Travel Blog

How to gain superpowers for dummies

I have been deeply encapsulated as of late by the TV series Heroes, to which my sister and brother-in-law, Eileen and Bob, first introduced and then sourced at infinitum through an online streaming site called Peekvid.com, an ingenious website made for those incapable of using Torrent.  This show is highly recommended.  A battle cry of "Save the cheerleader, save the world!" deserves accolade in urban history.  Have we come to an era of human evolution when some people will really mutate and develop powers beyond the norm?  I certainly hope so and I certainly hope I'm one of them.

More in past decade than ever before, Hollywood has amassed a tidy fortune on comic book heroes and fantasia.  From Jedi Knights and X-Men to Harry Potter, these characters we watch with a tickle of jealousy and whose powers we use vicariously in our imaginations.  What would your superpower be?  Pyro has always topped my list.  The belligerent teen with a Zippo, blowing shit up.  On Heroes, there is a Japanese salaryman named Hiro that can bend time and space.  Brilliant.  And he has a samurai sword.

Human beings are built on DNA.  The diversity of our DNA stems fom generations of blendng, some more careful than others, of our ancestors.  Half of your DNA comes form your maternal side and the other half from your paternal side.  So to foster an increased chance of mutation, theoretically, we have to widen the DNA canvas.  The most natural way, save finding a radioactive spider to bite you, is cultural diversity.  Here I present a new battlecry: Widen the canvas and gain a superpower!  Be warned.  Not all mutations are good.  Now also be reminded that "widening" the canvas does not mean you have an excuse to sleep with everyone in sight.  Remember that said canvas can only be widened when you procreate, and the possibility of superpowers to be your offsprings'.  This will certainly redefine "talking back."  I will suck to be a parent of the future.

Go ahead.  Imagine your baby with telekinesis.  Evil. 

Speaking of evil.....

Wedding Bells a Ringing

I'm getting married. 

Counterpart:

Big words from a guy racking up big numbers in the age category.  How do you know she's the one? one might ask.  That's the million dollar question... or in California... the [your assets divide by 2] question.  Well, life is full of risks and your ability to analyze risk, coupled with the quality of your guardian angel registered to your soul, should help you weather the toughest of life's challenges.  But really.  Analyze risk?  I spent 10 years of my life in the insurance industry analyzing risk from all angles.  No analysis can be applied to this. 

So here I present a new theory: if you are able to quantify love in dollar (or yuan or euro) terms, then it is not true love.  When this woman walks into the room, Justin Timberlake starts singing Sexyback in stereo in my head.  So how do I identify this as true love as compared to lust?  I am still able to think logically, work, made decisions in everyday life without fault. 

Back in November of 2006, I took Mandy (the counterpart) to Shanghai for a weekend, where I took the GMAT.  The evening before my exam, we dined at the Ruijin Guest House, a beautifully remodelled restaurant and lounge in the former French Concession at the heart of Shanghai.  It was a clear evening, we sat outside at a candlelit table, sipping champagne.  I got on one knee and asked for the honor of spending the rest of my life with her.  She said yes. 

The next day, I successfully took the GMAT, and subsequently was enrolled at China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) Executive MBA program.  Beginning March 2007, I will fly to Shanghai on a monthly basis to attend classes for 2 years. 

Suffice to say, this coming year will be a bit compressed.  But as we all know, we can't choose when good things come.  But when they do, make certain to grab as many of these good things as you possibly can as if Trump had thrown a million dollars in C-notes out his office window above Columbus Circle.   If I had a million dollars to throw out a window, this has to be the only moment in my life so far that I would actually do it.  Risk?  What risk?

The Spice Shop of Life

Variety is what people crave.  Boredom is what people seek to avoid.  Yet familiarity is what lights the warmth in our hearts.  Like all things of this world, this emotional paradox of a triangle is actually circular in nature.  To avoid boredom, we find variety.  To find variety, we must first escape familiarity.  Once gone too far, we regress to familiarity, which in another context, may translate to boredom.  We are taught to think in a linear fashion, which I believe creates an unsettling state of heart.  I propose a circular philosophy.  It is natural to go through these points of boredom, variety, and familiarity.  Do not think that you are getting away from each point after you’ve reached them.  Think of it as if you were going through it.  When bored, look forward to variety, when extended in variety, look forward to familiarity; and when boredom sets in, you start all over.  Embrace the circle and it shall disrupt your soul no longer. 

I recently fell madly in love with a girl named Mandy.  In the haze of the honeymoon period, we often question just how real this feeling is, and how it will actually feel a year from now, or 3 years from now.  The Discovery Channel claims that this feeling is purely biochemical and that it will not last beyond an average of 18 months.  Though factual, I refuse to let go of my biochemical high.  This begs the question: How does one physically prolong the release of the biochemical cocktail that produces this euphoria?  That is my quest.

Let’s assume this fall into a bell curve.  Taken the Discovery Channel’s average 18 months as a fact, of the 6 billion persons on earth, 80% or 4.8 billion persons will on average fall out of love somewhere between 3.6 months to 32.4 months.  Rough calculated, this is equivalent to 600 million persons who fall in and out of love under 3.6 months, and 600 million persons who stay in love up to and beyond 3 years. 

Please note that this doesn’t mean that people just break up after the love is gone.  We all know that it transforms to another level of love, comfort and familiarity, which ultimately works for approximately 50% of our marriages. 

The holy grail is to find out how to be one of the 600 million persons that make the euphoria ever lasting.  Given this, I am now attempting my own theory.  Keep it mysterious.  Never completely understand the other person.  Continuously learn, be creative and bring surprise to the relationship.  Really, the only way to do this is to regress to middle school crush mentality.  Back in the day, pulling a girl’s hair was a subconscious level of foreplay.  Imagine that.  The simplicity of it all. 

I received terrible grades in Chemistry in high school.  I think I may do better this time around.  And if that doesn’t work for you, email me, I know a cool website that sells nurse uniforms.

Neuropathways to Weddings

Just yesterday, I read an article in the Economist about an experiment where by a silicon chip with 100 gold electrodes was connected to the nerves of the primary motor cortex of a paraplegic.  Through this chip connect to a computer, the person is able to open email, play Pong, and change the channel of his TV set just by thought. 

WOW. We are really moving that fast into the future.  I just want to be the first to say that I want for Christmas (1) memory stick slot installed in the back of my head for memory expansion and multi-language capabilities and (2) Gills installed in the back of my ears like Waterworld. 

Back to reality.  I have been on hiatus.  I have been living.  I recently went back to California to attend two amazing weddings back to back.  I saw old friends, babies, children, and met new friends.  Seeing two people come together and commit to building a life for eternity is a beautiful thing.  It's inspiring, thought provoking, and pushes the procreative urge.

My friends Welly and Dina were married in Dana Point.  Being show persons, the after reception party at the lobby bar of the Monarch Resort Hotel consisted of In n' out burgers and extremely talented performers playing the piano and singing show tunes.  Welly topped it off by sneaking in our rooms and singing a capella, which woke us up in mid sleep like a dream.  This I will never forget.

My friends Marvin and Margaret were marred in Pleasanton.  The ceremony was beautiful and filled with friends from a long time past.  There was also In n' Out burgers and my brother Tony drunk and physically incapacitated, yet still mentally able to talk shit and have full conversations with you (you had to get in line and lay next to him on the floor).

