Your government is bad and you should feel bad

Today I was sitting in the park enjoying a relaxing day when a guy comes and starts smoking his cigarette near me while blowing the smog in my direction of course.

It's not the first time, and it's not because I'm in asia. Of course in asia everything gets intensified because there are many more people, but I've been having that problem pretty much all my life everywhere.

Same happens when I ride my bicycle every day, you get all the motorbikes and cars in front of you blowing you their toxic fumes, and even though I try to be health conscious and live a healthy life I have to breath waste, because yeah, people have to drive cars, right? and people have to smoke in the park, right?

So i leave the park, start walking and again thinking who's fault is it that i have to breath toxic gases every day, is it the guy who smokes or drives the car? No, because they don't think for themselves, they are a no more than a product of their environment.

The guy would had probably been smoking a grasshopper, it had been properly advertised and introduced into his environment, as for the guy who was driving a fossil fuel powered car, he would would be definitely driving a solar or electric car if it it was readily and conveniently available to him.

Is it the people who had educated them or lead them to think that making the air dirty and causing cancer to others and to themselves was the right thing to do? was the person who sold them the car or tobacco? was the one who produced it and allowed for its promotion and distribution? Yes of course they were but only to some degree, as for most of them, they are, same as the final consumer, just a product of poorly designed, poorly managed system.



A system where if I feed the poor it's good, but if I ask why the poor has no food and how can we change that, they will call me a communist, or an anarchist, or tell me I'm against the government, well of course I'm against the government and so should you.

So should you if you care about any other person besides yourself, or if you care about the animals or the environment. because your government knows it's idiotic that the world still runs on fossil fuel while we have so many other clean energy sources, It's not like we have one or two, we have more than 10, hydrogen, solar, tidal, wave, nuclear fusion, hydroelectric, wind, geothermal, radiant energy, biomass, etc. and your government knows it, yet they don't implement them.

I remember once while hitchhikinhg in finland some 5 years ago, got picked up by a driver who was driving a water powered car, he had been working on it for 20 years and showed me the whole mechanism and how it worked.

It was very strange for me as i had never seen anything like that, so i asked him of course why doesn't he share it with the world, so he told me the story about how they took his friend that had helped him develop it, and how all the people who develop renewable energy powered cars seem to just mysteriously vanish from the face of the earth, told me stories of some famous russians and north americans who had been taken together with their inventions.

Of course i didn't believe him, so when i got home i googled everything and it seemed he was right, everyone who tried to share it had disappeared.

Back to the park though, i keep walking and what do I see? The same thing i see every day, lots of office buildings, and construction sites (where they are always building new office buildings), the area is called Nangang, the city, Taipei.


Have you ever wanted to sit in an office for 10 hours a day? No? Me neither, but that seems to be the taiwanese dream right now, a business related job. If you have that job you are consider to be a successful person here.

Basically, most of the times, sitting in front of a computer, sending a few emails, making a few phone calls and doing some paper work, and that is in fact the idea that taiwanese have of a successful person.

It's just a trend of course, and it changes every decade, before it was engineer, before medicine and in 10 years it will be something different.

This people say they like money and they do it for the money, yet most of the times they barely make enough to survive. They don't really have much money but in their mind is all money money money.


Of course i tried to tell this people to ride a bicycle instead of car, to stop smoking, that money doesn't make people happy and that success is measured by how we interact and thrive within our environment,  instead of being measured by how we trash things up or by how much time we spend in a office causing  some trouble to others.

And what do I get for that? They look at me like I'm a lunatic and belong in a mental asylum or, like I come from mars and speak the tongue of my people. Others will say "you just don't understand the real world" or "that's how the world works".

"That's just how the world works" it is after all, just a phrase assholes use to justify doing awful things,  but what to say to this people who think they live in the "real world"? Well it's my world too, I also live in the real world and I'm tired of you and your government polluting the air I breath, the water I drink and poisoning the food i eat.

