Dragon Boat Festival 1992

"The next morning Bilbo woke up with the early sun in his eyes. He jumped up to look at the time and to go and put his kettle on - and found he was not home at all. So he sat down and wished in vain for a wash and a brush. He did not get either, nor tea, nor toast, nor bacon for his breakfast, only cold mutton and rabbit. And after that he had to get ready for a fresh start."

J.R.R Tolkien, The Hobbit

Shelter. A place to crash. An essential human need, right up there alongside food and fire. All intrinsically linked. The whole Maslow Hierarchy of Needs junk. Jammed down your throat at school like some sort of brilliant theory, instead of the simple commonsense it was. Where stud poker games lay on old Maslow's Hierarchy, Sean wasn't so sure. A recreational activity perhaps but that didn't quite cut it. A complex issue when thoroughly considered. Quite often at the Sunday night card game at the Fubar, one of the players would gamble away food and shelter and even a friendship to stay in a game of last card Manila. Chicago Bill set up the poker nights and several of the Fubar regulars played. Taiwanese and gwailos. A lot of needy men at the table.

Late one sultry Sunday night at the Fubar, much akin to all the others, there was a card game involving Sean, Hamo, Kent, Vin, Bill, Shadow, and his henchman, Fatty Chiu. Chicago Bill ran the game with a lazy smile and sharp eyes. Bill set the rules. The dealer rotated to the right and the dealer could name the game and any wild cards. Bill started and named the first hand. Manila. No wild cards. The game started slowly. Each player feeling everybody else out. Californian Kent had the worst poker face at the table. He reacted to his cards in disbelief like they were customers asking for credit. Hamo played the innocent. Big goggle eyes and a bigger smirk. It's a given that these two were the easy marks.

However Sean and Shadow were the nights biggest losers. Sean got caught out with full houses twice knocking over two of his hands. Hands he had wagered heavily on. The first when he was desperately betting that four consecutive cards 9, 10, J, Q would become a wannabe straight on the last deal. The other time he kept raising on two pairs (fives and kings) he held early on hoping for a full house. Big pots were at stake on both occasions. Welcome to last card Manila! Bill, Kent and Fatty were holding their own but nothing more. Two hours into the game, Angel brought a tray of Chilli soup and toasted tuna sandwiches and as if fired by the peppered provisions Hamo started on a winning spree picking up threes of a kind (Aces in one hand and Queens in another) to score two lucrative pots. Hamo was dealt straights, flushes, four of a kind and routinely full houses. Hardly ever straight off the deck. On most occasions, he asked for a single card, and beggaring belief, he slid the fresh card into the cup of his left palm which concealed the other four cards, and brought it to the edge of the table where he peered down before lifting his shaggy head and revealing a huge grin. Once again he had struck gold.

Perhaps the two bowls of soup he slurped down has cleared his head as the players at the table consumed beer, whiskey, B52s and XO. More likely his luck on this night was simply fashioned by the fates. "This is almost too easy," he said, raking in another pot greedily. He smiled expectantly like a child enjoying the lone popsicle and wondering why his friends cannot share his delight. Shadow stared at him stoney faced and Bill told him to shut it in an undertone. Sean wanted to bang his friend's fat head on the card table. Sitting to Hamo's right, Sean to his silent astonishment noticed during one hand that Hamo had palmed a card below the table which he was rotating between hands to match related numbers and suits. Sean looked at the other players. Everyone was drinking and smoking and there was small talk about sex, sport and politics. At one point, Bill mentioned the famine warlordism in Somalia and the likelihood of American intervention through the arrival of the marines. Perhaps he mentioned it to distact the other players. He took his card pychology seriously. But global affairs were not the staple conversation.

As usual Shadow was immaculately dressed. He wore a navy, double breasted three piece Gianfranco Ferre velvet suit with a white silk shirt with a butterfly collar. The suitcoat was draped across the back of the chair and he wore the vest undone and the shirtsleeves rolled up. On his wrist was a diamond and silver Rolex. He smoked 555 cigarettes continuously and rocked back on his chair with a sly confidence as he examined his cards. Fatty Chiu, his lieutenant, on the other hand was not so concerned with fashion. He wore a white singlet and checked shorts and sandals. As he scrutinised his cards, holding them close to his squinty eyes, he would occasionally fart or burp to signal his dismay or delight. Before he placed a bet, he fondled his testicular sack like a bag of golden coins. His only overt sign of personal anxiety was when he touched the jade necklace at the top of his black open-necked shirt. Vin sat hunched over the table wearing round glasses and a checked sahirt like some computer geek. He had finally managed to get a new visa and return to Taipei from Hong Kong by destroying his old passport and swapping his middle and family names so his deportation order didn't show on the computer In general, there were the gentle rumblings of male companionship overladen by studious attention to cards and money and greed. How would these men react if Hamo was caught cheating? Violently upset Sean guessed. Already he has had one run in too many with Shadow. There would be no more chances. He sat at the table stewing. Wrought emotions were never too far below the surface in these gambling games of supposed chance. Sean had to get Hamo out of the bar before anyone else caught him out.

