switzerland (+)

Switzerland's railway system is ranked first among national European rail systems for its intensity of use, quality of service and strong safety rating. It's the sole transportation we used during our three-week travel in this mountainous country, through the valleys, around the lakes, to urban cities, and rural villages. A quick check with its mobile app can tell you all the available routes to the destination you want, the exact times of arrival, the stops along the way, the platforms to board, even how crowded each train is.

The train itself is nice and clean, comfy and roomy, with designated spaces for bicycles, luggages, child seats, etc.

On the second day of our trip, I left my phone on the train. As we stood at the platform of the station we just deboarded, wondering who/what to contact for help, another train arrived, and down came a woman conductor for routine check. We told her what happened and she invited us to the train as it must leave on schedule, where she asked for the details of my mishap, and my friend's phone number for call back and assured us they would let us know if they found the phone. We got off the train at the next stop, and decided to go to the customer service counter there to report the loss just to be doubly sure that someone would look for it. As we approached the counter my friend's phone rang, and we handed it to the customer service agent so they could talk in German. Moments later, "they found the phone, and will bring it to this station by one of the next trains coming in. You can come back here to pick it up in about an hour," the customer service agent smiled and told us. And I did get my phone back an hour later, in the middle of nowhere, in rural southeastern Switzerland!

I couldn't be more impressed by and appreciative of the diligence and efficiency of the people and the system there!

The other pleasant surprise thing I encountered in Switzerland was their food. It was in general a good mix of German, Italian, and French cooking—no surprise, as it is the country's population composition—with quality agriculture ingredients (great bread and potato, freshwater fish from the lakes, happy cows on green pasture 😏), homey taste, at reasonable prices. (Average dish at formal dining was about 20% higher than in the US, but then you didn't have to tip, so it's a wash.)

Last but not least, the most pleasant thing of this trip, however, was to be accompanied by Joseph Chou, my best friend from high school, and his wonderful wife Peipei!

They were the ones that planned every detail of the trip: studying the places to visit, setting the itinerary, booking the hotels, reserving the train seats, etc., and led every step of the way as we moved up and down the country. When I said we took on this trip as a self-guided tour, what I really meant was a "Chou-guided" tour!

And I got to enjoy many precious moments with Joseph: in the train, at the summit, on the trail, sharing thoughts and memories of the old and the new. Joseph was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer two years ago and went through a major surgery and chemo treatment last year from which he was still recovering. I am so grateful that we had such a wonderful trip together to reunion and reconnect!

Thank you, Joseph and Peipei, God be with you, and let's do it again sometime!

switzerland (3)

Lausanne is a hilly city on the north shores of Lake Geneva, in the French speaking southwest of the country. It’s home to the International Olympic Committee headquarters, as well as the Olympic Museum and lakeshore Olympic Park. A grand cathedral in a busy old town district, and a street musical festival we bumped into whose charismatic singer and rappy but melodial singing still play back in my mind.  

Bern, the capital of Swiss Confederation, is a modest, everything-within-walking-distance town. It has an "Einstein Museum" (Einstein lived in Bern for seven years, 1902-1909, while working for the Swiss patent office) that not only details the life and stories of Einstein and his times, but teaches you easy-to-understand Special Relativity Theory in ten minutes.

Geneva is another shore city, sitting at the southwestern end of its namesake lake, bordering France, from where John Calvin, a giant of the Reformation Movement, escaped to preach in the city for 28 years before he died. A "Reformation Wall" built on the old fortification walls of the city, depicting key Calvinist and other Protestant figures, represents the significant roles these people and the city played for the success of the Reformation Movement nearly half a millennium years ago.

We took a side tour out of Switzerland to Strasbourg, France for two days before the end of our three-week trip. Strasbourg is a border city in northeastern France across the Rhine River from Germany. It's been historically a contested territory between the two countries for hundreds of years but is now the peaceful seat of the European Union Parliament.

