Keelung and Yehliu, a past memory

So now that I have left Taiwan, I actually miss it.
I miss the food (most importantly)! How good, how cheap!
The market stalls' food, especially the snow ice. Argh, can't them them anywhere else!
I also miss the easy of buying jeans that fit my size.
I miss the efficient health system they have. Both for medical and dental.

I miss the landscape, I miss the people. Looking back, I got great photos from Taiwan. Some even didn't have the chance to be uploaded here. I will, slowly.

First let's start with Keelung and Yehliu Geopark. You can drive, or take one of the tour buses. There are day long and 1/2 day long trips. It's quite cheap, 1000NT to go to both with a minibus shared around 10 people, and accompanied by an English speaking tourguide. Certainly worth the visit!

We went pass the Keelung harber and our first stop was the Jhongjheng Park (first photo here), then we proceed to Yehliu geopark to see the rock formations. Most famous one is the Queen's Head. It looks huge in the photos, but it actually quite tiny, probably only around 3m high. Pick a day where it's not so touristy, because otherwise you really have to line up around 15 minutes to take pictures with the queen only, and this is not good because you probably only have 30-40 minutes total at the park.

If you like landscape photography, definitely a must!

Bridges

So, looking for some spot to take pictures around Taiwan?

These are a few pictures of bridges in Taipei. The first three is of Rainbow bridge. The red coloured bridge connects the Neihu and Songshan district. It's called rainbow because it looks like one and at night time they put rainbow coloured ligts around it (have yet the chance to take a photo of the night time. Must not forget tripods!)

It i a fun wavy bridge, you can see it from the bottom view.

The last photo is a picture of Dazhi Bridge at Dajia Riverside Park. It connects Neihu and Dazhi district. Very pretty at sunset. You will see the bridge being illuminated by the sun rays.. while the sun itself will go down just near the Grand taipei hotel.

Creativity and curiousity

In the everly increasing world of overvalued money, overvalued power, I am blessed to find glimpses of creativity and curiosity around me.

Of course, to survive in such a big city like Taipei (with the population of 10 million people in the metropolitan area), one does not have many choices but to be creative to survive.

These are a few that are appreciated. Only a few that was captured by the lens.

The first is a photo of kids. Kids, always curious and always easily mesmerized are wonderful reminders to appreciate creativity.

The 2nd picture is about a guy who make this glass like caramelized figures. This is the first time and only time I saw something like this. It definitely requires skills. I love the fact that he involved the kids to help the creation process by letting them blowing in to the caramelized tubes while he shape the heated sugar to various shapes.


The third and fourth pictures is showing a painter in process of painting a portrait picture of his selected random people from the crowd. He finished the entire picture in about 5 minutes. He was jumping, running like a mad fella while occasionally put a stroke or two down on the black canvas. When he finishes he always wipe out the canvases and draw a new one.

Ah creativity, I hope she never fails to visit us.

More of Taiwanese food!

With my boyfriend Dominic who is currently visiting me here in Taipei, I had a great time trying out more of Taiwanese food. Such as this one, instant food bought from Family Mart. Lots of tofu and meat product. Meat product, you said? Yes!
And this is the glimpse of meat product from the local market. Pig hoofs. Dead chicken and fish head. See how yummy those are? :p

Yilan

The excursion of the winter school was to go to the National Center for Traditional Arts (NCFTA). The first photo was taken of a group of KungFu students performing their 'art'.
This one is a temple for students to pray before their exams
Amongst the many arts they display is this glass art. Since it is the year of the Ox, seems like Ox is everywhere!
Also charcoal figures with gold accents. Very nice! I've never seen this thing before.
And of course it wasn't complete with a shallow dof picture of a row of colorful wooden tops One of the cute moments :) More photos in picasa (just ask me the link)

4th Winter School, Jiaosi

decoration: underline;">So this is how it looks like when a bunch of physicist get together and talk entanglement and superconductivity for 4 days. It was an interesting gathering at Tamkang University, Lanyang campus. The campus is on top of a mountain, serenely isolated from everything else. Quite an architectural work!

Obvious from the photo that it was attended by many local Taiwanese students and a few international speakers. I learned quite a few interesting stuff, including not to get sick during conference!