Shadow lit a Camel and surveyed his dwindling stack of notes. The loss of money didn't worry Shadow. He had plenty of the green. The loss of face was the problem. Not coincidentally, the ante was doubled soon after. Not long after this, Kent getting into the act declares threes and sevens wild, and it's somehow decided by the table as a whole that a crappy pair of deuces will beat everything else. The night takes a surreal turn. Shadow without emotion looks at his cards and opens the betting. Hamo raised. Fatty raises him. More raises all round. Everybody except Hamo started pulling folding money from their wallets. Sean opted out. He had a potential three of a kind but with 12 wild cards anything below a straight or a flush is meaningless. But three of the players raise again and then again. The pot was the biggest of the night. Money piled up on the table. Dozens of crumpled notes and scattered coins picturing the stern faced Generalissimo Chiang and the engraved beauty of Mount Alishan.

Fatty took two cards. Shadow took two. Hamo took one. Bill passed. He's holding a straight and knows it doesn't mean shit. Hamo's smirking. The big boofhead. The madness of the betting is contagious. The more they put in, the harder it was to pull out even as the player careered towards the abyss of certain defeat. By this time the soup and toasted sandwiches have gone cold and the beers were flat. Time to put up or shut up.

"Royal flush," said Fatty, rubbing his balls furiously.

"Bad luck, Chiu Song," said Shadow tonelessly, "not good enough. "Pair of deuces."

Hamo stared at his cards confused. "Full house," he said tentatively. Shadow for the first time in this long night, nearly seven whole hours of uninterrupted poker, showed a glint of emotion. He laughed and laid out his cards Jack hearts, Jack diamonds, 2 diamonds, 2 spades, 3 diamonds before stretching his cufflinked arms out for the pot.

Suddenly Hamo lifted his face and beamed for the final time. "Full house," he said again, with a note of jubilation, laying out his hand methodically, snapping each card flat in front of Shadow. "Including a pair of deuces." Two Clubs, Two Clubs, Seven Spades, Three Clubs, Ace Hearts.

"Fuck, Aces high," said Vin and whistled.

"Yep. Last card Manila," said Bill.

Shadow stood up abruptly upsetting the table violently. Several bottles, glasses, cards and ashtrays came crashed to the floor. He walked to the back of the bar.

"Jesus, half past three in the morning," said Sean half pulling his friend from the table. Turning to the remaining players he explained and watched Shadow's back as the gangser walked away. "I've got an early teaching start tomorrow fellas and Hamo is my chauffeur, so thanks for the game. We'll be back next week. For sure!"

The two men got up and left amid protestations they should play a few more hands. "Enough is enough," said Sean with a wry grin. The grin stayed fixed until the doors closed behind them. He strode angrily out of the bar down the laneway with Hamo loping casually behind. A tight alley with plastic bags of rubbish dumped on one side and a corrugated iron fence running down the other side bordering Shi Da Normal University. When they were fifteen metres from the Fubar he grabbed Hamo by the front of his sky blue Hawaiian shirt.

"What the fuck do you think you were doing in there with an extra card. If those guys caught you, they would have beaten the crap out of you and probably me and who would blame them," he said.

Hamo just shrugged. "Just smoothing the odds," he said. The Australian photographer wouldn't even deign to remember the incident after this night. That was simply his nature.

Sean took him by the shoulder and slammed him against the iron fence. "Smoothing the fucking odds!! You stupid prick, McTaggart. Who are you kidding.You're stealing all our money . mates money. That's a scumbag act."

Now Hamo got upset. "Lay off Dinan. Ok, so I fucked up. So what. It was just a floating card for a couple of hands. Don't come at me with this holier than thou bullshit. The truth is that we're all cheating here, just in different ways," he said pointedly.

Sean stared at him and felt the blood rise to his head. "Do you want on?" He sized up the situation. They had both been drinking steadily but neither was so drunk they couldn't put up a decent fight. He had greater reach but Hamo was heavier set in the chest and arms. He decided he would have to hit Hamo on the point of his ugly dimpled chin to end the scrap quickly. He didn't want any broken bones in a foreign city. Just at that moment, Bill walked out of the bar. "Hey what are you two lover boys talking about?"

Hamo turned around and flashed his 1,000 megawatt smile. "Just giving my liquored friend a lift home, Bill, said Hamo. "He's a bit upset because he finished in the red while I came out 10,000 kwai ahead. We'll catch you later in the week.Coming Sean?"

