Unbalanced Vision

Couples in love do help out with the business, buying things from the shop for their cultured significant others. Occasionally we would have a husband coming into the store and say, 'My wife likes Eliot; it's for her birthday', or a wife splurging out £300 on a Naipaul portrait again for her husband's b-day. Yet we benefit from estranged or divorced spouses, too! A gentleman complained that his ex took away an important art book from him and now he's here to buy another copy. Bless him.

This week a gauche teenager came into the shop. He bluntly said that he wanted to see the boss--a lack of manners, no, a flimsy grasp of the language, yes. After I told him that the bookseller was not around, without any expressions he murmured, 'I want him to give me a job', and pulled out his CV only printed on half the size of a A4. Nationality: Poland... Utilities: Smiling... I've heard/read a lot on the news about the impact of the EU expansion after 1 May, but this is the first time I experienced it as close as on our doorstep.

My trip home was so short and filled with fun and frolics that I had no time to record the details; this is the gist of it all:

1) Demolished the greasiest and best Peking duck ever with uni friends, and then went to have some pearl milk tea (famous drink amongst the Chinese said to have originated in Taichung), which I haven't taken a sip for ages. I felt so satisfied with the meal, but mates think I'm over exaggerating.

Lean On Me

Amazing New Gadget

2) Invited to dinner by cousin M and his paramour at a cheap but delicious Italian restaurant. M (the terminator of buffet restaurants) with his black-hole type stomach can sit and eat for hours without showing a sign of weariness. A-li accompanied the meal with his various stories of pooping.

3) First time chef HT cooked us dinner at his flat--yum! After the meal, some corrupted souls were teetering on the brink of playing all-night Mah-jong if not for the table.

4) A few hours before my flight, I joined in a rally against purchasing weapons from America with Mum and Dad and their friends. The weather was extremely muggy, as if I was steamed in a rice cooker. The sunburned political activists later went to a Shanghai-esque tea house for lunch and tea.

Funny Bicycle Man

Lovely Tea House

I can't believe that I travelled all the way back from Taiwan just to make it to Hamlet, only to find out that I'm going to miss tonight's England vs. Portugal--bummer! The performance better be very, very good...

Came back to London on Sunday in one piece--it is as if I've never left. Anyone who has knowledge of China Airlines' glorious flying record would be extremely happy that he/she is alive. Actually, the service and food are recommendable, not to mention the gorgeous, elegant flight attendants. However, when there's a turbulence, one would still have the urge to just kneel down and pray. 'Oh, please God, don't make me die'. On a different note, passengers flying from Asia to Europe, from east to west are in reality saving more time: it took me only ten minutes to get to London from Amsterdam. Suppose one loony stayed on the plane long enough to play with different time zones, would he /she add more time to his/her life?

In the meantime, HY cycled from London to Brighton.

I Made It

I successfully received my student visa + Schengen visa in time! *throws confetti* My boss has remarked that the empire's regulation of requiring visa nationals, like myself, to travel all the way home just to get a stamp on the passport contradicts the concern for making needless journeys that only worsens global warming. This I totally agree. Back in the olden days when my cousin M did his secondary schooling in UK, he was able to easily send his passport back to Taiwan, and have his parents renew the visa for him. Today the Home Office is more paranoid about potential illegal immigrant workers and asylum seekers. Anyhow, in Taiwan, I'm super glad that I didn't have to wake up early to queue up in such a long line; moreover, the Sweden administrator made an exception by allowing me one less working day. In some sense I feel like a new person arriving in England, for before I may have been mildly suffering from what Alain de Botton calls a modern day 'status anxiety'. Spending too much time as a visitor in a foreign land can make one a miserable wretch, and perhaps I seek every opportunity to complain to HY about this matter--throughout the course he has been a tolerable saint. Oddly enough, with a simple stamp, I feel pretty excited about the 3+ years of brain-damaging research.

MUJI

Feminine-looking bloke

Last year when I returned home, I've wondered if MUJI, a paradise for chic, urban-living utilitarianists, will ever invade Taiwan, since it is quite popular amongst Londoners. And now the Burgundy-coloured sign can be spotted in every major shopping district of Taipei. Then it's the fashionably feminine young boy look that help sell products. I don't mind gamine looks, yet blokes who have fine skin complexions like plastic are not my cup of tea.

M, R and F

At Camper

Funny Feet

I have been dreaming about my feet dancing/running/jumping in those dainty black shoes ever since I tried them on last week; they should belong in my wardrobe. By no means mistaken me for shopaholic Carrie in SATC who owns hundreds of pairs of shoes, including those famous, pricey Manolos. In fact I despise people who are obsessive with buying things: the image of them carrying loads of shopping bags walking down the high street, spending hours on a shopping spree. But my flat feet need proper shoes as my mum tells me, so there. I intend to wear these comfy Campers for as long as the ice age.

China Airlines

Boarding

Friday, left the flat around 4a.m. with a heavy runny nose and sore throat. Forgot to bring tissues along, hence had to get up every five minutes to grab a bunch from the toilet on the plane. This resulted in a small pile of used tissue paper (sort of like Wanton soup ingredients) stuffed in the front seat bag. Coincidentally, the Dutch lady beside me also caught a cold. She kindly offered me some national cough drops which taste a bit like liquorice, I then pulled out a package of Chinese cough syrup which tastes similar to Dr Pepper in return. Maybe it's due to my clogged up nose, for the landing moment was quite painful. Other than that the flight was OK. China Airlines' flight attendants are extremely caring and adorable, and this makes me want to marry them all if only they weren't too skinny.

