I thought one of the first things I'd do once I got back to Taiwan is get back to the gym, but a week and a half later I still haven't. Tomorrow will mark four weeks I haven't been to the gym, but I'll try to go by tomorrow.

Granted I caught a head cold the day after I got back, but that cleared by mid-week last week, and physically I'm go for activity. I've been in a slump in addition to a sleep slump since flying to New Jersey.

I hardly slept at all on the flight to New Jersey, and immediately upon arrival my sleep pattern has been pretty constant to this day; that is, going to sleep between 1 and 3 a.m., sleeping roughly between 4 or 5 hours, and then crashing out for a nap later in the day or evening. It's not enough sleep, but I'm alright.

I guess motivation in general has been low. Slump. I'm in danger of alcoholism overwhelming. I'm in danger of becoming totally unmotivated and comfortable doing nothing. Which, as I recall, wasn't that bad as long as I don't get restless in it. I've even felt some possible relapses in my appetite. Not being able to eat is not something I want to go back to.

And now for something completely different, after almost 9 years in Taiwan, I'm pretty jaded about any ridiculousness here. I thought I'd seen it all. But something I'd never experienced was to buy something and find the item not in the box.

Yesterday I went to the supposed premier music store in Taiwan, ATB, and bought a Korg PX5D multifex unit. I had already scoped it out at another store and saw that the price was at least NT$8,000, so when I was quoted NT$7,500 at ATB, I went for it.

It's a weird feeling buying something and opening up the box and finding the item not there. I knew where it was. At the store, I had perused the box and noticed the actual unit sitting on the shelf, basically making it a display unit. That's when and where I asked about the price, got the quote and took the box believing a new unit was in the box based on the heft of the box (thick user's manual). And mind you the store people looked like they didn't give two shits whether I was interested in buying the unit or not.

So basically, someone had removed the unit from the box, left it on the shelf and still had the box displayed for purchase and no one at the store was responsible for putting two and two together and making sure if they sold the item, the item would be in the box.

I was as livid as I could get, which is not very livid (mindfulness practice), considering I was considering how livid I should act when I went back to the store. I ended up taking the civil, non-confrontational approach, but was fairly direct about it, that I wanted my money back.

The consumer experience of buying something and then finding the item bought absent = I'm not buying it from this store. To one of the store worker's credit, he looked reasonably horrified that this happened. He knew it was bad. Not to the store's credit, none of the other workers seemed at all interested that this happened and that they were losing a sale.

Anyway, I went to the other store which was selling the unit for NT$8,800 on the price tag and told them ATB was selling it for NT$7,500, just hoping they would match the price, and they gave a further discount at NT$7,300. I haggled without even knowing it. A seasoned haggler could've gotten it down to at least NT$7,000. I am not that seasoned haggler.

Needless to say, ATB is no longer the go-to place for music items for me. The store from which I ended up buying the item was Player Music Instruments, near exit 3 of the Chiang-Kai Shek Memorial MRT station. 

Flying back to Taiwan was just as grueling as flying to the U.S., even with no delays caused by an incoming winter storm the day I left nor other travel-related hitches and having a whole row to myself on the 13 hour first-leg flight to Asia from Newark. I think I may have been the only person in economy with a whole row to myself.

I have just about no incentive for making that trip in the future. I do enjoy visiting my brothers and their families. We're not super close and don't necessarily connect, but we're cordial and pleasant enough and I feel nothing ill when visiting them. I don't know if they feel the same way about me.

I've shunned the stress and responsibilities that they've taken on in living normative lives. I don't know if they acknowledge that whatever stress they have in their lifestyles is the result of their own decisions; I don't know if they even felt they had a decision. Or if they feel my own decisions are a cop-out.

I look at all they have and made a conscious decision that I don't want any of it. Wife, family, career, mortgages, cars, stuff . . . no thanks.

On the other hand, I recognize that my attitude has some degree to do with the parents. And this is a bit of a revelation and something my brothers probably don't understand.

There was never any way that I was going to get married and start a family because of what that meant regarding my relation with the parents. When my brothers got married, the parents were involved. They had to be involved. When my brothers started having kids, the parents became the grandparents. They had to be involved.

The course of my brothers' lives involved the parents and even developed a deep appreciation for the financial assistance they provided to get them where they are. I certainly don't fault them for that.

They don't know the extent of my lack of appreciation, though, specifically in regard to their financial provisions making my being alive possible when being alive is a take it or leave it proposal for me. I don't even owe them that.

So I'm stating it for the record that my relationship with my parents probably has been a major factor in why I never got married or had kids or even wanted to.

Still that's only part of it. The other part of it is that I myself really didn't want to get married or have kids. If I really wanted to get married and have kids, though, my parents wouldn't have anything to do with it.

If I truly found my "soul mate" and wanted to spend the rest of my life with her and make it "official" through some ritual concept referred to as "marriage", and then to sire offspring . . . and I can't even project any sarcastic or cynical meaning to that since it's simply inconceivable, so to speak, none of it would have involved the parents.

