Flew into Taipei a couple days ago. It was raining when I landed and it's been dreary since, but I don't mind. It's May, so as soon as the sun comes out, it'll get plenty hot plenty quick around here, so I'm not complaining if the clouds are keeping temps just warm.

I really need to change my life around here, I don't want to go back to doing just what I was doing before the trip to the States, and I think shooting more may contribute to that end. Shooting = Getting out of the apartment during daylight hours.

I already bought more color rolls for the Fisheye and I also have my brother's Nikon D80 DSLR to try to shake things up. I think maybe I stagnated with black and white film because of too much coffee and too much stress over whether a shot is worth using a frame of film.

Ironically, the D80 allows a flexibility that I've criticized about DSLRs before, which is it allows mindless shooting of endless frames, and inevitably one of those shots is going to be usable. But that might be what I need now to get over the paralysis and indecisiveness of wondering whether to take a shot or not.

But this is not about black and white, this is lomo, and I still have about 4 rolls of unposted fisheye (only 4 rolls over the whole of 2009-10! bleah.), while I dust off the fisheye 2 and see if I'm seeing anything.

Taipei overview:

December 9, 2008 - Jiankang Street and Nanjing East Road. I still consider this my neighborhood as it's within walking distance, although towards the outer range of my walking distance. 

December 17, 2008 - Freedom Plaza with the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in the distance. The whole plaza used to be dedicated to Chiang Kai-shek, but he's a controversial character and I thought it was appropriate for the government to take some of that back and dedicate the plaza to freedom and democracy. Chiang Kai-shek was a dictator and a ruthless butcher, but without him, Taiwan's current democracy might not exist.

Oh, and that's a group of Tibetan protestors at the foot of the gate, lobbying Taiwan to protect Tibetan refugees who have escaped from mainland Chinese repression. 

Needless to say, this construction is all complete now. The riverside bikeway on the lower left is complete and open, and the bridge on the middle right -- I forget if that's what they were tearing down or putting up. I think maybe they were putting that one up, and where I was standing was the bridge that eventually came down to improve traffic flow over the Keelung River.

Rock U (Kara)

After a month in the U.S., I'm heading back to Taiwan tomorrow morning, and it just so happens that the concluding frames on this roll of lomo are shots of my neighborhood in Taiwan. Maybe this will ease the shock of being back there. Or not.

December 2, 2008 - Funky winter sunlight in the stairwell leading out of my building. I live on the 3rd floor. Prior to here, I lived on the 6th floor of a building with no elevator. For the first few days after moving here, I kept making this turn out of habit to go up further before realizing I live here.

November 29, 2008 - Neighborhood park just down the alley from me. It's a nice place to stop before going home and munch on something or just decompress. Line dancing occurs here every night, too, one can imagine. They consider it exercise, but it pretty much looks the same as line dancing.

December 2, 2008 - In the opposite direction of the park from me is a local food street a block away, although this one is nothing to write home about. There's only one food stall I go to pretty regularly that has a really good fried onion pancake type thingie which I like with either cheese, tuna or kimchi and a fried egg. Otherwise it's mostly sustenance-level food, not to savor or enjoy.

Considering the events of the last 24 hours, I'm well aware that I'm about to get on an airplane tomorrow and subject myself to the indignities of airport security. I managed to avoid the full-body scanner at SFO coming here because the line was getting so long that security opened up another line starting from the person in front of me, and that line didn't go through the full-body scanner.

Aside from the "U.S.A.!" chanting idiots, my opinions on Osama bin Laden's death is pretty much in line with the rest of America. Actually, I'm even in line with those idiots, I just disagree with that thoughtless, sports-fan expression in response to killing one man who is still responsible for killing thousands of our own. I think such whooping and hollering is disrespectful to their memory.

I did feel a cloud lifted when the news came through, and that was right when the news broke and before the hype of what big news it was started snowballing. It was something that had been left hanging for the past 10 years. It had fallen into the background, but now that it's done, it's clear that it has been something lingering that needed resolution.

Now I'm waiting for the conspiracy theories to arise. This story is ripe for conspiracy theories.

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)

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)

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)

August 8, 2008 - Taipei, Taiwan. A small street market, near where I worked, off Zhongshan North Road, north of Mingquan East Road. Unlike other night markets, this one stayed open really late. It was often still open after I got off of work after midnight, but I never went to it to eat after work.


