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The goat is dead, long live the regulatory.

BUI (Blogging Under the Influence) is clearly bad form, but my drunkeness is medicinal. Once again. The regular reader of my 'online journal', for I hate very much the noun (you know the one I mean), will be accustomed to the shiteness of my mouth. I mean it in a literal sense, rather than my 'bad mouth'. I occur these oral hellfires from time to time and today was one of those times. A pertinent and illustrative time of what I'm talking about, as it turned out. My molar has been giving me some stick of late. she's a fucker, no doubt. Anyway, yesterday she fired up again like some gigantic toothache or something and occupied my mouth with all, 'dont eat this, dont eat that, dont talk, dont breathe in air', etc. I mentioned this to my students in my early morning gong-zhi class and one of them called her dentist friend, cancelled his appointments for the afternoon, and made him check out my sonovabitch. She drove me to the guy, paid my bills and drove me home on account of the anesthetic (even though it wasn't necessary as only my mouth felt like a balloon, not my mind). I love the Taiwanese, I fackin lovem i told ye. Anyway, he said he would root my canals or pull the succubus out. I am a vain bastard, but the bitch was right away at the back so i figured the ladies wouldn't miss it so much. I said 'go ahead motherfucker' (not really, but i thought it), 'do it'. And, true to form, that dental squad, they poked me full of iprovaline or some goddam thing, and, i swear to god, this is the truth, one of them actually put his knee on the arm of the reclining dentist chair (he did it. I nearly shat my pants when he did that, because i knew, with a black dread, that it was for better leverage), and pulled out that offending klaxxon with a pair of fucking pliers. I kid you not. Pliers. I heard the sound of my own tooth being ripped from it's roots like an old oak. I will take that sound to my grave, I swear it. He said, 'wait, i'll show you the root'. I said, 'hahah no fucking way' in English, then explained it more politely in Chinese. I do not mean to bemoan Taiwanese dentists, incidentally. In fact it is a global issue; why, if we can send a man to the moon, split a very small thing into more things, and fit an entire processing system of reason and deduction onto a pinhead, why can't we deduce a less troublesome way to extract teeth? I mean, pliers and good leverage? Is this the extent of contemporary dentistry erudition and experience? it's like the goddam dark ages if you ask me.

Power cuts arn't as ubiquitous here in Taiwan as they are in, say, India. There, they are daily, if not hourly, occurances. At night, the absence of the ceiling fan hum would wake me, and I would lie there in bed in a pool of my own perspiration until the power came back on so I could go back to sleep (until the next one came). The only time I was ever appreciative of them was in the bar of a crappy Bombay hotel one evening where a duo were making a hash of some already-stinking Western pop songs from the 1980's. The outage came mid-set and lasted for a beautifully silent twenty minutes.

Yesterday morning, some road-crew lackey cut through a particularly pertinent cable and my commute to work was even more anarchic than usual. The traffic lights along Simen (one of the busiest thoughrofares in the city) were down and everybody nervously took their chances with the oncoming traffic along Fucien. My route to work was littered with smashed-up scooters, cars that had parked right in the middle of the intersection to observe post-accident protocol (which is wonderfully brief in Taiwan. It consists of a small argument and the handing over of an appropriate amount of cash to the wronged driver. No forms or police intrusion is necessary), ambulances and onlookers milling about watching the action.

The Sevens were running on emergency power (which keeps the drinks cabinet cool and the tills ringing but not the lights), and there was a bustle to the morning as the Tainanese gossiped and gawked on the roadsides. The lifts of my school's bulding were out of order and, in any case, even if I were to climb the nine floors, the blackout had triggered the emergency lockdowns on the front doors so it was impossible to get inside. One by one, my students showed up and still there was no electricity. The schools secretary was flapping about in near-hysteria and calling the electricity board every five minutes as I smoked cigarettes and chatted with the students. It became apparent, as old binlang-stained skivvies emerged from the basement with torches and solemn faces, that it would be some time before the power was restored, and the secretary became suicidal.

