Bklyn Blggng

Goodbye, again. Can't wait until the next time.

(Jiantan MRT Station, Taipei)

(Off Shipai Rd, Taipei)

(Shipai Night Market, Taipei)

(National Taiwan University, Taipei)

NTU has a really nice campus. It reminds me a lot of Stanford. Not like I would have gotten in there, either.

(National Taiwan University, Taipei)

(Off Roosevelt Rd, Taipei)

There is a special place in Heaven for someone in Taipei's public sign-making bureaucracy. Xie xie!

(Near Mingde, Taipei)

I'm dying to bring a Taiwanese scooter back to Brooklyn with me. Unfortunately, Carrefour won't ship any of these to the States.

(Carrefour, Taipei)

Taiwan has many holidays celebrating civil servants, including Doctors' Day. For one day out of the year, docs can let their hair down and chung ger to a crowd of adoring fans. The white coats stay on, however.

(Veterans General Hospital, Taipei)

The Taipei 101 building seems to grow out of the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial on this rainy day.

(Sun Yat-Sen Memorial, Taipei)

My grandmother used to make this fatty pork dish for us growing up in NJ. Back then, I'm sure I wished we were eating McDonald's instead, but now I can't get enough of it. Ah, youth...

(Shipai Road, Taipei)

Every night, I make the four-minute walk from our apartment to the hospital. The trip is short and mundane, but often the highlight of my day.

Taipei can be oppressively hot when the sun is out, but the evenings are often beautifully mild and breezy. All around the VGH campus, people sit outside chatting and enjoying the night: families with small children, couples, elderly. It’s no small joy to see people laughing and having a good time in a place where there is also so much suffering and pain.

In particular, I love seeing all the old men hanging out in their hospital pajamas, cigarette in one hand and IV stand in the other. It’s a perfect picture of defiance – or maybe just habit. Oddly, it’s also quite calming to see – and helps me put a lot of this past year into perspective.

But the walk isn’t all peace and tranquility - there’s also a few moments of pure terror. Let me explain.

To get to VGH from our flat, you enter through a nondescript gate at the rear of the campus and walk through a parking lot to the main building. The lot runs along drainage channel about fifteen feet wide. (In the photo, the lot is in the foreground; the channel and main building are at left.)

At night, the parking lot is a feeding ground for what looks like several hundred bats. The bats flitter chaotically between the channel and the high lamps, devouring mosquitoes and terrifying passerby like myself. (OK, maybe only myself…none of the other passerby seem to notice or care.)

Navigating this gauntlet of hungry bats, many of which of which fly uncomfortably close, is nerve-wracking. I try to keep myself calm by recalling grade school lessons about bats and their superior navigational SONAR. But I also can’t forget the story I read long ago about the young girl that died of rabies after being lightly scratched – lightly scratched! – by a passing bat.

As I write this, I realize that if there’s ever a good place to be scratched, bitten, mutilated, gouged, pecked, or clawed by a bat, it’s probably the parking lot of a major metropolitan hospital. I’ll just have to keep calm enough to remember this on my walk later tonight.

Happy Halloween.

(Veterans General Hospital, Taipei)

OK, maybe I can complain about one thing: at this hospital, no matter how sick you are, when the cleaning crew comes to perform its annual floor waxing, you gonna get your shit and your terminally ill asses out of the room until we say its OK to come back in.

(Veterans General Hospital, Taipei)

I've never spent this much time in a hospital before, but I'm finding it hard to find anything to complain about. The staff and facilities have been great. The view is not bad either.

(Veterans General Hospital, Taipei)

With my new self-administered buzz cut, I fit right in at VGH. I'm a patient undergoing chemo, a monk praying for the sick, or maybe just the slacker delivering pizza.

I've had a feeling for quite some time now that I'll be a different person after this year. I guess the change has already started.

[Napoli Pizza, Tian Mu: supreme pie=good, seafood pie=bad]

(Veterans General Hospital, Taipei)

My brother gets a hair cut. Tomorrow, I'm gonna break out my own clippers and give myself a buzz, because I'm DIY.

I'll need him to take a look at the back to make sure I got it right, though.

(Off Shipai Rd, Taipei)

What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me? Into us? Clearly or darkly?

A Scanner Darkly is so paranoid and heavy that it’s easy to forget how freaking hilarious it is after it ends. This was my second viewing and I laughed out loud several times, which probably confused the hell out of the people sitting next to me.

This is a really cool movie. Stop surfing the net right now and go rent it.

(Cathay Pacific flight 451, NRT-TPE)

A final visit. Twenty plus hours of traveling alone. I've never done long-haul flights so frequently, but I can see myself getting used to it.

Transfer planes at Narita. Just an hour-and-a-half here this time and no terminal switching. I'm thankful for the good connection.

I get a really strong ice coffee at Doutor (L-size) and manage to avoid the sweets. Somehow, I manage to resist the dollar soft serve ice cream at McDonald’s (they take American dollars).

A (very) American woman in an Auburn U. sweatshirt makes a really irritating cell hone call.

There are so many Japanese hipsters here, I feel like I’m in the East Village.

(Narita Airport, Japan)

I try to imagine what it must be like.

Maybe like being underwater, a few inches below the surface. Shimmery figures, hollow sounds.

Distance, I'm sure. Comfort, I hope.

(Soho, Manhattan)

(Narita International Airport, Japan)

(Hermès, Narita International Airport, Japan)

(Taipei Taoyaun International Airport, Taiwan)

(Taipei Taoyaun International Airport, Taiwan)

(Taipei Taoyaun International Airport, Taiwan)

(Taipei Taoyaun International Airport, Taiwan)

I don't know if I'll ever see you again, but I know you'll always be with me.

I've dreamed of you already.

(Taipei County)

(Carrefour, Taipei)

(Takashimaya Tian Mu, Taipei)

(Zhongshan Rd N, Taipei)

(Taipei County)

(CTI News Channel 52, Taipei)

(Shipai Rd, Taipei)

(Nanking East Rd, Taipei)

(Tian Mu West Rd, Taipei)

(Tian Mu West Rd, Taipei)

(Veterans General Hospital, Taipei)

(Near Shipai Rd, Taipei)

(Shipai Rd, Taipei)

(Veterans General Hospital, Taipei)

(Grand Hotel, Taipei)

(Veterans General Hospital, Taipei)

(Danshui Line, Taipei MRT)

(Taipei)

(Veterans General Hospital, Taipei)

(Shipai Road, Taipei)

(MRT Danshui Line, Taipei)

(YMCA, Tapiei)

(Narita Airport, Japan)