Well, that took a while

Don't you love it when you think you'll have free time, but you are actually really busy? (And when you think you can sleep in but you end up being woken up earlier than you regularly get up) Sorry for not posting earlier, but I'll give you the details of my "Moon Festival Weekend." Feel free to call me 'neglectorb.'

As you may already know, earlier in the month my school had class on a Saturday morning, so I didn't have to go to school on Monday. Since Tuesday was a holiday/festival, that meant a "4 day weekend;" however, I put that in quotes because unlike conventional weekends, I didn't do all that much sleeping in or lolling about.

Saturday: Got up at about 8:00 AM, hopped on the subway to school. That's right, my high school choir practises every Saturday morning from 9:00-12:00 (did I mention that last year they beat out the nation's other high school choirs to be #1 in Taiwan?). Practise was fun, and as I was leaving, a couple of girls stopped me & I got invited to two class barbecues [烤肉]. I forget what happened in the middle, but in the evening, I went to 中和 with my mother.

We went to her older sister's house, because her brother-in-law is like a citizen's leader there. There was a community event of some sort, at which my mom was playing Chinese fiddle (two strings with the bow in between). Most of it was random people doing karaoke very badly, so for the most part I barbecue'd with some people. Said people were a small group of college students as well as people from my extended family. The only things we could talk about in Chinese were what kind of girls I liked and music... I learned the Chinese word for Evanescence & how to play the card game that everyone plays here; surprisingly easy.

Sunday: Slept in until...[drumroll]... 10:30 AM, yay. Went to a concert at my mom's church... it was a mixed bag for performers, but I got a feel for the acoustics as I'll be soloing there later this year. It's really big, but fairly new, nice stained glass and stuff, & not so cluttered as the European cathedrals I've visited. I don't have a picture. There was an amateur Christian Rock band (I don't know why they needed 4 vocalists, but w/e), several choirs, a youth band of kids playing many different xylophones &c. all hardcore. And some guy who played the soprano recorder (except about 10 million times better) on some classical song.

Went to Gongguan afterwards to meet up with people from S109 to go to BBQ #2. This time, it was at a restaurant, so the grill was powered by electricity. Dinner was good & I ate a lot... afterwards I went out with a bunch of the girls from that class to a photo place and we made lots of the small groups photos in the Japanese booths. <=== that was an awkward sentence, suggestions?

Monday: Choir in the morning again; however, today, I was to meet people outside Wanfang High School, so I didn't want to spend 1.5 hours travelling between home & school in a 3 hour period. So, I hung out with some students & our choir teacher afterwards. She became fascinated/delighted with my score for "Stardust," so I lent it to her. We all went out to a noodle place, where I discovered that the Korean spicy vegetable stuff I have with my beef noodles is also available as a soup. w00t. It being "Teacher's Day" (as well as Moon Festival & Confucius' birthday) the next day, I insisted on treating her to lunch. As I am a quasi-guest in this coutry, she likewise insisted on treating me. lol

The barbecue with the other class later that day was good. It was under a bridge and two classes from my school showed up. There was some mud to walk through and also it was raining outside the bridge, but it was really fun. I don't think I got to try BBQ'd squid though. Some people offered me vodka coolers, but naturally I was obliged to decline.

That evening, exchange students came up to our house from down-Island, including the Canadien that I like a little; she's neat. They decided that "since we're in Taipei, we HAVE to go to the night market." Some were staying with Scott, so we dropped off their bags at his house. He was in his housecoat about to go to bed when we got there, but I was like, "No, f*** that. You're coming with us, and getting as little sleep as we do." We went to the 'snake' night market, with lots of snake restaurants. Scott took the opportunity to do some air rifle shooting for fun (the prizes were cigarettes but we didn't want any). We got to bed around 1:00 AM

Tuesday: My father woke us up at 4:30 AM, and we got a taxi to the Confucius temple. The ceremony (starting 5:50 AM) was a little dull, so after a while we got bored and took pics of the people with the cameras, & not the ceremony. The day was random, and I fell asleep almost at an Imax later that day. Still it was fun for some of it. Afterwards, Scott & I watched most of the Cowboy Bebop movie at his house, but my mom made me come home right before the end.

