윤

I hope someday he’ll find this entry (among those that I’m less inclined to share) and understand the nomenclature, whatever the final result. His mother, despite her initial protest, surprised me by using it to refer to him no less than twice last night, but apparently a co-worker brought up Chuck’s word “trauma” again. My stance remains if that’s his greatest obstacle to socialization, he’s set; in some future classroom of Liams and Mayas, how would a John or Mary fare?

Not that 老婆 has made such a suggestion, but hers have gone from Kaden to Connor to, most recently, Valerian—which does, to its credit, contain her entire name; it would, however, deprive him of his own initial, and he’d almost certainly never be called by the full version unless civilization were to revert to a glorious era of swords and sorcery—the fact that it has in shorter than the month since we’ve known tells me they’re alternates, not ideas. Xavier came to me while running that weekend before seeing the doctor, after giving up trying to convince a person I’d met in an office that there was more to Avery than labels. Harve conjures the image of a balding White man; Harvey, one with half a face. Linus would combine both our families, without the subtlety of an anagram, and has polled better, but feels out of time. If not so much as Valerian.

But still, there’s three months left to decide. If experience tells us anything, it’ll be a nail-biter. Son, please know that my intention was never to make you the mere product of a jumble game, but if the rule is for you to be stuck with my last name, then you should be given one that allows you to be someone else yet always reminds you of the wonderful woman who did make you.

Update (January 27, 2009): Grandma’s been thinking of one on her own, and suggested 杰威 (jié​wēi). Sheil made the connection that it combines our names.​ Of course my knowledge of Chinese is laughable, probably worse than yours by the time you can read this, so my contribution’s naught, while your mom wants to use the alternate 傑 character to offset your overbearing zodiac.

I was in a baby shop (yeah, I go to those now) in Taiwan and saw this super-IKEA bed, only to learn upon returning to the States that the Japanese brand isn’t available here. And we complain about protectionism in foreign markets? The saddest part is that we’re stuck with the lower-tier Chinese-made goods that American companies can afford. Still, I wonder what effects there’d be on a child’s development to be stuck in a single bed for most her growing life. Same goes for this chair (for sale in England, too, though the Danish homepage was hard enough to Google) that was also on a poster there. Would she appreciate her father’s predilection for things that last—if not cost—or just mark them up to hell with crayons and force us to get replacements, anyway?

Had a dream we were by the ocean, overlooking it as we did at that stop in 宜蘭, and there was a giant turtle near the shore. It swam behind a smaller one, and when it got close enough, gobbled it up. 老婆 was preoccupied with her relatives and wasn’t listening to me when I told her about it, and wandered into the water …only to be swallowed whole herself. I was horrified, and yelled something to the effect of give me back my wife, but stopped short of throwing myself at the creature, as little as I could conceivably do without a weapon against its rock-like hide. Upon waking I re-considered; I probably should have. After all, not everyone gets a trial run at the life (albeit a lonely one, as a practical-minded coward)-or-certain death decision when faced with a giant turtle who’s just eaten your loved one.

Score one—for the consumer? The Macbook trackpad suddenly stopped depressing, and I discovered the cause was a swollen battery. I mean, pictures can’t do it justice; the bulge in the White glaze made it resemble Stormtrooper armor even more (the rounder parts thereof). Got to thinking about retiring the 3-year-old machine rather than spending $100+ on a replacement, but read that others with the same problem managed to get it free, out of warranty, by bringing it in, so I took a chance and made a “Genius Bar” appointment. I awoke from a jetlag-induced nap to ponder continuing it, staying and watching the premiere of the V remake or futilely trying to make it to South Coast in 15 minutes, but in this turn of events at least, the staff there was gracious with both my tardiness and their product defect. Still gonna go with ASUS next. Touch my heart, Taiwan.

That’ll be the tourism slogan. Once again, I’ll leave it to 老婆 to preserve the more important photos. The one I really regret not having taken (like the Muslim cab driver in Vancouver with the flip-phone held in his turban, that was awesome) was of an old man washing dishes in a place we ate near 龍山 while smoking.

Stupid idea to have 波霸奶茶 on the way back, again, so I’m up; might as well get in my problem with a bilingual children’s book with said title (subbed “The White Snake Saga/A Dragon Boat Festival Tale”) I read at a bookstore near Taipei station—then another, to clear it up, to no avail—which, as it happens is one of many takes on an ancient Chinese fairy tale: Xu-Xian already lives happily enough with his beautiful wife Lady White and her servant Little Green. Lady White suggests he open a pharmacy; the town falls ill and as their only supplier of the cure, they become rich. [There’s no hint of insider trading, at least not in the English version.] Xu-Xian goes to the local temple to thank the gods for his fortune, when the Buddhist monk Fa-Hai warns him that his wife and her servant are monsters. He’s given realgar to reveal their true forms.

Back home incredulous Xu-Xian uses it and they become a huge White snake and small Green one, respectively. He passes out, and comes to later to the familiar sights of Lady White and Little Green, who explain that he’s sick. Xu-Xian returns to the monk, who insists they are lying and offers to hide him in the temple.

