New Year's Resolutions

This evening, I do what I always do on New Year's Eve. I stay home and relax. I've never felt the New Year was an important event, just people getting drunk, and lots of cops on the streets, looking for drunk drivers. People making resolutions they don't keep. And more drinking and rowdiness. At least that's the way it is in the States.


This is a picture of Taipei 101 last New Year's Eve. It pretty much looked the same this year.

Or perhaps it's my Jewish heritage. My ancestors used a different calendar, dictated by the moon, not the sun, and the new year starts during the new moon in the fall, during harvest time. Perhaps your ancestors are always inside of you, deciding your innermost desires, your fate, your girlfriends, and you can't get away from them. Just a fun thought.

Despite my customary indifference to New Years' celebrations, I did go outside tonight. I live on a mountain, and sure enough, the part of the street about 100 meters uphill from my house was packed with spectators. That's the part of the street that has a clear view of the tallest buiding in the world, which we call Taipei 101. I was happy to see my neighbors. I like being around kids and dogs and families. And I really love Taiwanese people, too. There wasn't a drunk, rowdy dude among them. (Why is that?)

All of us waited until midnight when Taipei 101 began to light up. Fireworks. It was a beautiful light show. Like many people, I clapped when I saw the fireworks. I guess fireworks are one of the ways we mortals can get a taste of magic. This massive steel structure that represents serious business for the rest of the year, tonight becomes something out of a fantasy film. Giving us a taste of a different reality, a magical reality, one that we all long for deeply, even though we may not know it consciously.

I just got home, and thought I would share with you some of my New Year's Resolutions for 2007:

1. Become a top DJ of Asia and travel to Bangkok, Tokyo, Singapore and do commercials to encourage kids do not do drugs except for some glue sniffing, because it actually smells pretty good.

2. Learn to consciously control growth of body hair on specific areas of my body.

3. Increase my Chinese vocabulary, not by studying, but my mystical methods, including chanting of mantras, lighting incense, prayer, meditation, and gigong exercises.

4. Audition for the next James Bond movie, most of which will be filmed in Muzha. Do your own stunts, including jumping out of Taipei 101 with a parachute to escape bad guys.

5. Invent new recipes for common Taiwanese dishes based on my dreams.

6. Master psychokinesis, starting with small polystyrene cookie wrappers, and then with yarmulkes, and then medium-sized lumber.

7. Memorize all Jay Chou songs. Ask Taiwanese girls at bus stops if they like Jay Chou. If they do not, then keep singing his songs to them until they hit you with their umbrella.

8. Win the Belgian lotto.

9. Start e-mail campaign to McDonald's, petitioning them to import wulong tea from Muzha for flavoring their fastfood products, including "McTie Guan Yin" ice cream and "McWulongburger", so that tea farmers can provide better education for their kids, including English lessons.

10. Invent new style of dancing combining elements of tango, breakdancing, and bungee jumping.

11. Invent personal version of simplified Chinese and popularize it using Blogger.

12. Invent new operating system for PC, combining best elements of Linux and Windows and give all profits to fakirs of India for emergency care.

13. Do more Internet research to finally find connection between 9/11 and invasion of Iraq.

14. Start a movement in Taipei and other cities, making it a misdemeanor punishable by a small fine of 400NT for women who weigh less than 50 kilograms to say, "I am fat".

15. Petition Taipei government to increase number of public trash cans from 12 to 846.

16. Sing Taiwanese songs on Taipei MRT trains using traditional puppets for illustration of romantic elements of songs.

17. Plant a garden in front of my apartment that has all different kinds of melons.

18. Start making my own clothing from bamboo leaves, feathers in parks, and chopstick wrappers.

19. Invent a new Chinese instrument called the kucheng, based on the guzheng. Actually, it will be exactly the same, but I will package it differently and use a different spelling and invest a lot in infomercials, and people will really believe that it is a new instrument, especially in the States.

20. Try to talk more sense into religious people by taking out a full page ad in major newspapers in the U.S., telling them that they can't support killing people in other countries, even if does support the dominance of U.S. capitalism, a system which ensures that they have a job and health insurance, because that's what it says in their bible.

21. Visit one old Taiwanese couple a week, asking them about their first date, and write a book based on these stories which will be translated into at least 23 different languages.

22. Distribute small camcorders to Taiwanese kids between the ages of four and eight with a self-addressed stamped envelope, asking them to randomly film their lives, but to make sure they don't let their parents know about the project so they can have more artistic freedom. Then, after they send them back to you combine the videos and edit them so that they fit together seemlessly and distribute worldwide.

23. Build a Buddhist temple in Muzha made out of used pencil erasers, so that people can go there and forget their problems, including memories of asshole boyfriends, mean bosses, and betrayals by best friends in high school.

24. Start a movement to require all people in the world practicing yoga to memorize the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali in Sanskrit to ensure that they know how to ethically use the powers they gain after doing a lot of yoga.

25. Write a letter to the government of China, asking them to be nice, because their country is getting more popular, and if they want to continue this trend, it's pretty important.

26. E-mail Starbucks in Taiwan to set up a meeting so I can do a Powerpoint presentation explaining why Pork Pita and Bacon Bagels are offensive.

27. Do a reality show in Taiwan in which I go on dates with Elva, Jolin, and Lin Chi-lin, and try to fight with them for no reason, and see who gets most annoyed.

28. Go to SOGO and other department stores and conduct salsa classes in Chinese in their food courts. Bring Taiwanese friends from school who walk around distributing pamphlets stating that I am a famous teacher from Puerto Rico.

29. Decrease humidity in Taiwan.

30. Become chums with managers at major drug company plants in the U.S. and hatch a plan to secretly replace all anti-depressants with a mixture of soy protein powder and green tea extract, but use the same capsules, and anxiously await to see what happens.

31. Only wear sexy underwear every day, and then at the end of day keep track of how I feel, using a scale of 1 to 10. Then, at the end of the year, do a statistical analysis to see if it really works. I bet you I will feel outstanding.