My family was going to another barbecue (with the proper full moon so it's the 'Real Moon Festival'). She said my father would come pick me up on his scooter in 15 minutes, so I decided to take a nap. That was maybe 5:45 PM. At 9:55 PM I was awoken to the sound of everyone returning. I couldn't sleep after that for a long time, so I finished reading Steal This Book online. Afterwards I got into education theory & homeschooling articles/essays, such as this thing by John Gatto. That's been my interest since. I went to bed again at 4:30 AM.

Wednesday & Thursday have been pretty regular, maybe I'll discuss them later but now it's time for bed. That's my weekend, so post a comment.

for I have promises to keep

"Open your heart and let spring in. Or leave town."

Well I am going to shower and sleep in a few minutes. All I can say right now is school has been really busy... this weekend is a 4-day weekend featuring Moon Festival (& therefore gorging on moon cakes) so I'll have time to blog properly. I've just been going to school & studying Chinese a bit.

I joined another choir, that being my school's choir. They are a big choir, and in the warmup it was loud--loud like almost hurt your ears loud. Ah, the sweetness of a true big choir. Anyway, class has been fun, mostly. There have been some problems among the exchange students; however, they may be resolved soon. As to keeping promises/taking care of business, I bought postcards today for the people who were interested. Also, Alleah I believe wanted to see Scott & Claire. Well they're both here:

[From left to right, starting at the top: Fabio, Anna, Claire, Kyle, Kaylee, Yu-Gyeong, Célia, Yoshiteru, Me, Scott, Kenta, Laura, Noemie, Wil, Michael, Raphael, Alex, Lisa, Etienne, Claire]

BTW the quote is from a journal I was considering buying. I went with another one, because I only want it for jotting down stuff people tell me in Chinese (otherwise I forget like right away). Keep posting, and I shall endeavour to have something more, exciting to say come the weekend. In the meantime, post a comment or whatever.

An update (高中 & 淡水)

I don't know if I've posted in a while, but here's an update on my life for those of you who might follow it with a modicum of interest.

I have started school (as of Thursday) finally. On Wednesday, we did Taiwanese traditional flag & ribbon dancing [boys & girls respectively]. I have pictures/video of that, incl. pics of the people Alleah & whoever so desperately wanted to see. But my camera is in the other room, so not today. It was much fun. My class is Grade 10s... 42 people, evenly girls & boys. The girls all sit at the front, & the boys all at the back, so it's weird--I don't talk to girls during class.

I have been photographed a lot of times & it's pretty random. Many girls think I am handsome or cute or something, which I find strange... though I do rather enjoy my hair nowadays. Some people are still shy (esp. younger girls) but whatever, it's only been two days & my class is especially cool. A lot of my friends like hip-hop & the likes, so there is really sweet urban art on the back wall of the class... in between classes somebody will plug an MP3 ("MP-san") player into the mic jack and pump pop music over the classroom speakers. I went to a school show on Friday where the rock band played (they covered "bring me to life" and the girl sounded exactly like the chick from Evanescence) & also there wre hip-hop dance breaks -- very skilled.

Today was "School's Day" so we went to school on a Saturday. It's like "meet the teacher" except parents can watch you do your class, but only a few came. We get another day off later in the month to make a 4-day weekend for Moon Festival though, so it's all good. I had military training today. The first part, I did tons of pushups/jumping jacks. The second part we just did standing... my mom came & watched, but it was dull. Like our instructor made us go back & forth between sitting and various types of standing... then a class of girls showed up, so while he taught them, we all stood holding one position for 20 minutes, in the hot sun. It was fun though, because when they were sucky we would all make fun of their poor performance.

Afterwards, headed off with my friends to get ice dessert for lunch at a restaurant--'twas good. Saw some Mormon missionaries on the way there, chatted with them for a while. Also, I had "Pudding Milk Tea" today... I like it (unlike "Pearl Milk Tea," known in Canada as 'bubble tea'). Headed off to the MRT station & rode to Danshui. My friend had the bright idea of 'treating me' to the ride, so he scanned his EasyCard in on the entrance gate.

淡水: When I got to Danshui station (after standing nearly the whole way) I scanned my card on the exit gate and it just beeped red and flashed a message. So some guy took me over to the info desk, where I explained (in Chinese) that I couldn't speak Chinese.