A few must haves

Yes, a stamp of your name! Everybody has one here in Taiwan and it is one of the first thing that the secretary ask me to do when I got here. So here is my chinese name and seal.. it's "Wu Di An" ... which they took from "Dian W. U" haha. Fair enough.

The second thing that would be nice to have is of course bankcards! The green cute one is from the government bank. This is where my salary is deposited. The right card is a visa debit (number has been disguised.. ahahha) that I just applied for today.

Banks here have funny system. First of all, in the electronic age of today.. they still do paperwork and a lot of it! To apply for an account, I first have to go to the security guard at the door, tell him what I want. He will give me a slip of paper with the queue number. Wait for then number, then the banker. Most bank here have one person in each bank that speaks broken English. Consider yourself lucky if you meet that person! Then he will ask you for your passport, your Alien Residence Card, and your stamp, and normally a 1000NTD for first deposit. He then filled in about 20 different forms, log it in 3 different books, stamp it with 4 types of different stamps of dates, and at least 3 other validation stamps. Why not just computerize everything? And while this process is taking place you can see the two supervisors at the back doing next to nothing while the poor tellers working superfast with the million paperworks. Meanwhile you will be served a hot tea in plastic cup or offered some candies. Some consolation! If everything is settled, you will get your bank card and a bank book with the printout of your transaction.. and sometimes the banker have a tiny ruler to ruled out some entries. The card has magnetic stripe and the chip. It is run with different pin number. The whole applying for an account process took about an hour! It was an experience in itself, surely.

Hong kong Chinese New Year Excursion

My apology for the hiatus, I have just been back from Hong Kong for the Chinese new year. I met my family there, my parents came from Indonesia, me from Taipei.. and we met there. It was a joyful week.

Chinese New Year celebration there is big, with lots of lion dancing, a parade and fireworks. Not to mention the sale!

Of course the downside is that everything was more expensive too. Starting from the flight ticket down to the extra bed in the hotel room.

So here are some pictures from the trip. First, me and the lion .. taken in Langham Hotel Mongkok.. a hotel connected to the big branded shopping centre. It was awfully full of people!

The second picture is of Sogo shopping centre, the stals all in red and pink for the chinese new year, selling all kinds of food; cakes, preserved, cookies and peanuts.

The elegant sculpture is at the venue of stars in Tsim Tsat Shui. It was the tourist centre. We had the chance of staying close to that for 2 nights. It's pretty westernized


This is yours truly and the Hongkong Island skyline. The sky looks that grey for almost the entire trip! We had sunny days only on the last 2 days! It doesn't stop us from taking pictures though.

This is the boat shooting fireworks for the celebration. We saw the fireworks on our comfortable hotel room (and thank goodness for that because down below was jam packed!). But as the results, all my photos are on a blur (because of the window) and also because I don't use the tripod head (forgot to bring it!). Ah well. maybe next time.

And of course, the picture of our special taxi with the many cute things on the dashboard! As you can see the starting price of taxi in Hong Kong is 16 HKD.. and it goes up around 2HKD per kilometre. Not bad hey?

Taiwan Snack

So finally I gave in to the tempation of Taiwan's snacks. First, is this tiny noodle like snack that is very yummy.
Then there is the pea crackers that is not so yummy. Yes, I got it just out of curiousity
If you want a healthier alternative, these grass cereal that I bought for my mum looks ok.
Or maybe almond with "Hazlnut" powdered drink :p

Puzzle Floor

Apparently common in Taiwan, puzzle flooring! Made of mouse-pad foam (or a rough-cheap-carpet-like material), these squares are popular for people to line up their floor with. I did with my traso tiles because it's getting too chilly in the winter for my feet! These things are available from the corner shop; 10 tiles of 40cm each for 4 bucks in various colour. Funky hey? Should have got the orange ones .. !

Taiwanese Flag

In the attempt to stir up a controversy, Daniel had the idea of taking picture with Taiwanese flag and bringing it to China to show his chinese girlfriend. So I follow suit with this picture. It was a rainy day.. and yet we stayed strong and showed our patriotism :p