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.

January 11, 2009 - Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Lomo of taking wedding pictures for my cousin's wedding. During these my cousin remarked that all he could see was an array of Canon and Nikon. He obviously wasn't looking at me.


I'm happy for my cousin, I've known him as long as I've known anyone aside from my nuclear family. He's my uncle's son on my mother's side. It was still a drag for me to be there, though, since I was the only one who didn't speak Mandarin or Taiwanese. If I opened my mouth, I would draw attention to myself because I would force people to speak English, and whatever I said might have nothing to do with the conversation that was going on. So it sucked, I didn't need to be there, I was there for my parents, and left as soon as I could.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Nothingman (live) (Pearl Jam)
2. Love (John Lennon)
3. Suffragette City (live) (David Bowie)
4. Bicycle Race (Queen)
5. Look a Ghost (Unwound)
6. Down By the Water (PJ Harvey)
7. Mica (Mission of Burma)
8. Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen)
9. Land of Canaan (Indigo Girls)
10. To Whom it May Concern (Black Sheep)

Kaohsiung potpouri

Can you believe it? Can you even imagine? I'm in New Jersey with no internet (only at my brother's apartment for brief periods that it's OK to be anti-social). Now I'm glad I made my trip shorter, rather than longer. Ohmigod, how sad is that, when the quality of a visit to the family homestead is a function of internet access. I say revolution, man, bring down the internet! What do we want? Revolution! When do we want it? When we're done downloading!


May 26, 2007 - Back to the Kaoshiung lomostroll. Taoist temple. I'm so glad the gaudiness of Chinese tastes never made it to Japan. Or at least never overpowered the Japanese aesthetic. Sure, this is colorful, but spiritually tacky!


So this is a story too long to tell. Actually, a reason I went to Kaohsiung this time was to attend the Taiwan side of a wedding reception of a cousin on my father's side who now lives in the U.S.. The last time I saw her, she was a baby, maybe not even a year old. In fact, I know next to no one on my father's side, and apparently the majority of this crowd are relatives on my father's side. There's sure a lot of them not to know.

Can't see much here, but it was the entrance of the wedding party. I held the shutter open for a long exposure and then the flash triggered at the end of the exposure.


May 27, 2007 - Another low-light long-exposure in a tunnel which is a shortcut to Sun Yat-sen University on the beach in Kaohsiung.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Sing a Simple Song (Sly & the Family Stone)
2. Swordfishtrombone (Tom Waits)
3. Clay Feet (Kristin Hersh)
4. Adia (Sarah McLachlan)
5. Once a Thief (The Kinks)
6. Hanadairou (Hajime Chitose)
7. Kessen wa Kinyoubi (Dreams Come True)
8. Fifteen Seconds (Idiot Box)
9. Get Higher (Seam)
10. Pride & Joy (live) (Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble)

Lara Croft: Tomb Sweeper, pt. 2

April 5, 2007 - Centerpiece of the gravesite. It was pretty clean, no sweeping to be done.


Lighting incense, making offerings, reciting prayers, shooting lomos. . .

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Animal (live) (The Kinks)
2. If You Intend (10,000 Maniacs)
3. Stories to Tell (Stanley Clarke)
4. Blue Cloud (Bakufu Slump)
5. Prove It All Night (Bruce Springsteen)
6. Ajisai no Uta (Yuko Hara)
7. In Too Deep (Genesis)
8. Take This Town (XTC)
9. The Magnificent Seven (The Clash)
10. Something Hot in a Cold Country (Echobelly)

Lara Croft: Tomb Sweeper, pt. 1

April 5, 2007 - Kaohsiung, Taiwan - My grandparents' gravesite. It's not in a cemetery, this is their own plot of land because my grandfather was some kind of big shot. He was the founder and president of a bus company sometime after the war, and I fathom that is where, partly to my horror, sympathies towards the KMT in parts of my family originate.

The KMT government (which became a political party after democratization) was headed by the part-time butcher, part-time dictator Chiang Kai-Shek, and I imagine it was very difficult for native Taiwanese to mount such a large business enterprise without connections to the KMT.

I'm not sure if there were any reprisals by Taiwanese, I've never heard of any, as Kaohsiung and much of southern Taiwan was fiercely anti-KMT, but I get the sense that my grandfather was well-liked and well-respected. I've met him, and he seemed like the kind of person you can like and respect.


Rainbaby Gracie! One of my cousins's daughter. I was already referring to her as the Original Rainbaby, but not-so-funny I had just read that week that one early indicator of future autism is that when you call their name, they don't respond, they don't even look. And Gracie is totally like that. I mentioned it to her nanny (indistinguishable at the far right of this fisheye), and she tried it out and, right on cue, no response.

