I don't know if I should be watching what I say about suicide anymore. On one hand, my previous principle holds: If I'm not going through with it right now, I'm not going to now or in the near future. It's not reality. It's only reality if I'm going to implement a plan right now.

Planning for the future is just fantasy. And that goes for anything aside from suicide, too. I can have a plan in place and a time frame, but if it's not now, I don't believe it and neither should anyone else. I just have faith that right now will eventually happen. And sometimes right now needs a little encouragement.

On the other hand, the word 'inevitable' still means something to me, and looking at all the evidence and circumstances, I absolutely think and believe that I will succeed one of these days. I will not die a horrible natural death, peacefully in my sleep; or out of my control being hit by a bus on my bike; or indirectly through drinking myself to death.

Suicide is something I have to do, something I have to accomplish, something I have to succeed in, something I can't fail in. And it frightens me that it's not fact. I might still be on the fence. I can still be pulled. Fortunately, the "facts" don't indicate otherwise. Everything points to suicide, and it's only my own doubts, my insecurity that makes me think I won't do it.

Truth is, the longer I drag this out, spanning years into decades, the more irrelevant this equivocating gets. Not getting any younger, not getting any of these years back. Suicide starts making even more sense. And it made sense from the very beginning.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 1:08 p.m. - Cemetery on the way to Ruifang. The ride to Ruifang is pretty far continuing all the way to the coast. It involves taking Highway 5 east almost to Keelung City, but turning right on Highway 2丁 at Badu 八堵 prior to entering the city proper. 

1:49 p.m. - Ruifang 瑞芳 is a town just off the coast and is the transit town to go to the tourist attraction of Jiufen by train (after the train to Ruifang, buses go to Jiufen). Jiufen has become famous as the inspiration town for Hayao Miyazaki's "Spirited Away". That's the Keelung River flowing west in the bottom pic, having been thwarted from making it to the ocean.

2:08 p.m. - Leaving Ruifang it's a quick, short up and down to the coast. Keelung Peak shrouded by clouds. Turn left on Highway 2 to head up the coast to Keelung City.

2:13 p.m. - Sights along Highway 2. Some people like flowers, or insects, or wildlife. I like abandoned buildings.

2:25 p.m. - A well-marked diversion off the highway to the Badouzi seaside park area.

2:26 p.m. - Keelung Islet (believe it or not).

2:31 p.m. - Keelung Peak still shrouded by clouds. The rock sticking out into the water at the right has a natural attraction that I didn't see called Elephant Trunk Rock because it has a rock formation in the shape of an antelope elephant.

3:26-3:30 p.m. - Highway 2 goes through Keelung City proper and continues along the coast all the way to Danshui, but signs are clear about how to get back to Highway 5 to go back to Taipei. These are not on Highway 5. Highway 5 is rideable, but it's still a major highway and getting off it at an obvious point (there's a point where 5 veers diagonally to the left, but the road itself continues straight) was a no-brainer. Just follow the sun west to Taipei.

4:10 p.m. - Photostitch of Nanyang Bridge over the Keelung River. This is not the actual eastern border of Taipei and Xizhi, but in my cyclist's mind it serves as the border. When I get to this bridge, in my mind I'm back in Taipei.

4:19 p.m. - Getting on the riverside bikeway at the Nanyang Bridge, it's bikeway all the way home for most part. Actually, according to the map, this is closer to the actual border and I'm shooting from Taipei and that's Xizhi across the canal on the left. Across the Keelung River on the right is all Taipei.

I'm feeling a need to tear everything down again, strike the set, rip up the canvas.

Unfortunately, this is nothing new. I have nothing to say about it that I haven't said about it before, which makes it even more boring.

I want everyone and everything in my life, which isn't much mind you, out of my life. I'm quitting the band in February at the latest, my next destination will be Kaohsiung to regroup, but before I leave Taipei, I have to fit in another suicide ... thingie, whatever, just as I did before I left San Francisco. It just wouldn't feel right without it. Nor would I be able to get momentum to leave without it. Maybe it should be a ritual.

