After a grueling medley of jobs stretching through last summer and on into the fall, things have been settling down. I’ve started working as a computer instructor. At one job, during the day, I teach computer literacy in a recovery program. The individuals to whom I teach at this job vary widely in skill level; some people have never used a mouse before, whereas others are proficient with office applications already. It’s a job that requires a lot of adaptation, patience, and love of learning. Being present for someone’s first Google search has been one of the most illuminating experiences of my life—compellingly, far more so than my own first Google search!

My life-long dream of being an educator is slowly materializing. The opportunities to teach are frequent and meaningful. Already I’m working on projects to expand the programs I’m working in, so that we’ll be teaching a far broader scope of material to a great number of people.

In my free time, I’m tackling an unprecedented number of personal projects. In the past few months, I’ve written several utile Python scripts to get work done around the house, so to speak, and I’m back on the horse with improving my guitar technique. After a few more weeks, I should be ready to start sharing the fruits of these labors on this blog, like I used to in the good old days.

All in all, I have never felt so at home.

The doormat my lovely girlfriend bought for me on my birthday

(See the Flickr page for story of the doormat.)

The backstory for this excerpt is that a Marxist revolution (called in this book an “Odonian” revolution) led to the forced exile of the revolutionaries by the dominant political forces of the planet. After the establishment of the colony on the moon, all contact with the planet was severed, and no communication passed between the two civilizations for over a hundred years. In this excerpt, the protagonist Shevek discusses how good can come of their suffering in exile.

(Please note that the typo “principal” for “principle” is not an error in my transcription, but rather preserved from my edition of the book.)

“Suffering is a misunderstanding,” Shevek said, leaning forward, his eyes wide and light. He was still lanky, with big hands, protruding ears, and angular joints, but in the perfect health and strength of early manhood he was very beautiful. His dun-colored hair, like the others’, was fine and straight, worn at its full length and kept off the forehead with a band. Only one of them wore her hair differently, a girl with high cheekbones and a flat nose; she had cut her dark hair to a shiny cap all round. She was watching Shevek with a steady, serious gaze. Her lips were greasy from eating fried cakes, and there was a crumb on her chin.

“It exists,” Shevek said, spreading out his hands. “It’s real. I can call it a misunderstanding, but I can’t pretend that it doesn’t exist, or will ever cease to exist. Suffering is the condition on which we live. And when it comes, you know it. You know it as the truth. Of course it’s right to cure diseases, to prevent hunger and injustice, as the social organism does. But no society can change the nature of existence. We can’t prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. A society can only relieve social suffering, unnecessary suffering. The rest remains. The root, the reality. All of us here are going to know grief; if we live fifty years, we’ll have known pain for fifty years. And in the end we’ll die. That’s the condition we’re born on. I’m afraid of life! There are times I—I am very frightened. Any happiness seems trivial. And yet, I wonder if it isn’t all a misunderstanding—this grasping after happiness, this fear of pain. . . . If instead of fearing it and running from it, one could. . . get through it, go beyond it. There is something beyond it. It’s the self that suffers, and there’s a place where the self—ceases. I don’t know how to say it. But I believe that the reality—the truth that I recognize in suffering as I don’t in comfort and happiness—that the reality of pain is not pain. If you can get through it. If you can endure it all the way.”

“The reality of our life is in love, in solidarity,” said a tall, soft-eyed girl. “Love is the true condition of human life.”

Bedap shook his head. “No. Shev’s right,” he said. “Love’s just one of the ways through, and it can go wrong, and miss. Pain never misses. But therefore we don’t have much choice about enduring it! We will, whether we want to or not.”

The girl with short hair shook her head vehemently. “But we won’t! One in a hundred, one in a thousand, goes all the way, all the way through. The rest of us keep pretending we’re happy, or else just go numb. We suffer, but not enough. And so we suffer for nothing.”

“What are we supposed to do,” said Tirin, “go hit our heads with hammers for an hour every day to make sure we suffer enough?”

“You’re making a cult of pain,” another said. “An Odonian’s goal is positive, not negative. Suffering is dysfunctional, except as a bodily warning against danger. Psychologically and socially it’s merely destructive.”

“What motivated Odo but an exceptional sensitivity to suffering—her own and others’?” Bedap retorted.

