The Comdeian

The club is called “Taipei Adventurers”, but doesn’t have any adventurers and explorers. The big neon sign is a palm tree, which is the only exotic décor of the club.

Sometimes, there are some westerners, sitting in front of the club and drinking beer. The owner speaks a little English, and holds open-mic every Wednesday. Occasionally, people would come to the club on open-mic night, not because they want to be entertained, just because the beer is half-priced.

Today is Wednesday, and just like any other day at “Taipei Adventurers”, there are only a few people sitting on couch. Either they drink or stare at their phones.

Suddenly, a white guy comes in. He looks at the blackboard hanging on the freezer and asks, “Shoot a joke for free beer?” The owner smiles and nods, “Yes, yes.” The guy decides to go up on stage and give it a shot. The owner gives him a pat on the back, says “Break a leg,” Ands send him on stage.

Light fades in. With sparse applause, the guy comes up to the stage and grabs the mic.

“Good evening, everybody. My name is Larry. 賴利 (Laili).” Without any surprise, nobody pays attention on him.

“Do you wanna know my Chinese name? My Chinese name is 三八弟. Means somebody. I may be nobody, but will be somebody one day.” Larry says with a delightful tone.

A woman looks up at him with her despairing eyes and soon looks down at her small screen.

Larry sweats a little, he wonders if the aircon is on? This is what he hates about Taipei -- hot and humid, like a sauna.

“Alright, alright, I know y’all here for jokes. I’ve got a good one. I didn’t mean to come to Taiwan at the first place. It was an accident! When I was on my way to Thailand and came to a fork in the road. I saw a sign says, “Thailand Left.” So I decided to come to Taiwan since they are similar.”

He giggles, but soon realizes that no one is laughing but him. Even the owner walks away. Larry stands under the spotlight, feels like a giant elephant in the room. And wishes he was in Thailand, so he doesn’t have to face this awkwardness.

He continues anyway -- he doesn’t really care much about the audience. “You don’t think my jokes funny? That’s fine. Do you know what really make me laugh? We are losers, we all are. Everything is settled before our births. We are defeated even when we’re sperm.” He makes an exaggerative face, as if trying to convince the audience this is a good joke.

But people just remain silence. Larry feels like he is standing in court, waiting to go to trail.

“Hey, who am I sleeping with to get the god damn beer?” Larry sweats like a fountain and kicks the mic stand accidentally, making a big noise.

“Oops!”, Larry says, but nobody gives it a damn.

Suddenly, a voice breaks the peace and quiet. A guy talks to Larry from the dark. “Aaa, Laili Tou,” a guy in white shirt shouts at him.

“What?”

The man in white doesn’t answer, instead turning to mimic Larry with his buddy. Larry knows that they’re probably making fun of him. He doesn’t mind, but what really pisses him off is when they don’t tell you what’s on their mind.

It’s just like the weather -- hot, humid and stuffy as hell.

“Hey, you’ve got a problem?” Larry is irritated, he could have just sat at home.

Larry decides to leave anyway. “Fuck it,” he thinks, “What do you guys know about comedy, anyway?” He gives up, puts the mic back and kicks the mic stand again while he leaves. Suddenly, he falls. He looks down, and finds himself trapped by the wires.

Larry falls, hitting his nose on the floor.

 “Ouch!” He bleeds.

And all of sudden, people laugh, they laugh so hard they can’t stop.

The owner comes back, witnesses the scene, and then smiles and gives Larry a beer.

Larry is still trapped by the wires -- and the worst thing is, he broke his leg.

Singleton in Taiwan

Though the young generation are influenced by American TV series, such as “Sex and the city”, and tend to enjoy their singledom, there are still some biased thoughts against people who are not married. Especially people who are over thirty, suddenly we become the target. Everybody can invade your privacy by asking the rude question, which is “How could you still be single?” as if it is a crime or something.

Therefore, singletons are like abandoned dogs living in a down-at-heel shelter waiting for adopters, who also believe that there is a Messiah or “Soul mate”, who will come to rescue us from this burning hell. People have tried all they can do, asked advice from the cognoscenti, fortune tellers, and psychics, as if being single is the worst thing they can think of. For me, some of these irrational singletons are sometimes like walking dead, all they want is to find human flesh and eat it alive.

It sounds like a satire and could be a bit exaggerated. However, what I really mean is you cannot expect someone come into your life and just magically fix all the problems for you. The whole soul-mate idea could be lacking in rigour, and sometimes coupledom could bring more problems.

Being alone is not necessarily lonely. Being single means you have more time to discover yourself and devote yourself to something you really feel passionate about. We’ve been told by the media and commercials that we are not completed until we have found the right person, but the truth is, we don’t need to be validated by some expert or anybody else. We are who we are. No one can define our happiness but ourselves.

