tropical winter

this is the first year i really felt routinely cold in the winter here. last night, after the camo tie event, lzyk and i met with her friends and tchris at a videogame bar. it's not one of those internet cafes where people get their throats slit and you can buy cheap noodles. in fact, you can't buy cheap anything there. but you can buy good beer and play just about every console ever made. i stopped playing video games around the time that controllers began to use a toggle to walk around and a seperate toggle to look around, so i was less enthused as the rest of them, but it's a pretty fun bar, and would be an exceptionally awesome if i was into video games. we dropped off lzyk's friends in the promised land (林森北路) at their hotel (they are upstanding citizens and I dont think they knew just where they were going to stay, or "live", as we say around here.) i insisted we go for a walk, since we were already there, and it was already after 0200. this was a good idea. you never know what you're going to get when you wander through the taxis, binlang, neonlights, garbage, foodstalls, racks of lace panties, bras and other assorted paraphenalia for hte career women who work in the area. 

i wanted to show tchris how to gamble for sausage (not a euphemism, it's just the most fun way to buy sausages here) but we stumbled through the conversation with the cook who finally made us undestand that if we win, it's going to take him 15 minutes to cook our winnings, because the line was too long. we passed and found the best pig parts stand anywhere on earth. i've been there before a few times, and it's the jewel of 林森北路. i was slightly disappointed that no prostitutes had accosted tchris yet, but i think it was because lzyk was there. tchris didnt like the looks of open air offal, so we waded through the taxis to the other bank of the street, where he had spotted the telltale red and black yakitori lanterns. we picked out the components of the feast and got invited to a table of women who shared their red wine with tchris, because he is 帥哥. they also ordered oodles of food and lzyk got a couple of rounds of tb's for the table.  tchris and i practiced our mandarin (this sounds much more responsible than it was) and lzyk gritted her teeth and talked to weirdo ghost women in the redlight district until 5 am. she is the perfect woman. thanks lzyk, i know that really isn't your favorite activity. then she woke up a few hours later to go sightseeing with her friends. she bought me a shuangxi stamp, the origins of which are too convoluted to go into here. 

i suffered through the day regretting those last half dozen tallboys. i only went outside when lzyk insisted i do so to pick up the turkish food she was dropping off for me. i think she was trying to show off how well she treats me to her friends. she came back home as i was returning to something like a human state, about dark. she fell asleep with her clothes and make up on, and is still asleep nearly 12 hours later. i woke up to the scream of the white ferrari that tears around taipei late at night, around 0230. i tried to go back to sleep, but i m not good at that, so i went for a walk instead. it is really cold. you can't taste the dioxins in the air anymore from the tire factory fire in taoyuan. the city feels unusually empty. while it's nice to never need more than a hoody, i wish i didnt feel cold in my house. we dont have heaters here. i wish i had skated.