Eventually, they found a staffer who was bilingual, and I explained to him what happened. So they had to key the information into my card manually & I ended up being charged full price anyway. Bah. If only he'd bought me a ticket... :p Met up with some exchange students... English Claire & Lisa were there at the start, and a creepy old Chinese guy was taking their picture & asking for their addresses just as I arrived, but he left. They weren't too happy about it. Other-Claire & Kyle showed up quickly, as well as French Alex. We found Ivan wandering through the crowd & Laura showed up around then as well. Anna came very late (we had to go get her, we were far away at the time).

It turned out we ran into Taipei history day or something, so there were random cultural activities we could do. For the most part, we all walked around the waterfront, saw some cute dogs, tried food and played games. Alex & Ivan were being a bit silly a lot of the time... Alex wanted some girls' pcitures or something, but he got shut down--we couldn't hear what they were saying but we could see. Kyle kept whispering "walk away" as our friend dug himself deeper & deeper. They also said lots of random things in Chinese & other languages to people walking around / shopkeepers. American-Claire & I were a little embarrassed. Claire & Anna both played a game where you shoot balloons with BB guns, doing very well and winning good prizes. None of the guys dared attempt as we were afraid we would be shown up.

For dinner we went to a French restaurant where Alex did a good job of talking to the host. It was confusing because I was unsure what language to speak to the servers in (the maitre d' was French, but they were Taiwanese). We met some 白人 who were studying Chinese on exchange from Belarus & Russia... they were at the #2-ranked university in Taiwan. Eventually we all went home. I discovered a bookstore across the street from my house (well, across the alley--the post office is across the street). Joy. Most of the books are in Chinese though, and it's none too cheap. But there are postcards.

So, if you have a hankering for a postcard in the next while (maybe not a little while, maybe a long while) I would be much obliged were you to post a comment (or send an email, for the more paranoid) with your mailing address & postal code. If my hotmail bounces, try sending it to kdobson@shaw.ca. I check that occassionally and it has lots of webspace.

As always, post a comment... about your life, this post, my grammatical errors, whatever. Even to bitch about your lack of Asia的文語 support.

Got spares?

"...theres these crap fricker things and theres like 50 of them and you have to kill them with a shotgun and a pistol." - Ted Neilson

If they were giving out awards for best blog, you would have to give them all to Ted; the above is my quote of the day. Anyway, the real reason for this post is to show y'all my schedule. This school is a little bit like elementary school, but they've arranged my timetable so I cut some of the crap & do more active things. Note that on Wednesday I don't really go to school at all, but just have Chinese culture class and a language class. The circled part is my "spare:" a time where I don't have to be anywhere in particular, so it is pure hanging out with exchange students.

Also, it should be noted that it so far has taken me an average of 42 minutes to get from my house to school or back. That means I leave home before 6:00 AM to get to school on time. 4 days a week. I'll see if I can grab some pics of other people tomorrow, but you never know. In the meantime, I'd love to hear what everbody's timetable looks like... post a comment:P

Stood up?

Adopt Your Own Emo Kid!

Yesterday & today I was "voluntold" to study in one of the school offices, as Wan-fang gaozhong's exchange students haven't begun class yet. Some people I thought were students (but who are actually just remarkably young teachers) gave me a tour of the school, and I bought lunch in the school store [translated as 'canteen']. It was a bit boring as all I could do was study Chinese; needless to say I developed a slight crick in my neck, and also got a bit frustrated. I got a children's newspaper (with bopomofo beside the characters) and began translating it, 'word' by word. The characters have no spacing in between, so you're never quite sure what is a bound phoneme/morpheme a polysyllabic word or stands alone--especially not until you've done a whole sentence.

It seems Rotary will not be paying for my school uniform. And by that I mean, I don't get a new one, but old stuff donated to the school by parents. It's in pretty good condition; however, there is one problem: all uniforms bear a student's identification number (and sometimes the name as well). I need them to have my name & number, but the sewing woman (I don't know how else to describe her position--she sits in a room full of uniforms, sewing the numbers on them) will not remove the old information. So, my mother & I have been removing the old names & numbers BY HAND with sewing scissors... no one here has heard of a seam-ripper. The numbers aren't so bad, but as everything is made of thread machine-sewn (not patches) the names are especially laborious to remove. I have done 3 shirts so far... today I did two and it maybe took me 2-4 hours; that's right, I lost track of time.

