I spend way too much time on the net...

... so I'm cutting back as of today. I'll probably just post things at the weekend. The idea is to wean myself off the Internet on weekdays to free up more time for wholesome things like reading novels, something I'd like to do a lot more of.

Red millipede

Jason has a wonderful eye for spotting bugs. Maybe that's because he is closer to the ground than me! This magnificent specimen was walking past our doorstep just as we were coming home the other day. It's lucky I didn't accidentally squish him.

To squish or not to squish
By Naruwan.

Baby contest

Whether parents like it or not, as soon as their baby is born they are entered into a grand competition – a baby contest. It begins right from the moment your bawling bundle of joy is weighed. Lucas was 3 kg when he was born. “Although that’s not an impressive weight…” wrote one of my relatives in an email (!)
It seems that the heavier the baby at birth the better, even though there is absolutely no correlation between birth weight and weight after 12 months. But this is just the opening event in the Baby Olympics.



Another major event is “How Much Milk Does Your Baby Drink?” Jason was terrible at this event, only managing to put away a measly 60 cc of moo juice at a time, and yet has managed to achieve a normal height and weight for his age.

Our next door neighbour asked Kelly yesterday how much milk Lucas could drink. The gauntlet had been thrown down.
"120cc, no problem,” replied Kelly with pride. I admit I too find it gratifying that Lucas has a good appetite.
"Only 120?” scoffed Mrs. White, “Our granddaughter could drink that much at one month!” The granddaughters’ parents live and work in Taipei and come down to visit at the weekends. Kelly still had a trump up her sleeve.
"Ah, but Lucas can drink that much every two hours.” This much is true.
Mrs. White thought for a moment and then conceded that their baby only had that much milk every two and a half hours. She skulked off, dejected. Ha! So we won. 1-0 to us. [whole family performs victory dance]

By the way, Lucas is now over 6kg and we think he is going to win the Earliest Talker event too. He has already started babbling a little. So watch out -
our baby is better than your baby!

Daddy, you're scaring me

I've come across the 'magnified eye effect' a lot at Flickr and thought I would like to have a go myself. It was a lot harder than I thought. Lucas was moving around as was my hand, and it took a good second or so for the camera to focus in the low light which explains why it's somewhat out of focus.

I've recently discovered that at Flickr you can greatly increase the number of photos you can upload in a month by compressing the file right down to 5%. It's great because it has no noticeable effect on image quality even when viewed at full screen in your browser.
I reckon next month I'll be able to upload about 50 pictures. I have a lot of pics both old and new that I'd like to put on show.

What are you looking at, baby?
By Naruwan.

"The number of fingers is five."

This is "What is wrong with this picture? {Part 2)"
You know if you're a lateral thinker, there is a way in which the number of fingers can be five. Think Roman.

Mid-Autumn Festival

Forget the Great Wall of China, I would love to see a thermal image of Taiwan from space during Mid-Autumn festival with all those barbecues up and down the country merrily sizzling away.

On Saturday evening we went round to Lillian's house with fruit and salad things Kelly had prepared. Afterwards we visited Xiao-jen and her family just around the corner who were having a lovely feast then we had a stroll around Chung-Hsing university and let the kids tear around in front of the library. Poor Jocelyn collided with another kid and bashed her chin on the ground.



As you can see I have been having fun playing around with the shots I deliberately took without flash. It's amazing what you can do. Some of these shots came out virtually all black but by cranking up the 'fill light' and 'highlights' with some added shadow you can create some striking effects.

Gaming the system

I'm adding this here because for some reason I can't edit my previous post. Anyway, Jason often cracks me up with his logical analysis of the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus.

He just asked me whether he would get two more coins from the Tooth Fairy if he put his two teeth under his pillow again tonight. I said it that I didn't think it worked like that. Undeterred, Jason responded by asking how the Tooth Fairy would know and could he try it anyway!

