Always in line for the long walk home….

Kowloon, one AM and the night is a wet neon blur. A tropical storm has been drifting around the Pearl River Delta for days, alternately pounding hell like hammers and dangling quietly like a thick soaking quilt. For reasons that may eventually unfold in some future print version, I am without shelter and wandering by choice, supping on a late meal of leathery Hainanese chicken at Tsui Wah, the only place serving trustworthy food at this late hour. My flight leaves in ten hours, leaving me plenty of time to wander up to the airport. Suppose I could walk it if I liked, and and still have time for a long nap on the terminal floor. My camera is broken, darling, otherwise I’d snap you a few surreptitious shots of the sari-clad women of the night who walk the streets at this hour. They’re beautiful and tawdry, decked all in red and gold, slippers to head-scarves. But maybe it’s for the best, the broken camera. Women like that don’t take well to being photographed, not for free. They travel in pairs, usually shadowed by men with knives and lousy haircuts.

There’s a bad pressure over the city, wet and heavy, the sort of vibe that brings out the worst in people, especially late at night when options dwindle. Best to creep small and low at times like these, keep camera in bags and umbrella ready.

The weekend’s gone by fast; one sleepless night of angst and typing, another night of deep ten-hour sleep filled with cloying, claustrophobic dreams of being launched into space in a tiny tin can. They’d chosen me to cover some new satellite somewhere in the Van Allen Belt. The trip was going to take months, and they were trying to stick a catheter into my urethra; “It’s the only way,” one of the scientists in charge was telling me. I kept getting up to pee, but the dream kept resetting itself. Guess I needed the sleep. Now tonight, destination undecided.

The days were productive. A long and literary lunch on Saturday with Vittachi. I didn’t quite recognize him at first. “Who is this thin, brown man? He seems to recognize me.” I asked myself when he showed up wearing jeans and a T-shirt. He’d been doing a radio show, he said, and I realized I’d never seen him wearing anything but some incarnation of his trademark immaculately tailored Nehru collared suit. We talked about writing, travel, the future of capitalism for artists, and about life in general. I must have talked about you, too.

After we parted, I headed up to a country club on the hill for soup and tea with D., a friend of mine who used to be a professional dominatrix. The rain had stopped, but the air was so thick that climbing up the hill felt like walking on the bottom of a Venusian swamp. I got strange looks in the bathroom of this high-brow venue, wringing out my shirt over the sink then drying it with the hand dryer.

D. told me I was looking well, cute even, and from a woman of her experience I took it as high praise. It felt good to connect with someone who is, in this strange way, of my tribe. I’ve always felt an affinity for industry people. That and my impeccable work ethic – traits my father gave me.

Afterwards I went down to Flow, but was too tired to browse the stacks. I didn’t even pick up any comic books. It’d be good to have some light reading, for when the battery runs out. Went back to Lantau, watched Revolutionary Road before passing out. It made me understand you a little better. I guess it helped me to see one of the bright sides of our divorce.

Today, hard rain and typhoon winds, and a long coffee shop meeting with AW, who alternately encouraged and discouraged me before reading two chapters of the novel in progress and telling me it could be good, sending me away with a few light assignments, encouragement to finish the damned novel already, and one piece of professional advice that we both knew I wasn’t ready to follow. More rain, a meeting, cake, several old friends, one new one, and then night, wandering, and here.

So here I am again, laying low in Kowloon, trying to decide between a flophouse, love hotel alone, or a long, long walk. Tomorrow I’ll be home, for however long home turns out to be.

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admin, June 29th 2009 | Tags: , ,
Posted in Uncategorized

Train Ride to Nevets’ Shrine

I am on a train sitting in the station, underground beneath Taipei city. In a few moments it will start moving south to a town called Yangmei, a town I hadn’t even known existed before last week when I agreed to take eight weeks of classes there, conversational English, for 1400 NT dollars an hour. A pretty figure for whoring mother tongue. The train is moving, lights in the tunnel shining waxily , reflections of the puke green upholstery out there in the dark. The driver is reading a long list of the places where this train will stop before reaching Kaohsiung, its southernmost point, four or so hours away. “Taoyuan, Jhongli, Yangmei, Zhubei, Hsinchu…”

I stop listening at Hsinchu. I used to live in Hsinchu, but that was another lifetime ago. I have been on this train many, many times, but remember very little about individual journeys.

We are still underground, and I am sleepy despite having drank many cups of strong coffee to counteract medication I began taking yesterday, anti anxiety pills compiled lovingly by an old Chinese GP who I’d been referred to by my counselor. Under the circumstances, I felt it would be OK for me to have a short term chemical crutch, and she agreed, and brought me to a general doctor able to oblige.