It's also a charming tourist town with a 600-year-old cathedral and a river/canal surrounded old town.

And six Michelin one-star restaurants, one of them we visited.

switzerland (2)

Located at the heart of Switzerland, the Berner Oberland (Bernese Highlands) region is famed for its natural beauty and alpine charm. We rented a three-bed-and-two-bath-room apartment house at a resort tourist town Wengen for four nights to explore the area.

A young woman (Jungfrau), a monk (Mönch), and an ogre (Eiger), all standing 4000+ meters tall—yes, these are names of the famous triumvirate of peaks in Swiss Alps we went to see, at a summit that's 3000 meters tall itself.

Another bigger name peak, Matterhorn, the one Disneyland emulates at its theme park in Southern California for bobsled roller coaster rides, took us a day trip to its access city Zermatt, where besides seeing the 4478-meter tall big rock from anywhere in town, we also watched a short movie at the city museum that documented how the first ascent to the peak was accomplished in 1865, with tragic ending (some climbers died) and unresolved suspicion (was the rope cut intentionally?).

Back at Wengen, I spent one morning taking a cable-car lift to a 2200 meter summit, then a one-and-a-half-hour hike in the snow with my traveling companion Joseph. Worth every bit of my sore feet later that evening!

There are two major lakes in the region, we managed to visit two cities by one of them. At Thun, we saw people surfing on the river, at Spiez, skiing on the lake with some self-propelling gadgets. Eye-openers for a dude from a Southern California beach town!

It was snowing when we left town. The first of the season, said the driver who picked us up for the train station.

switzerland (1)

We took an unusual self-guided three week tour to Switzerland in September.

Right off the plane, we got a taste of this mountainous country's super efficient railway system by taking a train off the airport terminal and reaching our first destination in less than an hour.
 
Lucerne is a city tucked between a big lake and a few surrounding hills, at the outflow of a river from the lake in central Switzerland. Its indelible landmark is a footbridge that is the oldest wood covered bridge in Europe, with triangle paintings that depict Swiss Confederation history dating back to the 17th century. 

A visit to its old fortification wall and tower and a rock-cut monument commemorating the heroism of Swiss Guardsmen reminded me of the grit and the will of self-determination of the people that make the country what it is today.

Lugano is yet another beautiful lakeside city, at the very southern end of the country, bordering Italy. 

From there we took a bus east, traversing northern Italy to return to the southeastern tip of Switzerland, then boarded a train that took us up and down 2000+ meter high mountains and valleys, before reaching two highland hideaways—Pontresina, a tranquil one-street village, and St. Moritz, a one-time Winter Olympics host, somewhat chic-ish town—in southeastern Swiss Alps. 

Then we went to the northeastern corner of the country, and became accidental attendees to a once-every-25-year regional festival at a quaint little village, Appenzell, that featured an air show, an Oktoberfest-like celebration, and a wrestling contest.

St. Gallen, the major city in northeastern Switzerland, has an expansive cathedral-abbey built on the hermitage of an Irish monk who came to evangelize in the 7th century, with a library that keeps 160,000 volumes, including thousands of manuscripts dating back to the 8th through 15th centuries, and notes of cooking tips and dietary suggestions by the monks such as 

"May chopped herbs through the cross turn tart in the vinegar," 

"May mushrooms often stewed with blessings be imbued," and 

"In beer's careful brew, blessings anew."

john adams

Leader of the American Revolution, signer of the Declaration of Independence, senior diplomat to France, Netherland, and Britain, the second (and father of the sixth) president of the United States... John Adams was one of the prominent founding fathers of the nation, the like of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, if only without any dollar bills bearing his image.

But unlike Washington or Jefferson, who were wealthy Southern plantation owners*, Adams was the son of a humble farmer in New England who, growing up, wanted to be just another farmer like his father.

