Bikeway Bridges

April 22, 2006 - These are both bridges crossing the Key Lime River, which divides Taipei into the southern "Taipei proper" and the northern "suburbs", which aren't suburban at all, but have a looser, more relaxed feel. Actually, I have no idea, I don't spend much time north of the Key Lime River. I only go if I'm specifically going somewhere for some reason.

The first picture is the Dazhi Bridge, a very nice bridge, and is the only relatively easy way to cross the Key Lime River on bike, which also prevents me from exploring much north of the river. The second shot is more on the eastern side of the city and is pretty non-descript. Not sure why I shot it, aside from it looked neat while riding along the bikeway.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Waiting For the Girls Upstairs ("Follies" - Sondheim)
2. In the Cage (live medley) (Genesis)
3. Been A Son (Nirvana)
4. Sapphire Bullets of Love (They Might Be Giants)
5. At Last (Etta James)
6. With A Little Help From My Friends (The Beatles)
7. Toxic Girl (1963 Monte Carlo Version) (Kings of Convenience)
8. Lively Up Yourself (live) (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
9. Almost Blue (Elvis Costello & the Attractions)
10. Thank You (live) (Led Zeppelin)

Hangin' Out at the Airport Watching Planes Take Off

April 22, 2006 - Songshan Airport. Several weeks before this, I had been riding around an area where the planes were passing pretty close overhead. That inspired me to see how close I could get to where planes were taking off and landing. Turns out there's this area where people regularly go to watch planes take off and land. It was kinda neat, but isn't watching planes take off and land more of a loner, bored thing to do with a six-pack or a bong? Not a place to take a date or your family for a barbeque. Well, no barbecue. The area was surrounded by auto repair shops and the few environmental standards in Taiwan apparently don't apply to auto repair shops. There were puddles I didn't want to ride my piece-of-shit bike through. And I imagine some of the airplane exhaust is in particulate form which comes down.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Epic Problem (Fugazi)
2. Thoroughly Modern Millie ("Thoroughly Modern Millie")
3. How I Saved Roosevelt ("Assassins" - Sondheim)
4. No Language In Our Lungs (XTC)
5. Frank's Wild Years (Tom Waits)
6. Ein Deutches Requiem, V. Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit (Brahms)
7. Caffeine (Kristin Hersh)
8. Everyone a Puzzle Lover (10,000 Maniacs)
9. Don't Believe the Good News (Archers of Loaf)
10. Yebo! (Mahlathini & the Mahotella Queens)

The Downstairs Cafe

Ah, the downstairs cafe. Not sure what to say about it. They got to know me and what I wanted, so I was able to stop asking. When they saw me, they would just confirm, "美式咖啡?" (Americano coffee - espresso with hot water), and I would nod or give them a thumbs up or do a little dance. That was last term when I had afternoon class and before I started making coffee at home. This term, I have morning classes and make coffee at home. But sometimes during breaks, if a former classmate asks me to go get coffee with her, I'll go, and they still know what I want.



iTunes soundtrack:
1. Manbi no G*Spot (Southern All-Stars)
2. Me and My Charms (Kristin Hersh)
3. The Joker (Sakura)
4. Heading For The Light (The Traveling Wilburys)
5. One World (Not Three)/Love is the Seventh Wave (live) (Sting)
6. Every Word (Belly)
7. Flores De Los Muertos (The National Joy Band)
8. Is This Love? (live) (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
9. Strange Magic (Electric Light Orchestra)
10. Capri Pants (Bikini Kill)

perspective

April 19, 2006 - One of the main streets of the Shida night market. Interesting thing about the fisheye view is that normally, I don't notice anything above street level on the night market streets because there is so much going on and so much there and so many people at street level that it's probably hazardous to look up. So looking at this, I didn't recognize where it was until I just focused at the lower part of the shot.

The crunch of people at peak hours at some of the night markets is really insane, especially for people-avoidant people like me. I usually put on my "Hard Groove" playlist on my iPod and blast it. To get me through a crowd a people, nothing works like music that makes me want to plow right through them.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Abacab (Genesis)
2. Mahakala (Monks of the Gyütö Monastery)
3. Furious (Throwing Muses)
4. Lustra (Echobelly)
5. The Word (The Beatles)
6. Mona Lisa (Nat King Cole)
7. Far East Medley (Bela Fleck & the Flecktones)
8. Last Dance (Sarah McLachlan)
9. Hinomoto no Uta (The Boom)
10. Hold On ("Secret Garden")

Sun!

April 19, 2006 - Shida annex campus (across the street from the main campus) from the 9th floor of the language building.

After all my griping about gloom, clouds, and rain, here is photographic evidence that the sun has, in fact, come out during the past three and a half months that I've been in Taipei. It's hard to believe.

Sorry, I'm not impressed.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Domino (live) (Genesis)
2. You Make My Dreams (Hall & Oates)
3. Sunday, Part II (Cibo Matto)
4. I'll Be Gone (Tom Waits)
5. A Bowler Hat ("Pacific Overtures" - Sondheim)
6. You Started Laughing (live) (Supertramp)
7. Who Cares (Unwound)
8. Artists Only (live) (Talking Heads)
9. Cello Suite No. 6, II. Allemande (Bach - Yo-Yo Ma)
10. Gospel Truth (764-HERO)

low light

Here are some examples of the poor performance of the lomo fisheye in low light.