I've returned to my life in Taiwan refreshed and with a new perspective.  Often I discount my life here in Taiwan because it is less exciting or fulfilling than a life otherwise imagined in a foreign land.  Seeing these couples have inspired a new perspective: focus.  When there is focus on a goal, all other things seem to fade into a low priority blur.  Take my friend Raul and Smitha for example: they have a wonderfully beautiful baby boy.  In the presence of this baby, nothing else mattered.  If this is the feeling I can achieve through just a short visit with a baby, I can't imagine the intensity of focus with Raul and Smitha as the parents.  My conclusion is that this is definitely a part of the human experience no one should miss.  What a rush. 

I'm not naive to think that we are all made for this focus.  But for me, this has become a priority as of late.  Adrenaline Junkies beware of the new sport: having babies.  Probably more likely to kill you than skydiving. 

Fur Schizzle

Hey everyone.  I just wanted to show you my friend Dusty's bike.  It's called "The Shizzle Deluxe".  His fiancee, Blicious, has the same bike in pink.  Awwwwww!

Really Tangential

My friend Chad Norwood is going to visit me in Taiwan.  So he promises.  This to me is as if I've been given a piece of insider information, to which I will eventually profit on.  Chad Norwood.  Present at the happiest moment in my life, drinking pink things concocted by Fri Bri on the Playa along with my best pal, Dusty Swartz, dancing to breaks thrown on by none other than Master of the Universe, Greg Tung.  Seeing Chad here in Taiwan is as alien to me as seeing him in a mid-drift nurse uniform at a How Weird Street Fair in San Francisco.  That's Rick Reiker to the left and Chad to the right.  The plot thickens.  Fri is in Ko Tao Thailand teaching as a dive instructor.  The world thus shrinks.  Globalization in evidence.

In fact, this is how I feel:

The only probable down side is that he will get trapped in Thailand, which so oft happens amongst the backpacking crew.

So I welcome my friend Chad Norwood to be here with me and experience what it's like live like Yuta in Taiwan.  He will then be knighted as an official promoter of the bureau of "Visit Yuta in Taiwan".  Because as with Vegas, what happens here, stays in Asia.  Chad is number 2 from SF to visit.  YOU... can be No. 3. 

Parallel Careers - A Love Story

A recently renewed acquaintance, Lishan in SF, made use to the phrase "drinking career".  Here I would like to openly draw a correlation to our working careers. 

As much as we don't want to admit it, we all have drinking careers that parallel our working careers.  Working career by day, drinking career by night.  Our drinking careers and our working careers are typically linked by negative correlation.  For instance, achieving infamy in our drinking careers typically hinders our working careers.  Focusing too much on our working careers leaves little time for our drinking careers. 

There are exceptional one-way rules to this relationship.  When you excessively focus on a working career not of your liking, it may drive you to infamy with a drinking career to match, which will also likely ruin the undesired working career.  An effect perhaps subconsciencely desired.  However, your excessive focus on your drinking career will ALWAYS negatively affect your working career.

Mental ability and Physical ability.  In both your working career and drinking career, your mental and physical abilities are important factors.  The primary mental factors I mention are maturity and experience.  The primary physical factor is aging.  Maturity and experience will significantly improve your working career but slow your drinking career.  Aging will both negatively affect your working career and drinking career. 

There is no moral to this topic, but only to provide useless mental tickling.  But anyone who is interested in discussing this further, meet me at happy hour for martinis.  I'm buying.  My parallel career has fallen to neglect as of late.

Donkey Kong's Introspection

We oft sit in deep contemplation of our past relationships, particularly in solitude.  Last night, I sat in my iron claw bath tub surrounded by candlelights, smoking fragrant tobacco from a pipe, which I recently purchased in Brussels with the help of my Santa Barbara friends Dan and Gretchen. 

Why is it that we do not take the time for introspection to identify the repeating faults of our previous relationships?  Past relationships are by default failures.  For those of us not yet married or engaged to be married, we continue traverse through this world, meeting attractive persons of the opposite sex, and fail time and again to establish a deeper and more spiritual connection leading to an undeniable urge to get married. 

In contrast, when we play video games, we learn quickly upon the death of a player to avoid the same mistake that caused the previous death.  Mario runs up the ramp dodging wine barrels tossed down by Mr. Kong, in order to save a fair maiden.  We can make the same correlation to this analogy.  The barrels are the attractive, but not meant to be, persons of the the opposite sex that comes along.  We must learn to quickly identify them as barrels and jump over them in continuous succession in order to reach the fair maiden.  When we get hit by one, we quickly learn to not make the same mistake at the next turn.  Jump sooner perhaps or jump higher. 

Yet in real life, it is not as simple.  The next time that you go out with an attractive person, remember Donkey Kong and save yourself some time up the ramp to the fair maiden.  If by chance you begin to see all attractive persons as barrels, it is then a misfortune that I have put this imagery into your head.  And if by chance you are the type of person that does not want to find the fair maiden, then run forthwith straight into each barrel, each, hopefully, filled with delicious wine. 

No Muscles in Brussels

The 18 of us left Amsterdam 2 days ago and arrived in Brussels.  This country is known for (1) Chocolate, (2) Waffles, (3) Beer, (4) Capital of the EU, and (5) Jean Claude van Damm aka Muscles from Brussels.  Since arriving, I've eaten chocolate non-stop, waffles twice a day, drank 8 different types of beer, enjoyed an amazingly informative tour at the Chantillon Brewery, saw same EU federal buildings, but alas, no Jean Claude, most likely womanizing in Los Angeles. 

My friend Dan accompanied me to a tobacco shop yesterday and assisted in picking out a briar wood pipe, made by Brebbia.  I am now a pipe smoker.  The aromatic mango tobacco was an absolute pleasure to smoke, particularly paired with a Chimay sitting at a corner tavern surrounded by Wallonians.  When I get to London, I will find myself a red velvet smoking jacket and my alter ego will be complete. 

Speaking of alter egos, I want to pay tribute to an alter ego of a dear friend of mine in Kaohsiung, Zoey Kennedy.  Everyone should take on an alter ego to do evil. 

Any clever suggestions for my alter ego name, please chime in.

Amortizing Amsterdam

Tomorrow, I leave for Amsterdam. 

A sentence like that deserves its own space.  Like staring at a blank canvas moments before inspiration, this sentence is brimming with so much anticipation it is almost overwhelming.  It has been almost a year since I was last back in California.  Eric Allday, turning 40 next week, and Cat had gathered a crew of Santa Barbara Burners to celebrate said birthday with a beer tour through Belgium and a long weekend in Amsterdam.  No was not an option.  Here is a picture of the beautiful man.

The amortization of Amsterdam comes after the trip.  As with all things natural, you gain some, you will pay some.  I speak only of non-monetary payments.  Terms of payment to be determined.  Equilibrium.  But the lissajous ups and downs of life is what defines the interesting times that we live in. 

Starting tomorrow, I am going to be irresponsible and rack up a huge debt of emotional hedonism.  Scheduled payment begins 1 week + 1 day.  It's going be worth every neuron I destroy.

Here's to you, Eric!  Happy Birthday.  And a gargantuan thanks to Cat for organizing the week.  See you in two days.

Troubles the Sun Taketh

It is said that sunshine is the best disinfectant.  Today I bear witness and present evidence to the fact.  I've been living in Kaohsiung for over a year and a half now.  I woke up today to an unbearable emotional state of being, commonly referred to as "waking up on the wrong side of the bed".  I call in sick.

After a morning of self-inflicted internal mental and emotional audit, and countless inquisitioning of the divine for possible transcendental root causes, I fail and decide to seek inner peace outside.  Luckily it was a clear breezy Spring day here in Kaohsiung.  In flip flop sandals, thai cotton pants, and T-shirt proclaiming "Pulchritudinous", I set off on a walk-about to find peace.  Noon.