“But the whole principal of mutual aid is designed to prevent suffering!”

Shevek was sitting on the table, his long legs dangling, his face intense and quiet. “Have you ever seen anybody die?” he asked the others. Most of them had, in a domicile or on volunteer duty. All but one had helped at one time or another to bury the dead.

“There was a man when I was in camp in Southeast. It was the first time I saw anything like this. There was some defect in the aircar engine, it crashed lifting off and caught fire. They got him out burned all over. He lived about two hours. He couldn’t have been saved; there was no reason for him to live that long, no justification for those two hours. We were waiting for them to fly in anesthetics from the coast. I stayed with him along with a couple of girls. We’d been there loading the plane. There wasn’t a doctor. You couldn’t do anything for him, except just stay there, be with him. He was in shock but mostly conscious. He was in terrible pain, mostly from his hands. I don’t think he knew the rest of his body was all charred, he felt it mostly in his hands. You couldn’t touch him to comfort him, the skin and flesh would come away at your touch, and he’d scream. You couldn’t do anything for him. There was no aid to give. Maybe he knew we were there, I don’t know. It didn’t do him any good. You couldn’t do anything for him. Then I saw . . . you see . . . I saw that you can’t do anything for anybody. We can’t save each other. Or ourselves.”

“What have you left, then? Isolation and despair! You’re denying brotherhood, Shevek!” the tall girl cried.

“No—no, I’m not. I’m trying to say what I think brotherhood really is. It begins—it begins in shared pain.”

“Then where does it end?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know yet.”

It’s difficult to begin talking about what this passage means to me. I believe this is enough for now.

1. Annihilator – King Of The Kill (#6, Annihilator, 1994)
2. Hypocrisy – Total Eclipse (#7, Into The Abyss, 2000)
3. Agathodaimon – Tristetea Vehementa (Part 1) (#5, Carpe Noctem, 1996)
4. Avulsed – Compulsive Hater (#4, Stabwound Orgasm, 1999)
5. David Bowie – Lightening Frightening (#10, The Man Who Sold The World, 1970)
6. Cake – Never There (#3, Prolonging The Magic, 1998)
7. Eisregen – Des Heilands Haut (#1, Leichenlager, 2000)
8. Megadriver – Push Start Button (The Revenge Of The Shinobi) (#1, Action Metal, 2004)
9. Caliban – Partisan (#5, The Split Program, 2000)
10. Dio – Sacred Heart (#2, Sacred Heart, 1985)

From 4 to 5 there’s an interesting transition in what’s considered edgy. I can’t wait to see the stuff my kids’ll listen to. It’ll probably sound just like The Monkees.

1. Paradise Lost – Look At Me Now (#4, Believe in Nothing, 2001)
2. David Bowie – Can You Hear Me (#7, Young Americans, 1975)
3. Blut Aus Nord – II (#2, Decorporation Split, 2004)
4. Ozzy Osbourne – Pictures Of Matchstick Men (With Typo O Negative) (#4, Prince Of Darkness, 2005)
5. Aborted – Archetype (#7, Slaughter & Apparatus: A Methodical Overture, 2007)
6. Judas Priest – Victim Of Changes (#10, Live Defenders, 1984)
7. Gory Blister – Shader (#11, Skymorphosis, 2006)
8. Transmetal – Enviado Del Infierno (#1, Amanecer En El Mausoleo, 1992)
9. Joseph Hadyn – Concerto in F, Hob. XVIII/3: I. Allegro (#1, Complete Harpsichord Concertos (Ton Koopman), 1995)
10. Annihilator – Fire Power (#9, Waking The Fury, 2002)

I’m pleased.

Naturally this list is quite skewed toward compliments that would work best if given to a personality similar to my own. Duh. That’s what makes a good compliment.

I’d love to hear how anyone else’s might differ.

1. You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar.
2. Your mother must be a fine woman.
3. Maybe I don’t believe in you—but only because I know I don’t have to, and I can spend that energy elsewhere.
4. You always break even. If I believed in God, I would stop, because you always break even.
5. I curse that typo. Everything else, I want to embroider and pass down to my children.

A work in progress, I should like to think.

