text/gemini
# Checking in – May & June 2024
There was no blog last month because I was out to a trip at the time I would write these diaries, and I don't really feel like much have happened anyway. In any case it is now the end of the month again so it's time for something new to happen.
Although, like the previous months relatively little has happened otherwise . I don't even know how to summarise the month specifically, but here are a few special events that I have done for myself. There is one notable non-event, though. I have not been able to catch the aurora because it hasn't ventured south enough in my longitude. I've heard that Cuba has seen it and it is about the same latitude, but it's simply not as strong in the eastern hemisphere.
## Taiwan trip
So yeah one of the things that I have done over the last month was to go to Taiwan again, this time because my parents are having to deal with a relative and also to catch up with the pair. Somehow we managed to get the same taxi driver who went all the way down south from Taipei to Taichung where we are visiting to get us to some places.
I can't emphasise just how much value this tourist-taxi service is compared to making up your own itinerary or following a tour. Because they have a car, you get to see places that you would normally never go to or have to arrange for to visit. It's also easy to slip outside to more rural areas that few non-locals would consider otherwise, and that is a benefit both for us, who can go to less crowded areas as they are lesser known, and for the vendors there who would not have had our business otherwise. Though, Taiwan being what it is, you can't get too obscure.
So we managed to find ourselves up in some tall hills where we went to a petting zoo and had goats climb up our trousers, and also went over a whole mountain set to some other places which are bona-fide tourist attractions but hard to get to like Sun Moon Lake. The train service here is poor and although Taichung has a single metro line, it runs circumferential to the city and all our journeys are radial so it's completely of no use to us.
Also I ate kind of well over there and the hotel was pretty good. In the last day I went to the science museum there just to see what's around and yeah it is well worth it. I get to see a dinosaur fossil (full scale model?) for the first time.
## Rainbow Gala 31
The other highlight in June was a doujin convention, which is special because it's the last time that it would be held in the one and only venue that it has ever been in called KITEC. The venue is slated to be torn down and redeveloped into Yet Another Mixed Use Building containing the standard shopping-centre–office–flat combination, but that's another story.
Anyway for this one time I decided to do something a little different and drive there as well because the usual way of getting there by bus is awkward and the humidity is such that my skin would probably not be able to cope. So I did that and yeah I think it was worth it, even though it seems somewhat wasteful to lug 2000 kg of car just to carry me around, less than one-twentieth of the mass. Not to mention the parking and tunnel tolls, which is expensive in itself, but at least there is plenty of space and the spaces are themselves spacious.
As for the event itself, well I did spend a lot of money on guff, (and I would say that the parking receipt /is/ a souvenir) but this time I made sure everything I bought is small or compact so I don't have to worry about storing them. It's the usual vtuber thingies, which I generally like to the point where it is the only reason I'm there, but there are other things around there too, some of which might not be the traditional 'doujin' stuff. In particular, this time around there's Polandball things too, which is not what I would be expecting. Add in a smattering of American cartoons and that basically wraps up the minority groups around the doujin convention. I wonder where they would set up shop next time around.
## Mass, Health, Food and the rest
Now I am below 70 kg. It's a combination of some unexplained but welcome reduction in appetite. Likely, it has something to do with me trying to keep my own spending down. I'm trying to keep my spending below HKD 100 daily for partially aesthetic reasons but also because I want to not spend as much anyway.
But I have been getting into eating in other restaurants. I know this because I've been keeping records of where I go to eat and increasingly I have found myself reaching for the colour corresponding to "other restaurant". So that's definitely a thing.
I've also noticed a general uptrend in time taken to do things. I keep getting distracted and thinking about something else. Also, I've realised i spent a lot of time thinking about what I have to do or have done and less on actually doing those things. Perhaps that may need fixing.
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