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personal

Travelogue: Korea 2025 and Taiwan 2025 (kinda)

Welcome back, Mr. Lo.

It was still dark when we left our little pad in the UWS, our bellies fulla heart attack sammies.

With my awful back, I was dreading the 16-hour trip but my buddy Ricky suggested that I get this blow-up seat cushion and god did it help; it, plus using my jacket as a lumbar pillow helped tremendously.

I’ve not slept on a plane in 44 years.

Every time I get on one, I think: This time will be it.

I took one-and-a-half pills of Ambien, one pot gummy, two OTC sleep meds and…nuthin. Was awake for the entire 16 hours it took to get Korea.

In fact, I was awake since the morning the Firecracker and I got hitched: 45.5 hours in total.

So, I was feeling dull and vicious when we arrived but that too is a story for another day.

Her: You’re not making any sense!
Me: OK, that happens after 35 hours. (turning to my son) From now on, ignore what I say and listen to her. I’m not thinking straight.

The plane ride was, thankfully, uneventful.

Whenever I travel internationally, I try to have an extended layover; this time, it was in Korea.

I’d never been.

So, after the Firecracker navigated us out – because I was completely nonfunctional – we crashed overnight in a huge hotel room in the boonies where I finally got some sleep after 45.5 hours.

Some, being the operative word here.

Just a rando set of statues we saw in the Uber coming back to the airport.

Right before I left town, I dropped my old German tutor and buddy KG Betty a line and she said she would love to meet up.

So, bright and early on Saturday morning, she picked us up outside the Seoul station and brought us to the Gyeongbokgung Palace, which the Firecracker was dying to see.

We just happened to make the changing of the guard.

The kids were only so interested.

Afterward, we went to try to get noodles at the knife-cut noodle lady’s stall at Gwangjang Market, Seoul from the Netflix series but it was – of course – closed that day.

It was still super cool, and packed for an early Saturday morning.

She brought us to a local joint where we had some authentic Korean food before she gave the Uber driver some clear directions to get us back to the airport in time to head to Taiwan to continue our journey.

But not before giving me a hug and a little gift because she knows me so well.

After the 16-hour flight from NYC to Seoul, the trip from Seoul to Taipei seemed like nuthin.

When we arrived in Taiwan, I walked out of the airport customs area in the Arrivals Hall – something I’d done a dozen times in my youth – I was just overwhelmed with emotions.

It was the smell and sight of the place that took me back to the very first time I’d arrived there as a little kid.

I had a memory – real or imagined, I’m not sure – of my grandmother and youngest uncle, rushing to give my mother a hug.

It felt real.

And there was a little part of me that kept thinking that maybe my grandmother might possibly show up, the fevered dream of sleep-deprived old man.

My son started asking me all of these inane questions and I barked at him.

Not my finest moment (I later apologized).

The Firecracker took him away and left me alone with my thoughts.

I literally stood there for the first time in 25 years and wept.

Thought of all those people I loved and lost and would never see again except in pictures and in my cloudy head.

And I have so many, from the memorable to the mundane, they all mattered to me in one way or another.

Like when my uncle brought me out a night market to have a sizzling plate of steak and the wonderment of all the game and clothes hawkers.

 

So many random memories came at me, one after another.

Everyone was quiet while we waited for our car to arrive and my son was the first to break the silence.

Papa. I’ve never seen you cry before.

It’s funny.

I cry all the time because that grief button’s always being hit.

Suppose I hid it well up until then.

It was just too much to take at that moment, I guess.

I was just slamming that goddamn button.

I couldn’t handle the cacophony in my head.

Too many old ghosts came rushing up to greet me all at once, but after a bit, I realized the car’d arrived, so we all piled in and were on our way.

The driver spoke to me in broken in English and I turned to him and all this Chinese started coming out, as if I were a fat 10-year-old kid again.

Chatted with him the whole ride to the AirBnb.

Me: (in Chinese) I’ve not been here in 25 years.
Cab driver: 25 years! Why so long?
Me: (thinking) Lots of things. Life. I don’t recognize this place anymore.
Him: (nodding) A lot’s changed in 25 years. This place was all empty 25 years ago. The city’s grown, the population’s shrunk.
Me: Shrunk? I would have thought the opposite.
Him: (shaking head) No. (laughs) People are getting married later. They don’t want to have kids.
Me: Yeah, it’s like that in a lotta places.
Him: (tells me more about Taipei and Taiwan in general, I translate for the Firecracker and the kids as best I can) Here we are, Mr. Lo. (exits the car and starts taking the luggage out) It’s NT$1650 but just give me NT$1,600.
Me: What? Why?
Him: It’s 25 years! Welcome back. (smiles, holds out his hand to shake mine) Welcome back, Mr. Lo.

