Cori and I are enjoying a lovely time in Thailand. We've ventured to Chiang Mai, now we're in Bangkok, and we'll be finishing out the trip in Phuket.

This trip has taught me many things so far:

1) Buddha, he is taller than you, even when he is not.
2) Thai people are impressed when you can eat the real "local" level of spice.
3) Always request a new credit card when the old one is shut down due to fraud. Always.
4) Do not believe a man who says he is an english teacher if he is hanging out on the street with a towel in the back of his shirt at 11am on a Thursday.
5) Just because a hotel has cleaners doesn't mean that they will follow their namesake.
6) Bangkok is hot.
7) All the hippies in California moved to Chiang Mai
8) Elephants make great gifts.
9) Bangkok is hot, but in the way Phoenix is hot if Phoenix was next to the Ohio river.
10) Would you like that fried? Of course you would.
11) Thai is a hard language to pick up once you start learning Chinese.
12) Just because a sign is in english doesn't mean its in english.
13) Pulling out a map near more than one taxi driver is like bleeding in the ocean near a reef with a family of sharks nearby.
14) Tuk-Tuks are lawn mowers with a roof and a steering wheel.
15) Things are sometimes more expensive if they have to be made cold, because you're fighting physics.
16) French men laugh funny.
17) Italians terrify me.
18) Australians are the reason beer exists.
19) The harder someone tries to lower the price to get you to buy it, the more likely its better that you don't buy it at all.
20) American panhandlers have nothing on babies with missing legs.
21) If something is named a goofy name, its more likely due to poor translation than actual humor.
22) "Sugar free" is a mystical concept, except with water.
23) The water has one temperature: on.
24) Khao San Road in Bangkok is eternally on Spring Break.
25) The shortest distance between two tourist sites is a zig-zagging, curved, and twisted path.
26) Get on the boat immediately, even if it looks like its going to pull away from the pier suddenly, because it is going to pull away from the pier suddenly.
27) If someone sighs and reaches for a calculator, the price of what you want to buy just went up.
28) Lizards live in rooms. On the wall. Do not attempt to change this law of nature.
29) Everyone you think is the same nationality as you is actually German, occasionally French.
30) Everyone the same nationality as you thinks you're German or French.
31) When the taxi driver "has no change" start to count coins. Suddenly the taxi driver has change.
32) If someone asks where you're from, they're asking your nationality, not point of origin.
33) Any name brand can and will be mutilated in the name of profit. Example: Puma becomes Punta (silhouette of girl,) Pumba (The Lion King,) and so on.
34) Anything name brand is probably not name brand.
35) Watches: the bigger, the better. Flava Flav had it right.
36) If someone tells you that something is closed and they do not have a gun, they are lying.
37) Smile first, ask questions later.
38) Something with the word "Chez" in it is most likely lower scale than something with the word "Hippie" in it.
39) The car that is moving the fastest is more likely to stop for you than the car that is going 5 miles an hour.
40) That thing you thought you would never see for sale again? Walk five minutes. There it is again.
41) Shaving with "womens" razors is somehow better than shaving with "mens" razors.
42) That prepackaged, sealed food you left in the hotel room? It is now a miniature ant colony.
43) Its really hard for salesmen to argue with people that are complimenting them.
44) If someone says its "a little spicy" and they do not have a gun, they are lying.
45) If someone says its "really spicy" there is no way to turn that spice level down.
46) The number of taxis around is directly proportional to the number of drunk people around.
47) If an escalator only seems to have a door at the top and no other way out, its a trap.
48) In one block it is possible to obtain a custom-tailored suit, a tattoo, dreads, a cd at one-third its retail, a hammock, a foot massage, fried everything, and enough beer to bludgeon someone to death.

You forget who you are
Until you see yourself
In someone else's eyes.

The reflection isn't
Clear per se, its more
Of a watery, flexible you.

As it wanders down the slopes
And scales of its non-
Reflective terrain
You realize you're melting too.

A sheet of water
And boiling water
Sound almost the same
From inside.

Wrapped around me through
Racks and girders
The wash and rinse
Cleans the outside.

Almost as soon as I
Feel consumed
By the torrential
And continuous stream
I hear it cease and hesitate
As though its confused
And has lost its meaning.

Then it switches
To small splatters
And winding down with empty, hollow drifts.

Just as quickly as the
Kettle boils
The rinse of the world lifts.

I had put a link in my last post for a track.

This is that track.
Vasoline - Stone Temple Pilots (Dave Espionage My Fly Aline Rehack) by daveespionage

So, Here we are.

Hip-hop and Indie Rock samples are the new funk, soul and jazz samples.
Drum n' Bass is the new underground
Electro is the new Pop
Royksopp is practically writing Goa
The new minimal is Hip-Hop
Rap rock is back
The Wu-Tang's newest album isn't theirs.
Ethereal Breaks.. again... really?
All of this is just to say, I love music.