In other words, if I did have the drive to live some sort of normative life with a love of my life and kids, I would have likely cut all relations with my parents. My parents couldn't have anything to do with any relationship of mine with someone else, nor with any kids that we had. No fucking way. All they were in that regard was negative and chaos, and not something I would want perpetuated.

My relationship with my parents, and what toxicity they cultivated, simply doesn't include a relationship that involves those things. As such, if that were a path I wanted to take, it would have meant severing all financial ties as well; meaning a strong enough desire and ambition to find my own financial way in the world would have been required. A career, making money, being sustainable; what just about everyone normatively does anyway.

And I never had that ambition or desire. I never found that love of my life that would have superseded my financial attachment and dependence on the parents. Much too lazy? Maybe. The point is that they aren't entirely to blame. They were a major factor, but the decision was mine.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Last night in New Jersey, and as short as two weeks may sound, I'm glad to be going home tomorrow. Two weeks was enough.

In addition to basically my first week here spent at the resort, it's winter and it's cold. I have no access to a car here, no bicycle as my road bike was damaged the last time I visited, not that I would go out on bike in this cold. Public transportation is laughable. Parents are retired, so no alone time at the house to practice drums or make noise. And their internet is butt-slow.

On my last day here, I took my parents' car and went on a shopping spree spending almost $600. I got two sets of earbud headphones: Bose noise canceling and Monster noise isolating iSport Victory models.

I've been using Monster iSport Immersion earbuds for almost a year and they're probably on their last legs. I gave them a thumbs down because of poor construction and design. That model has been discontinued and replaced with the iSport Victory.

I was hesitant to go for Monster again because of the Immersion problems, but despite the problems they sounded incredible and I didn't know what else to get since the Bose are too expensive to be my daily active headphones. Fortunately, it seems the Victory model is better designed and possibly more robust. I'll wait until the Immersion dies before I really start using them.

Finally I got a Jawbone Mini Jambox, almost on a whim. I don't keep up with new products and technology at all, but I've heard about these portable, decent sound quality speakers, and I'm planning to use this on my nightstand to help get through insomnia.

I've been playing music during insomnia on my sound system across the room, and it's kinda too far away. I don't want to turn it up because I don't want to disturb neighbors. So the Mini Jambox is spoiling myself to be able to listen to music in good quality while I can't sleep.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

I went into New York today to go to the 9/11 memorial site and museum. I kinda felt it was an obligation as an American citizen to go, especially being such an easy trip from New Jersey. It was a pilgrimage to the site of, historically speaking, the worst day of my life.

I noticed the newly completed and opened Freedom Tower from the New Jersey Turnpike right after I arrived. It's huge and appeared to dwarf the Empire State Building further uptown. "Muscular" was the word that came to mind. And that only the spire gives its claim of great height.

The reflecting pools created out of the footprints of the Twin Towers were appropriate and allowed for peaceful reflection.

The museum was pretty intense. I didn't make it through. I reached a point of saturation at some point and just had to leave. Having spent over 2 and a half hours there and needing to meet someone for dinner also precipitated a hasty exit.

My sister-in-law summed it up with why she didn't want to go to the museum yet. Too soon. That's exactly it. Everyone who went through 9/11 and its ongoing aftermath knows everything there is to know about it.

I certainly didn't learn anything new, per se. But it was meaningful, albeit intense, to be in that space and around artifacts of that day. Important to note is that the museum is underground and built around the footprints of the former Twin Towers, now marked by the reflecting pools above, and by the preserved iron bases of the foundation columns below.

The preservation of the footprints above and below, I think, are all-important to attest where the buildings physically stood. Various exhibits now attest to what had been there before.

But I had to meet Liz at Katz's Deli at 5:30. Liz is a friend from high school and she's currently the person I've known the second longest in my life, family notwithstanding. We were on the track team together and we also dated for a short while.

I'm not sure what to say about Liz, except that she's good at keeping in touch with people and not carrying over baggage. We were just two old friends meeting up after a long period of time. Can't say there was a whole lot of meaning to it. Just two old friends meeting up to say hi.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

I just realized I hadn't iterated my recent use of "chaos". The recent mantra has been "Don't be the chaos", i.e., in other people's lives, the disruption, the unpredictable, uncertainty or frustration. The meditation is to pay attention to the disruptions we cause to other people, while also trying to not be affected by other people's chaos.

My parents are the natural and automatic chaos in my life without even trying to be. Like the car incident. They didn't maintain their own car, and when I offer a favor to drive my brother to the office in their stead, I feel the consequence of the chaos they create. They also have an uncanny ability to call at the worst possible times. Even with good intentions, it ends up as chaos.

The chaos doesn't have to be big. It's not necessarily bad. It's definitely subjective and interpretive. It's a little bit hyperbole, but also not. Some may relate it to karma, which I wouldn't deny.