That's just a feeling, not a declaration of an intended act.

Everything needs to be put down, everything needs to die. Not me, everything outside of me. But there's only one way to do that, which is to get rid of this manifestation of me. And I need to dig. I need to dig to get to the core of me. I need to dig to get down to the ground of being. I need to dive into the depths. I need to swim and know what it's like to have no shore.

Three Times (最好的時光) (2005, Taiwan)

I'm a huge fan of Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien, so I'm a little biased. This film isn't anything groundbreaking, but it's worth watching for HHH fans. It's in his trademark lethargic style, no surprise there, but instead of one long feature film which may try the patience of viewers not accustomed to his style, this film is broken into three segments in three different time periods.

Each segment focuses on a man and a woman, played by the same actors, and the relationship between them.

HHH does what he does so well – he gives us a meditative feel for Taiwan culture and society. In this film, he does it in three different time periods. I'm not sure what he was trying to do with this gimmick, whether he was trying to contrast them or say something about love or society and how they've changed, but it doesn't really matter.

As with all HHH films, he just sort of presents something and it's up to the audience to glean what they do. His films are ethereal and they seem to portray existence and reality in a meditative twilight. I think this was the first HHH film I've seen in Taiwan, and after watching this and going out into the Taipei streets, I felt like I was in one of his films.

Although I don't know if that says something about the film being a success in conveying a feeling, or if there's just something wrong with me.

Not a stand-out HHH film, but I'm still biased and give it a personal 8 out of 10 tomatoes. To people unfamiliar with his films, I would add a strong caveat that his films are very slow and meditative.

I must say, I was quite proud to be an American this past Tuesday. Well, Wednesday in Taiwan. I mean, really proud. Americans did something right.

Not quite so proud of my co-workers who couldn't get the date right in my absence. I had Wednesday night off, and when I came in on Thursday for my shift, I picked up the day's paper from a stack at the entrance to review the previous day's work as we do everyday, and I immediately wondered why Tuesday's paper was on the stack. I'm not perfect, I miss mistakes that then go to press. But the date on the front page of a historic story? Come on.

Being a racial minority growing up in the U.S., it was hard to be proud of being American when you weren't considered American. Then the first time I started feeling proud to be American was after Sept. 11. I don't know why. Maybe the shock and outrage of that event made me realize that it's still my country and I did care about it. Why? Because I'm American. Simple.

Even Bush's bungled aftermath which should have returned me to cynicism towards America, didn't. But seeing Barack Obama with Michelle Obama on the stage after their victory, a black couple, side-by-side with Joe Biden and his wife, white couple, and thinking, that couple, the black one, will be the first family, not the white one, and that is huge.

I wonder why I haven't heard of any reporting on people who voted strictly on racial lines, because you know they're out there. People who voted for McCain, just because they would never vote for an African American. They might have been willing to vote Democratic after 8 years of Bush, but black? No way.

Instead, we just get reports that there is "no evidence" of racial bias or underlying, hidden racism in voting patterns. Give me a break.

There are a lot of racist people in the U.S., why should they be left out of reporting? Hate is different from racism. Hate groups might be better left out of reporting, but even they've gotten more coverage than the racists who might be willing to come right out and explain it.

There was a clip on CNN of an Italian guy saying that McCain would win because he was the "true American" and Americans would never let Obama become president. I want that guy interviewed.

I think racism is primitive and uncivilized, but it's out there, and it doesn't get stamped out by ignoring it. Racism, different from hate, is something people can come to terms with. Hate, on the other hand, is irrational and its social manifestations should be dealt with under the law.

I admit that I'm racist towards whites. I admit that I'm prejudiced towards blacks. I agree that it's primitive and uncivilized and would rather not be this way. But I deny that I harbor hate towards either of them.