“Just divorced two days ago, your wife wanted the divorce but not you? And now you are living together still, and have anxiety. This is very natural. How are you eating? Very badly. Bowel movements? Sporadic and thin. Stress? That is natural. Sleeping? Poorly. Headaches? Sometimes.”

He takes my pulse, measures my weight and lung function, and pronounces me healthy under the circumstances. He enquirers about my cholesterol intake. After a while, he calls his nurse to prepare a take-away package of blessed short term medications, the chemical crutch I could – but don’t feel like – doing without. Four days worth, each day divided into four colorful packages carefully doled, each package containing a half pill of this, and a half pill of that, something for the stomach and something for the head, something for nerves and something for anger. The last dose comes not in a package but colorful thimble. The nurse hands me a glass of water, and I swallow both down.

“Come back on Friday, Mr. Brown. You will be fine. Your Chinese name is Jia Xi. It means “family happiness” – it is a pity you are divorced, but you will find another wife soon! Also, you are very healthy.”

I walked to Carefour feeling better already, thinking “what should I cook my wife for dinner” as I have a hundred times before before remembering we’re not married anymore. “Fuck it. She can eat out.” I buy myself some apples, cherries, a hard French baguette and a can of Manhattan clam chowder.

This train is a slow one, still moving underground. I can feel the outskirts of Taipei passing muddily above me, Yonghe, Zhonghe, maybe even Tucheng (Tucheng; that’s where my wife and I did some farming, when we were…no, best not to go there, eh? No pills made’ll keep those thoughts at bay, not this soon at least).

Sprouting horizontally, the iron worm is free at last, above the ground and outside of the city. There was a tropical storm passing through the Taiwan straits this weekend, teasing us with winds and rain that hardly came, leaving us with gray and muggy skies in this chunk of the west.

We are now at Shulin Station. Jumble box houses with barred windows and tattered awnings. Tall buildings like the one I live in, only far more disheveled. A long stretch of field, green and lush and windswept. Things are growing all right, things are growing. Also green are the plastic nets crawling up the sides of buildings being built, great big hair nets telling the world coming soon! Something the same, only more.

Sky now, to the left, and mountain to the right over which I know is the ocean, gray and clean with airplanes circling. This area has looked the same since 1994, the same ramshackle buildings and houses, gray blocks filled with life, patches of hungry jungle clamoring for inevitable lebensraum. Taiwan is alive with a vibrancy altered by people, a vibrancy that would not be diminished by lack of human industry. The jungle here builds faster than the people.

A bike trail is carving through a jungle patch next to my train tracks, next to a river. I guess we are somewhere north of Taoyuan now, and I guess I should be planning my class now. What was it I was looking for in chemicals? A temporary respite from ambition? Perhaps then I’ve gotten lucky, because I’ve just reached Inghe station and can’t see any reason other than lethargy to not get off, and cancel my first class in favor of exploring this little town that I’d hitherto never known existed.

But ambition is like herpes. Once you have it, it will always come back. So you need to treat it as such, and never forget you have it even when you can’t feel it.

So the train moves on, myself still on it (and feeling the powerful need to state here and now that I do not have herpes, not the genital kind anyway) passing through more chunks of Taiwan that I find lovely but your average tourist might no find all that interesting. What is the soul of Yingge? What do people here think, make or do? Will I find myself living in Yingge two months down the road, close to these ugly gas tanks, managing a brothel specializing in BDSM?

No, not likely, and anyway, we are somewhere else now, the outskirts of Taoyuan by my clock.

Taoyuan is a wonderful place to be if you are on an airplane that needs to land; their eponymously named airport has just the proper facilities for just such endeavors, and even a Burger king should you need immediate nutritional gratification upon landing. Professionally speaking I can say little more about the place, but could if I were paid to explore further. See my resume for hiring details.

Moving again. In an hour or so I will be standing in front of a group of adult students, trying to remember when to speak and when to listen. I suppose it isn’t something one forgets. Chin up, It isn’t like it isn’t something I used to be an expert at. I might as well try to forget bike messengering. Out of Taouyaun now, the fields are wet and green, almost two green. There is a sadness about them, land used for rice for so long that that’s all it can remember how to do. I don’t want to wind up like that. I wasn’t made to be a rice field.

