i don't like butts
If you thought i was about to "i don't like reggae... i love it", i hate to disappoint.
I don't like butts. I don't understand the appeal. I don't think they're sexy. I don't even think they're mildly attractive. I don't think they're saucy or risqué. I don't get excited by short skirts or short shorts. I don't get why some people like big round ones or what it even means to have a flat one. It's so irrelevant to me. Nothing creative or interesting comes out of the bottom half of the human body. The bottom half literally just exists to eject shit and move you from A to B. It's so fucking uninteresting it makes me suspicious of people who care more about it than i do.
Well, except for right now i am caring a whole hell of a lot about butts. Or, to be specific, my own butt. Because that is Ground Zero for the ongoing skin condition of doom that seems to never solve itself. After much craning of my neck and a whole assortment of NSFW mobile phone photos, i think i can safely say that whatever my current problem is, it is very much centered around the lower corner of both my butt cheeks, just above where the fold with my thigh begins. Much more on the left - where there are at least a dozen bright red spots that look like mosquito bites - but also a fair few on the right. And maybe one or two in the perineum area. Plus i still have three red spots in an even more sensitive area of my private parts, and a half dozen still distributed randomly around my waist and thighs.
The thing of it is. Originally i thought they were insect bites. Then they started spreading like acne and itching like the bajesus. Doctor said scabies, i took all the meds. Almost all of the itching went away and the acne-like rash almost completely disappeared. But this handful of insect bite looking bumps remained. I'd say about half of them had subsided into smaller lesions and i was hoping they were about to disappear altogether, but then just as all my medications ran out ten days ago, a few of them started coming back. Going on a cycle ride last week definitely irritated them a bit, but they seemed to settle again until middle of this week when suddenly - at almost exactly the same time all over my body - they poked back out into noticeable red bumps. If i didn't know better i'd say it was hormonal given how it seems to come in waves, and especially how it bursts out hard almost every two or four weeks like clockwork.
The good news is that so far i still don't have the acne-like rash or incessant itching. Now it is very much just a localized set of annoying red lumps. And any itchiness i'm getting from them is more the usual itchiness that happens when you have a bump that rubs against your clothes in uncomfortable ways. So i don't think it's scabies any more. But it might instead be some kind of infection of the lesions that were originally caused by the scabies. Or perhaps it's a separate fungal infection like ringworm or something. So now i bought some over the counter anti-fungal cream and i'm gonna try that for a week or two before going back to the doctor in despair.
This sucks. I hate my butt. I want to chop my butt off and throw it in the garbage can. With all the other butts. All they do is make life miserable for people. Butts fucking suck.
And, with that out of the way, on to this weekend's adventure.
It's a long weekend this weekend for National Day, and lordy i have to say that i love three day weekends. I really wish the work week was only 4 days. And none of this "9 hours for 9 days = one Friday off every two weeks" Silicon Valley solution. I already work 9 hours a day! Just give us the Mondays off so Sunday can be a real day of rest, and not a day of worrying about work again.
On my day of rest, i got on a bike and headed along the river in the opposite direction to last week. The weather was the opposite to last week too - overcast and relatively cold (around 25C/75F). Along the way i found a pumpkin. Not sure if it was to celebrate Halloween or if it was just a random pumpkin.
It's probably the most colorful thing i saw on my journey, because the weather was gray as hell, and the further i went upriver, the grayer it got.
And yet, there is something magical to me about these steamy riverside vistas. The elegant bridges, the hopeful new highrises, the mossy and mouldy old ones, mountains covered in green... everything gets covered in green the moment you leave it alone in places like this.
I'm no fan of rain and dampness as i'm sure you know, but if there's one time when rain is appropriate, i suppose it's when you are walking through the jungle. Those big, leafy canopies over your head, dripping water on your head, watching it ooze down the twisted vines. I got off my bike and took a wander around 和美山 Hemei Mountain, which is right on the edge of town in the 新店 Xindian district.
Xindian is actually one of the places i was looking for an apartment because i thought it would be neat to live next to the mountain for weekend hiking purposes. Eventually i got my place in 萬華 Wanhua (aka 艋舺 Bangka), which is practically downtown. I think i made the right choice after talking to a colleague who used to live in Xindian and said that it was really frustrating because of the rain and endless struggle with mold. It's humid as hell already down in the basin, but once you get closer to the mountains, it's like you just walk into a permanently hovering rain cloud.
