Frisco to Taoyuan, Done

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It’s 6/9/23 at 11:54 pm in Frisco International. It’s about to turn to 6/10/23. My flight, CI0003 boards at 00:25, bound for Taipei, Taiwan, landing at the Taoyuan International Airport at 05:05 am local Taiwanese time in the year of our lord 2023, on June 11, Sunday. Now, I’m not gonna go through all the rigmarole of losing a day when you head east from the west. I’ve done that already and quite frankly, no one is interested in reading about such nonsense anymore, if anyone ever did. You see, I want to talk about my travel, and Taiwan ain’t the final destination. No sir. Nah uh. I’m going to Japan with my family. Welcome back to the travel world old boy, where have you been you might ask. I’ve been living in civilization for the past thirteen years if you really want to know. As such, my critically acclaimed and award winning travelogue blog has been dormant for the same number of years that I’ve been living in civilization. Getting married, having a kid, a daughter at that, living the dream. I felt sedated, content, satisfied with my life, so my writing suffered. You can’t make a man write who is happy. Writing is a form of therapy, and if you’re happy, you don’t need therapy. So why now? What kind of crisis are you going through this time that you feel the need to want to fill a blank piece of paper with grandiose words and tall tales that mean absolutely nothing to no one else out there but yourself? Well you got me! I probably am going through some kind of crisis, some bothersome behavior of mine that maybe no one else notices except me. But I wouldn’t know what that behavior is or if it’s bothersome or not because I have not any clue at all whatsoever what the heck we are talking about. A crisis? What the heck could that be, and who's in jeopardy.

I should remind everyone that I, in fact, am the writer of this here magnificent piece of American literature, so it falls upon me alone as to what method to choose in order to elevate my level of writing, or if whether I should even indulge in all these inanities that focuses on the decadence of humanity, which by the way I enjoy doing tremendously. So if I ever feel the need to invoke a crisis of some sort, then I will do so on my own free will so help me god amen. Amen brother, amen!

The fact of the matter is, there is no crisis at all, just boredom, and this has always been a remedy for me, this writing business gig, a pure cure in between empty moments while traveling, and that is simply why I am back, providing y’all out there, the many dedicated followers of my award winning and critically acclaimed travelogue blog that’s admired by many travel aficionados the world over, even by the Lonely Planet crowd, as well as my favorites, the huge pack lugging, Luang Prabang trampling, Vang Vieng tubing peripathetics, misspelling intended. Yes folks, I am bored beyond belief. But I have not changed my personna. Still the same irreverent misanthropic thought provoking rabble rouser who is very intently probing the minds and perceptions of the wonderful people of this here great universe of ours that we live in and love so very, very much. That’s what happens when you have to sit in a tight cabin, packed like sardines where mobility is limited and the people around you are sometimes unpleasant. Thankfully, no one around me is unpleasant.

I am surrounded by my family. My daughter is sitting next to me, and my wife is sitting next to her on the other side over yonder with direct access to the aisle or passageway, whatever you want to call it. But we’re in the middle of the cabin that seats four, not in the window seats which usually only have three. So I get an extra neighbor on the other side, a Haole to my right with direct access to the aisle as well. The great thing about sitting right next to the aisle is that you just get up whenever you feel the need to go to the lavatory without having to bother the stranger next to you regardless of whether they’re unpleasant or not. Although the Haole guy next to me is not unpleasant, I still need to bother him if I want to go to the bathroom whilst he doesn’t, which irritates me mildly. Plus, I just don’t like the way he looks even though he might be a nice guy, the reason being is simply because he’s a stranger, nothing else. I never said a word to him throughout the fifteen hour flight. No need to. If I need to go to the lavatory I will just go over to my wife’s side and inconvenience her. I love my wife and she loves me, so getting inconvenienced by one another is part of the deal in our holy matrimony, and perhaps it’s the same for any couple who are held under a matrimonial obligation.

