Something had been puzzling me ever since I left Scotland, land of rampant alcoholism and sectarian football violence, for the sunnier climes of Thailand over two years ago. During the course of my pre-travel research I stumbled across a large number of news articles detailing acts of extreme violence occurring in my destination country. The one which stuck in my mind was a gentleman in a country town sauntering from his house into a neighbouring karaoke establishment and proceeding to gun down the clientele in punishment for the heinous crime of singing George Jones songs with a little too much gusto. How could this be squared with Thailand’s reputation as a peaceful country, a haven of Buddhism known as the Land Of Smiles?

In the months after my arrival the mystery deepened further. Politeness and social niceties are taken to great extremes in ol’ Siam. The entire social fabric of the country, as with much of Asia, revolves around the concept of ‘saving face’, something quite alien in its importance to most westerners. The rules regarding ‘face’ are very strictly laid down and one of the most important precepts is that you must never, under any circumstances, lose your cool during a disagreement. No wild gesticulations, no shouting and certainly no violence. Someone just raped your cat? Just calmly and with a polite smile explain to them that you’d really rather they didn’t do it again. Seriously.

This seems to make sense on the surface. In an area of the world with typically high population densities it would appear to be a good idea to minimise conflict and encourage harmonious living. But the philosopher and armchair psychologist/biologist in me is never satisfied with simple solutions. We’ve been evolving into our current physical and psychological form for millions of years and there are precious few parts of us which don’t serve (or used to serve) some important purpose. When we feel we have been wronged our natural reaction is to feel anger, resentment or something similar. Our ancestors felt this way too and figured out how to deal with it, passing on the relevant mental equipment to us in the form of genetic predispositions towards certain courses of action in certain situations. Just as it’s pretty foolish to ignore pangs of hunger instead of eating, wouldn’t we be ill-advised to simply ignore the bubbling negative emotions and bottle them deep down?

This was my tentative answer to the mindless violence issue. Surely a society which encourages its members to basically pretend conflict doesn’t exist is not only leaving its population without the training to resolve unavoidable conflicts, they are doing so in direct opposition to countless millenia of evolved responses. The upshot? Minor incidents which would warrant at most some raised voices in the west, such as excessively loud country music, rapidly escalate to gunplay and deaths. That was my hypothesis anyway, one I would ramble about after too many Hong Thongs but never bothered to investigate further.

Thankfully there are scientists to do the work for me…

Some enterprising group of American researchers subjected volunteers to disgusting scenes from two movies, instructing one group to react normally but the other to strictly control their emotional responses. Following the screening they were invited to play a (fake) online game, supposedly involving the subjection of other players to varying levels of discomfort. Can you guess what happened? Yup, the group who had been restricted from venting their emotions appropriately were more aggressive in the game by a significant margin.

It’s like we’ve always been told in the west – don’t keep your emotions bottled up inside, all that can happen is that they’ll ferment and get stronger and stronger until… BOOM! I’ve yet to investigate in more detail here in Taiwan but anecdotally at least it seems to be the same situation: keep your cool at all costs, ignoring your natural urge to express emotion. And yes, there are accompanying tales of violent crime which would seem out of place in the UK or US, places which would normally be regarded as more violent.

Yes, the west probably is more violent in terms of the number of ‘violent’ incidents per head of population compared to Asia but it’s the kind of violence which makes an important difference. We’re trained from a young age to resolve conflicts without resolving to extreme violence, the kind which would jeopardise our future reproductive success. We shout, we flail our arms, we smash inanimate objects and occasionally we even come to blows – but there it ends, except in exceedingly rare circumstances. We know how to avoid the escalation of violence because society has embraced and controlled our evolved instincts rather than trying to brush them under the carpet.

That’s my two cents anyway. I’m off to swear at people and break stuff.

