To: You

Subj: Wild On… Taiwan

Actually I am in Hong Kong now. Just arrived today. It is also the Moon Festival, although I have not seen the moon, let alone the sun since I got here. Today may well in fact be Asia version of a sunny day, that is… not raining.

Taiwan was tres grisaille, however my first couple days were spent in jet-lagged wandering, street after street and stall after stall of clothes shoes monkey brains fishmongers butchers, the smell was intoxicating to say the least. The humidity left me soaked to the skin and the tremendous pollution left me wanting to sport one of those face masks all the locals wore, very Michael Jackson.

I stayed with distant relatives in Chungli, had a posse of 10 year-old girls following me everywhere. Only one spoke English, and they would all whisper questions to her to ask me. I managed to recollect my college Chinese enough to not make me feel like a complete mute, but the nonsensical chatter is soothing in a way, I don’t have to think, or converse, just smile.

I was going into social withdrawl, and made my cousin take us to a club. Just happened to be a BALLROOM DANCING club. Turns out it is very popular there. Unfortunately I don’t ChaCha and there was no bar there, I thought I was going to die of boredom. I thought I would freak if someone asked me to dance. Some middle-aged businessman asked me, I couldn’t even look at him, bu yao, bu yao, I said, my face so red, I imagine, my mom laughed her ass off.

So then she takes us to a real club, a disco. I was so ready for a coctail at that point, they pour a pretty shitty drink there, once I could actually communicate what it was I wanted. It was Ladies Night which meant some male dancers. First of all, I don’t find asian guys too attractive, but I can appreciate the male form, and I might have if every song they danced to wasn’t Michael Jackson, and they weren’t ALL a bunch of homos (no offense Adrian). And of course I am sitting in the front row. He takes my water bottle and gyated a bit then poured the water all over himself (Remember when you walked out of puppetry of the penis, simone, it was like that.)

After 2 days there, I was nearly eaten alive my mosquitos, my stomach was in knots, (from the milk maybe, I had a caramel macchiato at Starbucks, trying to relish the US, you’d think they would have soy milk, but nooo…Could have been the unsanitary conditions of the street food vendors, from which I ate from nearly every stall I passed, or simply from all the carbs, my first stop in the morning (at 6 in the morning, as if… I would ever get up that early, jet lag, right… The pastries and bread, cream puffs, onion rolls, sooo good, a shock to the Atkins system to say the least)

So anyway I had to make my escape to Taipei and the comforts of the Grand Hyatt, and was it ever grand, I felt bad leaving my relatives and mother there, but I couldn’t sleep on that hard matress, sweating all night, getting eaten alive… you get the picture.

I didn’t leave the hotel at all the first day, the gym was fab, the club was pretty cool, too, American band doing covers, had to explain the finer poins of the vodka martini to the bartenders (shaken, not stirred). But I managed to bridge my jet-lagged self and get my 2nd wind closing the place down.

Anyhow, in HK, net is costing a fortune be home soon, the 3rd, my b-day.

lovelovelove,

meesh

our first interview chat with meesh two years ago + meeting meesh + meesh and her pals