To Live and Work in Taipei

To all my peoples in the struggle-

It was all a dream. I skated and worked to make ends meet but I never really tried to do better than the best possible moment until lzyk threw me out. I went into a different dream, that has become like a game, of how money I can make.

They say skating is a lifestyle. It's true as fuck. I haven't been able to reconcile my addiction to profit with my desire to skate, so I haven't skated for a while, like how a junkie just didn't show up for a while because of an insuppressible urge. I'm discouraged because when I get back to it, I'll be starting from scratch. It's almost like being injured for long term. A year later, you just start again from the bottom. And I'm about to start again from the bottom, cause I just quit my Mon Wed Fri gigs.

Skating isn't what makes you a skater, it's not being able to stop that makes you a skater.

Caterpillar Massacre

Went to the beach over the weekend with hyadees. It was great, but the gnats were horrendous, I saw my first giant centipede, foreigners tried to scare us while camping, and the heat was so brutal that some members of the party surrendered themselves to the centipedes and slept on top of their tent (s), leaving their fates up to the gods. We all survived. Probably mountain camping is the next camping though.

I got back to find my rooftop garden absolutely ravaged by caterpillars. The bastards had eaten most of my flowers and several sunflowers. They got into the basil and wiggled and chewed and pooped on everything but the Japanese maple and the cucumbers and the peppers. I took out the claws of death and ripped the life from their nasty little bodies.

It's been pouring rain and work. No time to skate. For a while.

Addiction

I tried a dangerous and expensive new drug and now I'm afraid I'm addicted. I don't know what it's called in English, but in mandarin, it sounds like "lencheeji." It's so addictive that if I'm not using for even one minute, I start feel really uncomfortable and uneasy. My body starts sweating and I have trouble doing even the simplest of tasks. The withdrawals are so bad that now that I tried it, I basically will do anything to get it. My habit is costing me thousands of ntd per month. In the day time, I can't work without it, and I basically spend my time hurrying from one lencheeji traphouse to another. Fortunately, I guess, it's available literally everywhere in the city - I see users on the MRT, lurking in the underground walkways, in the 7 -elevens and fami's, openly using in restaurants, in cars, on buses. It's crazy. The other day, I took an uber and the driver was so hopped up on lencheeji that he wasn't even breaking a sweat, even though it was 35 degrees and 100% humidity.
I didn't expect to get hooked, but I guess no one does. I tried it work (actually, I've been a regular user at work for some time. I should mention some workplaces are stingier about it than others), and in restaurants and nightclubs sometimes. I thought I would never get hooked as long as I didn't use it at home. I made it many months without ever turning on the purpose made dispenser, but last night I broke down, and now here I am, with it cranked to max, getting my fix for the second night in a row. I'll probably keep using, even as I sleep. I'm dreading that when I wake, I'm going to have to go 20 minutes without it on the way to work. Maybe I'll just hire that uber again and see if he'll share some of his stash. This is definitely going to kill my monthly budget, but now that I popped the cherry, I think there's no going back. I wonder if it's possible to OD and actually freeze to death.

Value Stream Mapping

The sky is lit and the birds are aggressively singing. I am typing because rmj and fa kept me up until dawn. Mostly, we (I) drank and the tried to skate main station, and they were more responsible. We stooped up at the family until well after dawn. Now the fucking birds are singing so loudly that I can't sleep, and I've talked myself sober. French people are overly good at the conversations.