Sean slowly got onto the back of Hamo's Sanyang. What else was he going to do? He was living in the guy's apartment for chrissake. "Stupid prick," Sean muttered under his breath as Hamo revved up the bike and they took off with a leap and a skid.

*****

Back to shelter. Finding a room or apartment in Taipei to be precise. Locating an apartment wasn't easy but locating the cash was even tougher. The very nature of a gwailo existence in Taiwan meant that you were always on the move. Changing locations, changing apartments, changing girlfriends (and occasionally revisiting old ones) and changing jobs. Looking for jobs or travelling between various Bushibans or the different schools of a franchise Bushiban like Global Village. Very few westerners had proper jobs. To top it all off, every three months, foreigners had to renew their visas. A more complicated process than one might think. As a result of the two China imbroglio there were no foreign missions of any substance in Taipei.

The lavish economic aid Taiwan showered on a number of despotic states induced a score of pariah nations to formally recognise the ROC as the one 'true' China. This high level bribery of tin pot African and Caribbean states served only to emphasise Taiwan's failure of diplomacy. A failure to win acceptance as a separate entity in the international community of nations. None of the developed countries had the courage to recognise the Republic of China as the one China successfully undergoing a challenging transition to democracy. Mainland China refused to exchange diplomatic missions with nations that recognised Taiwan so the calculation for foreign ministries was do you formally side with a country with 1.2 billion consumers or one with 22 million consumers. Work it out.

This meant established nations employed a duplicitous double-dealing. They refused to sanction embassies inside the ROC but were happy to engage on economic terms. So they set up Trading Offices, which, in effect, acted as phoney embassies. But for visa renewals, foreigners had to travel outside of the Republic of China. This entailed the expense of going abroad to cities like Hong Kong, Bangkok and Seoul to extend a study or working visa. Most of the transient English teachers couldn't obtain a proper working visa so instead they took advantage of an informal but widely known practice whereby they enrolled in Chinese language courses to receive student visas. Of course it was a dodge. They never attended classes. The expense of travelling to Hong Kong and Bangkok on a visa run wasn't only the cost of the air ticket and the accommodation however. There was the income forgone in lost classes and lost jobs. Many of the transient westerners used a visa run as a convenient excuse for an extended travel holiday. Once this decision was made, it might mean all the hard work to secure regular classes and an apartment lease was potentially lost. Sure there might be goodwill at some of the Bushibans for a popular returning teacher but that only went so far. If a traveller returned to the ROC, and many did, forced by economic necessity; like Bilbo Baggins, one had to get ready for a fresh start.

*****

Hamo and Sean after escaping from the Hostel had both moved into the student area at Shi Da near the Normal university. He lived there for 18 turbulent weeks including a wild Ghost month he thought would never end. Despite his hectic existence, he enjoyed a newfound sense of space and privacy in his own home. But career aspirations nagged at him. One day out of the blue Sean decided to use his onward ticket to Tokyo. The travel bug struck him again. Time to check out the konichiwa girls with their polite manners and pretty posturings he told himself. Watch how they placed porcelain hands over cherryblossom mouths as they giggled over some inanity. Try to fathom darting eyes of deep comprehension. Dream of fidgety limbs he wanted to wrap himself in . And perhaps find a proper job. Fulfil one of his longtime ambitions. He even had a plan of sorts. An old Argus colleague, Victor Brunetti, was working in Tokyo as a foreign correspondent and might be able show him around the traps. Before he had left Melbourne, Sean had arranged letters of introduction from various Japanese luminaries he had met as a journalist. These included academics from university thinktanks, ceos from private corporations and Mandarins from Government departments. These references might help him land a public relations job in Tokyo. Sitting in the lounge room at Shi Da the weekend before he left, Sean was amazed when he read the referrals again. The professional described in the introductions seemed like a total stranger.

So Sean gave up the apartment and dumped his classes. He relinquished all his hard work in acquiring a full-time job roster. Between his various classes at five different Global Village schools plus the teaching he did for his kids classes on Wednesdays and Saturdays at the Joy Bushiban, Sean had built up his contact hours, the only ones he got paid for, to 36. This was a heavy workload considering it normally took 20 or so minutes to travel by scooter between the various schools and then had to wait around until the class started. In reality, he was working a 50 plus hour week over six days. On average Sean was earning US$15 for each contact hour. That wasn't big bucks but it was a fair wage considering he paid a paltry amount of tax.

In any event, Sean turned his back on it all. He said goodbye to his friends from the hostel and the boys at Shi Da. This was the hardest thing of all. Leaving his good mates behind. The best friendships are made in difficult times and Taipei was a tough place. The worst thing was leaving Safira behindd and he was so stupid, he only half realised it. On a cloudy Saturday afternoon, Safira drove him to Chiang Kai Shek airport to catch a flight to Tokyo. Sitting in a cramped window seat of the JAL 747 and looking out into the black atmosphere, Sean told himself unconvincingly it was the nature of travel.