So Faye told Gracie that when she called her name, she had to respond, "Wei!", and they practiced a few times, but the last I heard, Gracie's gone back to not responding. It makes sense. Once a baby can recognize their name, if they hear it called, it's an almost automatic, conditioned response to turn and look. Two years old is too young to be copping attitude!

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Cities In Dust (extended) (Siouxsie & the Banshees)
2. Journey from Mariabronn (Kansas)
3. Sarafurimun (Shoukichi Kina & Champloose)
4. Everything is Fair (A Tribe Called Quest)
5. Ellen West (Throwing Muses)
6. Los Tres Deliquentes (Delinquent Habits)
7. A Map Is Not The Territory (edit) (Echobelly)
8. Symphony No. 4, III. Allegro Vivace (Beethoven)
9. Another One Bits the Dust (Queen)
10. 1985 (Archers of Loaf)

Alan, Pie, & Gracie

February 18, 2007 - Kaohsiung, Taiwan. More of cousins' kids at New Years. Alan and Pie. I wonder how rare it is that cousins in my family are close enough so that their children play together. In my slice of generation, I only know cousins, but I have no idea who my parents' cousins are, or if they exist, much less their children.


And more of the original rain baby, Gracie.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Bang a Gong (Blondie)
2. Nuages (Django Reinhardt)
3. Kimi Dake ni Yume o Mo Ichido (Southern All-Stars)
4. Wait For Me (live) (Hall & Oates)
5. Amazing Grace (Ani DiFranco)
6. After the Ordeal (Genesis)
7. Ain't No Mountain High Enough (Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell)
8. Kimi wa Mieru (Anzen Chitai)
9. Crazy Little Thing Called Love (Queen)
10. 42 (Sodaneva - Japanese underground)

New Years family gathering

February 18, 2007 - Kaohsiung, Taiwan. New Years family gathering. Well, one of them. It was pretty constant, and then freaked me out, and then I left and returned to Taipei sooner than planned because I couldn't deal. I just felt like a total outsider.

Here are three of my cousins on my mother's side. The two on the left are brothers. The one in the middle not only lives in Taipei, but apparently lives right next to my old school, which means he lives right down the street from my old apartment. Why no one put me in touch with him for the past year is a mystery to me, one which I'm wary of and a little bitter about, considering how hard the adjustment has been, so I'm staying out of touch with him. There must have been a reason. And quite frankly, out of all the cousins on my mother's side, most of whom I do know, I was surprised that when I saw him, I didn't even recognize him.

He gave me his contact information, though. I put it in my wallet, so if I get hit by a bus or something, he'll be the one they call, haha!


Little, cute Gracie. She has the cutest, squeaky little voice.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Crew (A Tribe Called Quest)
2. Confessions (Violent Femmes)
3. I'm Only Happy When It Rains (Garbage)
4. Testify (Parliament-Funkadelic)
5. 最愛的人傷我最深 (Ai Mei)
6. That's All You Wanted (Throwing Muses)
7. You've Got To Pick a Pocket Or Two ("Oliver!")
8. Darling Baby (The Elgins - Motown)
9. Turn Back, O Man ("Godspell")
10. Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer ("Cats")

ever been to a wedding where you really didn't belong? (not your own!)

December 3, 2006 - There's a reason I haven't gone down to Kaohsiung to visit family since I returned from the U.S. in October. Family is wack! I went to the U.S. in October because my uncle and members of his family were also going, and as nice as my uncle has been to me, I thought I could be of assistance to them while they were there.

But there's only so much family one can take before feeling how wack they are! I took it and I haven't visited them since then.

My (eccentric) uncle, however, comes up to Taipei once in a while for business and often invites me to the company dinners. I guess I should have been suspicious when he invited me out on a Sunday night. Turns out I was accompanying him to a wedding reception! It was the wedding of an old classmate's son, so the degrees of separation were pretty far. Awkward is probably the word that best describes it, and only reinforced my feeling of family wackness. I'm trying to come up with an excuse to not visit them for Chinese New Year.


Empty 18 bus going home from the reception. Oy. Low light situations courtesy of the Fisheye 2.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats (Genesis)
2. She's A Woman (The Beatles - Anthology)
3. Koi no Memory (Yuko Hara)
4. No Time This Time (The police)
5. 4:37 A.M. (Arabs With Knives & West German Skies) (Roger Waters)
6. Time (live) (Tom Waits)
7. Superstition (live) (Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble)
8. Buena (Morphine)
9. Shaking the Tree (Peter Gabriel w/Yousou N'Dour)
10. I Want It All (Queen)

the main hall

October 14, 2006 - I was at the monastery with my sister-in-law's family. They went to pray and make offerings because my sister-in-law's older sister was going to have some delicate brain surgery soon. I'm not sure what I think of that. Actually, I'm not sure what they think about that! It's not like they're devout Buddhists or anything. They invited me along (or assumed I was coming along) because of that almost-entering-a-monastery thing I did.