Except his father had a different idea. One day father and son set off to the creek to cut thatch and worked through the day. At night at home, father said, "Well, John, are you satisfied with being a farmer?" Though the labor had been very hard and very muddy, John answered, "I like it very well, sir."

"Aya, but I don't like it so well: so you will go back to school today."  

John went but was not so happy as among the creek thatch.

Later, when he told his father it was his teacher he disliked, not the books, and that he wished to go to another school, his father immediately took his side and wasted no time with further talk. John was enrolled the next day in a private school down the road. He made a dramatic turn and began studying in earnest.

Though John's father, a respected deacon at the local church, wanted him to become a minister, John's own experience under his father's roof, seeing many "ecclesiastical councils" going through there, gave him second thoughts.

"I saw such a spirit of dogmatism and bigotry in clergy and laity, that if I should be a priest I must take my side, and pronounce as positively as any of them, or never get a parish, or getting it must soon leave it."

He had no heart for such a life and told his father he would take the career of law even if that profession was not generally held in high esteem then.

A successful lawyer he had become, and when the infamous "Boston Massacre" – where a platoon of British soldiers inadvertently fired at a disorderly, violent crowd, killing five civilians – occurred and no other attorneys would come to the soldiers' defence, Adams came forward, believing no person should be denied the right to counsel and a fair trial, and got most of the British soldiers acquitted.

During the Revolutionary War Adams was appointed a commissioner to France to help negotiate a French alliance against Britain. Leaving his wife, children, his home, his livelihood, and knowing nothing of European politics or diplomacy and unable to speak French, Adams took the assignment with pure patriotic sense of duty and boarded a newly commissioned warship for a 3,000-mile voyage across the North Atlantic in a treacherous traveling season.

They escaped the chase of three British frigates at the beginning of the journey, but encountered another heavily armed British merchant vessel three weeks later. Adams was advised to stay at his cabin when the captain informed him they were about to engage with the British enemy.

The fighting was soon over, after a few cannon shot exchanges, the British vessel surrendered.

During the fighting, however, the captain found Adams had taken a place in the heart of the action, musket in hand.

"I then went unto him and said, 'My dear sir, how came you here,' and with a smile he replied, 'I ought to do my share of the fighting.' This was sufficient for me to judge of the bravery of my venerable and patriotic Adams."

America was a divided nation 250 years ago (as today), before and during the Revolutionary War. It was estimated one third of the colonists favored the Revolution, one third opposed it, and one third were undecided. And soon after the independence, partisan politics took over (as today) between the Federalists and the Republicans, resulting in comical theatrics as seen in some newly developed democratic countries today:

"Vicious animosity of a kind previously confined to newspaper attacks broke out in the first physical assault to occur in Congress. In the midst of debate, when Federalist Roger Griswold of Connecticut insulted Republican Matthew Lyon of Vermont, Lyon crossed the chamber and spat in Griswold's face. Soon after, Griswold retaliated with a cane. Lyon grabbed fire tongs from the fireplace, and the two went at each other until, kicking and rolling on the floor, they were pulled apart."

As a young man, Adams had done some soul searching of himself and concluded "honesty, sincerity, and openness... are essential marks of a good mind," and was determined to be a man of integrity: "reputation ought to be the perpetual subject of my thoughts, and aim of my behavior," but confessed vanity – being overly proud, conceited – was his chief failing.

Perhaps that was why though he had accomplished plenty for the country, he was not well liked by many of his political peers, who, while admiring his patriotism and integrity, deemed him aloof, arrogant, and combative. But that might well be his temperamental side, another key trait of his personality, at display. As Adams himself admitted in his old age:

"[As president] I refused to suffer in silence. I sighed, sobbed, and groaned, and sometimes screeched and screamed. And I must confess to my shame and sorrow that I sometimes swore."

By all standards, Adams had a happy, satisfactory family life through his life: He married his intellectual soulmate who became his lifetime political counsel, had three sons and two daughters, one of them (John Quincy Adams) became the sixth president of the United States, and fifteen grand sons and grand daughters whose company he enjoyed in retirement.

