Getting out of Taipei didn't help, and even in Kaohsiung insomnia reigned my nights. And talking about psychotic episodes, I found myself ravaging the kitchen in the wee hours looking for a corkscrew after I found several bottles of wine in a cabinet.
I was hoping to go to sleep early since I knew once I woke up to go
back to Taipei, there wouldn't be any chance to wrangle much sleep
before I had to go to work. At 1:40 a.m., I gave myself 20
minutes to get to sleep. At 2:00 I got up and studied an article of Chinese. I also
found a can of beer in a drawer and stuck it in the freezer to cool it
down. After 3:00, I gave myself another certain amount
of time to fall asleep, and that didn't work so I got up and sat for 45
minutes and then started working on another article of Chinese and
that put me past 5:00.
I also mercilessly killed at
least 4 mosquitoes, which is my equivalent of going around stabbing
people during a psychotic episode. Two of the killings were bloody. I must have gone through every single fucking drawer several times looking for a corkscrew. Why were there 3 bottles of wine without a single fucking corkscrew in the apartment (the wine was no doubt leftover from my cousin's wedding in January and otherwise there's no one to drink them, that's why)? So I snuck upstairs to my uncle's apartment in search of a corkscrew. This was after 5:00 in the morning and I noticed the elevator was on the 1st floor, so my uncle had already left to go swimming as he does every morning. I made my way around the kitchen drawers like a thief, but then I misestimated the length of a short drawer and it went crashing to the ground, so I gave up sneaking around and just turned on the fucking light. Luckily it didn't wake my aunt.
No luck. I ended up going out to a convenience store and buying a small flask of Jimmy Beam, and slugging that down in gulps finally put me out after 6 until about 10:30 when my uncle woke me for brunch, after which I was going back to Taipei by High Speed Rail at 12:06, arriving at 1:42. After getting home, I took a double shot of Dewars and slept dubiously for about an hour before I had to get ready for work. No incidents at work.
After work, my night was pretty much ordinary and I tried going to sleep at 4:30 a.m., only to wake up before 8:00. I lay in bed in a twilight daze for about another hour before I got up, sat for 45 minutes, gulped down a quarter bottle of gin and knocked myself out until just before 3:00 p.m. Less than 5 hours of alcohol-imposed sleep, I'm hoping that's enough to get me through work tonight.
The paper is running an article today about how in some northern latitudes, when there's constant sunlight during the summer months, there's a spike in violent suicides caused by insomnia.
Kaohsiung:
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| FRIDAY, MAY 8, 5:49 a.m. - Arrival in Kaohsiung by bus, too early for the KMRT so walking from the main station area to Formosa Blvd. Station to kill time. |
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| 5:57 a.m. - Even buildings leave impressions upon other buildings after they're gone. |
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| 5:58-6:02 a.m. - Formosa Blvd. Station. |
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| 4:22 p.m. - Along the Port of Kaohsiung where the old rail line has been converted to recreational paths. |
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| 4:34 p.m. - Shipping container art installations. Being located next to a port probably makes it easy to obtain discarded shipping containers. |
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| 4:41-4:42 p.m. |
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| 4:43 p.m. - Port of Kaohsiung |
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| Rainbow V 22mm lens toy camera. Kodak BW400CN. |
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| SATURDAY, MAY 9 |
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| 5:51 p.m. - World Games stadium from the KMRT station, but too late in the day to check it out. Earmarked for the next visit. |
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