Earthquake

Last night around 2am I was woken up by an earthquake. It was pretty cool in retrospect but I the time I was mostly just confused. It was a 6.3 and being my first earthquake it took me a good twenty seconds to figure out what was going on. Following that, I had another minute of panic trying to decide whether I should go outside or not (I didn’t). All in all it was a pretty cool experience despite the 20 seconds thinking I was waking up to some strange hallucination.

Taiwanese Rock Festival

I went with some friends to the Fulong Music Festival this past weekend. It is the second largest music festival in Taiwan and is set on a very beautiful beach in north eastern Taipei County. The music for the most part was expectantly random, however if you knew anything about east Asian pop music it was quite and exciting line up including the Taiwanese Madonna and bands from the US and France. But it was a very enjoyable way to spend a Sunday afternoon with one of the nicest beaches I’ve seen in Taiwan (see pictures below), delicious food (wild boar with onions peppers and taro served in a turnip bun) and amazing weather ( probably a little too amazing…I got sunburned…again.)

Taiwan is Proud of Our New President…

… I think:

This is an ad I saw on the subway the other day. Just for reference, that’s Obama and Bush enjoying a nice refreshing Japanese soft drink, although Bush looks understandably confused by the whole ordeal.

The Beach… Again

So a few weekends ago some friends and I went up to a beach on the north shore of the island and attempted surfing. It was rainy and I was reminded how little I really like surfing, but I still had quite a bit of fun. After the surfing we went crab hunting in a weak attempt to find dinner. While the crabs that we found were far to small to cook I was aided by my time growing up in Missouri hunting for craw dads and was a natural at finding and catching the baby crabs. I (all by myself without help from anyone else at all) made a sweet bonfire and we sat around it to keep dry after a long day of surfing and crab hunting until the rain put out the fire and we headed back to Taipei.

Here be pictures:

Chinese BBQ

This weekend I went to a Chinese barbecue that some friends of mine were having. I learned a few things. Mainly I learned that Taiwanese people have no idea how to cook on a barbecue. It took a good twenty minutes for use to explain that when cooking with charcoal you do not want to charcoal to actually be on fire. After that I had to explain that when cooking mussels or clams you want to wait for the shell to open before eating. Despite the inept pyros and the near food poisoning it was a lot of fun and a good way to spend a Sunday evening.

Hash Run

This past Sunday I went on a hash run. If you don’t know what a hash run is, the best way to explain it would be as a fusion of a cross country run, a scavenger hunt and a beer drinking competition.
We went up in the mountains around Beitue, which is where most of the hot springs surrounding Taipei are and met up with the Taipei Hash club. The idea behind hashing is that two people lead the rest of the group along a course marking it as they go with flower. Your goal is to follow their markings, not be duped by false markings and splits in the trail, and finish the course in as fast a time as possible.
Upon completion of the course there is a long “toasting” ceremony in which people give random speeches and sing songs. For example, because it was Easter all the “church going christians” were invited to come up and take a drink. Then, all the Jews were invited to come up and take a drink for “making Easter possible.”
All in all it was a pretty good way to spend a Sunday and something I think I’ll try and do in the future as a more entertaining way to go for a run.
Hope everyone is well and had a happy Easter/Passover.

The Beach

So this past weekend I went with some friends to Kenting in the south of Taiwan for a music festival. Kenting is a small beach side resort town and surfing village on the southern tip peninsula which is taken over once a year buy Spring Fling (the music festival.) No one that any American would have ever hear of plays there, but it was a nice place to hang out on the beach for a weekend.
Here be pictures:

Beach

Where have you been?

So its been quite a while since I have updated anyone on what I’ve been up to on here, but I figure I should get back into the swing of things. Initially the inactivity was due to business and then it was due to lack there of. But no matter. Lets see… in the past 2-3 months since I have posted I have done some more traveling around Taiwan. This time with the family. My parents came to Taiwan for likely the last time and we went to the hot springs in Beitue and down to Taroko. The hot springs were very nice but we were a little surprised to find that they were run in the traditional Japanese style (read nude). Taroko was almost as shockingly beautiful as it was the first time I went and I think the parents really enjoyed it. Since their visit in February I have just been in Taipei working, spending time with friends and continuing to explore the city and the culture.
I have started playing bass occasionally with a band here which is a lot of fun. The band consists of a German/Japanese singer, an Indonesian Guitarist, an Irish drummer and myself and I have no idea what our name is as it is in Taiwanese (not even Chinese.) I’ve been working on my Chinese some more and it has actually begun to improve noticeably (I’ve gone from sounding like a retarded two year old to a semi coherent 2 year old.) I have gotten to where I can usually order food without simply pointing to a picture and can ask and understand the answers to basic questions like: “Where am I” “How do you say ___” and “How much is ___”.
I’ve also started rock climbing more regularly as I found a public climbing wall near my work.
This next weekend is the Chinese Tomb Sweeping Festival and there is a large musical festival in the southern beach village of Kenting. I’ll be going down with some friends and look forward to spending a relaxing weekend on the beach/parting with some good friends in a strange country.
I’ll let everyone know how it goes…Or maybe I’ll flake out and not post anything for another three months. You never know.

PS. Strangely enough I’ve still had a few regular viewers. I’m looking at you Mom, Meemaw.

Chinese New Year

This past week I went traveling around Taiwan. The last week in January is the end of the lunar calendar and so most of east Asia celebrates the coming of a new year. Everyone gets the week off and goes on vacation. This means in a country like Taiwan (or pretty much any other country in Asia) where most people have moved to the cities over the past 20 years but still have relatives in rural areas, everyone leaves the city for the week to visit their families or travel abroad. As this leaves Taipei pretty much dead – only places that remain open are 7-11′s and McDonalds- I went traveling around the island with some friends (yeah I know its hard to believe that I have any of those).

Christmas and New Years

Here are some photos that I took with my cool new camera over Christmas and new years. For Christmas I flew to Hong Kong for a few days and hung out with my family. It was nice to see everyone and more importantly get some home cooked meals. On the last day we went to the horse races, a popular thing to do in Hong Kong. I won the equivalent of $15 on my first bet picking a long shot to place but then I lost $20 on my second round of betting picking more long shots.