Personal Dork Assistant

Not-Valentine's Day

Nothing's better for business than holidays, and it's amazing how many commercial opportunities one can create when you combine Western and Eastern traditions. Of course, the department stores pimp out Valentine's Day, since browbeating from wives and girlfriends is the only way to get guys to hang out in the ladies sections (i.e. 90% of the store). However, there's another day for lovers, namely 7/7 on the Chinese calendar. Because it's a lunar-calendar holiday, nobody would ever know when it actually is except for all the ads blaring the date in your face. Never been much for this sort of thing, but considering that I missed the GF's birthday (7/29, now properly entered into iCal for perpetuity), a token of some sort was warranted. Ended up just being a card, but I did get a nice card, for what that's worth. Thought about writing it in Chinese, but gave up on that in a hurry, when I realized that "Dear" is a lot easier to write than "親愛".

It's been a while since we've actually gone out, and the day happened to be a good opportunity, even though neither of us was keen on dealing with crowds of lovey-dovey couples. Saw one such couple walking hand-in-hand between platforms at the Taipei Main Station subway stop. The guy was proudly wearing his Kobe Bryant #8 t-shirt. I guess his girl doesn't keep up with the American celebrity news. Went to see a movie at the Spot, which was running films appropriate for the occasion. I don't know how they found a Chinese translator for a Danish film. I suspect they translated from the English, but there wasn't English subtitles so the Chinese had to do. The movie wasn't heavy on dialog anyway, and the plot was plodding, but the movie is all about cinematography anyway, all handheld artfully grainy shots of Copenhagen. Watched it more as a photo exhibit with a soundtrack, which is an interesting way to see a movie, in small doses.