I was a little bit of chaos to my brother's family when I was waffling in indecisiveness about whether to go with them to Philly or not. They had a set time schedule for the day and I put minor ripples into it. They possibly-probably don't see it that way, but I'm just being mindful of my own role.

I'm glad I went to Philly, it shouldn't have been such a hard decision. I wouldn't have made it down there for a visit this time otherwise. It's my first time visiting since they moved into a new house, and that was something that had to happen, and if it didn't happen now at the perfect opportunity, it may have gotten awkward.

It was a short visit, I stayed two nights and no one broke a stride in their routine for me. I had Monday all to myself and I walked about downtown Philly. Ate at DiNic's at Reading Terminal Market because I saw it on the "Man vs. Food" TV show. Good eats.

A poppyseed bagel with lox cream cheese also helped make my food experience. Still no decent bagels in Taiwan. I should've also fit in a Philly cheesesteak in there somewhere since it would've fit well with the no broken strides in routine thing (better to feed myself). I think too much, though.

I left Tuesday morning by train to New York Penn Station – the Septa transfer to NJ Transit in Trenton way, very well described on tripadvisor (you buy the tickets at the NJ Transit ticket machine near the Septa ticket counter at 30th Street Station). Another bagel with cream cheese affirmed that Philly bagels are decent. Easily comparable to New Jersey, not so much so with New York because of the water thing.

After getting to New York, I visited the Intrepid Air and Space Museum before taking a bus from the 42nd St. Port Authority to New Jersey. What crap NJ Transit is.

November was "space month" on Discovery Channel Science, and that made me want to visit the Intrepid, and specifically the Space Shuttle Enterprise. The Enterprise never went into space and so it was in fairly pristine condition. I'd like to visit the Smithsonian in Washington where the Space Shuttle Discovery is housed. Apparently the curator wanted the Discovery basically in the condition after it landed after its final mission with no touching up or making over.

I had a food misstep in New York going to Arthur Treacher's Fish & Chips fast food. I thought it would be a nostalgia thing, but it's for kids. After having real British style fish & chips as an adult, Arthur Treacher's is crap. I did grab a slice of pizza before heading to New Jersey, and it was mind-blowingly good.

Philadelphia, PA

So my brothers and their families all arrived at the resort on Thanksgiving day around noon-ish just before the big Thanksgiving meal. It was strange at that time that I had already been there for 24 hours and by the end of that day it was strange thinking that it was still their first day.

I was mostly dreading the trip because I didn't know anything about it, but it turns out we rented a whole house at the resort, so I had my own room to which I could and often did retreat. I didn't have to deal with the parents or the awkwardness or chaos of the nieces and nephews. It wasn't that bad.

One of my brothers' family is total chaos. I actually went over to their house the night I arrived from Taiwan and it was a total circus. I could see my sister-in-law caught with head underwater in the whirling rapids with hardly any chance to get a breath. It's hard to believe the great humor and grace with which she handles the situation. She deserves an award.

My other brother's kids are the total opposite: well-behaved, disciplined. If they can be described as soldiers standing at attention, the other brother's kids are like a bunch of baby squirrels playing in the first snow.

The parents continue to be sheer chaos. This was supposed to be a family vacation weekend celebrating their supposed 50th anniversary. But my mother scheduled with my oldest brother for him to go to work on Saturday, with her driving him all the way back to the office and then driving back to the resort afterwards. 

Whatever, all that is none of my business. However, even with the already existing tension with the parents, I offered to drive my brother at the last minute. Even though it was none of my business what arrangements they made for my brother to go to work on Saturday, once they were made, it only made sense for multiple reasons that I do the driving. I meant it as a favor, I'm sure my mother didn't see it as a favor.

The start of the parents' role as chaos began once me and my brother headed out in pre-dawn hours in my parents' car. It was quickly apparent in the mountain road darkness that without high-beams on, the car basically had no headlights. 

The left low-beam was completely out, a fact that I had already pointed out to them on my first day back. The right low-beam was damaged in a fender bender over a year ago that they never got fixed so that the beam pointed in a direction no where near the center of the road. 

Driving on the mountain roads, at points where it was completely safe, I turned off the high-beams and it was like I had turned off all the lights. Every time I had to shut off the high-beams due to on-coming traffic, I also had to slam on the brakes because I couldn't see anything and drive using the line immediately on the right side of the road. 

We had to drive on and deal with it, but since it was pre-dawn with few other cars on the road, it was manageable. Once we hit the interstate, the sky was just getting light, but I opined that if a cop saw us, he'd probably pull us over. So until the sky brightened sufficiently, I shadowed any vehicle in front of me both for safety, and to avoid how obvious our lack of headlights was.

The issue was what to do going back. My brother said that if we departed after three, we would certainly be driving in the dark once we got back to the mountain roads to the resort. Our options were to try to fix the bulb (which would be totally in his realm since I have no idea about any of that), or take his other car. 

