As I sit in the departure lounge of Taipei’s Chiang Kai-Shek International Airport, I’ve done some tallying up. In the past seven months, I’ve set foot in thirteen countries, set my watch for ten time zones, carried around eleven different currencies and cleared security in nine international airports. That’s a whole lotta air miles (though, ironically, it’s all been with different airlines so I haven’t collected enough frequent flier points to get me anywhere at all). Those of you who’ve been inclined to do so have been able to follow along with my journeys as they went, and I thank you for bearing with me when I shifted gears abruptly from this site’s usual content. It’s kind of funny to think that prior to the start of all this, I didn’t travel at all. Aside from a jaunt out to the Pacific northwest in the Summer of 2004 and Las Vegas a few months before that, I hadn’t been anywhere of consequence in… five years? And probably eight more years before that. But hellz I’ve made up for that…

About half this last trip was spent in Taipei, Taiwan, a place my roots pass directly through, if not lead to. There were no tours, no agendas, just some light sightseeing and visiting family friends, lots of restauranting and whatnot. I visited the National Palace Museum, home of many ancient Chinese artifacts and a sizable collection of Buddhist statues and illuminations, the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial , a massive park in the heart of the city dedicated to the Nationalist Chinese leader who led those fleeing the Communists to establish the modern Republic of China, aka Taiwan. It’s an impressive monument that served as a gentle reminder of how little I know of Chinese history, modern or otherwise.

As for the rest of the time there, there was a lot of taxi rides in a city that seems to pay no heed whatsoever to traffic laws. Motorcyclists weave in and out of traffic willy-nilly, taxis, buses and cars following close behind. It’s pretty fearsome to the uninitiated – you couldn’t pay me to get behind the wheel of a car there. The cabbies have been pretty funny, though, mostly ready to go on at length about any and every topic while weaving their way to your destination. Except for the last guy – he had a full surround sound home theatre set up in his cab, and ran movies for his passengers. Considerate, though Final Destination isn’t really what I want to see en route to the airport. I also don’t think the words “emissions test” exist in Chinese, because the pollution on warmer days (of which there were a few) was pretty stifling. A nasty grey haze is pretty standard, making their decision to build the world’s tallest building there a rather questionable one. They could very well just be SAYING it’s as tall as it is because no one at street level will ever be able to see the top.

Taipei at night is a somewhat different proposition. It’s significantly cooler and more pleasant, the air clearer and the streets still bustle, but at a slightly more leisurely pace. And the lighting from all the fluorescent signs creates an electric night atmosphere, but thankfully doesn’t illuminate the grime. It helps that all the shops are open late, there’s lots of street vendors and night markets and generally a lot of energy that creates a pretty nice vibe.

And cliched but no less interesting is the constant and comical misuse of English in Taiwanese signs, commercials, clothing, etc. It puzzles me that a TV spot will run entirely in Chinese, and yet the corporate slogan at the end is in English. Who is that for? But what’s really disconcerting is when the broken, random English begins to make some sense… that right there is a sign that it’s time to go home. Also surprising was the ubiquity of the 7-11. The convenience stores are everywhere and seem to be a fundamental part of day-to-day life. People actually buy their meals there, though I don’t think they sold slurpees.

Another thing I noticed was the hordes of stray dogs wandering the streets. And not just your prototypical mangy mongrel types, though there were plenty of those. I saw big dogs, little dogs, malnourished dogs and well-kept dogs just wandering around, in traffic (see above note about crazy drivers – not a good combination) and just anywhere they pleased and seeming to have a good time of it. Very odd coming from a place where real stray dogs are almost never seen.

And now I’m very much looking forward to going home. Getting back to my life, whatever that was/is. I hardly remember. Also looking forward to speaking English to people (and being understood). It’s the little things, you know? Not so looking forward to eighteen hours of flying, but what can you do.

Oh, and speaking of travel and Final Destination, this was the ship that ferried me around the Baltic Sea last September. I might even go so far as to say that the section of the ship that was on fire was where my cabin was. Pretty scary, kids.

Anyway, that’s all from the eastern hemisphere. Bye.

PS – there’s been a big update on my Flickr page. Photos through the first day at Hualien are up – still about a week’s worth to go, but we’re getting there.

Remember how I resolved that I wouldn’t do any more Sufjan Stevens posts for 2006 unless he, oh, put out a new album? Well yay Sufjan. The Avalanche will be a companion piece to last year’s New Pantheon-winning Illinois, comprising outtakes, unreleased and alternate versions of his ode to the Lincoln state and be out July 25. More info at Asthmatic Kitty. The title comes from the bonus track that appeared on the vinyl edition of Illinois, which keener completists went out and bought to go with the Superman and non-Superman editions of the CD. Well, at least you still have that limited-edition balloon sticker… what’s that, you peeled it off? Well then I guess you have NOTHING.

Oh, and Sufjan swears he didn’t knock up Rosie Thomas, except in perhaps the musical sense. If there is one.

