The old and new seem to live together quite peacefully in Taiwan, unlike some other countries, where Western culture is taking over Tradition. Here's MD's next to a traditional Taiwanese funeral (I think it was a funeral, but I'm just an ignorant Westerner, so feel free to correct me!).

Sparklers are great to take photos of, especially if you can focus correctly (doh!)

boo. Culinary creativity at a coffee shop outside the city.

Here's a siloette of Jo, that Craig took.

Messing around with torches, Jo, and Craig at an abandoned amusement park NE of Taichung.

Approaching typhoon.

Here's my new bike. It rides well and looks pretty sharp, too (well IMHO anyway). It cost me NT$24000 which is incredibly cheap for what it is. Cheesy name though... Maybe I'll erase the 'D'.

Taiwanese baseball games are something different. I've never seen such commited fans as those of 'Brother Elephant's Baseball Club' of Taibei. Drums, trumpets, a loudspeaker and 500 plastic banging-cones (one of which my camera was peering down in this picture), should have kept the yellow team psyched up for the duration of their 2 hour game against the Whales (also from Taibei) on Sunday.

Ever wondered what the average 8-year-old Taiwanese kid looks like? Probably not. Anyway, here's my new class. I'm slowly learning their names, but the twins are confusing!

Post Typhoon Haita Damage.

Typhoon madness. This kind of thing is not recommended by the way! While we were out, we saw at least one piece of sheet metal flying down the street at a perfect flesh-slicing speed. Rather stay indoors until the wind has died down!

Lanterns swinging wildly in the typhoon wind. Credit to Rob Sparrow for the idea!

Traditional Chinese 'chop' ink.

Flourescent lightbulb.

And here's me messing around with my camera as usual. This is a real photo, no digital manipulation, I promise! I put a beer bottle in front of my camera's flash and got this result. Kindof freaky, I guess.

Here's an interesting natural arangement I discovered on the way out of the gorge where we'd been walking. This dead tree has become life for a whole bunch of other things.

Here we are doing our thing. The water was pretty cold and being out of the sunshine was pretty chilly. Great fun though.

Here's the group I went river tracing with. A great bunch of guys and an excellent Sunday.

On Sunday I went 'river tracing' which is basically walking up a river, through the river. On the trip there, I managed to capture this great piece of scenery. Taiwan's cities might be ugly, but there are some fantastically beautiful places to visit if you get out of the urban areas.

Amazing colors in a single leaf.

There's art all around us, you've just got to open your eyes...

Big helmet, tiny kid!

3 of my students from a computer class that I taught.

Looking out over Taichung.

I really don't know what this is all about, but it's clearly some kind of map.

On the outskirts of Taichung there is small forest. This is from the road looking down on the trees.

Night market textures, part 4 - what is this?.

Night market textures, part 3 - bounce and win.

Night market textures, part 2 - toys in a machine.

Night market textures, part 1 - eggs.

In South Africa, 1 box cutter for NT$10 would be very cheap. Well, here are 4 for a grand total of NT$10! How do they design, manufacture, package, distribute and still manage to make a product for the cost of 3 slices of bread? It boggles my mind.

$NT10. That's R2, and it's a functioning alarm clock. Incredible.

Taiwan is so cheap! All of the items you can see here cost $NT10 (R 2). There are watches, swimming goggles, water pistols etc...

A typical Taiwanese night market.