Location: back in rainy NYC
Mood: crazy jetlagged
Music: Memories come rushing up to meet me now (Spotify)
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Returning to My Hometown

And soon I will as well

Pretty much everything advanced in the world has a semiconductor chip in it.

And the world’s largest and most advanced semiconductor foundry is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which is headquartered in – what used to be a sleepy little town called – Hsinchu, Taiwan.

Pretty much spent every other summer there as a kid.

The day after the Firecracker and I got hitched, I immediately took a plane ride to Taiwan.

By the time you read this entry, we would already be starting our trip back home to America so it’s gonna be a bit outta order, but I wanted to tell you this little story first to set the whole thing up.

The last time I was in Taiwan was Monday, May 8, 2000, for a business trip, 25 years ago.

Purely by coincidence, my dad was there for the first time in 30 years because it was his turn to sweep the family grave – which is a Chinese tradition.

That meant that the last time he had been home was 1970.

I’d not gone home to Taiwan for a host of reasons, which we don’t need to get into right now.

Before you knew it, a quarter-of-a-century passed.

That’s my dad next to me and my uncle. Both are gone now. Yes, I age. Just very slowly. Dunno what I was thinking with my hair.

In any case, I know exactly two Chinese poems by heart.

One of them was written by a fella named He Zhizhang, sometime between 659 and 744 CE, called Returning to My Hometown.

You can look up the Chinese version, but the translation roughly goes something like this:

I was young when I left, old when I returned.
My accent’s the same but my hair’s thinned and grayed.
Kids from my old hometown don’t know who I am.
They laugh and ask, “Stranger, where’re you come from?”

It’s a lot more poignant in the original Chinese (and rhymes, to boot).

But – at least the way my dad explained it to me – the poem tells a story of a fella that left his hometown to make his fortune and returns home only to find that his home isn’t his home anymore.

Yeah, it kinda looks like his home but it also kinda doesn’t.

Just like him, he kinda looks the same but also kinda doesn’t.

And when he was there as a kid, everyone knew his name.

Now, he’s a stranger in the town that he knew like the back of his hand – to the point that the little kids now run up to him and laugh and point, “Check out this weird stranger who’s not from around here.”

And the town is a stranger to him.

That’s how I felt when I came home to the little town that I used to spend every other summer at growing up.

Except it’s not a little town at all. It was kinda the same but really not.

It’s all modern and high tech, nothing like I remember.

While the town I last saw in 2000 was pretty close to the one I remember from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, this one I just left is almost nothing like I know.

Legit, nothing like the town I last saw in 2000.

Nothing like the home I knew and loved.

I’m gonna tell you all about my Taiwan trip but I wanted to tell you that, during the whole trip, I saw old ghosts everywhere I went.

The sleepy town I knew so well is a bustling tech hub that’s home to the most powerful and advanced tech manufacturing factory on the planet.

To me, it was just where my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins lived.

Where I slept above a garage that my grandma converted into a tiny little convenience store.

I was the grandson of a shop-owner who lived in town all her life and told of her daughter that lived far away in New York City.

Everywhere I looked, I saw glimpses of people and places I loved so very deeply, long gone that I’ll never see again.

You see that old lady in that picture up there? I loved her more than you can imagine.

For the first time in my life, I’ve come home and she isn’t here to greet me and I can barely type these words, that’s how much I loved – and still love – those two women you see above in that convenience store in a converted garage that no longer exists and never will again.

Just like so many things that I have loved and will always love.

I’m grateful for my son and the Firecracker. Truly.

Their being here with me made bearable the unbearable.

I realize may not look like an old man but I’m certainly not a young man.

And even if I age slowly, those around me do not and that is, in many ways, worse.

Now all the people and things I loved and love still are aging and disappearing.

And, if this trip has made me realize anything, I will soon as well.

Don’t know how much more loss I can bear.

Him: Aren’t you happy to be back?
Me: I am…I just…I am. (nodding) I am.

Location: on a hard wooden chair by a hard wooden table at a train museum
Mood: alone
Music: Someday, I’ll go (Spotify)
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The power to make anyone cluck like a chicken

A gun…made of cheese

I think that one of the reasons why it made sense for the Firecracker and me to get married was that we saw the world in the same way. When you find members of your tribe, it’s always nice to keep them close.