But tragedies also struck: One of their daughters died at two, the other one died in her forties of cancer. Two of his sons, though both having outstanding personalities and great ability, were considered mentally unstable and died of alcoholism, one at the young age of 30.

He tried to hang in through these with his philosophy and religion. "Rejoice always in all events, be thankful always for all things is a hard precept for human nature, though in my philosophy and in my religion a perfect duty."

He remained as he had been, clear-eyed about the paradoxes of life and in his own nature. Once, in a letter to an old friend, he had written, "Griefs upon griefs! Disappointments upon disappointments. What then? This is a gay, merry world notwithstanding."**

He died on July 4, 1826, the 50th birthday of the nation he helped create.


* John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams were the only two of the first twelve US presidents who never owned slaves

** From the book "John Adams" by David McCullough

snæland, norge

On our previous trip to the Baltics, the only Nordic countries we didn't cover were Iceland and Norway, so when a cousin of mine in Vancouver asked us to join them for a cruise to these two countries, we gladly obliged.

This 12-day cruise started at the southwest of Iceland, made a half circle to its northeast, then headed north into the Arctic Circle to a Norwegian archipelago midway between North Pole and the northern coast of Norway, then southeast to the Norway mainland, where the tour ended.

It was a cold weather trip, as you might imagine, but not so cold really, averaging high 40's Fahrenheit, and could be balmy when the sun showed up, like when visiting a cookie cutter town center, or while cruising a fjord.

The coldest spot (low 30's Fahrenheit) was reserved for "the world's northernmost town" Longyearbyen (pop. 2500), 650 miles from the North Pole, where an underground "Global Seed Vault" keeps over one million seeds from all over the world and where there are more polar bears than people.

 

Old time, harsh living mining and fishing villages had been mostly converted to cozy, scenic tourist towns.

​But the rough terrain remains wild and beautiful.

As well as accessible, such as this geothermal spa that seemed to be a popular hangout place for local high-schoolers.

Unlike the many august, solemn looking cathedrals we are used to seeing in Europe, two contemporary churches in little northern Norwegian towns impressed us with their innovative and inspirational looks and design.

When in Viking countries, read Viking stories. I picked up and read a book on the Vikings from the ship's library and got an interesting side view of European history through the aggressive activities these Nordic "barbarians" brought on to the British Isles, the Frankish Empire, Russia, the Byzantine Empire, and the Mediterranean.

​And for my aggressive act to the edge of the world, I was awarded a certificate.

Happy traveling!
​

* For more photos and details of the trip:

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/E2tkvFrqyJbL9tA9/

privileged

My dentist chatted with me the other day, said his little daughter just learned from school that "there are so many people in the world!": One point four billion in India, ten million in Czechia (where the dentist's wife came from), and here in the US we have over three hundred million people... So many, she was amazed, and so few of them she knew or would ever know, she thought.

That triggered a tiny old memory of mine: As a young boy, I once saw a calendar poster on the wall, a blown-up tourism photo of sorts, showing a Parisian city scene, the Eiffel tower in the back, people strolling around on streets, parks, buildings, etc... And there, a young woman walking up some steps caught my eyes, and caused me to think: this is a real person... what happened to her after this picture was taken... where is she now... what's her life story like...

I came from a sentimental culture of the old, I remember on the day we finished our grade school, they had us kids grouped up and circle around the school yard while the PA speakers played some melancholy "I am going to miss all my dear teachers and classmates" music that actually made some of us twelve-year-olds cry...

Fast forward more than half a century later, I've come half a world to reside in a New World, picked a career path that took me traveling seven seas and five continents, met multitudes of people of various creeds and cultures, ethnicities and origins. And though most of these encounters were transitional or transactional and went by fast, a few of them did stick out.