September 3, 2008 -A closer view. It's small compared to other night markets, it's just for people with the munchies. Oh yea, and it just occurred to me that it's right next to the closest thing Taipei has to a red light district. It's called the "Zone" or the "Combat Zone", and it's not as infamous as it once was, I gather, but I hear it's still the place to go for a quick pick-up. So yea, that's probably why it stays open so late. And another reason for me not to go there after work to eat.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Jump for Joy (Duke Ellington)
2. Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, Fugue #16 (J.S. Bach)
3. Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, Fugue #14 (J.S. Bach)
4. (The Gift of Sound) Where the Sun Never Goes Down (David Byrne - "Music for 'The Knee Plays'")
5. Funky Bird (Galactic)
6. London's Burning (The Clash)
7. Eric's Trip (Sonic Youth)
8. Rocks in My Bed (Duke Ellington)
9. High Time (The Grateful Dead)
10. Shine Like a New Pin (Camera Obscura)

August 7, 2008 - In front of Taipei Songshan Airport at Minquan East Road and Dunhua North Road, on my way to work in the late afternoon.

I just started a new roll in the fisheye, and the 2 shots in front of the Taiwan High Court posted earlier are, indeed, probably because it was at the beginning of the roll. I take a shot and then wonder if I advanced the film enough, so I take another just to be sure.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Velvet Days (Kristin Hersh)
2. Oh Yeah (Nokko)
3. No Aloha (The Breeders)
4. Higher Ground (Stevie Wonder)
5. Rapture (Blondie)
6. Leif Erikson (Interpol)
7. Drugs (Talking Heads)
8. Stairway to Heaven (live) (Led Zeppelin)
9. Limelight (XTC)
10. Big Spender ("Sweet Charity")

December 17, 2008 - Public art at Linsen and Zhongxiao East Road? The sun was behind me so I had to lie down on the ground to avoid getting my shadow in the lomo. Sometimes you have to lie for your art.


December 18, 2008 - Public Santa outside the Living Mall sphere.

I guess it was wishful thinking Spring had arrived. It had, but like it is everywhere, Winter has to sneak in one last sucker punch to remind us that optimism and forward-looking needs to be tempered. In Taipei, Winter means cool temperatures and overcast, rainy days.

And still it's not as bad, so far, as my first two years here. I'm optimistic that this current drear will not become a constant drear like before.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Well-Tempered Klavier, Book 2, Fugue #2 (J.S. Bach)
2. Kicked it in the Sun (live) (Built to Spill)
3. Horses (Tori Amos)
4. Else (Built to Spill)
5. Dance Hall (Modest Mouse)
6. Habit (Pearl Jam)
7. For the Turnstiles (Neil Young)
8. Losing My Mind ("Follies" - Sondheim)
9. I'm the Man Who Murdered Love (XTC)
10. All Her Favorite Fruit (Camper Van Beethoven)

August 5, 2008 - Outside the Taiwan Railway Authority (or Administration) on Bade Road. Train wheels turned into parking lot barriers. At sunset, so low light.

I read an article today about a woman motorscooterist who was killed several years ago when a taxi driver let his passenger out in a not safe place. The woman swerved to avoid hitting the opening door, but fell and suffered head injuries and died a couple weeks later.

It was in the news today because a verdict was handed down in the following court case. Both the driver and the passenger were convicted of involuntary manslaughter and face either jail time or stiff fines.

I agree with the verdict. Taxi drivers are a menace in Taiwan, and pedestrians aren't much better in their complete disregard of watching where they're going, or looking before they leap. Although, I do think the taxi driver had greater culpability - it was his responsibility to not let a passenger out if there was any danger to traffic, and even at a red light, a taxi driver should know that motorscooter and bicycle traffic continues around his vehicle. He has greater knowledge of what is safe or not, and he has mirrors to check whether his passenger can disembark safely. The only reason he would let a passenger out essentially in the middle of traffic is sheer negligence and disregard for safety.

This is another good argument to establish taxi ranks in Taiwan, where taxis can only pick up or drop off passengers in designated areas. The way it is now, a free-for-all, Taiwan streets that are already overcrowded with taxis are made more dangerous by reckless taxi drivers competing for fares.