This is the result. I’m hoping that I can use this exercise to a) get quicker at using ZhuYin input on my computer, b) speed the process of character recognition and c) get some constructive criticism from friends and corrections from Wendy. The first batch is from the first week of the year when I was hideously ill with pneumonia. Future updates will not be in chronological order, they will be posted at haphazard intervals and they will mostly consist of shoddy Chinese. For my non-Chinese speaking buddies around the world – just run it through Google Translate and trust me when I say it actually makes sense…

Oh, and thanks to Bear (熊熊), 我的女朋友, for her help and patience with correcting this

1/1 – 我下午兩點去呼嚕咖啡，可是我覺得我感冒了。我七點和熊熊一起去日本餐廳吃晚餐。好吃！因爲我生病了，所以我九點就回家了。

2/1 – 因爲安欣去了韓國和她的男朋友碰面，所以我不用上課。我還在生病所以我早一點十一點鐘就去補習班，再去看醫生。他告訴我「你一定要去醫院！」。所以我去了醫院。醫生跟我說我有肺炎，好可怕！我回家，吃很多的藥。我很悽慘。

3/1 因爲我生病，所以不用上課。我應該要休息但是我還是去了默契咖啡，喝普洱茶。很好喝！我寫了三個小時的中文字。

4/1 我還是在生病。我早上去呼嚕咖啡一下子就回家了。我晚上看很多的電視。

5/1 下午熊熊來我家。她媽媽幫我煮的湯麵，真的好吃！雖然我生病，但是這讓我很開心。

6/1 我今天身體覺得有點糟所以我和我的老闆的妹婿去醫院。醫生給我很多的新藥。

7/1 我下午去默契咖啡，喝普洱茶和學中文字。晚上熊熊來我家。我們吃晚餐，看「Real Steel」然後上英文課！我們兩點左右睡覺。

8/1 我好了，可是我的聽力還是不好。中午我去默契咖啡寫作業。我好多了！

P.S. I know that this is a very short entry. Most will be even shorter as this takes me an insane amount of time to do

Well, I embarked on a two-week tour of America’s Mid-West, something I never imagined would happen until I went to Thailand. Chicago, Iowa City, the Twin Cities and especially Madison have earned themselves special places in my heart, although I fear for my health if I ever return to Wisconsin, land of fried cheese and beer… During the course of the expedition, whose primary purpose was re-unions with erstwhile Thailand-based comrades, I re-united with the ex-girlfriend, rejected a job offer in Vietnam and opted instead for Taiwan.

Two months later I was cooling my boots back in Surat Thani for a couple of weeks, celebrating my birthday, then found myself waking up in Taichung. At first my reaction to my new home was somewhat apprehensive, with only two words running through my mind – “Big!!!!”, “Busy!!!!”. The scale of the city took me somewhat by surprise, especially after spending the past year-and-a-bit in sleepy, unassuming Surat Thani. My only experience with living somewhere this manic was Melbourne but that was 15 years previous and I had long since forgotten the skills required to cope with urban life.

My confidence took another blow soon after as, prior to the girlfriend joining me, we split up again. I was a stranger in a strange land, now without much of any reason to be there, not the happiest of times. However, since then things have turned around remarkably I’m glad to say.

My newfound fascination with photography and my reclaimed DSLR led me to start really exploring my new home, my explorations turning up all sorts of hidden gems in the form of beautiful relaxing parks, wonderfully cosy and welcoming cafes and a realisation that the paranoia prevalent in the West when you point a camera at a stranger simply does not exist here. Slowly becoming more and more comfortable in my surroundings I decided that hat his may become a long-term adventure rather than the 1-year break I had planned and this decision led me to embark on the daunting journey of learning Chinese.

Best decision ever.

Within weeks of commencing lessons with my new friend Wendy I discovered new levels of confidence in my ability to survive here. Chinese is a difficult language for Westerners, make no mistake – unfamiliar sounds, tones, thousands of characters instead of an alphabet – but the rewards for persistence are incredible. I took to doing my weekly homework at my favourite cafe, Forro, and soon was on first-name terms with the delightful staff there. They helped me with my Chinese, I gave them some English speaking practice. It’s now a home from home with me visiting usually 5 or 6 times a week (despite complaints from my wallet).

