Roger In Taiwan

My new blog

2007-01-28T09:14:00.000+08:00

Hello all.
I've got a new blog. It's www.rogergordon.net/blog
I'm also studying Chinese. Check www.rogergordon.net/chinese to see my progress (or lack of it :p)

THANK YOU

2006-10-28T05:43:00.000+08:00

Thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to visit my blog during the last 2 years, and especially those who have posted comments. If you would like to email me, my email address is

'roger' and then 'gordon' and I'm at 'gmail dot com'. There are no spaces in my address. Sorry to make it so cryptic, but if I just give it to you, I'll get lots of spam mixed in with your friendly emails!

I'm not out of touch, just not posting on this blog anymore. I'll be adding stuff to my site in future and I'm trying to expand it as much as possible, so have a look periodically.

Closing...

2006-10-28T05:39:00.000+08:00

I've left Taiwan. Sad as it was to go, I'm enjoying living in South Africa again. I'm trying to get into web design and as a start I've made my own page at my own domain. If you're interested, you can take a look at

www.rogergordon.net

It's not the best, but it's a start.

Long way down - Taipei 101 part 2

2006-08-19T00:22:00.000+08:00

89 floors, to be exact. Amazingly, the elevator takes 35 seconds to get up or down.

Taipei 101

2006-08-19T00:19:00.000+08:00

I had been there before, but never at night. Amazing is all I can say. The view is unbelievable.

New phone

2006-08-19T00:13:00.000+08:00

I got a new one! I can read the Bible and listen to MP3's on it at the same time. For those interested in the model, it's a Motorola ROKR E2.

Alishan 4

2006-08-18T23:58:00.000+08:00

Art class.

Alishan 4

2006-08-18T23:55:00.000+08:00

Here's one of my favourite photos from the trip - it's a happy kid with a game of 'pass the rubber band to your friend using a straw in your mouth' going on in the background.

Alishan 3

2006-08-18T23:52:00.000+08:00

Here's picture of a funny game my friend Grace designed for the kids which consisted of blowing a ping pong ball out of a bowl of flour. It was so funny to watch!!

Alishan 2

2006-08-18T23:46:00.000+08:00

Moonrise... without a tripod - man, I was annoyed with myself! Well here's a blurry shot to give you an idea anyway.

Alishan 1

2006-08-18T23:42:00.000+08:00

My company (Hess Educational Organisation) has a 'foundation' which they put money into in order to help kids in Taiwan who don't have much. I went up to Alishan (Ali Mountain) a week or two ago to help out and had a great time with some good kids. Having a 5 and 12-year-old in the same classroom proved to be a little difficult to control, especially since my Chinese is so bad, but it was great fun anyway. Here's a pic of the kind of view you get from the little school in the Mountains.

Yakiniku

2006-08-18T23:35:00.000+08:00

is the general term for (Japanese?) barbecue restaurants in which you pay a set fee and get to barbecue/braai as much food as you want to for an hour and a half. I've been to a few of them recently and can highly recommend them to the meat hungry visitor on a budget. Normally an evening at one of these restaurants costs about US$13 or so.

Friends

2006-08-18T23:32:00.000+08:00

I never put photos on this blog that I don't think are relevant to a stranger visiting this site. Well today is a little different. Here are some of my buddies from work.

Cheers, Craig and Jo!

2006-08-18T23:30:00.000+08:00

A belated farewell to two of my best friends here in Taiwan, Craig and Jo. They will both be sorely missed!

My church

2006-08-18T23:25:00.000+08:00

...just got a website. Visit it at www.taichungchristianchurch.com Here's a picture of a hand and the rest of church during one of our Sunday morning worship services. Oh and if anyone is looking for a Bible based non-denominational church that has bilingual everything, come along and visit us. Address details are on the church website.

Taichung Science Park - again

2006-07-06T03:22:00.000+08:00

Here's another photo using the 'Taiwan- ancient and modern' theme. In the foreground you see a large pagoda styled building and in the background is a huge high tech factory which I'm presuming is a chip fabrication plant.