It's pretty damn hot I tell you here in London. At some point the WeatherCast on my laptop reads 27C, which is quite unbearable in a city where having air con is usually unnecessary. Try taking a bus! It's practically an incubator for human beings--when you finally get off, you'd either be grasping for fresh air or ready to hatch eggs. Also I hope this is not too rude, but there are some very minging creatures out there. Whatever you do, avoid enclosed spaces. S and I have an insatiable appetitie for Japanese cuisine, and you'd think such dishes would be a remedy for heat exhaustion, but no. I've just had the greasiest tempura in my entire life, and now it seems the oil is floating inside my stomach. To solve this problem one would need a cup of tea--hot.

If ESPN at home does not broadcast Euro 2004 I'm going to be very pissed off--all they show is golf and NBA. Am already forced to give up tickets for Mastermind 2004 Final recording at BBC, just to be able to make it to Trevor Nunn's Hamlet on the 24th--it's not even my favourite play. Pooh.

It appears to me that Americans have a soft spot for Ronald Reagan. Am not an expert of any of these presidents, yet somehow RR always reminds me of a quintessential American cowboy leading his horse against the background of a Marlboro cigarette advertisement. Then I read his quotes and recalled a long past era when Communists were seen as the bad guys, and how the West feared them like they were practicing witchcraft. Yesterday the Communists, today the war on terror--the Yanks keep themselves quite busy.

Last night S and I popped down to Freud for cocktails. It was the usual trendy bar scene:
1) Bartenders who not only look cute, but they know they're cute. A few unnecessary lip pouting going on there, and S also noticed this dude who unconsciously swings the glasses higher when serving ladies.
2) No presence of lairy lads, but civilised, urban men in colourful plaid shirts standing in a group; potential couples wearing attractive smiles and talking forever on the seats.
3) Taking eons to get one's beverage: a glass of Yum Yum and two Long Island Iced Tea.
4) When we finally got to sat down, were surrounded by two tables of happy gay men holding each other's hands and eating a chocolate cake.
5) The trendy bar has a curfew at 23:00.

The Olympia Book Fair has left us basically 'home alone' in the shop. Usually when some grubby gentleman comes in with a big bag full of second-hand books like Father Christmas and his sack, the boss will come upstairs to price them. I like to observe this short moment of bargain dealing, when trade is stripped away to its basics: goods, coins and face-to-face contact. Also, these people sometimes do bring in stuff that I want to keep for myself. Now that the bosses are away it gives us the chance to do the estimation. One boss returned and asked me to show him how I labeled the stock. Though I didn't remember how J separated them, I divided them into piles of four, two and one pounders. I generally give fiction higher points, book on sex gets one point and so do books with a lot of wear and tear. There was one hardback with an ugly, old American singer on the cover which I didn't have any high regard, but apparently it was the first one that got sold. Words of advice: coffee table books aren't worth as much as you think. In the case of literary criticism books, the low value ones are either written by Americans, or that the content is about the comparison between two writers. Not wanting to be an Anglophile, but that's rather funny and true?

I wonder how people find out about this site? HY said it's my e-mail address that gives the secret away, yet honestly, it's no secret at all. I like having readers from every corner of the planet, the more the merrier. Believe it or not, according to my Nedstat I've even had a visitor from Afghanistan, or was it Iraq? Anyways, it's equally cool. However, when you know that your bosses have surfed their way to rachellin.com, and then your supervisor tells you, 'maybe I'll check up
on your weblog to see if it says how you are getting on with your journey', it becomes very scary indeed. I thought they belong to the technophobic generation!

They are going to whisk me off a few time zones ahead to TWN. I've booked a flight with China Airlines (God bless), which is going to take off at 6:25a.m., a most humanly impossible hour to wake up. At first I find it such a bore to travel all the way across the world just for a spell of eight days and spend so much wonga on the ticket, but then again I get to be with my family and friends, and I really want to see F whose coincidentally back for summer as well. It's going to be sweltering hot there; we must go clubbing like old times.

This Tuesday within only a couple of hours of property inspection I decided to rent a flat located somewhere close to the place I'm staying now. The agent first took us to a flat near Marylebone station. It was still under construction, but said to be in its glamorous state in a week. The rooms were merely OK, nothing really spectacular, but the fact that it was on the ground floor with pedestrians peeking at you like animals in the zoo kinda bothered me. So off we went to the second destination on Gloucester Place. This place was beneath the horizon, the deepest dungeon of hell... well, not that bad, but still. I don't fancy living in basements at all for how does one get to photosynthesise? Plus T sort of mentioned something about curb crawling!? Then at last we arrived at our future lodge. I fell in love with the two-storey flat instantly because of its proximity to my old place, and living in this area means that I don't have to make a hassle to commute. Judging from the history of my dwelling places, I tend to nest in flats close to everywhere I need to go. After giving a cursory glance at each room, it was a 'yes'.