*****

Japan was a trip in every sense. Right from Sean's landing at Narita airport, just before midnight, things went wrong. Sean had a short wait before he got in front of the immigration desk. The tired Japanese official scanned the arrival card and compared it to Sean's passport. He then turned the pages. First quickly and then again more slowly. He then spoke to another official who was dressed more seriously in a jacket with a more prominent identification tag. The second official came up and asked Sean about his visa. There didn't appear to be one in his passport, he explained in halting English. If this was indeed the case, then Sean would need to get on the next plane back to Taipei. What the fuck! Sean thought and stared at the official with the pale blue jacket. He didn't realise he needed a visa for Japan. Visa? What visa! None of his British or American friends needed a visa travelling to Japan from Taiwan. They were all granted 30 or 60 days on arrival. There was no Japanese Embassy in Taipei and Sean was too busy teaching and drinking to make inquiries elsewhere.

This policy turned out to be an anachronism of the 1960s immigration policy when the Australian Government was worried that Yakuza gang members might travel to the Southern Hemisphere to lay low for a while. So they applied restrictive visa conditions to visiting Japanese nationals. Really stupid. All the Japanese honeymooners and students and geriatrics wanting to spend hard earned yen in the sunlit antipodean world and the Australian Government was worried that dozens of Yakuza would be coming down to the land of the kangarui for shoot ups. Yeh, right! Naturally the Japanese had reciprocated with its own strict visa conditions for Australians.

To cut a long story short, Sean had to negotiate a 48 hour bridging visa so he could try and talk his way into acquiring a more substantive visa when the senior Immigration officer (who probably had an even better jacket) arrived on the Monday morning. Sean was allowed the bridging visa on the condition that he stayed the two days in the city precincts. It wasn't easy finding a cheap room in Narita. When he asked about economical hotels, the immigration official suggested he stay at the Holiday Inn. Economical? Not quite. US$160 a night! Fortunately the sympathetic concierge at the Holiday Inn understood his situation. He recommended that Sean stay at a local onsen . Like everybody else in Japan, the concierge couldn't speak English so he looked up onsen in an English-Japanese dictionary and showed the entry to Sean. "A public bathhouse; a place for ceremonial washing," the entry began. For the first time that night, Sean smiled. The man had done him a great favour. "Wonderful, he said, "I love baths!"

In the Narita Onsen you were either naked in the baths sections or dressed in shorty pyjamas with printed pictures of brightly coloured locomotives lying on a tatami mat in a communal sleeping hall. In the bathhouse, the spectrum of male society ranged from salarymen to taxi drivers. Even exquisitely tattooed Yakuza would take in the range of icy cold, boiling hot, and seaweed tubs. A whole other story. Sean found Japan wonderful, confusing and difficult. In another life, he would have stayed for a couple of years. But he missed the anarchic freedom of Taipei. He toured around for the period of the additional four weeks visa he had talked Immigration into giving him and flew back to the Republic of China.

Sean returned to Taiwan, not quite with his tail between his legs but less arrogant for his experience. He realised he had a group of real friends, reasonably well paid work and a generous lover in Taipei. Why not appreciate the situation - and the people - more. The more immediate problem was where to crash for a while until he got sorted. Not Taipei Hostel. That would be too much of a mind blowing reversion. Hamo suggested Sean come and stay with Cherry and himself for a while in their apartment building. Celestial Towers in Tsien Tien Village. This so-called village was really a group of scattered apartment blocks built between more traditional stores and market stalls which lay in the mountains above the World Trade Centre. He accepted.

After the Sauna, the two Australians never formally shared an apartment or room again. Over the next eighteen months, Sean and Hamo when the occasion demanded would crash in whichever share apartment the other was renting. This happened half a dozen times or so. On each occasion, Sean moved in with the volatile couple, the lodgements were curtailed when the respective landlord threw Hamo and Cherry out. By extension Sean followed suit. The unlikely couple would move in with other friends while Sean searched for more permanent lodgings. During that hectic year and a half, Sean lived progressively in Shi Da, travelled around Japan, moved into the first Tsien Tien apartment, was ejected, moved into a gwailo share apartment in Sungshan, went on a visa run to Hong Kong, moved into the second apartment in Tsien Tien with Hamo, was thrown out a second time, inherited Jim Dingle's basement studio in Tai Da, moved into the third apartment in Tsien Tien with Hamo, travelled to Thailand and Laos and then came back and found the apartment in Yung Ho which he leased in his own name. Of course, all the locational divisions weren't that tidy. Several times he needed stopgap accommodation for anything from one night to a couple of weeks. He would then return with some dismay to the Hostel. Frequently Sean was a man of no fixed abode. The times Hamo and Cherry crashed at Sean place, he ended up throwing them out as well. They were simply an impossible couple to live with. Argumentative and unreliable. As such, they became very adept in the art of landing on their arses. They fought often and loudly although Hamo was the more reluctant participant. He assumed a sullen distracted air most of the time, immersed in his own world while his girlfriend flapped around screeching about his laziness and neglect of her. Sean found Cherry's shrillness, insistent dramatics and false sincerity more than negated any minor physical attractiveness she may have held. One afternoon when Cherry was pitching a communications job to a potential client and they were alone he asked Hamo why he put up with her. "She's dragging you down, man," he said. "All this crazy bitching . You need to cut her loose," he said.