Indieinterviews has run a week-long series of interviews with singer Lenka of Australia’s Decoder Ring, who rather impressed at SxSW last month. I also got a copy of their Fractions, which plays very much like a film soundtrack – it has ebbs and tides with a variety of sounds and styles, but with a consistent sort of feel. And the bookending tracks (opening and closing credits?) are sublime.

This year’s Over The Top Fest has found the perfect way to cap off a terrific slate of shows – Saturday Looks Good To Me will headline a matinee BBQ show at the Drake Hotel on May 7 with Everyone’s In Love & The Flowers Pick Themselves and more acts to be announced. Pitchfork reports that SLGTM’s Sound On Sound rarities comp will be out on Tuesday, which is interesting since I ordered my copy well over a month ago and have been enjoying it since.

Billboard reports that when Radiohead roll into town this Summer, likely in June, they’ll be making themselves comfortable with a multi-night stand. This does not mean a week-long residence at Lee’s Palace, but more likely a couple nights at the Molson Amphitheatre. Their in-progress new album will apparently be “terrifying”.

Feist promises more guitars on her new album, which is now looking like an early 2007 release. At least there’s the Open Season rarities comp due out next week to keep the masses mollified. She’s also on the Olympic Island festival bill for June 25. Sign On San Diego also has an interview.

The Winnipeg Sun talks to Metric’s James “Jimmy” Shaw.

Dirty On Purpose’s debut full-length Hallelujah Sirens has been given a release date of June 6. Ask for it by name!

Matthew Sweet’s seminal Girlfriend will be getting the deluxe Legacy Recordings treatment on June 13. You know, the mylar slipcase, the fancy remastering, extensive liner notes, second disc of bonus material. In this case, the second disc will be the Goodfriend recordings which were available as a promo/fan club release way back in 1992. It consists of demos, live recordings and general goodness from the high point of Sweet’s career. His album of covers with good friend but not girlfriend Susanna Hoffs, Under The Covers, Vol 1, is out April 18.

The Fourth Rail offers a very thoughtful and thorough comparison of V For Vendetta, the graphic novel and the film.

I spent a couple of days earlier this week in and around the city of Hualien, down on the east coast of Taiwan. It’s a resort town of sorts, not terribly interesting unto itself, but notable for its proximity to the beaches along the Pacific Ocean and the Taroko National Park, which occupies a not inconsiderable portion of the entire island.

It was about a three hour train ride from Taipei down to Hualien along the coast, and from there straight into a van for a driving tour of Taroko. The park is defined by its verdant, rolling mountains of stone and marble and dizzying gorges within, some of the which reach up to 3700m above sea level – pretty massive. The main road through is actually the Central Cross-Island Highway, which traverses the entire island, but since it has to follow the terrain through through the park it often narrows down to a single lane along the mountainside. The Liwu River which ran through the park has certainly seen better days, at this point it was rather wimpy and dirty, but apparently during typhoon season it’s a fearsome body of water. The book I’ve been reading lately, Bill Bryson’s A Short History Of Nearly Everything, is a fascinating tome on the history of the world from a scientific POV, from cosmology to geology to zoology, so seeing such natural wonders up close was quite the experience.

The hotel we stayed at was waaaaay up on a mountaintop overlooking Hualien and was pretty fancy pants. I couldn’t help notice that it was located on the mountain just above a fairly large cemetary and just below a military base. In other words, a zombie movie waiting to happen. (Un)fortunately, the undead did not rise to feast on our flesh the one evening we were there, so we were able to head down to the Pacific coast the next morning. This portion of the trip was a little more free-form, just driving along the water, taking in the scenery. The southernmost point on our sojourn was pretty cool, though – the Tropic of Cancer. There’s a giant obelisk dealie right on that line of latitude that marks the spot 20-degrees north of the Equator. It was pretty hot out, I wasn’t going to debate the point. Besides that, there was some frolicking with water buffalos (okay, not so much frolicking as photographing at the side of the road) and hanging out on the beach contemplating the Pacific. Not a warm sandy beach, really more of a cold, rocky beach, but hey – the Pacific. It’s big, blue and probably quite deep.

What can I say? Nature is cool. I’m still working on the photos, they’re worth far more than a thousand words in this case. Unfortunately, I discovered how annoying it is to get dust on a DSLR sensor during the trip so I’ve got some Photoshop touch-ups to do before anything gets posted. Patience.

But to backtrack a bit – A Short History Of Nearly Everything? Great stuff. Even if at points it feels uncomfortably like being back in high school chemistry, it’s very readable and entertaining, even with the heavy stuff. Hey, anyone who can make the history of taxonomy a page-turner deserves some props.