The power cut was scattered around the whole city, rather than localized to a particular area, so one block was out but the next one was just fine. Yesterday I taught three classes on the top floor of the Jungua Kentucky Fried Chicken branch and the restaurant staff all made excuses to go clean the upstairs section so they could watch the waigouren and get a free English lesson to boot.

Read page one here.

Time was the first of my senses to fall. I spent the first few hours of my incarceration with the needle of my belt buckle wedged into the door groove, moving it, little-by-little, around the frame. It met no resistance at any point, despite variations of needle angle and meticulous work. When that failed, I abandoned the belt altogether and pushed the door, ever so gently, away from me. I pulled it toward me with my fingernails, and once I rammed it with my shoulder from the other side of the room. I yelled from the pain and pounded my fists against the door and when my fists began to hurt, I kicked it with my shoeless feet. I would take a break for a few minutes, gather my strength, and then begin all over again. I remember cursing my captors from the pit of my belly, crying out with rage, and finally falling flat on my back, exhausted, still kicking out at the door with the heels of my feet and swirling my belt above my head like a lasso; the buckle smacking against it with each cycle. Despite the noise, nobody came.

I ripped the door from the hatch to find only a stone recess, no more than a foot square with another hatch on the other side; and this one was as strong as the exterior door, resisting both violence and cajoling. The other walls seemed to be some kind of concrete; I slapped them with the palm of my hand and the sound was a dull thwack. The angles where wall met floor and ceiling were smooth and inaccessible, even to the needle, and every inch of the compound was devoid of any kind of fixtures, fittings or oppourtunity to tamper. At one point, I even rolled up the sleeve of my shirt and reached into the iron pipe that dropped away from the squat, but after a few inches it tapered into a diameter that was too narrow for my hand. I buttoned the cuffs of my shirt and I had no idea what I was going to do. I remember sitting there with my arm draped over the faucet and my chest heaving both from physical exertion and a growing hysteria in the back of my mind. Those first hours broke me more, I think, than all those other years combined. My self-confident enginuity and belief that I could fight, talk, or worm myself out of this faded into dull acceptance, and it was how quickly it happened that disturbed me more than my situation.

It took just a few hours to lose it. A few small hours to become so disjointed from myself that I believed I was finished. What made matters worse was that I didn't know if it were morning, afternoon or night. I became wholly dependent upon the metronome of the floor clock. Click on, click off, wake up, go to sleep. I don't know how far apart the switches were, only that they were regular and that I slept soundly and deeply despite my circumstances. Circumstances of hopeless ignorance as to how, and why, I came to be here. There was another factor, however, that was contributing to my mental demise. A prisoner can fight. He can fight against his gaurds, or against the legal system that detained him, or even against himself, but my memory begins only with the needle of my belt and the door of my prison. I have no gaurds to set upon, no system to navagite, and no self to confront.

I was examining the lip of thick glass around the floor lamp on that first day when it suddenly clicked off, and I was left staring into the glowing red filament for a moment as the compound was enveloped in complete darkness. My first thought, as day one became night with an unpleasant immediacy, was that I had no idea what time it was. I remained there, crouching on the floor in the darkness, not daring to move a muscle. I was sure that this would be the beginning of something; the sign that the door would suddenly swing open and a dozen gaurds would come in and beat me senseless. Or worse. But nobody came, I had no beating. I just went to sleep and woke up sometime later when the light came back on.

I.

Sunsets in the compound were minimal and efficient. Dusk was only a vague feeling of the onset of evening, and the transition itself was almost instant. The floor light shuts down with a dull mechanical click leaving only a residual image of the room burned on to my retinas and the fleeting echo of the switch in my ears, until those too, or my memory of them, evaporated into the darkness.

