Europe 2009

I'm on my way out of Taiwan now, so I can quit moaning about the Taipei Times and about AIT. Let's go back to where this sorry adventure started. Not that I am sorry about it, I should be proud, but I'm not allowed to be because of the constrictions of the environment, and the place I'm in.

Let's go back two years, to March 2009.

Here I am, living in a small European country. Fitting in as well as a wealthy not-quite-young but not-quite-middle-aged American can. Of course, I tried to learn the local language, but there's always an accent left. One of the reasons I got the job was my talent for languages. I could understand the locals as long as they didn't veer too far into dialect.

Anyway, I wasn't there for language studies. Infiltration was my hidden agenda. Publicly, I was a concerned American at the time we got a new president and you didn't have to pretend you were Canadian if you were really American. In Taiwan, when you say you're Canadian, people think of drug-dealing English teachers. In Europe, they think of an improved version of Americans.

So I was a local activist for more cycling paths, fewer cars, even if I drove a Mercedes myself, but the locals didn't find that a contradiction in terms. I was a good citizen, pretending to favor environmental and other soft-left causes. That was in my adopted hometown.

But I could travel to other parts of the country and adopt a rawer image. A health nut, a stark opponent of nuclear energy, nuclear weapons and animal exploitation for corporate greed. Of course, I took care to leave the Mercedes on the other part of town, inside an underground garage. I plotted the activists' illegal entry into nuclear power plants and NATO military bases. And I plotted their arrest as well. That was all part of the job.

My home life was pretty simple. No confusing women things, maybe my neighbors even thought I was gay, I don't know. A bit of gardening, which helped me getting rougher hands, useful with the eco crowd. Lots of Internet stuff, but hey, I was an American geek, right. I never paid much attention to news from Taiwan, or from anywhere else but the US and my adopted European home country. That all changed in April 2009.

AIT

You saw that AIT guy on TV last night, moaning again about how Taiwan should let in American beef?
Like this country isn't in trouble enough, it should worry about eating American beef instead of that awful Australian beef, do you hear me right?
They're so deep in financial, political, economical, military, societal, ethnic trouble, so Mister Wonderful AIT wants them to eat American beef.
They were right to warn me never to let those bums at AIT get anywhere close to my project. They may be Americans, but they're the softhearted, wimpy, useless, big mouth/big face/big no-no type of Americans.
The kind that people all around the world rightly object to and protest against. They're stuffing the big stick right in your face and they still think they're being subtle.
Anyway, AIT is almost behind me now. They chose this dreary, rainy day to tell me it's my last one. In Taiwan, that is. The weather will not help my mood, but it will certainly help me cover my tracks. Took my last pictures of the Taiwanese sunlight yesterday afternoon. Nice weather, but I thought I could venture out one last time by the river without raising any undue alarms. Everyone's at home sitting by the TV watching how this sorry episode of Taiwanese history is going to play out.
If AIT is at all involved, then it will be pointing in all the wrong directions. Not because I kept them gloriously uninformed of what I was up to in the first place, but because they're so full of beef.
Rough seas, rain, wind, cold. I better dress warmly, without letting on that I'm off on a nautical voyage. People like me leave Taiwan on airplanes, to Hong Kong, or even to China these days, ironically enough. Open doors. I'm gonna walk right through them, but in a different direction than they're expecting. Of course they'll be looking for people escaping. But they're not expecting someone who looks like me. And I'm not headed for China or the Philippines anyway. I just want to get deeper into the Pacific. The time is set, the place is in the hands of the people I meet in the dark.
I'm out of here. Forever. I'll forget about AIT. The American Institute in Taiwan. Right. They won't forget about me because there is nothing to forget. I never even met any of them, just got warned about them before I even reached Taiwan.
But that was on another continent again. Maybe that's where I need to begin my story.

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