Even though I have not published a whole lot in the past thirteen years or so, I still write. It’s just not interesting enough for me, what I write, that is. That’s because my marriage, my wife, and my daughter keeps me happy and busy. I am still happy now. I insist that I am happy now, and that there is no crisis in my horizon that I have to deal with because if there was then I would be preoccupied dealing with it instead of doing something useless, like writing. Writing really is useless to me. It doesn’t pay me anything. All it ever does is cleanse my soul of any bad vibes by just shaking them off. Most of my inspirational moments with regards to writing come when boredom sets in, usually in a place that feels very uncomfortable to me, when my mind needs a release from the agony.

So I guess waiting at the airport with my family for two hours was boring enough for me to want to grab my notebook and my blue pilot G2 0.7mm ballpoint pen to jot down every nonsense that I could think of, because that’s how I roll with this here shindig that we call the written arts. The plane ride over to Taipei was horrendously boring, but I managed to sleep off on some of the fifteen hours it took to fly from Frisco to Taipei. Let me tell you, the only saving grace of that fifteen hour ordeal is the free alcohol with your meal. The meal itself was forgettable. The whiskey numbed my senses and lubricated my sociability.

We landed at Taoyuan International on June 11, 2023, at five o’clock in the morning. It’s a rainy day here in Taipei, Taiwan. The cloudy skies did not capture my sunny disposition. The transfer to our connecting flight was pretty simple because I have done it before. It took about ten minutes to go from concourse A to concourse D because of the usual rigmarole. What the heck is a rigmarole anyhow you may ask? Who cares to be honest with you, but it’s a good sounding word to use and that’s why I use it, because it sounds good. It doesn’t even really matter if it’s a real word or not, so it would behoove all of you reading this here wonderful piece of literature to not be so inane by being skeptical about the legitimacy of such a word because it will only confound you, just like applying logic to advertisement in a manner that John Saxon’s character told Robert Redford’s character in the movie Electric Horseman to not worry so much about the propriety of prancing around a multimillion dollar thoroughbred champion horse with an electrically lit suit surrounded by solid gold dancers in a major Las Vegas strip casino, the implication being that it’s a immaterial to the purpose of selling products, or creating art, or entertainment, or all of the above that applies. Besides, Redford’s character Sonny Steele was being paid gazillion amounts of money by Saxon’s Hunt Sears to ride the prancing Electric Horse. Steele admitted as much by agreeing with Sears.

“You’re right,” said Steele.

“I don’t want just to be right,” replied Sears.

“You want me to like it,” said Steele matter of factly.

“It would be a factor in our working relationship,” was Sears final word, expressed sternly in no uncertain terms.

After the brief exchange Sears walked away with his minions and ordered one of them to fire Sonny Steele after the show.

Well, your hand carried luggage had to go through the scanner all over again, including yourself, except you don’t have to take anything off. Not your shoes, nor your belt, nor your laptop computer inside your backpack. Nothing. In and out and on to concourse D, where our boarding will be. That’s how exciting that transfer was at the Taoyuan International Airport. But the fun didn’t stop there because we had three more hours of boredom to look forward to while we waited to board our flight.

Airports bore me. They really do. The cleanliness, extreme sanitary upkeep, and billions of fluorescent light bulbs beaming down on you just sucks the living daylights out of you because it’s so canned and unreal. It’s almost like they’re paving a pathway to your funeral, and the plane is a casket for some three hundred odd people on god’s green earth. I love to describe the earth that we live in as god’s own, and green being symbolic of the life that we live in and love so very, very much so help us god amen! Amen brother, amen. The airports on god’s green earth usually have a Starbucks, a food court, and display art. Lots of art. Taoyuan International does not disappoint the world traveler in this department. They got Starbucks and food courts galore. Arts up the yin-yang. Kinda reminds me of the funeral scene in that movie Soylent Green where a character played by Edward G. Robinson was being processed for his own death. After spending two and a half hours waiting, killing time enjoying the arts, food courts, starbucks, taking selfies, and writing about all of that in this wonderfully crafted airport, we finally board flight CI100 bound for Narita International Airport in Japan.

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Photos

A Shrine Somewhere
Definitely not Frisco.