I was shocked to find my bicycle sprawled across the pavement when I finished my workout this evening. My bicycle was beaten up by some thugs. I parked in a small parking lot right next to my office building where late-arrivers park their scooters when the main parking lot is full. The malicious act left my poor baby on the ground, rear brake handle rotated from its original position, and even worse, basket badly warped. If my bike owned a wallet, I'm sure that would have been taken too.

It didn't take me long to realize what this was about. The culprit was clearly a scooterer who, without the courtesy to stand it back up, knock my bike over and left it for dead. These so-called "Bicycle Hate Crimes" are becoming more common and is plaguing what otherwise seems like a docile Science and Technology Park environment.

It's time to take action! I am going to constitute a Science and Technology Park Neighborhood Bike Watch. No more shall we be victims of such tasteless acts of inconsideration, I say. No more.

Anyway, I'm going to scooter to work tomorrow. Maybe kick over a bike or two.

The more I hear, the more I think Taiwanese men are some of the most disloyal husbands in the world. Exaggeration, possibly. I'm sure there are cultures where wives endure much worse. Nevertheless, the constant reminder of Taiwanese marital infidelities is shocking.

1) Three girls/ladies I know have been hit on or flirted on by people that turn out to be husbands. Coworkers, friends of friends, etc. Considering I don't really know THAT many people here, three is quite a large percentage for this kind of statistic.

2) I've been told that Taiwanese men think that if you (a female) talk to them one-on-one, it means you're interested, and hopefully that will lead to sex. I think this is the result of a society where, at least in MY company, the women sit together, the men sit together. It's very highschool dance-ish. Or maybe that's just because I'm here in a Science Park which is predominantly male and so the girls have to cling to any other girls they can find.

3) I've been told of one case where a friend asked this married guy (who turned out to be hitting on her) whether he would sleep with a lady if she was willing. He said "Of course! As long as my wife doesn't know about it, why not?" Enough said there.

4) I've been told that there is a (one or more) motel/hotel where the rooms are equiped with sound buttons, such as MRT (subway system) sounds, 7-eleven door sounds, etc. So when the ol' nagging wife is calling, you can simply press a button and claim you're not in the sack with a 17 year old.

5) A conversation (maybe jokingly?) between a friend and her coworkers revealed that a lot of married men don't like to buy cell phones with digital cameras - which are popular these days. The reasoning being that their wives may ask them to "show" them where they are - like, through video conference.

6) There's a TV commercial I often see where a woman (W1) and her husband are shopping. Then a friend of hers (W2) sees her and says (while the woman's husband is in the background paying no attention to the conversation) --

[poorly translated, but you'll get the idea.]
W2: "Wow! Your husband has changed!"
W1: "Yes, he not only left the other woman, but he treats me better now than before. All thanks to ."
W2: "Really? Why don't you take me to that place quickly."
W1: "Okay, see you tomorrow."

So, this commercial tells me
(a) There's enough of a market out there for women with cheating husbands to open such a company and advertise on TV
(b) There's a high probability of two Taiwanese women with cheating husbands to be friends
(c) Taiwanese women will openly talk about their marriage problems, even when the problem spouse is nearby - who, btw, appears to be tamed to b!tch status
(d) Taiwanese commercial dialogue sucks

Anyway, everytime I hear that some married guy is flirting, having an affair, or trying to have an affair, it disgusts me. Makes me disrespect an entire nation of married men, unfair judgement or not. Something about a rotten apple spoiling something something.

Someone have too much time?


Rocking to a world record
CBC News

Suresh Joachim is rocking his way to his 31st world record.
The 36-year-old Mississauga man, who holds 30 Guinness World Records, is working on his next feat: 75 hours of continuous rocking in a rocking chair.
"It's very comfortable," he said after one-and-a-half hours of rocking at the Hilton Garden Inn in Mississauga, Ont. "But maybe too comfortable.
"I'm rocking back and forth, so I'm going to get sleepy. That could be a very difficult problem."
But Joachim is no stranger to making it through long, repetitive stretches of time. Among the other records he's set:

• 100 hours of bowling
  
• Longest time spent standing motionless 21 hours and 30 minutes
  
• Longest modelling on catwalk, 133.2 km
  
• Longest time spent balancing on one foot, 76 hours and 40 minutes
  
• Travelling up and down an escalator continuously for seven days
  
• Longest distance travelled while carrying a 4.5 kg brick in an ungloved hand, 126.675 km
  
• Longest dance marathon, 400 hours
  
• Longest non-stop drumming marathon, 84 hours
  
• Longest non-stop band performance by a 14-strong group of musicians, 42 hours and 52 minutes
  
• Longest distance traveled while balancing a milk bottle on a head, 133.3 km
  
• Longest distance crawled non-stop, 56.6 km
  
• Longest radio DJ marathon, 133.2 km
  
• Longest movie-watching marathon, 53 hours

The nice thing about spending 75 hours in a rocking chair is one has lots of time to plan for the future.
And prepare for the future is just what Joachim did.
First, Joachim cracked open Tiger Woods: How I Play Golf to learn the sport he plans to play continuously for 100 hours next year.
Next, he practised guitar so that he could get ready for his attempt at 100 hours of guitar-strumming (no word yet on whether he'll play the same song for the entire stretch).
And then he started flipping through Elvis Presley and Ricky Martin lyrics for an upcoming 100-hour karaoke marathon.
He also plans to set the record for the longest non-stop TV watching marathon (72 hours), but he doesn't really need to practise for that one.