Hamo stared back at his friend and for once his eyes had a clarity of purpose. "You don't get it Dyno. She's the best thing that's happened to me in this shit-hole. She's as smart as chips and she's a sensational collaborator. We just seem to click on project ideas . but most of all, she knows me, really knows me better than anyone I've ever met before and she still seems to love me," he said and grinned sheepishly. Hamo bent down to crop his photos.

Despite the bickering, life at Celestial Towers was almost idyllic. The apartment was situated high enough on the mountain to rise above the dense smog cloud that covered the city. At night time they would occasionally see stars which was unheard of anyway else in Taipei. In the mornings, it was a pleasant and reasonably short drive into the city on his newly acquired Yamaha 125 cc scooter. Sean called this scooter his "little red death machine" as he was certain a horrible accident would result from its crooked steering. Sean would drive down the hill past the well kept graveyard, past the deserted swimming pool and onwards to the vegetable stalls at the bottom and from there onto the increasingly busy roads that led to the World Trade Centre and into the centre of the city. At night, they would look out from the apartment balcony towards the neon lights of the southern commercial precinct of the city or watch brewing storms circle the city during the wet season spitting out razor wire lightening. U2 would be playing on the stereo while Hamo and Cherry prepared portfolios and production concepts in their latest attempt to break into magazine or television work.

Other evenings, Sean would contently visit the night markets with Miranda or the two couples would go out together. Miranda and Cherry to his consternation became good friends. Sometimes they would all go to a nearby MTV to watch classic films in a private room. During the Dragon Boat Festival, they watched the oarsmen pulling their brightly painted vessels with fearsome carved heads in a syncopated beat along the filthridden Taipei river. After the races the four of them went to New Planet MTV in downtown Taipei and watched A Place in the Sun with Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor. Hamo and Sean ordered Taiwan Lagers and the girls Oolong teas. They reclined on large cushions in a small vinyl room cuddling up in pairs. The attendent brought out the gleaming disc of their chosen film and they lay back to enjoy it in the privacy of their own hired space. The film was a good choice. A tragic love story with symphonic music and large close-ups of the iconic actors.

Sean sat back and revelled in the escapist entertainment. Montgomery Clift and his wife, Shelly Winters were in a canoe on Lake Tahoe. Clift looks at his wife with murderous intent. He had married her after an unplanned preganancy and was now in love with a lovely heiress played by Elizabeth Taylor. Guilt-stricken, he decides against doing so. Meanwhile his nagging wife talks on and on unwittingly detailing the drabness of their future lives. At the description of misery continues, Clift suddenly becomes agitated and accidentally rocks the canoe. The wife falls in and drowns. He looked over to Cherry who was complaining about the service to Miranda. A little too close to home.

Sean began working again while living at Celestial Towers. He needed the mental stimulation. He kept a notebook to record his crazy friends and drunken misadventures. In appreciation of his favourite nightspots, he also wrote the story on Taipei nightlife. After that, Hamo pestered Sean to do other feature stories. The idea being Sean would write the words and Hamo provide the pictures. In another time and another place, he would have welcomed the idea but he had largely lost his enthusiasm for journalism. There were a couple of topics he did want to write about. He just wasn't sure whether anyone would publish them.

"Only if we do something that I want to write," he said to Hamish after yet another suggestion for a story collaboration. "Something about the people and places we know. I'm sick of all this bullshit journalism about minor celebrities and aspiring politicians and hardheaded company executives who end up bankrupt five years down the track."

"Well, what do you want to write on? Lesbian aborigines," said Hamo.

"I'd like to write a story on Taipei Hostel," he answered.

Hamo raised his eyebrows and then shrugged. "Bewdy, you're on. Lets do one on the crappy Hostel," he said. So they sat up drinking Taiwan Rum one night at Celestial Towers while Sean tapped out a 1800 word piece on a clunky old typewriter. He worked like a man possessed, wondering whether ennui and drugs had diminished his ability. To his surprise, he enjoyed writing the piece. Perhaps he could return to journalism. Christ knows, no-one could possibly keep their sanity teaching English to kids, bored housewives and superannuated students for the unforseeable future he thought. One day, he would have to work out what he really wanted to do. For the time being, it was easier not to think about anything serious. Just enjoy the Taipei rollercoaster ride. Eventually he would need to jump off. Sooner rather than later he guessed. Otherwise he risked wasting his life, misplaced in a string of dead-end jobs like many of his fellow travellers. He knew he had more to offer. He just didn't quite know what. Or where. Or with whom. Travel was meant to help him work it out. A job in a foreign country, a sound professional step. Hah! Hah! Instead he felt dislocated and in disarray.

