Shida Road

February 23, 2006 - I have this one last shot before I run out of Taipei shots, but I'm almost done with the next roll. This is the first lomo frame I took in Taipei when I went out walking and exploring on my first day. But as you can see, it was dark and overcast and not much to look at. It has largely been overcast like this ever since I got here.

Further on up this road is the popular Shida night market, which gets crowded with students and foreigners since Shida University is right there, along with its language center (which I'm attending).

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Dizzy Miss Lizzy (The Beatles)
2. June (Camper Van Beethoven)
3. One Love/People Get Ready (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
4. Jigsaw Youth (Bikini Kill)
5. From My Window (Keiko Matsui)
6. The End (The Doors)
7. Omegaman (The Police)
8. A Very Nice Man ("Carnival")
9. Breathe (Pink Floyd)
10.Spock On (Miss Gloria) (The Pugs)

Woman Riding By On The Sidewalk

March 3, 2006 - Heping East Road. Note the famous footbridge in the background. Only famous because it was in a 3 second shot in the movie "Yi Yi". This is the last frame on the roll, I really want to finish off the roll that's currently in Bebe, but it has just been raining like in the movie "The Hole" - also Taiwanese. In the last days of the last millenium, rain has been drenching Taipei non-stop and a disease has been turning people into insects. Yup.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Rabbits Dying (Throwing Muses)
2. Let's Electrify! (Versus)
3. Synchronicity II (The Police)
4. Don't Walk Away (Electric Light Orchestra)
5. Strawberry Fields Forever (Take 7 & Edit Piece) (The Beatles)
6. Everyone Says 'Hi' (David Bowie)
7. Overjoyed (Stevie Wonder)
8. Yinin' & Yangin' (Victor Wooten)
9. Drowning Man (U2)
10.Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues (The Kinks)

...then she threw the cat into fire!

Heping East Road, Section 2, Taipei, Taiwan.

Getting bored with blog. Again. I also don't have internet access at home yet, even though the landlady has added it to the list of things that come with apartments in her ads. It's really a good thing to stop me from being on the internet all the time. I go to the Taipei Public Library every morning for a couple of hours for my online fix, which is limiting and blogging falters.

It's been raining, raining, raining, for days straight now. I have a roll of black and white waiting to be developed, but I was waiting to finish a roll of lomo which is half done, but at this rate it'll never get done, so I think I'll take that roll in today. Give me scanning to do over the weekend if it's still raining as it's forecast. Not to mention having no time to shoot because of afternoon classes and studying all the time.

and no, she didn't throw the cat into the fire. sheesh, what are you people thinking?!

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Juno (Throwing Muses)
2. Bottle Dance ("Fiddler on the Roof")
3. Peace Train (10,000 Maniacs)
4. Barcelona ("Company")
5. Where Or When (Lena Horne)
6. Joe the Lion (David Bowie)
7. Panama (Van Halen)
8. Here, There, and Everywhere (The Beatles)
9. Rock On (Smashing Pumpkins)
10. Little Rootie Tootie (Thelonius Monk)

New Jersey dreaming:

February 19, 2006 - Here's a shot of the Jones Road overpass, the opposite view of the first shot in a previous post from the overpass. New Jersey seems so far away now. It was disturbingly familiar being there for over seven months, but that's what happens when you grow up in a place. I've taken to changes rather well. Odd considering I was diagnosed with a so-called "adjustment disorder" when I was younger. I always considered it a flaky diagnosis, but apparently real.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Everybody Out (20 Minute Loop)
2. Walk This Way (Aerosmith)
3. Begin the Beguine (Artie Shaw & His Orchestra)
4. Tevye's Dream ("Fiddler on the Roof")
5. The Drop (Peter Gabriel)
6. Ukhulum' Izindaba (Mahlathini & the Mahotella Queens)
7. I Am the Walrus (demo take) (The Beatles)
8. Lost, Dropped and Cancelled (Rainer Maria)
9. Sick of Me (Ani DiFranco)
10. Sulendro (Gender Wayang, Sukawati)

New York Dreaming

February 1, 2006 - New York photostroll. Going back to earlier shots on the roll. This church was on 5th Avenue in the Village, a few blocks north of Washington Square Park.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Ash and Alice (Mary Timony)
2. White Sun (Takeshi Yamaguchi)
3. Show 'Em Whatcha Got (Public Enemy)
4. Scentless Apprentice (live) (Nirvana)
5. A Pile of Time (Ryuichi Sakamoto)
6. Watching You Without Me (Kate Bush)
7. Wot's...Uh, The Deal (Pink Floyd)
8. Airegin (Wes Montgomery)
9. Vicky's Box (Throwing Muses)
10. Do the Evolution (live) (Pearl Jam)

National Concert Hall

February 25, 2006 - This is part of the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial park. Chiang Kai-Shek is the national butcher hero of the Nationalist Party (KMT). They implemented 40 years of martial law to give you an idea of their popularity. If the populace likes you, you don't need to maintain control through a claim of martial law.