Negligence on the part of the taxi driver, obliviousness on the part of the passenger, I witness this everyday in Taiwan, and in this case it resulted in the death of someone who was innocently trying to get from one place to another. I hate to say it, but she probably would have survived if she didn't try to swerve and just plowed right into the passenger and the taxi door.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Floating Dogs (Peter Gabriel - "Birdy")
2. Teentown (Kenwood Dennard)
3. D'yer Mak'er (Led Zeppelin)
4. Thunderstruck (AC/DC)
5. I Love You (Princess Princess)
6. Oh! You Pretty Things (David Bowie)
7. Tinfoil (live) (Rainer Maria)
8. Hinotama Jive (live) (Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra)
9. She's a Woman (The Beatles - Anthology)
10. Going to California (Led Zeppelin)

July 15, 2008 - Renai Road, in front of Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall. I rode past this bunch of reporters, and then I thought that whatever it was, it was public, cameras were everywhere, so I turned around to snap a lomo.


With the toweringly high standard of media in Taiwan, they were reporting on the addition of these bike lanes alongside the crosswalks, I found out. Right. Bike lanes for crosswalks. They're about as useful as bike lanes on sidewalks, like they have on the blocks surrounding Taipei 101. And as I've said before, "What do you get when you put a bike lane on a sidewalk? Answer: A sidewalk!"

Useless, but on the other hand it's good for bike awareness, so I can't fault it too much.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Rah! Rah! Replica (Bikini Kill)
2. The Mayor of Simpleton (XTC)
3. Red Light (U2)
4. My Blue Heaven (Smashing Pumpkins)
5. Colder (Throwing Muses)
6. What Crime Is It? (Victor Wooten w/Bootsy Collins)
7. The Chamber of 32 Doors (Genesis)
8. Rhyme & Reason (Dave Matthews Band)
9. Good Day Sunshine (The Beatles)
10. Dance the Night Away (Van Halen)

July 15, 2008 - Taipei 101 on a particularly beautiful Summer morning.

Chinese New Year madness is upon us, and I'm glad to be partaking of none of it, except for enduring long lines at the local hypermart. My uncle called the other day asking when I'd be going down to Kaohsiung, and that was the first I had heard about it. But after my cousins wedding just two weeks ago, I thought everyone would be tapped out emotionally and financially for any festivities. I was tapped out of the whole family thing, so I have no plans to go down for New Years. I've already informed work that I'm available to pick up any slack if needed, and it looks like I will be.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Technicolor Girls (Death Cab for Cutie)
2. Photograph (Def Leppard)
3. Unconditional Love (Shiina Ringo)
4. I Got a Right to Sing the Blues (Lena Horne)
5. Walkin' My Baby Back Home (Nat King Cole)
6. S.O.F.T. (Elastica)
7. So Sad About Us (The Breeders)
8. Secure Yourself (Indigo Girls)
9. Lullaby of the Moths (Helium)
10. The Owl's Escape (Mary Timony)

July 8, 2008 - Yong Ji Road in northern Xinyi District, Taipei, Taiwan.

I admit it, I got home from work and then stayed up all night watching the inauguration on CNN. I was moved and proud as a Georgia peach to watch Barack Obama become the 44th U.S. president. Not just because of the historicity, but because I have a lot of confidence in him. I think he's going to be one of the great U.S. presidents because of his acts and what he inspires, not just because he's the first African-American president.

He is already lifting the level of discourse in the U.S. With Bush, whenever there was a debate following an Act of Bush, I usually rolled my eyes and changed the channel, annoyed that whatever was being debated was at such a low level.

Already, after Obama's first major speech on the economic crisis last week, and today about Guantanamo Bay, both were followed by debates where I could listen to both sides intently and figure out what I agreed with and disagreed with, what were the important issues presented on either side.

We can be a thinker's country again. No more, "We're gonna invade Iraq, m'kay? They got weapons of mass destruction, m'kay? Weapons of mass destruction are bad. So we're gonna invade, see?"