As Sean wrote, Hamo paced around the living area drinking the mixed spirits and smoking Marlboros in his normal agitated manner. Occasionally he threw up additional ideas for the story. Every so often he would issue a challenge to complete a set of 30 push ups. Until four in the morning the two men sporadically drank, smoked, exercised and wrote a story in the crowded, messed up loungeroom in the mountains above the Taipei nightskyline.

Sean outlined a draft of the story and then began the composition. Taipei Hostel is an ordinary looking place. But for the hundreds of weary English teachers who have ridden the elevator to the sixth floor of this drab, box like building, it is quite extraordinary. The trash that fills the staircases, the salivating dogs, the urine soaked elevator, the demented, itinerant clientele - all add up to a unique atmosphere that dozens of foreigners call home.

"Do you think you're going in hard enough," laughed Hamo looking over Sean's shoulder.

"The truth always hurts mate," said Sean as he dragged on a number that Hamo placed at his mouth as he typed roughly into the clanking Remington. "Besides it isn't a fucking travel brochure."

After midnight, Sean asked Hamo to comment on some of the quotations. "Tell me what you think about comments from Eddie, Jim and Jean-Pierre that I've put in the story. Listen to this. 'What kind of people live in a place that takes all the wonderful elements of Taipei streets - the dirt, the smells, the crowds, the constant noise - and puts it right back into your bedroom?' a North American teacher named Eddie was heard to remark'."

"Yes, yes. Eddie's nailed it. He paints the picture. I like that, said Hamo. "What about the others?"

Sean read another excerpt. "As British teacher, Jim Dingle, described it. Some places have a lunatic fringe. At the hostel it's a lunatic majority'."

"Dingle would know, sniffed Hamish. "What about JP. What does Frenchie say?"

"Some teachers describe the hostel as a jail or even a mental asylum to their classes," said Jean-Pierre, a Frenchman who works the Taipei subways as a busker. "But really they're missing the point. Those institutions have a type of order or system. The beauty of the hostel is that it is living anarchy. There is no system."

Sean looked up expectantly with a ragged smile. "Beautiful," laughed Hamo. "Pippy's going to love it! It'll be great for business. Don't forget to mention the bedbugs."

"Don't worry, said Sean. "I could never forget the bedbugs. They'll be mentioned as the resident poodles alongwith in the lives of the not so rich and famous."

*****

Sean asked his friend, Roberto "Rocker" Barbaro, a journalist who worked for Reuters whether the newsagency would be interested in running the piece. They had met at L2N8 and Sean had been impressed by the energetic Italian journalist who had worked as a war correspondent in the Middle East, the Balkans and the Horn of Africa. The nickname had been earnt during a riot in the West Bank. Israeli soldiers had shot rubber bullets at a Palestinian crowd after being pelted with rocks. Roberto had become upset and thrown a couple of rocks alongwith the bandana clad youths. Roberto said the hostel article wasn't suitable for the news agency, but he showed it to the editor at the Taipei Courier who said they would be happy to publish it in a future edition of their English Language Student Supplement. Hamish supplied an accompanying picture of Little Stevie and Callum smoking on the Hostel balcony.

Most of his spare time outside of classes and bars, Sean preferred to read. Writing newspaper articles in the heat and enervation of Taipei was too much like hard work.

Unexpectedly, Sean found himself exploring the contemporary history he had studied at university. He re-read such classic works as William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich which he found at the estimable Caves bookstore.

All in all, it was quite civilised. Sean liked living there despite the argumentation. Like all such good things the seeds of destruction had already been sown. Hamo scrupulously never paid rent on time if at all. He also infuriated the neighbours with his constant din. Hamo just couldn't help himself. He was so self absorbed, he never considered the privacy of others. Relative quiet was a concept he didn't understand. He produced extreme noise night and day. Practising his guitar endlessly while drinking beer. Playing loud music on the stereo at all hours. Fighting constantly with a piercing voiced Cherry who banged pots and pans to indicate her displeasure. Toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches at three o'clock in the morning.Most normal people had jobs to go to the next day. Hamo just wasn't a normal person.

