September 26, 2008 - Kaohsiung, Taiwan - Bike path near the Pier 2 arts center between Fisherman's Wharf and the mouth of the Love River.


Western sun explosion behind a freighter in the harbor. I haven't been shooting much of anything these days. I'm wondering if it's a total loss of inspiration, but I'm just not seeing photographs anymore. It's tough, because I know they're out there, it's just a matter of looking and being in tune with finding something.

I'm back in the U.S. now for three weeks to recharge my batteries, get Taiwan out of my system and see how I feel about staying there once I go back. Of course, I don't know what I'd do here if I came back, so as long as I have a job there, I'll just cruise along.

I'm actually appreciating suburbia this time back. My brother bought a house since I was last here, and I've been coming over everyday . . . since my parents don't have Internet at their house. They live less than a mile away from each other.

Most important is getting my fix of American food. SF Mission District burritos - check; Fort Lee pizzeria pizza and lasagna - check; mac & cheese - check.

Also it turns out my brother is some sort of computer whiz and he switched out my dying, 4-year-old, 60GB hard drive for a new 250GB one, and it's almost like I have a new computer; that's how close to death it was before. It was soooo slow, and I couldn't play audio or visual files, and all my music files were on an external hard drive. Now everything's back up to speed and music files are back on my computer. I'm just still getting all the programs I was using before back up. But I'm happy, laptop's happy, who can ask for more?

I guess it shouldn't be any surprise that my brother is a computer whiz. He ended up becoming a doctor, but he was the OG version of computer geek - an OCG. He was among the first modem users, posting on local "bulletin boards" - I remember everyone wanting to make phone calls and picking up the phone and getting that high squeal of modems talking to each other.

He's got a set up now that I can't even get my head around. He's got it set up so that he can control computers at his home from his office. That may be child's play for big corporations with network engineers and such, but that he set this up more or less himself is pretty impressive. I know he had to call in software engineers whenever code was involved, but he maintains the hardware himself. G'dam.