meaning in the moving design

I saw a 60-year-old man running across the beach, and, as he approached this little kid, he slowed down, and then body checked him as he ran past. He actually bent down a little as he slowed and really put his shoulder into the little guy!

That was way funnier than the time I saw an old man about 20 years older than that old man barrel down the escalator and body check a pair of Israeli girls standing by the doors of the MRT, trying to figure out if it was the right train to take. Better still, this train that this old man inflicted injury upon others to catch stayed on the platform for another 10 minutes.

Lesson:
a) Watch where you stand, and

b) If you see an old man running towards you, get the fuck out of the way, cuz they sorta treat the streets like a big hockey area and theyre liable to take you to the boards.





ABOVE: A seemingly harmless old Taiwanese man in sleeping state. Once awake, these unpredictable creatures can weild surprising damage with their thin, boney shoulders.


I see women covering their mouth on the MRT because they're afraid of germs. Ironically, it makes me think that they are sick and about to throw up... which is totally alarming when you're in such close quarters and have no place to run to if the chunks be a-blowin. And so we spend the ride being equally wary of each other's (entirely imaginary) germy and pukey selves.

I walk past furniture stores and see families sitting down for dinner, eating on the dinette set that they're trying to sell. Or sometimes curled up on one of the couches for a nap. The whole set up just makes me think, maybe it isn't a store at all. Maybe they just have a giant storefront window in their home. Maybe theyre just exhibitionists.



Hidden lesson: the Taiwanese basically live, eat and sleep at work.





I see umbrellas. So many umbrellas...

See that stuff on top? That's sunlight. It was a beautiful day!


And see that on top? That's a ROOF. It ain't raining under there anytime soon. In fact, on this particular day, it wasn't raining at all! It was just cloudy, but not even like dark cloudy, just not sunny. Which doesn't even matter, because if it was sunny, they'd also be carrying umbrellas. It's like they all just want to be permanently covered... I don't get it. I think it's just a personality difference. Like, eew, the last thing I want to be is... covered.


And I see this- or rather, I FEEL this- every day.

They have this thing over here, where kids randomly dress up as their favourite anime/manga/video game/comic book character, and wearing a costume they've spent all their after-school hours labouring over, parade around like models and super stars for a day. And other, bigger little kids carry around $3000-dollar camera, set them to "Auto" and pretend they're the paparrazzi for the day.


This is Evil Nun Man. His WMD was made from rusted pedals and bicycle brakes. he didn't come off so scary , more like confused, like "how the fuck do I weild this deathly device again??"and so forth. I think it's a medieval anal probe.


This guy was so happy when I asked him if I could take his photo. I started a wave, because once someone stops to pose for one camera, then a cluster of cameras soon congregate. So, within minutes, there was serious paparazzi action a gwanin'. Instant star. I love his boots.


Look at this girl's hatchet! It's HUGE!! And look! her friend is one of those wise but deadly scholars, who can slice you up with her deceivingly floofy-looking caligraphy pens! Lethal weapon, that is!


The costumes are almost all handmade, and really really elaborate. Some of them are just clunky and funny, but some people really go all out.


This guy definitely had the shittiest outfit there. I think he's supposed to be Ultraman's pet robot, ponchobo.


This guy is aptly named Pyramid Head. I love people with super obvious names. You can see him rip someone's skin off in this Youtube clip.



It's weird. I hear Halloween isn't big in Taiwan, and I can't really understand why. I think it has something to do with age, like Halloween is thought to be child's play, but cosplay is, I dunno, "serious". Well, hope they plan another convention for the end of October. That'll learn 'em.

I used to avoid reading the news because I found it depressing... nowadays, it's hard not to feel not only depressed, but angry, cynical and morally superior. so, I try not to read too much because it gives me a complex, and god knows I have enough of those...
But now work has forced me to become a bit of a "newsie", and a hopeless internet addict. I dig through dozens of articles everyday and my god, the world is interesting! Check it:

I finally caught a This American Life episode I've been eyeing for a while, about a 10-year-old American girl named Sarah York who started a pen pal relationship with Manuel Noriega, right before the US took him down. They maintained a long friendship through letters, and then Noriega invited Sarah down to Panama to visit. My favourite part of the story is the gift exchange during their first meeting- the Yorks brought Noriega a snowglobe, the General gave Sarah a teddy bear in fatigues. That just made me smile.

Onwards.

I read about a guy who calls himself "the Chameleon". Frederic Bourdin is a thirty-something-year-old man who, for the past 15 years, has invented different identities on dozens of occasions, in over a dozen different countries. Usually posing as an abused teenage runaway, Bourdin settled himself into countless youth homes and high schools. Crazier still, he once posed as a American runaway (Bourdin is French), and was taken in by the missing kid's family for 5 months before being discovered as a fraud. His story in The New Yorker is fascinating.

Bourdin's been getting a lot of play since the David Grann article was released, and it's only been a few days. The most interesting part is his own self-hype. Bourdin got up on You Tube and filmed himself talking about nothing in particular, sometimes lip synching songs, sometimes just ranting about his life, ususally with an air of persecution in his voice. His first comment about Grann's article was how pleased he was with the photo of himself. This is a guy who wanted so badly to be someone else. Anyone else. So much so that he lost himself, and just had to keep trading in personalities... And now, because of the article, he finally gets to reclaim his name, and not just be the old him, but be The Notorious Frederic Bourdin. Which is arguably what he was after all along. I wonder if he's going to get sick of himself again...

Finally, before you beat your tormented head against the wall and vent at your parents for having named you Sunny (Asian), Kitty (also Asian), Pizza (my Asian co-worker), Ranger (my Asian cousin from Texas) or Olympic Games (Oly G for short har har ), consider this.

It could have been much worse. You could have been a Number 16 Bus Shelter.

Which, granted, is just about the awesomest name EVER... for everyone BUT that kid.

UNUSUAL NAMES

Legally Blocked:
Yeah Detroit
Stallion
Twisty Poi
Keenan Got Lucy
Sex Fruit
Fat Boy
Cinderella Beauty Blossom
Fish and Chips (twins)

Legally Allowed:
Violence
Number 16 Bus Shelter
Midnight Chardonnay
Benson and Hedges (twins)