1. Vader – Damien (intro) (#1, Live In Japan, 1999)
2. Children Of Bodom – Kunckleduster (#11, Bodom Covers, 2007)
3. Dark Tranquillity – Sacred Reich (#13, The Gallery, 1995)
4. Angra – Unholy Wars (#1, Rebirth World Tour: Live in São Paulo, 2002)
5. Taproot – Believed (#6, Gift, 2000)
6. Heaven Shall Burn – A Dying Ember (#6, Iconoclast, 2008)
7. Anata – Any Kind Of Magic Or Miracle (#10, Under A Stone With No Inscription, 2004)
8. Finntroll – Aldhissla (#12, Jaktens Tid, 2001)
9. Tool – Sober (#3, Undertow, 1993)
10. Rhapsody – Rain Of A Thousand Flames (#1, Rain Of A Thousand Flames, 2001)

Let’s see how much of this day I can devote to playing music before I have to hang.

My favorite event of the day, though, was that an artist for the game had a table set up along the side of the rather sizable hall in which everyone was playing. In between games, I wandered over there, steeling myself to avoid eye contact with a starving artist, whose art couldn’t be at all impressive, and whose personality would more than likely be tantamount to Incremental Blight.

I was awed by what I saw.

Artwork for the Deft Duelist card

He had prints of the artwork for many different cards laid out, beside the originals he’d created.

Artwork for the Obelisk of Bant card

I was quite happy to meet the guy, and asked the politest questions I could without resorting to small talk, wanting to know more about how the industry functioned, but never press him to admit where he actually stood in it.

What I quickly noticed, however, was that he signed all his works “D. Palumbo.” I found this a cute coincidence, being vaguely familiar with the work of one Dr. Don Palumbo, namely his Chaos Theory, Asimov’s Foundations and Robots, Herbert’s Dune: The Fractal Aesthetic of Epic Science Fiction. After brief deliberation as to whether I should bother to mention the similarity, I decided that I would, as he was clearly a geek, and therefore likely to appreciate a science fictiony association with his name, obnoxiously obscure though the reference may be.

The artist Dave. Palumbo is Don Palumbo’s son. He says he has never in all his life had someone recognize him because of his father. He said he didn’t think anyone had even read his father’s book, and guessed his father felt the same.

I owe this chance recognition to professor Dr. Don Riggs, with whom I’ve taken many science fiction literature courses, and who is a good friend of Dr. Don Palumbo. So good, in fact, that Dr. Riggs posed for a tarot card which Dave illustrated:

Artwork for The Hermit tarot card

If that isn’t Dr. Riggs in the truest sense, I’ll eat my hat.

So, please, do yourself the favor of checking out Dave Palumbo’s site and browsing his works. I happily purchased a print of the art for the Deft Duelist, and he was happy to autograph it for me.

The fact that art of this caliber still exists is a monumental reassurance to me that, as I’ve long suspected, everything is indeed OK in the world. The fact that I came across it in natural pursuit of two loves, science fiction and Magic, tells me that I’ll be happy all my days.

The list of candidates ran as follows. Already I have a pretty good idea who will be appointed.

The Culture and Communication Department will be bringing in three candidates for the faculty position of Assistant Professor of Anthropology.

Please join us for their research presentations.

Friday, January 30, 2009

Brent Luvaas will be on campus on January 30, 2009

His research presentation will be from 3:00-4:00 in Room 114. The title of his presentation is “Globalization Goes DIY: The Politics of Place in Indonesian Indie Music”

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Janet Alexanian will be on campus on February 5, 2009.

Her research seminar will be from 3:00-4:00 in Room 114. The title of her presentation is “Contested Visions: Cultural Politics and Anxiety in Post-Revolutionary Iran”

Monday, February 16, 2009

Stephanie Sadre-Orafai will be on campus on February 16, 2009.

Her research seminar will be from 2:30-3:30 in Room 114. The title of her presentation is “Casting as Practice, Casting as Metaphor: Rethinking Media and Multiculturalism in the New York Fashion Industry”

Unfortunately, I’ve already decided I won’t be attending any of these sessions, as a professor (of sociology–damn!) who’s rather dear to me teaches a class at all the prescribed times.

Naturally, I’d love to meet these people and feel them out for teaching talent, but I think that this Dr. Luvaas has the position in the bag. Applying for a position at a university with an already booming Music Industry major and a rapidly expanding Media Studies division in Communication and giving a presentation on globalization, politics, social space, and indie music, and located in a classically hip anthropological place, is smart.

