Thursday lunch at a small restaurant down some tiny lane somewhere in Taipei, with a guy who used to be a major in the Taiwan air force, so he’s taken “Major” as his English name. I was told he’s an expert on Taipei restaurants and based on this choice, I have no reason to doubt that. I didn’t recognize about half the dishes, was told the place was a mixture of Taiwanese and Sichuan food. He asked if I could handle spicy, I told him of course, so he ordered a bowl of beef swimming in chili oil, and then seemed fairly shocked when I told him I didn’t think it was very spicy (but it was delicious and I told him that, too).

Thursday afternoon shopping at Costco in Taipei. Bought so much stuff that I also bought a rolling duffel bag to hold it. This was in an area just outside the city, perhaps 10 square blocks, that was packed with multi-story hypermarkets and discount outlet malls. Carrefour, RT Mart, factory outlet clothing and furniture palaces, huge auto supply shops and so on. Why don’t we have shopping on this scale in HK? There’s room in New Territories and enough people have cars. It’s because the billionaires and real estate cartels that really run HK won’t allow this kind of free market access and choice. And the government won’t do anything about it because they don’t have to answer to the public.

Thursday night, ladies night at Brass Monkey in Taipei. I was there from around 9 till almost 3. Interesting, young crowd. I was done in by being too honest and by losing track of how much I was drinking.

As things were warming up, I noticed a lady who stood out from the crowd for two reasons. The first is that she was noticeably older than the rest of the women there, most of whom were in their 20s and she was at least 40. The second reason was that she was wearing an extremely short skirt and, whatever her age, had amazing legs. She was standing on her own, kept looking at her mobile phone in annoyance. Finally I went over and said, “You’re waiting for someone, right?” She said yes. “Well whoever you’re waiting for is an idiot,” and she looked a little bit shocked at that. I continued, “No man should let such a beautiful lady wait alone in a bar for so long.” She almost smiled but also clearly was not willing to continue the conversation. Later I noted that she was meeting a woman, not a man. And even later I noticed her leaving the bar and going home alone.

Fortunately by then I had recovered my balance and met someone, not my dream girl by any means but good spirit, fun. “I’m not young, I’m old! I’m almost 40!” she told me. And it turned out that “almost 40″ meant 34. She wanted me to watch some rugby game with her on Saturday, I confessed I was leaving on Friday, at that point probably too drunk to even attempt a lie. But phone numbers exchanged, various SMS’s received from her today.

Friday morning up early. I generally don’t get hangovers but this morning was darned close. I was gonna walk around for a bit before heading to the airport, but stepping out of the hotel door (yes, it is Les Suites, one of my favorite hotels in the world) it was so freaking hot that I gave up on that idea. Yes, even worse than HK. Absofuckinglutely baking on the streets.

Dragonair has moved to the new Terminal 2 at CKS Airport. It’s a huge improvement over the decrepit Terminal 1 but HK and Changi have little to fear from it.

At one duty free counter, the girl refused to sell me a carton of cigarettes after seeing I was going to HK, limit of just 3 packs for residents (and why does HK have such a ridiculously low limit?). But she didn’t know I was a resident and didn’t speak any English so I couldn’t explain to her the “mistake” she was making, that tourists can bring in entire cartons. I simply went to the next shop, where they assumed that I was simply a tourist heading to HK and sold me whatever I wanted.

Dragonair upgraded me to business class but printed the boarding pass on an economy ticket, so I didn’t know I was upgraded till I got on the plane. Looked at the seat number, looked at the seat, looked at the ticket, sat down, kept waiting for someone to make me move. At any rate, business class on a one hour flight seems like a waste.

Tonight, started out at Heat and then checked out Underground HK at Galaxy. So freaking weird. The HK indie bands and the people who follow them and lots of hookers sitting at the bar. And poor Sammy, he’s so sad, I’m telling him it’s great that he’s trying something new with the bar and look how packed the place is (and it was, too) and he looks like he’s gonna cry. The first act was two guys with acoustic guitars singing weepy folky stuff, the singer looking like Elvis Costello in a dutchboy cap. One song about “how do I find the words to make you love me,” the next about needing a reason to keep on living. Oh boo fucking hoo. My friend kept shouting “Show me the money!” at them. The next band was kind of power trio-ish but the songs were tuneless (especially odd in a bar of hookers that a band couldn’t manage a hook?) and we decided we’d had enough. Also I was not thrilled to discover that while most people were paying a very reasonable $50 cover charge for the bands, the hookers were allowed in for free. They should charge everyone the $50 and this will keep the hookers out until after the show is over. Otherwise, this is not gonna work too well.

So over to Laguna, Joe Banana, Fuckwick. I didn’t mean to have any alcohol tonight but eventually my resolve weakened. All the travel and drinking isn’t affecting my ability to conduct business but I found that certain parts of my body aren’t functioning as well as usual right now.