Dairy

連日多雨，今天總算是放晴了。
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不知道是因為終於停止下雨、抑或是打結生菇的腦袋總算有所長進。今天寫稿起來不但不卡，而且應該是可一路往結尾寫完。(雖然是說再不寫完也不行了。)

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在這感觸良多的三月，有時候真的覺得自己太笨、經驗太少；但二方面又好感激自己身邊周遭有那麼多貴人相助。感覺自己如果再不行、再不成功，那就真的不是時運，完全就是自己的責任了。

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偶爾雖然還是會有陰暗面壟罩著我，不過，或許就像天氣一樣。雨下得再多，還是會有放晴的一日。

Cheng Kai-shek’s zumbie film

One full moon night, Chiang Kai-Shek wakes up from his crystal coffin, and becomes a zombie. A night guide finds out that Chiang has come back to alive so he informs his supervisor to come and watch. Soon, the news has spread out to the whole island and KMT’s supporters are thrilled. They believe their time has come and soon Taiwan and China will be re-united again.

Chinese leader, President Xi, is also excited about the news, and claim that they are looking forward to reunion. The president of Taiwan, Ma ,decides to held a meeting for both. At the day of meeting, Chiang appears, while everybody is waiting for his speech, Chiang suddenly bites Xi’s head off. Not only Chiang starts to attack everybody in the present but also turns the victims into zombies as well.

Everyone is panic. The Communist realize that they have made a huge mistake. The whole idea about reunion is wrong, these crazy Taiwanese should be isolated at the island. However, it is too late, the situation is out of control, there’s no way to stop zomiblization.

At the moment, while everybody is hiding, President Ma decides to stand out. He walks in front of Chiang, and shake his hand. Suddenly, the zombie Chiang roars, and falls down on the ground. Ma did it, he killed the Zombie. The Zombie disease has been under control and China gives up the dream of reunion. Everybody lives happily ever since.

Sesame Credit

The idea of Sesame credit, is a score system which judge people by their social network and all their data on the internet. It seems innocent firstly, the higher scores you get, the more convenient the will be. However, it not only effect you on the internet, but also influence the real life. People who have bad score may have been barred from serving in certain high-status position. It sounds terrifying to me can monitor and control you every single second. If you have any opinion or voice which is against the government, or maybe you just simply want to reveal the truth, you’ll be punished by the system by isolating you from the society. As a result, everyone becomes the government’s pet, and lose the ability of independent thinking. And what even worse is, the system is not just a test model, it will become mandatory from 2020. For some people, it is probably nothing to lose, as long as they can live in prosper, they will embrace the system. But in my opinion, if someone can hurt you just because you don’t agree with the one, then someone is a bully. What you should do is go up against it and protect the freedom for yourself.

Raining Day

As usual, another rainy day in Taipei.

I can't make it stop raining, but have a maple coffee latte.

A Pitch of Next Bond's Film

James Bond is a fictional character who is a secret agent of MI6, and has been one of the most popular culture trend in the movie history. The first James Bond movie was released in 1962, since then, this handsome and agile secret agent has become a role model of most of men. However, the sequence of Bond’s movie has been refilmed too many times, though the movie company has been trying to put a lot of new elements into the movies. The audience and fans still expect for more.

Therefore, I've come up with some interesting ideas, which may contribute to future Bond’s movies.

James Bond wakes up in nowhere, and doesn’t know who he is, he loses his memory. The only thing he can remember before he faints is, he was lying on operating table, and injected a weird liquor. Suddenly, a man comes in, tells James that he is poisoned and will be dead in next 48 hours. In order to find the antidote. James has to fight by himself this time without anybody’s help.

As to actors, I hope new 007 will break the stereotype of the character that the actor usually is Caucasian. In fact, if the new Bond is an Indian-British actor, like Ben Kingsley. That might be a good choice. After all, this famous sequences may need some fresh faces.

A Movie Review of P2

I am not a royal fan of horror movies, especially those contain a lot of fake blood and bodies. If I really enjoy flesh, I’d rather go to a butcher’s shop than sitting in a theater watching some poor woman screaming. For me, psychological torture is way scarier than physical ones.

However, this movie “P2”, really gets me interested, and has changed my opinion to physical horror movies. The story is about a business woman, who is pursued by a psycho and is drugged and locked in a parking garage on Christmas Eve. Though the story is a bit cliché, the visual violence still entertains me. As the movie goes by, I feel so intense just like the leading actress trying to find the way out. In the end, out of my expectation, the heroine sets the psycho on fire and escapes the garage successfully.

Although the film is not a master piece, it is still worth a watch. Especially for those who don’t often watch horror movies, this may be a starter.