Like the Russian "handler" that accompanied me through Moscow-Saint Petersburg-South Russia for my one-man technical show for two weeks, the "boys and girls" Japanese support team a Canadian and I used in our multi-city tele-promotion campaigns off and on for three years in Japan, and those young-and-restless, rebel-with-some-vague-cause computer whiz kids I recruited and "managed" for one and a half year for my startup company... Where have they all gone and how are they doing now, I sometimes wonder.

There is an old Chinese/Buddhism notion called 緣 (yuan), the serendipitous encounter between people and things, that seems both chancy and destined, unexplainable but meaningful, that ought to be taken blissfully.

Indeed, out of trillions of stars and planets in the cosmos, billions of people on Earth, what are the odds I meet these few people through this limited life span of mine, be it my blood-related family members, lifetime partner of my choosing, people I go to school with, seekers in the same pursuit, neighbors next door, fellow travelers I met at tours, lecturers whose teaching I enjoyed... my dentist.

"What a privilege to know you," I said to him.
 
*****************************************************

We humans are competitive animals, vying for resources, amassing fortunes, optimizing our own wellbeing... But don't blame me for it, blame it on my "selfish gene", that since day one has commanded all the cells in my body to take all the nutrients they can, grow bigger and fatter, get smarter and shrewder, gain advantages in the world, so I can pass down that same gene to my offspring, so it can start reproducing and multiplying again, over and over... It's just the law of nature.

But hold on, isn't that the same gene that also instructs my cells to differentiate, to become specialty organs that work together to make my body a functional whole? Isn't this cooperative, holistic, interdependent working between protein, cells, organism also a natural law in action, and a more intelligent and elegant version than the brute force grow-and-multiply-at-all-cost one mentioned earlier?

Further, those competitive, selfish "bad traits" notwithstanding, a natural human grown-up also possesses some "good traits" such as love, kindness and care for others. You may say these socially good traits are derived and kept because they bring benefits to the group, creating greater chances for survival for a greater number of people, thus it is still the natural law at work, and you are right. "Social Darwinism" means truly a good thing if interpreted this way.

As a matter of fact, I would argue from a strictly evolutionary point of view, that once such "emergent qualities" as cooperation, love and compassion appear, they become "winners" and non-discardable building blocks for evolution, forces that move life in the universe up a higher level.

With such qualities built-in us, maybe that's why we are naturally attracted to the "transcendentals": things that are good, beautiful or true, even when we are not entirely clear what they might be.

Or perhaps that higher level, such as loving enemies or meeting aggression with kindness, has been revealed in our religious ideals and by some "holy-man" examples, that teach and show us how it can be achieved through "the love or fear of God" and spiritual practices.

What a privileged position we humans are at, to be either pushed from below, or pulled from above, to our next high!


"The moral sense perhaps affords the best and highest distinction between man and the lower animals."
— Charles Darwin

"And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good."
— Genesis 1:31

bill liao

The Liaos are our cross-street neighbors who moved into their brand new house like we did twelve years ago. Compared to us, theirs is a "big" family, consisting of the couple Joe and Merielle, their newborn daughter (and a boy add-on later), and Joe's mom Leah and dad Bill, a three generation ensemble.

Through curbside conversations, occasional meetups at community events, and some lunches together, we got to know each other better: Leah and Bill were first generation immigrants from Taiwan like us, though 10 and 18 years our senior, respectively, Joe, their second son, along with another son and a daughter, were born and raised in the States.

Bill came from a reputable family in central Taiwan. His father went to Japan to study medicine before World War II, when Taiwan was under Japanese colonial rule. After the war, he came back to Taiwan and started practicing medicine in his rural hometown 雲林西螺, instituting a first of its kind, "universal healthcare" system where for a fixed low monthly fee, everyone in town got comprehensive quality health care from him.

Then came the atrocious "228 event" (happened on 2/28, 1947, hence the name), when Taiwanese rebelled against the corrupt and inept administration of Chiang Kai-Shek's dispatch from China after Taiwan was reverted to China at the end of WWII, and the subsequent brutal crackdown by Chiang's troops on Taiwanese elites.

