Over my head.

Well, I am over my head in life.

I bought a camera that I don't understand, I'm fumbling for security here, lining up a new job to keep my citizenship issues on track, trying to make sure my kids are up to snuff before the new teacher comes in, trying to decide my vacation, and battling the 35C heat with about a billion percent humidity.

First, my camera. A Canon 30D, I spent way too much on a toy that's way too cool. Something I can't just "figure out", like I tend to do with every other toy that enters my life. I have talked with a few owners of the same toy and haven't heard nothing but greatness. I spent probably 40 hours online and a few on the phone with various people, making sure I got the right camera. I brought it home, played with it... a good portion of my pictures came out black... I had figured out how to set my shutter speed to 1/5000 of a second, step one complete! It feels good to use, the pics come out nice... when I don't mess with the settings. I really love it.

Security... well, my bank accounts, bikes and bills are all under my name, linked to my ID number. If I let my ARC (work permit) lapse, I will be issued a new ID number. Just wondering how this will all pan out. Anyways, instead of dumping my accounts and transferring my bikes... I am trying to wrangle a new school that will hire me now, but let me start in September... it's going well, but time is an issue.

At my old school, I'm just reviewing everything, making sure they know it well, for the new teacher. Just lots of work.

My vacation... I think it's just going to be Vietnam, maybe Laos, but I can decide while in Vietnam. I just need to figure out leaving and returning dates, I'm not restricted by time, so... who knows.

It's hot, and I was skirting burnout... not from the heat. But, things seem to be settling down now and my vacation is soon around the corner.

More to post later.

Decapitated

My last post, titled, "Nothing to lose," was somewhat ironic.

My hard drive has done something aweful and was decapitated last night.

This vicious act happend while I was at work, I came back to find my computer in a blue screen. The head on the hard drive that reads the data had fallen off. This is not possibly something I could have done without dropping my laptop from a good distance while the hard drive was reading or writing.

Anyways, $400+ to get what I missed and that's still without a new hard drive. Luckily, I had replaced my Windows last month and so, I've only lost a months worth of stuff, some pictures and art I had done. It's still a pain in the ass to have to redo everything.

I think most of the pictures are on my camera for this month, and Brett has some more on his computer.

...I really love, to hate, computers.

Nothing to lose.

Well, I'm a little scared.

North Korea is prepping a long range missile that could possible reach mainland U.S.A. I'm not really scared of N.Korea exactly, I suspect they only really have a couple missiles and they're probably not that good yet. What I am scared of, is what America will do, N.K. is a good friend of China and Russia. America has been pushing itself pretty hard against global politics and they don't seem to care about what others think (see: Iraq war, U.N. prohibits action against Iraq). You know what they say, "It's all fun and games, until someone throws a nuke... then it's just fun."

America sacres me because they are always shooting something stupid, N. Korea scares me, because they are pissed off at America and they really have nothing to lose and they have thier big red brothers to protect them if it comes down to it.

Also, I have posted some of my recent computer art on my picture site (the link is in the right column).

Maolin, a tale of past.

Well, my trip to Maolin (for the pictures, see previous post)

Brett and I went to go in search of a waterfall between Maolin and Leo guei in the central mountain range fo Taiwan. Since then, I have done research on Google Earth to find out details of this Murphy fated trip. Just before the Maolin bridge, I saw a path up into the trees and we decided to see where it went. It was a rocky train covered in gravel, not bad. We started at 300 feet above sea level. The trial went up fairly steep to a pagota that looked out over the river valley.

Next, we saw a dirt trail leading to the next hill and decided to go higher. The trail had 180 degree switchbacks and some large rocks and wasnt very wide.

We flew across a cliffside meadow of grass and some tiny dirt path, unseen, beneath the foliage. Wow, was it ever fun. We ran into some hikers who said that they had been hiking for 6 hours to get here and that it was another 4 to the top, we made it here in one hour and a half and figured we could do the top in another hour... silly hikers... leg power is so year 2000. So, they watched us as I tried to navigate the scooter through a rock crevase that was just too damn small, so my motorbike didn't stand a chance. They just laughed at the silly foreigners trying to drive up places that hikers need the help of all four limbs to navigate. So, we tried another path, and sailed up that bloody trail.

About 1km up, there was a super incline, Brett barely made it up on his scooter and I was behind on mm nike, I had to stop halfway so I didn't hit him as he crawled up the hill on his scooter. Scooters don't have clutches (well, they have centrifugal clutches, but no work for the driver and no slippage). I had to stop my bike half way up.

That bloody path ate my bike. It sunk about 6 inches into the leaves on the path, once I dug through the leaves, was gravel and then muddy dirt. Have you ever driven a lawn mover over a compost heap? That's what Brett got sprayed at him as he helped me push the bike up the hill. I cut a path up that hill about 10 inches deep for about 40 feet. The only breaks in the cut were from the logs and huge rocks blocking our way... we went over them.