Air and water are like the very basic thing you should be trying to protect, if not for you at least for your descendants, instead of that you are a trashing machine. As soon as you wake up you make sure during the day you can cause as much pain and trouble to me and to your environment as possible.

First in your car when you go to work making my air dirty, then at work creating some sort of bureaucracy or paperwork to make my life more difficult while making sure you contribute to the waste of resources and the destruction of my planet in as many ways as you can.

Well, you know what people from nangang? I'm sick and tired of you, and your office buildings and your cars,  and your construction workers building more offices and your factories building more cars.

And even though nobody living in Nangang is reading this right now, and that person smoking in the park was probably not even aware he was polluting my air, this post will remain here, on the internet, as a silent protest from a person who always feels like he has no voice in this profoundly sick community.

One that, for the record, I feel very ashamed of belonging to.

Seba and TV

Seba joined a group of people that think TV will cease to exist.

No one said TV will not exist anymore, but no one denied it either and the group is based on a series of assumptions that say that TV will serve the same faith as the monocle.

Basically because it's a single function device, and we live in an era where everything has many functions, like the smart phone, the tablet, the computer, you can already watch TV and do a million other stuff on them.

That's why not many people wear wristwatches anymore, because they only do one thing.

So this group, what they do, they watch lots of TV every day, just in case they can't watch it anymore in the future.

That's like spending lots of time with the elevator man, because you know the elevator will be automated and you wont be seeing him anymore.

The other face of religion

Spending some time in taiwan has really changed my view on many many topics, society, politics, religion, etc

Religion here is some mixture of taoism and bushism with many gods and temples everywhere, and something like 90% of taiwanese people believe in some kind of something.

I had the chance to visit many of this temples and seeing people's faces while they pray usually makes me smile, not in a condescending way, but in a pure and humble one, like when seeing children playing, or cute puppies.

Usually when they have some trouble in their life they will go to the temple, offer some food or money, light some incense, and say their prayers.

Now there's nothing strange about that, most asian countries do something similar, and I'd seen the same countless times in india, thailand, etc. 

But the way they do it here is special.

There's such a peace and serenity while they pray, so much devotion and happiness.

In my case, and I assume is the same for most westerners, when we hear the word religion we think: terrorism, hate, war, pedophilia, child abuse, corruption, brainwashing, censorship, racism, homophobia, massacres, bigotry, fanaticism, ignorance, etc.

But when I see people's faces while praying here in taiwan, or the monks cleaning and taking care of the temples, I think to myself: this is what religion should be about, well, kind of.

About taiwan

Friend: Hey! How's life in Taiwan?

Bruno: Not bad, not bad at all, you know actually the main reason why I've always wanted to come here was that some of the best people I've met in my life were originally from here.

Friend: So people are nice there?

Bruno: As nice as they come

Friend: How about the weather?

Bruno: It's extremely hot of course, but I can adapt.

Friend: I thought you hated the heat.

Bruno: Well, it's just for a few months, I can manage.

Friend: You know I think I don't even know where Taiwan is.

Bruno: It's just some tiny island south east of china.

Friend: Is it part of china?

Bruno: Yes, of course, well..  no, not really, well, yes it is part of china, except because is not part of china.

Friend: What do you mean?

Bruno: It is part of china, except because they have their own language, their own culture, their own currency, their own government, chinese can't come here without a visa.

Friend: It sounds like it's not really part of china.

Bruno: Well, you know how politics work (they don't) so if you ask a chinese they will say taiwan is part of china, if you ask a taiwanese they will say it's not, it's a different country, and technically they are both right.

Friend: How is that possible?

Bruno: They made it in a way that it's part of china and it's also not part of china.

Friend: I'm getting confused now.

Bruno: Some countries accept it as a country some don't, so it just depends on who you ask, add some corruption, a few government conspiracies there and you got taiwan.

Friend: Fair enough, good to hear you like it there though.

Bruno: Yeah, it's nice to  be here.

Ready to die 2

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the concept of death.

I learned that life is fragile, and unless you're a very basic form of life, for most of us advanced organism with many cells and organs, there's only one.