The teaching job itself isn’t bad. I work for a private cram school, meaning that children can’t really ‘fail’ as such and so you’re left with a mixed bag of students. Education takes a back seat to making money so teachers in these places inevitably wind up a tad frustrated but I had already dealt with this in Thailand. At times you’re little more than a babysitter with a textbook. However the job is easy, the pay is good and I’m secure teaching here for as long as I want. In the long-term I have my eye on a university job but that will possibly require taking a year out to study so it’s not something I’m focusing on right now.

So, plans for next year? Well I have several thoughts. First is that I’m not going anywhere – as far as I’m concerned right now Taichung is my home. If things go well then ‘ll be here for the real long term and I’m already formulating plans for when I tire of teaching, plans that would involve me running my own business. Eep. That’s distant future though, what about right now? Well a few resolutions spring to mind:

1 – Improve my Chinese but specifically learn to read and write the 1,500 most common characters by the end of the year. Four completely new characters per day is a daunting but not impossible task.

2 – Get my ass in gear and start a band. I bought a bass months ago but so far have only had one occasion to use it in public. This must be remedied.

3 – Explore more of the island. So far I’ve been largely confined to Taichung, time to broaden my horizons.

4 – Spend more time volunteering. Either with Taichung Paws or other groups, time to use a few spare hours to benefit others instead of pissing them away on Facebook.

5 – Relax. I’ve realised this year the extent to which I allow stress and anxiety to control my life. No more. I’ve quit smoking, cut back on the drinking, time to work on this vice.

That’s it. Oh, obviously things like post more regularly here, read more now that I have a new Kobo, get back to a regular gym schedule, etc, etc. 2012, I have high hopes for you – let’s not let each other down

By the way, experimenting with this slideshow thing but I’m unsure as yet. What do you think?

It all kicked off with a rare long lie, snoozing intermittently till somewhere just shy of 10 o’clock (that’s late for me…) before emerging from my cocoon to cradle the acoustic for a while. Hunger started to kick in but was soon enough assuaged as I met Bear for a spot of brunch at  K。布朗, a popular spot a stone’s throw from my flat which had somehow evaded my attention till now. The bear-filled interior gave it a bizarre, cutesy charm – a strangeness matched by the menu. I opted for the French Meal, details of which were in Chinese beyond my knowledge. French you say? That’ll be croissants and the like, obviously…

Nope. If memory serves it was fried chicken, fries, sweet mayonnaise, a solitary toast soldier, ham omelette and french toast doused in caramel sauce. Yup. Bear’s Norwegian meal was no less eclectic, featuring bacon, sausage, egg, cheese, fruit, salad and cake. Seriously. An odd start but oddly delicious Over the course of the meal I was treated to an impromptu Chinese lesson, Bear seemingly reveling in the opportunity to teach me all manner of handy phrases including “I’m going crazy”. 謝謝老師

Brunch over, Bear headed of to Forro to start her shift while I went on a shopping spree. Aside from the weekly essentials I had a brainstorm to help with my recent forays into learning to read and write Chinese – an ambitious plan without an official teacher. The shop at the National Museum Of Fine Arts sells some gorgeous books and on my last visit I spied a Snow White story book with traditional Chinese characters – mostly Greek to me – backed up with ZhuYin, which I can actually read. ZhuYin is a Taiwanese phonetic alphabet for Mandarin, allowing one to at least pronounce words without necessarily knowing the meaning. Chinese characters offer no clues to pronunciation themselves so this has been an invaluable aid to me. Fingers crossed I can use the ZhuYin to allow me to decipher (via friends or dictionaries) characters I don’t yet recognise (i.e. 99.99% of them). As an added bonus I spotted a similar storybook for Belleville Rendezvous/The Triplets Of Belleville for 99NT. Score!

According to my Chinese teacher, Wendy, the Belleville book’s language is a tad tricky but I’m assuming that familiarity with the story will help. If not I’m in for a rough ride but hey, that’s half the fun.