And before you say that it might just be mere coincidence that his topic so uniquely suits our university’s tastes, I submit to you that the chap has a rather broad swath of ethnomusicality credit to his name. Also, it appears that his dissertation was chaired by Sherry Ortner, which would definitely spruce up the pedigree around here. (Ortner, though quite a figure herself, studied with Geertz at the U of C.)

The department here already has a solid assortment of females as assistant professors (they outnumber males, actually), so I can’t even see a female hire out of motivation for political correctness or diversity mandates keeping him away.

Sorry I won’t be around to take classes with the guy.

My good friend Jim, who was awesome enough to visit me twice while I was in Germany and thereby made the acquaintance of Carl and Jesse, drove. The three and a half hour drive up from Philadelphia, through Harrisburg, to State College gave us a lot of time to talk and soak in beautiful landscapes, both of which I feel I sorely needed.

Then, once there, the four of us sat around a table with a marvelous assortment of beer at our disposal (and dispose of it we did, I assure you), and talked for five hours straight. Just talked.

On Sunday we played Risk for an equal amount of time.

I send gladness and fullness out into the world.

For one, my computer recently died. Thanks to the magnanimity of a wonderful human and dear friend, I’m back up and running with a tower at home.

More importantly, though, I’ve been reading more, I think, than at any other point in my life. It’s quite a wonderful thing, how much I’ve learned, about a thousand different things, in just these past few weeks.

In short, things are leveling out again. I am stretching in funny but pleasurable ways, learning how to harness myself a little better and evoke actual productivity.

I mean to get back on track with many things, among which online presence most certainly can be said to number.

I’m not entirely adjusted to the time change yet—for example, I’m writing this at 9am on a Sunday morning, because I’d run out of interesting things to do online—but that’s in many ways a good thing, because now I act like a properly socialized human being.

There are very many things I miss about Taiwan. Three months for a stay is simply not long enough; I was very much spoiled by my ten months in Germany.

Look at me, obnoxiously talking about my travels as though they were Sunday morning routines.

I’m going to unwind for the next few days, maybe sort some photos, listen to some music, read some blogs. Be with family.

That’s what this time of year is for, after all.

This past weekend I spent in Tainan, a stunningly beautiful coastal city with warm, warm weather. I saw many temples, was cooked dinner by Buddhist monks, and declined an invitation to stay with them overnight so I could participate in the morning prayer. I did manage to stay for the evening prayer, though, which made for an unforgettable experience.

Today I had a written exam, for which I had to write solely in Chinese characters, by hand, with a freaking pen (typing Chinese characters is no long a problem, nor is reading, but writing? that’s another story), and that went quite well. Then this afternoon I had an oral presentation about all the traveling I’ve been doing. I’ve another, similar one on Friday.

I’m going to go out to dinner tonight and take it easy.

Till another time.

Don’t hate me for making this another tiresome photoblog post.

The night we arrived in Hong Kong, we caught a late train home from the airport and spent a long time walking through the city, trying to find our hotel. There were many latenight street shot opportunities.

I think I took some of my best pictures while just moseying around the streets, far too late at night, in this ghost town. There is no life in Hong Kong, it seemed to me during my all-too-brief stay, at night. But maybe I traditionally look for the wrong signs of life.

And then there are the mandatory skyline shots. Can’t go to Hong Kong and not take pictures of all the tall buildings, right? I particularly like this one, because it’s taken from up on the mountain, and shows how snugly the dense city hugs the hillside. There isn’t much wasted space in Hong Kong, at least not on Central Island.

And then, a staple of any tourist in Hong Kong: we had to stick around the bay one evening to see the Symphony of Lights. It was underwhelming, to be nice. But then, I’ve been craving some caving paintings as of late.

It sounds odd, but I think what I got most out of this trip was that I finally learned how to use a camera. Beginning on the second day or so of the trip, I got the balls to put my camera on manual. I don’t think I would have gotten a lot of the shots I did had I not had the courage to try this out.

So, looking good into the future!

Many more pictures here and here.

