I officially no longer have phone service. My phone is a 2G Samsung slider phone which drops jaws whenever I show it to anyone. The strong reaction is an indication of how complete and thorough the homogenization of the cell phone landscape has become.

You can pull out a CD Walkman or even a cassette player and maybe get a surprised or impressed reaction; you know, whatever floats your boat. But if you're not using a so-called "smart" phone, people flip out like you lifted your shirt and showed the still-attached fetus of your stillborn twin that you had actually murdered in the womb.

It's probably a matter of time before kids are wondering "what's a slider phone"? What's a "dial tone"? Why do you "roll down" a car window? Why do you "trip" on acid? Duh, because when you're on drugs you lose equilibrium and stumble and fall a lot.

2G service ended in Taiwan at the end of June, but I read conflicting reports about a grace period of continued service to let people upgrade. One report said that there would be a six month grace period until the end of the year and it was all excuse for me to do nothing.

I got my usual $9 (NT$288) phone bill in July. Then in August I got one that was a little over a dollar. Then in September none at all. Then I met up with someone on Monday and had him try to call and text my phone and confirmed there was no service. There was no grace period.

There's still no point for me to upgrade to a 4G phone and service which will certainly be an "upgrade" of more than $9 a month. Nine dollars per month on the same service as when I first got to Taiwan was more than I needed. My sparse and irregular annual phone usage certainly doesn't justify upgrading. Good riddance to those people.

Furthermore, I know absolutely nothing about 4G phones or services provided. I'm not about to buy something I know nothing about and I don't know anyone to give me a primer. And being so far behind the learning curve as it is, I would only accept learning from someone from whom it wouldn't be a complete embarrassment. No one, that is.

I'm hopelessly behind on all technologies, I shouldn't wonder. I browse technology news sites and I have no idea what most of the headlines mean. At most I'll recognize a prominent company or product name. That's it.

I've heard opinions that people are moving towards not having a physical music collection, where files on a computer are considered "physical". My main workhorse listening to music is the iPod Shuffle and it has just recently been discontinued.

Coincidentally, I bought a new one the last time I was in the U.S., and apparently it's the last one I'll buy. I have three working iPod Shuffles, none of which have impressive battery life, even the new one. The very way I listen to music has a finite lifespan!

Being left behind by the relentless march of technology. Being disconnected and isolated. Indicative of a good time to check out.

Ooh, that's almost haiku!

Here:
Being left behind
Technology disconnect
Good time to check out

I decided to cut back drinking in dramatic fashion because of the realization that it's not going to kill me and therefore serves no purpose. So not constantly drinking, it's . . . sobering. Sobriety; interesting and strange with all its side-effects.

The constant drinking was making me feel like shit, and I think I can confirm that all, if not most, of my gripes and grievances regarding my gut and physical ailments were alcohol-related. Appetite is back and that's great. I don't struggle to eat and that's great. Eating more than once a day is, um, OK.

A bummer is that I get hungry now. Sometimes I find myself looking around my apartment at untimely moments to see if there are any morsels to munch on and glad for a pack of crackers.

A minor inconvenience is having to think of eating twice a day. I know, poor baby. But for years I've only had to think of it once and get it out of the way. Saved time and money, too. Well, time at least. I'm not doing the math, but I'm getting the sense that the amount I'm spending on more food is still offset by what I'm not spending on alcohol.

I've taken to looking for places to eat on Google maps. I wonder if anyone else does this. You can check out photos of eateries that are mapped out on Google maps and see what the place and the food look like and if it's appealing. Key for me is whether there is a readable photo of the menu if deciphering from Chinese is needed.

Sleep I mentioned has been "alright". It has continued to be alright, meaning no nights that I would call insomnia. The hours I've been sleeping aren't a lot, but it's never felt like insomnia, I haven't been struggling with it.