My racism towards whites was more of a response to their racism towards me. I wasn't born racist against whites, I learned it. In grade school, I was taught to humiliate Asians as foreign, different, inferior. I was rewarded for differentiating myself from Asians by talking down about Chinese, Japanese and Koreans to prove I was American – like the white Americans who were dishing out the perceived approval.

And then college happened, and I learned what that was all about, and about history. Being predisposed against white people was actually quite natural in that light. Does that make any difference when I meet someone who happens to be white? Not at all. When I meet someone, my vibe is purely based on personality and what I get from them personally, nothing to do with their race.

My prejudice against blacks is the same, and I choose my words carefully. I have a judgment before I meet them, also based on my experience. However, that's more of a defense and doesn't come into play whenever I meet with another human being. I deny being racist against blacks. I pre-judge because of my experience with specifically African Americans being racist towards Asians, but that judgment can be discounted within 5 seconds of meeting a person.

As a race, I hold blacks in pretty high regard. As a race, well, let's just say it's better that I deal with whites on an individual by individual basis. I've met some very cool white people in Taiwan, but the bottom of the barrel worst experiences with anyone here has been with whites, period. And don't even get me started about the Chinese.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 12:52 a.m. - Still Halloween as far as partying goes.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 12:06 p.m. - Riding to Pingxi from where I live now in Taipei involves riding east along Rte. 5 into Xizhi, and about halfway to Keelung turn right onto Xiping Rd (Xizhi-Pingxi, 北31). It also involves climbing a mountain to get there. 

12:09 p.m. - The valley Xiping Rd. climbs slowly through until hitting the part on the map where the road becomes very squiggly (see above pic).  

12:38 p.m. - Panshiling Viewpoint. Fortunately I don't do climbs for the views at the top.  

12:42 p.m. - And now for the screaming downhill into Pingxi.

12:53 p.m. - Quaint township Pingxi. What blows my mind is that this is the Keelung River! I don't know where the source is, but at this point it's heading east towards the coast where you'd think it'd drain into the Pacific O, but no!, before it reaches the coast it turns around and heads back west into Taipei to drain into the Danshui River. Go fig.

I'm planning on quitting my job today. It's just not worth it anymore. This isn't like San Francisco where I was giving up my livelihood because I wanted to give up my life. This has become a sucky job, with sucky pay, that doesn't appreciate my being there, and therefore doesn't deserve me being there.

It's actually a no-brainer. This is not a job worth languishing in. It's not even my livelihood since I switched to part-time, and that doesn't earn enough to live on.

Taiwan is a dead city to me. It never really came to life, except for maybe the cycling. Time to leave.

What does that mean? Did San Francisco die? Almost. Yea, it did. There was nothing more left for me, there was no more potential in that city. I wasn't going to get anything more out of that city.

I did that North Coast Highway 2 ride. It turned out to be 66 miles long, possibly the longest ride I've done without hurting myself (that would be Tahoe, which nearly killed me. Well, not really, but it really, really hurt). It also established the upper limit of what I can do, which is nothing impressive, as some people do more than that as casual training.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2:49 a.m. - Not much to photograph or see at this time of morning, but in daylight hours this is a seaside plaza for taking wedding photos. There are a bunch of aesthetic structures built to enhance wedding photos. Taiwanese take wedding photos very seriously. 

2:56 a.m. - Basically across the road from the wedding photo plaza is the Jingang Four-Faced Buddha Temple.

But I was hurting in that last 13 mile stretch from Keelung back to Taipei. And the sun was well on its way up by the time I got back to my neighborhood. Yea, that was a long-ass ride. Especially solo and basically a straight shot. I took two rests, did the ride in 5 hours, averaging 16.7 mph until Keelung. That's fast for me! I'm usually happy when I complete a ride averaging over 15 mph (albeit those usually have climbs). By the end of the ride, after suffering from Keelung to Taipei, I was only down to an average of 16.3 mph.

