the birthday of the emperor of heaven

Today is the birthday of the Emperor of Heaven (or something like that) and the fireworks are popping all around town like popcorn in a movie theater concession stand! The cats seem to be getting used to all the noise these past few days at the end of the Lunar New Year holiday when stores use firecrackers to open their doors after the hiatus to scare the evil spirits away and welcome back customers. There aren’t any more religious and superstitious people here than in America but they are much noisier. In both places, religion takes over the airwaves with news about ceremonies, special programs, and sales and advertisements with people saying ‘congratulations’ to viewers. Newscasters exchange Wall Street suits for red chi-pows and silk jackets shaking their fist in fist hands at us with smiles on their faces. Money and wealth seem to be more prevalent wishes than good health but with all the smoke from the fireworks, vehicles in traffic heading home for the holidays, and bonfires from people who couldn’t wait for sanitation pick-up to resume and burn their garbage on roads and hillsides, they should be praying for a cure to lung cancer and emphysema.

Last Night of the Lunar New Year

2-15-13

It is Friday. The weather is beautiful; partly sunny 68 going up to 78. I’ll take a bike ride, perhaps to Jason’s supermarket in Chung Yo department store to get smoked salmon (lox) and Philadelphia cream cheese, if but from Australia, better than nothing, to put on the $2us New York Bagel bagels we bought last evening. I will try to make falafel with tahini sauce and the tomato and lettuce from the Italian dinner salad. We got three extra nan from Andrew’s to use as pita and dip in the tahini.

      There was some talk at Shih-Dong’s place about us taking his children to see a movie this week but nothing has become of it and the week is almost over. Monday everyone goes back to work and school, including me.

      Yesterday morning, I didn’t ride the bike. Instead, I took a long walk up Dong-Shan Road to the stationary store to get Leona a Valentine’s Day card. I then went to the plant nursery and dropped 380NT on a flower pot, soil, and a few more plants for the balcony in our living room.

 

2-16-13

      The dinner worked out well despite the falafel balls disintegrating in the boiling water. I think the problem was the oil wasn’t hot enough; it needed to be 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Leona solved the problem by adding a scrambled egg and frying the chickpea balls in a pan.

 Ellen arrived at 6:30 with her two daughters, her boyfriend and his grown son. The six of us sat down to eat at the makeshift dinner table; a desk added to the length covered with a tablecloth.  After preparing dinner, I then made three hamburgers for the younger three and placed them where I thought they would sit, at the side of the table.  (When I pointed it out she said it was the blue cheese on the burger she liked and, anyway, it was Australian beef which she suddenly didn’t mind.)

After dinner, Ellen said she wanted this grass jelly beverage famously sold on Dong-Shan Road up the mountain. Either she asked Leona or Leona offered to go get it . Leona ended up giving Ellen’s boyfriend’s son the directions (without calling the store) and he and Ellen’s older sister took their father’s car up there. It turns out they got lost for a while and then discovered the store was closed. They had to get the grass jelly drink at another less famous store. This kind of impromptu behavior, usually frowned on by Leona, was okay if a guest prompted it. Leona gets upset at me when I change a plan.

 She and her two daughters went back to watching that Chinese soap opera which, apparently, was on all day long, on two channels, in a marathon; she could have watched it at home the next day.

 

Ellen’s boyfriend is an intelligent mild-mannered man, my age, who  had to remind Ellen a few times that they were planning to visit a night market in Taichung which they couldn’t do if she continued to watch the soap opera on TV. Leona who went in and out of the kitchen preparing fruit for dessert. The topic was politics and the military and I kept the men in the room and Leona entertained with conversation while Ellen and her daughters enjoyed their favorite TV program.