Jade Mountain 9

2006-07-06T03:06:00.000+08:00

The summit of Taiwan's tallest mountain at 5:44am. The most amazing site I've ever seen - pity these photos don't capture the beauty of the place at all...

Jade Mountain 8

2006-07-06T03:05:00.000+08:00

At the second lodge known as Paiyun lodge, I again got to witness one of the most fantastic night skies of my life. This is my first attempt at doing 'star trails' - long exposure photographs of the night sky. This was a 30 minute exposure which got a bit too bright due to what I can only guess was the light from the milky way.

Jade Mountain 7

2006-07-06T03:03:00.000+08:00

All the trees in this one forest were growing one way only I guess to face the sun. Here's one of my new friends from the small tour group we were with.

Jade Mountain 6

2006-07-06T02:59:00.000+08:00

The cold weather and high altitude means that things decompose really slowly. Thus, when a tree had died, its bark falls off, leaving the wood to be bleached by the sun.

Jade Mountain 5

2006-07-06T02:57:00.000+08:00

Some fantastic scenery - just one of hundreds of pictures I took of the area.

Jade Mountain 4

2006-07-06T02:42:00.000+08:00

And when the sun finally set and the clouds moved away, I got to see the brightest night sky of my life.

Jade Mountain 3

2006-07-06T02:30:00.000+08:00

Our group was blessed with beautiful scenery right from the start of the tour. Here's a spectacular sunset at 'Tataka', the first lodge one stays in when attempting to summit Jade Mountain.

Jade Mountain 2

2006-07-06T02:23:00.000+08:00

The roads around Taiwan aren't that stable due to the torrential rains, precipitous geography and seismic activity. Nevertheless Taiwan is covered with thousands of amazing engineering models in the form of roads in places that other countries wouldn't even consider. Things do go wrong sometimes and as you can see in this photo, we had to hang around waiting for a road barrier to be erected after heavy rains had washed away a portion of the road.

Jade Mountain 1

2006-07-06T02:14:00.000+08:00

I went to Jade mountain 2 weeks ago. Jade mountain is Taiwan's tallest and is so called because of it's summertime green hue. The summit is 3952m high, and the area around it is very beautiful indeed and definitely not to be missed if you are in Taiwan for even a short time. I had such a good time that the Jade Mountain area is my new favourite place on earth. While travelling to the first lodge (known as 'Tataka') our tour group stopped at a restaurant. This old man decided that my foreign face was quite a novelty and warranted a 'Hellooo' from the table opposite. He was too cute not to have a photo taken with. Funnily, 2 or his relatives were about to kill each other over a financial argument regarding their inheritance at the same time, but he didn't seem too concerned...

Thanks for visiting!

2006-07-04T05:40:00.000+08:00

Wow! I've had over 10000 unique hits on this website since it started nearly 2 years ago. Thanks a lot to everyone who has visited and has put up with my inconsistant posting style. It's been great so far and I hope to continue posting as long as possible!

Not exactly beautiful...

2006-07-04T05:06:00.000+08:00

Taiwan's urban landscape consists of a lot of THIS.

Noise

2006-07-04T05:01:00.000+08:00

Taichung, once it wakes up, is really noisy. It's so noisy that you can't even hear the huge amount of air traffic that passes overhead everyday. At 5am though, it seems that every jet on the island takes off at the same time, leaving a fantastic pattern of jet streams across the sky. I didn't manage to get a good picture of this pattern, but I did capture a plane making it's own streamer in the sky.

Good morning.

2006-07-04T04:59:00.000+08:00

If you look at the time stamp of many of my posts, you'll see I'm quite a night-owl. I saw the entire night through the other day and watched the sun rise over the apartment block buildings surrounding my own. It was actually quite scenic...

