Day down... for the count

One of our faithful readers asked if, with a day off, we would be writing more regularly. I would say emphatically, "yes" but....

I had intended and expected and was excited to go see more of the trail system I'd found last week. Photos of the city from a safe distance, seeing people instead of crowds, more plants than buildings. I was and am excited by the idea and sorry I hadn't made time before. But on Monday I came down with a massive cold or something. I managed to get through my one class on Monday (and be grateful most of my work happened on Saturday when I was a little more coherent) and then fell into a feverish delirium that night, probably 'cause I knew I had the next day off.

I'll skip the details, but it brings up a point about traveling abroad. Yes, it is a complaint but it's part of the adventure or the trials, however you label it. In Taipei I'm quite sure there's a higher instance of respiratory diseases.

I don't know frequency from a local's perspective, but I know I used to get sick maybe once a year in the States. Once every two or three years I'd get something bad enough to be memorable. Here, I've been sick four or five times in a year, regardless of season and several have been tough to forget.

A lot of this is because I don't have an immunity to the local diseases. I'm sure I'd be sick more just by being here. I think I've mentioned before how this's starting to feel like disease-vacation, catching bugs from other parts of the world so you're better equipped for the coming pandemic. If this's true, I feel I'm well equipped now: stop the ride, I'd like to get off... and throw up.

It also doesn't help to work in a school, where every disease to sniffle a nose in I-don't-know-how-many elementary schools, will be run past me. I might even be this sick in the States if I had this job. So between those two major changes in my situation, there are more opportunities to try the local fare, so to speak.

I'm confident that these are respiratory diseases because one: I can taste the air. Two: many people wear masks here, some are to protect others from their disease but many scooter-riders wear them so I think much of the population has suspicions about the air-quality. Three: I've had at least two, maybe three sicknesses where I spent time coughing icky stuff out of my lungs.

One illness actually robbed me of most of my vocal ability for nearly a week. This's particularly notable, for me, because while I've lost my voice for a day or so after screaming for hours at a state basketball tournament or something, I've never lost my voice to a bug.

And it was added irony to the frustration because after ten years or so of editing-writing jobs where speaking wasn't much more than a convenience, I lost my voice on a job when I needed my voice.

Coming face-to-face with some of these realities hasn't really been fun. I mean, it's not the army where you can get, along with job-related injuries, meningitis. But it's been an education to learn just how reliant disease prevention is on my system being familiar with potential diseases. I thought I was doing really well: drinking a fair amount of water and o.j., getting lots of sleep, running occasionally.

But come to find out, running might just be part of the problem. In the States I think running in the winter is what keeps me healthy. I spend less time indoors and I get fresh air and exercise. Here, I'm beginning to suspect that the fine particulates I breathe in might be neutralizing the positive effects or maybe making it worse than not running.

Maybe I should be hiking more. More away from the city and the traffic, and not so much rapid breathing. It would be an interesting physiologic research project, if I had the time and resources.

I hope, next week, to have a real blog with pictures and interesting things to talk about.

Day off

This's pretty unexpected but suddenly my schedule has a big hole in it. I unexpectedly have Tuesdays off. This does leave me feeling a little guilty, 'cause Marie still has to work, and she' s working more than I am, again. But I went for a hike and I felt better.


















This's heading towards a hiking trail called Guizikeng. I think it might sound like Guay-tsih-keng, but it depends on how you interpret the letters anyway.

I took the MRT north, about halfway to the coast, to a stop called Fuxinggang (Fu-shing-gong). Then I followed this overflow canal for a while. There were a bunch of these heron-like things that really didn't like it when a walked past. Even tho' I was up on the edge and they were down in the bottom of the canal. But it was okay with me, because every time I'd get close to one it would take off and I'd get to see it soar down the canal.

I did have an interesting time because I'm just sure the map in the MRT station didn't quite match to the real world. It seems to happen once in a while.

Usually they're quite helpful, but it's really hard to check if I screwed up or the map is some how off. But it was entertaining because I kept looking for some sign to my left, as I hiked along the canal, for the start of the trailhead and where I'd start into the rougher country. But the only sign I saw was a board that'd been knocked down and was lying along side the trail next to what looked like someone's front yard. If you imagine a ramshackle collection of corrugated steel, nearly black wood, and tarps to be a house, then this was the front yard. So I kept walking.

It was still really hot and humid. I don't know how hot, but wearing athletic clothes with a breeze made it okay, especially for a July day in the tropics.

I did eventually find a trailhead. It wasn't what I expected, but it led me up a series of switchback rock steps. There was a little sign at the start of the trail that said 2,400 meters. After a really long time of walking up these rough-rock stairs I found 2,300 hundred. I was really glad I didn't have to be anywhere 'cause I was already seeing myself crawling up after a thousand meters of those.