So if it's making offerings and praying to some external being hoping for material favor, I'm not sure I can support that sort of thinking. But if it's a gesture of internal reflection and generation of positive energy, then that's something I'm less skeptical about.

Anyway, it worked and she came out of the brain surgery with flying colors. My sister-in-law reports that when you clap, her sister clucks like a chicken. I can't wait to try that out.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Star (Belly)
2. The Rhythm of Life ("Sweet Charity")
3. 10538 Overture (Electric Light Orchestra)
4. Waitress (live) (Tori Amos)
5. Symphony No. 8, IV. Allegro Vivace (Beethoven)
6. So Jah Seh (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
7. Escape of the Levitational Trapeze Artist (June of 44)
8. Fugue in G Minor "The Greater" (J.S. Bach)
9. Standing in the Shadows of Love (The Four Tops - Motown)
10. Thirty-Three (Smashing Pumpkins)

Statues of the 18 Luohan

October 14, 2006 - Chuang Yen Monastery, Carmel, New York. I went with my sister-in-law's family to this Pure Land temple in upstate. I didn't know it was a Pure Land temple until we got up there. Not that I think the delineations between different sects of Buddhism make too much of difference. What is Buddhism, after all, but nothing? Just a label. And labeling it Pure Land is supposed to mean something different from labeling it Zen?

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Like China (Phil Collins)
2. Day to Day Thing (The Neville Brothers)
3. Misery (The Kinks)
4. Southampton Dock (Pink Floyd)
5. Does Your Heart Beat Slower? (June of 44)
6. Down, Down, Down (Tom Waits)
7. Eraikocha (Bakufu Slump)
8. Nervous But Glamorous (Rebecca)
9. Miss World (Hole)
10. Rival (Pearl Jam)

Weird scenes inside the dollar store

Teaneck, NJ:

December 2, 2005 - My sister-in-law searching for baby stuff for her expectant sister.


Creepy Christmas stuff. I'm such a scrooge.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Don't Mess with Bill (The Marvelettes)
2. The Tale of Dusty and Pistol Pete (Smashing Pumpkins)
3. Haisaiku Dochi (Shoukichi Kina & Champloose)
4. Prayer of St. Gregory (Hohvaness - Seattle Symphony)
5. Back in N.Y.C. (live) (Genesis)
6. Call Me (Blondie)
7. Tengoku no Bijin (Bakufu Slump)
8. Late Home Tonight, Part I (Roger Waters)
9. Human (Elastica)
10. Pennyroyal Tea (live) (Nirvana)

Thanksgiving

What's the use? This is so pointless. This was so long ago, but here are the Thanksgiving lomos.


My sister-in-law's sister (or my brother's sister-in-law), Peggy, cooking up a storm. The light leak is because this is the first frame on the roll. She's a high-power lawyer who used to prosecute war criminals in the Hague. If I had known her when she did that, I would have begged her to be her love slave assistant. Mind you, she's considerably older than me. She's older than my brother. Not that age means anything. She works for the New York Stock Exchange now.


Cheese and wine. And a lovely fruit tree.


Poor ex-living thing. At least it's for a good cause. When people die, we don't feed anything. Usually.

current soundtrack:
1. Sweet Charity ("Sweet Charity")
2. Why Don't We Do It In the Road? (The Beatles)
3. Movin' Out (Koji's Song) (Billy Joel)
4. Thrilla in Manila (The National Joy Band)
5. Please Do Not Go (Violent Femmes)
6. Do You Think It's Alright? (The Who)
7. Angel (Echobelly)
8. Aku Rela Kau Behagia (Javanese street musicians)
9. Corporal Clegg (Pink Floyd)
10. Badlands (Bruce Springsteen)

Rainy Days Retrospective

Ah, the gloom of 8 days straight of rain are over:

October 8, 2005 - second day of rain, view outside the front door, kinda the reverse of this.

I documented some of what I did this past week with my lomo. Early on, before we knew it would be 8 days without sun, I visited my brother in Fort Lee:

October 9, 2005 - He lives on the 22nd floor and, as you can see, has quite a nice view. This view is reversed, as his building is south of the bridge, not north.

We had brunch with my sister-in-law's sister and parents:

October 9, 2005 - it was a pretty friggin' amazing brunch. my sister-in-law rocks. She's the one in maroon. Her older sister, Peggy, is at the head of the table. She's pretty cool, too, she used to prosecute war criminals at the Hague. There's not much sexier than prosecuting war criminals at the Hague.

