it's been really shitty, i know, how i've been keeping up with this blog thing. i'm new to technology. but more so i am a terrible documentarian. i should be ashamed about how few pictures i've taken of all the truely amazing places and moments i've had out here. i think i start every one of these damned things with an appology. sorry. i'm really sorry.
ok, so... i'm on tour with a puppet show i put together with a czech puppet troupe. we are mostly touring the aborigional villages of taiwan. to say it has been hectic would be an understatement. to say the whole tour lacks organization or communication would also be an understatedment. i am enjoying it although. the czechs seem not to be. they have real life adult standards and i think are many times insulted by what we are given... or not given rather in terms of information and transportation and sleeping arangements. it's completely pell mell everyday. i dont know the name of the town i'm in or the last or the one before that. dont get me wrong i have had my fair share of ugly moments where i was sure i would be forced to rip the throat out of every person within a 10ft radius. we all get a little testy. the czechs are master complainers. i have come to the conclusion that the czechs as a people are completely unequiped to be happy in almost any capacity. there are so many situations to fill in here. how can i start? i am on the east coast of taiwan. we are quite far south and are seeing here the aftermath of the typhoon. the coast is so littered with drift wood... covered 20 ft high with a whole forest of trees for miles and miles and miles. the sea is also thick with it. sailing here is not a little dangerous. everywhere we go the roads are in a state of repair. so many of them were washed away in the storm. i think we will go no farther south. i think that not far from here the damage is quite bad and travel is acctually impossible. but i am missing all the good points. we are in the mountains and we are by the sea. the people are kind and pure and wonderful. i've just come from 2 days off from shows. we took and bit of a tourist vacation to an island called "green island" 50km off the coast of taiwan. it's like a sort of eco-tourism spot. but it was great. beautiful. why not? there is beautiful snorkeling. like national geographic photo essay beautiful. and there are all these deers there, native to taiwan, called sitka deers. they are small and docile and really special. the hostel we stayed at had a baby one who had lost her mother during the storm. her name was lulu and she was the size of a small dog and i fed her from a bottle. you have no idea how cute this is. seriously. baby deers, people? come on!!! this is world class cute. 2 days of tooling around the island on scooters and now we are back on taiwan. rested. realxed. we are here in this town whose name no one knows waiting for our show tonite. we are staying in the home of a retired professor of acheology who has turned his home in to a museum. i felt very fucking holden caufield last night i must tell you. and what a shame that i couldn't share it with anybody. i guess nobody outside of the states has read "catcher in the rye". what a shame. this is such a sorry excuse for an acctual account of my time here. mostly i just want to let everyone know i am well. my time is almost up here at this interenet place. and i must meet everyone for lunch. well... i'll see who i meet. i woke up this morning to find the house empty and all 3 of our tour vehicles gone. and i was up before 10. really. like i said before... no order or communication. so i wandered around the one street in town for a while before cleo and shang yuen found me and led me here to the interenet cafe. i love nothing more that wandering aimlessly under a tropical noon time sun. really. there is in the next town over is a handicrafts market. but it doesnt open til 4 because even the locals won't work and shop in this heat. i dont know the date or the day of the week but i'll be somewhere sometime playing a damsel in distress for some very nice taiwanese people i'm sure. k-bye.
Showing posts with label taiwan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label taiwan. Show all posts
Friday, August 21, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
Arrivals/Departures
ok. so i made it all the way to taiwan. i don't even know where to start. firstly i guess by thanking everyone in new york for such a lovely last week in town. it was rough. last minute visa problems, a death in the family. terrible, terrible. but then i had such a lovely send off. a sushi dinner party friday night and dance parties one after another all weekend. i couldn't ask for a better summer time in new york slice of life to hold onto as i move along on my way.
the flight went well. better than expected in fact. i don't like flying on the best of days and 18 hours of it is really pushing my (and anybodys, really) limits. no seat made by man is comfortable for that long. it's just not possible. the food was edible. they really feed you on those international flights. i guess they figure if you have something to do it's easier. i couldn't help stuffing my face with thier sub-par reheated platters. i can't ever turn down free food. i didn't really sleep at all on my 16 hour flight to hong kong. maybe only 2 hours. my feet and legs swelled up like sausages. gravity works, ok? and it ached terribly making sure i didn't sleep hardly a wink. i played more games of video solitaire than i'd like to admit. in hong kong my layover was just long enough to shuffle from one terminal to the next and be herded onto my conecting flight to taipei. i'm quite proud of myself. i handled it quite well. there wasn't a single moment of creeping panic. i'm somehow able to attain a sort of airplane zen. it's kinda like this detached meditative state. the flight is a blur now. but it was kinda a blur as it was happening. more the better.
