Spitting It Out

I know what you're thinking. I'm supposed to be a photographer and all I come up with is this kind of amateurish blatant postcard stuff.

Remember, it was only a cover. All I had to do was to shoot pictures of dull men in suits sitting behind tables and starlets doing really awful songs. And you know what that is on the picture, right? Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world. Once. The Burj Dubai in the United Arab Emirates has overtaken it now. So maybe my next job will be there.

Anyway. I was picked for this one because my Chinese was great, they said. Five years in Okinawa translating boring commie speeches into English for the military. Intelligence work. Still, it's the Taiwan bit I want to tell you about now.

Especially that nasty cover work as a photographer. A full year of really dull work, then I got sacked for missing what could've been the most important picture of my career. The picture that would've graced the cover of Time, Newsweek, and other publications around the world. The only thing they didn't know: I didn't want to take that picture. It was my work to make the content of that picture happen. And I did, and that's all I cared about. No matter what that egotistical tyrant raged about after the fact. I knew what was going to happen, so that time I was prepared. I knew how he had pestered one of my colleagues away to replace him with his girlfriend. The international media, free and unbiased, give me a break. Luckily, their bias helped me get the information I needed to help carry out my mission.

As I'm waiting for the extraction - still a couple of days away, but I can't let on too much - I know I did a terrible thing, yet it was for the good of millions of people, even of that tyrannical madman and his girlfriend. They don't know it and they'll probably keep raging about that photographer who missed the biggest news in the history of Taiwan. Let them rage. I'm happy now I spat it all out.

I'm In The News!

I did it! I'm in all the newspapers, news agency reports, TV news shows, and so on.
Of course, it's not my name, and certainly not my face, only what I did. But that's fair enough for me. That sort of vindicates all the trouble I've been going through.
I've been reading the papers - or at least their online versions, because this time I want to go out as little as possible, just want to get my face on convenience store cameras or noticed by people - and I must say, as usual, they have it completely wrong.
The international media like CNN of course sent reporters from elsewhere who don't know the first thing about Taiwan, hell, some of them even can't speak Chinese, or read the local press.
And then there are the local papers and news agencies who have correspondents here, you know the Taipei Times and AP and the like where as usual, everything is slanted according to ideological preference, or the ideological preference of the reporter's local girlfriend.
Anyway, I'm just glad my news got so much feedback despite all the other nonsense going on elsewhere in the world, and the media as usual got it completely wrong, which means I'm safe for the time being. By the time they get the real story, if they ever do, I'll be long gone.

Celebrate

I should be celebrating.

Because this is the time of the year when everybody is. I have a completed task to be proud of.

It's just that I don't like walking around with a happy face when the people around me are falling apart because their country is in an economic and political shambles. Even more so when a significant amount of that is my doing.

So instead of celebrating, I'm sitting in this cold apartment here waiting for the right time. The question is, how will I leave. Should I be taking the MRT out and mingle with all those people who might remember my face? To me, they all look alike, but I don't think all foreigners look alike to them. After all, there are blonde, red, dark, brown foreigners, and I'm one of them.

The other possibility is taking a cab. But then there will be one taxi driver who remembers my face. He will remember taking a foreigner, because there aren't many of them around this area, and he will wonder why this lazy foreigner can't be bothered to take the MRT if the station is right across the street from his front door. Anyway, those are questions for later. I've dealt with taxi drivers before, so I can deal with a last one again. Only, it would leave awkward questions after my extraction. I don't like leaving traces. A dead taxi driver is a trace, even if he's floating about in the ocean.

Taiwan 2011

Another cold front is coming in soon. From the North, from China. I'd better close the outer windows, or else the wind is going to blow all my documents away, on the cold floor, under the sofa.

If it's getting colder, it means I'll have to be wearing more clothes, though the water will always be cold. The wind will keep the tourists off the beach, though.

Taiwan doesn't have much of a beach culture. So I won't bump into parents taking their kids out for a walk in the sand. The rougher sea will also make the voyage over the water more of an extreme sports adventure than a leisurely cruise. At least, it's not typhoon season, otherwise, the extraction might have to be canceled altogether.

I'll miss some of the food, the sweet, rubbery moaji and the oyster omelets they're so proud about. I'm almost beginning to think it wasn't such a bright idea, killing a president to be.

Taiwan 2011