Fifth Day is Valentine's Day, too

2-13-13

While Leona was out with her friend from Tainan at an 85 Degree Coffee Shop in Tan-Zih, I was out riding the bike into the Westside of Taichung. I put on Johnny Winter and headed down Tai-Yuan Road until it ended at Taichung Kang (Port) Road, (soon to be renamed Taiwan Road.) There it turns into Jing-Cheng Road. I followed it as it curved south a few blocks to Da-Ye Road and turned right to find Salut Pizza in an alleyway on the left. I knew it wouldn’t be open until 6pm but I sat and rested outside and looked at the map. I rode back to Taichung Kang Road, turned right, passed Sogo Department Store and the New York Bagel Restaurant and in five minutes was in front of Caves Book Store on the promenade in front of the National Museum of Natural Science. I chained the bike up to a light pole covered with a waxy substance which I discovered to be insect repellent and went into Caves to browse. I bought Grimms’ Fairy Tales for 80NT ($2.76us) then I got back on the bike and rode home the way I came. It was a pleasant ride with not that many cars and hardly any motorcycles or scooters on the street this being the morning of the fifth day of the Lunar New Year and people still on vacation; only the highways were jammed. I got home at noon (a little while before Leona returned) and had a plate of leftover spaghetti and meatballs for lunch. We stayed home for the rest of the day and into the evening, reading, eating, watching TV and taking naps.

2-14-13

      Today is Valentine’s Day! I want to get a flowering plant and a card for Leona and a kumquat bush for myself to put on the balcony. I’ll take a walk over there now. For lunch, we are going to the Westside to have Indian food at Andrew’s. I’d rather go there later in the afternoon so I can ride the bike but I’ll leave it up to Leona; I could always ride the bike after we get back.

Leona and I had a nice dinner at Andrew’s Indian Restaurant on the Westside. Afterwards, we got a few New York Bagel bagels and went into Sogo where Leona bought a pair of shoes. Afterwards, we sat in a 7-11 where Leona opened up the card I gave her. She didn’t give me a card. “I will be your present,” she said. From the refrigerator, I took out and showed her the Ferrero Rocher chocolates I’d gotten her as I usually do on Valentines’ Day for twenty-two year, even mailing it to her in Taiwan from Brooklyn. We made love to each other before falling asleep.

 

Fourth Day of the Lunar New Year

What was cooking was Leona’s cousin was coming by at 1pm to take us out for lunch at a coffee shop she knew. It turns out she knew the coffee shop because it was owned by the cousin of her deceased husband. She picked us up with her college-aged son (I forgot his name); his sister was “angry about something” and stayed home. We drove down Tai-Yuan Road to the other side of town and headed to the Westside. We drove all over the place because Leona’s cousin didn’t know how to get to her in-law’s coffee shop. It was pretty boring except I was paying attention to the streets. We went so many ways after Taichung Port Road (soon to be renamed Taiwan Road) that I lost track and direction. We finally arrived at the two-week-old Tommyboy (sic.) coffee house with “flavorfull” food except there wasn’t much selection to be had. I ended up eating a slice of white bread with garlic-oregano spread. Leona had a waffle that was crunchy outside and raw inside. The cappuccino in paper cups wasn’t bad but the conversation in Mandarin and Taiwanese between Leona, her cousin, and nephew was too boring to try understanding. All the other customers were relatives, too, and occasionally one would come by our table and say hello. We sat there too long and l felt was fatigue in the car. We were going to eat somewhere but Leona and I weren’t hungry yet. I suggested we eat later at our house where I would make spaghetti and meatball dinner that had come up in the conversation earlier; why wait for a separate engagement? To give her husband a rest, Leona suggested we drive home and not stop off at her cousin’s apartment, but we drove there anyway, in Beitun near the abandoned Taichung airport to pick up her cousin’s daughter who wasn’t angry anymore and wanted to join us for dinner.

By the time we got back to our place four hours later (it seemed like more) it was five o’clock. I didn’t want to go up to rest in bed while they chatted in the living room. It was more restful to get my ears away from their mouths and take a walk to the bakery and supermarket on Dong-Shan Road. I took my time walking there and back and was glad I had something to keep me in the kitchen. Leona made the meatball mix, salad, and set the table. I cooked and poured the wine, another bottle of the same Spanish Merlot we got from 7-11! The dinner was excellent. The cauliflower came out well and we dipped dinner rolls instead of Italian bread into the olive oil seasoned dip.

After dinner, they sat in the living room and chatted some more. I sat at the table and commented occasionally when Leona filed me in. I printed two photos of 60 Cayuga Street in Seneca Falls when the ladies were talking about real estate. I tried to be polite (not that anyone would have cared) but finally left to lie down in the bedroom. I came out but left again a few more times to save my soul. Leona had a wonderful day but all I did was behave. At least it was better than doing nothing all day which is what we probably would have done if there wasn’t someone to do nothing with. The only good part of the day was riding the bike, cooking and eating dinner. The rest I did for Leona’s sake. After they left, Leona did the dishes and I went to take a real nap.