Ostracising on occular complexes
Perhaps is one of the few activities
That I think we fail to realize
The full mundanity of
... which
... it ... is?

Preparedly and prepositionally
I've lain in wait
Accepting planning and fortitudes
Of anticipation as my mechanism
And merit.

These fall short when faced
With the faces of those
That I thought one day
Would never look
The way they do today.

Not horrible, terrible,
Terrifying, strange
Or fearsome,
But different, disparate
Better and worse.

The changes of process
I see day to day
Account none for the
Total sum of the way
That I see now these faces
Facing me now
In their state of being
And being somehow
Something more, and more
Still something less
And less beyond all
We have see them before.
I have seen them all.

But never like this.
Never to date
Has my imagination
Begun to contemplate
The scale of change
The dynamic of shift.
These things I thought
I knew
I knew not
And am now set adrift.
Afloat, affluent, afforded
Affectioned.

Loved, loving, reconciled
Reputation.

So how to reconcile
The face of my own.

I see a man in the mirror
Whose name is gone.

We all have some idea of our past.
Some idea of the present,
How long it will last.

We are but our own
best and proudest muse.

Withering details will flutter aside
As new blossoms form.

Yet so slow.
So gradual.
The art of patience,
Immaculate and strategic.

I have been so oblivious to it.

And now I witness, with the strongest sensation
That I must be patient and impatient
With myself the most, in every way.

Face forward for the face you face
Is your own.
Look backward to know
The face you have known.

To the side you will see
Your own enemy.
To the other you find
Your strongest aligned.

The now is a mirror,
A reflection of things past
But newly made images
That will not last.

We wish for these frail
And hollow ideas
To remain eternal
When none of it is.

To last forever it would seem
Would be the best.
To fall back and follow
The path of rest
Is seen as weak and
Immaterial.

However, to an end, it is the way we all will be.

The Grip got it first

('cause, you know, Steve has ABSOLULTELY NOTHING ELSE TO DO, congrats, again man on getting married and the honeymoon!)

But yeah, so here it is

I'll get the track listing together yet, but the mix is 2hr 45min (you have been warned.)

Cori and I have settled in nicely in our beautiful apartment that the school set up for us. Its a two bedroom, and its neat, with lots of good omens and feng shui.

Much bicycle riding, much walking, and time on mountains and beaches. I'm working from the elementary school during the day so Cori and I can be close (the school actually arranged it without us asking)

So far I've learned how to awkwardly say "My wife is an english teacher at Toujia" (wo de tai tai shr toujia de yingwin laoshih) but you have to be precise about the r's or else you say "mouse" or "rat" instead.

Just a note.

So there's been some things that have happened, such as me being in asia, Taiwan specifically.

Here's what's happened so far:

http://picasaweb.google.com/daveespionage/TaiwanTaipei?feat=directlink
http://picasaweb.google.com/daveespionage/TaiwanTaichung?feat=directlink
http://picasaweb.google.com/daveespionage/TaiwanTaichungWeek2?feat=directlink

Taiwan (Taipei)

Taiwan (Taichung)

Taiwan (Taichung Week 2)

Yes yes yes.

I just helped Cori do an introduction for a video that will be a tour of the entire school. We hopped up with our hand in the air like we were going to take off.

It's been amazing.

I am not.
I speak a language
Fraught with inconsistencies
Much like
Most of the species.

But does that make anyone expert?
For truly, the exact method of
Implementation
Varies wildly from
Station to station.

So within these walls
Of celebrated language
We can see clearly
That the windows are foggy
And we've wrecked into a dangling preposition that extended our sentence around.

What?
Around what did it extend? 
Was that just an avoidance
Or was the exception meant to
Annotate the interest of dissonance?

There was once a page
Detailing the decades of musical
Composition and their variances
From dissonant to harmonious
And cited specific instances.

And then in explaining
The lyrics of YMCA
I realized our trending
Of slang flows similar
And flies past mind-bending

As adjectives not only
Change meaning often
But their meaning in context
Is quite often forgotten.

So to explain
A verse of a verse
We say that its bad
But its far from that
Yet its worse.

"So then bad is good"
I hear a literalist
In my emotive imagination
Substantiate exploration
While internalizing explanation.

"But no, its bad as well"
Comes a reply
But the coy literalist
Knows both are lies.

So where is our truth
In our statements of presence?
In fact no one knows
For many languages its
Irrelevant.

So how to be an expert
A model
A mentor
When all of your words mean
Not what they were meant for?

I suppose we'll teach
Everyone latin
That will give all explanation
For how deep the river is
That we stand in. 

Oh wait, tried it.
Still need a new dictionary
Every five minutes
And even then culture defies
Definition on paper,
And likes it.

So there we have it.
Phrases on t-shirts, posters
In books
Affecting the way everyone
Looks.

Nonsense abounds
And is embraced willingly
For its the stuff our very
Very absurdist selves
Demand, loudly.