The Bookshop Downstairs 「樓下的書店」

There's a bookstore downstairs the apartment I live in. A few plastic chairs lie spare outside the entrance. A few days ago someone installed an arcade game outside the shop. People can often be seen idling away outside the bookshop. Some people read, some people just unwind in the haze of cigarette smoke wafting lazily under a tattered roof.
「在我住宅樓下有個書店。外面留著有些空置椅子。有幾天之前外面安裝街機。常常會看到人在書店外面消磨。有些人看書，有些人只舒展，在廢舊的屋頂下濃厚的煙蓋著他們的迷離的臉。」

The bookshop closes at 11:30 pm every night. During the closing hours, a guy is regularly seen playing on the arcade machine. He also has a smart tablet which he places beside the screen of the arcade machine and plays another game on it. He always wears a black tee which clings tightly to his body which is out of shape. His appearance and mannerisms hint at a lifestyle that lacks creature comforts. An old man sits in a chair behind him reading a book while smoking continuously. He exudes lonesomeness. These two people stay totally absorbed in their own life. They carry on with their own stuff, oblivious to the shop-owner inside the shop as she wraps up the interior.
「書店晚上11:30休息。關閉時間時常常看到一個人玩在街機。他也有個智能平板電腦在街機螢幕旁邊，他用它玩另外個遊戲。他總是穿緊身的黑體恤，那件體恤暴露他的不健康的身體。他的形容跟習氣暗示他的生活缺少物質享受。一個年紀大的人坐在他後面抽煙看著書。他滲出寂寞。這兩位人非常專心的做他們自己的事。他們繼續做自己的事，不察覺到裡面店員正在準備休息。」

The bookshop is surrounded by cheap food stalls from three sides. They seem to be run by old people who live in the apartments right behind those stalls. Their day ends around 11pm after which they begin washing huge pans, bowls and cutlery just by the road. Clinging sounds of metal fill the air as they wash and carry their kitchenware inside their homes.
「書店的三面有便宜的食物攤子。它看來們是被住在攤子後面的房子的老人擺的。他們晚上11點結束然後在路上開始洗盤子，碗和刀類。把洗好餐具帶進家去時響叮噹的聲音瀰漫四周。」

Every night I watch as the soapy water sweeps the edges of the road. The bookshop shines under white light which illuminates a thick haze of smoke.
「每天晚上我看到肥皂水沿著路邊。亮的書店外面白光點亮飄著的濃煙。」

When you enter the bookshop, you can find shelves of books with a sign on top that says "18+". Nothing suggestive is apparent on or in any of the books here. A small fraction of the books are accessible to all. It seems a rather dull bookshop where the line between coziness and congestion diminishes.
「進入書店後你會看到書架有“18+”這個標誌。可是書上或書裡沒有提示情色的事。所有書的小部分是大家易取得。這家店好像個無聊的書店，這裡舒適感跟擁擠的差別幾乎不見了。」

The bookshop sticks out like a sore thumb in this neighborhood. It just feels like it shouldn't have been here. The people sitting outside the shop appear to be misfits. They shouldn't have been this way.

「這家書店在這個鄰里看起來有點奇怪。我覺得它不應該這樣。外面坐的人好像跟社會不能結合的人。他們不應該這樣。」

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A Perspective on Information Redundancy in Languages

This thought occurred to me while I was watching a Taiwanese movie - 逆光飛翔 (Touch of the Light). It's a movie based on true events of a blind person with an innate talent for music. It was the Taiwanese entry for the Best Foreign Movie Oscar. While watching the movie, I was using Mandarin subtitles. I was a bit nervous in the beginning wondering how much I would understand without relying on languages I am familiar with.

Redundancy in Information Theory in layman terms is the amount that could be subtracted from a given piece of information without actually affecting the data delivered to the recipient. Mandarin has fairly less amount of redundancy compared to English. It has no articles and you have to rely on the context to find out the tense. Actually, Mandarin is highly contextual in nature.