Lady White storms the temple like in any good Shaw Bros. movie, demanding her husband, and rather unsubtly throws a flood at it, the water full of shrimp and crabs yelling “Yeh-ho, yeh-ho!” [The Chinese only had the single “Yeh-ho.”] Fa-Hai shrugs the waters off and they destroy the village of Zhenjiang instead.

God, in the singular, is quite irate with all the commotion and sends the wonderfully-named Thunder King and Lightning Queen to punish Lady White. Fa-Hai intervenes, persuades the all-knowing that because she’s with child to grant her a reprieve until it’s born …then bury her in the Gold Purple Bowl under Thunder Peak Pagoda.

Years later, Xu-Xian [the drawing has his faithful dog by his side, and it’s great, he’s got a old mustache and is smoking a pipe] and his son visit the pagoda to pray, and afterwards a cloud of smoke arises in the shape of a woman. Xu-Xian cries, is reminded of his time with Lady White, then realizes the secret of happiness and smiles—now I forget the exact order, as my RAM was pushed to the limits with the spelling of “Yeh-ho”, but it’s either critical to understanding the moral of the story and I failed miserably, or you, too, see why I’m expecting to be at a loss when explaining it to my child someday. He’s glad to have his memories, but not his wife by his side all this time, making new ones while living and raising their child together? Because she was not only hot (and came with a cute handmaiden), but an awesome snake-monster with cool powers?

China Airlines is as uncomfortable as I remember it; there’s just something about the seats that have me trying to bend metal by the end of the flight. Nice selection of media, however, including the 30 Rock 3rd season premiere (with Chinese subtitles) and enough movies to put together a a summer science-fiction marathon: Moon, which I liked a lot, seeing as how I actually had to put on the headset to follow—which certainly wasn’t the case with Transformers 2. I had to again for Will Ferrel’s Land of the Lost because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing had been released as a major motion picture. What a shame that they revisited this show without the awesome end theme.

Taipei’s TV lineup doesn’t seem to have changed much; in under a week I’ve seen every Bruce Lee movie and more than my share of Jackie Chan and Tony Leungs—had the time, being laid up with what we first feared was the H1N1, but turned out to be more akin to stomach flu or Traveler’s diarrhea. (I suspect the sushi my in-laws always insist on treating us with.) My experience with the health care here is, nevertheless, one for Michael Moore’s films: seeing a doctor and a bag full o’ drugs cost half my insurance co-pay back home.

Dreams, had a bunch, thanks to the mild fever.  In one, Ron and his whore planned to drive me to the ocean and throw me in, so I broke his neck from the back seat without so much as an emotional farewell.  The same night my then ex-wife, our child, another woman and I were registering at some Taiwanese agency, and the only word I understood from her responses was the state of her new relationship: “lesbian” …still, our breakup apparently was amicable.  Then there was the Star Trek movie which had me feeling was worth a revisit, where original cast featured alongside Next Generation, Deanna Troi traveled the corridors in a floating seat and Kirk showed heroic vigor by placing a vital dumbbell-shaped part on his thick head of hair and running off to engineering to save the day with it.

The apartment 老婆 arranged for us reminds me of Blade Runner, except all the flying cars have descended onto the damp streets as scooters. From our eighth floor window I can hear all the noise from below, where shops repeat recordings through megaphones so distorted that even she can’t make them out, and I have to resist the urge to smash. One that played all night sounded like 發燒 (fāshāo), but instead of mocking my temperature, it’s 肉粽 in Taiwanese (バッチャン, because I’m not learning Pe̍h-ōe-jī just for the sake of this post).

Was explaining our stop at Fry’s last weekend to 老婆, and her response: that’s because they were made in China. (The Sony’s, which I successfully swapped them out for, don’t fit flush against my head as intended and has always been the case, insert with the speakers facing forward. Yanking on the extra-long cord brings up the same old concern, too.) Alas, the Zippy keyboard which has served me so well these past few years, comes to us from Taiwan; the flexible Tripp-Lite it replaced, which didn’t fare as well—what do you know, let gravity have at the wires inside and they fail—most likely from the mainland. But let’s hope that manufacturing, regardless of where it’s done, sticks to standards commensurate to premium products such as Deck’s.

The deep keystrokes remind me of my old Selectric II, but it’s as if the thick and hence less portable case is making the extra room for your fingers. Thankfully the FN commands to dim and disable the lighting work over USB to the 360 and PS2, because I’d be blinded by the LED’s at their highest setting. Or made to feel guilty by their gratuitous use of energy. There is, however, a niche concept behind it (even if it harks back to case modders from ten years ago), the braided cord, diamond plate bottom, that’s just as hardcore and uncompromising as Apple’s. At twice the price.

Then again, the headliner inside my Japanese truck designed and built in the US has come unglued and is sagging.

I wonder what it must’ve been like to kill off the last 白鱀豚, knowing that you’ve outlived an entire species? I certainly hope it was worth completing that shipment of Nikes or whatever.

Mom’s 목메달 joke is a reminder that mass stupidity is by no means limited to the mainland Chinese. It’s like that Happening movie, where instead of making people hang themselves or jump off buildings, Mother Nature just instills this for a generation or two and succeeds with her own brand of population control.