School has started, which is always a bitch (for lack of a better word). It's not bad so far but I can tell it's going to be a lot more work than last year. Three of my classes last semester barely had any homework while this year, that's not really the case. I know I had it too easy last semester but as I'm sitting here BLOGGING instead of doing homework (I haven't done any homework since I got back to my dorm about 5 hours ago). I'm also eating weird stuff, which is never a good idea. Damn food, it's too easy to find what you want in NYC (I wanted something without wheat or rice that I'd like, and I did).
But no food talk. Or music talk.
I was looking at Clark Macleod's photo site and running across those from Taipei made me miss the city. I haven't gone through the hundreds of photos on the site but here are some that made me reminisce about a particular memory of Taipei (not that anyone will care but I barely update this thing, I don't think it matters):
Shop shop shop: I may be wrong but I think the right-most building is Mitsukoshi (department store). When I lived in Taipei (1996-1997) this building was new and there was almost nothing else around there. It didn't feel like an abandoned area, just an oddly undeveloped area (they obviously had plans for it). Warner Village was built afterwards and it was DAMN CROWDED. Scary crowded. I saw Titanic there and sat all the way in the back. Nice theater though. Most theaters in Taipei are iffy so I guess it was a nice change but the lines to buy tickets were horrendous at the time. Maybe they have machines you can buy tickets from with credit cards now (that's usually what I use at theaters).
The MRT: This was also pretty new when I lived in Taipei. It didn't go very far so I took the bus most of the time. Also, I don't think I lived very close to a stop. Then again, living in NYC I never take buses or cabs. THe way I see it, I'm always close enough to a subway and a subway is always close enough to where I wanna go. And if something is within a 20 minute walk, I can just walk there. Hell, 40 minutes is "walking distance" too if the weather doesn't suck and I have no time limit. The problem is finding reasons to go out (in NYC, yes I know this is stupid).
Downtown street: Not taken in Taipei but lots of streets look like this. I had totally forgotten.
es-light, es-leet, es-leeté?: I NEVER HAD ANY IDEA HOW TO PRONOUNCE THE DAMN NAME OF THIS STORE!!! I went with "es-leet", whatever that means. Eslite is a nice bookstore chain which I liked because it had many books in English. I frequently bought Mad Magazine there and loads of novels for leisure reading (remember the time of leisure reading? barely). The branch I lived near had loads of nice shops in the basement that bored me at the time but I'd probably find more interesting now. Actually, there was a separate children's bookstore in the basement. There was also a designer stationery-esque store and a weird furniture store. Similar to B&N or Borders, Eslite also had a cafe. Once I took a bunch of friends to Eslite and we had some overpriced water and tea. Oops. (We were 12 years old at the time so we must've looked kind of strange.)
Ah well, that's it for now. If I were growing up in Taiwan now, things would be different. First off, I'd have a digital camera and probably a blog (I started my first website while in Taiwan, although it was far from a blog or anything any other human should have been subjected to looking at).
I've also been thinking about how I don't care enough my education. I wish I cared, but my heart isn't into it. My heart is into things I can't excel greatly at (or don't think I could make a living out of); drawing stupid comics, playing music, making websites. I'm not totally hopeless but I wonder what all my family's money and my effort is being channeled into. So I can get a degree and then do whatever I want? Or maybe not. Once I start thinking about all the things I'd rather do I forget how lucky I already am. So on top of not caring enough about the things I should care about, I'm also selfish. I don't know how to not be a burden to society while I'm still living here yet I don't know how to make things better. I just hope the little things I can do to help other makes some kind of difference. Small stupid things, but...helpful. Maybe.