I walked along the Love River by my house down to the harbor.  The Love River has been beautified over the past 5 years, with grass and trees planted along the river front.  A multitude of cafes sprung up to match.

No peace at the Love River.

I turn into DaRen Street, where just 2 blocks off the river, stands the Tao/Buddhist temple at which my family had been praying for over 50 years.  I stopped in to offer incense and prayed for inner peace. 

No peace at the temple.

I stopped across the street at a food stall that I religiously lunch after prayer.  Yummy steamed pork meatballs. 

No peace with meatballs.

Just 2 blocks further stood my elementary school.  I walked by and reminisced the blue shorts and white shirts whith my name and second grade ID stitched thereon. 

No peace with memories of dodgeball.

A 20 minute walk took me through Kaohsiung Fisherman's Wharf to the boat docks of Gushan.  A 30 cent ferry ride across the harbor to the island of Cijin, brought me to a place a world away.  A 5 minute walk from the ferry landing across the narrow island and I find myself on a volcanic grey sanded beach.  I took a deep breath at the site of the horizon, peppered with cargo ships.

No peace in the horizon.

I sat under shading in deep introspection on an abandoned bamboo fishing boat, and futilly reviewed aspects from my life from every possible perspective.  The age old trick of distraction with a magazine enforced further futility.  I fell asleep to the sound of the waves for an hour.

No peace in the nap.

I woke to the sound of a 5 year old pigtailed girl playing with rocks and a Coca Cola bottle.  How easily children amuse themselves with just rocks and a Coke bottle!  Not feeling any lighter, I walk towards the hill at the end of the island.  Perched on this hill is an old Ching Dynasty cannon fort dating back to the 17th Century.  Through a series of boardwalks and trails, I findmyself circling upwards, past a lighthouse to the fort. 

It was 5pm, and the sun was setting.  There was a light breeze on my face.  I found a perfect corner bulwark with a near 270 degree view of the horizon, and watched the sun set over an hour.  Through the shades of purple and orange, my thoughts transformed from chaotic emotional distortion to calm and clarity.  Accompanied by deep breaths and a mental replay of Porcelain by Moby, I received one of the most amazing gifts from mother nature; a gift we oft take for granted.

We live in an ever-urbanized environment.  The digitization of our lives make us turn more inwards.  This unnatural course accumulates unknown tensions that clandestinely permeate our emotional wellbeing.  Stop for a moment and hear the call of nature.  If you happen to feel an unexplicable downturn in emotional wellbeing, I suggest paying a visit to our old friend, the Sunset. 

I found peace today.

Being Run Over by a God

My fellow Kaohsiungese friend, Pieter Vorster, inspired me to drive to YanShuei for the local version of the lantern festival.  The Lantern Festival occurs a few weeks after Chinese New Year, and under normal circumstances is painted with the imagery of a sea of children running along public grounds with handheld lanterns lit by tea candles.  Contrastingly in YanShuei, the town celebrates the worship of the war gods with an open invitation to fire off as many bottle rockets as possible .... at the attendees. 

The ceremony: there are about 8 temples in YanShuei, each housing the various gods from polydeist Taoism.  During this festival, carriages with pro wrestling-like metal cages encases the traveling god, and is taken to each of the other temples in town for "a visit".  Each temple honors each visiting god with a pyromaniacal display of fireworks.  A typical set up is a shelf 5 foot in height, lined with rockets side by side on multiple shelves pointed outwards on all four sides.  Attendees rush up and surround the rocket tower with only but a few feet of distance and POW!  Fireworks are shot simultaneously from the center of the tower into the sky and chains of firecrackers are lit under our feet.

Five of us, wearing standard protective gear including a full motorcycle helmet, gloves, heavy jacket and pants, and a towel wrapped around our necks are allowed to charge with thousands of other attendees dressed in the same fashion, at walls of bottle rockets fired directly at us.  The biggest one featured a wall of 250,000 rockets fired into the crowd underneath a waterfall of sparklers.  Pieter and I ran in front of a god carriage as 3 chains of firecrackers went off under our feet.  The carriage pushed through the crowd at high speed and flattened 10 people.  We crawled out from under with firecrackers bursting around us.  The war god givith no mercy. 

YanShuei for the evening looked like Sarajevo under seige.  Across the horizon hundreds of fireworks go up simultaneously like anti-aircraft guns.  The constant bursts of explosives surrounding us rang in our ears until the next day.  For those who wore synthetic jackets, the rockets melted holes to mark scars of war. 

The siege began at 630p and ended at 2am.  8+ hours in total.  Spain may having the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona.  New Orleans may have Mardi Gras.  Only in Taiwan can one charge at 250,000 bottle rockets.  One fond tip: follow the fire engines because you know something big is going to explode.  YanShuei 2007 is an open invitation for those tempted, or just plain crazy, like us. 

Fried Chicken

Fried Chicken.  I love fried chicken.  My vanity hates fried chicken.  Somewhere in this seemingly complex structure that I have called a brain, fried chicken creates a perfectly harmonious concoction of biochemical love and hate that zeros in on my pleasure sensors like pubescent boys to cheerleading uniforms.

Fried chicken is the epitome of guilty pleasure.  Tastes SO good.  Feels SO guilty.  It led me to ponder, why is it that most everything on earth that feels or tastes fantastic, is undoubtedly bad for us?  To name a few just from the letter "B": butter, bacon, Belgian chocolate, beer, bad boys a la James Bond, and bitchy girls a la Paris Hilton.  Definitely good for the soul.  Definitely bad for reality.  I offer no solutions, but plant a seed of curiosity that perhaps will lead you to a personal answer.

Let's talk about food first.  If you were born in the middle of the rain forest, completely unaffected by what we know as society now, and your parents fed you creme de beetledung since birth and told you that it tastes good.  Would you know the difference?  Would your cerebral wirings convince you that creme de beetledung was "the shit" in culinary delights?  Pardon the slang and pun, in that order.

Now let's talk about bad boys and bad girls.  You know the type.  Those that make you activate your long lost 8th grade crush tingles or tie up your stomach in knots followed by temprary aphrasia.  These people can make botany the most exciting date activity you've ever done.  They drive you made with their brash or abrasive personalities.  They ignore you, abuse you, douse your brain ina vat of their bad temper, and it only makes you want them more.  It feels good to be angry at them.  It feels good to love them. 

Dangerous men and provocative women are stimulating and unpredictable.  We've all been there before, and in fact, some of you may be there now.  If you've been there, take a minute to reminisce the soulfulness of diving in without care.  If you're in it now, enjoy it while it lasts.  Some theorize that you don't cherish something easily gained.  Therefore we aim to tame.  Taming a tough personality produces an overwhelming sense of accomplishment the likes of summiting a mountain.  Another likely theory is that going out with such a person is but a voyeuristic peek into a life otherwise lived.

The fact of the matter is that it is but another trial in life.  Live it.  We were meant to stir the emotional brew once in a while.  Feel the anger.  Feel the lust.  Feel the guilt.  Whatever truth is locked in the depths of our desires, we can only fully decode our souls by process of elimination.  Try being a dangerous man or a provocative woman.  If you don't have the fortitude for the said experiment, you can always resort to the traditional large bucket of fried chicken. 

13

Paraskevidekatriaphobia.  This seemingly German word is, in fact, English defined as the fear of Friday the 13th.  This seemingly irrational superstition is, in fact, very entrenched in our culture.  Its basis, nonscientific.  Its origin, obscure at best.  Yet undeniable proof of the strength of this superstition appears clandestinely in our lives. 