It came to a head one Sunday night about a month after Sean returned from Japan. Hamo and Sean went out drinking and ended up at the cardgame. Hamo had promised Cherry that he would be home early. Instead they stayed up at the late night gambling session where Sean caught Hamo cheating. By the time they left for home it had already been a long difficult night. The entertainment had not quite finished however. As Sean and Hamo pulled up outside the apartment building and drunkenly alighted from the bike; they squinted into the dim light at what appeared to be quite a variety of loose clothes on the street. Someone clothesline must have fallen down. The wind had spread the garments across the street. On a closer inspection they realised it was their own clothes strewn at the bottom of the white six storey apartment building. They discovered a couple pairs of shirts and trousers caught in the branches of old oak tree above their heads. The clothes had obviously been thrown off the balcony. They looked at each other. "Oh shit," they groaned in unison. At three o'clock in the morning, the last thing they felt like doing was rearranging their wardrobes.

"Cherry might be a bit upset at your lack of punctuality, mate," said Sean laconically. Inside however he was fuming. The sheer fucking gall. bloody Cherry chucking out HIS things!

Hamo and Sean walked up three flights of stairs to their apartment, both carrying piles of their own clothing in their hands. Cherry wouldn't answer the door so Hamo had to drop his load and fish out his front door key. As soon as they walked in, Cherry started screeching at Hamo. Sean threw his clothes onto a tatami mat and thrust his face between Cherry and her unreliable boyfriend and temporarily halt her tirade.

"I don't give a fuck what you do to Hamish but don't you ever, fucking ever, touch my stuff again," he yelled. "Your bitching and theatrics . they don't have nothing to do with me." He slowly and deliberately picked up Cherry's large brown leather satchel she carried everywhere with her and walked over to the balcony. He lifted the bag over the edge and turned it upside down to empty it He watched with grim satisfaction as her cosmetics, sunglasses, notebooks, camera, gloves and countless other bits and pieces tumbled down to the street below. Finally he dropped the empty satchel and watched it float slowly down to the ground below. "Stick that up your bony arse," he said and went into the bedroom.

Cherry gaped at him like a stunned Roger Rabbit. Her front lip curled upwards and her protruding teeth stretching downwards. As Sean closed the door, she resumed screaming. "Your friend is a hateful man. How can you let him treat me that way."

Hamo sat slumped in an armchair holding his face with his hands.

*****

Unsurprisingly, not long after that long, delaundered night, Hamish received a letter. A handwritten note from the landlord. Mr Lee was frustrated at the irregular rental payments.

Hamish, Your fighting is not like a gentleman. You make big noise and you give me only IOU. I'll come Saturday evening. If you fail to stop noise, if you fail to pay me, I'll throw away all your belongings and take back my room. Mr Lee. 

Besides the on-going interest of various parties in discarding Hamo's possessions, the other notable aspect was the speed in which all the individuals concerned reached irrevocable breakdown in this matter. Hamo received the note on a Monday. The following Friday Sean arrived back at the apartment at 10.00 pm after riding home from his final class of a busy day. He had taught nine contacts hours in three different schools. A six hour stretch at Joy Children's Bushiban near Snake Alley followed by a 5.00 o'clock class at the GV in Chungshan Lou and then an hour and half class between 7.30 and 9.00 pm at the GV in ChungSiau Bay Lou Section Three. As usual, after 90 minutes of inanity and bad English in his last class, a Basic Level class, Sean retired to the local Sogo department store for Korean BBQ in the food court and then rode home. By the time he arrived back at Tsien Tien Village, Sean was weighing up whether to drive down to L2N8 to have a look around. He wasn't sure. Miranda was busy with her family so she wasn't around for MTV or to visit a teahouse. She was starting to get under his skin he realised. A feeling he quite liked. He could still go out. He was sure to run into friends of some type. Perhaps meet someone new. Taipei was that kind of town.

As soon as Sean entered the apartment at Celestial Towers he was offered a lighted joint by Hamo who invited him to check out his recent work. Slides of Taipei street scenes. Hamo made the suggestion in an offhand way so Sean knew it was important to his friend. First Hamo would pick up a negative and examining it on a light board through a magnifying block. He gave Sean another magnifier and pretty soon there more more than a dozen slides scattered on the light board and the table. A photo of a boy on a bike at Shi Da market in crazy blurred colours. A black and white photo of the bank of motor scooters shot through the back window of a Taipei Yellow Taxi. A boy spinning a wooden top on the stones of a Temple courtyard. Sean turned the plastic sheets holding negatives until he found an old series Hamo had shot of Sean and Safira at Chiang Kai Shek memorial. He never tired looking at it. The two men smoked the joint, drank the Guinness stout Sean had bought downtown and listened to Paul Kelly on the stereo. Time passed and enjoyably so. Sean decided to stay home for a change instead of going out. He picked up his newly acquired account of Nazi Germany and sat outside on the balcony to savour the night breeze.

William Shirer had been a foreign correspondent in pre war Berlin and understood the politics and social change intimately. When Hitler and his wife of one hour in Eva Braun and their compatriots had committed suicide in their bunker, an archive of meticulously kept war papers were left untouched. Shirer's skill as a historian with access to this material resulted in a compelling account. Sean was reading about Hitler's ascent to power. The rabble rouser was building a power base in Munich. He also became obsessed by his beautiful niece.

