Right on cue after my last post, right after my last class yesterday before leaving for the U.S. today, one of the bald spots on my beater commuter bike blistered, sprung a leak, and left me flat on the Taida campus.

Of the laundry list of things that I thought could fail, that was probably the most likely. Although a crank falling off was a close second. The brakes I could tighten if I wasn't so lazy, and I've never heard of a rear suspension just "falling off", even though that's what it felt it would do.

So I locked the bike on campus and will decide later if it's worth getting a new tire or just abandoning the bike. I'm leaning towards abandoning it, because it is Just Not Worth It. That does mean I would need to find a replacement. I'll try the public transportation thing after I get back, but I doubt I'll last a week.

Heh, so yesterday something came up that had me texting Hyun Ae for the first time in a while. We met up at the beginning of May and the beginning of June, so I thought maybe our relationship could become a once a month thing. But then we both left texts unanswered at the end of June and then radio silence.

I've got a lot to bitch about Hyun Ae. Calling her a good friend would really be stretching it.

But the truth is we met in our first Chinese class in Taiwan, and as everyone else in that class has gone home or away, we've stayed more or less in touch. And more importantly, I don't give a crap that she's in the light of cold, hard facts, a crappy friend.

We connect. I feel we connect, I don't know about her. For our June meeting, I got the itch to text her at the end of May, but then I didn't. I bet myself that she was about to text me, and she did the next day.

And yesterday, after we texted in the afternoon, she told me she'd call in the evening. In the evening I was about to respond to her text, I was holding my phone in my hand, and she called.

Could I love her like Amina? I don't know. I was a different person then, I really can't say. Even if it's irrational, a figment of imagination, Amina is in a league of her own. Which I suppose is what love is. Can I love her like Sadie? Well, since I didn't love Sadie, yes, I can love her like Sadie. Hm. That's it. I do love Hyun Ae. But there's a "fuck that" attached to it.

The point of all this is a feeling that "I can . . . " I don't know what. Love? I wouldn't go that far. Love and the attachment that goes along with it is just not in my reality anymore. But there is something here that is in my reality, i.e., something I can learn something from. Something in this feeling towards Hyun Ae. It's akin to love, but it's not attachment. But isn't that what I learned from Amina? And wasn't it a bitter pill in the end? Won't Hyun Ae be a bitter pill in the end? Wasn't Sadie a bitter pill in the end?

It's time for me to leave for the airport. It's only for a week and a half, but it's still an 18 hour flight. Enough of an ordeal for me to think about "leaving", really leaving. Oh, for once I don't mean suicide. I mean a place. What it means to be in a place and what it means to leave it.

Unless I kill myself here, or near here, I will leave Taipei. That's even more certain than leaving San Francisco. So what should this experience mean to me? This being here? I have my answer, do you have yours?