(14:13:47) Sarah: hahaha
(14:14:01) Sarah: ohhhh that so sad
(14:14:03) I: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chromatic_dragons
(14:14:06) Sarah: i got to the bottom of the paragraph
(14:14:07) I: oops wrong chat window
(14:14:11) I: that’s embarrassing

(14:14:38) Sarah: thats really embarrassing
(14:14:43) Sarah: i think im publishing that
(14:14:53) I: loling
(14:15:01) I: already sent that exchange to all my friends
(14:17:37) Sarah: and did they all have the same response. or were some like “oh sweet dude. thanks a ton”
(14:18:51) I: (14:14:17) Will: TWITA
(14:18:55) I: (twita = that’s what I’m talking about)
(14:19:01) I: (14:15:10) Will: it still doesn’t have the metallic dragons
(14:15:13) Will: FUCK THESE PEOPLE
(14:19:50) Sarah: hahahahaha

We’ve all been there before, I think.

I’m far, far behind on my Flickr activity. Tomorrow I have a lot of midterms, so I’ll be inside all evening flipping between studying and tagging and uploading.

Honestly, I just couldn’t let two Friday Random Tens happen in a row.

1. Unleashed – Long Live The Beast (#14, Sworn Allegiance, 2004)
2. Pestilence – Phileas (#10, Spheres, 1993)
3. Ozzy Osbourne – Won’t Be Coming Home (S.I.N.) (Demo) (#10, Prince Of Darkness, 2005)
4. Napalm Death – The Crucifixion Of Possessions (#1, Punk Is A Rotting Corpse, 1982)
5. AC/DC – Nervous Shakedown (#4, Flick Of The Switch, 1983)
6. Böhse Onkelz – Narben (#2, Dopamin, 2002)
7. Elliott Smith – King’s Crossing (#7, From A Basement On The Hill, 2004)
8. Symphony X – The Divine Wings Of Tragedy (#8, The Divine Wings Of Tragedy, 1997)
9. Pitchshifter – Landfill (#1, Industrial, 1991)
10. MC 900 Ft Jesus – Real Black Angel (#2, Hell With The Lid Off, 1989)

Would’ve been swell to’ve gotten some metal in there, but hey. Also: all AC/DC songs sound the same.

Image source: Wikipedia

On a whim, I bought a plane ticket to Hong Kong. Alcohol may or may not have played a role in the decision.

Originally the plan was to use Hong Kong as a gateway to China, and travel onward to Guangzhou, Shanghai, Kaifeng, and the Shaolin temple in Zhengzhou, but from what it looks like, visas for American citizens are at this time in my life prohibitively expensive. Maybe next time!

So I’ll be going to Hong Kong with three friends from here, all Americans—our Taiwanese friends are not exactly doing backflips about our desire to go to China—one of whom lived in China for 3 years (in Kaifeng, actually).

We’ll make sure to hit up Macau, too, as Hong Kong might not be enough to entertain us for 5 days. Although I’m really looking forward to seeing the Tian Tan Buddha in all its monstrous glory.

Image source: Tian Tan Buddha by Oye-sensei

It will be a marvellous time.

Hell, yes. I’m very pleased with this thing. I’m pleased because you are fuckin’ lazy, and I am fuckin’ busy. You know?

I seriously love this hat. More than that other one.

For the coming weekend my university here has organized a trip to Taipei for all the international students. I should get to meet a fair number of people. I hear there are some Dutch and French people, as well as lots from various Southeast Asian countries, so it should be a pleasant time.

I’ve saved many Taipei activities for this trip, as at least some of it will be on the school’s tab. That said, here are a few things I was lucky enough to see on my last trip.

Upon arriving to the city, I was able to bear witness to a gorgeous sunset.

I love the motion of the bicyclist in this picture.

The plan was originally to make it to Taipei 101 in time to photograph the mountains in sunset, but it took a while to get to that part of town. By the time I did get to it, it was fully dark, so I just took pictures of the outside of the building, rather than paying to go all the way to the time.

There was a splendid foot court in the basement complex, though. I wasn’t as adventuresome as I usually am in terms of food, because I saw fried rice and noodles and went wild, and everything was about US$1 a plate. Hell, yeah!

Nighttime is a great time to wander around and snap pics of things and places I can’t identify, but are pretty.

Sorry I’ve been tossing together only photo posts with very little narrative or speculative content. Things are fun here and there is much beauty of all kinds. Still sorting through all of that.