He's been chipping away at the Santa hoax for the past two Christmases. During one conversation on the subject he forced me to concede that if kids are only a little bit naughty they will still receive presents. He then went on to zero in on exactly how naughty you would have to be to get struck off Santa's gift list.
I really have to think on my feet these days. Last Christmas I had to waffle and fudge an impromptu explanation as to why our neighbours' kids didn't get presents from Santa.

Jason's milk teeth are coming out

Two of Jason's teeth at the bottom were very wobbly and ready to come out so on Saturday morning the dentist helped them along during a check-up. I thought Jason would be in tears but he was fine, not even a whimper.

Of course now he is very proud of his gap. He keeps the teeth in a dinky tooth-shaped container and shows them to people any chance he gets. When he wakes up this morning he'll discover two 50 dollar coins under his pillow that the tooth fairy left for him last night.

Nice haircut

Thanks again to Alice for sending me this. Kelly thinks Lucas has a very similar face. I'm not so sure. That was my favourite jumper, by the way.

Photoblogs.org - Taiwan

There are two dozen photoblogs listed under 'Taiwan' at photoblogs.org. Some are good, some are crap, and some are not even Taiwan blogs. There are also some notable absences.
I think I'm going to have to devise my own personal top ten Taiwan photoblogs - sift the wheat from the chaff.

There are also several Taiwan bloggers out there who take great photos but are not photobloggers per se - Roger in Taiwan, for example. Look at the picture on the left: that is one cracking good photo. Also, check out the one he took of himself with the bottom of a bottle covering the flash. A very weird and wonderful effect. I'm thinking of trying something like that with coloured sweet wrappers. More fun that just sliding scales in an image editor.

"Homo" hippo car sticker

Michael Turton's post yesterday about names of Japanese cars reminded me of this shot I took in Jan this year.
Incidentally, we test drove one of these Solios last year. Horrible, horrible cars. Horrible to look at and horrible to drive.

"Homo" hippo car sticker
By Naruwan.

Ice cream staredown

Alice sent me this great pic of Jason and Mark that she took during our day trip to Birmingham. Jason has grown so much since then. In the picture he looks like someone else's little boy who bears an uncanny resemblance to Jason.

Ice cream staredown
Originally uploaded by Naruwan.

台灣影像部落閣 'Taiwan Images On The Blog'

歡迎來到~台灣影像部落閣。行政院新聞局為配合中央推動深植本土文化政策，並鑑於中部地區長期缺乏完整介紹台灣風俗民情、庶民文化及自然生態的影像視聽資料場所，主動規劃設立「台灣影像部落閣」，爰引網際網路「BLOG」（部落閣）之精神，提供一處能讓中部地區青年學子及民眾觀賞紀錄影片與閱讀的場所，真實呈現台灣本土的文化價值暨濃郁的人文關懷。

The government has set up a centre in Taichung for images of Taiwanese culture (i.e. photographic exhibitions and a library of DVD documentaries). I am not sure where the 'blog' part comes in as it does not seem to have anything to do with blogging. There's a small library and a screening room upstairs. Could be worth checking out.





部落閣地址：(40304)台中市西區自由路一段150.號聯絡電話 04-22249632, 傳真：04-22296800

A funny telephone conversation

Sometimes when I call people on the phone and they hear that I am a foreigner, they freeze up, panic and run away for assistance.

A while back I called my friend, Lillian. Her mother-in-law, pictured above with her son Johnny, got the phone:

Me: 喂,你好. Lillian 在嗎?
L's M-I-L: 什麼人?
Me: Lillian 在不在?
L's M-I-L: [walks away from the phone and yells to son, Johnny in Taiwanese]
美國人....怎麼說?* [I hear Johnny saying something then she comes back to the phone.]
AH-MAY-REE-KA [she hangs up]

In 1993...

...there were no typhoons. It was the year I arrived in Taiwan and I was kind of disappointed. I was looking forward to seeing one - something exciting to put in the journal.

