trotzen protzen kotzen

The typhoon was nothing to speak of, just a bunch of rain and a day off. I survived.

Now for some Nina Hagen. This video makes me think she was having some sort of mid-Eighties showdown with Grace Jones. Who won?

I had a great night with the Austrians. They’re what the Germans would call Lebenskünstler (life-artists?), a term that I found had romantic, lone-wolfish connotations among my friends in Berlin, but which is used with a bit of a deprecative tone by the Swiss. The Swiss like to have plans, whereas people in Berlin are usually content to float down the river and enjoy the ride. Na ja.

I just found out that I have the day off tomorrow for Typhoon Fung-wong (Chinese for ‘phoenix’). It should be a window-cracking, cat-flinging, hair-tousling rip-roarer of a day. The last typhoon, Kalmaegi, just seemed like a heavy rainstorm, so hear me now Fung-wong: I demand satisfaction.

First things first: Happy Birthday Claire! I tried calling you but an angry Frenchman answered. It was 1:30am there. Quel est le grande problème? He was probably just whipping up a big late-night batch of pea soup and didn’t have time to chat. Mange mes briefs!

I made it to San Zhi yesterday. I was surprised by how short and beautiful the drive to the beach was. After skulking around a bit to make sure there were no cops, attack dogs or living dead in sight, I weaseled my way in. The place felt more haunting than haunted. A broken waterslide? Those poor children! In a strange sort of way, it gave me the same feeling as an abandoned hippie commune in Nova Scotia my mother took me and my sister to when we were wee. Like there was a big messy pseudo-visionary party, and then somebody said something awful, and everyone else shuffled toward the door awkwardly while mumbling something about needing to work tomorrow. Or about not needing to work, as it were.

The silence was what made this place strange, because it’s never quiet here. Scooters, jackhammers, filthy screaming children, and my personal favorite: the recorded promotional message hooked up to one of those mini-megaphones, just laying on the sidewalk in front of a store screeching the same eight unintelligible words until the end of time. Kick it! The stillness actually made me a bit nervous at first. I think I was also a tad concerned about who I would meet in there. There was a little statue underneath one of the houses that I spied from the corner of my eye, and I was sure someone was standing there watching me (see photos). Not so. I did hear giggling inside one of the houses, and I looked up and saw an obese Taiwanese girl wearing a gray wig standing in the window. Her friend was taking pictures of her (I’ve noticed a lot of friend-on-friend photoshoots here involving gray wigs). That was somehow less frightening than the statue, because unlike the peering statue, they were oblivious to my presence. 

After a good look around, I hopped back on the bike and visited a couple of charming outposts, then found a nice unsupervised beach without too many people or children. Most beaches here have designated swimming areas that resemble factory cattle farms, and the lifeguards start yelling and arm-flailing if you go in past your waist. Something about people here not being very good swimmers and the “treacherous” currents that swirl about. I swam out and floated on my back in the warm Pacific water for half an hour, and all was well in my world. Then I went to 7-Eleven and got a large mango ice-based beverage (can’t say which, it’s one of the more disgusting S-words), and all was even better.

Tonight I’m going to a concert with my Swiss friend Daniel, his girlfriend Penelope, and a bunch of Austrians, so I should be able to learn plenty of quirky idiomatic expressions, like the one he taught me yesterday: Das ist mir Hans wie Heidi. Translation: I don’t give a shit. Sounds more like a declaration of bisexuality to me though.

(Click photo to see the rest)

Vive le weekend! I plan to drive up to the coast tomorrow or the day after to see something creepy I heard about a few months ago. It’s an abandoned Sixties-futuristic complex of pod houses, by most accounts haunted by the ghosts of workers who died during its construction. Have a look at it here and here. I mentioned it to one of my students today, and he said it was going to be torn down soon to make way for some ghastly resort. When I asked him if he believed that it was really haunted, he replied “not by ghosts, but by the many gays who frequently make love there.” Whatever happens, it promises to be interesting and sexy. 

This has also reminded me of my ultimate B&E dream, which is to walk to the top of the Ryugyong Hotel and remain there until I run out of supplies or get sent to a North Korean prison camp. A dream which I’ve just discovered may never be realized, because an Egyptian company has just resumed some sort of construction on the upper floors. Keep your GSM towers in GIZA, for Christ’s sake, and stay away from my potential lair!

Life is going to be loco as of September. I’ll be working full-time and spending roughly twenty hours per week learning Chinese. There will be no time to breathe, no more staying up until 3am watching endless episodes of all the things I never got around to watching back home (it’s a bit of a problem – it’s hard to find good English books here, so I’m getting my edification from HBO series and movies. Combine that fact with the heat fact and you start to get an idea of how feeble-minded I feel most days. The perfect time to start a blog).

I must find a doctor in the next few days, because the college I’ll be studying at requires me to pass an HIV test before they’ll let me sit near other people and breathe the same air as the instructor etc. I don’t even know where to start with that. Jump through this bullshit hoop, that bullshit hoop, bullshit hoops all around.

