The air is cool, not fully cold, just…crisp. The sky is clear, save for a few veils of cloud too thin to catch any of the light pollution from the city. It’ dark enough that I can see a few stars, Orion’s Belt off to the south. A brilliant silver white moon is competing with the street lights. It’s quiet, just the sound of a few cars in the distance and the wind rustling the leaves of a nearby palm tree. It feels wrong, like I’m not in Hsinchu anymore, it feels… like Gotheburg in September.… Read the rest
M.I.A – take your money is pumping in the red and green light behind me. In front of me is compact darkness, no, not completely compact, an uneven line dividing the trees from the sky is discernible in the distance. The cold night air embraces me with chilly claws but I remain standing. The clomping of high healed shoes has joined the beat of the music and amidst all the revelers is a girl in an expensive dress and a guy in a nice suit. They are bobbing up and down with the rest in general ecstasy. The man is … Read the rest
There is a soft hum in the background and every once in a while a low squeaking can be heard. The train glides slowly, seemingly without effort, through the green landscape shifting from forest to field and back to forest again under a sky full of light clouds; mist creeps across the fields and to my right the sun is setting. The coach is short with only a few groups of seats in grey and white with wooden tables in between. The roof is domed like that of an airplane but with big windows stretching upwards. Except for me there … Read the rest
I am on the top of the mountain, leaning on the wall of what must have been a fortress looking out over the city in the dwindling sunset. The darkening sky overhead shifts to a paler blue close to the horizon where it meets a band of yellow then one of orange. Below, the city lies in a sort of shadowy dusk. Some skeletal trees stretches their black fingers upwards, contrasting the colorful sky. The big group of women who were with me on the way up seem to have disappeared except for a few vainly trying to catch some … Read the rest
I am skirting a horseshoe shaped pond to the west of the main palace. Due to coming directly from Taiwan my clothing is insufficient for the Korean winter so I have to keep walking to keep warm. In the pond are two rectangular islands with some kind of pine trees growing on them and in the center of the horseshoe shape is a gigantic two story pavilion. Big wet flakes of snow fall slowly but the absolutely still surface of the pond is still unfrozen. The surroundings are rather barren, sand, yellow grass and a few pines, and the palaces … Read the rest
I’m sitting at a table in a garden drinking tea, it is dark, the ambient light from the nearby cafe building spilling out on the people sitting here combined with a small oil lamp is the only thing that illuminates us. The early december air is verging on cool and in the background I can hear the noise of the nearby motorway as the walls around the garden do not block it out completely. Three women are sitting around me having a lively discussion is Chinese and one of the women’s son sits in front of me fiddling with a … Read the rest
The sky is blue and the bright sun makes the clear blue water dazzle. Under my bare feet is a mass of smooth, palm size, sea polished, round stones. The stone beach stretches out to my left in a sort of natural pier between the sea and the river mouth, and curls a little towards the tip where the river meets the sea. I sit down to watch the waves for a little while. Close to the coast the water brings with it sand and stones and turns from a brilliant blue to a darker, more muddled hue as the … Read the rest
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