Taichung Science Park

2006-07-04T04:53:00.000+08:00

To attract money to the city of Taichung, the government has set aside a huge block of land for hi-tech factories. I found the soon-to-be-completed Taichung Technology Park the other day by mistake and was amazed by the incredible looking architecture and size of the various semiconductor foundries I saw there. The security guards were quite picky about photos and cameras, so I wasn't able to get too many decent pics, but hopefully this will give you an idea of the feeling of the place.

Strange fruit

2006-07-04T04:49:00.000+08:00

As I've noted before, Taiwan has some strange fruit. Here's a disturbingly-purple photo of a type of fairly tastless but shockingly bright fruit, and what it does to your tongue!

Taiwan Tea

2006-07-04T04:39:00.000+08:00

Taiwanese people love their tea and almost every road has at least one tea shop. The variety is quite amazing and you can get anything from straight green or red tea, to pudding milk tea with passion fruit mixture (actually I just made that up, but I'm sure some shop could make it for you). Here are some varieties ordered by ladies at my school.

Once-Was-Sticky Ball

2006-07-04T04:34:00.000+08:00

Some are better quality than others...

Golden

2006-07-04T04:33:00.000+08:00

Here's another old photo which I don't think I ever posted. It's the inside of a temple at Sun Moon lake and it's one of the most ornate I've seen.

What?

2006-07-04T04:31:00.000+08:00

I have no idea what this means... A lot of English in Taiwan is purely decorative, the way Chinese characters are trendy in the West.

Sigh...

2006-07-04T04:28:00.000+08:00

Here's an old photo of some horrible homework. I never knew anyone could get it SO wrong in just 2 simple sentences.

Typing Chinese...

2006-06-07T14:35:00.000+08:00

...is slow, when you're not a good student. I've decided to accelerate my learning I'm going to try to type everything in Chinese, even if I haven't officially learned the characters yet. The general process goes like this...

Try to remember the word you're looking for.
Think about how to 'spell it' in Mandarin phonetics.
Try to remember the correct tone for each syllable.
Search in the back of my book to find the correct tone, and try to remember what the character looks like.
Look for the correct phonetic symbols on the keyboard.
Type them.
Type the correct tone.
Make sure that the character is correct (by this time I've usually forgotten, so I have to check my book again).

And voila! You have successfully typed a single character! Translating 6 written sentences from English into Chinese usually takes me about 2 hours. However, I can do it verbally in about 1 minute.

Congratulations

2006-06-03T09:54:00.000+08:00

Congratulations again must go to my room mate and good friend Rob Sparrow on his impending marriage to Dorienne Spencer. Here's a photo of a photo being taken of the very happy couple at their Taiwanese 'mock' wedding. They'll get married properly in South Africa in a short while.

Rice Paddy

2006-06-03T09:51:00.000+08:00

Long exposure of me running with a torch in a rice paddy. The dip in the light is me falling on my rear end in the mud. It was kind of hard to see what was going on. Good thing only one person saw that happen ;)

Tension...

2006-06-03T09:48:00.000+08:00

There's nothing quite as tense as a good game of Table Soccer. This was taken at my church and was a post prayer meeting match between the pastor of our church and one of my mates.

Dragon Boat Festival

2006-06-03T09:44:00.000+08:00

This occured on the 31st of May this year. However there wasn't much celebration this time round, because everyone's attention was on the current political scandal involving the president's son. At least one of my classes got to celebrate by having their own dragon boat races.

Scooter City

2006-05-21T16:42:00.000+08:00

One of the most prominent things about Taiwan is the sheer number of scooters you see everywhere. This is a shot of a department store parking lot in Taichung named 'Tiger City'.

Old Phospor lighting

2006-05-21T16:38:00.000+08:00

Well the image is old, from December of last year actually. With my new computer I've increased the brightness a bit so now it's possible to see it properly. I have a watch and a small compass which both glow in the dark and I used them to illuminate my face while I was lying in bed one evening. The exposure was about 2 minutes long.

Sunrise

2006-05-21T16:00:00.000+08:00

GuGuan is a great place to drive to to see a sunrise if you have the inclination (and can wake up at 3:30am!)