5:42 a.m. - Last stretch of Keelung River bikeway approaching home.

But overall it went really well. It was a nice clear-ish night and I was able to track my direction as I made the curve of the north coast by spotting Sirius, high in the southern sky. I probably should've taken a rest in the stretch through Shimen, Jinshan and Wanli into Keelung, which I did in one shot. That probably would have made the last stretch less painful.

That ride accomplished, I don't know what else Taipei has to offer. Dead city. After I quit, I'll start doing more day rides as the weather allows, and start exhausting what photography is left to find.

Assuming I don't kill myself, which would be off the east coast I decided, not the north, I would quit the band and move to Kaohsiung some time next year, stay there for some period of time and then move back to the States and look for a job in New York or Philadelphia until I got sick of living so close to family and then relocate to Tucson. Unless I can find my way to Nagasaki.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28 - Raohe Night Market about to start preparing for opening.

4:43-4:49 p.m.

4:55 p.m.

Hula Girls (2006, Japan)

I usually watch a film twice when I rent it on DVD, and the second viewing really benefited my liking this film. Watching a film twice on DVD is about the same as seeing it once in a theater. I think in a theater, your eye catches much more screen information just because of the size of the screen, and, of course, in a theater you're just concentrating on watching the film.

Almost every fault I found in the film during the first viewing, I noticed during the second viewing that the filmmaker actually did cover it. It's not an air-tight film, but definitely enjoyable. I'd give it 8 out of 10 tomatoes.

Loosely based on a true story, the film is set in the 60's in a mining town in northeastern Japan. The mine is set to close and the locals aren't happy and rebel against a seeming-frivolous mining company idea to build a "Hawaii center" to shift the town to tourism. A handful of local girls are interested in the offer of hula lessons, and an urbane, out-of-place, professional dancer from Tokyo with secrets in her past is hired to teach.

It's an against-all-odds triumph film, arguably feel-good, but I think it captures the tensions and difficulties fairly well. I think it would help to know that none of the actors were dancers (which lends to credibility that a bunch of miner's daughters could accomplish what they did), and the real-life Hawaii center enjoyed a great deal of success (which makes the finale seem not-so-overblown).

I think the strongest point of the film is that feel-good aspect, so if you're not into feel-good, you might want to skip it. The pace of the film is good and the characters likeable and more or less credible. The weakest point of the film, I think, is character development. I didn't feel I really got to know them and their motivations.

My basic problem is an existential one. My basic what? Problem? No problem. There is not a problem. A problem is a paradigm, and in my paradigm of life, there is no problem. You can only have a problem if there is also a concept of a life with "not a problem". There is no "not a problem", so there can be no problem, therefore there is no problem. I'm serious, I'm not being enigmatic, cagey or clever.

It's been 10 years since I've been in a relationship. For 10 years of my life, not a single person has found me attractive or interesting enough to get to know better. Through my entire stint working at a law firm and being in a band in San Francisco there was nothing. That's astounding, really. Can you even imagine it? It almost qualifies as an achievement that I can be that irrelevant. And I have no better words for the world that surrounds me, either.

We all face death alone. Maybe I'm in training in life for that. The resonant echo of no one there. I say it despondently, but it comes out like some sort of bliss. I'm hoping to do that north coast ride this week. At night. I did the Jinshan ride during the day. The scenery was nice, it was good to see things, but the traffic was annoying. Descending from mountains also much better during the day, but no mountains on the north coast ride.

I'm gonna decide this week whether to quit my job or not. I'm getting trained on other aspects of the job, so I'll see if it keeps my interest and if these other aspects keeps me far enough away from another person there who would be my key reason for leaving, and my boss knows it.

My parents are coming to Taiwan in January for my cousin's wedding. They also invited me to travel with them to Cambodia and Angkor Wat. As miserable as traveling with parents sounds, I think I'll take them up on it, seeing as they're getting on in age. Beyond that, I keep my mind quiet.