 By 2:30am, I wasn’t sleep and started having writing ideas for Taiwan Wieners and Losers. I came into the home office to begin writing the fifth short story of the book. It is tentatively called “The Vast Sea of Life in Taiwan.” It is about the random people around me on scooters while I wait for a light to change, their brave lives as oppressed people in their own homeland, victims of the KMT Chinese, industrialization, and American bourgeois materialism. The personality sketches will come from Chinese Working Class Lives by Hill Gates. I will take the nine people she interviewed, modify them, and bring them back to life. They will travel through their histories, remembering every face that put them here, and end up with me on my bicycle, they on their scooters, waiting for the light to change on a smoky, crowded, Taichung road. I’m using the ocean motif because I was reading Pi for so long. I don’t know if I’ll carry it through. So long as I don’t mix metaphors, it will be okay.

Leona left a half hour ago to go spend time alone with her Tainan friend at a coffee shop in Tan-Zih. I’m going to bring Sweeney-Poo upstairs now, read my book, and then come down to ride the bike. I want to check out the Taichung street map again and find some new places to visit.

Third Day of the Lunar New Year

 It was going to be a busy day the third day of the Lunar New Year. We were invited to Shih-Dong’s condo again for lunch. Leona’s aunt, her father’s younger sister and her two grown sons were invited, too. Only Leona’s sister was not invited by her brother; we both felt that she should have been and Leona mentioned it to her brother later on. He hadn’t invited her because the aunt who came was still owed money by Leona’s sister and was complaining about it earlier. We had a good lunch (including black chicken soup) and stayed to watch TV until 3pm.

After we rested a few hours, Leona’s Tainan childhood friend, her husband, and their four daughters came by for a visit. They had been in Tan-Zih visiting her mother and would be in the area for four days. They sat in the living room and chatted, and fussed with the cats that were frightened by the intermittent fireworks. I made hot cocoa with whipped cream, nutmeg and cinnamon and a plate of Japanese crapes with Chocolate Midnight Hagan Das ice cream. Just like Leona’s cousin, niece and nephew a few days earlier, they loved it! They left after 9pm. Leona was so happy all day and I was happy for her and not bored as I thought I might be when we weren’t sure if anyone would be coming.

Plants on the Balcony for Valentine's Day

2-10-13

 Nobody is on the streets today. The highways were crowded the past few days but everyone is where they wanted to go, usually their parents homes. I would like to take this opportunity to get train tickets for a day trip to Tainan to the south or Taipei to the north. So long as there’s a seat and we don’t have to sit on a highway, it should be okay. All the amusement parks and tourist spots will be swamped with families trying to enjoy what is their only real holiday; they work or study on other holidays. I just want to visit restaurants. Leona said we may go to a movie today. That is fine with me, too.

Valentine’s Day is Thursday. Leona and I will probably go to the Westside to have Indian food at Andrew’s.

I fixed up the balcony in the living room yesterday with plants that we bought a few days ago when I went to the dentist to get my bottom right implant tightened. The Taichung night market with the great chow tofu was there and there were plant stores nearby. Yesterday, I got some soil, a garden trowel and a watering can and went to work on the narrow two foot wide balcony. I was careful not to drop anything thirteen floors down. With the sliding-door windows that I washed, the balcony looks good though we could put more plants up. One-third of the balcony is taken up with the air-conditioning unit for the living room; however there were neglected plants before on the top of the unit and the wall behind it so I used the space for our new plants. We don’t let the cats out on the balcony. I moved the decorative chain of wood cylinders along the railing edge of the balcony and removed the rotting wooden floor risers so we have a place to stand outside.

 

Personal Fireworks

2-10-13  Sun.

      There were personal fireworks around Taichung late into the night. Leona and I made our own fireworks when she went down to 7-11 for a bottle of Spanish Merlot and Taiwan beer. We sat and munched on snacks and watched TV until late and made love before we fell asleep.

 Religious people were going to temples at midnight to be the first to stick their lit incense stick in the burner. In a nation without many marriage counselors or social workers, the temples double as clinics for the lost and depressed, but most people feel that way if they don’t have money. The first wish for most is to have lots and lots of money. Like bourgeois capitalists everywhere, they think that will solve their problem.

First Night with a married daughter?

2-9-13 Sat.