While watching the movie I was surprised by how naturally I could follow the course of events in the movie. The first half of the movie is not much predictable while the second half is the exact opposite. It's obvious that a predictable plot leads to redundancy in information. But I was amused even a mundane setting had a strong correlation with the words being spoken in the movie. Given a few keywords, expressions of the characters and an empirical approach to the movie plot, I had little difficulty following the movie. 

Surprisingly, when I used to have conversations with people here in Mandarin a few months ago, even though I was well aware of the context and the subtleties in tone, I found it hard to follow the conversation I was part of. But why was it so easy to get in the flow of events of totally unrelated people in a plot totally unrelated to me?

The guess the answer lies in a few assumptions I think hold more or less true -

1. The amount of people involved in usage of a language is directly proportional to contextual information which helps one make an educated guess about what the speaker is talking about. In a dialogue, there are only two people involved and there exists no prior knowledge about the subject. On the contrary side, the viewer is aware of the subject most of the time.
2. Grammar is more or less a redundant concept. It doesn't help relay any additional information; rather it helps reduce the 'noise' or randomness in the information. A lot of Asian languages have minimal usage of Grammar compared to English, Hindi or a few romance languages. When watching a movie in a language you are not familiar with, one can easily catch the keywords and connect the dots without any need for scrutinizing the grammar. While having a dialogue, if you are a speaker you need to focus on the grammar part (if you wish to). 

I believe the  presence of redundancy mostly contributes to the beauty of a language. There are exceptions of course - one aspect of beauty in poetry is how minimal and terse it can be. It plays a big role in subjective evaluation of a language. If you consider language strictly as a mode of delivering data, the concepts of grammar and sentence structure assume little significance.

While reading a book written in Mandarin two days ago, I came across a section where the author narrated her experiences while living in Africa. It was only after an hour that I realized I couldn't figure which tense the author was narrating the story in - past or present. But from the contextual knowledge that she was talking about her past experiences, this knowledge wasn't even required. 

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Movies from Asian Cinema

Farewell My Concubine: This is definitely one of the best movies I have seen. It's a sweeping account of two friends' lives from childhood to adulthood against the volatile political background of China.

The Blue Kite: Zhuangzhuang Tian was banned for making this movie. It totally destroys the idea of communism and exposes how much people had to suffer because of so called Cultural Revolution.

To Live: This  is my favorite movie from one of my favorite directors - Zhang Yimou. Like The Blue Kite, it also narrates the story of a family who had to suffer because of Cultural Revolution. It's also got amazing background music.

Not one less: Zhang Yimou again. A simple and moving movie which has lots of realistic elements.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Perhaps the most well known movie to come out of China.

Oldboy: Watch it for the intensity and the fierce atmosphere it creates. Brilliant direction, back-ground music, cinematography and action scenes.

Confessions:
Another psychological thriller that was supposed inspired from Oldboy. Not as grappling as Oldboy but yet worth a watch.

The Road Home A really simple, touching and nostalgic movie with breath-taking cinematography.

Raise the Red Laltern: Considered as one of the best films ever made, I had my expectations too high while I was watching this movie. It has the trademark stunning cinematography of Zhang Yimou, and can be interpreted as highly symbolic in nature. It's one of those movies that grow on you gradually.

Spring Summer Fall Winter and Spring:
I don't have much idea what makes this film so critically acclaimed.

Chungking Express: Brilliant movie! I became a fan of Wong-kar Wai after watching this movie. It's a movie that will haunt you for days after you have watched it.

Laskar Pelangi: Another example of simplicity and sentiment combined to create a beautiful movie.

In the Mood for Love: A critically acclaimed movie which I failed to appreciate.

The Scent of Green Papaya: Yet another critically acclaimed movie which I failed to appreciate.

Himalaya: One of those lesser known gems everyone should know. If you want to see how the life of people living in the one of the remotest areas in the lap of Himalayas is, watch this movie. The scenery is undoubtedly jaw-dropping.

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Stuck

The clock is ticking, and I am stuck.