The fixing option didn't pan out. He could pull it off if we had more time, but we didn't. But he did tell our parents about the issue, and the mother then called me and asked me to take the car to get it fixed. That was the chaos that sent me near over the edge. Mindfulness practice engaged, I didn't go over the edge. 

But I was furious. I reject cars. I got rid of my car. I got sick of the headache of maintenance and all the baggage that comes with cars. And here I am for just two weeks and the chaos asks me to take her car in for repair. 

I did half-assedly look for the repair shop she mentioned. I couldn't find it. When she gives directions, it's totally from her subjective point of view and doesn't take into account how other people might see things. 

One of my brothers acknowledges that about her. He doesn't listen to her driving instructions because they're so subjective as to be useless. She describes what she did and tells him that and it's nonsense to him, as opposed to when I give him directions when the first thing I ask is what does he see so we can coordinate our bearings (this happened when they were driving to the resort). 

For the return trip, my brother rejected my impulsive idea to just take their fucking car back to them and let them deal with it, so we ended up taking his other car. I didn't look at or talk to the parents until just before leaving the resort (which was just until the next morning).

I was furious (sorta), my other brother invited me to stay at his house for a few days, and I decided to accept. Not wanting to drive with my parents back to New Jersey or deal with them in any way was no small part of the decision to go to Philly. So the last thing I said to them was confirming they were alright driving my brother's car. 

So that's why I'm in Philly now. 

Funny thing about this traveling and insomnia, I have been maintaining morning sitting. Before leaving for the resort last Wednesday, departure was delayed so I started sitting. So it happened that when everyone was ready, I stuck my sitting cushion into my luggage which was otherwise near empty. 

As insomnia continued, I would get up early in the pre-dawn and do sitting, which was very pleasant in the mountain quiet. After the manifestation of chaos on Saturday, on Sunday morning I was sitting and thinking about the chaos when a huge blue throne-like block visualized before me and said "LET IT GO!". I thought that's probably a good idea.

Some resort in Pennsylvania

The flight from Taipei to New Jersey was grueling. 16 hours of flying, but full travel time was 24 hours, including time getting to the airport and waiting in between flights. And it was Groundhog Day upon reaching LAX since I arrived around the same time I was at Taoyuan airport the night before (both were Monday night), waiting for a flight that took off at roughly the same time.

A mere 24 hours after arrival, the dreaded Thanksgiving weekend trip commenced with a drive into the mountains. A drive that should have taken a little over 2 hours, but snowfall made it a treacherous 5 hour ordeal which could have been worse without my constant brow-beating my mother to slow the fuck down.

And unfortunately the increasing snow through the day delayed the arrival of my brothers and I was stuck alone with the parents until they arrived today on Thanksgiving. Fortunately the resort fed us well and amply.

A little over a year ago I could barely eat at all, and since then I've been OK although I had to be careful because the slightest over-eating would send me into an unpleasant, uneasy feeling food coma. Actually that happened right before I got on the plane, making the flight even more unpleasant.

Now here at this resort I'm stuffing myself three times a day and snacking in between. My intestines feel like I'm making sausage. It's a one time thing, so I'm allowing it. And who knows whether it might change something in my gut for the better. Maybe all food issues will disappear.

Insomnia has persisted since leaving Taiwan. I may have gotten a couple hours sleep on the 11 hour trans-Pacific flight, but none from LA to Newark, and since then sleep at night has been touch and go with no settling into sleep. Which may explain the absence of food comas, since they may be masked by insomnia-induced fatigue.

Well, that was another boring post.

I don't know if I've mentioned anything about this, but I leave tomorrow for New Jersey for two weeks. If I haven't mentioned anything about it, it's because I've been dreading it; trying to block it out of my mind, hoping it will go away.

I really, really, really, really wish I wasn't going on this trip.

The only reason I agreed to go was I was trying to be a "good son". Parents mentioned it's their "50th anniversary", and they want to do something together as a family so I agreed.

"Something together" turns out to be Thanksgiving weekend at some resort in the Poconos.

Only later did I question "50th anniversary"? Any anniversary?! We're not the type of family that pays attention to anniversaries. Even without the kids, I've never heard of my parents celebrating any anniversary. The fact that they even got married is a total mystery. They've never talked about it or mentioned it, but as a family that doesn't talk about anything except the most superficial and meaningless things, of course they never would.

And this "something together as family"? All we've ever done together "as family" has been narrowly defined. If we all happen to be in the area, meaning me coming from wherever I'm living at a given time, the most we've ever done is gather at someone's house having ordered out a feast of Chinese food.

A resort? Everyone confined in this limited space for the entire Thanksgiving weekend? Quelle horreur. The focus will have to be my brothers' kids, my nephews and nieces. Me and my brothers can talk, but add in the parents and there is nothing to talk about. We aren't the talking type of family.