When everything else is absent, the mind will seize hold of any form of routine change and attempt to ceremonialize it. The dawns and dusks of my days were the only signs that I was alive; the only changing variables amidst a life of constants and pemanence. It was with a grim spirituality that when I sensed the approach of 'evening', I would lie prone and naked on the floor, my chest covering the rectangular glass floor panel that houses the halogen lamp, and absorb the heat into my body; singing songs of love and loss until that terrifying moment when day became night. Sometimes, I would lie with my face down on the lamp, eyes closed, my nose squashed against the glass and my lips pursed into a kiss, and imagine that the light that permeated my eyelids was the light of the sun. I began to develop an affinity with the first light of day too. I would wake at the same time every morning; roughly half an hour before the light was switched on. I rose from my hard-floored bed and in the darkness I would crouch over the squat, empty my bowels, and rinse my hands beneath the solitary faucet in an absolution. I scrubbed my teeth with my index finger (the skin has become tough and leathery through years of use) and bowed my head beneath the trickle of water until my hair was sodden and fixed to my face. When the light sparked into life, minutes later, I was curled up on the floor again, the warmth of morning drying my body.

It made no sense to me that there was this artificial cycle of day and night in the compound when every other human consideration was neglected, or even ignored. My meals were delivered, once a day, via a serving hatch in the dining room, I slept in a bedroom that has no bed and I urinated and defaecated into a hole in the 'bathroom' floor. The rooms were separated by thin archways and the only door was the exterior door which had no handle, no apparent locking mechanism (although it was always locked and resisted all kinds of tampering; both forceful and delicate), and was distinguishable from the wall only by a paper-thin groove that surrounded it. I never saw it open in my years of captivity, not once. Nor did I ever see as much as a hand placing the dish of pureed vegetables in the hatch -my food was simply there; once a day, before dawn. Never did I hear a sound from anywhere beyond my own walls. No muffled voices, no hollow footsteps and not even the sounds of a truncheon rattling the doors in the dead of night. On the walls there were no CCTV cameras, there were no mirrors (2-way or otherwise), and were it not for the contrived daily cycles and the silent appearance of a solitary meal in the hatch each morning before dawn, I would have easily believed that I was the last person on Earth.

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Day 3 of 9

Everyone in Taiwan, and most of the Japanese, seems to have descended upon the alley today. The weather is beautiful and there are stalls and musicians flanking the cafes, restaurants and crystal shops that do a brisk business even when it's not Chinese New Year. There are fortune-tellers, portable kitchens that have appeared overnight, tea-sellers, drummers, and even a Western busker who quickly packed up and dissapeared when he saw me coming; believing, as I did, that he was the only Westerner left in the city. Normally, I like to take a stroll up and down the alley before sitting down in some place to eat and read, but today was impossible; it was a trial just walking from the apartment and I quickly gave up on the idea of breakfast and escaped feeling claustrophobic, paranoid and slightly resentful of the tourists and locals who have taken over my 'manor' and forced me to eat crap 7/11 food.

Every now and again there is a blast of noise and activity from the temple; a round of firecrackers goes off, or a parade of drummers appear seemingly from nowhere only to be lost immediatley in the crowds. They become unidentifiable in the throng but their noise, along with the noise of everybody else, settles above the alley like a raincloud. It is all very pleasant and vibrant, but It's a bit too much for me. I panic in large crowds of people. Can't stand it. I hate nightclubs for the same reason; too many people, no windows.

An update on my tasks: I made a flying start with the lounge and balcony but I seem to be running out of steam, especially concerning the lesson plans I must finish. I took out my trash yesterday though, if that counts.
I am waiting for inspiration to strike.

Day 2 of 9

Over the course of the last 2 years, I have become completely dependent on radio. I had cable TV for a while, principally because of the rolling-news channels, but nothing that was so interesting ever happened in the world that warranted me seeing it with my own eyes instead of listening to it on BBC 5live (the dogs of radio). The movie channels are littered with straight-to-TV American romantic comedies and depressing fighting flicks so I let my subscription wane and they finally cut me off last week. At least I noticed it last week; could have been months ago.
Anyway, for when 5 gets gets all sport-obsessed (weekends and evenings GMT) I discovered Last.fm, an 'innovative social website that tracks your music listening, matches you with people who listen to the same artists, and then makes recommendations based on what else those people are also listening to. It lets people check out what their friends are listening to, form groups around special interests, and build charts' (from their website).
It is voluptuous.

