all these big buildings. there'll be snow, of course, too. weird...

not much happened later friday, but the plane ride was notably interesting. see, we left from a small airport, so not only does one need buy tickets no more than minutes before departure, if they're available, but upon take-off, the overhead view of the mountains and general greenery, even in taipei, is beautiful. i was dead [*cough*] tired, as later that day and today, after like a week of too little sleep (yeah, yeah, i know, but i saw it coming way before i even left for [wrote that as "ofr" first time around] taiwan). it was great, though; some parts even looked like spines or something, where ranges or valleys, or somethihng, stood in rocky grey contrast to the luch greenery. taiwan's a tropical place, in case you're not sure, by the way.

but then...not much later that day. came back, met my mom's brother's in-laws (parents, brother, nephew, and neice), had dinner. lesse...now it's (the first) time to consult my notes. ah, yes. how could i forget? ah, okay, all the excitement of today (later--oh, the joy of anticipation!). rain! typhoon's coming to taiwan, so the weather's going to turn nasty in a few days. means it's already not too hot, sometimes, so we had a wonderful rainstorm yesterday, complete with very dark clouds in the distance, over the ocean, as we were being driven (by my uncle's father-in-law) over from the airport, with excellent lightning. wehn it struck, finally, i definitely went outside and stood on their porch to watch the storm for a while. it was great. there were times when i could see the wind, when it blew hard and so compressed the drops of rain together--it was like a sheet of white wiping over everything.

of course, some people got caught in the rain, some of whom were on bikes. they mostly tried to get to wherever they were going (*cough*) as quickly as possible, and i thought, wow, if i were already as soaked as they must be,i'd just take my time. one or two kids did. i thought, wow, good for (i just wrote "ofr" again...) them, it'd be pretty cool if they were to, iunno, yell or something--right before they did. winners, for real.

before i forget, i'd just like to point out the fact that my muscles (namely, forearms, thighs, and calves) have gotten sorer the days following that upon which i ran by several days...uh...uhfortunately. mebbe that'l do something about itself...hopefully. especially the soreness in my writing/disc/;right arm--it's something of a problem. [i just realized: i like my adverbs very much.]

anyways, anybody ever heard of "ragnarok?" my...cousin-in-law? uhh...my uncle's nephew-in-law, anyways; the guy plays the mmorpg...watches the show...reads the comic...and, presumably, plays the card game. i just thought that was weird...a bunch of these two days have had odd thoughts like that.

or me remembering that "hollaback girl" is, apparently, something of a big song here; it plays entirely too often, including the video.

then, today, i had to get up at like 5:30 or six in order to get on the way to ken ting (and eluanbi), the very southernmost tip of taiwan. well...ken ting has a national park, but we really just looked around before going to a beach there, where we spent maybe two hours. finally; no, not enough emotion. *finally*, finally, finally, threw my disc around a bit, though, admittedly, in very poor conditions. my uncle isn't the greatest frisbee-er, but he can throw and catch pretty well. the wind wasn't much of a problem, but that, somehow, it kept making me overthrow--m headwind, that is. the issue was the sand. okay, so i've put my feet on radiators before, bare, for minutes, and i can stand standing in pools of ice water, but this sand *burned*. i mean, i couldn't even run around in it for a minute; it was too bad. after trying to, and getting stuck in it many a time when my foot slipped out of a a flip-flop, or i simply threw one or both off to run for the disc (i only actually ran for hard catches), my feet ended up a little raw later. and red. even the water was warm--not just "not cool" or anything, but warm in the shallower areas. by about waist height it was normal, but...killer sun, i say. i'm even a little red about thes houlders today. so...swam very briefly a few times, but the waves (though very small, slowly picking up through the day and the coming of storms) and people mostly prevented any real swimming (for more than ten strokes of whatever), and an indecent number of motor boat-ers kept me from water where i couldn't breath while standing flat-footed-ly or swimming more than a stroke or two submerged. *sigh*...but apparently it was better than normal, people-wise, because of the imminent typhoon.

and then, lunch. pretty good. tried a few more things i've never had before, but just in the cooking, mostly. actually had shark fin soup, escargot, and some unique taiwanese veggie thing with dinner. but the tea that came with lunch...it was just tea-colored coffee. no, it probably didn't actually have that many chemicals (such as caffeine), but it tasted just like coffee. very peculiar. oh, also had some coconut milk stuff that was extremely tasty.

afterward, we headed over to eluanbi, wich [sic] is *the* southernmost piece of land on taiwan. took a whole bunch of pictures. tossed the good disc around a few more times. decided, when i threw it uphill and it stayed darn near parallel to the grouond, a foot above it for a few meters' ride that yes [sic], my backhand has evolved into something of an air-hopper. took a bunch more pictures. saw a lighthouse that was destroyed (and rebuilt) twice, some 100.4 m or so tall. bood stuff. then, went to a street vendor with coconuts (they're big on them [and they're really big] there), payed a bit of money, and had him promptly grab a huge one, lop off one part, put a straw in [ouch, sorry, definitely my bad; i'll call it a written typo], and hand it over [twice.].not too sweet, but very refreshing and tasty. he was just doing this and bottling it. fresh, pure coconut juice/milk looks just like water, too, so it looked like bottled water. cool.

there were a bunch of little stores there, and so we saw a whole bunch and bought a bit. saw some kid with a shirt on that appeared to say "chic." he turned a bit; "chick," is this? no way! oh, okay...wait, "chica?!" what a loooooser! i laughed.

also saw some very cool shell art things--that is, just sculpted or painted and whatnot--including mood rings. yes, i saw shell mood rings, and almost bought one for the extraordinary novelty of the thing, but decided aginst it. oh, and that stoore seems to have a website, too. they had it hand-painted on the bottom of their sign, and i plan on checking it out.

...which about covers everything on *both* of my hands. yes, i do believe it does. had a respectable headache last night/yesterday; i've survived today. now, though, it's time to go to sleep in. woohoo! finally!