I recently read a fascinating article by David Emery on this topic.  Here, I will give you a synopsis of his findings.  The superstition can be broken down by its parts: (1) Fear of Friday and (2) Fear of 13.

(1) Fear of Friday

Some say that the fear of Friday goes back to the beginning of biblical times.  It was on a Friday, supposedly, that Eve tempted Adam with the forbidden fruit.  Adam bit, and they were both ejected from Paradise.  Tradition also holds that the Great Flood began on a Friday; God tongue-tied the builders of the Tower of Babel on a Friday; the Temple of Solomon was destroyed on a Friday; and, of course, Friday was the day of the week on which Christ was crucified.

In pagan Rome, Friday was execution day.  Later in Britain, Friday was hangman's day.  In some pre-Christian cultures, Friday was a day of worship, so those involved with secular activities on that day could not be blessed by the gods.  This explains the taboo on embarking on journeys or starting important projects on Fridays.

Here's a good story:  One hundred years ago, the British government sought to quell the widespread superstition among seamen that setting sail on Fridays was unlucky.  A special ship was commissioned, named "H.M.S. Friday".  They laid her keel on a Friday, launched her on a Friday, selected her crew on a Friday and hired a man named Jim Friday to be her captain.  To top it off, H.M.S. Friday embarked on her maiden voyage on a Friday, and was never seen or heard from again.  Ooops.

(2) Fear of 13

Thirteen is sometimes called the Devil's Dozen.  The nexus between the number 13 and misfortune originates from legends and myths of antiquity.

Twelve gods were invited to a banquet in Valhalla.  Loki, the god of mischief, had been left off the guest list but crashed the party, bringing the total number of attendees to 13.  Loki raised hell by inciting Hod, the blind god of winter, to attack Balder the Good, who was a favorite of the gods.  Hod took a spear of mistletoe offered by Loki and obediently hurled it at Balder, killing him instantly.  All Valhalla grieved.  And although one might take the moral of the story to be "Beware of uninvited guests bearing mistletoe", the Norse apparently concluded that 13 people at a dinner party is just plain bad luck.  As if to prove the point, there were exactly 13 present at the Last Supper.  One of the dinner guests betrayed Jesus, setting the stage for the Crucifixion, on a Friday.

Many cities do not have a 13th Street or a 13th Avenue.  Many buildings don't have a 13th floor.  If 13 people sit down to dinner together, all would die within a year.  If you have 13 letters in your name, you will have the devil's luck.  Jack the Ripper, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Theodore Bundy all have 13 letters in their names.

Ultimately, there are powerful forces in this world we have yet to comprehend.  These forces of nature move about us.  We cannot see it.  We cannot hear it or smell it.  Yet we sense it.  Call it destiny, karma or feng shui, deep within our hearts this underlying energy in our lives is undeniable.  Whether or not you believe in superstitions, on this Friday the 13th, take a minute to send a quiet and personal non-denominal wish of safety for your friends and family.  And in case your sixth sense cautions you with bad luck, better stay home, lock the doors, close the blinds, wear garlic, throw salt over your shoulders and keep your fingers crossed.

Red Skies Ahead

I have conversed with friends who reside outside of Taiwan who have but only crumbs of knowledge of the China phenomenon.  Being Chinese, and your friend, I think it is a matter of personal friendship that I give you sufficient information for you to be dangerous in discussions.  Here, I will arm you with readily quotable facts and statistics that will impress.

Let's review some of the cultural and historical aspects:

Historical Fact #1: Why so many Overseas Chinese?  We quietly infiltrate every culture and slowly infuse Chinese food into the culture.  Our aim is to bring it all down from within.  I jest.  Actually, the year is 221 B.C. during the Qin Dynasty.  Emperor Qin, a big fan of Confucius, systematically forced the coaster traders out of the country.  Under the Confucian system, farmers were revered while traders were shunned.  Traders created nothing and lived off the passing of goods between people.  Out with the leeches!  Chinese have been rooted throughout SEAsia since.  Immigration of Chinese to America, Australia, and Europe is a relatively recent phenomenon.

Historical Fact #2: Emperor Qin Shi Huang did the following during his 21 year term:

(1) Unifed China by sheer military might;

(2) Establish Mandarin as the official language;

(3) Built the Great Wall O'China;

(4) Rumoured to have indirectly given birth to Japan;

(5) Created 7000+ terracotta soldiers to guard his tomb.

Historical Myth #1: As with all megalomaniacs, Emperor Qin was fixated with immortality.  Appointed doctors that could not deliver the elixir of youth were subsequently beheaded.  One clever physician was sid to have delayed his decapitation by fabricating a mystical eternal herb in a far away land.  The price: 50 young men and women were sent on a ship to retrieve this herb.  Myth is that they landed in Japan.  Let your imagination run henceforth.

The doctor was eventually decapitated.  Qin built 7000 soldiers, horses and carriages to guard his tomb in case he came back.  I imagine when the tomb was finally sealed; all workers withknowledge of the tomb were executed.  The last guy probably had to commit suicide. 

Historical Myth #2: Labor laws were lax.  Emperor Qin was keen on quality control.  Each section of the Great Wall of China was appointed a foreman overseeing hundreds of laborers.  The mortar had to be tightly packed and the stones meticulously placed.  Each day a Qin officer would ride along the wall and systematically thrust his sword into the mortar.  If the tip of his sword were to pierce the mortar by more than 3cm, the foreman along with his entire crew of hundreds would be beheaded.  That section of the wall would be torn down and rebuilt.  This explains why the wall is still standing after more than 2000 years.

Historical Fact #3: What's the story with China and Taiwan?  Here is the Cliff Notes version:

(1) Modern China was born after the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911.

(2) Chang Kai-Shek led the nationalists.  Mao led the rebel communists.

(3) They fought with each other until the Japanese invaded in the 1930s.

(4) They got together to kick out the Japanese during WWII.

(5) After WWII, they went back to fighting each other.

(6) In 1949, the communists won and the nationalists pushed off on boats to Taiwan.

(7) China and Taiwan have been at a stalemate since.

Today, you will not find a more unique blend of paradox.  When Mao launched the cultural revolutions in the 60s and 70s, he effectively destroyed 5000 years of cultural history.  Why?  My personal conjecture is that a billion people would have no extracurricular distractions but to listen to everything he says.  No religion, no philosophy, no roots.  Freshly injected with western capitalism, teh current generation of Chinese is born with a characteristic that only Gordon Gecko would wish: an ethical bypass at birth.  Capitalism is the new God.  Thanks to Mao, modern day mainland-Chinese do not ahve the ethical or moral roots to anchor their pursuit of happiness.  Like Terminator, they will not stop until the money in your bank account is in their bank account.  they feel no pity, no remorse, no fear.  The paradox: communist by name, socialist by policy, and pure capitalism by mentality.

Now let's review some of the economic aspects:

Scary Fact #1: China has 1.3 billion people, or 20% of the world population not accounting for the 34 million Overseas Chinese.

Scary Fact #2: China is the 6th largest GDP economy in the world in 2004 and is anticipated to be the 4th largest in 2005, after America, Japan, and Germany.

Scary Fact #3: Opened for business in 1978.  It's just getting started.