Mostly.

Her: If you had a minor superpower, what would that be?
Me: (thinking) If I could detect cancer, would that be major or minor?
Her: Obviously that’s a major superpower.
Me: Gotcha, ok then, that’s easy: I’d want to be able to make anyone cluck like a chicken at will to the volume and extent that I want.
Her: WHAT?! That’s ridiculous.
Me: Is it? Think about it. There are so many situations where it would be amazeballs.
Her: Name one.
Me: Where to begin?

Me: Imagine someone cuts you off, instead of road rage, he’s now clucking like a chicken in his car at the top of his lungs. Maybe he’s on a date, maybe he’s with his parents, maybe he’s with his boss. Guess what? He’s clucking like a chicken for the next hour or so.
Her: (laughs hysterically)
Me: Or imagine I get mugged. Instead of defending myself, dude is now SCREAMING like a chicken. He cannot stop and he doesn’t know why. Is he still really gonna be mugging me?
Her: (still laughing) Stop, stop, I can’t…

Me: Or if someone insults you. Guess what he’s gonna do for a month at the top of his lungs when he gets home? The list goes on.
Her: Ok, that’s a pretty good minor superpower, when you put it like that.

Me: OK, what about you?
Her: (takes a deep breath) Ok, ok…ok. Lemme think. Well, I suppose I’d want to be able to make anything cheese.
Me: Wait, what? Why cheese?
Her: (shrugs) I like cheese. Like, if I’m at the bank and I get hungry and I’m holding a pen. Instant cheese.

Me: What if you get mugged?
Her: With what? A knife? That’s cheese now. A gun? A gun…made of cheese. You know the best part?
Me: What?
Her: Never need to buy cheese again for the rest of our lives.
Me: (nodding, impressed) OK! I like it. Between my clucking power and your cheese power, we could take over the world. We’d be invincible!
Her: And moderately fat.

Location: Not NYC…
Mood: 45.5 hours sleep-deprived
Music: heroes, forever and ever (Spotify)
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The Firecracker and I did a Thing

We got hitched

Me: Hey.
Her: Yeah?
Me: I feel we should just go do it. You and me.
Her: Just us?
Me: Yeah. I mean, it feels like we’re already married. I can’t imagine life without you.
Her: (laughing) Well, that’s good, because you’re not getting rid of me.
Me: Sweeeeet.

May or may not post on Monday.

Gonna hang out with the kids and Mrs. Lo for a bit.

Me: This ring is really gonna cut into my picking up women.
Her: I will kill you, Logan. I will kill you dead.
Me: Noted.

Location: earlier today, the courthouse downtown
Mood: married
Music: I’ll go anywhere you want to (Spotify)
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Giving it time

My talented friends

So far, the second shot has been a disappointment as well. But it’s still early yet.

I’m still hoping that the two together – plus the oral steroids that I took some months back plus the ridonk amount of PT that I’m doing – will result in some improvement.

Anything, really.

Been hanging around with another surgeon from my gym who thinks I should just keep getting the shots.

We met up for a drink and some food the other day where I picked his brain about my situation.

Me: So far, these two shots haven’t done a thing.
Him: Dude, steroids work. I had three shots and was good for years. Give it time.

I’m not sure what to do.

One of the guys I do kali with – and he started 13 years before me, which means, he’s been doing it for 33 years – happens to be an acupuncturist and offered for me to get checked out at his clinic.

What’s crazy is that it was literally the building next door to the place I had the shots.

My life is so fulla odd coincidences.

So, I went where he essentially beat the crap outta me for 90 minutes – it was painful, but I felt pretty good afterward.

Me: How much do I owe you?
Him: Oh, it’s on the house. We’re old friends.
Me: Dude, you spent an hour with me…
Him: Actually, it was 90 minutes.
Me: That’s even worse!

But he wouldn’t take anything from me. What a nice guy.

It’s too early to say if it did anything but it was, if nuthin else, an amazing massage.

It’s nice to have such disparate and talented friends.

Now if I could just have a working back…

Location: home, with a bad back a lot on my mind
Mood: so disappointed
Music: had no warning about who you are (Spotify)
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Bro, these are precious

Licking off knives

The Devil once said something about his childhood that always stuck in my mind:

When you aren’t fed what you need by spoons, you learn to lick what you can off knives.