Pentax ZX-5n, Ilford XP2 Super. All between Dunhua and Guangfu N. Rds., south of Minsheng E. Rd.

Taipei Chang Gung Memorial Hospital

October 9-21

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9, 5:22 a.m. - Nearing home at daybreak on that ride I posted photos from a few weeks ago. Keelung River from Chengmei Bridge.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 13, 9:23 p.m. - Minquan W. Rd. MRT construction near my workplace.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2:29 p.m. - Pet lovers must think this is great. Others might think it's disgusting or rude. Do people let their pets sit at the table at home? Anyway it's apparently acceptable here. I don't really have an opinion, but I've only ordered to go from there since. Go fig.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16, 3:20 a.m. - I don't know anything about New Jersey, so my ballot basically has one vote for president.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2:46 a.m. - Rte. 101 in Danshui. This ride is to Sanzhi, one of the northern-most towns in Taiwan. The ride to Danshui is about 15 miles, then riding out of Danshui on Route 2 until finding Rte 101 and turning right through rolling hills. It goes to Sanzhi where Rte. 2 takes me back to Danshui along the coast.

3:18 a.m. - Huge cemetery on Rte 101 and pretty near the highest point on the road before heading down into Sanzhi. It's a steady climb but not challenging at all. The ocean would be visible during the day.

3:36 a.m. - Sanzhi (三芝) town sign formed with clouds and birds. 

SEPTEMBER 21, 12:13 a.m. - Co-workers at the end of the shift after the final pages have been sent to press. The chalkboard is our AP style quick reference.

2:13 p.m. - The Jinshan ride first requires climbing Yangmingshan, circling around the Qixing peak, the highest in Yangmingshan, and descending into Jinshan 金山 on Taiwan's northeast coast.

2:25-2:26 p.m. - Macao Bridge on Yangjin Rd. (Yangming-Jinshan, Rte. 2甲) descending into Jinshan.

3:00 p.m. - Wanli photostitch. After reaching Jinshan, I turned right on Rte. 2 and Wanli 萬里 is the next town down. This is across the street from Nuclear Power Plant #2 and is where the heated water (where it's white) is discharged into the ocean.

3:03-3:04 p.m.

4:33 p.m. - Flat tire on Rte. 5 from Keelung to Taipei.

5:13 p.m. - Finally back on the Taipei riverside bikeway for the last stretch to home.

10:47-10:54 p.m. - Meeting up with band members and their crew for drinks on my night off.

Nina Mix:

1. Fire Eyed Boy (Broken Social Scene)
2. Dashboard (Modest Mouse)
3. Neon Lights (Sahara Hotnights)
4. 1234 (Feist)
5. Burn You Up, Burn You Down (Peter Gabriel)
6. happiness!!! (Kimura Kaela)
7. No One Knows (Queens of the Stone Age)
8. Keshou Naoshi (Powdering My Nose) (Tokyo Jihen)
9. Je Veux To Voir (Yelle)
10. UMO (OOIOO)
11. Way Out (Yeah Yeah Yeahs)
12. Owaranai Uta (Blue Hearts)
13. Soul Meets Body (Death Cab for Cutie)
14. Amurita (Chitose Hajime)
15. Happiness (Gavy NJ)
16. Aozora (Shiina Ringo)
17. Try, Try, Try (Smashing Pumpkins)
18. Ishiki (Shiina Ringo)
19. The Twist (Metric)
20. Turn Into (Yeah Yeah Yeahs)

Negativity still clings to me and burns me from the inside like a demon.

I've managed to alienate everyone who was in my life, and I keep everyone in my life at far arms distance.

I bet just five minutes in my shoes and you wouldn't want to be here, either.

My movement on this path of life is a haunted house hall of horrors.

I still sit every morning. I still go through the Tibetan Book of the Dead in a circular read. I'm still trying to focus and cultivate what I think is most important. Music's not that important anymore. I still listen and hoard obsessively, but playing music isn't that important, despite being in a band. A humiliating joke of a band. I still ride.