Broad leafed jungle plants punctuated by shipping boxes; we must be near the place where they store unnedded steel in times of economic downturns. Soon I will be at Zhongli station, and then Yangmei. Maybe I should get a coffee then, some liquid ambition. “Teacher seems tired,” one student will say, and it will buzz from brain to brain like a mental mantra. I wouldn’t mind so much, if I didn’t need the money.

Somewhere to the right, just before Zhongli station, a beautiful shrine in a field.

That’s my shrine for you Nevets; did you even read this far? That’s my shrine for you, and no, I never said kaddish for you, not yet. But I will visit that shrine one day, and depending on how I feel, smoke a cigarette, or get someone else to smoke one for you. Perhaps we will meet there, in that field, by that shrine, postponing our mutual kaddishes.

The future is too hazy for me to see now. I can barely see past the end of this train ride.

My ticket is punched. The train is coming close to reaching exactly where it is meant to reach. I am to be deposited, to be picked up by a nervous driver who has called me three times in the last three minutes to ascertain that I am indeed capable of reaching a particular seven eleven unguided. Soon I will be drinking coffee, transforming speech into capital. Somehow.

The train is here, I think; therefore, I am too.

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admin, June 23rd 2009 | Posted in Uncategorized

Guns, Hookers and Durian: Bangkok Chinatown

Even in Southeast Asia’s most famous city of inequity the Middle Kingdom’s pull on me is inescapable. I’d come to Bangkok for three days of meetings, luncheons and dinners with a group comprised of Asia-based travel writers, photographers, artists and various other nomads. The get-togethers were good, but by the second day I was burnt out on the tourist and skin trade vibe of Sukhimvit and Nana Plaza, where all the events I’d come for were taking place. So on the morning of the third day, with nothing scheduled but high tea at the fantastic Mandarin Oriental for late afternoon, I decided to escape the sleaze and tourism and head to Chinatown.

Strange irony indeed that the first thing I saw upon stepping out of the taxi in Chinatown was a brothel named after my adopted-by-marriage Lone Star State. Unable to resist being able to tell people about a the existence of a place in Bangkok called Texas Massage, I walked down the alley towards an unlit neon sign.

The heavily made-up duo lounging by the entrance confirmed what I already suspected. Inside the darkened parlor, the business at hand was clear as day; a lobby sitting area contained a few couches facing a ceiling-to-floor window that stretching from wall to wall. On the other side of this window a long and narrow room was set up with two tiers of felt-covered benches, long enough for twenty or so prostitutes to lounge away the hours until being called for duty.

Absent, however, were the prostitutes themselves. An older woman – the madame, I presumed – sat behind the front counter smoking a cigarette. She shrugged, and, pointing to the clock and the wall, held up two fingers. Heartened to learn that in this little corner of Bangkok at least the world’s oldest profession sleeps in, I headed out to explore the rest of the neighborhood. The hookers by the door smiled and waved me over, but theirs wasn’t the sort of exploration I was after. “Forget it,” I said to them as I passed. “It’s Chinatown.”

One of the oldest areas of in Bangkok, Chinatown dates its history back to the late eighteenth century. Back in those days, the country was known to outsiders as Siam, and the neighborhood was home to thousands of Chinese merchant families. Many of the Chinese who now live in the area are descended from these merchants, or are part of a later historical Diaspora. Though some can speak some dialect of Chinese (Cantonese, Mandarin, and even Chaozhou can all be heard,) most folks who live here consider themselves Thai.

After winding through a few alleys featuring small stalls selling cooked food, I found myself on Bangkok Chinatown’s main artery. At night Yaowarat road is famous as a food street, but during the day shops selling gold (as well as other goods, wholesale and retail) are the main business of the long avenue. I stepped into a brightly lit apothecary that seemed Chinese inside and out. When I asked the young lady sorting through herbal remedies behind the counter if she had anything that might forestall the cold I was coming down with, she just looked at me quizzically. Fooled by the decor, I’d spoken Mandarin, which the young lady clearly didn’t. She quickly called over a colleague, and after a brief conversation in our mutual second language, I was soon holding my nose and gulping down a warm glass of the foulest liquid I’d tasted in years.

One part of me invigorated and another embittered, I left the shop and went looking for something to wash the medicine’s aftertaste from my mouth. Though most of the street’s famous nighttime food stalls had yet to open, I found a wooden stand selling whole pineapple, durian, jackfruit and other delicious, unwieldy tropical fruits. The saleslady sold me some cut pineapple, which I chomped down greedily while making my way over to the enigmatically named thieves market. Offering wares ranging from clothing to bolts of cloth to bulk nuts and candy, the covered street market seemed to have earned it’s sobriquet in more colorful times, and was neither larcenous nor particularly exciting.