Economically, China is everywhere akin to a swarm of bees hovering over a busted hive.  The majority of items you buy these days is from China.  It always starts with textiles and toys, then plastic and rubber household goods.  Then progress to low tech kitchenware, then electronics goods.  Take a look at the back of your Ipod.  Surprise.  It is the manufacturer to the world for one reason: labor cost.  Here is a sampling:

Average hourly wage in 2004

Germany US$31.00

USA US$22.00

Taiwan US$5.64

China US$0.92

There is no typo.  With 92 cents an hour, any Chinese manufacturer can approach any German manufacturer and claim: "For every one of your workers, you can hire 40 of mine."  Downside risk: quality of product and intellectual property infringement.  But WOW.  US$30 savings per hour! - Yummy by any business standards.

Not bad for 20 odd years of progress.  So if you have an iron will and a fortified consitution, "Go East, My Friend!".  East is the new West.  Red is the new Black.  And a traditional Chinese dress looks fabulous on any woman.

The Formula of Love

I had a stimulating conversation with my friend Hans who runs a company a floor down from my office here in

Kaohsiung

.  Hans is a chemical engineer from

Germany

, and has been in

Kaohsiung

long enough to be more Kaohsiungnese than me.  The topic: Love.  Being a meticulously logical person that he is, he had created a formula for the Value of Love©, which is akin to the econometric formulas we all feigned to understand in college, and later became embarrassed to even earn a passing grade.  The purpose of this formula was to systematically place a numerical value to love.  It involves multiple variables and utilizes complex charts for prioritization.  As he intends to write a book on this topic, I will not steal his thunder here by divulging trade secrets.  But the discussion ignited another basic observation about human behavior: the need to organize an overwhelmingly chaotic world.

The world is naturally chaotic.  We have a proclivity to put order to chaos.  To achieve this order, we naturally organize concepts and ideas into formulas based on conclusions founded from experiences.  The formulas or basic truths help us understand nebulous concepts such as the personality of someone we love, or personality of someone we love, … oh yeah…, and the personality of someone we love.

Let's use an example.  I once saw a proof for why girls are evil.  Sorry girls, this is just exempli gratia.  I mean no offense.  It goes something like this:

It is given that:             Girls = Time X Money

We all know that:          Time = Money

Therefore:                   Girls = Money X Money = Money²

We also know that:       Money = Root of all Evil = ÖEvil

Therefore:                   Girls = (ÖEvil)²

Conclusion:                   Girls = Evil

Another thoughtful observation to organize our love lives goes something like this:

There are 5 stages of a romantic relationship:

(1)          Initial Attraction          Boy meets girl.

(2)         Discovery                     Boy and girl engage in dating activities to find out about each other.

(3)         Conflict                        Boy and girl discovers things they dislike about each other.

(4)         Conflict Resolution       Boy and girl resolve conflict by coming to terms with what they dislike about each other.

(5)         Commitment                   Boy and girl are promised to each other.

The conundrum is that for boys, they enjoy (1) Initial Attraction and (2) Discovery; but are more likely to leave the relationship upon first sign of (3) Conflict.  For girls, they also enjoy (1) Initial Attraction and (2) Discovery; but then have the greater propensity to bypass directly to (5) Commitment. 

These formulas provide perhaps a false perception of control.  The control feels good.  We perceive mastery of yet another mystery of life by applying simple structure to it.  If love ad infinitum has a formula, it is undoubtedly complex.  It must involve chaos theory for definitions.  It must involve quantum math for a solution.  Then again, perhaps it is as simple as rolling dice: pure chance.  Conclusion: We should all learn something from

Las Vegas

: “Whatever happens here [in life], stays here [in life]”.

Birthday Blast Radius

The birthday blast radius is December 27^th +/- 2 days.  I have had the honor and privilege of meeting some of the finest human beings within this blast radius. We often meet people who share the same birthdays and, without fail, we are stunned at the coincidence.  Let’s put this into perspective.  There are roughly 6 billion people on earth and 365 days in a year. On average, this would yield 16,438,356 people who have the same birthday as you. 

Here I want to send out a Happy Birthday to all those within my radius:

Myla Yee

in NYC on 25th

Theresa in the LBC on 26th

Vicky in

Vienna

on 27th

Nikie in

Taipei

on 27th

Babs in LA on 27th

Erich in SF on 27th

Megan in SF on 27th

Chris in SF on 27th

Chris in

Houston

on 29th

So that’s 9 persons out of a possible 82,191,780 within this 5-day radius.  I will end this blog here because, obviously, I have a lot more people to meet. If you fall within this blast radius, email me.

Something Fishy about All of This

Last night, I rounded up the more liberal thinking folks around

Kaohsiung

to partake in a local tradition: shrimp fishing.  It has been uncontested that this is a phenomenon unique to

Taiwan

. Thai mountain people eat stir-fried crickets. Xinjiang Chinese eat deep-fried scorpions.  Taiwanese people shrimp and then eat them.

The idea of shrimp fishing conjures images of shrimping boats a la Bubba Gump. Uh… no that exotic.  We walk up a concrete ramp into a light grey sheet metal warehouse of about 1000 square feet.  In the center there is a concrete pool of nebulous water where shrimp are allegedly farmed.  Twenty local men sit around on a variety of pink, grey, and green plastic-injected chairs with shrimping rods, smoking cigarettes, drinking Taiwan Beer™, and eating grilled shrimp. A bar characteristic of an 80’s dive bar in downtown LA was obviously shipped in crates and resurrected here.

Imagine this scene.  I, in my Pepe Jeans™ off-white sweater jacket, walk in with 4 fashionably dressed women toting handbags the likes of Fendi™, Gucci™ and LV™, each with Starbucks™ Vanilla Lattes in hand.  There goes the neighborhood.  I contemplated bringing out my ipod mini to play some down tempo music; but restrained myself to prevent inflicting psychological damage on the locals. One local later asked: “You folks from

Taipei

?”

We pick up shrimping poles lined up on the walls as if pool sticks, go to the blood stained mini-fridge full of chicken liver, and off we go. You have to first tie a line with 2 hooks onto the pole, then cut miniscule pieces of liver for bait.

A nice Taiwanese man stuck the entire end of the rod into the water to gauge the depth, and helped me adjust the bobber.  You then put the bait in the water and wait. The shrimp eat the liver, you eat the shrimp.  The food chain simplified.

We talked. We laughed. We took pictures like tourists.  We all caught shrimp, racked them onto a grill, and put them into the convenient oven at the facility and sent them all to shrimp hell. Then we ate them.  Yum.

To recover from this oxymoronic urban outdoor experience, we all went to the opening of a new lounge bar called Loft.  My new found friend Thomas meticulously designed every piece of furniture and décor over 6 months and finally opened to debut his artistic sense. We enjoyed a bottle Moet surrounded by purple velvet drapes, comfortably upholstered red couches and pillows, with down tempo music as background. It was another good school night in

Kaohsiung

. 

Step into the Dark Side

“I often feel like life is pointless. That’s why I want to have a kid… who will eventually hate me or not talk to me.” -----My friend Y, Circa 2005

This quote is absolutely brilliant. These 2 sentences concisely capture those moments that we have sometimes. Even the most optimistic have these moments. They just hide it better than most. So this blog is dedicated to those silent moments we have to ourselves: moments that are unbearably dark; moments that are excruciatingly us; moments that are undeniably human.

I believe that for the majority of us lucky few with relatively un-traumatic family lives, the root of this dark matter rests on one simple question: what the hell is this all about anyway? I do not want to mislead you to think that I have the answer to the meaning of life. I don’t. But one fact is certain: knowing that we’re not the only ones to have these moments sure does make me feel better. Therefore, I can only offer some thoughts as a nexus to all of our collective dark moments. You are not alone.