It's not insomnia where I can't sleep. It's just that I'm not sleeping a lot, but when I get up I'm satisfied with how much I slept. I may crash during the day or need a power nap, but it doesn't feel like I'm dealing with a problem.

Actually insomnia rarely led to crashes or power naps. Not getting enough sleep leads to a fatigue switch flipping and crashing, nodding off or power napping. With insomnia, there is no switch or it's a dead switch and nothing happens.

And this change occurs right after I cut back on drinking. The relationship between alcohol and sleep wouldn't surprise anyone, but with my type of insomnia, I would be surprised if it all hinged on alcohol.

I thought my insomnia was of a particular type that I was able to brush off cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), the most common treatment for insomnia. I thought there were deeper psychological issues involved or even a physiological basis that psychiatry isn't even looking for.

If it turns out it was all just because of alcohol, I'd be a little disappointed. Although I wonder how drinking less affects my other sleep-related quirks. For instance, I can't fall asleep unless there's music in the background. Every night, the last thing I do before turning off the light is play a CD with a 30 minute timer set. Eventually, I guess, I'll get around to test if this is still so.

Another one that is unlikely to be tested is that I can't fall asleep if there's someone else in the room. I have to be alone. That probably fits well if the other person isn't happy about music playing in the background.

You know, I keep starting these posts with something I want to say, but end up writing about all these other things. Distractions. That's what I continue to do, constantly distracting myself.

I've started morning sitting again after a two month break. The superficial excuse to stop was the heat. It's really hot, I don't want to sit. But that's really not a reason to stop, at least not in my room where I have the means to keep reasonably comfortable. I just didn't wanna.

I think I needed the break. I recall I was having trouble with practice in general in the first half of the year. I'm sure that played a part when I woke up one morning as daily temperatures were rising and air conditioner days had begun and decided not to sit. But then not sitting continued and it became habit. Instead I'd turn on the MLB baseball game airing live the previous evening in the States. That's another bad habit distraction; having baseball on every morning. Not sitting meant turning on the game earlier instead of in a later inning. Don't judge me. ok, maybe a little.

After two months, the hell heat started to weaken in late August and I woke up one morning and decided to sit and it just snapped back into place like I've never been gone. It was no big deal either way. That's just the way I approach the practice.

A part of me may have wondered whether I was doing something wrong. Why wasn't I bothered when practice got weak? Why didn't it bother me when I stopped sitting? Was I not at all worried that I wouldn't or couldn't get back into it? That's just not the way I approach the practice. I'm very laissez-faire about it. I just don't put that kind of pressure on myself for whatever reason. It's counter-productive? I'm lazy? Whatever. I don't believe in being hard on myself. I don't even know what it means to be hard on myself. That's possibly a character flaw.

An'ther hell hot summer done. I've mentioned it before. They've been a feature of Taipei summers over recent years, possibly, if not probably (if not definitely), an effect of global warming. I stopped going for rides in the afternoon because of hell heat. I thought of switching rides to mornings, but that never happened. Too busy watching baseball :p

Hell heat is sweltering, suffocating, oppressive; and going outside means going directly to somewhere that has air conditioning. No lingering, wandering, meandering or taking the long way home. Bangkok was like that when I was there 20 years ago. I've never felt it anywhere in the U.S.

Unfortunately there apparently has been recent government encouragement for public establishments to set thermostats higher to save energy. It used to be that you could step into any indoor space and be greeted with an immediate, refreshing, arctic blast of air-conditioning. Some places are still like that, but more and more places greet you with unsatisfying, lukewarm, tepid air-conditioning. I don't know if it's a city or national government directive, but I wouldn't vote for them if I could figure out how for the next elections.

The hell heat may have broken, but it's still subtropical summer hot. A lot of people still find this uncomfortable, but I'm alright with it. It still means having a fan on me all the time at home, even all night. None of that oscillating shit.

I guess that is a change from before, either indicating a hotter climate or me becoming more sensitive with age. I used to get uncomfortable with a fan blowing directly on me for extended periods of time. Not in this heat. Before at night, the fan would oscillate and the timer would turn it off after three hours. Now it blows and blows all the time. All the time, it blows.