There has been no traveling and no elements of novelty of late; even those irregularly paced phases of high-spiritedness have ceased to zap me. Optimism is letting up gradually. There is consumption - consumption of knowledge, of information. That is one good thing. Necessary but not enough!

To beat the dullness and keep one's brain ticking, there has to be a stimulant in one's life. For me the element of novelty works as the stimulant. One can also call it strangeness or unfamiliarity.

There is an amorphous world of possibilities out there. The key is to pick one, outfit it with your skills and substantialize it.. I don't find it hard to learn something, I can consume information at a fast pace. What I find difficult is using all this information to come up with something appealing. I find it a daunting task to tame the randomness that skims over the masses, or to weave patterns to rein in the randomness. 

As the clock ticks, the scope of my ambitions and my plans diminishes. Every passing second the audacity of my thoughts gets watered down. The chores of mundane life have started to bother me again. The necessary evil of seeking financial stability goads me constantly to resort to the consistency of pragmatism devoid of hope.

Let's hope it ends soon. I know it will end soon. 

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「我為什麼來台灣？」

我目前的時期該稱做變動的時期變形期。

我去年開始旅遊行的時候想不到我有一天會住在個一點都不熟悉的地方。我第一次來這裡的時候,我幾乎看不懂大家寫什麼，也聽不懂大家說的話。我連一個人都不認識。也許我之所以喜歡這裡，是因為我需要有新奇的氣氛和陌生的感覺讓我好動。我需要當好動讓自己快樂。

上個半年我目睹自己的變化。我這個有陌生的感覺漸漸減少。我有跟這裡的方式多配了。我去年想不到有一天我要幾乎把我會說的語言都不用去年的同個時期，我做夢也想不到，有一天我會放棄使用我原本會說的任何一種語言，想不到我會開始用一種全部新的語言。

我常常在這裡的舊的馬路逛街。我觀看人，攤子，汽車什麼什麼的之類的等等。我常常去爬山。你才座搭乘一個多鐘頭的車，就可以到一片海灘還或是高高的山。台灣人的熱情還沒被消費主義掠奪。這裡的這些方面迷住我來。對我來說這裡是很理想的地方。

我後來發現台灣必然絕對有有點壞處，可是一共似然是很特別的地方。

我超喜歡每天早上去這裡的窄巷上中的早餐店吃飯。我超喜歡這個城市下雨以後怎麼要變成了一個充滿各種顏色的一張畫。我在這裡有很多這裡的難忘的回憶。我不能忘記在花蓮的那一晚。我不能忘記跟很多人說過的話。

某一個人人很少有機會了解一個與其家鄉迥異的地方，了解那裡的當地人。我為什麼來台灣？希望你現在知道。

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Days in Laos: Creeping along the Thai Border

Thakkaek:

"Thailand is so close from this city. You just need to cross the river. Have you ever been there?"

"O yes, many times", the boy at the hostel said excitedly, "A lot of people cross the river and sneak into Thailand. It has more jobs."

"Did you enter legally or did you also sneak into Thailand secretly?"

"I don't have passport. I crossed the border on a boat. I worked in Nakhom Phanom in a shop for a couple of months, then I came back."

I wanted to ask him so many questions about the whole process of going back and forth. 

Then we started discussing the situation of drugs and stuff in Laos.

"Most people go to Thailand to sell drugs there."

"What if you are caught?"

"The police will beat you and put you in jail. But if you are caught without drugs, the police will beat you up and send you back to Laos."

Another guy came to us with the room keys. Knackered and spiritless, I left for my room. Our conversation ended there. 

I reached Thakkaek at night after an interminable journey. While having dinner along riverside, I saw Thailand for the first time. It was right there across the river. Its streets were lined with street lamps, and cars zinged on its roads. The sight of the city instantly incited in me an urge to visit there and spend some time in basic luxuries of the place. I quelled my impulsive desire to cross the border and headed to Pakse - a beautiful place nestled in the hills of Bolaven Plateau.

