Little weird. It's fair to say that I've always been, more or less, a heavy drinker. But I never considered it a problem. I was never physically addicted. It didn't really get in the way of things I had to do, it was rarely debilitating, if ever, it didn't really affect the way I dealt with other people. It wasn't a problem. I just drank a lot.

Then just last week I was feeling a little worried that it was getting out of hand. Part of me was telling me to rein it in, and the other part of me responsible for actually reining it in . . . wasn't doing its job.

There were times before I left my apartment that I told myself if I had a drink before I left, I would have to admit having a problem. And even though I could get through that, I consider that behavior extreme. The pangs were still there. The key word in my mind in telling myself to not drink was "drink", yo'm say'n?

I was thinking, OK, this is bad, it may be time to submit that I'm an alcoholic . . . with a problem. And then I suddenly stopped drinking for the entire week without even thinking about it, with less than two shots left in a bottle of a vile local liquor that is 116 proof, 58% alcohol.

I was exposed to this liquor soon after I got here. My uncle comes to Taipei fairly often for meetings with a bus association, and when they have dinners, he often invites me along. The first time he invited me, they had this stuff, Kinmen Kaoliang 58 or something. Tasted awful. And seemed particularly strong, but I couldn't tell if it really was particularly strong, or if it just tasted particularly awful.

Eventually I did find out that the 58 is in reference to the alcohol content, considerably stronger than 40-46% I'm used to (although not nearly as strong as the 151 rum I killed my vocal chords with). And I learned to take the taste in stride.

Several months ago, they invited a bunch of bus operators from South Korea for some reason. South Koreans are notorious heavy drinkers, of course, and proud of it, of course. They served Kinmen Kaoliang 58, and it was really hilarious seeing them take their first shot of this stuff.

You don't need a common language to understand what is this vile, disgusting stuff? on someone's face. Of course, they were pounding the stuff back by night's end. But they made that face everytime they drank it. It's quality liquor, just really harsh.

So I think I can give myself a clean bill of substance abuse health.

I just haven't wanted to finish off that bottle. I get into grooves. If I stop drinking for a while, I lose all desire to have a drink. Even the thought of it sometimes makes me queasy. I just don't want to feel that way.

And even if I go out and have a drink with other people, nothing stronger than beer or wine, when I get home, I won't want to continue. But once I decide to finish this bottle off, I'm pretty sure I'll buy another bottle within days, if not the next day, if not that day.

And I will eventually finish this bottle off. If not tonight, tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, or the next. . .


Experimenting with the ultra-long zoom on my Ricoh Caplio R4 which is said to have the equivalent of 28mm-200mm range.

6:04 p.m. - On the Danshui riverside bikeway, shooting across the river at freeway construction in Taipei County. This is the 28mm wide-angle equivalent when the camera is turned on. Focus on the center at the teeny-tiny Stonehenge-like structures and zoom in:

6:06 p.m. - This is what the 7.1x optical zoom can do, zooming until the lens mechanism stops making noise and is sticking out several inches in front of the camera. Now focus on the structures on the left side and continue digitally zooming (the camera makes no noise) as far as it goes: 

6:07 p.m. - With no expectation of great quality, that's pretty damn impressive for a compact point and shoot camera.

And finally pulling back just a bit for how I'd compose those structures at such a long zoom. A silhouette line can be seen of the Luzhou plateau in the background.