locking in

sophia bird
Apr 29
3 min read

part one: a little holiday

before getting into the nitty gritty of midterms we had essentially a six day weekend three of which i spent visiting and hiking in 九分 (jiufen). it's an old mining town to the northeast of taipei (see 假期 pt.2：九份) for more background on the area. we took the ~2 hour bus ride over around 12:00 and after dropping stuff at the airbnb, we grabbed tea at the famous teahouse 阿妹茶樓 and walked around the maze of a town.

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the next day with such good weather, we went on a hike up and around the mountain. i swear when you "hike" in taiwan, no matter where, the equivalent is a stair master. no need to leg day that week lol. we got up pretty high (maybe you can even tell by the progression in the pictures) and got an even better view of the sea. it was blending into the sky with no distinct horizon line and i kept imagining bob ross teaching us how like it was a painting. we got to a mine and dealt with some crazy rocks on the decline. at least the middle was pretty level. and it was dry – i can't even imagine this hike in the rain. (in the picture, red is where we hiked and blue was a bus; stairs and the weird rocks are where the elevation lines are hella close together 🥲; the switchbacks weren't bad at all)

part two: movies (again 😅)

as a part of the golden horse festival, the Shining came back to cinema and we had to see it. it was technically the first time i've seen it as a whole and honestly the best part of the film is the sound design. like particularly when danny is repeatedly riding the tricycle over wood and then carpet. the other one is the one part that made me jump – the title card that says "TUESDAY". and obviously that's not scary in meaning, but the sound design got me good.

turns out Perfect Blue was also for golden horse! in order to prepare, i watched the director's other movie, Paprika. both have to do with dreams and the line between fantasy and reality. it is said that Paprika influenced Inception. there's also a lot of parallels of Perfect Blue with Black Swan. i thoroughly enjoyed them both!

i'm told that i'm turning into a proper cinephile haha.

part three: forced outing

for one of my classes we have to go out to a "cultural experience" with a group and make a presentation about cultural differences with our home countries. we decided to go to raohe night market because night markets are very taiwanese. we even found german pork knuckle and my german group member had to see how they do it differently here. surprisingly to me, tanghulu and the ice cream + peanut + cilantro burrito were not as much of a hit. of course the black pepper buns were though. anyway, it was nice to be out with other people i don't usually go out with and also we learned a lot about each other – most interesting to me being that all three of us have been on exchange with host families (mine being china 2017).

part four: school (ugh)

i know i came here for school but it's being annoying. i assume spring term feels different because we're all waiting for summer break adventures. about now is finals and yay wouldn't you know, i have four papers and some presentations so yeah...

was doing some stats for one and it was giving major MDR vibes (iykyk)