Today instead of walking to my house, I decided to explore a little bit more of the area in which I live. I don't remember if I mentioned before but I moved recently. To a different part of Jilong but typical Taiwan it's only about a 10-12 minute walk from where I used to live but it looks completely different. My building is directly across from a train line and I live about a 45 second walk from a commuter train station. Also typical Taiwan, due to the ever-present security cameras the building seems quite safe and it's not particularly sketchy. There's a stream that runs by my house, although by stream I mean something that seems to be similar to the branch of the LA River that used to run through my neighborhood in LA. By LA River, I mean a canal that for all intents and purposes acts as a sewer. However there are things living in it, I discovered. There's a school of fish that live in it and a water bird of some kind which hunts in it.
I haven't explored much around the area but taking the train back one day I did start to wonder what the area is like and so today rather than going right home I walked a little farther along my street and found not one but two awesome things. I'm going to try to take some pictures when I buy a camera having DESTROYED my old one and a precious roll of film in an act of unbelieveable stupidity. Anyway until then I'll try to describe them.
The first thing is a garden that someone has created set into the train platform. The train actually runs about a story above the street so there's this tall blue wall that makes up one side of my street. Anyway someone has set a tree, and millions of plants and birdcages into the wall. It's really beautiful and amazing. Hopefully it will still look cool tomorrow.
The other thing that I found was also sort of awesome but in a different sort of way. As I kept walking I saw this sort of tiled courtyard. Literally it's just a square of tiled concrete with walls. On these walls are giant panels of graffiti and swearwords, I think. Mostly in English. However the sign says, 龍門區兒童樂園 or Longmen District's Children's Playground or Happy Garden litterally. My feelings were, "Well, fuck, if this is a playground what else is there to do but cover the place with graffiti."
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1 comment:
Storm drain. Ballona "Creek" was like a storm drain. Or, in muni-speak, a flood protection channel. OK, there were old bicycles, appliance cartons, and tires in there sometimes, but... Anyway that garden sounds nice.
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