The last time we "did something as family" that wasn't a meal of take-out Chinese food was when I was in high school and my parents dragged us on a vacation in Europe. It was miserable. I was threatening to run away in England to get away from them permanently. It was a war zone in my teens.

So one reason I'm keeping this visit to a minimum of two weeks is because of the ridiculousness of this proposition. Also because it's winter. Also because I won't have a car. Also because parents are retired.

Since the last time I visited three and a half years ago, the situation has changed so that visits have near zero appeal. I'm just going to hunker down and try to disappear. Whatever imaginings the parents have of me being there is diametrically opposed to anything I am.

I don't know what the parents think they can pull off, but whatever they imagine for their lives now that they're retired, if it includes me, they're sadly mistaken. We're not that kind of family. If they want things to be a certain way now, they should have thought about that a long time ago to make it possible.

But the way they raised us was incommunicado. There was no communication, they didn't cultivate "doing things together". As such, I think it's ridiculous that they can hope for it now, and I'm not willing to go along with it.

They mention family reunions every year now. No. They contemplate it because they're retired and have the time for it. It's in their convenience. They never did any work to cultivate any family feelings. And as much as they've provided, they've never sacrificed anything for their children. The money they provided, they were making for themselves as well. The money they spent was a mandatory part of their world view where siring progeny was expected.

Xizhi-Wanli Rd. (汐萬路 2,018 ft.):

北3 Danshui->Beitou (1,121ft. climb):

Rte. 109->深坑->full bikeways home:

I now have my own personal MRT station! I allow so-called "members of the public" to use it, but I consider it my own. This new "Songshan" MRT line opened on Saturday and runs along Nanjing East Road, which is a major boulevard that I use as the reference point to tell people where I live. It's a three minute walk to the station.

I've never been so close to a major rapid transit system (i.e., not buses). In Noe Valley I was pretty close to a light rail line, but San Francisco's light rail was part of the MUNI bus system. It wasn't BART.

The closest I lived to a BART station was in Daly City, about a 10 minute walk, but BART was not a very versatile rapid transit system. It was basically a commuter system from Bay Area suburbs to downtown San Francisco. It had a single set of tracks that ran through San Francisco and every train on all lines stopped at each of those stations.

This new Songshan line of Taipei's MRT system has transfers to multiple lines which opens up convenient possibilities to quickly get to a lot more places than BART could ever boast. It will be seen if this is a life-changing thing in terms of daily life. Especially on rain days when I can't go out on bike. On the other hand, it's still public transportation; still a drag.

Another big deal about having an MRT line open so close is that the value of my apartment probably just skyrocketed. This means that I owe my cousin Audrey that much more for setting me up here since this is her uncle's property and she's the one who got me in here at a discounted price six years ago.

The night before last was another eight hour dead sleep. I'm not sure what that means having two nights like that in a row. Fatigue from all the poor sleep and that climb up to Yangmingshan? I don't know. Fatigue usually doesn't affect insomnia, but maybe I was SOOO fatigued that . . .

Maybe. Because I wanted to go the gym yesterday, but realized I was just too tired and that it would be a bad idea. It wasn't a matter of not wanting to get out and using that as an excuse to not go. I actually wanted to go and realized I was too tired. I even ended up taking a nap which I rarely do in the afternoon, so that all attests to being smart taking a rest day.

This morning I was back to back-end insomnia but with a twist. And it was a marginal back-end insomnia because I think I got almost five hours sleep before waking up. Five hours is enough rest to not consider it insomnia, even if I would like to sleep a few more hours. The twist was in the dreams. During the slides into light sleep that occur during back-end insomnia I do sometimes dream, I've mentioned before.

The first dream just naturally happened, a lot of random elements, no real plot. A tourist bus at a stop, lots of people. Then a distraction in a café and then realizing that I was late to rejoin the group, but my shoes were missing and I had to find them first. All the people were gone except for one little kid who was running back to the bus, also late, and I yelled to him, "Matthew! Tell them I'm right behind you". But running all over the site, I couldn't find my shoes. I was barefoot, anxious, I was making people wait for me, I was alone, there was no sign of my shoes. It sucked. I didn't like the feeling. 

I stopped and thought, "Forget it, I'm not doing this. I'm pushing out". I didn't think I was sleeping and dreaming, but there was an element of recognition that I could get out. On some level I must have been aware that it was a dream and I was forcing myself to wake up, but I didn't actually think I was lucid dreaming. But I pushed "up", upward towards consciousness, I suppose. I went up through several layers, even doubting if this was going to work, wondering how would I know what was waking reality and not another dream? But I finally visualized what I should see if I was awake and saw my room and the environs and then I opened my eyes and there I was.

And then I was frustrated with myself because I was having insomnia, I had fallen asleep since I was dreaming, and in the dream I forced myself awake. That was a groggy thought, though, since I know that kind of sleep is very light and I would've waken up anyway.

But that's not even the twist! The twist is at least two times afterwards I was able to push myself back down into a dream. I wasn't pushing myself into sleep but into a dream state. In an insomniac haze, I thought of trying it, visualized the sinking down out of wakefulness and it worked! 