Always something to do.

2006-05-19T02:56:00.000+08:00

Taiwan has to be the most convenient country in the world. Where else can you go carting at 10pm on a Sunday?

Birds?

2006-05-19T02:52:00.000+08:00

Yes, the real kind. There really aren't many of them in Taiwan, it seems. Well I guess that's to be expected in the urban area I live in. It's just hard to get used to when there is such a rich diversity of bird life in my home country of South Africa. Anyway, here are some birds and a blue sky, too! What a good day that was ;)

[Correction... It appears that Grace, a friend of mine had my camera when this photo was taken, so technically it's not my photo at all!]

Mongolian Style Stir Fry

2006-05-11T01:49:00.000+08:00

Just a shot taken at a night market near my house.

Sunset over Danshui

2006-05-10T19:37:00.000+08:00

Here's a picture from an area known as 'Danshui' which I'm told means Iron Water in Mandarin. It's about 30 minutes from Taibei (the capital of Taiwan) and accessible via the MRT line. Friends and I visited there on Saturday and I took this picture overlooking the Danshui river at Sunset

2006-05-02T14:42:00.001+08:00

Dakeng Scenic area, #2.

2006-05-02T14:42:00.000+08:00

Dakeng Scenic area, #1.

2006-05-02T14:41:00.002+08:00

Random Taichung night photo.

2006-05-02T14:41:00.001+08:00

Taichung Harbour Area

2006-05-02T14:41:00.000+08:00

Only occasionally does the air in Taichung get clean enough to warrant taking pictures of the city. Today's heavy rain and strong winds seem to have washed the pollution away for a while, so I took a few random shots from my 24th floor rooftop.

2006-04-15T16:11:00.000+08:00

Taiwan's English learning industry is HUGE. Go to any decent sized bookshop, and you'll see racks and racks filled with all kinds of English learning magazines. Most are accompanied with audio CDs and some even have DVDs. A friend of mine works for an English learning publishing company and managed to organise me a job being filmed lip syncing English dialogues with another foreigner, who you can see here. Hope she doesn't mind me posting this!

2006-04-15T16:06:00.000+08:00

Here's a cliche'd photo of Taiwan. Rice paddy in the foreground and modern city buildings behind it.

2006-04-15T16:04:00.000+08:00

And here are 2 of Taiwan's most famous mucicians, the lead singer for a band called 'Mayday' on the left and 'OO Bai' (which means 500). From what I can tell, OO Bai is kindof the Bono of Taiwan, with his shades and attitude. Corrections welcome!

2006-04-15T16:02:00.000+08:00

I went to the 'Tai Kuh' Rock Festival/Concert thing the other day with a friend. It was an awesome experience to see some of the biggest names in Taiwanese music all playing one after another. There were about 30000 people there but they were all amazingly chilled and well behaved, and I didn't spot a single drunk person. Not one. Weird, by western standards, but I really like it. Actually, Taiwanese people are pretty mature and self controlled in general and know how to behave in a crowd. The band playing here is 'Wung Fu', who play kindof 60's/70's style rock with a Taiwanese flavour. They have an unusual dorky sound but are excellent musicians. Good enough for me to have one of their CDs.

2006-04-15T15:51:00.000+08:00

Hin Tsong Ming! That means 'so smart' in Mandarin and it's what I thought about Taiwanese people when I saw the local city government using a forklift to pick up cars while they repainted the parking bay lines. I was a bit worried about the forklift tipping over though... I guess this also makes you less confident in the effectiveness of all those mail order steering locks!

2006-04-15T15:48:00.000+08:00

I'm in Taiwan so I can post as many red black and white pictures as I want, even if they look mostly the same! This one was taken in the garden of my aparment complex during some light rain.

2006-03-23T10:26:00.000+08:00

Just foolin' with soft focus and neon lights.