(The small characters to the right of each large one are ZhuYin)

With the shopping mission complete it was time to hit Forro Cafe for round two of the epic tongue twister battle between Ponni and myself. I was tasked with reciting the following Chinese torture implement:

石獅寺有四十四隻石獅子
四十四隻石獅子吃四十四枝濕紫柿子

Which is pronounced roughly as follows (with the addition of tones to mess things up further)

“Shi shi si dzi si shi si zhi shi shi dzi, Si shi shi zhi shi shi dzi chi si shi si zhi shi dzi shi dzi.”

Ponni’s challenge was the classic:

“Swan swam over the sea,
Swim, swan, swim!
Swan swam back again,
Well swum swan!”

Somehow – and I still maintain the decision was wrong – a jury of our peers (Bear, Ivy and Michelle) awarded me victory over my valiant adversary. A travesty of justice to be sure but I accepted the honour. As a reward Ponni made me the sweetest gift – a rubber stamp bearing the phrase “Forro” and my Chinese name, “堡羅”, with the two parts blending into each other. It’s easier to display than explain…

How she made this I have no idea but it was rather touching so I gave her the gift I’d prepared in case of her victory anyway, an album of photos taken by my LCA+ at Forro the previous week. We brainstormed the next event over my introduction to the local delicacy of thousand-year-old egg, which I’m glad to report tastes a hell of a lot better than it sounds. Her next challenge is good old “Red lorry, yellow lorry” repeated five times while I have something of a Chinese equivalent.

The gist of this, as far as I could glean between the snickers of Bear – who was responsible for choosing it – Ponni and Myron is that it describes mythical beasts of varying colours. I’ve got a good feeling about this one if I can master the tones, bring it on.

Now it’s 9:30, I’m all ready for the week ahead, listening to some Chinese music I’m not allowed to mention and preparing to re-acquaint myself with the wonder of Belleville Rendezvous. Yay for Sunday, see you in a few days when the latest batch of prints are processed.

Here are a few of the better shots…

Chalkboard wall at the back of Forro Cafe, my home from home

Outside Forro, I'm always tempted to ride this thing...

This is why I love Forro. Where else has a tree growing from the ceiling, next to a wall of Post-It notes and an Escher-esque staircase ending nowhere?

Chinese homework and a glass of 學校生咖啡 - perfection...Ivy and Ponni hard at work behind my Friday Night Beer (tm)

Ivy and Ponni again

Bear after a long shift - this girl works too hard

Bear and Asuka looking all spooky and double-exposed

Iced cappucino at my other favourite haunt, Match Cafe

Sarkis, one of my students. His name sounds like 'circus' and he acts like an animal. Funny that...Adrian hard at work in the teacher's room. I love how the colours make it look like a psychiatric institution. Very apt.

View from my rooftop at night

I just liked the text on the t-shirt

View down GongYi Road

The One Hotel, pretty much dead centre of town

Double exposure at CMP Block

This shot was only possible for a split second thanks to wind and a fidgety subject. Yay for lucky timing.

Kids outside CMP Block

Erm, I have no idea but I like it. Happy accident I'd happily use this as an album cover actually...

That’s all for now, more to come when I get them developed. There were 72 in this first batch and they all, bar one, came out well. These were just my favourites. Verdict? I really, really like this camera. Things are going to get expensive…

My Lomo LCA+ with wide angle lens attached (thanks to Bear at Forro Cafe for the photo!)

Taking the leap back to analogue photography isn’t easy after training yourself  in all things digital and becoming accustomed to the safety nets and comforters it provides. Near-unlimited storage thanks to increasingly cheap memory cards? Gone, now every shot counts and costs. Fire-and-forget photography is no longer an option, you have to get it right first time or not at all. The instant gratification of the LCD panel? Forget about it. Now I have to wait for a little counter to creep up to 36, find a camera store, wait for processing and printing and only then will I know if I got even a single keeper. The entire roll could be a bust, who knows? Even something as simple and commonplace as autofocus is gone – I now select from 4 ‘focus zones’ of 0.8m, 1.5m, 3m and infinity, the first three with unforgivingly narrow depth of focus. In fact any semblance of control is now gone: I choose my focus zone, ASA setting and that’s it. No white balance, no shutter speed or aperture, no B/W option, nothing. Scary…