The first one was very fragile and I knew it was tenuous and tried to move as little as possible while stuff happened around me. The dream started in a room and I could see out a window and saw some Asian faces, but then the scene was a collegiate-feeling urban courtyard and I couldn't tell if people were hostile or not.

A later dream I forced myself down into was more stable and I was aware that I was dreaming. In fact, I was so aware of it that there was a part with a woman I knew in California and I thought, "I'm dreaming, I can totally grab her boobs" and did and she had no problem with it. My, my, my, what the hell is my subconscious doing for realz? Just goes to show no matter how old a guy is, there's a libidinous 16-year old boy in there somewhere.

There was also a part where I was on a bus and one person there knew I was dreaming and another who didn't. I was looking out the window to try to get a reference to where it was so I could look it up later and see if it was a place I'd been before. Except I was having trouble reading, and what I could read I couldn't retain a memory of. The person who didn't know I was dreaming asked me what I was doing and I told him and he helped read out a place name, and I did retain that name even after waking up, but thinking I could remember it, left it at that and . . . have since forgotten it. Of course.

A lot of random, chaotic dream elements not worth mentioning, aside from knowing I was a dreamer and investigating the dream world. One thing I noticed was the feeling of each dream scene as being enclosed. Like being on that bus, but the bus wasn't traveling. It was moving but it wasn't leaving that town.

Another part involved being in a house with a bunch of people (there was a woman with a moustache and a penis, or maybe just a naked man, I didn't linger) and I couldn't find my way out of the house. I could see where the exits were, but couldn't navigate myself there. It felt like there were definite borders to each dreamscape that people might not notice if they were just dreaming.

The night before last was a full insomnia night: inability to maintain sleep on the front-end, unsettled fading in and out on the back-end. It was less than a week since the previous bout of full insomnia. That's not debilitating. 

Since weather permitted yesterday, I decided to go on my planned ride up Yangmingshan, the highest climb in the Taipei area which I haven't done in probably 4 or 5 years. The climb was fine. It's a challenging climb so I didn't mind going down to the granny gears at times. I don't think I ever went down to the lowest gear which means I was never anywhere near tapping out.

I gather Yangmingshan isn't actually a mountain as I thought at first. It may not even refer to a range. It is the name of the national park that contains Taipei's highest peak(s). The highest peak is called Seven Stars Mountain (七星山 Qixingshan). The main road that climbs up to that peak offers two alternatives. One road circles around the peak and heads back through Yangmingshan to Taipei proper. That's the route I usually think of when going up there.

The other road heads north out of Yangmingshan and descends to the north coast area and Danshui. That's the one I did yesterday and I think it actually reaches a higher altitude than the one that circles the Seven Stars peak, but I'll have to do that ride to confirm it's highest altitude. Doing that route meant traveling farther than if I had looped back into Taipei directly, and the ride exceeded 40 miles. So hopefully I expended enough energy to improve sleep, despite my type of insomnia having nothing to do with fatigue or tiredness.

And I did sleep solidly last night. A dead sleep until the end. Today was rain so I went to the gym, but energy levels were low and I attribute that to the combination of insomnia and exertion of yesterday's ride. Nothing unexpected.

After the Yangmingshan climb and the 40-mile+ route, I did reward myself on the way home by stopping off at what may be considered a Western-style deli, called 1bite2go in Shilin, with a corned beef sandwich. Absolute heaven.

Yangde->Yangmingshan->101甲 (2,753 ft.):

Xiadongshi 下東勢 Rd.->Chinese Cultural U. (1,312 ft.):

I tried this route up to Yangmingshan that was completely new to me, not using Yangde Rd, which is the main road up. I know there are numerous roads that go up from Beitou District, but they are mountain routes and very confusing unless you're a local and use them regularly. I plotted this route using Google maps street view and it seemed pretty defined. And fucking hella steep actually doing it! That's the reason Yangde is the main road to Yangmingshan, it's longer, but not as hard.

I had all but forgotten how wretched full insomnia is. Recently my sleep has been consistently unsettled on the back-end, but never enough to call it insomnia. Then the night before last night I had a remarkable full night sleep; solid eight hours, no waking, no dreaming. Rather than being refreshing, I think I was a bit dull and dead the whole day. That's not unusual.

Then similarly out of the blue, last night was full insomnia. I played three full mix CDs, which is 4 hours, and though I started sliding into sleep during the third CD, I was never totally out. Some songs I don't remember at all, so I must have gone below the threshold of sleep, but never for long. Most of the time, even when I was on the fringe of sleep, I could hear the song playing, even if I wasn't conscious enough to identify the song until I came up enough.