Perhaps some insight into the expert level of my self-distraction: I've spent the summer reading the Harry Potter series of books. HBO was also accommodating with a timely broadcast of the series of movies. Twice, in fact, so I had the opportunity to read the books in conjunction with watching the movies. I'm reminded of this as the entire movie series has been broadcast back-to-back these past few days. Twice! I'm not watching it, I've quite had my fill.

I think it's really impossible to say whether the books or the movies are better. They are quite complementary with their pros and cons. What the movies do great are things that are lacking in the books, and what the movies miss out on are provided in the books. The movies' strengths are their visuals, economy and consistency over 8 films and 7 years. One of their main weaknesses is related to their economy and the amount of information that was necessarily left out. The books' strength is the detail and fleshing out of information that was left out of the movies. At varying points, that's also the books' weakness when they go overboard in detail and prattling discussions that go on ridiculously long and are tightened up in the movies.

One more prominently memorable of the examples is in the Prisoner of Azkaban in the Shake Shack scene when Sirius and Lupin confront each other. In the book it's a long drawn out verbal confrontation. Tensions and emotions are high, wands are threateningly drawn, and . . . they're having a conversation. It's an action point, and that's what the movie realizes. Instead of the drawn-out discussion, Lupin arrives already having figured out the conclusion of the discussion in the book, explained in a very economical and logical way.

There is so much detail in the books that is not included in the movies that it may seem that a lot is lost in just viewing the movies. Maybe so, but it doesn't feel that way and the movies are still great on their own. Unlike The Lord of the Rings, the complementary nature of the books and films is strong. 

An example that comes to mind of the opposite, where the book explains what the movie doesn't is in the last book. At the beginning of the movie version, the Dursleys are leaving with the brief and hurried explanation that it "isn't safe anymore". The book is much more satisfying in going into why it isn't safe anymore. And it's not just that the Dursleys are leaving, but they had been told by the Order of the Phoenix that they had to go and would be escorted to safety by Order members, and the Dursleys actually weren't sure whether to believe them or not and equivocated about leaving.

There isn't a contradiction between the pros and cons of the Harry Potter movies and the books. You can enjoy the movies without the details, then read the books and get the details, but then still enjoy the movies with the added information. That's different from the Lord of the Rings which I both watched and read in conjunction several years ago. Unlike Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings books are flat out superior to the movies. The Lord of the Rings books are near arguably considered literature, whereas the Harry Potter books, I shouldn't wonder, will never be more than Young Adult fiction with a wider appeal. That's not a diss; they are what they are, and are very good at what they are.

The contradiction I find in the Lord of the Rings is that if you haven't read the books, how the hell do you know who everyone is and what their motivations are? And if you have read the books and know who everyone is and what their motivations are, then how do you watch the movies and not think how inferior they are (story-wise) to the books and how much is wrong or missing?

There are also substantial differences between the Harry Potter books and movies, and some the books do better or worse, and some the movies do better or worse. For most part, I think the movies' economy on plot points actually improves the story. Scenes that are convoluted in the books are presented in the movies in a way that improves them. And some not. For example, the fate of the elder wand in the last movie is terrible compared to the book. In the book, it makes much more sense and has much more meaning and is more consistent to Harry's character and his relationship to Dumbledore.

Finally, if I were a parent whose children were interested in the Harry Potter series, I would require them to read each book before watching the movie. Partly because watching the movie first just seems lazy. There's also an element of encouraging literacy and patience in investing the time and effort into reading a book and using imagination, instead of just being fed someone else's visualization of the story (albeit a very good visualization). I don't think children would read a book and then watch the movie noticing what was left out. That's what critical adults do because we don't know how to just enjoy and have fun anymore. Kids would likely enjoy the movie with the extra information simply incorporated into their viewing experience.