typhoon pics

September 14, 2008 - Raohe St. where the night market opens up at . . . night. Typhoon means holiday, so people use the road as a normal road and park along it. The numbers on the street are where booths go, obviously, and the chalk stickmen are where pedestrian lanes are supposed to be. That's mostly theory, though, not necessarily practice.

Swine flu all over the news. CNN on constant coverage, we had the words "swine flu" on practically every page of the newspaper today. We don't like to repeat ourselves too much in headlines on one page, so I was pressed to come up with other terms for swine flu - epidemic, virus, the icky icky, that which should not be breathed in, etc.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Take a Lickin' and Keep on Tickin' (Bootsy Collins)
2. Kid Fears (Indigo Girls)
3. Josephine (Tori Amos)
4. Still In Love (Cat Power)
5. Remedy (Cold)
6. Visions of Johanna (Bob Dylan)
7. West (Pinback)
8. Before They Knew (The Butterfly Effect)
9. O My God (The Police)
10. Birthmark (100 Watt Smile)

typhoon pics

September 14, 2008 - Keelung River and Maishuai Bridge #2 during a typhoon. I thought the Keelung River would be interesting during a typhoon, but it's too big. It was impressive, but not exciting like the smaller Jingmei River where I used to live, which turned into a raging torrent. The Keelung River just got really full.


Opposite view looking at Maishuai Bridge #1. I don't remember the name of the typhoon - too far back, one of the disadvantages of not posting closer to when I shot - but I think it was a really slow moving typhoon and I went out shooting when the eye was over Taipei for like 3 hours. The storm picked up again later.


Maishuai Bridge #1 from the other side. I still had to go to work that evening, as a daily newspaper has to come out no matter what. I think the storm had died down by the time we finished, and I probably took a bus home no problem. I think the newspaper was willing to pay for a taxi if it was still raging outside.

Everything has changed since then. I took some time off and worked part-time for a while. Now I'm back at about 80%, working 4 days a week, and that suits me fine. New boss, and changing format. It may get interesting.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. DMV (Primus)
2. Citizen Erased (Muse)
3. Soma (live) (Smashing Pumpkins)
4. Texas Flood (live) (Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble)
5. Counting Out Time (remixed) (Genesis)
6. Static (Sahara Hotnights)
7. Midnight Rambler (The Rolling Stones)
8. Anata ga Koko ni Ite Hoshii (Chitose Hajime)
9. The Seven Sisters (Rainer Maria)
10. In My House (PCS Nitrogen Starlift Steel Orchestra)

September 7, 2008 - Art installation outside Taipei 101. And the oft-copied "LOVE" sculpture tiny in the distance.


Motorscooter lot outside the Vieshow movie theater in Xinyi District.

So CNN reports it's been 10 years since Columbine. I never comment on news events as they happen, because they happen and then often they're gone. They're just news events. But I think even news events have a maturation period for their profundity to manifest.

10 years in a life. What would those high school students be now? And how we'd be perfectly happy not knowing a thing about their anonymous lives if they had just been allowed to live, to graduate from high school, to go on to college or jobs or meet someone special or raise families, ideally. Or whatever their ideal was.

And what a special place in Colorado that area is - maybe its the thin air, maybe the beautiful scenery that brings out an organic spirituality. The interviews with parents 10 years on were so grounded and profound. They still have their grief, but they've also grown from it and come to higher or deeper understandings and realizations about life.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Terrified of Flight (764-HERO)
2. Napoleon (Ani DiFranco)
3. Miss Brand-New Day (Southern All-Stars)
4. Jumpers (Sleater-Kinney)
5. Paperback Writer (The Beatles)
6. Today Tomorrow Sometime Never (Echobelly)
7. D.I.Y. (live) (Peter Gabriel)
8. Moonlit Sea of Clouds (k's Choice)
9. Egypt (Kate Bush)
10. Aqualung (Jethro Tull)

night and day

September 7, 2008 - Songzhi Road in Xinyi District on the footbridge connecting Taipei 101 and the extended shopping area and Vieshow movie theater.


December 24, 2008 - long exposure.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Razzle Dazzle ("Chicago")
2. Ishiki (Shiina Ringo)
3. Rock Candy Brains (Kristin Hersh)
4. Don't Call Home (The Breeders)
5. Little Palaces (The Costello Show featuring the Attractions)
6. Lovely Rita (The Beatles)
7. Call Me Back Again (live) (Wings)
8. Thru These Walls (Phil Collins)
9. String Quartet No. 8, II. Allegro molto (Shostakovich)
10. Fever Few (Throwing Muses)

2 lomos that have nothing to do with each other

August 19, 2008 - Shandao Temple on Zhongxiao East Road, Sec. 1. This is an urban Buddhist temple and is the name of the MRT stop one away from the central MRT stop at Taipei Main Station. I've never been inside. Something about it being in the middle of a city and looking huge and ornate puts me off.