I left the thieves market and headed north through the alleys until I came upon an odd avenue, one I’d previously not known existed. There, on the outskirts of Chinatown, I came across row after row of stores whose stock in trade was firearms. Impressive indeed were the dizzying array of handguns, rifles and automatic weaponry on display in the windows of the dozen-plus mom and pop gun shops lining the street. For a moment I thought I might be back in Texas, until I walked into one to take a picture and the owner told me with a smile “sorry, I only sell to Thais.” With the idea that second amendment rights might have somehow traveled with me out of America forever quashed, I hailed a taxi.

As I rode from gritty Chinatown into the posh neighborhood surrounding the Mandarin Oriental, I found myself meditating on the idea that both the beginning and ending points of my tour might have been somehow appropriate to the story at hand. There are “Chinatowns” all over the world, ranging in tone and tenor from glorified theme parks with cartoonish Asian overtones to utilitarian neighborhoods, organically formed and clearly serving purposes other than tourism. Though there’s plenty of culture around for those who know where to look, nobody would mistake this neighborhood for a Sino-flavored Disneyland. Offering sex on tap and guns for sale, Bangkok Chinatown clearly fits squarely in the utilitarian column.

1 Comment

admin, June 11th 2009 | Posted in Bangkok, Guns, Hookers, bangkok chinatown, durian

Dancing Monkeys / Racism is not Cute

Was turned onto this letter via David On Formosa

Scroll down to the middle letter (Racism is not Cute) at http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2009/06/02/2003445105

Since doing that absolutely stupid TV show last week (full story forthcoming,) this has been a subject much on my mind, the way that the “otherness” of westerners in Taiwan is constantly pointed out.

The author of this letter writes about an experience at the Muzha Zoo (”Waigouren,say hello!”), an experience that I’ve had and still continue to have in Taiwan.

Anyway, I’ve got to stay upbeat, and keep my eyes on THE BIG PICTURE

(oh yes, friends, the big picture….*cackle*)

but it’s an interesting letter, worth mentioning.

Anyway, yes. Since I’m already on about it, I’ve been having this disquieting suspicion lately in Taiwan that it doesn’t much matter what I say to anyone anymore; indeed, my ability to speak alone is all that I’m ever judged on (”wa! ni de zhongwen hao bang”) so it doesn’t matter whether I’m expressing a preference for black coffee over coffee with milk or trying to share deeper insights. Most people, when encountering a dancing monkey, do not take the time to note whether the monkey is performing a tango, foxtrot, or even the venerable mud-shark.

“Look at the dancing monkey! Look at it!”

Taiwan people – not always, but often enough to make it an issue to me – see westerners who speak Chinese as some sort of “skilled monkeys.” The fact that they can speak at all is so overwhelming that what they’re actually saying comes in a distant second, if it’s even paid attention to.
But is this the case everywhere? Inevitably, it comes down to comparing Taiwan and China (ok, you’re a white guy who speaks Mandarin. Where else you gonna go? Singapore la?) 
In mainland China, a land where 1.6 billion people speak varying varieties of a more or less common language, I’m more or less a fluent speaker of Mandarin.  My tones are off here and there, my accent is funny, it’s not a major barrier to communication.  Your average coffee vendor in Kunming, used to doing business with all sorts of minority people from all over Yunnan (many of whom speak Mandarin as a second language, and thickly accented at that) can instantly deduce that I’m asking them not to put sugar (糖(餹)[táng, second tone) In the cup of coffee I'm currently purchasing, and not, in fact, expressing bizarrely a preference to not have soup 汤(湯)
[tāng, first tone] mixed in my Joe.
 
In Taiwan, alas, people seem to lack these deductive skills. 
“The foreigner…he does not want….soup? in coffee? Does not compute…syntax error. ER-ROR! ER-ROR!”
Nervous pause. Smoke emitting from ears. Total collapse.
The upside of this is that if you study Chinese in Taiwan and really make an effort, your tones should be excellent.  The downside is that if you’re a generalist – as I am – you’re Chinese will inevitably go much further in the mainland then in Taiwan.
I spent a month travelling through Yunnan last year, where I felt fully competent in nearly all situations. As soon as I returned to Taiwan, I felt as if I’d been demoted three grades.
“Study harder,” might be the logical solution, but at the age of 40, with ten different projects going on, I’m faced with the quandary of finite time. To be a bit hyperbolic (and why not?) I can spend two hours brushing up on my tones to order soup in a restaurant in Taiwan without being looked at cockeyed.  Or I can use that time to do something completely unrelated, go to Shenzhen, have a half hour conversation with my taxi driver from Sichuan (whose accent is different than mine to begin with), talk to six different hotel owners for whatever guidebook I’m working on, then give a presentation in passable Mandarin on a variety of subjects to a group of people from all over China. Afterwards we can all go out for coffee with sugar. Or maybe some soup. 
This is not to say that the same “dancing monkey” thing doesn’t exist in China. But it seems to be dying out, whereas in Taiwan, much as I love this place and the people who call it home, it still seems to be in fashion.
OK, off on a rant. Thanks, David!
Time to get back to work. 