Bill's father was accused of harboring some riot leader, and disseminating "Socialist ideas" by setting up a community based healthcare system such as he had done. He was arrested and sentenced to prison for 12 years.

The whole family was on the government's black list, Bill couldn't find steady good jobs and was under constant surveillance by government informants. It was only through his marriage to Leah and some serendipitous incident, along with some personal connection to some higher-up in the government that he made it out of Taiwan, emigrating to the US in the 1970's.

From their new foothold in Northern California, Bill and Leah built out their new life in America: worked hard, ran their own businesses, raised three kids, sent them to colleges, before retiring and settling down in Southern California.

Now Joe, the son they live with, is a VP at Goldman Sachs, Joanne, their daughter, married with two kids, also a corporate lawyer at Goldman Sachs, and Tim, the other son, runs a coffee shop of his own.  All are either within the same household or five to ten minutes away from their mom and dad. "You are the luckiest parents I know in America," I must have told Bill and Leah a couple times or more.

Bill was healthy looking yet didn't seem to do any workout. What's his secret? "Drink red wine every day," he'd say. Indeed once when we were at their house for a chat he poured out glasses of red wine from a five-liter wine box. "One glass a day, keeps disease away all these years," he said. It was the same kind of box wine he used when he was running a restaurant business in Northern California that he'd been drinking since.

He also kept up a sharp mind and good memories, name-dropping some old time high officials in Taiwan that were either his relatives or schoolmates or friends' friends, etc. He'd been back to Taiwan a few times since the old white terror days were long gone, and kept abreast of what's happening there through YouTube and the internet. And though he probably would never forget the tragic events the old regime did to his family (he still slept every night on an old, classy, family heirloom bed he took from their old home in central Taiwan), he didn't seem to let them cloud his assessment of political reality today. When I asked him, jokingly, "who do you want me to vote for the presidency this time" before I left for my recent trip to Taiwan, "the third party," he replied, like many young people in Taiwan had in mind.

Red wine drinking notwithstanding, his health started declining in recent years. First the bladder, then the liver, and finally the lungs, cancers and old age gradually took their toll on his body.

He passed away last month, just a couple weeks before his 84th birthday.

Just last year, the Liao's extended family, both in Taiwan and abroad, finished rehabilitation of their old estate in central Taiwan, setting up a memorial hall at the site in honor of Bill's father Dr. Liao Man-Tu (廖萬督). I know Bill would have wanted to visit that place had he been well. I think I will visit it and pay tribute for my sweet old friend to his family next time I am in Taiwan.

* Leah and Bill in front of their house with a bag of persimmons I collected for them from our backyard, November, 2022

 

* The Liao family's memorial hall in central Taiwan:

https://doctorliaomt.net/

gym, cafe, and tamsui

Having been staying in Taipei for well over three months, by default or by design, I have become a habitual visitor to a few places that weave the fabric of my life as an "expatriate" in a city I was born and grew up in decades ago.

There are commercial gyms and community sports centers pretty much everywhere in the city, but too crummy and crowded for my liking, so I decided to check on some "VIP Health Club" hosted by some five-star hotels offering their fitness facility to due paying members outside their hotel guests. There is one such hotel nearby where I live, about 10 minutes walk away, presumably perfect for regular visits. So I bought a one-day pass to check it out.

It has everything: workout floor, steam room, sauna, spa, and an outdoor swimming pool, nice and dandy. The show stopper, however, is the pool is on the 20+th floor of the hotel while the rest of the facility is on the basement floor. Imagine going half naked in between these places... Not for me.

Then I checked out this other hotel that we stayed during those pandemic quarantine times whose room and services we were quite happy with. It's got the same whole nine yards: spa, sauna, steam room, exercise equipment, and a two-lane outdoor swimming pool, at a smaller scale than the other one, but more ergonomically laid out and all on one same floor, with a nice service crew. I signed up with them right away.