2006-03-23T10:25:00.000+08:00

I went walking along Wen-Hsin Rd the other night with my mate Glen and on the way I spotted this sign reflected in a puddle of rain water.

2006-03-20T11:34:00.000+08:00

An arbitrary photo of graffiti and a taxi.

2006-03-20T11:33:00.000+08:00

And talking of electronics, this is another brilliant idea... a simple spinning row of LED's that flash on and off momentarily creates a low cost and effective circlular signboard.

2006-03-20T11:29:00.000+08:00

The parade was followed by a huge caravan of busses, presumably carrying those who didn't want to follow on foot.

2006-03-20T11:27:00.001+08:00

A roadside worshipper.

2006-03-20T11:27:00.000+08:00

Here's a guy inside a lion costume

2006-03-20T11:26:00.000+08:00

Yesterday, on my way home from riding around the neighborhood BMX track, I found myself in the middle of the biggest Taiwanese religios parade I have ever experienced. There were hundreds of people following these strange characters around the streets, clashing cymbals and lighting a ridiculous amount of fireworks. Here are some scary vampires.

2006-03-15T15:25:00.000+08:00

With the infux of foreigners to Taiwan, and particularly Taichung, foreign restaurants are becoming more and more common. To draw in the customers, many have foreign sports channels playing inside. Unbelievably, there is even a pub in Taichung that has South Africa's own sports channels, Supersport. Here is one of the most historic moments in cricket history - the winning shot SA played to win what many have called 'the greatest one day international match in cricket history'. I was lucky enough to watch this live. It was one of the most exciting sporting moments I have ever experienced.

2006-03-15T14:31:00.000+08:00

The most dangerous fruit in the world? Probably! These are durians, a type of fruit which I'm told actually comes from Thailand. You need gloves to handle them and a chainsaw (jokes, just a massive heavy knife) to open them and at then end of all that, they don't taste particularly amazing. They are also quite stinky, in a weird fresh fruit kind of way. Strange, some of the things that are popular in Taiwan!

2006-03-15T14:23:00.000+08:00

Taiwan has some really interesting tea, in general; but this has to be the most bizarre I've ever seen. It tasted like watercolor paint! I'm sure it's good for you though...

2006-03-15T14:16:00.000+08:00

I must appologise for the poor quality of this photo, it's really not a very good picture. Anyway, what is it? This is a scooter with 'training wheels' for disabled people or those who have to use crutches. It lets them be just as mobile as anyone. Actually, the work ethic in Taiwan can be summarised by taking a look at how many 'disabled' people have jobs and are prepared to work and how few beggers you generally see. Another lesson my home country of South Africa could learn from Taiwan...

2006-03-15T14:08:00.000+08:00

Here's a picture I forgot to post a while back. It's a guy selling baloons at Taichung's lantern festival.

2006-03-06T12:09:00.000+08:00

Here's a poorly taken photo of some Nissan employees doing their daily excercise/team building/company loyalty activities on the side of the road outside a car showroom. Is this a Japanese or general Asian thing? Comments are welcome!

The best fireworks I have ever seen. Really.

2006-03-02T10:29:00.000+08:00

Check this out. Thanks to Grace for the link.

2006-03-01T16:44:00.000+08:00

Mates and I played paintball for my birthday.

2006-02-23T10:36:00.000+08:00

So what do I do in the mornings? Well, most days I wake up and head down to my local breakfast shop for some Pagen Dun Bing (Not sure if there's an English name for that) which is basically an egg and herb mixture, and a rasher of bacon all wrappped up in a kind of savoury pancake thing. This is the breakfast treat all Brittons wish they had invented. To get me out of my early morning stupor, I drink some Oolong tea (which probably has as much caffiene in it as coffee) and to occupy my mind I listen to a daily Bible study podcast on my iPod.

2006-02-23T10:29:00.000+08:00

One of the things I'll always remember about Taiwan is the amount of LEDs on this island. One good use for all of them is the animated pedestrian crossing lights found in most major cities. When you can walk, there's an animated green walking man with an orange countdown timer, and when your time is running out, he starts to run. A very cool Taiwanese (I think...) invention.

