Author RenegadeTourist
I’m sitting here in the lift, waiting for it to bring me to the top, contemplating my situation. It’s really quite strange when you think about it, you travel hundreds if not thousands of kilometers to some small town somewhere where everything is overpriced. When you get there you spend a large portion of your time sitting in a chair that’s suspended several meters above the ground with nothing but a thin metal bar keeping you from falling out, and you get get slowly pulled towards the top of the hill, all the while being exposed to the elements. When … Read the rest
It’s cold, if there’s even a slight gap in my armou of winter clothing I feel it immediately. It’s snowing, the icy flakes sting the exposed skin of my face and stick to my beard, forming a frozen mask around my mouth. Visibility is low, at most some 50 meters before the world disappears in a thick milky fog. Given the circumstances you’d think that I’d be miserable but I’m ecstatic; I’m literally ass deep in soft fluffy powder with a snowboard under my feet and it feels like surfing on clouds. Bloody awesome!… Read the rest
When I went to Hong Kong back in October I thought it would be the last time in quite a while. Turns out I was wrong, about two weeks ago my brother messaged me to let me know he and his friend were going to Hong Kong and later to Kuala Lumpur. Of course I had to take the chance to see him, and at first Renegade Wife and I planned to meet them up in KL. Sadly, she couldn’t get the time off so I ended up going back to Hong Kong on my own to meet up with … Read the rest
The walkway is raised above the road, allowing pedestrians to navigate the streets without having to deal with the heavy Hong Kong traffic. It’s a couple of meters wide and covered but with open sides, and follows the street for several hundred meters, branching off here and there to follow the smaller side streets. Normally it’s nothing special, just a convenient way to get around, but today is Sunday, when all of Hong Kong’s maids (most of them Malaysian migrant workers) have their day off. Since they have no place of their own they can’t go home, and since Hong … Read the rest
The room looks like the basement of a school or something, thats been temporarily converted to a disco; an open space with low ceiling, bare white walls and a couple of support pillars. Against the back wall is a DJ booth on a raised platform and behind it, the letters “XXX” painted in white on a black background. On the left wall is an LED matrix display showing the words “Absurd TRAX – dj sniff”, and on the right wall is powerful light. The entire place is awash in red and blue light and the air is imbued with the … Read the rest
In October last year I set off on my three month journey through south east Asia. When I first came up with the idea for that trip many years ago, I had this vague notion that I should write a lot of Frozen Moments during the trip, perhaps even forgoing a camera altogether and just document what I saw using words. My idea was that I would gather all of these texts together and try to get them published as a book, a sort of photo album if you will. In the end I did bring a camera, and … Read the rest
Useful knowledge for living in Taiwan
I’ve been living in Taiwan for several years now. I’ve gained a fair bit of knowledge through some sort of cultural osmosis, and by now I have a pretty good feel for the country and its culture. I’d like to share some of that knowledge with my readers (all three of them). Back when I first wrote this I thought a single post would be enough but since then I have written three more that you can find here, here and here.
1.: The counting system
In Chinese, numbers and counting works more or less the same way … Read the rest