So we gotta make the most of it, right? Or does it even matter?

Life is so fragile that if a bus hits me while I'm crossing the street I will die and everything I did all this years will not matter at all.

Whether I build a space station or stay at home masturbating every day for 20 years will make no difference whatsoever, because I will close my eyes and will never open them again, pretty mind blowing right?

Now that's not a valid excuse to stay at home masturbating I know, if everyone thought like that we wouldn't get anywhere, but it's hard to know that all the things you've accumulated all this years will be gone.

I'm not talking about material things of course, but about knowledge and experience, all the things you've done and thing's you've learned, the people you've met, gone just like that, the bus hits you and that's it.

Maybe the bus doesn't hit you, maybe it's just a bicycle, it hits your chest and a rib punctures a lung, or you get some internal bleeding, or you step on something and break your neck. Our bodies are so fragile, that every day we could die in a million different ways.



In japan some people go to die at the Aokigahara forest, many others jump in front of the train, some jump from the window at work or at school.

Up to 30.000 japanese kill themselves every year, that's one every 15 minutes.

Around 15.000 a year in south korea, so like 1 every half an hour.

And that's just 2 countries.

Sociologists and psychologists say the causes of suicide are usually stress, competition, social pressure and emotional isolation, but i wonder is it really that, or those people realized it didn't really matter when they die.

That either now or in a few years or when they are old, but they will have to die, there's no way around it. So they chose to do it sooner.

In the animal kingdom there are only a few insects that can willingly take their own lives for no apparent reason. Most of them try to adapt to their environment, to the food they find, to the weather, to some stimuli.

But not us, some humans, specially some japanese humans will jump from the building, just like that.


That reminds me of once I did bungee jumping in china, I was so scared, and they had to push me.


How can some people do it without getting pushed I can't understand.

Plant a seed

Making a comment on facebook or some other website is like plating a seed, you put something there and maybe it will grow, maybe not, like auctioning something on ebay, maybe you get money, maybe not, you never know.

The wait is nice though, makes you hope for something, give you something to look forward to, specially if you have no life outside the internet.

And the best is planting the seeds before going to sleep and checking if they grew when you wake up.

Most times they don't grow of course, but it gives us something to keep ourselves busy with, us people with no life.

Find an excuse

Friend: Why do you travel?

Bruno: I don't travel, I'm always in taipei.

Friend: So why did you travel before, were you trying to find something?

Bruno: Not really, but you know sometimes you pretend you are looking for something, but actually you just want to have fun looking for it, if you find or not doesn't really make any difference.

Friend: How's that?

Bruno: Well it's like some people when you ask them while are they still single, they say they are searching or waiting for the right person, when actually they are having a great time looking for that person and trying different partners to see if some fits them, or another example are people who go to college or university, they don't do it to get a piece of paper like a diploma after many years, they go there for the parties, for the clubs, the environment, to be away from their parents, because they know they will make friends for life there and hook up with lots of people, you see in the end they had so much fun in college that the paper doesn't really matter at all, it was just an excuse to do something fun.

Same goes for me.

I don't want to achieve anything and not looking for anything, sometimes  just find excuses for doing what i want. for example when i went to germany i signed up for the language school there, just to tell people i do something, but the school was only 2 hours a day and i didn't learn much, life in berlin was, on the other hand, probably one of the best times of my life.

Friend: Got it, so first i have find an excuse to do what i want, and then i can do it.

Bruno: Yeah well, it has to be a socially accepted idea, for people with narrow minds, so should be either work, study or travel, you can not just say you're going to romania to find dracula or going to russia to build a time machine, people will look at you like "what?" it has to be something they can understand and relate to at the same time

Friend: Work, study or travel, got it.

Bruno: Anything else?

Friend: I think that's it for today.

Bruno: Alright then.

tide goes in

Tim will be coming to taipei next week, he's a really funny guy but doesn't know it.

He's funny because he always makes the "tide goes in tide goes out face".

Not many people would recognize that face though, Tim surely doesn't.

But it looks really funny when he does it.