Got some shit done yesterday. I reorganized my whole lounge (except for the couch problem, which may have to be delayed until after the CNY holiday. I suspect all the lackeys will be kicking it back playing mah-jhong, chewing binlang and watching tv for the next week or so). I also finished cleaning the back balcony that I started months ago. Originally, I used it as a place to keep my trash and it has been curtained-off and rarely opened since I moved in. I avoid it because I know there are likely to be hundreds of cockroaches crawling around. But the reason for the curtains is the old witch who lives next door. Our two balconies are face-to-face; exactly the same size and position, and there is barely a distance of 2 or 3ft between them. I could, if I wanted to, reach out and touch her (if it wern't for the steel bars that box us in and my disgust at the thought).

But it's such a waste of a balcony, the sunlight pours onto it in the first light of dusk, at about 4.30pm, and it stays there until the sun sets behind the temple buildings at 6 (or 7is in the summer). It's a bit cramped, with the gas tank and the aircon fan bolted to the wall, but yesterday I built the wooden fence I started ages ago, using the thin slats of wood I saved when my cheap-shit self-assembly everything-shop bedroom unit fell apart. With bits of wire I gleaned from the cord of a broken lamp, I tied each slat to the metal grill of the balcony until it covered enough of it to stop the witch peering in to see what the devil waigouren is doing. I bought over my neglected plants from the front balcony and stood them on the concrete wall below the new fence. Ingenious eh butterfly?

Day 1 of 9

It's my third Chinese New year, but only my first in Tainan. I could have gone to Thailand, or some other tropical Paradise (as I have in the past. Thailand is a very cheap, convenient and alluring CNY destination) but I am saving up for a trip to Europe and in any case, I have a million things to do right here. So, here I am and here I am going to stay for the next nine days and you lucky bastards get to read all about it.
Why? well, practice for one thing; I got a good idea for a book and one of those million-things-to-do is to lay the groundwork for it. I want to get into a habit of writing every day.

And anyway, that's what a 'blog' is supposed to be. I'm not a paticularly good blogger; I write when I feel like it, or when some trivial thing is occupying my mind. But for the next nine days, I pledge to keep an account of my daily activities. Not because they will be of any interest to anybody, but because it is a task. And these next nine days are going to be days of many tasks. Here are some of them, in no special order.

i. Learn Chinese (yes, the whole language. Both spoken and written).
ii. Reorganise my apartment, which means, at some point, hiring a lackey to move my couch from the front bedroom into the lounge. However, the couch is fucking huge and will not fit through the bedroom door (if you navigate back in the archives of this blog you can read all about the grand adventures I had getting the beast up here in the first place). In short, I need to remove the balcony doors, winch it down four storeys to the alley below and then bring it back up a narrow stairwell and through my front door.
iii. Clean the balconies (front and back)
iv. Complete a whole load of lesson plans that have been a work-in-progress for the past eight months or so. I have been painstakingly translating (via the web, not via my grasp of Mandarin) the key vocabulary of each chapter and I want to get it over and done with. This is is the big task. Task 'A'.
v. Unblock the bathroom sink. This is not as easy as it sounds. You'll have to trust me on that one.
vi. Get my scooter fixed. A few weeks ago I noticed one of my brake levers was missing. It's a complete mystery to me where, or WHY, it went.
vii. Buy a tape player and transfer the whole TOEIC listening chapter to MP3 files and then burn them to disk. How did anyone ever survive teaching with cassette recorders? It's beyond me.
vii. Address all outstanding correspondance, bill payments and make it so the fridge looks like a fridge and not a goddam bulletin board.
ix. Get a plumber to take a look at the water pressure.
x. Save the world from itself.

I can't promise I will get them all done, of course (especially the plumbing issue) but it's always good to set your sights high right?
I don't plan to do very much this weekend. Let's see what Monday brings.