Never really understood what he meant by that until I became a dad myself, but I think it means that children will fill themselves with something, so it’s best that you do it before they do it themselves with things you may or may not want.

To this end, I’ve been trying my darndest to give him things that I loved as a child, like the books that made me, me or shows that I loved as a kid.

Obviously, he’ll find things of his own that he’ll know and love.

But sometimes I feel it’s a losing battle against the allure of technology and…screens.

Man, screens are crack for kids.

BUT there is one single thing that I loved as a kid that the kid loves as well: Board and card games.

So, the other day, instead of playing Big Two – which we’ve been playing pretty consistently around here – we dusted off the ole Settlers of Catan.

Man, I still remember playing with Paul and my friends way back when and coming home to Alison. That was a lifetime ago.

I digress…

The kids were really into it this time because they understood the rules and strategy, so it was a lot more fun.

While I ended up winning the game, for me, the high point of the whole evening came early on when we were all desperate for bricks.

The kid was the only one with any – he had just one – so we were all trying to cut a deal with him when he looks at the Firecracker’s kid dead in the eye and goes, You wanna trade that for this brick?! No way, bro, these are precious!

AND, I just happened to snap a pic right when he said it – that’s the pic directly above.

Laughed so hard I almost started crying.

That will be in the top ten memories for me and this kid for a while, I think.

Location: at a new studio, filming more shorts and video
Mood: drained
Music: with you, I am whole (Spotify)
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An old Chinese man that cooks for you

Re-seasoning my carbon steel pan

Me: You now have access a stand mixer, food processor, and…(thinking)…and an old Chinese man that cooks for you.
Her: Oooooh, that last one’s my favorite.

Steel and I are friends for two reasons: (a) We both hate people, and (b) we both like to cook – although I’ll be the first to admit that he’s a FAR better cook/chef than I.

One thing that he did turn me onto was a carbon steel pan, because I’m always so worried about environmental factors when it comes to the kid’s health.

I’ve really learned to love this pan because it works so well and I know that the kid’s not getting anything but oil and steel from it.

Unfortunately, the Firecracker – because she’s always looking to help out around here – decided to clean the pan the other day and put a wet pot on it.

You can see the results above.

It took me pretty much all morning to grind out all the rust and then all afternoon to re-season it.

But it works good as new again.

Seriously, this thing rocks.

It turns out, though, that I’m not the only one with this issue.

Steel gifted the Surgeon a larger 12″ pan, and his wife put it in the dishwasher.

So, one night when we were all over, Steel rolled his sleeves up and took it back down to bare metal again and re-seasoned it on the stovetop.

Hey, everyone needs a hobby.

And this is one of my few hobbies that doesn’t involve either copious amounts of violence or massive nerdiness.

Ok, one outta two isn’t all that bad.

Location: 7PM, my local polling station, enjoying democracy…for now
Mood: exhausted
Music: light the match to watch it blow (Spotify)
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Spinal Epidural No 2

Well, that didn’t work

Welp, that spinal epidural I did last month didn’t do jack.

As I said, it’s the last step before surgery so my doc suggested that I get another one.

So, last week, headed to the other side of town, went to the office, and did a round two.

The first shot I did was a more modern version of a spinal epidural in that it went directly into my nerve.

For that one, I felt a slight pinch with the lidocaine and barely felt the actual steroid injection.

Was in and out in 20 minutes total with the actual procedure like 2-3 mins, tops.

But this last one I just did was vastly different than that first one.

Firstly, this new shot(s) went into my spine.

Secondly, it was a completely different doc that did the procedure because the first fella actually transferred to a different office.

Now, the first lidocaine shot went in fine.

I think because it went into my spine, he needed two, so he put in another one.

That second one messed up somehow and literally exploded all over my back; it felt exactly like I’d been hit hard with a small water balloon.

It was jarring, to say the least.

After they cleaned that up, they did a third lidocaine shot.

Then he put in the first shot and said, “You’ll feel some pressure and some feeling in you right leg.”

He was right; it felt like a bad day of sciatica and as if he was kinda twisting the needle around in my back.

It wasn’t insanely painful – like a 3 outta 10 – but it also wasn’t fun.

He then asked if I was ok and if I could handle more.

I said yes.

Welp, he then really pumped a MASSIVE amount of steroids into my spine. So much that either that or my own spinal fluid was all over my back when he was done.

After this procedure – which was like 20 minutes total – I was nauseated the rest of the day, dry heaving, and in pain since I left.