]]> http://www.conorschaefer.com/blog/index.php/2008/10/02/a-small-taste-of-taipei/feed/ 4 http://www.conorschaefer.com/blog/index.php/2008/09/19/im-in-taiwan-now/ http://www.conorschaefer.com/blog/index.php/2008/09/19/im-in-taiwan-now/#comments Fri, 19 Sep 2008 11:16:46 +0000 Conor http://www.conorschaefer.com/blog/?p=611 This post has been a long time coming. Really I’ve only been here a few days, but as I’m sure is understandable, it feels much longer.

I got in about 10:30pm on Tuesday night. This means I’ve had three days’ worth of classes, and had my ass handed to me in every one of them. The instructors really are great, but I have a lot of studying to do to bring my Mandarin up to par.

Upon getting to the dormitory where I’ll be staying and meeting my roommates, I realized I wouldn’t be able to sleep. It took 23 hours to get from Philadelphia to Taipei, and I’d slept for most of it. Also, given the timezone difference (GMT +7 or EST +12), my body just wasn’t feeling it needed a nap.

So I decided to go for a walk around campus and the city. One of my roommates with whom I had a good vibe offered to tag along, and it seemed genuine, so I accepted. I reasoned that I would be able to wander much farther if I had a guide, and hopefully he could point out some places of interest which I could revisit later in the week.

The plan worked marvellously. Max and I walked and talked for an hour or two, I overstimulated myself, and even snapped some great pics.

There are many more great pictures to come. The upstream bandwidth I’m allotted here is abysmal, so I’ll have to start uploads before I go to bed, and make posts in the morning. I’ll try to do that soon.

On Sunday I’ll be going to Taipei by train.

More details to come.

Allegedly, there will be someone at the airport to pick me up when I get there.

I wish I knew how to say “God bless you” in Japanese. It would have come in handy quite a bit today.

Promptly after taking off, I spilled orange juice all over myself and then fell asleep, wet and sticky. I feel like an ambassador already.

Oh, and for the record, Taiwan’s timezone is GMT +8. That means EST +12, if that makes it easier.

Time to board.

The first trip I took up there, a Friday, my application was declined. The reason given was that they at the consulate wanted to know more about the curriculum at the university in Taiwan I’d be attending. I didn’t see why that was important, of course, and still don’t, actually, but, not having access to The Big Book Of Important Shit like these people evidently do, I figured it was best to take their word for it and bring back whatever they asked for. My acceptance letters to the program from both my unversity in the U.S. and the university in Taiwan were simply insufficient to convince these people of my intention to attend classes there. OK, super.

So I made a second trip. This was on the following Wednesday, the only day of finals week at my university that I didn’t have an exam. I brought with me my life history on paper. I had e-mails from every party involved in the matter, written confirmation of disbursement of my scholarship, bank statements corroborating a deposit of equal value, acceptance letters, Cheetos, a written statement from my mom saying how awesome I am—there was no way they could turn me down.

The girl helping me through the application process seemed to think the same. Then she slid the whole mass of papers back to me and said, “You also need two photos and you don’t have those.” I slowly touched my finger to the pictures I’d placed on her desk along with everything else. She seemed a little annoyed that she’d have to go through with the application process, but the papers were slid back across the table and the photos picked up.

“These aren’t the right size. We cannot use them and so the application is invalid. You will have to come again.”

I of course proceeded to explain that they were so totally the right size that the International Bureau of Weights and Measures had written me requesting to house one of them in some basement in Paris as the fucking SI standard for passport photo. My argument was less than persuasive.

Fortunately—according to her—I wasn’t to fret, because replacement photos could easily be obtained from a photo store that was just around the corner from the consulate. Not half a block away! I’d shown up at a reasonable time, so it looked like I could go get new photos, then come back and finish the application in plenty of time, same day. Great, right?

It should not have surprised me that the photo place, literally two doors down from the Taiwanese Consulate—a single Starbucks weakly fractured the aura of assocation between the two establishments—was run by Taiwanese people. I waited behind a persnickety woman for a while, before an employee stepped in from the side and asked me what I needed. I said a photo for a Taiwanese visa, and she responded with pleasure, as though it were an exceedingly simple task. She showed me to the photographer in the back.