The main gate on the left is a pretty famous tourist image. I've been trying to go out exploring, but it's hard because this city is so big. My feet start hurting after a while. This is as far north as I've gotten on foot. I don't know how far it is, but on the map, it's not that far. I keep trying to expand my walking circles to cover more and more of the city. Then I'll start taking the MRT to stations and walking home from them.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Might (Modest Mouse)
2. Moving (Supergrass)
3. Take a Look Lee ("Assassins" - Sondheim)
4. Ought to Be a Woman (Sweet Honey in the Rock)
5. Down, Down, Down (Tom Waits)
6. Message in a Bottle (The Police)
7. My Friend Fats (Primus)
8. Mirando de Lado (Kinky)
9. Asadoya Yunta (Ryuichi Sakamoto)
10. Small As Life (Rare Air)

Shida University

March 3, 2006 - This is where I'm studying. The building on the right is the languages building. The building on the left is the main library for the university. I don't know if foreign language students have access to the main library, but I wouldn't mind going in and looking around. It's looks like a pretty cool building. It's a weird D shaped building.

This was probably the first blue sky I had seen in over the one week I had been there. I guess it is supposed to be Winter, with monsoon season coming up. So I hear.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Cross the Street (Versus)
2. Baby I Love Your Way (Big Mountain)
3. Heathaze (Genesis)
4. Technopolis (Yellow Magic Orchestra)
5. The Plan (live) (Built to Spill)
6. Dance Song 97 (Sleater-Kinney)
7. Hide Away (live) (Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble)
8. Maximum Consumption (The Kinks)
9. High (The Cure)
10. It's So Hard (live) (John Lennon)

Life Imitating Art

March 3, 2006 - Cloudy day on Heping East Road. Actually it's been cloudy most of the time I've been here. I shot this on the way to school, killing the roll. A serendipitous confluence of elements. Statues like these creep me out. Like they're real people frozen in time. I remember a really creepy statue in downtown San Francisco of a line children skipping. Creepy.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Tell Me Why (Echobelly)
2. Shika no Tone (Kohachiro Miyata)
3. Horses (Tori Amos)
4. Beautiful (Carole King)
5. Can't Be Sure (The Sundays)
6. All Too Soon (Duke Ellington)
7. Sitting In My Hotel (The Kinks)
8. Distant Early Warning (live) (Rush)
9. Kaila Raps (Victor Wooten)
10. Two Step (Throwing Muses)

Daan Park footbridge

February 24, 2006 - Another lomo view from the footbridge. I don't know what it is about this footbridge, but I really like it. Something about it is distinct and striking to me. Like it's not just another mundane, functional footbridge, but it's architecture. But I don't think it was meant to be. I think it was meant to be just another mundane, functional footbridge. But unlike most footbridges, it connects all four corners of the intersection, and so far it's the only one like it that I've seen, so it's unique.

But Taipei is quite large, and I've barely begun to get acquainted with it. I don't know if it's like San Francisco, where you can know the city. I think Taipei exceeds the size of a city that you can really "know".

The park is on the corner on the right of this shot. This is looking north.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Behold! The Night Mare (Smashing Pumpkins) what a pretentious name for a pretty good song
2. A Different City (Modest Mouse)
3. Shehar Ki Pariyon ("Jo Jeeta Woh Sikandar")
4. He's Gone (Suede)
5. Knock On Wood (live) (David Bowie)
6. Shy (Ani DiFranco)
7. untitled (Blonde Redhead)
8. Tracery (Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan)
9. King Porter Stomp (Benny Goodman)
10. Want More (Bob Marley & the Wailers)

Taipei, Taiwan

March 3, 2006 - Yea, so I'm in Taiwan now. I just got this roll developed and there are still pre-Taiwan shots that I'll get to, I'm sure, but since I'm in this new place, I thought I'd start posting of the new place.

This is an elevated footbridge connecting all four corners at the intersection of Heping East Road and Xin Sheng Road. It's less than half a block from where I live, and I use it almost everyday to get to school (studying Mandarin). That wee spire in the distance is the Taipei 101 building, currently the tallest building in the world, to be superceded in several years by a taller building in Shanghai, which might be superceded by the replacement building at the World Trade Center site in New York, but at the rate it's going, that won't be completed until terrorists win the war on terror.

If you've seen the movie Yi Yi, there is a shot of this footbridge in one scene.

I'm pretty sure this is a roll of expired Fuji Superia film because the whole roll has an "interesting" quality to it.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. The Sound of Business (David Byrne)
2. Stay With Me (Melodie & 12 O'Clock)
3. No. 13 Baby (The Pixies)
4. Symphony No. 2, I. Adagio molto-Allegro con brio (Beethoven)
5. I Looked at You (The Doors)
6. The Ballad of Johnny Burma (Mission of Burma)
7. Speed of Life (David Bowie)
8. Pantomime (Engine Down)
9. Kayleigh (Marillion)
10. Old Old Song (Ani DiFranco)