I climbed the stairs to the top of the mountain, which was just your usual 100-200m jungle bump, but still a stiff walk due to the steepness and stairs. Then popped back down to the village on the other side, where sadly they didn't have anywhere to get nibbles besides the same FamilyMart convenience store you can find on every street corner of the city. I decided to take a probably-unwise hike along some of the mountain roads to get round to the other side of the mountain.
The road had all those feelings of Hong Kong for me, or the Japanese anime Initial D. Just up in the hills behind a big city, everything wet and slippery, mist everywhere, all the cars and even the trucks are small, moped riders in ponchos, bright lights emerging from the fog. Out back of the mountain was another small village - this time with nowhere at all to buy food, although i heard a few chickens coming from a hut whose roof i ducked under to hide from the rain and check my phone.
There is a little ferry that can take you across to the suburb on the other side of the river, but i decided to head back into the jungle and hike to the walking bridge that would take me to the subway station. I thought the riverside path would be easier than the summit path, but it turned out to be a fair bit more challenging, with lots of steps going up and down and back up again. A decent section was just a wooden boardwalk suspended on the edge of the cliff, which in the steamy weather gave the impression of a mysterious floating path through an alien landscape.
In the end i probably only spent an hour or maybe a bit more criss-crossing all of the paths on the mountain - it's not a major hike by any means - but perhaps due to the rain it was relatively peaceful and a great place to get a workout in greenspace that felt properly wild and distant from the city.
But then i walked across the suspension bridge and into a relatively bustling (given the weather) market street. Got a plate of noodle and some greens, then jumped on the subway back to my house. It's glorious to be able to bike and hike close to home, and not have to need either a car or a tent to do it.
So i got home and showered and reapplied my latest round of creams that i hope will fix my stupid ass. And then i just settled down to watch some TV and relax through the rest of this weekend. I've been working hard, so it's nice to not have to worry about it an extra day this week.
I feel like i should do something National Dayish today, but the weather is still overcast and i am not really in the mood. Having the extra day means i can just doze and do nothing and not feel like i wasted it. I heard fireworks yesterday and fighter jets fly over this morning, so i suppose i already experienced some of the celebrations indirectly.
Happy Monday, all.
I don't like butts. I don't understand the appeal. I don't think they're sexy. I don't even think they're mildly attractive. I don't think they're saucy or risqué. I don't get excited by short skirts or short shorts. I don't get why some people like big round ones or what it even means to have a flat one. It's so irrelevant to me. Nothing creative or interesting comes out of the bottom half of the human body. The bottom half literally just exists to eject shit and move you from A to B. It's so fucking uninteresting it makes me suspicious of people who care more about it than i do.
Well, except for right now i am caring a whole hell of a lot about butts. Or, to be specific, my own butt. Because that is Ground Zero for the ongoing skin condition of doom that seems to never solve itself. After much craning of my neck and a whole assortment of NSFW mobile phone photos, i think i can safely say that whatever my current problem is, it is very much centered around the lower corner of both my butt cheeks, just above where the fold with my thigh begins. Much more on the left - where there are at least a dozen bright red spots that look like mosquito bites - but also a fair few on the right. And maybe one or two in the perineum area. Plus i still have three red spots in an even more sensitive area of my private parts, and a half dozen still distributed randomly around my waist and thighs.
The thing of it is. Originally i thought they were insect bites. Then they started spreading like acne and itching like the bajesus. Doctor said scabies, i took all the meds. Almost all of the itching went away and the acne-like rash almost completely disappeared. But this handful of insect bite looking bumps remained. I'd say about half of them had subsided into smaller lesions and i was hoping they were about to disappear altogether, but then just as all my medications ran out ten days ago, a few of them started coming back. Going on a cycle ride last week definitely irritated them a bit, but they seemed to settle again until middle of this week when suddenly - at almost exactly the same time all over my body - they poked back out into noticeable red bumps. If i didn't know better i'd say it was hormonal given how it seems to come in waves, and especially how it bursts out hard almost every two or four weeks like clockwork.
The good news is that so far i still don't have the acne-like rash or incessant itching. Now it is very much just a localized set of annoying red lumps. And any itchiness i'm getting from them is more the usual itchiness that happens when you have a bump that rubs against your clothes in uncomfortable ways. So i don't think it's scabies any more. But it might instead be some kind of infection of the lesions that were originally caused by the scabies. Or perhaps it's a separate fungal infection like ringworm or something. So now i bought some over the counter anti-fungal cream and i'm gonna try that for a week or two before going back to the doctor in despair.
