This will be my last post from Taiwan, and I’m placing it in my tech section. Shortly I will be flying to Hong Kong, and then traveling into China. I’m not bringing my laptop with me. I’m always a little wary of using public computers, especially in many of the poorly run internet cafes. Often the logged in user is the administrator, and we all know the computers are obviously crawling with worms and keyloggers. What can I do?

A mere three years later, I have finally put my Britney Spears remix online. I made it for a media-literacy class I was taking, and it has already been shown to well over a thousand people. If you have six minutes to spare, feel free to watch it.

The date is June 25, 2007, and I’ve sinned. Let me explain. I’ve been involved in technology for quite some time and have long been opposed to Facebook, MySpace, and Friendster. I never felt any urge to join; I always thought people spent too much time updating their profiles instead of writing something useful or insightful, or doing something productive. Two months ago, I broke my rule and joined MySpace for a single day because I needed to contact someone.

For the last 16 months I had been living in Taiwan (if it wasn’t obvious). Within the next month, that chapter will come to an end. Over the next few weeks I will continue studying for the GMAT and hopefully finishing my MCSE; any words of encouragement will be warmly welcomed. Meanwhile, I will try to avoid distractions, which seem to be coming in the form of Python. Django has been one of the most fun things I’ve ever played with. Recently I wrote and contributed some code to access both Alexa Web Search and Alexa Site Thumbnails via Python.

I am currently working from a Starbucks cafe, I’ll admit it. The internet is normally quite good, and I pay about $15 a month to use it. Today, however, it is very unreliable. Don’t believe me? In addition to certain sites failing to load, forcing me to use pattern recognition in Tor to open them, the internet is simply slow today. I can’t even connect to AIM. Frustrating.

I’ve had many friends produce music. Some were quite good; others were not. One of my friends, Mark Heckman, has produced a mixtape. Considering I listen to it as often as Nevermind, I’ll leave a link here for anyone else who would like to download it. Cheers, Mark. Get the Mix’d Tape, only about 90 MB.

My laptop really is on the way out. I’ve been quite pleased with it so far, I’ll admit, and have no complaints. Today, I carried it around in search of a better cafe to work from, one that would also make it easier to get to work. I turned it on and got nothing. The screen wouldn’t even light up! In the end, I removed the battery, turned the laptop back on, and it worked. Phew. Of course, this is all a bit of a catch-22. I want to buy a new laptop, but not yet; I would rather wait until I’m in Australia and have a steady job. Not exactly a crisis, but certainly inconvenient.

Today has already produced several interesting stories. First, I went to the dentist to have my teeth cleaned and one wisdom tooth removed. On my way to my “office,” I saw a dog running through the MRT, followed by three or four employees trying to catch it. I wonder what the rest of the day will bring. Sadly, someone is using most of the bandwidth here at the cafe, and I know who it is. Maybe I should make some RIAA business cards.

For the last two weeks, I had been touring Taiwan with my dad and Cathy, my stepmom. I’ve finally returned to Taipei and am back online, ready to start studying and trying to make some money. Wish me luck.

The alarms woke me quite early, and I wandered down to breakfast. I ate quickly, packed, and jumped in the car. Next, I drove to the Confucius Temple, parked nearby, and began walking. Along the way, just off the road, a flower market appeared. Cathy and my dad instinctively wandered under the tents, surrounding themselves with orchids and a myriad of other flowers. I tried to hurry them along, but it was like trying to rush children in a candy shop.