Shitty Weather

Saturday I was supposed to cover Ryan's (another one of the English teachers) classes because of Sports Day, but I woke up to pouring rain and the certainty that the event would be cancelled.  I struggled out of bed anyway to return his books, and because I wanted to get my HW corrections out of the way- since I wouldn't be doing anything important today anyway.  It was really coming down, harder than I'd seen since riding around in Fulong a month ago, and knowing Taipei, it'd be the same weather tomorrow.

Fuck.  What a waste of a weekend.

I'm sitting here writing this after cleaning my apartment (much needed), and buying some more living essentials from Carrefour...but in all honesty I'd rather have gone out and done something exciting and come back home to my usual dirty, disorganized shit-pile.  I've heard people who've been living here say they used to have a new adventure every weekend (sound familiar?) but now that they've settled into the life here they kind of bum around and relax.  I guess when you decide to make Taiwan your new home and treat teaching English as a legitimate profession, not a means to travel around, you probably just fall into the swing of things.  I'd like to keep myself in the middle..live here for another year at least and understand the way of things, but I don't want to ever lose that feeling of wanderlust and adventure. There's so much shit to do here- I could limit myself just to Taipei and New Taipei and there'd be a different thing to do and see everyday.

Anyway, with the heavens opening up, I decided to take a trip to the hippy library in Beitou, right next to the hot spring I always go to.  I'd been wanting to make a trip, but since I'm always in Beitou at night, naturally the library's always closed.  This is supposed to be a super green library, with lumber taken from managed forests in North America (logging is effectively banned in Taiwan, probably due to the extensive cutting the Japanese engaged in when they colonized and modernized Taiwan).  It's also energy efficient.  Here's a link if you guys are more interested:
http://www.culture.tw/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=242&Itemid=157

Enjoying the great weather

A reader's paradise on the third floor.

Main floor

Stairs down to the children's floor

Anyway, all that stuff sounds cool, and the interior wood layout pleases the eye, but this place really isn't worth visiting for itself.  You could potentially poke your head in and give it a walk around, on the way to the much more interesting Beitou Hot Spring Museum, but even that's stretching things.  It's one of those things that tourists would shake their heads at but locals really appreciate.  I admit, it was nice to look out over the lotus-covered pond through the wide windows and admire the beautifully worked wood...but if I had anything better to do I'd be somewhere else in a heartbeat.

Hot Spring Noodles, name of the place.  Really evoked the feeling of 1950s-60s Japan with all the posters and decorations it had up.  Didn't overdo it though.  Cool little place.  Noodles weren't bad either

One can only study for so long, and after a couple of hours I was sitting on the MRT again.  Except I had no idea where I wanted to go.  I damn well wasn't going back to Xizhi, where my ennui would find even less of an outlet.  So I looked at a map and decided that Zhishan was the closest MRT stop to the river (don't know which one, any river looked good at that point).  I'd walk along the river until the path stopped, and then I'd turn back.

In the end, this didn't end up being a bad idea.  The riverside park that stretched along the river was deserted, at least of people.  Black-crowned Night Herons, stockier than the ones back home, glanced up at me suspiciously as I walked past, wondering perhaps if I was encroaching on their prime frog-hunting territory.  All around me I heard the chorus of the river, frogs the main voice yes, but others joining in to drown out the sounds of city life, drawing me closer to nature.  The river was sluggish, bloated from the sky's recent offerings, though the farther I walked from Zhishan, the more the current picked up, until it was clipping along at a fair pace.  The rain was barely a fine mist, and it felt good to feel the cool wind on my face.  It hadn't all been a waste then. 

On the way back I strolled along the road that ran parallel to the river.  Strains of music, this time of human origin, caught my ear and I walked towards a park.  Two metal children dressed in suburban clothing from 50's America sat together, perfect smiles molded on their faces.  The song...it sounded like it matched their clothing- where had I heard it?  It sounded so familiar.  Looking down the placard, I saw the name of the last song- Moon River.  As an instrumental the song lacked a bit of the wistfulness that the original had, sounding rather schmaltzy.  Maybe that was the point.  I could just envision an older Taiwanese couple dancing a slow two-step within the nestled confines of the park, smiling at some memory conjured from the loudspeaker.

Wow, look at that line-up. 

All along the walk back I saw murals depicting all the attractions of Ming Li Shan, the community I was passing through.  Some of them seemed pretty desperate bids to fill the necessary quota of tourist sites, but some definitely left more than a passing interest.  It'll be an interesting bike trip once I pick one up.  Until then, I'm left, like that old imagined couple, with the memory of a song to hold me over, and to place a smile on my face.