      We got back from Leona’s brother’s condo a half hour ago after celebrating the Lunar New Year with his family. We gave Leona’s father a red envelope with 6000NT ($207) and the children 1000NT each ($34.48.) Meanwhile we mailed Renna, Simone and Amanda $100us (2900NT) each for the Lunar New Year.

 Leona and I are not religious so we didn’t go to a temple to pray for the New Year but we respect the custom of the holiday and do not at all consider its Chinese origin; it has always been the Lunar New Year in Taiwan. Every nation celebrates the New Year differently. The Jewish New Year, Yom Kippur, is in September and is also a Lunar New Year. Anyone who calls it a Chinese New Year in Taiwan is either ignorant or a traitor.

First New Year guests

Leona’s cousin and her two teenage children, male and female, came by after 9pm. I had to ask Leona to call and ask them when they were coming. I didn’t want to eat the leftovers (fuck the salmon) when they were coming. Reluctantly, Leona called. After they came, they sat in the living room. I had suggested earlier that I we get ice cream for whoever comes but Leona said it was cold outside and that wouldn’t be necessary. I was going to make hot cocoa. After they arrived, she asked them if they wanted ice cream and they said yes. I had to go downstairs to buy a pint of ice cream. I suggested I make a dish with Japanese crapes and a drizzle of maple syrup with the hot cocoa and whipped cream with nutmeg and cinnamon, and Leona agreed. It turned out to be the most delicious dish the three had had, but no one said thank you or commented until I asked them. I guess I had to look to see if they were eating to know if they liked it or not. I guess a ‘thank you’ comment was not in their habit, or maybe Leona didn’t translate for me their reaction. After that, feeling tired and out of place, I went back into the kitchen to cut up some guava and bring out the Chilean cherries we had. Leona did none of the preparation for snacks for the guests. Earlier, when I suggested we use the candy dish we bought to put out some of the snacks we got for the new year, she said’ it wasn’t time yet.’ (It was only New Year’s Eve. Duh.)  The cousin was just ‘dropping by’ to bring some rice cakes. She just happened to bring her two teenage children unannounced and stay for two hours! By the way, I also chose to wash the dishes.

Here comes The Year of the Snake!

Leona went out alone to get 20,000NT ($690us) in new bills for New Year gifts from an ATM machine at China Bank with access to the TD account in Brooklyn. She went to a Japanese supermarket near the bank and called to suggest she bring home lunch; I agreed. We were full afterwards when we headed out to visit a few more real estate agencies to find more condominiums before we make up our mind on the building near Dong-Shan Road. With only two days before the nine day holiday, the agencies had skeleton staff and some were even doing spring cleaning. After seeing one closed and visiting two others with no selections to show, I suggested we go home.

Today is the first day of the Year of the Snake. Leona must be excited here at new year time for the first time in thirteen years. She is not keeping me in the loop about what’s going on. She said a few days ago she was going to ask her family if we were welcome to dinner the first night (usually not for married daughters) tonight, but only told me we were going for sure last evening. We went to the Feng-Yuan market and got a nice slice of salmon for dinner last night but then she went out to get buns last evening, came home and said we were having leftovers for dinner!  We stopped off at a market to get cauliflower and butter for the salmon dinner.  I had to jump start the leftovers dinner while Leona kept trying to bring back the salmon. Then, Leona’s solution was to have the salmon for lunch today but I told her I wasn’t going to do that with a big New Year’s dinner in the evening! The final solution is to cook the salmon and bring it to her family’s condo. I will also cook the cauliflower.

 

Looking for a Condo

2-6-13 9Thurs.