This sucks. I hate my butt. I want to chop my butt off and throw it in the garbage can. With all the other butts. All they do is make life miserable for people. Butts fucking suck.
And, with that out of the way, on to this weekend's adventure.
It's a long weekend this weekend for National Day, and lordy i have to say that i love three day weekends. I really wish the work week was only 4 days. And none of this "9 hours for 9 days = one Friday off every two weeks" Silicon Valley solution. I already work 9 hours a day! Just give us the Mondays off so Sunday can be a real day of rest, and not a day of worrying about work again.
On my day of rest, i got on a bike and headed along the river in the opposite direction to last week. The weather was the opposite to last week too - overcast and relatively cold (around 25C/75F). Along the way i found a pumpkin. Not sure if it was to celebrate Halloween or if it was just a random pumpkin.
It's probably the most colorful thing i saw on my journey, because the weather was gray as hell, and the further i went upriver, the grayer it got.
And yet, there is something magical to me about these steamy riverside vistas. The elegant bridges, the hopeful new highrises, the mossy and mouldy old ones, mountains covered in green... everything gets covered in green the moment you leave it alone in places like this.
I'm no fan of rain and dampness as i'm sure you know, but if there's one time when rain is appropriate, i suppose it's when you are walking through the jungle. Those big, leafy canopies over your head, dripping water on your head, watching it ooze down the twisted vines. I got off my bike and took a wander around 和美山 Hemei Mountain, which is right on the edge of town in the 新店 Xindian district.
Xindian is actually one of the places i was looking for an apartment because i thought it would be neat to live next to the mountain for weekend hiking purposes. Eventually i got my place in 萬華 Wanhua (aka 艋舺 Bangka), which is practically downtown. I think i made the right choice after talking to a colleague who used to live in Xindian and said that it was really frustrating because of the rain and endless struggle with mold. It's humid as hell already down in the basin, but once you get closer to the mountains, it's like you just walk into a permanently hovering rain cloud.
I climbed the stairs to the top of the mountain, which was just your usual 100-200m jungle bump, but still a stiff walk due to the steepness and stairs. Then popped back down to the village on the other side, where sadly they didn't have anywhere to get nibbles besides the same FamilyMart convenience store you can find on every street corner of the city. I decided to take a probably-unwise hike along some of the mountain roads to get round to the other side of the mountain.
The road had all those feelings of Hong Kong for me, or the Japanese anime Initial D. Just up in the hills behind a big city, everything wet and slippery, mist everywhere, all the cars and even the trucks are small, moped riders in ponchos, bright lights emerging from the fog. Out back of the mountain was another small village - this time with nowhere at all to buy food, although i heard a few chickens coming from a hut whose roof i ducked under to hide from the rain and check my phone.
There is a little ferry that can take you across to the suburb on the other side of the river, but i decided to head back into the jungle and hike to the walking bridge that would take me to the subway station. I thought the riverside path would be easier than the summit path, but it turned out to be a fair bit more challenging, with lots of steps going up and down and back up again. A decent section was just a wooden boardwalk suspended on the edge of the cliff, which in the steamy weather gave the impression of a mysterious floating path through an alien landscape.
In the end i probably only spent an hour or maybe a bit more criss-crossing all of the paths on the mountain - it's not a major hike by any means - but perhaps due to the rain it was relatively peaceful and a great place to get a workout in greenspace that felt properly wild and distant from the city.
But then i walked across the suspension bridge and into a relatively bustling (given the weather) market street. Got a plate of noodle and some greens, then jumped on the subway back to my house. It's glorious to be able to bike and hike close to home, and not have to need either a car or a tent to do it.
So i got home and showered and reapplied my latest round of creams that i hope will fix my stupid ass. And then i just settled down to watch some TV and relax through the rest of this weekend. I've been working hard, so it's nice to not have to worry about it an extra day this week.
I feel like i should do something National Dayish today, but the weather is still overcast and i am not really in the mood. Having the extra day means i can just doze and do nothing and not feel like i wasted it. I heard fireworks yesterday and fighter jets fly over this morning, so i suppose i already experienced some of the celebrations indirectly.
Happy Monday, all.