Now we've got typhoons by the bucket. Typhoon Khanun appears to be headed this way according to some reports, but at the time of posting the Taiwan weather folks seem to think it's going to veer off before it reaches us. Hope so.



Everyone out there named Khanun try not to fret. It's probably not going to kill any (or many) people. It's the girls and women called Katrina you want to feel sorry for.

The grooviest toilet seat in the land

Went to B&Q yesterday and bought possibly the sparkliest toilet lid in Taiwan. I spent at least 10 minutes opening up each box to compare which lid had the best aesthetic arrangement of seashells.



I know you're thinking, 'What is the world coming to when people start blogging about their toilet seats?' Well, you're just jealous. You just have a think about that when you're next sitting on your plain old toilet seat.

But what about the best beef noodles in Taichung?

2005台北牛肉麵節~世界牛肉麵之都在台北

I wish I could be up in Taipei at the moment slurping down some quality beef noodles at the beef noodle festival. The best bowl of beef noodles I've ever had in Taipei was at a place on Zhong-zheng Rd. Man, I could eat bowl after bowl from that restaurant if I had a big enough stomach. I wonder if that place is still there.

But what about the best beef noodles down here in Taichung?
The best place is without doubt a restaurant on Xue-shr Rd., near the China Medical University emergency department (!). It's called General Beef Noodles (in Chinese, see pic below) and is run by an elderly gentleman with a scraggy white beard. His beef noodles are completely different from the normal stuff you get. Most beef noodle places use beef broth made from those nasty generic bags of spice which have an overly heavy emphasis on star anise. The broth at the General's place is much more subtle. It's not too salty and the beef is very 'gamey'. Not to everyone's taste but very much to mine.

"Laden vs. USA" handheld game

When I saw this game in the convenience store just down the road from my house (in Taiwan) I knew I had to buy it. This was several months after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The label on the back indicates that it was made in Nanhai city, Guangdong province, China.





A view of the back.

Google Maps + Flickr

Check out this amazing bit of experimental software that Flickr member .CK is developing which marries Google Maps with geotagged Flickr photos. Is this not utterly awesome?

Google Maps in Flickr
Originally uploaded by .CK.

May as well jump on the bandwagon and post this

The story behind this logo can be found in this Forumosa thread. Poagao came up with the idea and Andre designed it. Congratulations chaps - it's a winner!

Talim, Breaker of Trees

More pics of the aftermath of Talim - these three were taken at Taichung city's Health Park.




Taichung city's Health Park was hit pretty bad by Talim and lost a lot of fairly sizable trees.



Someone on another blog (Mesheel?) said that Talim was more sound than fury in Taichung. Tell that to the trees in Health Park !



I guess the farmer pretty much figured that his field of corn would be flattened.

Typhoon Talim

I ventured out onto the streets in the afternoon when the wind and rain had calmed down a bit. Chung-Hsing Rd. was pretty much as it was last time with broken branches, twigs and assorted vegetation strewn everywhere.





Crunch! A shot from our roof showing a blue flatbed truck underneath a fallen tree. Luckily it missed those gas tanks.





This must have blown from right across the street to have landed there. Scary.




Fortunately we weren't really affected by Talim. We did have a 2-hour power outage in the late afternoon which for some reason only affected our street. There's supposed to be another typhoon just around the corner - it never rains but it pours.

Celluloid blasts from the past

Last Sunday afternoon I decided to have a dig around to see if I could find the photos of damaged buildings I took a couple of days after the 921 earthquake. I found hundreds and hundreds of photos, but that particular set eluded me. I can't describe how intensely annoyed I am with myself for having misplaced these great photos. I did however unearth some great stuff, and thought it would be prudent to scan some of the better ones just in case they go mouldy or something.



I took this pic of Jason about two and half years ago at some sort of tourist farm in central Taiwan, the name of which escapes for the moment. It's basically a picturesque field that you pay to enter. Jason loved it, running and tumbling about on the grass slopes.