Pakse:

Pakse was an absolute delight. I found a newly built hostel which has marvelous rooms at dirt cheap price. I was the only one staying in the whole hostel. Apart from traveling, I did a lot of reading here. 

It was in Pakse did I realize that I could not enter Thailand overland when I was deported back into Laos. My re-entry back in Laos was smoother than the exit. My exit stamp was repealed and I even got my exit fee back! At this point I was really itching for some city life. 

I found an Indian restaurant with an Indian owner here. For days, I just had Indian food which made my life even more comfortable. The owner came from Chennai but could speak fluent Hindi. He had spent nineteen years in Laos. He had two sons who had been brought up in Laos itself. He seemed to have mingled comfortably with the local populace. His dad had come to Vietnam long ago and opened a restaurant there. He then decided to do the same in Laos.

After having given up on an almost improbable trip, I decided to go to Savannakhet, the nearest border town from Pakse.

Savannakhet:

I originally came to Savannakhet to apply for Thai visa since I was not given a visa on arrival (so much for holding an Indian passport). I realized getting a Thai visa was even less economical than taking a flight to BKK. I liked Savannakhet since it had its name derived from Sanskrit (Suvarna-Khet, meaning golden land). It was an extraordinarily dull city. It had a marvelous riverside which was the highlight of the place.

Savannakhet is probably the second biggest city in Laos after Vientiane. The riverside had a few tourist attractions which I had totally given up on. A few people could speak French due to its history. They formed the richer upper class in the communist Laos. 

I liked going to a cozy, relatively posh cafe near my place owned by a Laotian couple who could speak English and French fluently. They used to remind me of an old man I met in Luang Prabang. He fled to France during the US-Vietnam war where he raised his kids. All his kids stayed in France, but he came back because of his attachment with Laos. He had a small shop in front of his house which served breakfast. His wife and he apparently lived a comfortable life in that beautiful city. His eyes would gleam with pride and a smile drew contours on his face every time he mentioned his children.

In the end I decided to take a flight to Bangkok reluctantly. If there was some part of Thailand I wanted to see, it was the lesser known edge along the Lao-Thai border. But I missed it due to lack of time and money. 

On my last day in Laos, I walked for an hour to the airport with all my luggage. When I reached the airport, I found it was closed. Except for me, there was no one around, not even security! Nothing was locked, I could even take a walk on the runway if I wanted to. I dumped my luggage and roamed around in parts I wouldn't have been allowed to otherwise.

After about three hours, I left Laos!

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Parkour Progression - P1

This is an attempt to keep track of my progress in Parkour. I have been practicing on and off for four months now.

When you begin, it's all about getting fitter - getting stronger muscles, improving balance, strengthening grips and all. I guess that's the hardest part - even harder than conquering the fear of doing a new move.

I am a fairly fit guy, and I am trying to take my fitness to the next level. I will keep recording my progress with parkour in this series of blogs titles 'Parkour Progression'.

Current level:

Pull-ups:
            10 reps X 3 sets
Hand-stand (against wall):
            3 sets X 2 mins
            2 sets X 90 secs
Precision Jump:
            8 feet (~240 cms)
Moves learnt:
            Kong vault, speed vault
Moves learning:
            Palm Spin (almost there), Side-vault, Muscle-up
Push-ups:
            Haven't done any push-ups in the last three months but three months ago I could do 60 proper push-ups without taking a break and without breaking the flow of breathing. In short, 60 push-ups in 60 breaths. More than a year ago I could do 50 diamond push-ups. That's when my elbow got injured.
Running:
            4000m in ~15:30 (PB is 15 mins 20 secs)

Limitations:

• Elbow pain while trying one-hand push-ups
• Chronic back pain while trying to do a bridge. I don't/can't do anything that involves bending backwards. I can bounce up and do a forward hand-spring comfortably though.

Next update in about a month (or sooner).

