July 19, 2008 - Taipei City Hall and Taipei 101. I always thought that Taipei City Hall was probably one of the ugliest city halls in all existence of god and man, but I recently realized there was a symbolic reason for its architecture. If you note the features in the lomo, you can see when I say that from looking at the building from above it looks like two plusses attached together: ++.

十 is ten in Chinese, so 十十 is ten-ten, which refers to October 10th, which is Taiwan's National Day. How 'bout that? Clever folks, them Chinese - even in Taiwanese form, at least here in Taipei. I'd better watch it, I'm going to be one of them in April, when I'm supposed to get my citizenship. Even though my family is from Kaohsiung and Taiwanese not of the sort who brought mainland culture with them several decades ago, I won't be considered anything like them, who always speak Taiwanese, and only speak in Mandarin when I inconvenience them enough to make them have to communicate with me.

Who am I kidding? Citizenship or not, I'm always going to be American, never to be confused with being Taiwanese, even if I did learn the language.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Seen and Not Seen (Talking Heads)
2. Corpse Pose (Unwound)
3. Fun World (Mission of Burma)
4. Soul Singer (live) (Rainer Maria)
5. Sulk (Radiohead)
6. An Everlasting Love (Andy Gibb)
7. M1A1 (Gorillaz)
8. Last Exit (live) (Pearl Jam)
9. Dig Me Out (Sleater-Kinney)
10. Pennyroyal Tea (Nirvana)