The Firecracker counted six punctures in my back that night.

Plus, I woke up at 4AM completely wired from the steroids.

It’s gonna take a few days to figure out if this latest round of shots did anything but here’s hoping…

Location: West 74th Street in the middle of the night, picking up some Prosecco
Mood: oddly, not hungry
Music: I’m pushing through it, you know (Spotify)
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So long and so completely

Happy birthday, mom

Two big things happened recently. The first was awful.

Saw a good buddy of mine the other day and he looked…off.

So, I asked him what was up. His wife answered for him.

His mother died this past Friday.

Instantly, I thought of my dad and my mom, and – of course – Alison.

When I lost my grandmother all those years ago, it was the first close loss I’d ever had.

The losses never stopped once it started.

That’s how it goes for everyone.

But no one’s really prepared for the loss of a parent, to say nothing of the loss of a spouse.

My dad said it himself when his own mom died, long after his own dad died:

I feel unmoored from my past, like a leaf in the wind or a ship on the waves.

Lines I stole from him years ago.

In any case, I took my buddy out for a drink over the weekend and just heard his (and his mom’s) story, which I’ll end here because it’s not mine to tell.

Me: This is why alcohol was invented, man.

The second was the opposite.

My own mom turned a milestone birthday, one that I’m grateful she was able to reach.

My sister came up with the brilliant plan to have many of our relatives from all over – including Taiwan – to video call her at the same time and wish her well.

As an aside, I usually put up pictures that don’t include my kid sister and only include my brother and me because, by the time she was born, I was already a fatty-fat-fat.

Anywho, getting back to my mom and the video call, she’s not one for pomp and circumstance but I could tell she was touched by the gesture.

I know that, at some point, I will have to go through what my buddy is going through and I’m not – at all – prepared for it.

Don’t think we’re ever prepared to say goodbye to the people we’ve loved so long and so completely.

Ok, that’s my sister when she came home from the hospital. I can put pics of her up so long as I’m not in them.

When I think of my mom, the faces you see above is the face I always see in my head when I think of her.

She’ll always be that young and beautiful to me.

I wish everyone we love can always stay.

Doubt that I’m alone in this.

But that’s not the deal, and we have to accept it, however hard it is.

Me: Even I have to go someday.
Him: But…what if you don’t, papa?
Me: That’s the deal, kid. We all have to go at some point so someone else gets a chance.
Him: (hopefully) But maybe it’ll be different for you.
Me: (laughing) Ok, kid. Maybe. We’ll just have to wait and see. Go do your math.

Happy birthday, mom.

Location: In the rain, picking up my treasure
Mood: nauseated
Music: seen it all the tears have fallen (Spotify)
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His first haircut (with me)

And our civic duty

We voted together the other night.

They keep moving my polling station; it used to be right across the street then a few blocks north, then a few blocks east.

This time around, I thought it was at my kid’s school, but I read the address wrong.

Staffer: Sorry, you’re at another polling station – but it’s literally one block away.
Me: Oh, man…

Luckily, it was.

So, after a nice little walk – where we were accosted by people we didn’t know…

Them: Can we ask who you’re voting for?
Me: Nope.

…we found the right place, stepped in, did our civic duty, and high tailed it home.

Her: I think it’d be good for the kids to see us vote, or at least know we did.
Me: Agreed. Not enough people do it and we gotta lead by example.

Here’s hoping for some good news moving forward.

The kid’s never really cared about how he looks.

Until recently, that is.

When Alison was sick, and his hair got unruly, I just buzzed it for him.

Then Alison’s mom and he started having this nice little ritual where she takes him to get a haircut around her pad, which I find really sweet.

Unfortunately, with the exception of that brief visit the other day, he’s not really been able to spend much time with them to get a haircut with them so…I took him out for his first haircut (with me).

It affected me a lot more than I thought it would.

I suppose because it’s yet another first I got to experience, and Alison didn’t. Everything is bittersweet.

We can stop talking about that now.

Anywho, he picked out his hairstyle himself. You’d like it, I think.

He wishes he could grow up faster and I wish he would slow down.

Neither of us will get our way, which is probably how it’s always been with fathers and sons.

Him: What do you think, papa?
Me: You look great kid! Good choice. More importantly, do *you* like it?
Him: Yeah!
Me: Well, then that’s really the important thing, then.

Location: earlier today, getting stabbed multiple times in the back with a needle
Mood: ouch
Music: don’t wanna sit still, look pretty (Spotify)
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