Today the Mexican student who will be studying at my school finally showed up (he arrived yesterday). It is my principal's birthday (though I've never seen him) so a secretary/teacher & I went to a supermarket to buy cards & a gift. All the exchange students who were there for language class wrote on it. Anna & Claire said that this evening they were going to a mall near Taipei City Hall MRT station, but it was too short of notice for Scott & I to join them, so we graciously declined. Though I enjoy highly the company of all exchange students, I must say that shopping with girls has never been one of my favourite hobbies.

Apparently tomorrow (somewhere in the 9AM-3PM period here, when most of you will be reading this -- under the assumption I have readers, save faithful Alleah) a large posse of exchange students is going to Danshui for the day. I think I am allowed to go. I gave my number to Anna, as did the others, and she said she would call this evening with particulars. As it is now past midnight I find that an unlikely occurrence in the immediate future. I have the faint hope I could get a call tomorrow morning, but as I don't know the meeting place or time for this endeavour, if that does not happen I am friendless for the day. mreh

I'll see what I can do for pictures on Wednesday perhaps, at Chinese culture class time. Also, some of you wondered how I could communicate with Scott if I was going for Chinese immersion. Well, I can't. And for that reason, he (the most desirous of fluency among us) prefers not to socialise with exchange students excessively, and even speaks to me in Chinese sometimes. It's a tradeoff here, the language barrier: either you slow yourself down reverting to English, or remain friendless, confused, & incommunicado for quite a long time. I don't know if I am ready for the latter as I like people. Sometimes, I wish they sent me to a country that spoke a language any less hard. Any contry. [though the culture is very interesting and I love the land & people]

I talk big words

Not of the intolerably dodecasyllabic variety. Simply put, today was pretty darn good.

Got up, hung up my laundry. Went with Scott & his mother to Zhong-Lun high school for Chinese Culture class. It started with a lot of long speeches, but then Rotex did some more skits and hilarious entertainment so it was all good. A Rotarian's daughter sung "Ave Maria" and a Taiwanese folk song, thereby impressing me. Eventually, the powers that be announced they were electing a "monitor" & "vice-monitors" for the class (these are basically gophers that are also supposed to address the group for the teachers). Scott volunteered for the lead role, citing his experience in ROTC officer's training as a key qualification.

As there were no volunteers for #2 or #3, I decided to step up to the plate. Before I tell you exactly what happened, let me explain; I am not magical. I do not have an above-average memory for people. I did, however, read a book called Remember Every Name, Every Time about attaching names to faces. In light of its teachings, I tried to meet every exchange student during the previous gathering and that mornings socialising. Also, I had a book from Rotary with photocopies of their business cards. So, when I was passed the mic (all cordless at Rotary functions) I proceeded to name all the exchange students (I knew their countries as well) in the completely random order they were sitting. This elicited some surprise, applause, and position #2 ... not that the role is important but I thought that event was good.

After that, everyone introduced themselves a little further. Most of us are inept speakers (damn Laura, whom you all know, rules) and many people could speak little English... still it's the official language of proceedings until people learn Chinese. Then everyone who was to study Chinese at Wan-fang high school (where I will attend) left as a group. Randomly enough, we got there like... maybe 2 hours early. So we had lunch at KFC (I managed to order my friend Scott a water in Chinese, but it was actually steaming hot -- mreh). Then we walked around a bit, and went up to the school to talk.

Chinese began at 2:00 PM, and our teacher said almost nothing in English, which was nice. It's nice how everything is just assumed, like it was nothing special to be able to write your name in Chinese or something. We basically learned Pinyin... but I was surprised to learn I had had a few misconceptions about it. I think I have it straight now, pretty much, though I still screw up a little. Unfortunately, we will not be using bopomofo, which is more straightforward--I guess this is because it requires memorizing new stuff beyond the English alphabet. We played a game like French dictée for a while, writing the stuff she said in Chinese into Pinyin.

Afterwards, Claire (the American one) & Anna randomly decided we should hang out at Starbucks. So everyone called their host families (we're supposed to go straight home) and then we all talked for a while. Somewhere today, Anna was going to light up a cigarette, so Scott took her cigarette away; don't judge anyone, but of course I completely agree with him. Scott & I rode the bus/MRT back to Yong-he, talking about various things: Chinese, school, taking people's cigarettes away, US policy, politics, morality, whatever. It was, for the most part, extremely interesting. One of the most interesting things was seeing Claire & Scott interact, because they are basically at opposite ends of the political spectrum (within opinions you can have in the US).