September 3, 2008 - Inside a beef noodle shop in my neighborhood. Beef noodle soup is, like, one of the national dishes of Taiwan, although beef has been putting me off lately. Oh, hey, I guess these two pictures do have something to do with each other! Two things that put me off!

I dunno, the last time I ate beef, several weeks ago, I kinda felt sick, but not physically, just like I wasn't thrilled about eating beef. That happened before with seafood a long time ago, too. That time I just felt like a cannibal, which led me to believe I was seafood in a string of previous lives. It's not that I can't eat seafood, I just avoid it if I have a choice about it.

I've been avoiding beef and cutting down on meat in general and I actually have been feeling . . . less . . . something - weighted down? Less heavy? I'm not making a turn for more healthy, just going for what feels better.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. My Weapon (XTC)
2. Starla (Smashing Pumpkins)
3. Sayonara (Dreams Come True)
4. Dissident (Pearl Jam)
5. Revenge (live) (Archers of Loaf)
6. Back of Your Head (Cat Power)
7. Happy Jack (live) (The Who)
8. Moby Dick (live) (Led Zeppelin)
9. Singapore (Tom Waits)
10. Artists Only (Talking Heads)

Intersections

August 28, 2008 - Minquan West Road and Chengde Road in the late afternoon.


September 6, 2008 - Dunhua North Road and Nanjing East Road with Taipei Arena across the street there. The fascade is a huge jumbotron. I don't know what they're called now. Back in my day, they were called jumbotrons and were exclusively made by Sony.

I got my job back at work after someone got fired this week. I'd been marginalized for the past six months, relegated to working weekends, because I refused to work with her. Then my old boss retired and the new boss apparently felt the same way I did, only he is higher up the food chain.

I'm just being dramatic when I say I got my job back, it's really not like that. From their point of view, the terms of my employment were simply renegotiated, and I'm doing them a favor by agreeing to work more shifts. And apparently everyone knew about the beef between us, as people have been coming up to me asking, "So now that she's gone, you're going to be working more days, right?"

For now. I've agreed to work through April. I still plan to go to the U.S. in May. Whether the job is still there when I get back is up to fate.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Azanian Freedom Song (Sweet Honey in the Rock)
2. Fading Lights (live) (Genesis)
3. When I Was A Young Girl (Feist)
4. Learn to Fly (Foo Fighters)
5. Play Dead (Versus)
6. Knife Edge (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
7. From Now On (Supertramp)
8. Funnelhead (Archers of Loaf)
9. Neighborhood (Space)
10. What in the World? (live) (David Bowie)

August 12, 2008 - Fuxing North Road, along the raised tracks of the MRT Brown line.


August 14, 2008 - Burning "spirit money", Taiwan's unique contribution to global warming. Although such traditions are part of the glue that holds society together and gives a culture its identity.

Strange. Or not. With signs of positive movement in the stock markets, I kinda don't want the economy to recover so quick. I also find Obama losing some of his sheen when he says things like the auto industry cannot be allowed to collapse, although I watched his town hall in Strasbourg, France, and was affirmed that he is a great orator and fundamentally a great president who sincerely first and foremost wants to steer the U.S. and the world into a more enlightened direction. He just can't be as radical as one hopes.

The auto industry can't collapse? Why not? They're dinosaurs and time is coming for its extinction into a being specialized industry. If the auto industry collapses, it may be economically devastating in the short term, but something will emerge to fill in the void it creates. It's only natural. It's natural selection, and if the auto industry can't survive on its own, it's not the fittest for survival. Furthermore, what emerges can focus on the key word for the future of the planet - sustainability. Saving the auto industry is not a move towards sustainability, economically or environmentally.

Same with the stock market recovering and still using "growth" as the measure of wealth and success. I mentioned my problem with growth as a yardstick, and he was like, "without growth, what's the point?". And I think he's exactly right, and that's exactly the problem - it's a mindset we can't even conceive of getting out of.

OK, if the stock market recovers and shows signs of an improving overall economy, maybe that also means that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the system, and all there needs to be is regulatory tweaking and more, much more, oversight. International oversight.

But going back to any sort of status quo would be a loss of a huge opportunity to move forward. And also stymies our need for sustainability. No one wants to suffer, no one wants to suffer the pain of a long depression. But our fixes, unless sustainability is in every sentence of the fix, to avoid pain for ourselves seems to just add to the hardships our children and future generations might have to face.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Portia (Throwing Muses)
2. Angel (Belly)
3. Dashboard (Modest Mouse)
4. Glass Onion (The Beatles - Anthology)
5. sola (Kaela Kimura)
6. Circle (Edie Brickell & New Bohemians)
7. Love and Mathematics (Broken Social Scene)
8. Thick as a Brick (Jethro Tull)
9. To Your Love (Fiona Apple)
10. Cool Guitar Girl (J Church)