8 Comments

admin, June 1st 2009 | Posted in Taipei Times, Taiwan's national psyche, off on a rant, racism

Hiking and River Tracing in Fushan

Went on an amazing hike Friday with Tammy and Phil,Laurie and Chris. Went up to Fushan, a mountain south of Wulai, which is itself on the northern end of the mountain range that forms the spine of Isle Formosa. Readers who still somehow have the impression of Taiwan as being a gigantic metroplex / semiconducter factory, something like a cross between Donguan, China and Tokyo’s Ginza, will be greatly illuminated by having a gander at Phillip’s page of photos from the trip.

After meeting at the Xindian station after dawn, we headed up to Wulai for a quick breakfast and then motored south on what once was a logging road built by the Japanese. The area is a protected preserve, so we had to pass through a checkpoint and show identification. The road wound south through high mountains, waterfalls cascading from the peaks above into the gorge far below.
After parking the van in a suitable spot, we headed up a stone staircase. The stairs led us to a rough path, the Fu Ba Trail, which runs through a patch of jungle filled with long stands of running bamboo, trees old and young, and patches of edible flowers with names straight out of Grateful Dead songs. At one point we climbed over an unfinished metal bridge, the vast majority of which lay in chunks on the northern bank awaiting construction.
After hiking south for about an hour, we turned back and headed down a steep, unmarked path that led us to the river itself. It was hear that we stripped down to our swimsuits and strapped on our river-tracing boots (shown here)

Purchased the day before for under NT500 at a shop just east of Taipei main station, the river booties proved critical in navigating the chilly, fast moving river. Phillip, Chris and I traced about a kilometer up the river and floated back down. For me, this short run was just a test-trace, as I plan to come back and travel more of the river later this summer.


After about an hour, we’d had our lunch and were lounging on the rocks when a small group of Atayal warriors came floating down the river towards us brandishing homemade spear guns.

The Atayal are headhunters, and I know they wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than some gory trophy for the alter. I bravely swam out to them to offer my own head; luckily, these tribesmen were pacifists, or at least kindly disposed towards us. (The Taiwanese fishermen who’d been casting on the rocks directly south from us beat a hasty retreat shortly after the warrior’s arrival. There has long been bad blood between Aboriginals and Han Chinese.) One of them demonstrated his spear-gun, an ingenious device.

The men had come to this beach to camp for the night, and brought chunks of raw mountain boar to stew alongside the Formosan mountain carp they’d been skewing in the river. As they settled in for the evening, we headed back towards the casa of P&T and a dinner of strong coffee and stronger cheeses.

Again, many, many fine photos of the day can be found here.

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admin, May 31st 2009 | Tags: , ,
Posted in Uncategorized

Hiking and River Tracing in Fushan

Went on an amazing hike Friday with Tammy and Phil,Laurie and Chris. Went up to Fushan, a mountain south of Wulai, which is itself on the northern end of the mountain range that forms the spine of Isle Formosa.  Readers who still somehow have the impression of Taiwan as being a gigantic metroplex / semiconducter factory, something like a cross between Donguan, China and Tokyo’s Ginza, will be greatly illuminated by having a gander at Phillip’s page of photos from the trip.   

After meeting at the Xindian station after dawn, we headed up to Wulai for a quick breakfast and then motored south on what once was a logging road built by the Japanese.  The area is a protected preserve, so we had to pass through a checkpoint and show identification. The road wound south through high mountains, waterfalls cascading from the peaks above into the gorge far below.  
After parking the van in a suitable spot, we headed up a stone staircase. The stairs led us to a rough path, the Fu Ba Trail, which runs through a patch of jungle filled with long stands of running bamboo, trees old and young, and patches of edible flowers with names straight out of Grateful Dead songs. At one point we climbed over an unfinished metal bridge, the vast majority of which lay in chunks on the northern bank awaiting construction. 
After hiking south for about an hour, we turned back and headed down a steep, unmarked path that led us to the river itself. It was hear that we stripped down to our swimsuits and strapped on our river-tracing boots (shown here)

Purchased the day before for under NT500 at a shop just east of Taipei main station, the river booties proved critical in navigating the chilly, fast moving river. Phillip, Chris and I traced about a kilometer up the river and floated back down. For me, this short run was just a test-trace, as I plan to come back and travel more of the river later this summer.