Leona and I went to a real estate agent near the McDonald’s near Dong-Shan Road. The first place we were shown we both like. It is 35 ping or 1,245 sq. ft (1 ping = 35.5747239272sq. ft.) In a twenty year old building complex off Dong Shan Road not far from the supermarket we go to and all the other shops. It is on the third floor. Leona and I used to joke about how the building had no public space or doorman so the people living there could save money; at a condominium in Taiwan, the residents share the cost of maintenance, including doorman and the public space is added onto your total area. The total area of the apartment is 52 ping which, according to Leona, is a small ratio of public to private square footage. The outside of the buildings (there are three) is a stained and tattered pink tile and the glass in the façade hasn’t been washed, perhaps ever. But inside the condo, which Leona thinks we could get for five million NT, including large parking space in the basement ($172,413us) there is a small foyer with window and new solid wood shoe cabinet, large living room and dining area (30’x15’?) with wide and long patio (15’x5’?) master bedroom with bay window (20’12’?) and private remodeled bathroom with gray slate tiles and new fixtures (7’x5’?) public bathroom (5’x5’?) tatami raised solid wood ‘guest/dressing/storage room with large deep built-in solid wood closet (10’x8’?) home office (12’x12’) and kitchen with new fixtures and solid wood ceiling (12’x5’?) There is long, deep patio that exits from the kitchen and runs outside the back of the unit along the office and guest rooms. There is where the washing machine we buy would be put and clothes would be hung. It faces the southwest and there are no tall buildings blocking direct sunlight to it. It looks down on a grassy private area of the condominium complex which has a stone path that leads up to the main complex courtyard, rather nice looking with oriental style main entrance and, yes, a door man; the entrance to our particular building has a key and sensor security pass but not a main entrance for deliveries or guests. The front of the building empties onto a narrow winding slightly inclined two-way road with minimal traffic off Don-Shan Road. The living room with patio and master bedroom face this road and look out to a shabby lot with banana trees and other unkempt foliage and trees hedged in by shabby two floor buildings, some the back of structures on Dong-Shan Road, and beyond them, perhaps two hundred feet away, are two large old condominiums which block all but a sliver of sky and sunlight. At least one of them is light gray tile and reflects the sun back onto the condo we visited. The condo has a few problems. First, there is no bathtub nor is there an enclosure for the showers in the windowless bathrooms. We don’t know how well the exhaust system works. Second, there is a watermark on the ceiling near the window in the master bedroom. Most of the unit has new electrical fixtures and, probably new electrical wiring including a new intercom but the two back rooms and some outlets in other rooms are the old style two-prong outlets. The roof has no garden and is pretty ratty looking. Sweeney-Poo would probably not go up there. The small 5’x5’v7’ ‘L’ shaped hall outside is newly tiled but not well lit. The unit has one reasonably clean 4’x4’ elevator and one staircase. The third floor will have mosquitoes and some security issues. There is one other unit next-door to ours with a shiny-clean aluminum gated door. The neighbor keeps two bicycles outside in the public space in front of our door in the space to the stairs that must go if we buy the unit. All in all, we like the unit and think it is a good deal. It’s large enough, pretty, in the neighborhood we like, quieter than the Beverly.

Ho-Feng Bike Riding Trail

I had a great ride this morning. The weather is getting warmer and the Hou-Feng trail wasn’t that crowded since it was Friday, though there were many students there out from school.

2-2-13 7:43am Sat. (1)

      It is 69 degrees already this early in the day. I won’t have to wear two sweatshirts to take a bike ride. I will wear my read hoodie because it has a pouch in front for a book to bring.

 I took another bike ride yesterday in the late afternoon up the Han River. I’ve ridden the bike three days in a row starting Friday when I rode up to the Horse Farm on the Ho-Feng Trail. I feel stronger since the cold and bronchitis I developed three weeks ago. The weather is warmer, too, though yesterday was foggy. I wrote one of my favorite new poems since moving to Taiwan called “Thick Gray Taichung Sky.”

The East Coast is a great idea but...

2-1-13  Fri.

      This is the second entry in the journal today. The first was written in the laptop on the roof garden this morning. I wrote an e-mail to Robert a short while ago and he replied right away; what a good friend! I told him about my bronchitis the past few weeks and he suggested I go to the east coast for clean air this is what I wrote back:

 

Hi Robert: The east coast is a great idea, if I could get there. The road from Ilan to Hua-Lien was damaged by rain and mud slides a while ago and they just got around to fixing it, just in time for the Lunar New Year. People can hardly get a train ticket to go there. Of course the road through Taroko Gorge is still out since the earthquake of 1999. To get to Tai-Dong would take a long time by car via Kaohsiung. Car rental is $70us a day and I would do it but, again, not during the holiday. I thought of going up Ali Shan but the railroad there is still out, too, and the place is swamped with Chinese tourists. I just bought a new pack of face masks and rode up the Han River to the Feng-Hou bike trail across the old train bridge and tunnel to the Horse Park. That was how I spent the day, sitting on an old wooden grand stand at an abandoned race track next to three grazing horses with the Taiwan railroad whizzing by to my left. It was sunny and the grass was green. I could see the mountains through the mist (smog?) so it wasn't bad at all.