Do you wonder, when God interrupted the nothingness the first time, was it irritated at the break in its routine?
Probably not. Being irritated would be something, which is exactly what nothing is not.
Anyway.
I recently decided I would write for one hour every day. That won't necessarily always be here, but that means I probably will write here more often.
So, I suppose I should say something.
I'm going to post some more photos pretty soon - 三個星期以前我跟家寧去沙灘倒了．I felt like typing in Chinese. Of course most of you can't read it, so here's what Babelfish says I said -
Three weeks before I rather went to the sand beach with the family but actually
So now you know Babelfish is crap. Let's see if Google is any better!
Three weeks ago I told Andrew Ning goes to the beach
So, now you know you should never, ever buy automatic translation software. Even if I totally screwed up, which is very possible, the two shouldn't be quite that different, right?
Here's what I think I said:
Three weeks ago Jianing and I went to the beach.
So let's assume I am right (my understanding of 到/去 is not very good, nor is my understanding of grammar in general, in any language. Surprising for someone who likes to write, isn't it?) in saying that, and move on.
Something you should know about Taiwan: many of the people here either do not, or cannot, swim. I thought this was strange at first, but it turns out there's a good reason for it: it rains really hard here. No, it's not that they're tired of the water, though I suspect some wouldn't mind sending a few fat rainclouds somewhere else - instead, Taiwan is a very mountainous and small island. This means that rivers are very short, and when they are flowing, they flow very hard. Swimming in the rivers here could be considered a suicide attempt at worst, or the culmination of a life-long habit of drinking heavily and having bad ideas at best.
"Well, what about lakes? Or the ocean?", you might be saying. As for lakes, there aren't many - as I said, this is a very mountainous (read: steep) island, and not especially large. There just aren't many lakes. They've found space for a few reservoirs, but those are off limits as they are drinking water (this has never been a problem in the US, I know, but this country has its legal quirks. Whether I meant oddities in the legal system or quirks that are legal, I leave up to you. Either would likely be appropriate.).
That leaves the sea. As I may have mentioned, the island is quite mountainous. It rises sharply from the sea, and just didn't see any reason to stop once it broke the waves, I suppose. What that means is, where the water meets the land, it does so violently. This has been a brutal conflict, as one can see from the many boulders torn from the island's side, lying unmoving in the water, but even now fighting against the breaking advance. In other words: if you get in the ocean, it means either jumping off a cliff, or scrambling over slick, sharp rocks. Once you do get into the water, the ocean will simply slap you, hard, until you have helped to break down one more rock. It is not expected you will be of much help, or that you will survive the process, but the ocean does not care; it is tireless in the pursuit of victory. It's just too bad you won't be around to see it, or, even if you were, there wouldn't be any land left on which to stand.
So the ideal beach that springs to mind, long, sandy, with nice regular waves, no horrific undertow, not too crowded, and lots of sun, undoubtedly does exist; I have seen it. It is just not a Taiwan beach.
But there is one that's not too bad, not far from here. So we went there. And it was nice. Fortunately, it was raining, or it would've been crowded. And I got to take pictures of pillboxes, which is something I always felt cheated of doing on other beaches.
So I'll post those pictures. In the next few days, likely.
I think I should write about things you should know before you come here since, in fact, a very few of you are coming here soon. And the rest of you can just get a nice idea of how this place is different. But I won't do it today; it would be an extremely long post. So for right now, I think I'm going to say goodbye. Well, write it, anyway.
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