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
In front of me, the blue leather back of a seat and a bland gray piece of plastic euphemistically called a table with the words “Fasten seatbelt while seated” and “Lifejacket under your seat” printed on it. To my left, an incredibly bright sky, white clouds and wing of an aircraft. Up and to the right is a small screen with a rather grainy graphic showing me that I am over Örebro, my parents home town. I left here for Stockholm a little over five hours ago and now I am back. Was it worth all that trouble? Wouldn’t it … Read the rest
I am standing in the clinically efficient bathroom of a German sleeper train. The floor is gray, the walls have bland white nuance and here and there clean gray aluminium panels with painfully clear symbols on them let you operate the bathroom fittings such as toilet flushing and the tap. The only splash of color is a turquoise toilet seat cover and even that is washed out. Everything is so much better, so much more efficient, so much more comfortable than the Czech sleeper train that brought us to Budapest but that one made up for it by having so … Read the rest
I am walking home, tired from the exercise, the mild air is no longer cool enough and the street lights have been turned off. In just one hour the sky has turned from a deep blue to a bland light grey, but at the edge to the east, the band of yellow and orange has shifted to a dodgy shade of pink that gradually thickens to a powerful red. I can draw two conclusions at this moment. One is that there are few better ways to spend the early hours of the morning than skateboarding down traffic free roads and … Read the rest
The air is mild, the birds are chirping in the bushes, and the brightening sky is competing with the street lights. I have been here before on a similarly early morning with the same mission, to ride a skateboard down this marvelous hill. That time it was colder, so cold that my hands went numb, and darker, so dark i could barely see the dangerous bumps in the asphalt, but that time I stood on my board at the top of the hill and didn’t stop until I had reached the entrance to the big roundabout at the end of … Read the rest
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