Awake!
In the morning, on a weekend! I felt brave at 7am and since I was the only one awake, if I threw up there'd be no one to stare so I downed raisin spice oatmeal for breakfast and as a bonus did not vomit from the alien texture. I don't think I worded that very well. And tea, hot tea.
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I like you so much, Wikipedia, why did I not seek you out earlier?
A few websites I look upon with a bustin' of nostalgic fondness:
dooce.com
erasing.org
explodingdog.com
ftrain.com (usually I was perplexed by its fiction)
marychen.com (not updated for a while)
popscratch.com
squinty.com/briskdiazo / pagoda.blogspot.com
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My Chinese was and still is very fragmented, verbal quilt with patches of remembered kung-fu soap opera subtitles, common expressions my parents and grandparents used, words and phrases in my head as bastardized sounds I'd never seen the written form of, that might not be pronounced quite the same way I remembered. Or else I'd recognize the written form of a word but had no idea of the meaning or the pronunciation. Things would be said sometimes, that I'd heard before a long time ago and I'd be like, oh! yeah I know what you're saying! But then immediately afterward something else on the same usage level would be said and I'd be all, ... Huh?
My accent is totally good though! I've always prided myself on that one extremely small thing, heh. As opposed to my sister, who writes and reads abbreviated mainland Chinese better than I do (actually I don't know any abbreviated Chinese at all), but has a horrific accent. Listening to the tapes however, I realize I spoke noticeably slower than everyone else.
Weird
1. Random persons kept thinking I was Japanese. I don't remember who was the first person, it might have been Shou Ying that first mentioned I looked it; the second was a scruffy man outside a subway station who asked me in Japanese for some money.
2. A cabbie I think swore up and down that my dad (born and raised in Taiwan) sounded like he had a mainland-China accent.
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Vacation documentation included long paper entries during first blush that tapered into shorter, vaguer exclamations towards mid-vacation, then halted altogether after an afternoon wherein I threw a brief, quietly desperate and decidedly childish fit (this was the last of the Vacation paper documentations; embarrassing). At that time I started making use of the tape recorder (recording conversations on the sly) and the little pocket notebook (for day notes, reminders of words and pronunciations) I'd thrown into my backpack at the last minute.
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One of the places I visited, with my father's friend's daughter (henceforth known as Shou Ying), was the Museum of Contemporary Art. (Here's an article in the Taipei Times critiquing the exhibition I visited). I must humbly submit that I didn't 'get' most of the works, as contemporary art has always gone right over my head.
- A room filled with what at first glance appeared to be ancient artifacts, but then wait, the stone sculpture has a border of cellphones, the brush painting is of a laptop, this fine porcelain collection are representations of vintage Coke bottles. Shou Ying said stuff about emotional response to the 'trickery' being important to the work as well, and I was proud that I understood her.
- A room labelled "DIY [something]". Walls a deep turquoise sporting sentences and phrases scrawled in tiny script in white chalk; flowers made of newspaper; wires hanging from the ceiling; sequins-things here and there; ramshackle dolls. All the furnishings were small and delicate like it was fixed up by an artistic and particularly fussy 5-year-old.
- Giant paintings in the style of biology textbook illustrations lining a hallway -- "Muse Parasites" said the title cards. In front of each were newsstands of identical pamphlets with what I think were explanations (and more bacteria illustrations).
- A big dark room playing music. Dim flickers of light emanated from behind convex protrusions in each of the four walls, and it seemed like portions of the music were coming from behind each as well, except, when one approached each protrusion to investigate, the light and that part-of-the-symphony would shut off completely. Like, no more strings or cellos until you step away please, so one was forced to be submersed totally in sound. Nice.
- A series of black-and-white photos of the same sunglassed dude (the artist I presume) doing an extravagant spread-eagled handstand in front of different landmarks. Each photo had a detailed explanation card of the location, and each photo was upside-down. The ground upon his palms like a giant serving plate. Solemn Atlas, I salute you and your acrobatic ability. Shou Ying, after a gleeful squinty examination of the work, launched what sounded like a really eloquent explanation, and sadly, I did not understand a word. I liked this one a lot too.
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This is cheating, this is part of an email I wrote to someone:
"I ate something in Taiwan that looked like the squat blushing cousin of an American pear, and tasted a cross between an apple and a starfruit. It lacks an English name in this brain, and my dad's brain too, so I will have to turn to my friend the Internet in the next few days for help on this matter. Also, deadly fresh bamboo (dug up from mountain earth the same morning) in a delicious clear beef bone broth. And tea, lots of tea. And guava. And tofu from a vendor that I could smell from an alley away, and that smell was Unwashed Feet, I kid you not. IT WAS SEMI-DELICIOUS, actually. I took pictures of none of these. Why?!?!?"
I am going to beat this currently strapping but soon to be sickly horse further down the road, likely enough. If I got rid of all my Vacation notes in one go it would be nice for everyone involved but nooo. About face.
