Tuesday, February 22

Photos from Lakulaku last Friday

As a brief intro, aforementioned young lass is a Japanese girl by the name of Kaori, a busker by "trade" for want of a better term, who performs live every Friday night at a Japanese (ish) bar/restaurant by the name of Lakulaku (#3, Alley 7, Lane 137, Yanji St, Taipei City - 台北市延吉街137巷7弄3號1樓) run by a Taiwanese guy, Kevin. In between her sets, sometimes some of the customers, or even Kevin himself, will take to the stage and perform impromptu, it's a fully informal setup. One particularly noteworthy regular is another Taiwanese guy whose English name is - get this - Slaughter. Seriously. Anyway, he's a big Tenacious D fan, and part of a ska band, and so sometimes he'll get up and start rocking out on the electric guitar playing Tribute, Fuck Her Gently, or Kielbasa. And he's just a hell of a loose unit in general too. Great guy really. Anyway, here go the photos from last week:

Kevin (owner of Lakulaku) and Kaori Posted by Hello

Kaori on stage Posted by Hello

Catgirl Kaori Posted by Hello

Forumosa Happy Hour photos


Irene, Joyce, and Wally Posted by Hello

Wally, male model. Or not. Posted by Hello

Westsyde biatch! Posted by Hello

Joyce, drinking from a big girl glass. Posted by Hello

The Forumosa Cake Posted by Hello

Chris and Reiner Posted by Hello

Gwailo 2: Electric Boogaloo

Well, it's now officially both the Western New Year and the Chinese one, and in line with that (and because I've forgotten the password to my old, long-neglected blog), I'm starting afresh. Since it's 1am and I've only just finished setting this piece of shit up, I'm not going to post too much. Basic rundown of life at present:

  • Taipei is one cold bastard of a city in winter. We're talking lows in the single digits. Visible breath. All the nice shit. And yet people still run their goddamned aircons.
  • Just bought a digicam, so for the first time in the year+ I've been here I've actually got a camera that'll allow me to share a few pics of the place, starting in this post. Cam only cost like NT$1500 (about NZ$75/US$50) too, second-hand. It's hardly state of the art, but it's better than a kick in the balls.
  • Work at my buxiban (cram school) is slowing down, finally, and while the pay was excellent I'm glad for the more relaxed hours. Sinorama work is still as thin on the ground as it has been for the past few months. Picked up a project from a client I worked for a couple of months ago (Dadi Zazhi, aka Earth Geographic (I think)), editing the English draft of a book they're publishing. That's about 30,000 words, give or take, at NT$0.6 per word, plus NT$2 per Chinese character for any additional translation required, so I'm looking at about NT$20,000 out of that (about NZ$1000/US$700) for three weeks work, on top of everything else I'm doing.
  • Did I mention it's fucking cold?
  • Current love interest is also currently spoken for by a boring twat of a pommy boyfriend. Speedbump only. By means fair or foul, I will ensure he is removed from the picture.
  • Got on the telly here tonight as part of the Forumosa Happy Hour at The Tavern last night.
And that's about it really. I'll submit this now and see if I can lob on a couple of the better photos related to this badboy in a moment.