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Cinderella Search (Marillion)
2. Body Movin' (The Beastie Boys)
3. Shining Light (10,000 Maniacs)
4. Excerpt from 'Lamplight Symphony' (live) (Kansas)
5. Secret Heart (Feist)
6. Who Can It Be Now? (Men at Work)
7. Does Your Heart Beat Slower (June of 44)
8. Tuff Luck (Seam)
9. Sad Songs (Say So Much) (Elton John)
10. Happy Ending (Makihara Noriyuki)

June 29, 2008 - Street shooting at the corner of Civic Boulevard and Keelung Road. The structure just visible on the left is the elevated freeway over parts of Keelung Road.


Keelung Road just south of Zhongxiao East Road with Taipei 101 behind the street signs. I remember being frustrated at not shooting very much, so that day I made a point of taking whatever random shot occurred to me while riding along. But only these two.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Picture Book (live) (The Kinks)
2. Real Love (Smashing Pumpkins)
3. UFO TOFU (Bela Fleck & the Flecktones)
4. What People Are Made of (Modest Mouse)
5. Back in N.Y.C. (live) (Genesis)
6. Sensation (The Who)
7. The Only Way (Hymn) (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
8. Leave It (Yes)
9. Home (Kristin Hersh)
10. Symphony No. 2, II. Larghetto (Beethoven)

June 23, 2008 - Waiting on my bike at the intersection at Minquan East Road and Fuxing North Road, looking south, on my way to work.


September 3, 2008 - Waiting on my bike at the intersection at Minquan East Road and Fuxing North Road, looking north, on my way to work.

This partly explains why I've shot so little this year. Work and routine makes me a creature of habit, doing the same basic thing day in and day out. Actually, it's not that bad, I do vary, but once I've found a template, I can easily find and fall back in it. I think law school did that to me.

Like I've mentioned, there is a route to work where I know all the lights, and therefore how to ride on any section of road to beat a light, or to not waste my energy. I know never to rush to get to this light because I'll never beat it, and I even have time to pull out the fisheye.

These are probably even just about at the same time of late afternoon, the first one just after the solstice, the second a few weeks before the equinox.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Portions for Foxes (Rilo Kiley)
2. Cash Car Star (Smashing Pumpkins)
3. Stokfel Jive (Mahlathini & the Mahotella Queens)
4. Karn Evil 9 - 1st Impression, part 2 (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
5. Technopolis (Yellow Magic Orchestra)
6. Dirty Fingernails (Modest Mouse)
7. Starman (David Bowie)
8. Kiss Off (Violent Femmes)
9. Baby's Got a Brand New Hairdo (Elvis Costello & the Attractions)
10. Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, Prelude #16 (J.S. Bach)

May 16, 2008 - Intersection of Xinyi and Keelung roads, looking east at Taipei 101, the 2nd highest building in the world. Somehow that doesn't have the same impressiveness as saying "the tallest building in the world". Oh well.

It's been raining for more than 24 hours straight. It may have let up for short periods of less than an hour, but I think it's been pretty much constant since yesterday morning. I think it's from a typhoon to the southwest that isn't predicted to come near us, but the rain is dumping down on us.

So I couldn't do any riding yesterday, on my rare day off with no work and no rehearsal/gig, but I'm quitting my job next week, going in for weekends for maybe a month longer, so I'll have a lot more time soon. Although I'm supposed to be using the time to really try to nail down the language before I leave.

I was hoping to ride out to Taiwan's east coast. I'm doing more day riding now that the Summer heat is gone. It's still hotter than San Francisco ever gets, except during their laughable "heat waves", which to me is just comfortable, but it's all relative.

The other day, I found a road from Xizhi (汐止), just east of Taipei, that goes south to Pingxi (平溪), that I did during the daytime. Day riding still sucks because of the traffic and pollution, and Route 5 out of Taipei wasn't exactly pleasant, but once I got off that main road onto 北31 to Pingxi, it turned out to be a great ride. The climb went up to 655 meters (over 2000') before descending down to Pingxi.

And strangely, I was worried when I started out before noon that it would be uncomfortably hot, since the sun was shining and it was already probably in the low 80s. But as I got out of Taipei and headed up the mountain, it clouded over and the temperature came down, and it was a pleasant climb. I was even worried about rain.

