Still alive and reporting from Banqiao, Taipei County, Taiwan. Been a bit gloomy lately, so I'm sorry for not having had the mood to write much.

Today it rained a lot. In the morning, it was a little cloudy and over the afternoon the city would start looking foggy when looking from the higher floors. Then it started raining a little, then more, then a little less. I decided to take a walk towards Taipei city by that time. Was told that it was impossible to walk all the way. I'd have to take a bus or MRT past the river as there isn't a lot of bridges for pedestrians. I don't know about that. Seems it's possible to cross the river walking next to the highway but I wouldn't do it for the fear that people might get angry. Besides, it rained.

I got off from school in Xinpu and got as far as Jangzicui pretty quick. Walking to the river from there on was a mystery to me with all those highways and roads and stuff over there. I did find a pretty nice place though, below one of the big highway bridges connecting Banqiao and Taipei. I did have to turn around a few times to get there, and apparently all the stuff they have over there is old gas stations and metal junk yards so not many people will bother to go there I believe. Especially on a rainy day. By the time I decided to rest for a while, (or rather, couldn't move further without walking into a river,) the rain was now so strong that I would rather stand under the highway. At that time it was raining like a heavy Danish rainsquall, but without all that wind and briefness that goes with those. I took some pictures with my puny point and shoot camera, depressed for not having brought the big gear. Next time it rains on a hot day, I'm going to bring it there I hope.

Amazing how few raindrops the camera manages to catch, isn't it? I can assure you it was raining cats and dogs, but these little point and shoots just doesn't do the magic like a DSLR. * Sad face *

While I was there I felt really strange. Been reading a lot lately. Especially Haruki Murakami and I felt like I could just aswell have been in one of his books. It was really jazzy there. Dark and not so crowded in a somewhat far off and quiet place. The sound from rain slipping down over the border of the bridge and cars driving around up there above was just awesome. And then it's like the end of a small world. Usually it gets really cold whenever the rain comes. (It is a bit cold now, actually.) But at that time, the air was still hot from the last few summerdays we've had, so it was pleasant. Also. Just standing below such a giant structure that such a bridge is is something I don't do everyday. I do skitter around below grand highways daily, they're everywhere, but it's quite some months since I stood below a bridge this size. You should try it. Go find a big bridge by a river and stand under it when it rains a lot. Haha. I hope you've read Haruki Murakami yourself. Otherwise you have probably no idea of where I'm trying to get with this writing. I hope you enjoyed it, though.

Can't promise too much with all these things going on, but I'll try and drag my DSLR over there sometime.

Yeah. Now you're warned. Taiwan's weather is infamous for having some pretty hefty temperature swings. This year has been one of the worst.

Seen those pictures from Yangmingshan I took last Friday? It was rather hot, and that's even though I was up in the mountains. Apparantly, two days ago, there had been "snow" in the higher regions of the mountain. (According to Andre.)

Weather has been especially harsh just recently. So much that people all around me are telling it's one of the worst years for a long time. (It's not often the temperature goes as low as 5 degrees, but it did recently.) Today was cold too, and metreologists are having a hard time.

Rainy days are the worst here. When it starts to rain, temperatures skydive and lots of people will get colds. (Including me. Actually I've been fighting with what I suspect to be a conspiration between cold and flu since last thursday or so. And I'm not even taking that stupid medicin that stops your immune defence from fighting it that's become so just that much popular amongst people here since "H1N1" broke out and killed thousands of people. Ridiculous name by the way.)

You could say, my body probably is going through some sort of culture shock now. It's used to much more cold environments, but it can't really figure out the high air humidity I guess. Chinese new year was pretty bad and somewhat colder, (also the worst in the last 5 years or so,) but it didn't really hit me as hard as this weather rollercoaster we're in now. The poor machine here is completely out of it. I'm feeling cold one moment and then, after walking for a few minutes, I have to change my shirt because it's soaked completely from sweating. (And there's no way it'll dry with humidities like this. Especially not while it's 10 degrees celcius. It'll take sometimes a day to dry something even when it's 36 outside.)
Tonight is going to be really cold too. I imagine my cold and flu will strike back hard tomorrow if they're still alive in there.

I don't have much new pictures for you right now, as it's pretty boring out there and I'm too busy sleeping at home anyway recently, but Here's the most recent photos I shot at Chihlee College. If you're reading this article a long time after it was written, I might have added more photos from that place, but just now I've only taken some pictures of guys playing volleyball there from last Friday.

Just FYI: Moved to my third host family last Friday too. (Busy day huh?) There's my packed luggage from before I moved. Their house is close enough to Chihlee too and it's a really cool place that I ought to tell about soon.

And then, to fill in some more, here's another youtubed piece of my new passion. The Japanese band POLYSICS, which is honestly a bit unrelated to Taiwan:

Actually I went to look for some of their music in Ximending some weeks ago. After some Mandarin/English juggling, clerks at the first store I decided to enter, managed somehow to inform me that POLYSICS didn't release any CD's in Taiwan. Most of their releases would be Japan only, and just a few were sold in America too. Damn it. *哭*

Today it's finally on for real. Lately it's been raining first a little bit in the afternoon now and then, later also a few times during the day, and since yesterday night, constantly and quite strong. So strong, actually, that some parts of Yilan, which I visited earlier, has already been flooded amongst a bunch of other places.

In Taipei it's not really too dangerous, althout your umbrella can take damage. If it's made in China it might even break over on the middle so that you have to grab the top part to not have it hit someone else in the head. That's what mine did last week. Retarded. But I have a better umbrella now. Umbrella is btw called Y San around here, where Y means rain and San mean umbrella or cover, essentially. (So what is meant is, these are Rain Umbrellas.) This naming always get me to think of Japanese when they put ~san at the end of peoples, animals or even items names (althout ~tan is the more correct suffix for objects as far as I've understood)...

Usually the schoolgrounds are pretty lively during the breaks, (and also during classes). Now you can just spot people with umbrellas, sometimes sharing with each other.

This is just outside my school. And of course there's a seven eleven just around the corner.

Actually the news just told us this evening about the typhoons condition: It's currently a little south of Taiwan but not really far out in the sea. Because of high pressure around the typhoon, it's not moving, so it's probably going to stay there for some time. This way, it will just cause a lot of rain, which is a big problem for the southern part of Taiwan where the earth is very loose and causes mud-floods. For Taipei residents this just means that you have to use your umbrellas all the time and that more people will take the car. Plus it's getting much colder now, so that you can almost feel a little cool when a strong wind is blowing on you. But still just almost.

Here's another cultural perculiarity. This was taken in Taipei Mainstation while I was tranfering from the beitou line to the danshuei line on my way back home from school. Maybe not a super bad idea since this is a place a lot of people change trains. This way perhaps less kids will drive you crazy with screaming when you're in transit? (Not that I thinks it's ever really used. I've only seen someone taking their baby with them through the MRT about 4 times so far. And funny thing was, it was the babies fathers all four times carrying them around.)

Nagato is quite smart. She chose to put on a raincoat. This way she won't have to struggle with her umbrella in the typhoon windgusts like everyone else here in taiwan. (But then again, she's a Japanese, so that's probably where the culture difference lies.)

This is also mooncake. I'm eating a lot of these right now, because my birthday was just before the mid-autumn festival. So of course, a had to give me a bunch of those, so that I could eat them the next day. Not that I got the chance, because I got a lot of mooncake from the family on that day aswell. But they taste quite good, really.