Choir was pretty good, though it was raining all hardcore on the way there, and it was one hell of a motorcycle (read: scooter) ride. My calves and feet (incl. shoes) were totally soaked though the rest of me remained dry. I was trying to explain a bit of the concept of gospel (& pretending to be a big, afro-american person when singing it for maximum soul) as well as holding on pure vowels. Of course, I am neither the director, nor able to talk music in Chinese, so it wasn't TOO effective.

As to the subject of my post... my father got back from Europe today. While he was teaching me to use the dryer, I finally broke down and asked him to speak to me exclusively in Chinese. I'm going to see how long I can go without actually speaking a word of English... I am of course thinking/writing in it, and listened to the English song "Wonderboy" earlier, but the radio in my room will play only Chinese (& Taiwanese, & Japanese, & Hakka) stuff. Yay.

Maybe I will go to school next week. In the meantime, I hope everyone will keep blogging and share their newly compromised lives (due to school).

"But I at last with weary feet...

Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My even-rest and sleep to meet."

Well, it has been a decidedly good weekend. Saturday was the Inbound orientation... while parts of it were boring speeches (the one about the history of Taiwan was excellent) the chance to meet with scads of inbound students (instead of the usual dearth of bàirén) made it all worthwhile. I learned the names/faces of many students; however, I forgot [when meeting again] Cindy from Wanfang High School. Afterwards, Scott, Claire & I went to an "eslite" bookstore to kill time.

There, we discovered that bookstores are kind of like libraries. That is, it's really quiet in them, because many people are reading; prices are comparable to stuff at Chapters (I mean like $10-25 CAD) so some find it cheaper to read there. Scott & I each bought a copy of what could quite possibly be the best book in existence: certainly more hilarious than the Mad Russian's Crime & Punishment.

There was a small party afterwards, dinner was ok--I finally worked up the testicular fortitude to eat a lot of the gross-looking chicken (which tastes like regular chicken, except they cut it weird, so there are bones and skin and yucky stuff). Also, I discovered that, indeed, old people here can speak Japanese [due to a long occupation of Taiwan by Japan]. Scott also mentioned that he thought 'indeed' was a pretentious word. I kind-of forgot Rtn Vino, because the last time I had seen her was 2 weeks ago at the airpor--managed to salvage it, though not before offering her my card again. D'oh.

There was a grandfather there who made us all a calligraphy thing, where it has our chinese names, & the maxim "Hao Xue Bu Lei" -- something along the lines of "Like studying & you will not tnire" or "Study hard & tirelessly." So I said "Anata-wa shoodo-ga joozu desu." He was surprised... but unfortunately I still suck harshly at Chinese. On the MRT back, Scott and I spoke to some random white people, who turned out to be Rotary Exchange students from another district. Now, about today:

I agreed on Thursday (as a Rotarian insistently volunteered herself) to go places today. I planned to get up at 9:00 AM, then meet her at the MRT station 70 meters away at 9:30. My mother woke me at 9:15, as my watch-alarm failed to wake me. Consequently, I rushed breakfast to make it on time. Once I arrived, it turns out Alice brought her good friend (also from my club) ... since I had actually "met" her by shaking hands and exchanging cards, I managed to remember her name (which made her happy).

We headed immediately towards Linshin station so we could visit the prestigious "National Palace Museum." I have heard part of the reason it rocks so much is because the government which fled to Taiwan in the Communist revolution stole all the good artifacts from mainland China; however, regardless it must be said that it rocks a lot (if you like Chinese stuff). I took some pictures but it was dark so many are blurry. I saw really sweet stuff, like imperial seals. A cool thing was this famous painting & poem "ode upon the red cliffs".... in the painting there is a little boat containing the scholar who writes the poem. Somebody made a replica carved out of an olive stone. The pit of an olive. With 8 little people inside, 4 articulating latticed doors, and a tea service on the table inside, with the poem carved on the bottom. All one piece. Insane.

