Wake up, undercover systems...

...that erase your will to live,
so just get in place it's too late
the vaccine has been destroyed;
our disease will render humans void.
Distress, lost inside my mind.
End this, and show me what you find.
Technology defines your life,
lose it all--beginning with your strife.

A catscan to your soul (into my soul)
designing destiny (on the run)
collect your thoughts and start again (start again)
your eyes are still on fire (and burning)

Fear the end, you know it's coming soon,
the years spin, locked inside your room.
Hit the gas, you're going to make me break:
one more is all that I can take.
Don't think, sleep & drink today,
eventually it will happen anyway,
when your frame is crack dead on the floor.
I just don't feel the same way any more.

I challenge any of you to name the song, the band that played it, the album it is from, or composers :p Anyway my life has settled [after a fashion] into that pace where days flow into weeks and the time passes without one noticing. Really... a while ago I said to my classmate, "holy crap, it's October." Well, I actually said "十月" but that's beside the point... because now September is quite passed.

Anyway, as to new developments in the past week... hmm... it turns out my church choir accompanist's boyfriend is a drummer, and that furthermore he is impressed by my drumming to the point of calling it "fierce" & consequently I have access to some free drums soon I think (though there's the transportation). Choir is good on all fronts, church choir's got a concert on Saturday. I also got delegated into doing another solo from a different part of the Gospel Mass [w00t/lol]. School choir is good, the classical music is teaching me a bit of vibrato, volume & proper high notes. When I go to that choir I can sing for 3 hours and have my voice not be fucked, it's really cool. & our teacher rules a lot

For the most part I've been doing a lot of reading & having my mind sift through things and intellectualizing. In the past week I read Steal this Book and now I've gotten into educational philosophy. At first I was interested in the homeschooling movement and methodologies, then it was classical education and now a book by John Gatto called The Underground History of American Education which I am partway through. If you want to know what Gatto is about check out this oft-quoted speech of his.

Did a bit of jogging recently around our school track... a kilometer here, a mile there, but I want to get in better shape. Exercise alone just makes me feel good, but if I could get some real lung capacity, my singing would rock a lot more. Also, our school had a mass medical test where all the students filled out forms, had height & weight measured (on a cool automatic machine) and had their hearts monitored. It took me a long time to figure out the machine screwed up when I talked.

Some stuff about Taipei: My game to avoid boredom on the subway is to count pregnant women. I used to count foreigners but there are too frequent, like you might see 5 or 10 in a day. So every day since I've arrived, I have seen at least one pregnant woman, sometimes two or three. It is now a random source of comfort and happiness for me... my father says there used to be more. Also, the garbage trucks (which come twice a day) play "Fur Elise" constantly. And by that I mean the first 12 bars, except in a higher key. And you have to bring your garbage out to the trucks, they don't pick stuff up.

I'd like to leave you with this quote from another American exchange student:
"Alex - 何立德　(Insert some witty name here) says:
true or false: a lot of Taiwanese women are hot"