A week of rest

Not that my usual life is stressing me out, but it is nice to have a week of vacation now and then. It is the third day of the lunar new year, and there's still quite a different feel to the city here. Much quieter, but when I do hear people out and about there seem to be more kids running around. Plus, there's a lot of random fireworks being let off at all times of the day.

On the new year's eve, I had a dinner of kimchi hot pot with some friends who weren't able to return home for the holidays because they had to work in Taipei this week. The next day, I ate with a classmate at a friend's shopfront. I hesitate to call him a friend because we are very different and we don't exactly hang out, but we have occasional conversations where he tells me what he finds important about Chinese culture and essentially trains me in understanding really thick Taiwanese accents. But the weird part is that he will discuss classical literature (Shuihu Zhuan, Xiyou Ji) and Chinese philosophy in his impenetrable Taiwan guoyu in exactly the same voice you'd expect from the worst kind of taxicab driver (not that I have anything against them). In any case, he also knows the old veteran from Kwangtung who I like to talk to at the coffee shop I occasionally frequent, and had invited him over seeing as he doesn't have any real family in Taiwan to celebrate with. It was a pretty interesting time, and I think we certainly made a sight, two very white Minnesotan boys sitting out front of a betel nut shop, talking to the proprietor with his lazy eye while the freshly 85 year old veteran sits off to the side observing the conversation. He is, by the way, temporarily toothless, because the nurse accidentally threw out his teeth.

Anyway, I will be returning to school next week and I intend to make the best of it. But until then, I just downloaded the demo for Supreme Commander, the sequel to Total Annihilation. As unrelated to Chinese or Taiwan as it is, I have nonetheless been waiting 6 or 7 years for it. So I hope it brings back a little of that anticipation I used to feel: I can still remember reading the instruction manual to the previous game in the car before the family even got home from the computer store. I was obsessed with that thing, and I lived in a world framed by computer games and science fiction from a young age. I'd like to document their influence on my world view, which is not insignificant, but I don't know that the intellectual climate allows that yet. Was there a time when film was influencing young people but hadn't yet attained enough legitimacy to be claimed as a source of inspiration? Some video games, and those for PC in particular, are as moving as any film and more detailed than a novel. Those that have actual ideology or meaning are harder to find, but they still exist. And one can always make it up, if it's not already there. In any case, I still have to go play the game.

Plus, I saw Di Hai Zhan Ji, or Tales from Earthsea, yesterday. It's pretty good, and reminiscent of the Japanese director's earlier works (Princess Mononoke, Totoro, etc.). But it was actually written by Ursula K. LeGuin, whose original novel from Earthsea I read in high school science fiction and fantasy literature class. I spent a lot of mental energy deciphering the Chinese subtitles, because the voiceovers are all in Japanese. But I also got to eat some good mushu pancake thingies. I don't think I've ever eaten them in their American Chinese incarnations, but I like them quite a bit from the one place in the Breeze Center basement. Try them sometime, if you have the opportunity. Reminds me more of flaky flour tortillas. Good!