After four hours, it was 7 a.m. and at that point I stopped turning music on and for the next three or four hours it was like the usual unsettled back-end sleep; constant waking up and fading out. That kind of unsettled sleep after three or four hours of regular sleep doesn't qualify as insomnia. On the back-end of insomnia qualifies it as full insomnia. If I managed to fall completely asleep at 7 a.m., then it would've been a night of front-end insomnia.

Even being disconcerted by the full insomnia, the weather was nice as forecast and I decided to go on a planned bike ride. Cumulatively insomnia has its effect, but just one night is nothing. And going into winter I want to take advantage of any nice days as there will be weeks on end of no riding soon enough.

Having been able to climb hills recently, I decided to make a foray up the Yangmingshan National Park range (which includes the highest peak in the Taipei area, Qixing (Seven Stars), although I didn't do that today). It's the first time going up there with GPS so part of the reason is to make sense of the mess of roads and bike routes up there. It's a well-settled mountain, hardly backroads.

I went up from the only southeast access road off Zhishan. That way is pretty steep with lots of switchbacks. The highest point I reached was decent at below 1,700ft., but doing more of the mountain range goes considerably higher. Getting close to 1,700ft. on some Taipei area climbs is success, but in Yangmingshan, it's just passing through.

Yangmingshan from Zhishan Rd. exploratory foray:

I live in a third floor one-room studio apartment with a window whose view is the apartment building opposite across a tiny alley. I never get direct sunlight; sometimes an oblique sunlight early in the morning when the sun is rising. I'm rarely fully awake at that time but catch it during insomnia.

Sounds coming out of other apartments are reflected in the alley and I can often hear activity in other apartments. Mostly conversations, sometimes arguments, that I can't understand or the sound of cooking and the attendant fragrance.

It's mostly non-intrusive, except for one apartment that I can't locate where some kid is having a horrible childhood. I've lived here for over six years and the child was born in that time. I remember hearing the infant cries. There may be a second infant by now.

But the first infant has grown somewhat, enough to have his disturbed, battleaxe of a grandmother, I'm guessing, hollering at him in a banshee screech whenever she perceives he's done something wrong. Even when the child starts wailing, she continues screaming at him. It's child abuse as far as I'm concerned, and this woman should be arrested and put into therapy.

As I mentioned, I can't locate the apartment. It might be the one directly above me. I know they have small children. I've seen the stroller, I've picked up tiny slippers that had fallen off in the stairwell and brought them up and put them outside their door.

But even if I could locate the apartment, what am I gonna do? I don't speak the language. And it's controversial whether calling the police is the best course of action, acknowledging the sad state of social services in this regard.

I thought of seeking out public social services which might have informational flyers on domestic violence and child abuse and suggestions on what to do. I've noticed that the main front doors of apartment buildings around here have clear plastic pockets where community notices can be posted.

I thought maybe if I could get informational flyers, I could put them on all the main doors in the area, which at least might put the abusive family on notice that someone notices. But even doing that seems way beyond my means to pursue. I'm still in touch with my last Mandarin teacher and we get together every once in a while. I suppose I'll brainstorm with her when we meet again.

Until then, I decided, if I ever hear abuse happening, I'm going to place my meditation bell right by the window and ring it at intervals in mindfulness fashion for the duration of the screaming and crying.

After 3 mornings of fading in and out sleep with continued crazy, carnival-esque dreams, I should have and did anticipate insomnia; back-end this morning after 3 hours of sleep. On the other hand I could have reverted to normal sleep like I had last week. There are no patterns or predictors what sort of sleep I'll have.

And it's useless to make any connection between insomnia and the fact that I went on a ride yesterday with over 2,700' of climbing total. That's a lot for me these days. The most in a long time, I shouldn't wonder. It did entail, however, freely allowing myself to go down to the granny gear and even the lowest gear and going as slow as I was able. At my age, it's encouraging that when every next section of climbing appeared, I just had at it and tackled it despite being at no impressive strength or speed.

Energy expenditure has nothing to do with insomnia, nor does fatigue. Yesterday was a warm one as days have been getting cooler into autumn. Climbing was hot and when I got home, I used the air con to lower my core temp (air con has been off for several weeks now). My body temperature remained high into the evening and night and it may or may not have contributed to insomnia.

Today was a wreck. Probably because I started drinking even though insomnia. I think there's a window in which insomnia combined with alcohol leads to a mess of a day. If I had managed to lay off for several hours, I may have been fine. Instead I put on a DVD of a movie, "Suzhou River"; an art/foreign film I used to love, but I'm not sure where I stand with film now. I enjoyed watching it, but not with the depth I did when the film first came out. I suspect the same with many films I've bought on DVD over the years.

I drank through the course of watching the film and did manage some zzzz's afterwards. Riding and gym were eliminated as options but I productively got laundry done. Including my sheets, which requires going to a laundromat to dry them before use at night.

Laundromat has come to mean Domino's pizza, which is on the way to the laundromat. Wash the sheets at home, en route to dry them place an order at Domino's, dry sheets, pick up order on the way home. In the U.S., I never ordered from Domino's, but here it's a taste of home. I'm not sure I appreciated it as much slightly sloshed as I would sober.