gordon, my employer, picked me up at the airport. he's such a wonderful, child like man. so enthusiastic. he took me imediatlely to some street stalls for snacks. mango ice. it's basicaly cubed mango covered in a mound of shaved ice and toped with sweetened condenced milk and brown sugar syrup. you wouldn't believe how good this is. especially when it's 80 degrees and 80 percent humidity at 11pm. the mangos here are of a completely different caliber that what we have in the states. they are like butter. sweet, orange, fruity butter. we also ordered a little bag of fried squid and diakon cakes from the guy next door with the choose your own adventure fried food stall next door. i wasn't even aware i was missing out on anything as far as fried food goes. but seriously, you are. i'm sorry. i don't know what they dust it in but it's wonderful. please, barce yourself. this is only the first in what i assume will be a long line of travel essays expounding on the virtues of taiwanese cuisine. then we drove to the dream community and gordon showed me my room. andrea, it's painted the same color as that one green building you love. it's nothing fancy. a bed. a table. a fan. a small desk. it's directly above the bakery. they mill all their own grain and have fresh baked bread daily. all of their offices are are on this one one or two block strip. there's the bakery, the dorms, the cafe, the dream community offices and apartment complex. it's awesome. and as we drove up i noticed that every door was left wide open in th middle of the night. the bakery and the woodshop were just sitting open for all the world to see. gordons laptop sitting on a desk 5 feet from the door in a completely empty building. i like that. i like that a lot.
i tried to sleep a bit last night. 4 or 5 hours was all i could muster. i had hoped for more but i think it's nerves. i was up at 6:30 rolling around in bed waiting til 9am when someone would be down in the bakery to bug. i came into the offices around 10. i met clebson who is the brazilian costume designer i will be working with all season. his english is really poor but i think we can work it out. he's adorable. he came out last season and stayed. he's been here a year! i met all of the office girls who's names i can't remember. they all jumped up and ran from behind their desks and hugged me, giggling. they are all really sweet girls. i'm glad that they are as excited for me to be here as i am. everybody i meet knows my name and where i'm from and everything. they have been waiting. everything seems really well organized. i think it's going to be really easy to be here. gordon wants me to just chill out for the next 2 or 3 days until we go to ludong. i don't know if i can. i want to explore and if i can't do that i want to be working. i think i'll go bug clebson now and see if he needs any help. so here in is.... the first sleep deprived installment to this trip.
the flight went well. better than expected in fact. i don't like flying on the best of days and 18 hours of it is really pushing my (and anybodys, really) limits. no seat made by man is comfortable for that long. it's just not possible. the food was edible. they really feed you on those international flights. i guess they figure if you have something to do it's easier. i couldn't help stuffing my face with thier sub-par reheated platters. i can't ever turn down free food. i didn't really sleep at all on my 16 hour flight to hong kong. maybe only 2 hours. my feet and legs swelled up like sausages. gravity works, ok? and it ached terribly making sure i didn't sleep hardly a wink. i played more games of video solitaire than i'd like to admit. in hong kong my layover was just long enough to shuffle from one terminal to the next and be herded onto my conecting flight to taipei. i'm quite proud of myself. i handled it quite well. there wasn't a single moment of creeping panic. i'm somehow able to attain a sort of airplane zen. it's kinda like this detached meditative state. the flight is a blur now. but it was kinda a blur as it was happening. more the better.
gordon, my employer, picked me up at the airport. he's such a wonderful, child like man. so enthusiastic. he took me imediatlely to some street stalls for snacks. mango ice. it's basicaly cubed mango covered in a mound of shaved ice and toped with sweetened condenced milk and brown sugar syrup. you wouldn't believe how good this is. especially when it's 80 degrees and 80 percent humidity at 11pm. the mangos here are of a completely different caliber that what we have in the states. they are like butter. sweet, orange, fruity butter. we also ordered a little bag of fried squid and diakon cakes from the guy next door with the choose your own adventure fried food stall next door. i wasn't even aware i was missing out on anything as far as fried food goes. but seriously, you are. i'm sorry. i don't know what they dust it in but it's wonderful. please, barce yourself. this is only the first in what i assume will be a long line of travel essays expounding on the virtues of taiwanese cuisine. then we drove to the dream community and gordon showed me my room. andrea, it's painted the same color as that one green building you love. it's nothing fancy. a bed. a table. a fan. a small desk. it's directly above the bakery. they mill all their own grain and have fresh baked bread daily. all of their offices are are on this one one or two block strip. there's the bakery, the dorms, the cafe, the dream community offices and apartment complex. it's awesome. and as we drove up i noticed that every door was left wide open in th middle of the night. the bakery and the woodshop were just sitting open for all the world to see. gordons laptop sitting on a desk 5 feet from the door in a completely empty building. i like that. i like that a lot.
i tried to sleep a bit last night. 4 or 5 hours was all i could muster. i had hoped for more but i think it's nerves. i was up at 6:30 rolling around in bed waiting til 9am when someone would be down in the bakery to bug. i came into the offices around 10. i met clebson who is the brazilian costume designer i will be working with all season. his english is really poor but i think we can work it out. he's adorable. he came out last season and stayed. he's been here a year! i met all of the office girls who's names i can't remember. they all jumped up and ran from behind their desks and hugged me, giggling. they are all really sweet girls. i'm glad that they are as excited for me to be here as i am. everybody i meet knows my name and where i'm from and everything. they have been waiting. everything seems really well organized. i think it's going to be really easy to be here. gordon wants me to just chill out for the next 2 or 3 days until we go to ludong. i don't know if i can. i want to explore and if i can't do that i want to be working. i think i'll go bug clebson now and see if he needs any help. so here in is.... the first sleep deprived installment to this trip.
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