Lunch was good, but expensive. I didn't realise for a while that everything was shared by everyone so I tried to order like one thing. Also, the staff brought me a fork again, which pisses me off. Alice's friend Stacey taught me the correct way to hold chopsticks, but it really sucks because it kind of hurts my hand and I'm not so good at it. Here's the picture I took off my camera before the bitchy batteries tired out again:

Another thing I saw which was really sweet was this decorative ivory thing... somehow, out of all one piece, they made an object with 9 latticed balls, one inside the other. The technique is now lost, but I saw it with my own eyes and it r0x0r3d my s0x0rz. There were also ridiculously small latticed boxes connected with chain, all made out of one piece of jade or ivory. Much sweetness, I am going back at least twice more. Imagine carving links of chain (interlinked and that can move around) out of a solid piece of stone, really I think it was very hardcore.

Afterwards, we went to the movie theatre, which was very big. The lineup was stupidly long... I wanted to see "Super Size Me," but it wasn't showing today... the next best thing was "the Terminal" which I'd already seen. We bought tickets then went to dinner at a Chinese Japanese restaurant (by that I mean the servers didn't speak Japanese and there was no sushi or sashimi). Alice's mother met us there, and she could also speak Japanese. The elderly rock... they are very cool & multi-lingual. So afterwards we watched the movie and people laughed in the weirdest places. Like the stuff I thought was funny, I was the only one, and almost the whole crowd was totally broken up at things where I hardly cracked a smile. I attribute part of it to the subtitles, but I felt like my sense of humour was messed up.

Anyway, turns out since one of the Japanese guys isn't registered at my school, so we are all not starting until Tuesday. Day off w00t. As always, post a comment. If you have nothing to say, tell me where the quote that titles/begins this post comes from. Rock on.

I love myself today

Maybe I got the perfect amount of sleep or something, but I'm feeling pretty darn good. I am going to an Inbound Students Orientation all day, so I probably won't be online when any of you are up. Just randomly... does 'Wanko' seem like a random name for a clothing store? Because I know it cracks me up every time I go by it. Also, I saw douches for sale a while ago.

Another random thought: one thing I enjoyed a lot was having someone else wash my hair; however, I haven't had the opportunity to repeat the experience, because my hair wasw subsequently removed from my head. Plus, it costs NT 88$ (about $3.38)... mreh

Incidentally, gospel is very, very awesome. Seriously, our choir is doing this gospel mass, and every single part of it (6 songs over 56 pages) has a part where it breaks down into "Gospel Rock." Even though the music is written in English, I haven't been able to understand all the stylistic markings. Does anyone know what "vamp as necessary" means? I'm pretty sure "ad lib obbligato" means you must improvise off the melody; however, it seems a bit of a contradiction--being obliged to interpret the music freely seems a bit random to me.

Anyway, that's about all I have to say for now, sorry about the disjointedness of this post.

Here it is

Well, there it is. I paid all of 376 NT for that haircut. I kept my ponytail too, just not attached to my head. Now I am ready to be confused at a Taiwanese High School. Note the sweat due to excessive heat.

Anyway, I also went to a Rotary meeting, where I had to give a speech in chinese. It was very short, to say the least. The sad thing was, I asked if they wanted a Canadian flag, adding "to put next to your flag, that you sing the national anthem at when a meeting begins." Unfortunately, Taiwan--having sovereignty issues--does not use the flag/song at Rotary meetings. This is because China insists on owning Taiwan: also note at the Olympics, Taiwan is called "Chinese Taipei" and they have a random flower for a flag, not their real flag. What I didn't expect was that my club is ladies' club, so all the members are women. I have only seen like two male Rotarians this whole time.

Anyway, as always I urge you all to post a comment. Or two. I like comments.

shoe-in, w00t

Well, I just got my second tenor solo of all time... we went to my host mother's church choir (go Catholicism) and it turns out they are short on tenors. So I ended up with a solo in a gospel mass (with gospel/rock Kyrie, Gloria, Agnus Dei &c.). If you're counting, that's my second solo of all time (after 'boston beans' in "Java Jive"). We also practised the Vatican national anthem, which we will perform at the Vatican City embassy to celebrate something to do with the Pope.

Tomorrow, I must give a speech at a Rotary club; then I will probably get a haircut later in the day. If you were wondering, here is a pic of my glorious guitar:

It's an acoustic-electric with on-board equalizer. Steel strings (of course), cutaway body so I can solo [as if]...but oddly enough I think it's only 21-fret. Which means no top minor 7 in a E blues scale solo. Darn. Still, I like it a lot. Guitar buffs, what do you think?

Also, I have been reading blogs & it seems to me there are multiple people named (*): who are they? I am confused.