Too often we ask questions to which there are no answers. Yet we don’t have the innate capacity to stop ourselves from asking them. We have intelligence. We have opposable thumbs. We dig rocks out of the ground and build towers that touch the sky. We forge metal cylinders and hurl ourselves underneath the ground and across the globe. It’s just that… someone forgot to tell us why we were doing all of this!

This begs the question: why do we need someone to tell us in the first place? Why are we waiting for some external being, some random grand poobah to tell us the purpose to our lives? We don’t. As I see it: we have about 80 years to live on this earth. We spend too much time pondering the origin of our soul and its final destination after we die. Perhaps we should focus on the 80 years that we have here. Without further evidence, I for one believe the only reason to be here is for the experience.

I turn 34 this coming week. I’m not yet half way through my allocated 80 years and I feel like I’ve experienced so much living by this philosophy. I’m blessed with extremely creative friends to help me fill in experiences. I’ve learned to be less fearful of my dark side.

So my friend Y is right. Life is kind of pointless. But having a kid is an experience, and having your kid hate you or not talk to you is also an experience. That is, perhaps, the only point.

Yogurt coverd Chocolate Balls

Tonight, I did something extraordinary.  There are truly few moments in life like this…the first crush, the first kiss, or the first …. uh… firework show in your pants.

About a month ago, my South African friend Pieter Vorster asked me to participate in Extreme Theater at a space called Mindful Phoenix here in

Kaohsiung

. An enterprising gentleman named Thomas Sebastian, an Australian, and lethally good looking, decided to open up a space for people to learn kung fu, tap dancing, salsa, and put on plays. Kung fu and tap dancing.  Who would have even had the gumption to put the two together?

So once every other month, they put on Extreme Theater.  The concept is that on a Friday night, 3 writers are invited and given three facts: (1) a person, (2) a place, and (3) a prop. These writers have 24 hours to write a play incorporating these three facts, get actors to rehearse and act out the play by 8pm the following evening. I reluctantly volunteered to act.

I had never done any stage work before, which is the main reason why I decided to venture into this unknown. The three facts in my play were (1) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, (2) a treacherous mountain range, and (3) a hot air balloon. Craig wrote the play, called “Tonight we devour the Wolves”. I played a hot air balloon captain, who is hired to take Charlie’s 9 month pregnant wife to look for him because he had freaked out about the impending baby, and took off with the guise of discovering the perfect yogurt covered chocolate balls.  The short of it is that Charlie get’s devoured by a pack of wolves, and I deliver a baby. My co-actress Erin did such a great job.  Her delight of the day was the opportunity to slap me across the face as part of the act. She REALLY got into it. I left with a rosy left cheek.  She left satisfied.

The story is unimportant.  What’s important about tonight was that I learned yet another valuable lesson. I pushed myself to do something I had never done before, and the growth was invaluable. I have a new found respect for actors.  To put yourself in front of people against every grain of entrenched social limitation, with the possibility of total embarrassment, is unfathomable.  Yet the thrill of the experience gave me a rush of adrenaline like that of the first firework show. You know what I mean.  I highly recommend the rush.  You’re stomach will never be as tightly knotted or as filled with a swarm of butterflies. You will open up parts of yourself that you never imagined to have existed before. Just for today, I was a thespian. 

Colder than Thou

I took a weekend trip to

Taipei

. My friend Bjack set up DJ Tasc to headline at a club called The Face on Saturday night. The club had a long runway, lit with red and white squares a la Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean video, with the exception that they didn’t light up as you step on them, as they do in the video. Here’s a piece of nostalgia:

“Billie Jean is not my lover
She’s just a girl who claims that I am the one
But the kid is not my son”

This nostalgia paints quite a frightening scenario, once you take a moment and realize the circumstances surrounding Michael’s statement. Ironically, the kid is most likely his girl, and the girl the kid’s mother. But I digress.

I stood behind the DJ booth with a bird’s eye view of the entire club, and quietly observed the ritualistic social movement, which is the basis of this blog today. Young adult males roam about with huffed egos, preparing themselves to approach attractive young adult females.  Each male armed with a barrage of one-liners, smooth come-ons and tried and tested conversation topics. The goal: to get some action.  The measure of success: to get some action. The young adult females move about with DEFCON 4 defensive mechanisms, with their frail egos ready to order launch codes in rejection of young adult males unworthy of their level of attractiveness. The goal: to find a suitable and dependable adult male to establish a life of love and happiness. The measure of success: to find a suitable and dependable adult male to establish a life of love and happiness. Such seemingly contrasting goals, yet both are co-dependent on the other’s existence to achieve it.  And this excludes considerations for sub-factors such as competition amongst the same gender.

True chaos theory at work.  The statistical permutations and combinations of relationships that can result from this chaos are mind boggling.  And yet, somehow it works.  Order within chaos, miraculously achieved. I watched the 300 or so males and females roaming about in a great social swarm, trying to find their personal spark of order.  And I think to myself: I’m too old for this. But as my

San Francisco

friends can attest – I do love the music so.

Many of us religiously watch animal behavior on the Discovery Channel. Yet we observe so little and have little understanding of our own kind. So a piece of unsolicited suggestion for an activity: Go out to a club.  Observe humans from the eyes of an extraterrestrial. Try approaching someone.  Try rejecting someone. But most importantly, try a martini.

Ribbons to Plastic Surgery

I just got back from a 2 week business trip to Germany. During the many hours of transit time dispersed throughout my near 24 hour trip, I walked through the duty free shops of Berlin Tegel, London Heathrow, Bangkok International and Taipei CKS, only to discover one basic truth: we love packaging. Good packaging is exciting. Good packaging sells, sometimes more than the content itself.

I have here a few examples to ponder. At Bangkok International, I purchased a really nice tea candle set as a present for my friend Lynn Gately in London. The nice Thai lady spent 5 minutes meticulously knotting a perfect ribbon on the already nicely packaged box. This made me feel good. I had optimized the value of my Thai Bhat.

On the same trip, I had bought a box of cookies to bring home to the parents. I picked the box with the best packaging. Who cares if the cookies were actually good! But man, the box looked good in raw silk. Each individual cookie neatly wrapped in pastel colored paper. The packaging must have cost more than the cookies.

We all like nice things….pretty things. But some things get you so excited that you have to wonder when the brainwashing took place. Tiffany & Co. has made a fortune selling the baby blue box. Women get climactic at the mere sight of the color. Hermes has a nice deep orange ribbon that looks so good I want to buy a roll of it and then have them put it in the same orange box and tie it with the same orange ribbon.

There was an interesting story in a local magazine here in Taiwan that reported of a family that was shocked when their new baby didn’t turn out as pretty as the father and mother. Turned out the mother had done extensive plastic surgery, including rhino, cheek lifts, boob job, the works but forgot to tell the husband (except the boob job, of course). There was a before and after picture of the woman. Wow. There was a picture of the baby. It wasn’t pretty. The bottom line is: the husband was cheated in his genetic choice of a mate, purely based on packaging. Ladies…it may soon be time for you to start wondering if your guy’s six pack abs are real, because anything is possible these days. Honestly, I think we all willingly want to be cheated. 

Mere content isn’t good enough anymore. We want it all: packaging AND content. And if we can’t have it all, then the packaging will do. This is what feels good in the short term. And then we wonder why divorce rates are so high. There is no lecture or moral lesson in this blog post. But the next time you’re confronted by the simple cost benefit analysis between packaging and content: make a mental note of the difference between your logic and your emotional urge.

This past weekend, DJ Tasc from Toronto came into Kaohsiung and we threw a raging party. I’ve never really watched a live scratching session and I have to admit it was fun. Tasc was stellar. The party was a success. Kaohsiung is becoming a better place with every event. I should call city hall to have a discussion about how to package the city better, and show up in a Tiffany baby blue shirt.

