Last Day
Well, this is basically my last full day. Well, I guess I have tomorrow (the 18th) but at this point I am anxious to get home. I guess I’ll summarize the last few days.
As an over-arching narrative, I haven’t done much in the last week or so. Just mostly hung out, prepared myself to be re-introduced to civilization at large, reading and hanging out at the hostel. I’ve done some good dev work and read quite a few books.
Mainly:
- David Foster Wallace’s “Oblivion” (Still working on this one)
- Ryu Murakami’s “In the Miso Soup”
- Ryu Murakami’s “Piercing”
- Richard K. Morgan’s “thirteen”
and some manga just for the hell of it:
- Tokyo Ghoul books 8 + 9
- “All You Need is Kill” which resulted in a movie
September 11th
Interestingly enough, during the night the power was cut from midnight to 2 or so AM for some maintenance. I was, however, still wide awake and on my laptop. Having no internet, I decided to take the SIM card out of my phone and to place it into my laptop. In the dark I somehow managed to shove it into my laptop without actually doing anything and only getting it stuck. Nice.
So, in the morning I headed back to Guanghua to maybe look at phones and to pick up a screwdriver. Fun times wandering around in the heat, like always. Problem solved.
September 12th
Picked a random nice coffee house to go to, Drop House Coffee and read for a while. Very good coffee, but a little expensive. More dev work. I am starting to go crazy at this point without any real ecercise.
Ended up playing a lot of street fighter with the group of people I met here, went out to dinner and some… Ice cream? With one of them. Nice folks. The entire building the arcade was in lost power at some point so we ended up migrating somewhere else.
September 13th
More OlegDB dev, more street fighter. I am sick of sitting around indoors so I decide to go for a walk. I end up walking around the entire perimeter of the Taipei City Wall because it’s actually pretty cool and I’m only a couple blocks from the north gate. Right now I am pretty much familiar with this entire area and could probably draw a pretty awesome map of places to eat, train stations, shops, etc. Maybe I will.
September 14th
More dev during the day, somehow I’m down to one pen and this upsets me. In the evening I end up drinking, sitting in the park and watching some awesome thunder roll in. Excercised a bit in the park, feels good.
September 15th
I am getting sick. I can feel it in my throat. Besides this, I finally meetup with a classmate and his girlfriend from the summer intensive course, we end up viewing Taipei 101 and hanging out for a good deal of time. Had some awesome Korean food. I discover that having a mandarin speaker with you is immensely useful. We part ways in the evening.
September 16th
Yesterday… Whatever cold I have is slowly getting worse. Guess I need to drink more fluids. Hung out again, as has become the routine while I wait to go back to the states. More wandering around looking for neat little back alleys to wander into. Ended up drinking some coffee before bed and stayed up way to late writing things down in my journal for later.
September 17th
Today! More Oleg, more wandering, more awesome little food places hidden in the traditional market near my hostel. I’m really going to miss this place, I like the people, the food, the atmosphere.
I’m not too fond of the traffic, the heat or the crowds. I still need to practice my chinese more. My flight is tomorrow. Portland is going to be really nice after this. Getting away for a while is the best way to renew your perspective.