It should be noted that the nice man taking my picture grinned and gave me a thumbs up as I snapped a pic of this sign with my cell phone.

After snapping a few shots and showing them to me for comparison, so that I could choose the one with least glare on my glasses, the man plugged in his camera and began to crop the photos on a computer. He then printed them out and cut them up, I believe cropping them even further. Whatever. He assured me he was very familiar with the requirements for “next door.” No surprise there.

The friendly old photographer hands me my two freshly cut photographs in an envelope and sends me off to the register up front. When I get there, the helpful cashier with a great New York accent reasonably supposes, “American passport?” I said no, that actually they were for a visa for Taiwan. He yells, “Oh!” and with a single button press on the register, my total flips from $6.00 to $14.50. For two photos. I recalled that I’d paid $9 in Philadelphia for six photos, which I still believed (and still do believe) were the right size.

These new ones I got were indeed exactly the same as my old ones. I only got two with my purchase, though, so I couldn’t take one home to show to friends, as two were required by the application. Bah.

So I pass by the Starbucks and head upstairs at the consulate again. I turn in my photos. The woman is very pleased with me, presumably because of how willingly I gave $14.50 to her cousin or brother or uncle, and says my application is now complete. She fills out a “visa pickup” form, handwrites in 4:00pm, and dismisses me for the time being.

I wander around that section of New York—right next to Bryant Park and the NYPL, for those interested—for a bit, and make it back by 4:00pm on the dot. The woman who helped me earlier that afternoon looks very upset and motions me over hastily to ask what I’m doing here. I point to the time on the paper she’d given me, and she points to the date, which was the day after. Oops.

On my third trip to New York, several days later, I picked up the visa without a single incident. Well, actually, there was one slight issue, but the people in New York assure me it’s not a problem: my visa is good for only 60 days, when my trip will last substantially longer than that.

Oh, well. At least I have something to let me into the country!

Now I can pay off that $1,400+ ticket I charged to my credit card with a $1,500 limit.

I shall also buy lots of cocaine.

=D

]]> http://www.conorschaefer.com/blog/index.php/2008/08/22/calloo-callay-im-going-to-taiwan/feed/ 5 http://www.conorschaefer.com/blog/index.php/2008/08/18/what-is-wrong-with-this-picture/ http://www.conorschaefer.com/blog/index.php/2008/08/18/what-is-wrong-with-this-picture/#comments Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:58:07 +0000 Conor http://www.conorschaefer.com/blog/?p=602 Exhibit A:

Can you tell what’s wrong with this picture?

1. That man has King Leonidas’s head plastered on in a really shitty GIF way.
2. The title of the video implies there are other techno remixes of “This is Sparta!”.
3. It has over 17 million views.
4. I’m watching it, too.

In case didn’t cause you to hang your head in shame for being a part of this mess called the internet, try this one on for size.

Exhibit B:

What’s wrong here?

1. Over 19 million views.
2. Over 19 million views.
3. Will you look at these fucking peppers?
4. Over 10 million views.

The internet is dying, folks.

For the record, this particular YouTube excursion happened as a result of poring over the Internet Memes timeline over at Dipity. Requests were made to verify some of the claims laid out, and hence the “leeroy jenkins” in my search bar.

Hence also the flying spaghetti monster wallpaper. (For the record, the timeline credits the FSM as being born on January 14, 2005, while the website itself claims it all began in May 2005. It appears the domain name venganza.org was registered on November 24, 2004.)

And then I blogged about it. Sigh.

Unfortunately, I, cameraless, was unable to snap photos all day long of fun things that we did. So I had to wait until I got home and I could snap them with my laptop’s camera.

Behold.

That’s right, I bought a cowboy hat. In Manhattan.

Now, I understand that it’s not a real cowboy, and actually looks exactly like a cowboy hat that one would buy in Manhattan, but still, I’m really freaking pleased with it. Everyone tells me it’s extremely “me,” whatever the hell that means. And it was $20. So whatever.

Alright, I went kind of crazy with the pictures. You can tell I miss having a camera, no?

One final note: I know y’all are teetering on the brink of sanity right now, so maddened are you by the furious jealousy pounding in your skulls (which are most certainly not housed under cowboy hats, I think it’s safe to say), but I hope that this cowboy hat does not come between us.