Gun Slinging with Jack Daniels

Summers here in Kaohsiung are just like Summers in Washington, DC, New York, or to an extreme, Miami ... hUmid, with a capital "U" for Unf*ckingbelievably humid.  Unlike many of these other nice cities I mentioned, the Summers here are lonG with a capital G for "God-d*mn, chill out already!".  So humid that it makes you feel like you have perpetually wet your pants. 

But then ... just 2 weeks ago half way through October.... BAM!  I woke up one find morning and the humidity disappeared like an out of favor mobster.  AHHHHHHHH.  Now, Fall is the stuff of dreams.  The really nice coats and sweaters start coming out.  Body parts not meant for public showing are covered once again.  Daydreams of eating sticky rice wrapped in bananaleaves and slow roasted pork knuckles with sweet potatoes* creates unnecessary drool over my keyboard.

What's all this got to do with Gun Slinging with Jack Daniels?  Nothing.

Halloween just went by and my new Kaohsiung instigators and I threw and amazingly fun party at a club called Dreams.  Yes.  I was a cowboy with hat, guns (2 Guns!), and a shiny silver badge.  My horse was named Richardo - Latin for Richard.  Appropriate only because Ricardo came as a pair of shorts and, when worn, his head jut out of my groin.  Ricardo is an eager beast.  I had his tail coming out of my behind.  The line "Pet my Horse!" did not go completely well with the locals, but they appreciated the humor.  We had 851 people show up (not bad for a newbie in town, eh?) at our first party. 

The next one is going to be November 26th, with DJ Tasc flying in all the way from Toronto, Canada to throw down some hip hop tunes and show the local Kaohsiungnese what scratching is all about.  For those of you who know me from back in the days who are now thinking: What the F*UC&!  Hip Hop?  Yeah.  It's the only kind of music you can play here without getting shut down by the cops. 

So Hip Hop will have to do until I meet up with Dusty and Laura, and the DC crew at the Winter Music Conference next March.

If you're wondering what role Jack Daniels played in all of this: I traded a pistol in for it and fired it with just as much frequency.  Yee Hah!

*We don't really celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas here in Taiwan, so it's the closest thing we have to seasonally made holiday food.

Kaohsiung Kaos

I've decided to keep my main blog under Travel Blog because, after all, life is one big journey. 

Tonight, I made a breakthrough here in my new home in Kaohsiung.  I've been back in Kaohsiung, Taiwan for exactly one year now.  I spent at least three quarters of my time here bitching about how  boring this place is and how I miss my life back in SF and DC. 

So a few weeks ago, I decided to stop bitching about it and to do something to rectify this situation.  (I love the word RECTIFY).  So tonight, I signed 2 contracts to promote parties here in Kaohsiung.  The first will be Halloween at the biggest hiphop club in Kaohsiung called Dreams on Oct 29th.  The second will be to fly DJ Tasc from Canada down to Kaohsiung for the weekend of November 26th and throw a gigantic hip hop party.  Now for those who know me, hip hop isn't really my thing.  But the city government has been busting and closing down all the house/trance venues in town due to it's relation to chemical goods.  So hip hop is the only game in town.   

Kaohsiung has a population more than 3X the 750K in SF.  But it's primarily and industrial "blue collar" city.  With China's manufacturing black hole, Kaohsiung has fallen into an emploment slump as factories move their assets to the mainland for better labor advantages (FYI - the average labor cost per hour in the Germany is US$31, in the US it's US$26, in Taiwan it's US$5.6, and in China it's US$0.92).  Yes folks, 92 cents per hour.  That's the key to cheap Kmart, Walmart, and Costco goods.  But I digress.

So Kaohsiung, being the second largest city in Taiwan next to Taipei, definitely has some untapped potential.  By God, I'm going to be the one to tap it.  So for those of you (like Adam Croan from DC) who have the gumption to visit me out of the blue from yonder, you will see first hand my handy work.  I welcome all to visit exotic Taiwan.  And for those who are in Taiwan, I welcome you to come down and see Kaohsiung in a brand new light.

Return of Things Forgotten

My friend Bjack put out a lounge album in Taiwan called Future Groove.  I rediscovered the pains and pleasures of a foot massage.  I experimented with the color green for the first time in my life.    I rekindled my love for the color white.  Most times, when people ask: "what have you been up to?"  The majority would reply with "nothing much".  To change that, we just need to find a new perspective to apply to the mundane, or dig up an old one.    When all else fails, make something up first, and then follow up and go do it.

So what have you been up to?  -----if you are still having trouble with this part, my imagination is on loan at request.

The spark that will burn it all down

My friend Louis and I engaged in a very interesting topic tonight over fine scotch.  We both find ourselves back in Kaohsiung for various personal reasons, where we suffer from a lack of cultural sensory input, after having lived and traveled to cities that represent heights of our civilization.  So the question is, if we cannot move back to where we have been, how do we bring it to Kaohsiung?

How do I bring New York to Kaohsiung?  San Francisco to Kaohsiung?  London? Buenos Aires? Barcelona? Or even Taipei?  What are the key elements that make these cities so unique in their respective ways?

I present no solutions here.  But I have now made it a personal objective to identify the factors and make this come true.  Whatever the answer is, I know red velvet has something to do with it. 

Home Humid Home

I just spent a perfect weekend in London.  2 full days of walking around, refamiliarizing myself with the city after almost 20 odd years of being away.  Live 8 was happening with the anchor Pink Floyd reunion, followed by U2, the list goes on.  I didn't go cuz I didn't get free tickets.  It was a lottery thing.  So instead, I did plan B.  I hit the London Gay Pride parade to check out if English gays and lesbians were just as carefree and "out" as the San Franciscan gays and lesbians.  The answer is a resounding YES.  Mind you, I'm not gay, but am very prideful.  Just for kicks I marched along with the Trans Gender group just to throw people off.  Bangers and mash, ladies and gentlemen...it's all about the bangers and mash in London. 

Well after an almost 24 hour ordeal, I'm home in Kaohsiung, in my own bed.  You see, when you travel for 2 months out of a Southwest legal roller case with only 4 pairs of underwear, being home is a good thing.  It's hot and humid here.  In fact, the timing couldn't have been more terrible to return to Kaohsiung.  But I have my own bed and I have no laundry issues.  The aircon is on full blast now, and I won't turn it off until mid September. 

Life is good.

Memory of Istanbul

I spent 4 days in Istanbul and fell in love.  As I check into the hotel, I went to the rooftop per the concierge's recommendation, and arrived to a view of the Blue Mosque, The Hagia Sophia on one side, and the Sea of Marmara on the other.  I stood there stunned with the view with a grin stretching the width of my face and I hear "Would you like to sit down?"  Two turkish women invited me to have coffee with them.   

Ipek (ee-peck) and Sertac (sar-touch) both worked for foreign firms and happened to come to this roofdeck for their regular catch up session.  Ipek then invited me for Turkish coffee and then offered to read my fortune, a skill they acquire from a lifetime of practice.  Turkish coffee is extremely thick, with the coffee grains sitting at the bottom of the expresso cup.  You drink the liquids, then put the saucer over the top, flip it over and let it sit for 5 minutes.  The coffee grains then settle on the saucer, creating amazing shapes on the side of the cup.  You then pick up the cup, and use the coffee grain residue on the side of the coffee cup to read a person's fortune.  (The person who drank the coffee get's read, and must turn the coffee cup himself/herself). 

