The night is dark, the road is straight and I keep my hand firmly locked at the 50 kilometers an hour mark. The wind is ripping at my rain cloak and the rain drops pelt my body like little stones. The helmet’s visor is covered in droplets that cloud my view, I have to concentrate on the white lines to see where I’m going. Lifting the visor to see better is not an option as the drops hitting my face will sting my eyes and my soft exposed skin. The rain is so heavy I can even feel it drumming … Read the rest
The road curves about like an asphalt snake and I have to adjust the throttle carefully to flow smoothly through the bends. My clothes flutter in the wind and the sun glares in the scratched surface of the visor on my helmet. The touch of my girlfriends thighs against mine remind me of her presence. The high pitched roar of the scooters little engine accompanies us as we zoom through the landscape’s bends and turns. To the right, the high, light green mountains of Taiwan’s eastern seaboard, to the left the pacific ocean. Far out a bright sapphire blue, followed … Read the rest
The sky is blue and the bright sun makes the clear blue water dazzle. Under my bare feet is a mass of smooth, palm size, sea polished, round stones. The stone beach stretches out to my left in a sort of natural pier between the sea and the river mouth, and curls a little towards the tip where the river meets the sea. I sit down to watch the waves for a little while. Close to the coast the water brings with it sand and stones and turns from a brilliant blue to a darker, more muddled hue as the … Read the rest
“The road ends here!” The black and yellow striped concrete barrier makes the message as clear as can be. Beyond the barrier, a sheer drop of several meters then a vast expanse of rice fields and trees, and on the far side, the outskirts of some satellite city. I really cannot understand why there is a stump of wide, newly paved road out here in the dilapidated farmyard and industry back streets of the city. There are no construction works nearby, no half-finished support columns for a road out there in the fields. Just this short stump of black asphalt … Read the rest
A thousand scooters neatly lined up in rows, a thousand handle bars locked to the left, a thousand pairs of rear view mirrors reflecting the sky. Although similar, the scooters are different: different make, different size, different color. The mirrors are all the same, a vaguely rectangular shape on the end of a crocked stick, the silvery surface colored a bright sky blue. To a foreigner like me, this mass of two-wheeled vehicles is both amazing and bewildering all at once. Newcomers inevitably ask themselves how can there be so many of them while we have so few? How do … Read the rest
I am sitting on a stone wall, dangling my feet over a red bricked square, my girl is by my side and I have a cold drink in my hand. I rest my hand on her leg and gaze up at the full moon shining brightly behind a thin veil of clouds. It is strange how such a simple thing can be so beautiful. My girl snuggles up to me in the surprisingly cool air and I feel the smooth skin of her thigh against my palm. I sit here and feel absolutely content, the perfect ending to a perfect … Read the rest
The typhoon is here, the typhoon is here, it’s all over the news and we all know it’s here. While the people in cities all around us are caught in the storm, it is not much of it going on in Hsinchu. So, I have gone to the beach to get some typhoon action. To my left is the greyish sea, to my right a series of concrete wave breakers buried in the sand and an embankment leading up to the waterfront path. And underneath my feet is the dark gray, almost black, surface of the low tide sand. Light … Read the rest
The room is dark but i can still se the gray shapes of things. The room is quiet but I can still hear the woosh of the air conditioning. Somewhere to my right I can sense the presence of my girlfriend. I was tired earlier but now I seem to have come out on the other side of the weariness of a long flight and I can not fall asleep. I wish I could sleep, the logical part of my mind tells me i need it but I feel fully awake. At least there is one good thing about this, … Read the rest
The same familiar airplane surroundings, the screen now tells me I am over Göteborg, my home town. What bothers me is not the effort I spent the last two days to get to Stockholm via my parents house just to be back so suddenly; neither is it the rather soggy excuse of a sandwich they have provided me with. No, what bothers me is why they provided a packet of skimmed milk, some sugar and a small – in lack of a better word – spoon with my sandwich. What also bothers me is why they decided to make a … Read the rest
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