Hospittyhorn is currently working on an epic AAdvantage Miles scam to fly over here in September. Can anybody suggest the ultimate scam that would allow me to spend four days in Toronto, eight days in Nova Scotia, and ten days in Berlin in August? It shouldn’t be impossible. How expensive can it be to circumnavigate the globe during a ‘fuel crisis’? Hide in a suitcase? Drug mule? Fake medical emergency?

It’s another scorcher! 35 degrees, “real feel” 45. It’s windy though, so I couldn’t be happier. The best weather combination is, without a doubt, hot and windy. If it’s hot outside with no wind, I’ll whip around extra fast on my loyal steed to simulate those conditions. It’s like pointing a hair-dryer up your shorts. You know, that old chestnut. I suspect I would thrive in a desert climate. Like a majestic cactus.

Now for the colorful medieval potato (the look for 2006) part. Most of the gas station attendants in my area are sweet, dainty girls. Fine. What’s not fine, however, is that they’ve recently decided en masse that they no longer want to unscrew gas caps themselves, so they stand there with gas nozzle in hand waiting for clean-handed old me to do it. Call me set in my ways, but I think that if you work at a gas station, you’re the one who should get your hands dirty. These days I just stand there, and we stare at each other for a few awkward Mississippis until they cave and reluctantly unscrew the cap. Can somebody explain this? I don’t exactly need people thinking I’m a gas huffer or a mechanic.

It’s been a torrid few days, so I don’t really have the energy for anything beyond naps and watching movies in my partially air-conditioned box. Spending an hour outside makes me want to sleep for three, so I’m hoping I can reverse that ratio soon. I also said goodbye to a good friend who decided to head back to the Beeg Smoke. We had a lovely afternoon on the patio at Wendel’s, a German restaurant and beer garden around the corner from my house. As we were leaving, a large Bavarian man came out of nowhere and gave me the old Gruß Gott. Give me Northern Germany and its secular greetings any day of the week. 

It’s not especially easy meeting quality westerners here, so I’ve basically given up on that and am now focusing my energies on integrating. That’s right, my Chinese is that good. Generally speaking, Occidentals here fall into two categories: English Teachers (or ET’s, as a Taiwanese friend aptly dubbed them (us)…Elliottttt. Ellllliiiioooottttttt) or the over-forty set of expats who work for multinationals that have shuttled them off to Taipei. My neighborhood is full of the latter, but I rarely see the husbands. Just the frumpy, purse-lipped wives who scowl-walk aimlessly around Tienmu and avoid eye contact at all costs. The very essence of charm.

Other than that, I’m trying to get a library card so I can feed my interest in the history of China from the fall of the Qing Dynasty to Generalissimo Chiang’s retreat from Charlie. If you haven’t already seen Ang Lee’s latest (Lust, Caution), you should. It renewed my burning desire to visit Shanghai, but I probably won’t be able to get a visa for the PRC until the Olympics and attendant ethnic cleansing are over with. I hope they didn’t bulldoze all of the history out of the place. How many eyesores in glass and steel can one country need?

Also: Today I had a student tell me that he would never live with an Australian. The reason? “They swell too much.” It took a few minutes of very amusing conversation to figure out that he meant “sweat”, at which point I was forced to agree, despite being pretty swollen myself these days.

Dawn French as Jackie Stallone. Reminds me of Raniels for some reason.

Back in the day I read somewhere that Americans instinctively find words that start with or contain a ‘K’ sound funny, so stand-up comedians try to incorporate as many of them as possible into their acts. I’ve recently discovered that most of the words that trigger my puke reflex start with or contain an ‘S’ sound, including:

• mince
• scalloped
• Jocelyn
• slough/slaw
• slurry

I guess that’s why ‘colostomy’ is such an interesting word. It’s funny, beautiful, and revolting, all at the same time. A real ‘mixed bag’.

For some reason, when people here find out that I’m Canadian, the first thing anyone over the age of thirty asks me about is the relationship between Canada and Quebec. The referendum was apparently pretty big news here back in the day because the local media decided to paint it as parallel to the Taiwanese struggle to be recognized as a sovereign nation. I have to explain at least once a week that Canada doesn’t have 900 ballistic missiles aimed at Quebec in the Chinese fashion, ready to maim and destroy if they ever get plucky enough to declare independence, and that Canada sends truckloads of shuddafuckup money in Quebec’s direction every year, quite unlike the threats that China hisses across the Strait every year.

The funny thing about this is that when they asked what I thought about having the Q of E as our nation’s official head of state, and I responded that I thought it was ludicrous, I was accused of disregarding my own heritage. When I pointed out that all non-aboriginal Taiwanese (the vast majority) floated over here from Mainland China relatively recently but don’t necessarily dig the idea of being ruled by their distant cousins, it looked like their heads were about to explode. 

Nationalism. So mind-numbingly boring. I wish they would ask me about les filles du roi and my theory of 10,000 instead.