My reading: I am filling in a swamp that no one else sees the potential for.  I will have to overcome 4 main obstacles to succeed, which I apparently will sooner than I expect.  Ipek then said that I should plan for what happens after I succeed or else I will lose it all.  ---Very criptic.

The thing to do while in Istanbul is to sit around and drink tea.  Try the apple tea, a favorite amongst westerners; but definitely ween yourself off that and start drinking flower tea or just regular Turkish tea.  There is a nice cafe just south of the Blue Mosque, where they play traditional music, serve Hooka pipes.  Hookas in Turkey make you drunk and dizzy.  Highly recommended.  Out of nowhere, everything turns off, and you hear the call to prayer from the mosque.  The arabic singing is beautiful.  I can only imagine the audition for that job.  Ipek thinks they should change with the times and put the prayer to techno music.  I love Ipek.

Drink more tea.

Zurichian Summer Camp

You would never believe it if you heard it from someone at a party.  Zurich makes the top 10 list of clubbing cities in the world.  Oh yeah,... Ibiza, Amsterdam, London, New York, Los Angeles,.....and then not far behind...Zurich.  Known better for secretive banking laws and stuffy conservative pin stripped bankers, these same people tear off their suits and ties and rage as hard as any city in the world. 

I was lucky to have friends there to show me the local side.  Lynn, formerly a San Franciscan, had moved there a few years back to be with Hao, a Zurichian (I just made that word up).  We went out to an old converted carriage house for dinner, then to a club called Supermarket.  Don't let the name fool you.  Not everyone can get in and you can't just pick up any produce to leave.  The bouncer at the door had the power of Mao Tse Dong.  He decides if you're going to have a good time or not that night.  Going with the same line of imagery, everyone was beautiful.  Hat's off to Mao's quality control.  So SUBMIT or face exile.  Martinis run about US$15 and I think they charge you $3 for every time you sneeze. 

Zurich is not to be missed in a European tour.  It was an amazing city and absolutely unexpected, which is what we all want in our travels.  Be prepared to sell your car for a night out on the town.

Roma mi Mama

Rome is a wonderful place because you can't help but eat through it.  The pasta, in any shape or size, is amazing.  The gelatos are an absolute addiction.  I wonder why it hasn't been exported with enthusiasm.  Every corner you turn, there is some relic of the old Roman Empire.  A thousand years here, a thousand  years there.  My Roman holiday was just perfect. 

Supermodels Milanos

This is the first thing I see when I come out of the Milan train station.  United Against Ugliness aka UAU.  I joined it right away and am now a card carrying member. 

The thing you have to understand about Italians, especially in Milan, is that everyone is ON, all the time.  "Hey honey! I'm off to the 7-11 for a pack of cigarettes.  Have you seen my Dolce & Gabana sandles?... No, not the ones from last Spring."  I happened upon a street called Montenapoleone, which is right in the middle of the city and home to most of the fashion houses.  I sat and watched the prefectly attended bodies walk by.  I then wonder why what I was doing then was not the national passtime. 

Having been inspired, I purchased a range of pink ties.  Long Live the UAU! 

Cavernous Prague

Prague is an "in" city.  Meaning...if you really want to understand the city, you have to stay long enough to be "in" the know.  Then you really see and understand what Prague is really about.

This is the second time I've been there in the last 2 years.  So I skipped all the touristy stuff (which is amazing, by the way), and spent my time trying to meet locals.  I did and met the right ones at that. 

Going out in Prague is going under.  On the street level, you will never be able to guess the activity that happens under the street level.  Case in point: there was a bar right next to the hotel, which at first glance, looks like a small coffee shop a la Amsterdam.  A couple of middle aged hippies smoking and doing their thing.  Soccer was on the tube because the Confederation Cup was in play.  But then, you walk pass all these people, turn the corner around the kitchen, take a stairway down to the cellar, which opens up into a room full of fooz ball tables and pin ball machines.  You continue to go down and it opens up into a cavern full of young Czechs sitting around cafe tables and chairs drinking beer (The Original Budweiser is from Czechia, also Pilsner Urquell).  Go deeper, and you find a DJ spinning loud house music and people tearing up the tiny dancefloor.  The cellars have brick archways and the walls exposed. 

In the 4 days that I was there, I must have found 4 different caverns.  So when in Prague, the only way to have some local fun, is to GO DOWN.

Weinheim

I was in a little town called Weinheim, just outside of Frankfurt.  It was the most picturesque little German town anyone not having been to Germany, but tried to imagine, would conjure up in imagination.  Complete with castle ruins on the hilltop, cobble stone streets with outdoor cafes full of Germans drinking beer and eating asparagus, the seasonal harvest.

I really need to learn German, fast.  This is a good language to know. 

The Extreme Sports Czech

I was lucky to have met Milan, a 27 year old extreme sports Czech who LIVES by the seat of his pants.  NO JOKE.  Some of his stories include: Trying a 360degree jump (unsuccesfully) on his first day EVER of snowboarding; Trying a downhill mountainbiking race where he crashed and rashed his butt over 25 ft of asphalt. 

I met him on the train from Nurnberg to Prague.  He wanted to check out my Ipod Mini (always a hot topic).  Since the joining of Czech Republic with the EU, he was lucky enough to find work in Germany, where he works part time as an auto mechanic, and spends all of his Euros (to his mother's disgust) on Bike Parts.  "Live Life!" was his motto.  Always with a smile. 

Life Above the Map

I took the infamous Chinatown bus from DC to NYC this morning.  The driver was so bored out of his mind, he was slamming his hands on the steering wheel every 5 minutes.  It kinda freaked out an old church-going couple sitting in the first row who watched every turn and yet were too afraid to react.  I just went to sleep because I figured my fate was in his hands.

So after apparently days of rain and cold, I arrive into NYC on a beautiful day.  I took the train to Columbus Circle and met up with my pal Yishane, who now lives on 198 street.  It's an up and coming part of town.  Buy there, so her property can appreciate.  We hadn't seen eachother in over a year, so we sat at the park near the Cloisters for the beautiful afternoon.  We had a few drinks at the New Leaf before walking back to her new beautiful home.  This is a really up and coming area.  Dinner was fantastic, near the 180s at a restaurante called Bleu.

The meat packing district was the last memory I have of my weekend in NYC before Europe!!!

Recon-Tact-O

I've been back to the States now for about 2 weeks.  The first week in LA was a bit unreal.  I had been living in Kaohsiung, Taiwan for 6 months, and really think I've fully adjusted to the low sensory input living. 

A good night out (all night out) with my buddy Christine in SF put me mentally right back in place.  Thanks bebe! 

Now that I'm surfing Friendster and I'm realizing how detached my life has been from my friends since I've left.  It wasn't purposeful, more like working with an overloaded CPU.  You know how you open up too many files on a computer, and everything slows down?  Moving back to Taiwan was like that for my emotional CPU. 

Life sure does take us in interesting directions.  And our minds are incredibly resilient. 

Love your friends and stay in good contact.  Something gets lost in between sometimes.

Tulsa, Oklahoma

I'm at the Tulsa International Airport.  Technically, if you have even one flight going to ...say....Cancun, you're International!  More TSA jobs for everyone.

I arrived this morning at 9am to visit a client about 40 minutes east of Tulsa.  First time here.  Tulsa is flat.  You can see for miles on end.  I can imagine how cool it would be to watch a thunderstorm here. 

3 hours to kill before my flight to Sarasota to hang out with my best friends.  The band gets back together tomorrow.  Dusty, Christine, Sandra will all be there.  Just like old times back in SF (except less fur).