I rode up into the mountains thinking I would finally do the Wanli ride.

One of my short-term goals is to ride Route 2 along Taiwan's north coast in its entirety, from Taipei north to Danshui, then Route 2 to Keelung, east of Taipei, and back to Taipei. I'm sorta haphazardly "training" for that. I'm not sure what the mileage is, but to Danshui is 13 miles, and to Keelung is 14 miles. So from Danshui to Keelung is at the absolute very least 27 miles, so the total ride is at the very least 54 miles since it's roughly circular. Doable, but how much more than 54 miles is the actual ride?

Anyway, before that attempt, I first want to do a Wanli ride and a Jinshan ride. Wanli is north of Keelung, and Jinshan is north of Wanli, so each would incrementally increase my range. Both of those rides entail big climbs and a return route through Keelung, which I'm already familiar with. I'm hoping there are no big climbs on Route 2. Relatively flat along the coast, I hope.

I finally found the mountain route to Wanli several weeks ago (maps in Taiwan are quite unreliable) without actually doing it. So anyway, I decided to attempt the Wanli ride, and headed up to get to the "Wanli pass." It's not really a mountain pass, strictly speaking, but it's where the roads converge onto the road at the peak of the climb to descend down to Wanli.

My energy level was low, and I wasn't really into it, so as soon as I hit the base of the climb in Neihu District, I immediately went down to my granny gear. I noted the sky was overcast, but didn't think it would rain because the weather maps showed any clouds were remnants from the typhoon and were pulling out northward.

What I forgot was riding up to 2,000 feet quite possibly puts me into those clouds.

As I approached the top of the climb, it was wet, but not quite raining. Water wasn't precipitating on me, rather I was riding into the moisture that was already there. I'm not a wet weather rider (think wet cat), and it was miserable enough for me to abandon the Wanli ride. I did, however, complete the climb, going further into the wetness, so that I could come back down a different route on this same side of the mountain, but would put me into Xizhi, between Keelung and Taipei.

But there was more to the experience than the ride.

I was above the "street lamp line", sort of an urban equivalent of the "tree line" in mountains, so I was riding in near darkness. The moisture was bearable, but not making me happy. There was also a wind blowing something fierce up there.

October 9, 2:39 a.m. - Xizhi route up to the "Wanli pass", above the "streetlamp line", probably more or less around "2,000 feet" in "elevation".

The surreality wasn't being wasted on me as I miserably approached the summit, but then Shiina Ringo came on my iPod. I've mentioned before that when I die, I want to be wrapped in a shroud of Shiina Ringo's music, not knowing what I meant by that. I still don't, but there she was hauntingly in my ears, and I began the descent.

The darkness was disorienting. The isolation was total. The rain was frustrating, exasperating. The wind was roaring. The speed was frightening, riding my brakes all the way down, riding in the center of the road keeping my headlamp on the glass cat's eyes to guide me through turns. Shiina Ringo.

October 9, 3:05 a.m. - Keeping forward light on the cat's eyes and staying in the center of the road, bike cables illuminated. No rain (or wind) when these were shot a week later.

My way of coping was to envision the experience as a virtual imagining of the death bardos.

There was a point as I neared the peak where I emotionally "cracked", like my stomach opened up and spilled out. I gasped and it turned into a laugh of awareness and that was the start of it.

I went down the mountain telling myself to practice death, let myself be overwhelmed, let myself be consumed, let myself go, but keep my consciousness, keep my concentration on the cat's eyes to guide me like dharma, like hearing a recitation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. I need to recognize it and keep my senses even in the cacophony of the thundering straits of the bardo experience.

Shiina Ringo in my ears was a faint echo of my past life and emotions. I felt my attachment to my life and I thought of all the things that comprise me, my life, and my identity, and I didn't want to let them go, I didn't know how to let them go, they are all that I knew. But that's why I had to let them go – grasping onto all that I knew is wallowing in ignorance. I'm willing to let my life be taken, but I was acting like I wasn't ready to give it up. I need to be.