April 19, 2006 - The MTC language lab. The tape players don't have speed control, which doesn't seem right for a language lab. It's just another item in a list of things that I find lacking in this school. But really, we're getting what we pay for, and tuition is pretty cheap - about $550 for a 3 month term. There's a better program at another nearby university, but it costs about $3000 for a 3 month term.


April 19, 2006 - Shooting into my previous classroom from outside the window that overlooks the central atrium.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Candyland (Kristin Hersh)
2. Gone! (The Cure)
3. Once I Had a Love (demo) (Blondie)
4. The Rhythm (XTC)
5. The Fruit That Ate Itself (Modest Mouse)
6. Security of the First World (Public Enemy)
7. Island of Woods (Ryuichi Sakamoto)
8. It Is Accomplished (Peter Gabriel - "Passion")
9. Symphony No. 10, III. Allegretto (Shostakovich)
10. Whipping (Pearl Jam)

clouds clouds clouds ...and flowers

April 19, 2006 - Flowers down a residential side street of Shida nightmarket. How do they bloom without any sun? Maybe they just don't know any better.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Show Business (A Tribe Called Quest)
2. Ima Doki no Otoko no Ko (O-Sensu Mix) (Nokko)
3. Safe European Home (The Clash)
4. Slippery People (live) (Talking Heads)
5. If You Cross (Three Mile Pilot)
6. Dollars & Cents (Radiohead)
7. Carbonation (Enon)
8. Midnight Sun (Ella Fitzgerald)
9. I Am the Audience (XTC)
10. Sale of the Century (Sleeper)

Three from Daan Park

As rainy and cloudy as Taipei has been (and if this is the norm, I ain't stayin'), it's hard to have days with good enough light to shoot or want to shoot. So it was a rare day on April 19, probably after a long stretch of rain every day, when I shot over 10 frames with Bebe.


This is kind of the middle of the park.


Someone was feeling unusually clever designing this phone kiosk. Seriously, this is the height of creativity I've seen in Taiwan in terms of public design.


Amphitheater. It's a nice amphitheater, but I haven't seen used once for an event. Maybe in the Summer. Maybe if it stops raining. I've seen it used a lot for group dancing lessons and tai chi.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Celluloid Heroes (live) (The Kinks)
2. Four Minutes (Roger Waters)
3. Blind (Talking Heads)
4. Goodbye, Darlin' (Dreams Come True)
5. Psalmodies (Music of the Himalays & Nepal)
6. Precious Things (Tori Amos)
7. Symphony No. 1, IV. Finale (Adagio, Allegro Molto E Vivace) (Beethoven)
8. Glass House (Ani DiFranco)
9. Doll Is Mine (Blonde Redhead)
10. Ghosts In the Radio (Pretty Girls Make Graves)

Daan Park footbridges

I didn't intend this to be a default shot (a scene I shoot repeatedly at different times), but there it was on April 12 (previous post), and it showed up twice on a roll I just got developed, so maybe it should be a default shot. Always the northeast corner.


April 19, 2006


May 1, 2006

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Distant Early Warning (live) (Rush)
2. Toxic (Britney Spears)
3. The Waiting Room (Rare Air)
4. (I Know) I'm Losing You (The Temptations)
5. The Hut on Hen's Legs (Baba Yaga)/The Great Gate of Kiev (Mussorgsky)
6. Pride and Joy (live) (Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble)
7. The Secret Life of Arabia (David Bowie)
8. Market Square Heroes (Marillion)
9. Does Your Mama Know About Me (Bobby Taylor)
10. Midtown (Tom Waits)

My favorite footbridge (again)

April 12, 2006 - Footbridge at the intersection of Heping East Road and Xinsheng South Road. I love how the fisheye makes it look like it's not a square. I've found other footbridges that link all four corners of an intersection. I have to make a mental note to shoot them. None of them have the character of this one.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Happiness Is A Warm Gun (The Beatles)
2. Séquelles (MC Solaar)
3. New York (U2)
4. Thought I Was (Rainer Maria)
5. Soul Mining (The The)
6. Havona (Weather Report)
7. You Make Loving Fun (Fleetwood Mac)
8. The Move (The Beastie Boys)
9. Sukiyaki (Selena)
10. Crazy Baldhead (Bob Marley & the Wailers)

Walking to Shida Street sequence

April 11, 2006 - A rare sunny day, crossing Heping East Road, the major street crossing for Shida University.


Hanging out with classmates, we were probably going for dessert - shaved ice if I know me. They all know that if they ask me along, we will inevitably end up going for shaved ice. This is kind of a reverse shot of the previous one. The D shaped building of the main library is in the background, and behind that is the Mandarin Training Center.


Weird probably street art thingie on top of the phone booth. I think you'd only find this sort of thing around universities in culturally conservative Taiwan. I'm still looking for the underground.


Longguan Street. It's actually the next street down from Shida St., but is the main drag of what becomes the Shida night market. So it's not Shida St. at all. Low light and expired film, I didn't expect this to come out. I was shooting for the light reflecting in the mirrors of the motor scooters, and that stands out at least.


iTunes soundtrack:
1. The Acid Queen (The Who)
2. (A) Face In the Crowd (The Kinks)
3. All You Need Is Love (The Beatles)
4. Mali (Charlie Hunter Quintet)
5. Suite for Flute & Jazz Piano Trio No. 2; VII. Intime (Bolling-Rampal)
6. Blown A Wish (My Bloody Valentine)
7. Give A Little Bit (Supertramp)
8. Song 2 (Blur)
9. Coastline (764-HERO)
10. Obsoléte (MC Solaar)