After about an hour, we’d had our lunch and were lounging on the rocks when a small group of Atayal warriors came floating down the river towards us brandishing homemade spear guns.

The Atayal are headhunters, and I know they wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than some gory trophy for the alter. I bravely swam out to them to offer my own head; luckily, these tribesmen were pacifists, or at least kindly disposed towards us. (The Taiwanese fishermen who’d been casting on the rocks directly south from us beat a hasty retreat shortly after the warrior’s arrival. There has long been bad blood between Aboriginals and Han Chinese.) One of them demonstrated his spear-gun, an ingenious device.

The men had come to this beach to camp for the night, and brought chunks of raw mountain boar to stew alongside the Formosan mountain carp they’d been skewing in the river. As they settled in for the evening, we headed back towards the casa of P&T and a dinner of strong coffee and stronger cheeses.

Again, many, many fine photos of the day can be found here.

1 Comment

admin, May 31st 2009 | Posted in Fushan, Wulai, blogsherpa, hiking in taiwan, river tracing, taipei, taiwan, taiwan aboriginals

Taipei Night Shots

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admin, May 30th 2009 | Posted in Uncategorized

General Update, Best Trip etc.,

T minus three hours until my brother in law arrives from Texas, then it’ll be ten days of tour guide duty with hopefully more regular posts.  Too much stuff going on, so consider this a general update.  

To Wit: 
Tobie, Carrie and I recorded a short film last week based (very loosely) on my old Off the Rails Column. Tobie is now hard at work editing the hour+ of footage into a seven or so minute short that we’re hoping to have online soon. The operative plan is to make five of these films and parley our combined skills into an actual TV pilot. More on this as it develops.
Last month I accepted a quick gig for Things Asian, the writing of a trilogy of stories about different Chinatowns. With this theme in mind, I decided to expand it a bit by doing one story in first person, the second in second, and the third in third. The first two are done, and the third – being written entirely in the Singaporean patois known as “Singlish” is on the way.

The first is “Guns, Hookers and Durian: Bangkok Chinatown”
and the second is “Gray Noodle Gate: Incheon Chinatown”. Have a click, and leave a comment. Not much feedback on the Things Asian Stories, not sure why.

Other stuff – going to be on the TV, so been practicing my wedding related Chinese.  This is something of a follow up to the events detailed in Shotgun Audition, hopefully will have some video to show for it. 

Still awaiting backers for Wujian’s Wedding. Anybody from the Discovery Channel or National Geographic reading this blog? Drop me a line, I’ve got a proposition for you.
Finally, there’s this, The Best Trip in the World. Anybody who’s every wanted to get paid to take a trip around a beautiful island, here’s your chance. Basically, the Taiwan government is going to pick from a pool of applicants fifty teams / couples and pay ‘em to travel and blog about their exploits.  Check out the website and if you have any questions I might can field ‘em (I’m hoping to get involved on some level).
OK, gotta clean the air filters, put away the salad, give the kitty more durian. 

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admin, May 26th 2009 | Posted in bangkok chinatown, best trip in the world, seoul chinatown, things asian

Fun with Animal Testing!

What could be more wholesome than Animal Testing, I ask you?

Today, in the name of science (SCIENCE I say!) I attempted to answer a question that has plagued mankind since man first deceived himself into believing he had domesticated felines instead of the other way around.
Namely: Will a cat eat Durian?
The answer may shock you. Unless, of course, you are familiar with Durian, a stinking fruit that nearly nobody of the non-Asian persuasion (present company excluded) can even stand next to let alone eat. In that case, the answer – which I reveal in advance in the interest of minimizing stress (a major source of health problems among people aged dead and under) as No.

But without further adieu, let’s watch the video, shall we?

No animals were harmed in the making of this film. However, one animal was, in the following sequence, perplexed, puzzled, mystified, confused, miffed, and finally driven under the couch for approximately one and a half minutes before forgetting the incident entirely.


1 Comment

admin, May 21st 2009 | Posted in animal testing, cats, durian

Fun with Animal Testing!

What could be more wholesome than Animal Testing, I ask you?