Afterwards, I took a walk and found that two roads diverged in a wood, and I have no idea which one I eventually took (especially since I can't tell if this shot is flipped or not), and that hasn't made any difference in anything whatsoever (sorry, Robert):

Finishing off the Wedding

Right, so a week and a half ago my cousin got married in Boston, blah, blah, blah. It was a modest wedding, I heard my cousin wanted it to be low-key. It was scheduled for 11 in the morning, but at 11:00, no one was there, no one knew what was going on, people trickled in and mingled in cliques, overhearing other peoples' conversations to confirm they were in the right place. But it happened and it was laid-back, a relatively informal, down-to-earth affair, befitting my cousin's humble personality.

I think it was more important for her that it was meaningful, so no big production was necessary. She might have preferred it to be a strictly close friends and family thing, but decorum required that friends of family and extended family not be left out, and I'm sure she was fine with that. Although that meant having a strange cousin who she hadn't seen for eight years show up taking pictures with what looked like a toy camera from odd angles:


That's my aunt on the left, beautiful woman. My cousin Mimi and her husband John, and then my cousin Glen. No idea who the dude on the right is. The wedding was at the Langham Hotel in Boston.

I was honored that at the last minute, my cousins realized that I probably didn't want to be seated with my parents, so they accommodated me at their table:

From left to right that's my cousin Mimi, her husband John, cousin Glen, friend of the groom, the groom, and the bride, my cousin Sola.

I like how these two lomos came out. Not sure I'm liking the black and white, but the fisheye lens does the group of people thing well, I think. I like the shape it creates.

So those are the wedding lomos that I thought came out well enough to post, my inaugural roll at that. Should have gone with color, but I'm working on that now. I still have a few more Boston and miscellaneous lomos while I finish the color roll. Who knows when I'll see Sola again, I'm not counting on it being any time soon. I did think of sending a thank you and congratulations card, since I have these nice cards I picked up from a monastery I stayed at for five months, but I'm thinking we're not so close any more, don't try to cross a bridge that was burnt down long ago. We're family, if occasion arises, we'll see each other again, although maybe it won't have as much meaning as it could.

Boston (The Wedding)

Still on the Boston Lomos, still on black and white, still shooting my first roll of color. Soon I'll have enough to mix things up a bit.

As I mentioned, I went up to Boston on September 25 for my cousin's wedding. I hadn't seen her in eight years, since my brother's first wedding. I have pictures of her at that wedding I recently found out when I scanned a roll of that wedding.

My mother is older sister of her father. Our families were the only ones that immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan, and so they were the only cousins we knew and grew up with. Our families visited each other several times a year when we were kids, they lived about an hour away, but once we got to high school age, we pretty much lost touch.

Cousin Sola:

It was great to see her so happy. She was the middle child. I remember her being a very straight arrow, very serious, quiet and reserved, really smart, maybe the smartest of the siblings, high on filial piety. She was kind of dorky (her siblings might vehemently argue against that), but in a sweet, endearing, charming way. But since we lost touch during high school, I don't have any insight into her personality. I get the impression that she is highly principled, faultlessly loyal to her friends, very honest, caring, giving, compassionate, selfless . . . wow, what a great person! I hope I'm right.

Her younger sister, Mimi, moved to San Francisco while I was there, and I got to know her a little more as an adult than her siblings. I remembered her as my "baby cousin", so seeing her all grown up in San Francisco was truly a delight. She's really beautiful, and has a certain grace and elegance about her. She was very easy to be around and just had a calm and gentle energy. However, we didn't hang out a whole lot in San Francisco, and when I left, I didn't even tell her.

Cousin Mimi:


Mimi got married this past Spring, and I didn't go to the wedding even though I was in San Francisco at the time. However, for the occasion, their older brother Glen was in town, and I did meet up with him. I couldn't even remember the last time I saw him. I have no recollection of seeing him within the last 20 years. He didn't think it was that long, but just talking to him a little bit, I knew the last time I saw him was before he developed any political, social, or cultural ideology. From his family background and what he was like when he was a kid, I was certain he would turn out to be conservative, if not Republican. So I was totally shocked when I found that we could actually have a conversation!

Cousin Glen:


My uncle:

I have to give him and my aunt credit, from the way their kids turned out, compared with how me and my brothers turned out, they did a great parenting job. My uncle and my mom are from the same evil greedy, obsessively materialistic stock, but my aunt is perfectly an angel, so maybe a lot came from her line. My dad might have been born in a test tube, but I'm still trying to gather evidence of that. Seriously, there is like no one from his side of the family. But no, I don't mean to disparage my uncle in any way, he's always seemed like a great guy and wonderful father. My direct experience with him has mostly been pretty good, and the evidence that he is, in fact, a product of my evil greedy, obsessively materialistic grandmother's upbringing is all indirect.