At the time of writing this, I'm sitting in the Los Angeles airport in California, trudging through my 10 hour layover for the connecting flight to Portland. It's almost 1 AM right now, and I can't check into my flight for another 3 hours. Thus, I'm sitting here hunched over my laptop typing this. I'm sitting next to a huge pillar with an outlet in it, opposite a very pretty sleeping girl on the benches. I don't know if this is the case with girls, but it's hard not to feel like a creep in a situation like this. I can't give a reason why, you just hear girls talk about creepers all the time. I don't want to be that guy, however innocent my intentions are. Truth be told, the only reason I'm sitting here specifically is because this is one of the two power outlets that actually work in this jenk building.
I'm returning from a week long stay in Taiwan, and I need a fucking shower. Like, bad. I haven't showered in a week cause Earthan and Sylvia's shower was scary. Sorry guys, but it's true. Showering in river water isn't my idea of clean. At least I know where my funk has been. Still it was great of them and Mark to give me a room for a week, and despite my frightening lack of cleanliness, I'm really glad I went. I had almost forgotten how much I love hanging out with them.
Taiwan itself was breathtaking. It's a jungle island, and I mean that in the truest sense of the word. Jungle everywhere. It's all these crazy high tech buildings plopped down next to pockets of the greenest patches of trees and vines you've ever seen. Complete with poisonous snakes and frogs and asian hornets that will make off with your first born child if you're not careful. Like some kind of Sim City experiment gone wrong. It was like tumbling into a Miyazaki film on Endor. The sounds at night were unreal. Like straight out of a movie. That is, the sounds in between the barking of the pack of wild dogs that "adopted" Earthan, Sylvia and Mark.
We had to buy a bug net for my room on the first day, cause without it the mosquitoes would eat me alive. They still managed to get to me a few times. That and the hornets and giant queen ants. Earthan and I had an epic battle with one of the giant asian hornets. It was all "RAWR" and we were like "OH SHIT" and I hit it with a broom and Earthan raided the living fuck out of it. I actually broke the broom handle over it. Then we rolled a block of concrete over it to make sure it was really REALLY dead. Normally, I wouldn't go through such trouble over a little bug, but these guys are big. And by big I mean way too big for an insect. Bees shouldn't be allowed to get this large. I hear that when it stings you it feels like a red hot nail being driven into your flesh. Lovely. Broom handle and concrete block it is.
I think I might have picked something up in Taiwan, I've been feeling sick since halfway through my flight from Taiwan to LA. a 15 hour flight is long enough, without getting the full body shivers and headaches. Must've been all that brushing my teeth in river water. I should get over it pretty quickly though once I get home. I'm planning on pounding a couple energy drinks a little later before I hang out with Redge to minimize the jet lag. I R HELTHY.
Anyway, all the nutrition fact labels in Taiwan were in Chinese (duh), so I couldn't read any nutrition facts on anything I ate, so I decided to go on a strict non-diet where I didn't worry about my food intake at all. You know, since I'm on vacation. Neither of these happen very often. The people in Taiwan have kind of a weird viewpoint on "American" food. They fail super hard at pizza. Like, everything that should be savory is sweet over there. The corndogs were...wrong. I wish someone could have gotten a picture of my face when I tried them the first time. All the chips there are sweet too. Earthan and I went to the store at one point and bought all the gross flavored chips we could find. I kind of got accustomed to eating them after a couple packages though. Their donuts were made of bread. And not the flaky delicious bread, just the regular doughy kind. I felt like I was eating a chocolate sandwich. Earthan kept insisting that if I had gotten one fresh it would've been better. I'm not sure I believe him. OH YEAH, they have this thing that we call "stinky tofu" that smells disgusting. Like, enough to make us recoil and hold our breath as we go by. They actually sell this stuff as food too, and people like it! Sylvia described it as smelling like unwashed penis. There's a surprising amount of American chains there, more than I expected. It's creepy to walk into a Starbucks over there and have everything be exactly the same as in the States, from the hanging strawberry mood lights to the hardcore brand loyal yuppies drinking the coffee. Most of the chains had asian twists though, like Coldstone's giant bow ties. Wtf Taiwan, wtf.
It's interesting what you take for granted. Like being able to ask for directions when you're lost, or being able to say "I'm sorry" when you trip over someone. Or simply read nutrition facts on the back of a food product. I felt handicapped in a way, all the restaurants would have to dig out their english menus, and I'd feel like an asshole for going to their country and not speaking their language. You know those groups of people on the bus or standing in line somewhere babbling on and on in a language you can't understand? Yeah, that was us. I kept coming to this revelation over and over. It's kind of surreal to hold a private conversation about someone when they're standing right there.
Everyone was really nice though, the atmosphere was entirely different from the States. Here you don't leave anything anywhere cause it'll be gone when you get back. We left my bag on the scooter when we went into MOS Burger and it was still there when we returned. I guess Earthan and Mark have left the keys in the scooter by accident before, and on occasion someone will take them out of the ignition and drop them in the scooter's cup so they won't be so obvious. That's practically unheard of here.
Everyone stared at us. We couldn't walk into the subway station without getting looks of disbelief or amazement or something. I guess it's the black sheep thing, you focus in on what's different. A large portion of the fashion models were Caucasian, which took me totally by surprise. It was weird to see this sea of asian people and look up to find a billboard size white guy. I guess that must've been what everyone was feeling when they saw us. We did run into a couple groups of white tourists though, and there was always a kind of camaraderie there. When you're walking around in the States and you see a white guy you don't go "Hey what's up!" In Taiwan it felt like mutual amazement that there was another Caucasian within a 10 mile radius.
This is too long now. I trust that I've lost most of my audience by now due to the sheer length of this. And my back hurts from leaning against this metal ledge. I hope my cat's ok. The end.