Today, in the name of science (SCIENCE I say!) I attempted to answer a question that has plagued mankind since man first deceived himself into believing he had domesticated felines instead of the other way around.
Namely: Will a cat eat Durian?
The answer may shock you. Unless, of course, you are familiar with Durian, a stinking fruit that nearly nobody of the non-Asian persuasion (present company excluded) can even stand next to let alone eat. In that case, the answer – which I reveal in advance in the interest of minimizing stress (a major source of health problems among people aged dead and under) as No.

But without further adieu, let’s watch the video, shall we?

No animals were harmed in the making of this film. However, one animal was, in the following sequence, perplexed, puzzled, mystified, confused, miffed, and finally driven under the couch for approximately one and a half minutes before forgetting the incident entirely.


3 Comments

admin, May 21st 2009 | Posted in animal testing, cats, durian

Day after 5/17 Rally film

Though I follow politics closely, especially when it pertains to Taiwan(and to a similar extent, China) I haven’t really written much about the topic on this blog over the last few months. This is partly because I’ve grown kind of burnt on the topic, but mostly because there are so many other writers in Taiwan (David on Formosa and The View from Taiwan , to name two) who cover it better – and more regularly – than I have time to.

 
Anyway, this morning I was riding downtown and came across the remnants of yesterday’s protest rally, still going strong, and shot a few minutes of film before my batteries died (I wasn’t planning to do any filming, just going for lunch). 
You can read more about the rally itself here. 

2 Comments

admin, May 17th 2009 | Posted in May 17 rally, Taiwan politics, taipei, taiwan

testing

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admin, May 15th 2009 | Posted in Uncategorized

Shotgun Audition

Being a young man of job-holding age, I answered the following ad at tealit.com…

TV Show with Foreign Guests! Videoland Television is casting a new TV show featuring foreign guests to share their opinions on living in Taiwan and help act in & produce skits on the same topic. No restrictions on nationality, age, occupation, or gender. Seeking individual who: Are lively, self-confident & outgoing. Have basic Chinese ability…

Figuring I met these qualifications in spades. I went to the offices of Videoland in Neihu with book in hand (Vignettes of Taiwan, naturally), a fresh haircut, and a nicely pressed white n’ lime green shirt.

I chatted for about an hour with a nice young man, totally in Chinese and about a variety of topics. At first these were subjects I guessed were germane to the program – travel in Taiwan, that sort of thing. But after a while we wound up talking politics, sociology, and other, deeper subjects.
All in Chinese. I was pretty psyched.

Getting back to business, I was asked to tell stories. So I told some. I reenacted Shotgun Wedding, even approximating my own Chinese ability at the time of the story’s occurrence where suggested by the text.

I sensed things were going swimmingly. Then the camera came out.

“What do you want me to do for my screen test?” I asked.

“Just introduce yourself and tell some short and interesting stories,” replied the young man.

He picked up the camera and told me to follow him. I figured we were heading to a recording studio, or something like one.

Instead, he walked me to the front entrance of the office, the hallway where the glass doors to the elevators met the receptionist’s desk.

“3..2..1…GO!”

I was looking at him, puzzled. My back was to a door that people were walking in and out of.

“Um…what do you want me to do?”

“Introduce yourself.”

“Here?” I asked.

Someone entered and walked in front of the camera to deliver lunch boxes to the receptionist.

“Yeah. 3…2…1…go!”

“I’m Josh Brown…I’m a writer…”

A couple of people from the office walked past on their way to have a smoke. I tried to continue my monologue, but was distracted by the fact that I was not only standing in, but actually blocking a high traffic corridor. I felt deeply unnerved.

“Now tell a story. Anything.”

He silently sized up the length of my body with his camera. I started to take off my shirt, but being in public I thought better of it. I blathered something to the camera before turning to nervously chat up the receptionist. She was thoroughly uninterested.

Someone came along and had angry sounding words I didn’t quite catch with the young man, and I began to wonder if some joke were being played on me. After this, the cameraman put the camera down.

“OK, we’ll call you when we have decided,” he said rather curtly.

“So…is that it?”

He nodded.

“So I should just take off then?”
I motioned to the door, conveniently behind me.

He nodded again, then shook my hand before turning back into the office.

Guess I blew the audition. Funny…the conversation had been going so well before the camera came out.

I took off, wondering not for the first time in my life what just happened here?

