drive carefully

What happens when you're walking through a beautiful forest park on the small mountains outside Taipei, heading to a grassland 1000 metres above sea level, and you come across a sign about driving? Take a picture!

Unfortunately I didn't get one (we were in the car) of the numerous "Owl Crossing" signs, but I plan to go back later in the year. Anyway, things have been o.k. the last couple days. Saturday was random, went to a Rotary planning meeting in the morning, and we saw not two but EIGHT Mormon missionaries. I had already asked some about D&C 89:9 so I had nothing to say but they waved at us. Then was the choir concert; however, nobody told me that there was a FULL CATHOLIC MASS beforehand. So, for an hour and a half (90 minutes) I sat through that, in Chinese of course. I don't even know the things that everyone says at the English ones, mreh. Managed to avoid communion (yay).

Helped Jack, the accompanist's bf, pack up his drums and then we went to his house. Set up the drums (6th floor, but there was an elevator most of the way) in his music room and played a bit. One time he left the room and I started playing and he came in right away and made me show him how to do a single-stroke triplets fill. Then we taught each other sticktwirls and stuff. The best part was when I learned the names for all the different drums and cymbals in Chinese, and taught him some English as well. So we're conversation partners. In the evening I talked to my sister a bit, and it was instructive.

Today we went to Yangmin Mountain park and hung out. Some nice forest hiking and then a pretty high-altitude windswept grassland. Scott & I talked theology, roleplaying & revisionist history the whole way. No Chinese for us! On the way out we drove to a place where lots of sulphur gas was coming out of the ground & that was pretty neat too. I have a fair number of good pictures of most of this, because the light was terrific today, very bright so lots to work with. Also one picture of me with my family. I don't feel like uploading any more pics now though, maybe a picture post later... also Scott agreed to burn me stuff basically at cost with his laptop, so I no longer have to worry about hard drive space.

Let me say now that I fear for Scott when he is living with my family, because man does my mother not understand his food allergies... of the two snacks today that she said were "ok" for him to eat, one contained 'Soy Sauce' [not for eating by Scott] & the other 'Milk' [likewise]. And the concept of "a little bit is not ok" does not get to her, in any language... like sometimes she will give him stuff, then he feels sick, and when pressed she admits it had "only a little bit" of soy or w/e in it. Also at dinner, we told her that he couldn't eat egg & that I didn't like it so to order our meals without. Of course, mine came fine sans oeuvre; however, Scott's had a big fried egg with it. So we made them take it back, but then they brought the same dish back with it scraped off, leaving plenty of obvious deadly residue. The second time the lied and said it was a new one, but they really just did a better scrape job, so he wasn't feeling too well after dinner.

That's about it for now. What's with this Drew thing? Does he never die or run out of people to befriend & betray? Also, the lyrics are from "Systematic Failure" by Genetic Drift's untitled album. Too bad they broke up, but I hope Sean & Quinn's new jam band is working well... also I wonder how the Smoke-dogg is down in Victoria.