This is going to be a rant, dear reader. A long and arduous one about morality, law, taxes, and such. So if you’re not into that kinda thing, you may want to avert your gaze now. Well, maybe you may wanna stick around for the few pictures but the rest of the post will be a tough slog otherwise.
Okay?
Good.
So let’s talk about this concept of the straight and narrow, shall we?
Had big plans for this weekend: go down to see Caribanna, soak up the sunshine, restock my new photo collection. But fate’s a bitch, ain’t she?
At around 9 p.m. on Saturday night I started to get a migraine. No biggie, I thought, usually lasts a few hours, I’ll be right as rain tomorrow. By 2 a.m. I’d emptied the contents of my stomach from the pain, couldn’t quite see out of my left eye, and just wasn’t having a good time. Not good at all.
Yes, I have to admit that believing me to be dead would be a natural conclusion at this point. The gears have all but ground to a halt here at TCL, the Toronto City Life Twitter feed has barely seen the light of day over the past couple of weeks, and for all intents and purposes I may as well be pushing up the digital daisies.
“This is just glorious!”, exclaimed the unidentified cyclist as we stood in the middle of Jarvis Street, referring to the empty center lane he was casually occupying.
…continued from previous part.
Sometimes fate provides the best illustrations of the topic at hand. Tonight, for example, as I was nearing my flat, I passed a regular panhandler seeking the usual “money for food, sir?” He probably could use food, truth be told; he’s skinny, has an unpleasant complexion, and wears early-eighties Bill Gates goggles replete with the chunkiest of lenses.
I have the “no” head-shake down so well now that I can even do it from behind. Which I did. Question stopped. Alas, it took Goggles less than half a second to shout to a compatriot across the street asking if he could get a “pipe for a dollar fifty?” I honestly have no idea if that’s in any way realistic. But that’s not the point.
What Goggles did was to demonstrate the importance of just doing something in order to kick-start the Ultimate Success® machine. The first attempt doesn’t have to be successful, as long as you’re focused on the near-term goal — research, planning, and organization will just flow naturally from there.
Goggles will get his pipe. You bet.
On the outskirts of Taichung there were fields and fields of muddy, flooded rice paddies bordered by sloppily-paved embankments that farmers, and their vehicles, used to get around.
I’d been a regular in Taiwan for about two years before one day noticing that a car had just exited one of these paddy roads at the foothills near the place I was residing in (the island is mostly mountains). That meant that there had to be something on the other side!
I should point out that these weren’t really roads – the driver of the car I’d noticed advanced very carefully. He had about half a foot separating him and a hilarious dip into the short-grain Chinese staple on either side. And, although a car could barely fit, farmers insisted on taking farm vehicles on these embankments. Okay, the tractors and trucks were smaller than North American ones, but still bigger than a car. Serious business atop tarred and dilapidated concrete slabs, let me tell you.
I should mention that, although it’s probably since improved, traffic priority in the country was based on size and aggressiveness. On a motor scooter, you generally gave way to cars. Cars gave way to mini-trucks. Mini-trucks gave way to farm vehicles. So on. Red lights were a suggestion, sidewalks were simply another place to drive. Just about every cabby flashed a gloriously red Betel nut smile, usually while spitting joyfully red sludge on the sidewalk.
The floor-cleaner-tasting nut (of course I tried it!), created a short-lived intoxication not unlike alcohol. I believe a certain level of actual alcohol was considered to be a stimulant, but that could’ve been a y-guo myth (why-guo-ren: foreigner). Despite that story, the cabbies drove around at a very controlled level of intoxication, that much was certain, so I’m sure there was some acceptable limit. I’d often be offered Betel nut (with a courtesy spitting cup), and a can of beer when hitching a cab. Just requested to keep it low.
... with pictures
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