2 Comments

admin, May 11th 2009 | Posted in Audition, Videoland, shotgun wedding, vignettes of taiwan

Milky Teats of Serendipity

I originally gave this story the title “Plate Zero Shrimp” (Repo Man Reference) but decided this tale of the delusion, lattice of coincidence and goat’s milk starring me, Lee Kuan Yew and Ma Ying-Jeou would be better served with another title. I doubt it’s Asia Literary Review material (they’d probably shy away from the image of two Asian statesmen kow-towing before one of their more deranged contributers), but it’s definitely up Cherry Bleeds’ alley.

Click here to readMilky Teats of Serendipity at Cherry Bleeds.

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admin, May 10th 2009 | Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized

Milky Teats of Serendipity

I originally gave this story the title “Plate Zero Shrimp” (Repo Man Reference) but decided this tale of the delusion, lattice of coincidence and goat’s milk starring me, Lee Kuan Yew and Ma Ying-Jeou would be better served with another title. I doubt it’s Asia Literary Review material (they’d probably shy away from the image of two Asian statesmen kow-towing before one of their more deranged contributers), but it’s definitely up Cherry Bleeds’ alley.

Click here to readMilky Teats of Serendipity at Cherry Bleeds.

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admin, May 10th 2009 | Posted in Cherry Bleeds, Lee Kuan Yew, Ma Ying-Jeou, Milky Teats of Serendipity, lattice of coincidence

Speaking of Somalia….

This one’s for you, Dave…

(”…and now you have cholera”)

1 Comment

admin, May 7th 2009 | Posted in Somalia, liberarianism, pirartes

Somalis aren’t the pirates (link)

My friend & satirist Nury Vittachi (all my friends are satirists; Nury just happens to be brilliant at it) just wrote a wonderful article called Somalis aren’t the pirates; check it out here.

In the meantime, this blog is making a slow migration over to www.josambro.com, for reasons that will become clear (or not).

I’m battling ennui. Some mid-life crisis with your coffee, sir? Perhaps a trip to Wulai is in order.

1 Comment

admin, May 5th 2009 | Posted in nury vittachi, somali pirates

Where is Josambro.com?

Having just installed wordpress, we are mid-migration. In the meantime, if you’re looking for the old josambro.com site, it’s still here: http://josambro.com/index.html

If it’s Snarky Tofu you’re after, look no further

http://josambro.com/index.html
josambro.comSnarky Tofu

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admin, May 4th 2009 | Tags: , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized

Bangkok Faces (photos)

For them what’re more interested in the visual aspect of my travels.

Bangkok Faces at Things Asian

2 Comments

admin, May 4th 2009 | Tags:
Posted in Uncategorized

…Never a Bride

So I come home from Bangkok last week, and the next day I’m all sneezes and snot and watery eyes. So I thinks to myself, maybe, just maybe…

I tunes into my local Taiwan Fox affiliate station for confirmation, and after five minutes of pure jacked up fear I’m sure as sure gets.

YES, I says to myself, this is it: I has SWINE FLU!

So I heads off to the local hospital to get my official diagnosis, all the while imagining them royalty checks coming in for all them books I’m going to write about the experience if I lives, me being the first person in TAIWAN diagnosed, also the first WRITER diagnosed. Hell, if this thing gets big enough maybe I can even parley it into a TV series. Film Rights. The whole shebang!

Yep, pretty boy, I says to myself, once the doc down at Tzu Chi Med confirms me, I’ll be fartin’ through silk the rest of my days. It’ll be like winning that lottery thing, if I can only lives long enough, me having the Swine Flu and all. Hell, I might should even give a big donation to the hospital for their help with the diagnosing, because they’re Buddhists and can always use the money for wind-chimes and what not.

So I gets to the hospital, already sizing myself up for a new gold plated Iron Lung with wheels on it that I’ll use for the duration, and the doc comes and sees me and gives me the old jab-jab and tells me to wait in the hall.

Few minutes later he’s back, looking all grave-like even through his mask and I’m thinking that look can only mean one thing: PAYDIRT!

“Mr. Brown,” doc says to me, all serious-like. “I’m afraid you’ve contracted Bird Flu.”

All at once them dollar signs in my mind dissolve into ether just like in a cartoon.

“Bird flu? Doc, you sure? H5N1 don’t do me no good at all. Been around years. I’ll be lucky if I can huck 350 words to Highlights for Children with Bird Flu. Might as well be SARS for all the good it’d do me.”

“Be that as it may, that’s what you go” says the doc as two strong orderlies direct from the Shao-lin drag me off to quarantine, from where I now type this missive wrapt in mylar.

Guess this is what them Buddhist folks call Karma.

8 Comments

admin, May 3rd 2009 | Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized
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