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Akron/Family, Dead Science, Tujiko Noriko, Low, Sufjan Stevens, I could listen to you all forever always constantly. You too, Dirty Three.
-----
I like you so much, Wikipedia, why did I not seek you out earlier?
A few websites I look upon with a bustin' of nostalgic fondness:
dooce.com
erasing.org
explodingdog.com
ftrain.com (usually I was perplexed by its fiction)
marychen.com (not updated for a while)
popscratch.com
squinty.com/briskdiazo / pagoda.blogspot.com
-----
My Chinese was and still is very fragmented, verbal quilt with patches of remembered kung-fu soap opera subtitles, common expressions my parents and grandparents used, words and phrases in my head as bastardized sounds I'd never seen the written form of, that might not be pronounced quite the same way I remembered. Or else I'd recognize the written form of a word but had no idea of the meaning or the pronunciation. Things would be said sometimes, that I'd heard before a long time ago and I'd be like, oh! yeah I know what you're saying! But then immediately afterward something else on the same usage level would be said and I'd be all, ... Huh?
My accent is totally good though! I've always prided myself on that one extremely small thing, heh. As opposed to my sister, who writes and reads abbreviated mainland Chinese better than I do (actually I don't know any abbreviated Chinese at all), but has a horrific accent. Listening to the tapes however, I realize I spoke noticeably slower than everyone else.
Weird
1. Random persons kept thinking I was Japanese. I don't remember who was the first person, it might have been Shou Ying that first mentioned I looked it; the second was a scruffy man outside a subway station who asked me in Japanese for some money.
2. A cabbie I think swore up and down that my dad (born and raised in Taiwan) sounded like he had a mainland-China accent.
-----
Vacation documentation included long paper entries during first blush that tapered into shorter, vaguer exclamations towards mid-vacation, then halted altogether after an afternoon wherein I threw a brief, quietly desperate and decidedly childish fit (this was the last of the Vacation paper documentations; embarrassing). At that time I started making use of the tape recorder (recording conversations on the sly) and the little pocket notebook (for day notes, reminders of words and pronunciations) I'd thrown into my backpack at the last minute.
-----
One of the places I visited, with my father's friend's daughter (henceforth known as Shou Ying), was the Museum of Contemporary Art. (Here's an article in the Taipei Times critiquing the exhibition I visited). I must humbly submit that I didn't 'get' most of the works, as contemporary art has always gone right over my head.
- A room filled with what at first glance appeared to be ancient artifacts, but then wait, the stone sculpture has a border of cellphones, the brush painting is of a laptop, this fine porcelain collection are representations of vintage Coke bottles. Shou Ying said stuff about emotional response to the 'trickery' being important to the work as well, and I was proud that I understood her.
- A room labelled "DIY [something]". Walls a deep turquoise sporting sentences and phrases scrawled in tiny script in white chalk; flowers made of newspaper; wires hanging from the ceiling; sequins-things here and there; ramshackle dolls. All the furnishings were small and delicate like it was fixed up by an artistic and particularly fussy 5-year-old.
- Giant paintings in the style of biology textbook illustrations lining a hallway -- "Muse Parasites" said the title cards. In front of each were newsstands of identical pamphlets with what I think were explanations (and more bacteria illustrations).
- A big dark room playing music. Dim flickers of light emanated from behind convex protrusions in each of the four walls, and it seemed like portions of the music were coming from behind each as well, except, when one approached each protrusion to investigate, the light and that part-of-the-symphony would shut off completely. Like, no more strings or cellos until you step away please, so one was forced to be submersed totally in sound. Nice.
- A series of black-and-white photos of the same sunglassed dude (the artist I presume) doing an extravagant spread-eagled handstand in front of different landmarks. Each photo had a detailed explanation card of the location, and each photo was upside-down. The ground upon his palms like a giant serving plate. Solemn Atlas, I salute you and your acrobatic ability. Shou Ying, after a gleeful squinty examination of the work, launched what sounded like a really eloquent explanation, and sadly, I did not understand a word. I liked this one a lot too.
-----
This is cheating, this is part of an email I wrote to someone:
"I ate something in Taiwan that looked like the squat blushing cousin of an American pear, and tasted a cross between an apple and a starfruit. It lacks an English name in this brain, and my dad's brain too, so I will have to turn to my friend the Internet in the next few days for help on this matter. Also, deadly fresh bamboo (dug up from mountain earth the same morning) in a delicious clear beef bone broth. And tea, lots of tea. And guava. And tofu from a vendor that I could smell from an alley away, and that smell was Unwashed Feet, I kid you not. IT WAS SEMI-DELICIOUS, actually. I took pictures of none of these. Why?!?!?"
I am going to beat this currently strapping but soon to be sickly horse further down the road, likely enough. If I got rid of all my Vacation notes in one go it would be nice for everyone involved but nooo. About face.
-----
Akron/Family, Dead Science, Tujiko Noriko, Low, Sufjan Stevens, I could listen to you all forever always constantly. You too, Dirty Three.