Cordoned

“Considering moving…”

The joint across my apartment is what Taiwanese calls a “uniform store” – a rather high-end store you would find on the street of a red light district. It’s actually so notorious that when I tell taxi drivers the intersecting streets to my apartment building, two out of five times they ask me in response whether if it’s near that store. Everybody that goes into that place think they know somebody or at least they knew somebody that knew somebody. Ignorant and cocky men pop in, night in and night out, thinking they rule the world. Allegedly, gang members broke out into a fight last night, again. It actually started inside the store and carried on outside – people called people – and next thing you know there was some two hundred on the scene. Before long, police showed up but when trying to break up the fight, they got tangled up in it themselves. To stop it from getting out of control, one of the police officer drew his pistol and shot three times towards the sky, putting an end to this outrageous havoc.

On the way home from dinner tonight, there were a lot of cars parked on either side of the street and groups of people just hanging around. The security guards of our apartment building claim there is a round two tonight. It’s dangerous yet sad and funny how some people just don’t have better things to do with their weekday nights. It’s like these people watched too many Hong Kong gangster films (古惑仔) – most of the ones called over to fight were merely teenagers, carrying mainly bats and watermelon knives. What’s more bothering is the fact that this is becoming a weekly, if not daily, occurrence, but there’s always never any news coverage and this store somehow manages to reopen every night. It goes to show that corruption is really a growing problem even in developed countries. I was never really aware of the rampant gang violence that goes on in downtown until recently and I must say, some people have too much money, too much time, and just too little charm.

The humidity fucking me up – throat infected again… time to rest.