2006-02-20T01:13:00.000+08:00

Red sky lanterns and the moon.

2006-02-20T01:10:00.001+08:00

Lantern festival at Taichung's main park was one of the best experiences I've had in Taiwan. There was such a great vibe, the moon was out and those lanterns are just awesome. If you ever get a chance to write new year's wishes on a lantern and watch it sail away, go for it.

2006-02-20T01:10:00.000+08:00

Some great lanterns on display during lantern festival.

2006-02-20T01:09:00.000+08:00

The classic red Chinese lantern.

2006-02-20T01:08:00.000+08:00

My friend Torg at Taichung's lantern festival.

2006-02-20T01:03:00.000+08:00

Taipei 101 during Chinese new year.

2006-02-20T01:01:00.000+08:00

In South Africa we call them 'braais'. In Taiwan they call them 'barbecues'. Whatever you call them, it's great to spend time with friends around a fire, cooking meat.

2006-02-01T03:28:00.000+08:00

During Chinese New Year, almost everything shuts down, including school, so everyone has a week's holiday. Today we planned to go to the beach, but everyone else in the whole of Taichung was also keen on heading North, so we cancelled that idea when we saw the traffic. We did end up spending the afternoon at Taichung's science park though, and there was a really cute little girl who took a liking to our soccer ball. Let's hope her parents give her more opportunities to play sports than most Taiwanese kids get.

2006-02-01T02:56:00.000+08:00

Approaching Taibei.

2006-02-01T02:53:00.001+08:00

Rice paddies near a city called Ilan.

2006-02-01T02:53:00.000+08:00

Taiwan has an excellent rail service that is clean, fast and efficient. It's a very good way to see the Island.

2006-02-01T02:49:00.001+08:00

Here's the Presbytarian Church in Taroko that we slept in.

2006-02-01T02:49:00.000+08:00

This was taken out of the train window on the way back from Hualien to Taichung. This scene is from the east coast somewhere. Sorry about the reflection.

2006-02-01T02:46:00.000+08:00

And here's the cave I mentioned. A woman called Chi-Oang used to preach to whoever would listen in this cave while 2 guards would stand guard in case the Japanese authorities came along.

2006-02-01T02:44:00.000+08:00

We were lucky enough to be put up for free in a Church in the town of Taroko, by a very friendly and interesting Minister there. The story of how the church started is quite amazing involving secret meetings in caves to avoid the Japanese authorities. Currently there are over 300 mountain churches scattered throughout Taiwan serving the 12 or so indigenous tribes that live here. Oh, the photo is simply light reflected off coloured windows in the church.

2006-02-01T02:33:00.000+08:00

And here's the beginning of the 'tunnel of nine turns' which is the most spectacular part of the absolutely huge gorge. I'm not sure if the natural scenery or the fact that there is a decent road to see it by is more impressive. Taiwan has some amazing engineering and has put roads in places that other countries wouldn't even attempt.

2006-02-01T02:28:00.001+08:00

This is the beginning of the famous Taroko Gorge which is one of the most amazing natural sites I've ever seen.

2006-02-01T02:28:00.000+08:00

Bamboo rice is made by putting raw rice and other ingredients in a piece of bamboo, and then boiling the whole thing. To open it up you hit it hard on the ground to split the bamboo open on one side. Tasty and pretty exotic, I guess.

2006-02-01T02:26:00.000+08:00

There are some really scenic spots on the way.

2006-02-01T02:24:00.000+08:00

Flower soup at Tienshan, close to the end of out journey. It's actually quite tasty.

2006-02-01T02:23:00.000+08:00

Rain, rain, rain. Credit to Isabelle for the idea.

2006-02-01T02:22:00.000+08:00

Too much mist to see anything but a silhoette.

2006-02-01T02:21:00.000+08:00

The blossoms are out, which I guess means it's spring.