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最近生活的狀況：一個更新版 [An update on stuff going on in life recently]

[我還沒翻譯完這篇文章，我需要多一點時間。]

A little more than a month ago, on the spur of the moment I decided to go for a hike outside Taipei. That was the best thing I did in the recent months; in hindsight probably the only good thing I did.
[一個月多以前我在最後時刻決定去爬山。回想起來我覺得那是我最近做的最好的是。]

June was a particularly dark month, both literally and metaphorically. With my spirit running low, my errant thought process forestalled any progress I was making on the things I was working on. July was a much better month. I have been making efforts to get closer to the kind of life I have imagined, and the pace has been steady more or less. I hit a plateau in most things I have been working on - fitness, language learning, programming and getting more social. I write this to keep a track and also since writing is one of the few things that calm me.
[五，六月我不太快樂。我普通做的事的進步停止了。我正在努力把我生活變成我理想的生活。為了記下我的進步我寫這篇文章。在說，寫文章讓我輕鬆。]

Outdoors: I went to WuliaoJian (五寮尖), a small mountain to the south of Taipei. While it wasn't physically or mentally challenging, it helped me get out of the groove and I found the much needed repose. I committed to devote every weekend to exploring the wilderness of Taiwan. I made a few more trips to the northeast coast of Taiwan, and discovered how underrated the Taiwanese landscape was. 

The northeast coast of Taiwan is a range of jaw-dropping volcanic cliffs lined along the deep blue Pacific Ocean. A hike to any mountain here offers an extended view of the horizon whose beauty is compounded by the ocean in the foreground. All I need now is a bike to explore the area thoroughly.

Parkour: A lapse of about a month severely hindered all developments I was making with my fitness. Most of the skills I had been learning were at a cusp of being committed to muscle memory and relapsing back again. A month of practice more and I would have gone past the most difficult stage of getting a well conditioned body. My progress on precision jumps, handstands, handstand push-ups, muscle ups and kong-vaults has been absolute zero in the last three months. I was learning to do a double kong vault, but I haven't tried it after moving to my new place. I need to find a good spot to practice it. 

A few days ago I intensified my physical activity with a renewed fervor. By the end of September I aim to be able to learn all the aforementioned skills. I usually practice in a small park near 101 which has all the equipment I need to practice. I am also looking for someone to record my moves so that I can see if I am doing it right. 

Mandarin: I have been learning Mandarin at a slow but steady pace. My listening skills are woeful, probably due the lack of social participation. It just takes a couple of months to get a hang of how these characters are created and the underlying notions of logic or randomness. It is interesting, but you need to keep it applying in daily life which at times becomes a little challenging.

I will try to re-write this post in Mandarin but there are sections which are too complicated for me to translate into Mandarin. Let's see.

Programming: The least wanted and a little unpleasant part of my schedule is programming. I have to be fiercely motivated or at least happy to get ready to code, but lately in the wake of drooping endorphins it's been a rather tough task to do.

I should be done with most of what I have been doing within a week or two if I keep pushing myself.
===
Next update next month. I hope it's rather positive in the nature of its content.

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Fiddling with Endorphin Levels

This place was supposed to be a succor for me. I spent the last year roving the different lands of Asia, absorbing as much as I could. HK was supposed to be my last stop, where I was supposed to kick-start my career. Each of the nine days I spent in HK was a day of agony, dejection and disappointment. The claustrophobic cityscape and its extreme money-minded pace of life appeared to be an antithesis of Taiwan - a tiny island with warm welcoming people who had not yet been gutted emotionless by consumerism. I came here again. And then again.

Throughout my travels I kept going through phases where I had to struggle to keep my endorphin levels from falling down. Something would happen every few weeks - a dull morning, an irrational fear of something unknown after a long siesta or just a phase of unsolicited partial anhedonia. I noticed people, and I noticed it was relatively easier for them to be happy.

I am certain of two things that I affect my endorphins boots - a) I am not meant to be doing nothing when alone. Every second I spend on my own relaxing or doing nothing depresses me.
b) Being in motion calms my nerves. Anything from a random midnight saunter to a quick jaunt in a train calms me down. There's something soothing in the state of dynamism, and in the cradling action that galvanizes certain parts of the brain into action.