The paths just got worse from there, into boulders that we couldn't go over, rock fields that shifted under our feet and we both just about laid our bikes down a hundred times form slipping out. Try driving on 2 feet of loose rocks about the size of softballs, cover that with dead leaves and rotting sticks and then add some water... dyin to do it again. Anyways, at about 4000 feet, Brett ran out of gas and we had adjusted my clutch as it was screwing up. We tried to double up, but my bike was barely getting me up the hill and the other half of the time, I was getting it up the hill... maybe the hikers weren't so silly, with thier silly looking walking sticks and towels. Anyways, Brett decided to run as he used to run marathons, or something... he does look the part. So, about another 300 feet up the mountain, my bike roars, but nothing is to be felt, my clutch is gone. We walked up the next 700 feet to the top, the bike could have only gone another 200 feet anyways as we had resorted to ropes and climbing. We made it to the top for a fantastic view, 5000feet above where we has started. We only had one litre of water between us, it was gone in a flash.

I phoned Jaco, letting him know where we were and he offered help, aside from flying past and me grabbing the bar of his hang glider, not alot he could do.

Here we were:
Saturday afternoon (5:00)
On top of a mountain, 2 hours form home (from the bottom of the mountain)
2 hours (on motorized transport) from the bottom.
8 hours (as a proficient hiker) from the bottom... we didn't have those silly sticks, so not a possibility
1 empty water bottle
2 tired guys
0 women
$50CAN between us

Our plan... freewheel the bikes down the hill! Yeah! So we got to my bike and... well... brakes only work half as well on the downslope. Luckily, it was uphill the whole way here! So, I slid on my heavy bike around every corner and Brett, the same.

...oops, there was one hill in the meadow. Well, for about 400 feet, there was an insanely steep hill (gentle for driving, insanely steep for PUSHING a bike through the bloody weeds!). Brett powered his bike up with the fumes of gas he had and barely sputtered to the top. Me? I pushed about 50 feet and laid on the horn and called Brett, it took 2 of us 15 minutes to push it up. The rest was just as fun as going up, flying at breakneck speed, I lost my bike on one corner and banged my ankle up pretty badly, just bruised the bone between a rock and my footpeg. It hurt, alot. And, I almost decapitated myself on a tree, it was one over the road that I had forgotten about, I did a powerslide right under it and smacked my mirror as I slid under... the bike never hit dirt, I recovered. Brett was laughing.

The rest was fairly tame, we made it to the bottom, only to find a mechanic on the highway. From pulling up to pulling out, he had me a new clutch in 24 minutes, flat. We drove home.

Oh, and Brett was pushing his bike down the highway and some guy in a red jeep pulled up and told him to wait. Came flying with a jug of gas and when Brett tried to pay him, he handed Brett an election flyer. Foreigners can't vote, but we can hope, I guess.

If you click on the title of this post, you will go to Brett's account of this trip and some pictures, I will try to update my picture site soon, the link is in the right margin of this page. Or, click "here."
Spellcheck is for people who are paid to write... send donations, I'll spellcheck.

Long-Asia Bobbit.

So, the Asians have always been chasing the American dream and trying to 'Be Like Mike', well, I think some of the dream was lost in translation somehow.

Wife castrates, kills husband in Kaohsiung

A Kaohsiung County woman bludgeoned her husband and cut off his penis on Sunday, according to local media reports.

The 62-year-old woman, surnamed Pan (潘), struck her husband, surnamed Li (李), with a pick as he sat on their couch passed out from a bout of drinking, a local newspaper reported.

Li was reportedly unconscious when Pan then sliced off his penis with a razor blade and flushed the organ down the toilet. Li later died at a hospital from severe head injuries, and Pan is in police custody. Pan claimed that she had suffered years of physical abuse at the hands of her husband, whom she also suspected of having an affair.

Distaste from my mouth.

A chuckle of poor taste.
(Click on the title of this entry to read the news article)

I was reading the news when I saw a story about the U.S. offering Iran an aid package including Beoing parts... I thought to myself, isn't this what got the U.S. all hot and bothered to invade Iraq and Afghanistan??? They are wanting to get into Iran also, is this a trick? Crashed jets have been an excuse to "purchase" oil, maybe they're trying to spur something on? It's like giving a BB gun to a kid just so you can take it away when he shoots you.

Speaking of which, ever since the Maolin trip, Brett and I have been causing havoc all over town. We are like matches and lighter fluid. We raced to Carrifour (departmmnt store) at 1am as they were closing. I had my iPod playing the slow motion song from the Matrix movie, I was flying down the alleys on my scooter and everything was in slow motion, I was dodging the potholes, just like Neo dodging bullets. I made it to the store in 3 minutes and 37 seconds. On the way back, we decided to shave some time off of the trip... 3:03 and Brett, 3:48. Wow, wrong way on a 6 lane street at 2am making left turns through red lights.

Later in the week, we bought some bb guns at the 24 hour store and we both happened to have full face helmits and, well... I started shooting.
Bang! Throttle! Re-cock! Bang! Gas! Re-cock! Recocking meant taking both hands off the handle bars and steering by leaning, shooting meant not looking at the road, and we were flying like madmen, good thing it was 4am and the streets were deserted... also no cops, the guns looked damn real.

Other than that, it's been a lot of Rainbow Six on the xBox, killing terrorists and getting shot.