The “indie yuppie” phenomenon continues to not go away. This feature in New York Magazine is the latest salvo in the media’s attempt to understand some of today’s thirtysomethings, and it manages to coin an impressively gross new term in the process – “Grups”, taken from an old Star Trek episode. Yeah, THAT’S the road to cool. Cribbing terms from Star Trek. My thoughts on the topic haven’t changed too much since the last time the topic reared its unkempt yet fashionably-coiffed head – I don’t understand it. Are there really people as vacuous and fashion-victim-y as the article makes them out to be? Does anyone really think that consciously and objectively about what their lifestyle is or what they want it to be? I always thought that life was one of those things that just sort of happened… But either way, dig the unquestionably stylish photo of Ivy’s Andy Chase and Dominique Durand (and their spawn). If they’re the prototypical grup-couple, does that make Adam Schlesinger the wacky neighbour?

CBS offers some commentary on the piece and The Albequerque Tribune has already embraced the term with their own “I’m a grup and I love it!” column and The Globe & Mail has also bought in while The Orgeonian still clings to the apparently now-passes “indie yuppie” label. My rule of thumb – anyone who actually uses a (stupid) media-created term to reference themselves needs to be taken out back and stabbed to death with a 1″ Strokes pin.

I Like Music has an interview with Chris Walla and The Gateway with Nick Harmer of grups-fave Death Cab For Cutie The Anchorage Daily News talks to grups-faves-in-waiting Matt Pond PA.

The AV Club gets a look at Janet Weiss of Quasi and Sleater-Kinney’s iPod. Quasi’s new one, When The Going Gets Dark, came out March 21.

Manchester Online talks to Patterson Hood about Drive-By Truckers’ new album A Blessing And A Curse, out April 18.

Elf Power are at the Horseshoe on May 3.

The Varsity (Bugmenot) has run an interview I conducted with Matt Brown of Trespassers William. It was/is my first-ever interview and I was mildly surprised to find the hardest part wasn’t the interview itself, but meeting the word count.

Entertainment Weekly confirms, via interview with creator Mitchell Hurvitz, that Arrested Development is dead. But at least season 3 will be out on DVD June 13, and since it was a truncated season, it’ll be a cheap 2-disc set. Via The Big Ticket.

24: Why do they keep sending people to CTU medical? No one makes it out of there alive except the bad guys. And at least they’ve replaced Chloe with someone hotter. Which means, of course, that she’ll be crazy and/or a traitor. Okay, this clumsy “Jack has to rescue a little girl” detour has time-filler written all over it. Next, someone will tell Jack they absolutely need a pint of Cherry Garcia from Ben & Jerry’s, even with the curfew. Only Jack can do it. And the big bad reveal is… huh. I repeat: Huh. Good luck selling that one.

Note – there’s basically three new posts up in the past 24 hours. Do check them all out.

np – Crooked Fingers / Red Devil Dawn

So while tonight’s Flaming Lips show at the Phoenix is obviously the hot ticket of the early Spring (mandatory media coverage courtesy of The Toronto Star and The Toronto Sun and AP), one of the hot shows of last Summer (which I didn’t attend but was told was great), the Broken Social Scene fete at Olympic Island, is getting a second go-around.

This year’s edition, which will take place on June 24, will again feature some BSS family acts, in this case Feist and Raising The Fawn, and some impressive imported talent – Bloc Party and J Mascis – with more to be announced. Interesting to note that J is being billed simply as J, not Dinosaur Jr or Witch. Will he be doing Fog material? Or maybe he hasn’t decided exactly who he’s going to anger the Toronto Islands residents with.

Tickets for the to-do will go on sale on Thursday for the CFNY presale price of $38.50, plus $6 for the ferry to and from the islands. After that the price goes up, though I don’t know by how much. BSS also made some news backstage at the Juno awards after taking home a Best Alternative Album paperweight for Broken Social Scene, slagging off the Canadian Idol machine. JAM! and Chart dish dirt. Damn you, Kevin Drew. Damn you for making Kalan Porter cry.

Some other just-announced shows meriting varying degrees of excitedness: The Guillemots return to Toronto for a show at the Mod Club on May 4, SF shoegazers Film School have a date at the ‘Shoe on May 19, Greg Dulli brings his Twilight Singers to Lee’s Palace on May 27, the same night Imogen Heap returns to the Mod Club. Snow Patrol are at the Kool Haus June 7 and Vancouver’s Pink Mountaintops, who were such a hit that SxSW that I had to stand on the street for two hours to get into the venue, are at the Horseshoe June 11.

After being delayed for, uh, 7 years, the Big Star tribute album Big Star Small World will finally be seeing a release on May 23. More than a quarter of the contributing artists are now defunct, one broke up for an extended period of time only to actually become half the band they’re saluting (who also themselves appear), several are a decade or so removed from their heyday and one is Wilco. I’ve already posted three of these tracks in the past, but this should still be worth possessing since I don’t actually have any more of them.

Chart and NOW stir some interest for Centro-Matic’s show at the Horseshoe tomorrow night.

The CBC has named me one of Canada’s best arts and entertainment blogs. Well thank you, Ceeb. You’re my second favourite crown corporation. Canada Post still wins because they bring me things.

np – Neko Case / Fox Confessor Brings The Flood