Still, I did this in high school and absolutely loved it and I’m already feeling addiction creeping in with this camera. There’s something about not only hearing but really feeling the ‘click’ of the shutter button that makes it somehow more real (sorry to sound like an obnoxious hipster). Anticipating the development of the first roll already has me excited, despite the fact that I have to get someone else to do it. Note to self – look up places which might let me use darkrooms…As an added bonus, this new model has a nifty button on the underside which allows for simple multiple exposures without fiddling around with rewinding films – prepare for some uber-cheesy images! The wide angle lens I opted for as well (thanks to the Taichung Lomography Embassy Store for a good deal…) has given me the little bit of flexibility I need. The other accessories for the LCA+ are weird and wonderful and I’ll no doubt try them out soon enough but for now it’s time to play.

The only downside to this – I was given two rolls of 100ASA film as a starter but my hours and the current weather make that a less than perfect choice. I’ll burn through them as practice as quickly as possible and pick up some 400 to give me more shooting options. And maybe some expired film for shits and giggles. And a colour flash. And the tunnel vision lens. And… and… and…

Oh dear.

Cock Zombie represented a band at the peak of its powers, before one of the members stupidly decided to go and live on the other side of the world. The video was thrown together rather hastily and, after five aborted attempts (I’ve never used any video software before), this last one was the product of boredom, anger and apathy. So it looks kinda shit. Also it’s a demo recording so it lacks the extra firepower that the band would bring along to a live set but it still sounds pretty damn good. Lie back, switch off your brain – it’s going to get eaten anyway – and revel in the delights of Cock Zombie.

“She’s a cock zombie, sucking my brain through my cock whilst I rock.
She’s a cock zombie, ooh-nananananananananana rock!”

Daz and Alice have both turned out some winners in their last posts, go check ‘em out if you need some more ideas for a Hallowe’en soundtrack. In the meantime it’s time for me to retire this meme until next year. Thanks for listening…

* – not strictly factual

First on the chopping board is Zombina And The Skeletones with ‘Zombie Hop’. I don’t really know too much about this lot as I only stumbled on them by happy accident a couple of weeks ago but I like their style. Trashy, schlocky, theatrical and definitely rocking. Plus how could I not include them with a name like that?

Next is doom/sludge/stoner rock stalwarts Electric Wizard with an homage to zombie flick, “The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue”. I’m not always a fan of this kind of music but these guys do it for me. Many thanks to Nova Tea Jim for introducing me to them a few months back.

I’m off to nurse a hangover caused by a Hallowe’en party in the mountains around Taichung last night. I learned a few things there – wearing a full-face evil clown mask is sweaty, smelly and makes it difficult to drink; cheap-ass Freddy Kruger gloves are liable to fall apart within hours of being removed from the packaging; and it’s very, very difficult to drive a scooter while wearing a kilt and retain any semblance of diginity. Till tomorrow…

• Hammer Smashed Face
• Meat Hook Sodomy
• Addicted To Vaginal Skin
• Necropedophile
• A Skull Full Of Maggots
• And, of course, the classic love song, “Entrails Ripped From a Virgin’s Cunt”

I feel slightly dirty just typing those titles so they’ve definitely earned their place in the Zombiethon. In fact next year I could just do a month-long Corpseathon devotes to a different perversion  every day and still not run out of songs. Without further ado, here’s Cannibal Corpse with a lullaby entitled “Pit Of Zombies”. Get it doon ye!

If that proves too much for you then Daz at The Dixie Flatline has a much more palatable selection of delectable tunes over at his place. Thanks to him my music collection is growing at a rapid face, lots of unheard names cropping up there. Check it oot! Alice is also contributing to the Hallowe’en spirit with a tasty slice of Eurometal at Sprinklings Of Alice.