spent the weekend in taipei. had a sort of reunion with some of my old students who at this point are really more like friends. we spent the afternoon at a fun little cafe/shop near shida called zabu. some fun stuff for sale there by local designers and wind up robots too! i had most of the robots so wasn't too tempted except by the ones a bit out of my price range.

after zabu, we headed up north to san zhi to go to one of the many funky coffee shops out there. the boss seemed really curious about me(maybe not many foreigners come to his shop) we left around 10:30 pm, but took the long way home. we passed the abandoned resort i took pictures of before, and the dragon outside the resort is much more frightening at night.

around 12:30 i finally got to my friend's james' and sarah's where i was crashing that night. once i got there we stayed up talking until nearly 5 am.

i had a mental note of cds i wanted to look for while i was back, but in the end just picked up two of those remastered cure discs(these are priced much cheaper than the first ones i'm not sure if the price has come down or if the shop just has them mismarked). the other disc is an offshoot of one of my favourite defunct taiwanese bands natural q. the packaging is pretty fun. the outer sleeve is sewn shut, so you have to unsew it to get the package open. something i have yet to do.

it's been a good 4 months or so since i'd been in taipei. it was definately a bit strange to be back. i don't really miss the city, but i do like it for its ease of finding indie music and the museums and my friends of course. i guess in the end, it's just a city, not home like it was before. oddly i didn't take any photos at all while i was back.