The difference between enlightenment and non-enlightenment is recognition of awareness in the death bardos. Awareness is there, but it's like being in a tempest, sense overloaded – the last thing you think of is recognizing your own awareness. It's just experience and fear. But recognition of awareness, which can only manifest with cultivation and practice, is a hallmark of enlightenment.

Shooting through the straits of the bardo and hearing something familiar and forming an awareness around it. Like lucid dreaming, maybe. I hope I can hone in on a recitation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. If anyone is reciting it, I think I will recognize it and move towards it. I just hope someone will be reciting it. For me.

5:15 p.m. - Now I just need to find one of those auto repair shops with Authorized Service Station signs nearby.

October! It feels cooler outside but it might be because a typhoon just blew through. After the winds died down it rained all day yesterday. The rain stopped and today was just overcast and cool. I'm about to head out for my first ride in a week. Exactly a week ago I climbed the Yangmingshan loop for only the second time. Then I went to Kaohsiung, taking a few days off from work, and then the typhoon arrove.

My oldest brother had another kid a few days ago, but since they're touchy about personal information that's all I'll say about it.

While I was in Kaohsiung last week it happened to be Pie's (my cousin's daughter) 6th birthday. I took the opportunity to implement what I'm encouraging as a new practice in the family. I took Pie out to buy her a birthday gift, but that was only an excuse to more importantly help her buy a gift for her mother.

I told her that people buy her presents for her birthday, but on her birthday she had to buy a gift for her mother to thank her. My logic being that birthdays are too often just about the birthday boy or girl with no attention paid to what the mother went through on that day however many years ago.

It all went perfectly. Pie was totally into it. It took her less than a minute to choose her own gift, but then we spent a little more time for her mother's gift with the help of Pie's nanny, Faye, who was instrumental to this scheme. Pie also totally independently found a card which I sure hadn't thought of.

After we got back to my cousin's place, Pie wrote a message in the card using Chinese phonetics since she can't write characters yet. My cousin was thrilled even though she had an idea what was going on since I'm sure I mentioned this idea to her before and we weren't trying to be secretive or anything.

The only thing that felt funny in the end was having the appreciation solely towards the mother, who, after all, was the one who went through labor. When I mentioned this idea to my brother some time ago he asked 'what about the father?', to which I replied that he did his role 9 months earlier and likely had a good time with it. He didn't suffer through childbirth. Or maybe he did, but not in quite the same way (no one likes to hear his wife screeching like a harpy).

But it was a little strange that Audrey's husband wasn't in on it, and quite honestly I don't think I could have convinced him to implement it since it wasn't his idea (so he wasn't crystal clear about it), and he's actually very busy with work. But now that he saw how it works and how much Pie enjoyed it and how happy it made Audrey, I think I can pitch it to him to do it from now on, starting with Gracie (Pie's little sister) next year.

I actually wanted to do it with Gracie earlier this year but didn't get enough momentum from Audrey to go to Kaohsiung in June. But this way was better because I'm glad Pie got to do it first. As the older sister she's entitled to certain privileges and afterwards Gracie wanted me to take her to do it next year (mostly because Gracie is in an envy/jealousy phase and wants to be in on anything of Pie's).

But the father should totally be in on it. That was actually in my earliest draft of the activity – that it be the father who takes the kid to buy the gift and explain why. That makes it a family thing and doesn't ignore or leave the father out of it. So next year I'll encourage Eric to take Gracie. I hope it can become an annual thing. The idea not being the gift, but the appreciation. The activity was not really for Audrey, but for Pie – that she has this idea now to be grateful to her mother on her birthday. And actually I think Audrey was most moved by the card that Pie chose by herself and wrote on her own.

Pie's sixth birthday on Vimeo.