Nights are the worst. That’s beginning to be my mantra. Sometime around 1-3 AM each morning I awake with a coughing fit. This morning it happened twice, both times I had nosebleeds because my nose is so weak from constant blowing. I had to get up and leave the room, so I spent time on the computers. The long and short is I lost several hours sleep which I made up for in the morning.
I slept right through Michelle’s morning class and awoke at around 12:00 with one determined thought in my mind, “Today I will eat at Subway!”
Just about that time Irene and Michelle returned from class to tell me her parents had bought beef noodle soup for lunch. So much for my lunch plans.
I was pleased to hear that, during her class, the teacher demonstrated putting blue and yellow paint together and making green. In Chinese the teacher asked the class, “where did the green come from?” The other kids gave answers (in Chinese) like “It came from the sky!” but Michelle said to the teacher, in English, “Blue and yellow mixed make green.” Luckily, the teacher does understand English and now realizes that Michelle does understand him when he’s speaking Chinese, which, with her behavior sometimes, you’d think she doesn’t understand English either.
It rained all day, but, despite my coughing fit at night, I finally began to feel better today. I decided it was time I’d futzed around enough and needed to get down to work. I’ve got some videos to shoot, pictures to take and stories to tell.
Truth be told, yesterday when I ended up at Nanshijiao station, I had been attempting to travel to Xiaobitan (
Despite the concerns of my mother-in-law that I was going out in the rain, I escaped. As I was leaving, my daughter ran to me and said I had to take an umbrella and that she loves me. It’s those moments that make it all worthwhile.
The rain was coming and going and when it wasn’t raining, I’d close the umbrella (which was a classic black, full-sized umbrella with curved handle) and use it loosely as a walking stick, with a jaunty twist to it that John Steed would approve of. In fact, I’m sure I could have passed for Steed, if only I’d had a bowler hat and wasn’t wearing a t-shirt that said, “I don’t give a rat’s ass” in pictograms.
When I arrived at the station, my instincts were absolutely right, it’s a great place for video/photography. In fact, two photo shoots were actually going on at the station while I was there. The clouds and rain prevented the mountains from being very clear and there wasn’t much cover, so I snapped some stills and panoramas for future reference. Then I decided to go for a walk. After all, it was only 5:07 in the afternoon.
Big mistake. Sundown is not long after 5:30 in these latitudes. I headed down the main road, thinking, just like yesterday, I’d walk a ways, turn around and come back. No problem. The difference this time is that I took the GPS along with me. I got a nice solid fix at Xiaobitan and was confident that I’d have no problem finding my way back.
And so, when I came to the fork in the road, I took it. Roughly speaking, I’d been heading north, with the road lightly curving to the east (or perhaps I was heading east, with the road slightly curving to the south.) Either way, my logic was that the fork was an acute angle intersection and that it would lead me back, roughly parallel and slightly behind the station. It didn’t matter because not only did I have a GPS fix, I also knew that the station was next to the river. I was heading roughly towards the river and knew when I got to it, I just turn right and would have to arrive back at the station.
The darkness came, then the heavy rains. If I haven’t mentioned it, Taipei sidewalks are often split into two parts, the part under cover of the above buildings and then a part out exposed. If you walk under the buildings you stay dry, but you cannot get a GPS fix. After I walked in the shelter for a long time, I began to get nervous as I should have arrived back at the station by now.
So I bit the bullet, stepped out into the rain and locked a fix. What it told me was frightening: It was pointing in entirely the wrong direction, as If I’d passed the station and somehow gotten back on the western side of it, all without crossing the original road I was on. It was pointing 225 degrees off my current course – behind and to my left.
It was impossible, I knew it was impossible. It couldn’t possibly be right. I decided to take a right turn down a back street, hoping to intercept the original road. As I turned, the GPS continued to point 225 degrees off my new course. Now I was 100% sure it wasn’t giving me a true reading.
I ambled, in the rain and the dark, down an ever increasingly twisted maze of streets, some tiny, some major thoroughfares, yet nothing was right. Finally the GPS began to gave me a fix in a direction that, while it didn’t seem right, at least stayed the same when I changed my direction. I couldn’t make a beeline toward it, so I continued to wander the streets, turning this way and that trying to stay close to on-course.
At last I came up behind a high school. I’d passed the front of Xindian High School as I was leaving the station, so I worked my way around the school hoping it was the same high school. It was, and finally the station came into view.
I had a lot of unpleasant moments out on the streets thinking I was completely lost, and not even being able to explain to Irene on the phone where I was.
I was really looking forward to getting home and then going out for a sub sandwich. Of course, the family decided to order Peking Duck instead.
After my obligatory four bites of greasy duck and two tortillas and the kids were put to bed, Irene and I finally headed out to get me a sandwich.
Just south of the house, on the east side of Xinsheng Rd here used to be a Subway. Last trip it had gone out of business, replaced by “Subzone”. This trip, Subzone is still there, but a Subway has opened across from it on the west side of the road. My idea was to go to Subway, but at the last minute decided on Subzone.
After a long look at their sandwich list, I decided on the “German Salami” thinking that the Germans probably make a pretty darn good salami. German Salami is Bologna. Still, I was pretty darn hungry and it wasn’t too bad, but I’ll eat across the street next time.