Reference: CBC website

Actually, I looked this guy up on the Guinness World Records website, and three records were found... but they can't seem to decide whether he's from Canada (as this article says), Sri Lanka, or Australia.

Balancing on One Foot
Longest Distance Carrying a 10lb Brick
Drumming Marathon

Last Friday, in the morning, I saw the second act of a two-act scooter-bicycle collision. I didn't see the impact itself, so I can't accurately describe the precursor to the events that came to be. My diagram gives an idea of how things started.

With cars lined up waiting for a light to turn green, I was on my scooter along the right side of the road (where scooters ride). I saw a scooter come out from an alley just ahead on the right side. Based on what was to come, I guess there was an older lady riding a bicycle in our direction on the other side of the waiting cars.

In true Taiwanese style, it is fashionable to scooter between cars without looking around to make sure the coast is clear. So, shortly after I saw his scooter cross through , I heard a large "PACK!!!". As I rode past his entry point, I turned and saw a woman on a bicycle that was swinging around, pivoting off one wheel, like some punk kid on a BMX bike doing tricks. Then she quickly toppled to the ground. I was impressed. You'd think Scooter Man was aiming for her. Heck, if I had that MO, that's just how I would have wanted my victim to flail about before landing. Poor woman.

Anyway, just a reminder that while scootering is dangerous... biking around scooters is even more so.

The best time of day is just as the sun is on its way down and is sitting 30 - 45 degrees from the horizon, starting to cast long shadows on the ground. It doesn't matter whether it's 9pm during the Summer or 4pm in the Winter. There's something about that setting that I find calming and overly pleasing. It makes me want to get in touch with my inner self. I find that exact moment even more pleasant when I catch it leaving the office early, like around 4:30pm in the late Fall or early Spring - because it's as if I could only enjoy that feeling by leaving the office early. Wish we had more of those here. But throughou the year in Taiwan, the sun sets between 4pm - 7pm... usually before I leave the office. Too bad.

I got this video (18.9MB) from someone a while back, but forgot to look at it until recently. The sand artist is Erzekeny Toredekek (less a few accents above vowels), and the performance was from the Seoul International Cartoon & Animation Festival (SICAF) 2003 -- there are a few more videos here at this link here. Quite amazing.

All about Dane Cook.

I rave about Dane because he's been my favorite stand-up comic since about two years ago when I started hearing his stuff. It's no wonder I bought his first album "Harmful If Swallowed" and listened to it often. And from that album, I not only got a CD and a DVD, I also got more than a year's worth of continuous quoting!

Well, his second album "Retaliation" is out and guess who had to go out and order it? That's right! (I'm assuming you guessed me...) I ordered it off Amazon.com for $19.97 US including S&H to Taiwan -- hey, for 2 CDs and a DVD, that's not bad. Just think of how much quoting I can get out of this one! I placed the order July 31, and it was shipped the next day. My confirmation email said gave a "delivery estimate: August 29, 2005"... and boy, they were off, because it arrived today! Can't wait to go home and listen to it.

New pants!!

Ok, not really. But it sure feels like it. Last week, I brought 7 pairs of pants to have altered. 3 shortened, 4 lengthened. 4 from Canada, 3 bought in Taiwan. 2 bought at that store, 5 bought elsewhere. Came to just 5 x 50nt (totalling around $10 cad).

There's an incredible difference between wearing pants that fit well length-wise and those that don't. As I mentioned in a previous blog, a number of pants had shrunk since coming to this island. Wearing short pants garnered a horrible feeling of insecurity as the hem of the pants swing back and forth just below the calcaneus bone, causing me to deliberately try to push them downwards. Longer pants are fine, so long as they can be folded inwards hiding the extra material. But more often than not, after a little bit of movement, the folded piece does fall out or bunch up around the ankle.

After 250nt well spent, I feel like I can walk freely in what feel to be brand new pants. Oh the glory!

Kevinitis. That's what I have.

In Canada, I was as healthy as I could be. But since the beginning of this year, I've been sick a large percentage of the time here. I find Taiwanese doctors sketchy, but mainly because I feel like the medication I'm taking isn't getting me back to 100% each time I take them. Since February, I've been diagnosed with having a flu (Feb), cold (April), mild bronchitis (the second opinion was that it was just the latter lingering stages of the cold), asthma attack, and now laryngitis. Why does everything sound worse when you add -itis to the end of it? Really, just an inflammation of some body part, but add the -itis and it feels like near-death.

I'm not sure what the cause is, why I'm running on this illness treadmill. Is it the pollution, the dense population, the fact that viruses run rampant in moist and heated climates, or my diet and nutrition? Yes. I'm sure all of it. I feel like I'm constantly on medication here. Poppin' prescription pills isn't something I like nor that I'm used to. And they seem to prescribe this stuff like candy (well, no one REALLY prescribes candy). So I'm on 4 pills and a cough syrup now.

Took a blood test today (upon my request) -- where the blood extractor bludgeoned the vein in my left arm before he decided he couldn't get any blood out and moved to my right arm. After I saw him pull the needle out, re-angle, and re-insert for the 3rd time, I couldn't watch the 4th, 5th, and 6th times. A few days and I'll get the test report. And I also have a full health check-up via work sometime this month as well.

Be well, be healthy.