I have since been going to the place averaging three or four days a week. My routine starts at the workout room, going through seven or eight different machines, morphing into the steam room for a sweaty detox, going to the outdoor pool for lap swimming, heading back in for hot spa, cold dip, hot spa, cold dip, then a long sit in the sauna room, before taking a shower and heading home, for a total of roughly two-hour run.

For its tiny footprint, one thing I was concerned about was it might be easily crowded out, especially for the two-lane-only swimming pool. To my pleasant surprise, that never happens. For all these times I've been using the facility, I have rarely met another swimmer at the pool, nor other users at the steam room or sauna cabin, and no more than two or three people at the same time exercising in the workout room or sitting in the spa. As I splay still in the cold water well, body heat reaching perfect equilibrium with the surrounding chill, all quiet and all alone, I feel more like being in a private meditative chamber than in a public sweathouse!

As for the commute, it's only two subway stations away from where I live. But I can—and prefer to—take the bus too, which comes almost every two minutes and allows open street views that the subway can't. Or on sunny days I'll take the city-run rental bicycle that gets me to the club about the same time as the subway or the bus—kudos to the excellent public transportation systems in Taipei!

There is literally one coffee shop at every street corner in Taipei. One day I strolled into one of these in my neighborhood and saw/heard a young musician playing viola at the corner of the store. I grabbed a table right next to him and started enjoying the music. They were a mixture of classic, folk, and pop scores, and all of a sudden I heard one that sounded mysteriously familiar, then I realized it was one of the songs that my chorus group in SoCal had been practicing for a while. So I chatted with him afterwards, and he said he—along with the City Orchestra—had actually worked with a chorus group from LA recently... He then played that song again just for me so I could record it...

He is actually one member of a string orchestra team the coffee house (a chain of three coffee houses plus one ice cream parlor) had recently organized. Consisting of about a dozen young male musicians, they take turn playing at each of these coffee houses, sometimes single, most of the time twosome or threesome in concerto, in the afternoon or in the evening, usually free (as long as you spend the minimum required consumption at the store), at times charging admission fees.

I took my wife to one of those evening paid performances and she loved it. It was a piano and cello concerto by two young men in their early 20's. The house was packed. We chatted with a middle aged woman who sat across our table, she said she'd been a fanatic follower of this particular cello player for quite some time. A younger couple sitting next to us said they were recent converts to such cafe concerts for its easy atmosphere and flexible hours that provide for an enjoyable evening at the end of a busy work day.

We have since been to all three of these coffee houses for their coffee/cake/meals with concerts, and got to know almost all the team members. They are in general recent graduates from musical schools, each with numerous performance and award records under their belt, and all very handsome (and cute)! Maybe that's why many of their fans are middle aged women and my wife always leaves generous tips to them at the end of their performances, with the excuse of "helping out these starving young musicians"!
 

Tamsui (淡水) is a seaside community a half hour away from Taipei City. It has been a popular go-to place for the townspeople, not only for its easy reach through the train, but also its unique mix of geographical beauty and legendary history.

It's where the river meets the sea, the old British consulate residence and the Spanish fort standing on the hill, overlooking the harbor where Dr. George Leslie Mackay, a Canadian Presbyterian missionary landed and established the first Presbyterian church in northern Taiwan some 150 years ago, and where local militia fought off an invading French naval fleet some 140 years ago.

I have visited the place quite a few times through the years: Strolling along the riverside boardwalks and the old-town district, crossing the harbor on boat and on bridge, visiting the old fort and the consulate residence and Dr. Mackay's dormitory turned modern day art gallery, besides bicycling all the way from Taipei to and around its coasts.

This time around, a friend who lives in the area took me on his sports car for a ride, to scenes I've never seen before: a couple of bucolic country roads hidden between major arteries, a fallowed rice paddy turned scenic pond, and some palace like structures that I wouldn't know are for cremation ashes storage had he not told me so.

