James’s Blog

I still can’t believe that I found one of my favorite pop songs back in the Taiwan days last night, in someone’s blog. It’s called 不懂的事 (Things I don’t understand), sung by the duo 知己二重唱. The song was released as part of the album 六個朋友 (Six friends), a collection of works from six artists, among whom was 張雨生, one of my childhood pop idols. Turns out that of course, he has a fan site and a Wikipedia entry. 張雨生’s life story is pretty tragic; a few years ago he died at the peak of his career at the age of 31 from an auto accident.

Anyway, back to the song. It’s a rare pop song talking about something other than love and relationship–it talks about enjoying one’s youth. This is a point made more poignant because the song is part of the memories I have from spending a carefree summer (’88? ‘89?) with my sister, and my consins Cody and Vincent. The song, the lyrics, and my attempt at the translation, after the jump.

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While sifting through some old emails, Wolf reminded me of the story of the whale that exploded in the street of Tainan, Taiwan. Which inevitably brings up that other story about the whale that beached 35 years ago in Florence, Oregon. They tried to get rid of the carcass by dynamiting it. The results were mixed.

There is now a website dedicated to exploding whales, and other exploding things.