The only thing that constantly kept making me happy was intense physical activity. After a hiatus of more than seven months, I began programming again. I had not imaged, but I did get a kick out of it. Writing, watching favorite snippets of movies and other similar actions also temporarily gave a rush.

Then I noticed one more thing about people. They thought about other people a lot, very often actually. Most people had fond memories of others they were attached to via companionship or blood kinship. This emotional intimacy certain did trigger a rush of endorphins.

People thought about other people. People thought about things. I just thought about things in my life. Wherever I went, I talked to people, made acquaintances, had interesting conversations once in a while and left the place. Having spent more than four months here in Taiwan, I ended up knowing a lot of people. Maybe it's my blunted affect that disallowed me to form close relationships with anyone.

I am nowhere close to an unsocial droid scuffing away from the society. I love the outdoors. I love the buzz and the bustle of people, which is why I love this place. I program in cafes, student halls or other public places. The loud chatter and white noise I hear when sitting in a pub soothes me. But at the end of the day, all I am left with to occupy my mind is inanimate things.

I notice when people are down or sad or scared, they think of other people. They ring someone up. They talk.
When I am down or sad or scared, I think of things to do. I go running. I make myself so tired that I lose the ability to think.

The gush of endorphins after a long run or an acute physical exertion takes over all other positive or negative feelings. I feel happy. Relaxed. Tired. I go to sleep.

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An Italian's attempt for Sapara Pokhara in Nepal

It was another of those gilded winter evenings. A bunch of people, mostly Europeans, snuggled onto a pile of cushions in a sheltered nook of a lakeside restaurant in Pokhara. Puffs of smoke and thumps of percussion filled the air. I saw them as I passed by the place walking along the lake.

On my way back I saw one of the them searching for something in the muck that lined the edge of the lake. She was actually picking plastic bags and other toxic stuff out of the mucky bank. Dressed in a hippie outfit, her body adorned with piercings and a prominent tattoo, she carried on unfazed by the stares of people around. She was Belgian. I lent her a helping hand. With a broad smile, she gave me a large empty plastic bag to collect the trash in.

I steered away from the northern end of the lake where she was, and discovered a few more tourists dirtying themselves in a bid to clean the lake. Apparently they all knew each other. A guy approached me, thanked me for the help and said, "You should get some more Nepali friends of yours." He was Italian.
"I am not Nepali, I am from India", I said.
"Can you speak Nepali?"
"No, but everyone here can speak and understand Hindi.", I said pointing at a big crowd of locals watching in curiosity.

All attempts to make the by-standers join us failed miserably. A little kid who knew me asked me,"आपको सफाई का पैसा मिल रहा है क्या ?" ("Are you being paid for cleaning the place?"). Most people took a defensive stance, claiming they never threw trash into the lake. But no one joined.

The Italian guy was the mastermind behind the act. Back in Italy he taught environmental sciences as a profession.
"We will clean the lake, buy some dustbins and put them all along the lakeside. I plan to visit the municipality and talk to them. We can print 'Sapara Pokhara' (clean Pokhara) everywhere. Can you come with us and talk with the people in municipality?", he said in a distinctive Italian accent.
"Sure, but let's do it this week. I am going back to India the next week."

He gathered a big crowd and began talking to them, trying to explain how important it was to keep the lake clean and the environment healthy. As corny as it may sound, most people got defensive and began explaining themselves.

A week later, on my way to Sunauli in India I saw him in the bus again. He had probably given up on the people of Pokhara. I lost him at the border but ran into him again in Gorakhpur after a couple of hours. He was haggling with a ticket agent over a ticket to Varanasi. His notion of Varanasi was a haven of spirituality, religious piety and peace.

He left for Varanasi that night. Phewa Lake in Pokhara is A LOT cleaner than the holy river Ganges in Varanasi. I wonder how he reacted to the ground reality of the holy town and its holier river.

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