We also went across town to have lunch at a beef noodle place whose chef-owner is an erstwhile general who used to run a big chain of beef noodle shops across the strait in mainland China until the pandemic hit and he decided to call it quits, retire and settle down here for good.

Another, contemporary legendary story going on in Tamsui, I suppose.

  

​

septology – a novel

The plot—if there is one—is simple: An ordinary, if somewhat rebellious and gifted boy named Asle grew up in a little seaside village in Norway, dropped out from high school for art school, met and married the love of his life, a devout but free spirited Catholic, became a successful painter, lost his wife, lives a secluded life in the countryside except for a good faithful friend Asleik who watches out for him and keeps inviting him to his sister's house for Christmas every year...

And there was another painter with the same name and almost the same look as Asle living in the city, that he met and cared for, who was twice divorced, an alcoholic and ended up dead from it, and another woman who also has the same name and look as Asleik's sister who enjoys Asle's paintings as Asleik's sister does...

You've got some surreal feel already, don't you? But more, for the story is told through Asle's "stream of consciousness" narration that weaves his hallucinating memories, artistic musings, spiritual wonderings, and mundane activities in one day in one long sentence, one chapter, for seven consecutive days, seven chapters, that make up this 650+ page volume.

Through his own inner dialogue, Asle reveals his thoughts and ruminations on

God

"God put limits on himself by giving human beings free will,"

"God is not all-powerful, he is powerful in his powerlessness,"

"the greater the despair and suffering is, the closer God is,"

liturgy, symbolism

"when the people there, five or six or seven of us, stood up to take communion there was a wonderful sense of atonement,"

"both prayer and mass, and most of all the eucharist, can lead us closer to God, closer to eternity and nothingness, closer to the shining darkness inside us, because I experience that every time I go to mass or see the halo around the host, or the glimmer coming from it, the light, in the transfiguration happening, in the consecration,"

"the words are simple, they’re words everyone can understand, and that’s why the meaning too of these words is something for everyone, but if you get hung up on the literal meaning, to the extent you can, then the words become meaningless,"

art

"a good picture is a gift, and a kind of prayer, it’s both a gift and a prayer of gratitude, I think and I never could have painted a good picture through force of will, because art just happens, art occurs, that’s how it is,"

"my inner pictures in their own picture are always pointing towards something beyond themselves, there is a kind of longing for afar in all the pictures, and at the same time what the pictures are yearning for is always in them already,"

good and evil

"it's from God's darkness that the light comes,"

"even if good and evil, beauty and ugliness are in conflict, the good is always there and the evil is just trying to be there, sort of,"

silence

"a painting is a silent voice that speaks, and the voice says that there is a silence that at the same time brings something close,"

"God’s language speaks silently from everything that exists, and this silence was first broken when The Word came into the world,"

"mother Judit could kind of just fall into herself and become silent,"

mysticism

"isn’t God just something that is, not something you can say anything about?"

"it’s when you understand that you can’t understand God that you understand him,"

"The Bible has to be interpreted, has to be read metaphorically, yes, like it’s not the real thing but a picture, like a painting, with its own truth, because The Bible is literature, and when it comes right down to it literature and visual art are the same thing,"

It does no justice to the book to group thoughts and ruminations the way I just did, for 1) thoughts and ruminations are in truth interrelated and cannot be bounded by abstract topical grouping as such, and 2) the book does an excellent job capturing the random, spontaneous and free flowing nature of the inner working of human mind by faithfully recording the protagonist's ever wandering, overlapping, reappearing "I-think"s as they arise, in simple but rhythmic proses, that is smooth, tranquil, incantational telling of a solipsistic tale.

And a mesmerizing read for me.

For the book:
https://www.amazon.com/Septology-Jon-Fosse/dp/1945492759/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8