But as soon as I started descending, the clouds disappeared and the rest of the ride was all in sunlight. As good as it gets.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Ai Suru Hito Yo (Sakura)
2. Samurai Showdown (RZA - "Ghost Dog")
3. Cracked Actor (live) (David Bowie)
4. Yume no Tamago (Ichiko Hashimoto - "RahXephon")
5. Chan Chan (Eliades Ochoa - "Buena Vista Social Club")
6. Wonder (Natalie Merchant)
7. Walking in Space ("Hair")
8. Giant Steps (John Coltrane)
9. I'll Be Back (The Beatles)
10. Got To Get You Into My Life (The Beatles - Anthology)

May 9, 2008 - Nanjing East Road, Section 5; one of the major east-west boulevards going across Taipei. They're building an MRT line under it, which is that construction going on in the middle of the road. I'm not making any predictions, but I can't imagine still living here by the time they complete it. Which is like. . . 5 years from now.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Grasshoppers (Ryuichi Sakamoto)
2. Pull Up the Roots (Talking Heads)
3. Who Do You Dance For? (Sahara Hotnights)
4. Try to Remember (reprise) ("The Fantasticks")
5. December (Unwound)
6. A Sword and a Rose and a Cape ("Carnival")
7. Home (Kristin Hersh)
8. Black Country Woman (Led Zeppelin)
9. Five O'Clock Whistle (Duke Ellington)
10. Whatever (Ani DiFranco)

April 12, 2008 - Wow, this is the next consecutive frame from the previous post. A whole month between shots. That's so sad. And I didn't even start work until the beginning of April. What was I even doing then? I'm still working on the second roll of this year. That's even sadder. I didn't even stop sleeping until the end of May.

East side of the Raohe Night Market street in Songshan District, where there's an apparently popular Taoist temple.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Drain You (Nevermind)
2. La Guerre Est Finie (Pizzicato Five)
3. The Goldberg Variations, #17 (J.S. Bach)
4. Democratic Circus (Talking Heads)
5. Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! (Take 7) (The Beatles - Anthology)
6. Panama (Van Halen)
7. Morning Sprite (Chick Corea Akoustic Band)
8. Caught A Lite Sneeze (Tori Amos)
9. Harbor Wind (Keiko Matsui)
10. Woman (John Lennon)

March 12, 2008 - Taipei, Taiwan. Aiguo West Road near Xiaonanmen. "Nanmen" meaning "south gate", this was probably originally part of the south wall fortification surrounding the original Taipei City, which was no more than the current western part of Zhongzheng District and a little north of Taipei Main Station. It's hard to imagine Taipei a hundred years ago.

This shot didn't work. I was trying to get that busted up motor scooter that get left by the gate. The gate is on an island in the middle of the road, with a roundabout going around it.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. You're My Best Friend (Queen)
2. Anata Dake o - Summer Heartbreak - (Southern All-Stars)
3. Paquita (Tabu Ley & Africando)
4. Mothership Connection (Star Child) (Parliament Funkadelic)
5. Long Painting (50 Foot Wave)
6. Stop Your Sobbing (The Pretenders)
7. Five O'Clock Drag (Duke Ellington)
8. Stone the Crows ("Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat")
9. Pencil Rain (They Might Be Giants)
10. Ugly (Smashing Pumpkins)

March 9, 2008 - Taipei, Taiwan. Nanjing East Road near the Guangfu North Road intersection. This is my new neighborhood after I moved in the beginning of March. I had been in this area before, albeit rarely, on rides. Needless to say, I never thought I would one day live here.

I had also been here once before to a music venue called "The Living Room", which is across the street directly to the left off this shot. I heard that it was closing soon after I moved here, which peeved me (just my luck), but I think the place has been picked up by new management and will continue having live music.

They're building an MRT (subway) line under Nanjing East Road, and this is a fenced off construciton area. The fencing and traffic lanes are constantly changing to accomodate construction. It makes for hairy riding, so I avoid riding my bike on this road. The line is scheduled for completion in, like, 2013, by which time I certainly hope to be back in the U.S.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Shoot Him (The Sugarcubes)
2. Home Sweet Home (Peter Gabriel)
3. New Jersey (100 Watt Smile)
4. Bitter Memories (Bakufu Slump)
5. Schizophrenia's Weighted Me Down (Cat Power)
6. Beneath, Between and Behind (live) (Rush)
7. The Roof is Leaking (Phil Collins)
8. Every Ghetto Every City (Lauryn Hill)
9. Shulaba La Bamba (Southern All-Stars)
10. No One Has Ever Loved Me ("Passion" - Sondheim)