This's what I saw about 300 meters up the trail. On the left you can see a needle-like building in the mist, that's Taipei 101. I did start pretty high. As the train goes north it slowly climbs up the wall of the basin Taipei is in, but I hoofed a lot of the elevation on my own.

Fortunately for me and my water supply, the 2,400 meters didn't mean 2,400 meters of stairs. I still dunno where it was counting to, but the stairs ended after about 4oo meters. It was a surprise, but I was really glad I wouldn't feel the need to call a cab to get me from the top of the mountain.

That's the end of the trail right there. I'd actually found a saddle between rather more serious hills, but it was enough for the moment.

More to the point, finding these little-used places are vital to me and my time in Taipei. I kinda freaked out when I visited New York on my own, years ago. Downtown Seattle took a while to get used to and I've always been glad it's a tight group of building that get filled with pedestrians.

Here, once you walk out of your apartment, there's people, people, people. It's like something out of a Star Trek episode where a planet is so overpopulated they kidnapped Captain Kirk so he can give some young woman, in sixties clothing that's pretending to be other-world-modern, a disease. No points for guessing how he gives her the disease.

Point is, I really need these breaks from humanity. I always forget this until I'm out in places like this and I feel some of the pressure slide away.
















I love this. This's just indicative of the local thinking. There isn't any population or even much farming for a couple of kilometers, but they still stick a four-story building in the middle of the draw between these high hills. I suppose that's what the U.S. needs to start doing, instead of covering every inch with houses and yards and asphalt, but it looks very odd to me.

I did have some trouble finding my way off the hillside. There was supposed to have been a trail back into town but, to paraphrase Robert Frost:

Two roads diverged in a green wood,
one of them diverged again,
and I thought, "now which one do I take?"

I get the impression that things on the edge of the city are even less regulated than in. Or maybe they're regulated the same but out in the relative countryside fewer people mind if someone drops a farm across a walking trail. So I picked a trail and ended up walking right up to someone's cultivated plot that brought up images of farms from Vietnam through too many action movies.

I couldn't tell what they were growing, but I figured going through wasn't helpful, so I went back and tried again. This time I wound up in a golf course. At least I could get to a road from there.

Oh, and I realized that while herons are beautiful and majestic while strutting and gliding even on a concrete canal, on a golf course they look a little silly.
















I thought this was neat. I'd had no idea when I'd left Taipei City, but apparently I was coming back in from Taipei County-Province.

This was also really instructive. This's a cemetery along a hillside between the golf course and the community along the metro line.

What's unexpected isn't the Christian symbols (if you look really close), but that they're still tombs, not burial plots. Tombs do make more sense, in a very densely populated place like this, but it's interesting to see what allowances are made for broad cultural morays and the specifics of the church.

These are all facing one way. There's no allowances for feng shui, like in Taoism and Buddism shrines. But I did find, as I walked past, hell money. A roll of paper representing a gift to the deceased to be used in the next world. So there's a sort of amalgamation of worshiping at work. Again, not that I'm surprised, but it's interesting to see it.


















I liked this view. I gives an impressive idea that I climbed and climbed on my hike.

No, I don't know how or why the buildings are so dense and then suddenly there's open land. Much of the open space isn't farmed that I could see. I do know that demarcation line is the MRT tracks, so maybe the metro owns everything on the right, but that's all I know.

I think I was something of a surprise, walking as I was, down the road. I was much safer than these two, I think. I had low concrete barriers, ostensibly to keep cars from hitting the rock retaining wall, but it gave me a safe little path.

So that was my day off. Next Tuesday I'm going back. This time I'll spend less time poking my way around and I'll charge right up the hillside and find out what's down another path at the top of the saddle.

















This's just for entertainment and cultural levity. Marie and I are working on getting new alien-residence-cards. It's a legal thing to stay in the country, or at least to avoid a few thousand in fines when we leave the country.

But to get this card we had to have another medical check. We just saw this show on Discovery channel here about drug resistant tuberculosis. Forget swine flu or bird flu or blue flu. Tuberculosis is scary. I'm glad we get an x-ray for that!

But this photo's of the form we got from the hospital. Look at all the stamps! There's about a dozen stamps on here. Some are just dates, but some are obvious yet obscure. They have this thing about stamps here. If you want something to look official, stamp it!
















And this's from a shopping trip after the hike. I had the camera with me and I saw these no smoking signs sold next to the ashtrays. I like that.

So, it's not so hot here, tho' it is usually close to a hundred. But it's the humidity that's impressive. As I walked home one evening, I realized I could actually feel the moisture collect on my skin. I could tell that I was stickier now that half-a-block back. But it really makes you appreciate any little breeze, or air conditioning.