"Frau Raubal brought along her two daughters, Geli and Friedl. Geli was twenty, with flowing blonde hair, handsome features, a pleasant voice and a sunny disposition which made her attractive to men.Hitler soon fell in love with her. He took her everywhere, to meetings and conferences, on long walks in the mountains and to the cafes and theaters in Munich. When in 1929 he rented a luxurious nine-room apartment in the Prinzregentenstrasse, one of the most fashionable thoroughfares in Munich, Geli was given her own room in it. Gossip about the party leader and his beautiful blonde niece was inevitable in Munich and throughout Nazi circles in southern Germany.[later] some deep rift whose origins and nature have never been fully ascertained grew between them. There has been much speculation but little evidence. Each was apparently jealous of the other. She resented his attentions to other women - to Winifred Wagner among others. He suspected that she had had a clandestine affair with Emil Maurice, the ex convict who had been his bodyguard. She objected too to her uncle's tyranny over her.There are hints too that she was repelled by the masochistic inclinations of her lover. That this brutal tyrant in politics yearned to be enslaved by the woman he loved - a not uncommon urge in such men, according to the sexologists .Whatever it was that darkened the love between the uncle and his niece, their quarrels became more violent and at the end of summer of 1931, Geli announced that she was returning to Venice to continue her voice lessons."

Sean leant back on his chair with his feet balancing on the balcony's metalwork balustrade. "Fuck, what an amazing love triangle between Geli, her psychopathic uncle and the the thug Maurice," he thought wryly, "Maybe I'll throw that into my next Basic class at Global Village as the lesson material. The students will love it."

At that moment a blood curdling scream rang out. "EEHHHYYYAAAHHHHH."

CHERRY! While Hamo and Sean had admired the photographs, chewed the fat and generally enjoyed themselves in a rather mild manner for a Friday night in Taipei, Cherry had stayed in the bedroom she shared with Hamo. She had sat on the bed and sulked. Now however at a quarter past midnight she was announcing her presence. "AAAAAYYYYRRRRR." she screamed again. Sean almost fell off his chair. He drew across the white cotton and bamboo blind that separated the living room from the balcony and saw that Hamo, despite the noise, was still sitting and looking at his latest photographs thought the monocle while cribbing them with a blue artist's pencil. Sean looked at Hamo and cleared his throat. Hamo peered from the light board, shrugged his shoulders but eventually got up to try and calm his her down. He returned to his broken peace on the balcony. From the hysterical abuse that Sean heard Cherry shower upon McTaggart's head in their connubial bedroom, the attempt at pacification wasn't working.

He picked up his book to continue reading. The insanely jealous Hitler had forbidden Geli to return to Venice to continue her singing lessons and a bitter argument had ensued.

"The next morning, Geli Raubal was found shot dead in her room.The coroner reported that a bullet had goen through her chest below the left shoulder and penetrated her heart; it seemed beyond doubt that the shot was self-inflicted."

"WWWAAAHHHH," Cherry screamed yet again but this time adding some guttural resonance to her high pitched frenzy.

"Mate, can you lend me a hand," Hamo yelled out plaintively. Sean rose reluctantly from his comfortable chair but just as he did so Cherry stormed past him clenching a large carving knife. She leant over the balcony rail and screamed into the purplish night sky. "I'm living with a foreign thief and liar who treats me like dirt and I hate him," she shouted.

The two Australians watched and listened, at first bemused and then with growing concern at Cherry's threats. She announced to the neighborhood that she was going to slit her wrists and throw herself onto the road. In that order. She yelled this out in a mixture of angst ridden English and Taiwanese at the top of her voice from the balcony while holding the large carving knife in her hand. Sean looked nonplussed at Hamo. "You'd better take her to bed and try to cool her down."

Hamo stared vacantly at Sean. "Fat chance but I guess I'll give it a go," he said.

Wisely, he made no movement towards her. Instead Sean reached over and carefully took the large chopper from Cherry's hand. He walked to the kitchen where he collected all the sharp knives and put them on top of the highest cupboards. Beyond Cherry's reach. A ridiculous gesture but the only precaution his tired mind could come up with. Sean contemplated riding down to the bars in Shi Da to escape the amateur dramatics but it was late and he had an early class later that same morning. He decided against that plan. Instead he went to his makeshift bed, the sofa in the living room next to the balcony, listening all the while to the escalating argument on the balcony, pulled a pillow over his head and tried to get some sleep. In the midst of Cherry's rantings, Sean's lack of interest, and Hamo's daydreaming, the rent was forgotten and they were told to leave. Later Sean wished he had let Cherry cut her arms off. It would have saved him a lot of grief.

THE END.

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