To recap since my last post, it was definitely a low-grade cold that kept me in all day on Tuesday, too. Sniffling, sneezing, not feeling too bad, but enough to convince me to stay home, although honestly it doesn't take a lot to do that. It's a daily labor to get myself out the door.

On Wednesday I went on a short, 20-mile "recovery/fitness" ride, even though it wasn't that bad of a cold. However, I hadn't eaten anything substantial those two days, so no gas. 20 miles was about all I could handle.

On Thursday I went on a more substantial 35-mile bikeway ride, also not having eaten much on Wednesday. I bonked towards the end and took a short-cut home. My leg muscles were fried.

Then yesterday and today were gym days. Yesterday I probably went too hard on running and felt some aches I shouldn't have, but today I'm feeling my strength and nutrition are normalizing.

Sleep has been good until this morning, but it wasn't insomnia. It was fading in and out, and then came the crazy dreams and the lucid dreaming. There was so much going on in this sequence of dreaming that trying to describe it would just be visual gibberish.

So many details I can't even begin to describe, when apparently a Namie Amuro song came on outside the dream on my CD player, and suddenly there she was in the dream and out of nowhere her background dancers arrive and they dance the song.

Then the next song comes on, a teeny-bopper Taiwanese pop song that I was embarrassed to have liked when I first heard it in 2005. But I've adopted the principle that if I listen to a song and it hooks me and I like it, I'm gonna accept it as a good song (but I accept the descriptive of 'bad song that I inexplicably like'; everyone has those), therefore it's on the CD. Unlike my musical integrity.

I think I may have wondered if that singer was going to show, but then Namie is still there in a different costume and performs this song (I don't remember what either of these performances looked like, just that they happened). When I faded out of sleep, I groggily thought I should've known it was a dream when Namie's costume changed without explanation.

So I thought (still not very clearly) that if I find myself in another dream, I'd try to kick myself into lucid dreaming by telling myself that I'd go out from wherever I was and run down the street and put both hands against a wall. It sounds completely bonkers writing it out now, but it made sense at the time.

I'm not sure I was all that successful. I did go into a dream and I remembered and ran out of wherever I was, but there was no street to run down, just like a lawn on a college campus. But I ran anyway, but then there was this kid running ahead of me and he got to the wall of a building and put both hands against it.

Yea, I think at this point I think my dreaming mind hijacked the lucid attempt and I was just dreaming. But it continues and becomes inception-ish because I was in the dream thinking I was lucid dreaming, and I was supposed to meet someone else who was also lucid dreaming and we had some mission to do.

So I'm at the meeting point but I don't know who it is, but I notice someone who looks suspicious and I tentatively approach, and he makes a tentative response and then decides I'm not the person he's supposed to meet, but then I remember there's a code and I call out the first phrase of the code, of which he's supposed to give me the response, and so we do make contact.

That line of dream doesn't get any more interesting, kind of a bust, and we part ways as I feel my sleep getting lighter, but then going back to where I started in the dream I realized I was on a U.S. college campus! Pizza! And in a few steps I'm in a food area and a pizza counter is right in front of me.

But I'm having trouble reading the options, so the pizza guy hands me a menu but I'm still having trouble reading it. Suddenly a line starts to form behind me, and I hate being the guy who gets to the front of the line (although I was already there) and hasn't decided what to order.

So the pizza guy makes a suggestion and I say, "Yea, that!", and he goes to start preparing the ingredients without ringing me up first. While he's doing that, I reach for my back pocket where I always put my cash these days and realize I only have Taiwanese money. And I realize the only way out of it is to wake up, which I did.

Kind of a quasi-lucid dream.

* a final note about that insidious Taiwanese pop song that no one needs to know: I liked the song in 2005. I didn't get into K-pop until roughly 2010. If someone pressed me to name my favorite K-pop act, it wouldn't be a second Hallyu wave group, but solo singer Lee Jung Hyun who came to prominence during the domestic first Hallyu wave in the mid- to late-90s. It turns out that the Taiwanese song is a re-make of a Lee Jung Hyun song. Bam. (and strangely I think the Taiwanese song is "slightly better" because the hooks are clearer)

My body needs a better means of communication with my brain. Today was an absolute ride or gym day, but neither was happening. Sleep has been alright for the past several days, so no disruption there.

I am a baseball fan, so I did turn on the National League series live after waking up and morning regulars, including sitting. But the communications going on between body and brain regarding getting out for a ride or to the gym afterwards were just ridiculous.

The bottom line being the body has a bit of a cold, sniffle and sneezing, which is a legitimate reason for calling off physical activity, but then my body needs to communicate that clearly to my brain. Not all this waffling through the afternoon about it.

Ultimately I didn't get out at all today. Fine. I was sick. Tomorrow, no excuse. If I'm sick, it's not that bad. Ride or gym or just get out.