Civilization (II)

Here's a few photos for Niall. If you come visit, you won't starve - they've got Ruth's Chris here in Kaohsiung.

It's situated right across the road from the Kaohsiung City Council Building, downtown. I can only imagine how expensive their prices probably are here, as that they are a bit pricey even in the States.

I found their website: http://www.ruthschris.com/Steak-House/10035/Kaohsiung/

GJS

Taipei trip

I'm going to try something new this post. I'm going to try to make extensive use of my Flikr page for the photos I want to include because it is easier to upload pictures to it than it is to this blog. There will still be images here, don't worry! But just not 20 of them, hopefully. Here goes.

Tuesday I made a solo trip to Taipei to meet with two other Olmsted Scholars, one a veteran of the program from about 10 years back, and one who is a currently in the program, a year ahead of me. It was an informal meeting over lunch, just informational, but very useful to me. Anyhow, since I was making the trip all the way up the island, I decided to make a day of it and take in some of the sights along with visiting with my colleagues.

I arrived in Taipei about 9 AM. Here is a video clip I made just after my arrival laying out my goals.

When I finally decided where I was going to go before lunch and went there, I made this video.

I was blown away by the scale of this monument. Simply huge!

Many more photos and video from the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial are available here.

After that, I met with my colleagues for lunch at Din Tai Fung, a restaurant on Yongkang Jie. It was delicious. We had a variety of Shanghai-style dumplings, vegetables, and soup. While we ate, we discussed various issues surrounding the Olmsted Scholar Program and the more seasoned Scholars offered me advice, were that they in my shoes (just arrived in-country).

After lunch, it was off to Taipei 101, one of the tallest buildings in the world. For whatever reason, I like to visit very tall buildings. They fascinate me. I had been wanting to visit this building since I learned that it was in Taiwan and that I would be coming here to study. Here is the video segment I recorded upon arrival at the building.

There is a 5-level shopping mall in the building, jam-packed with high-end designer boutique shops and expensive restaurants. There seemed to be quite a few Japanese restaurants, in particular. None of these were my objectives, though - bookstore, anyone? The mall has a large bookstore called Page One. It did not disappoint. It featured a section of books that you wouldn't find in a bookstore in China:

After browsing the shelves for a while and not finding anything I couldn't live without (plus, I am trying to make the transition from traditional books to Kindle-based books and periodicals, so I didn't want to purchase more old-style books to derail that effort), it was time to head to the top of the building.

The tickets to go to the top are a tad expensive (NT$400, or about US$12), so I was glad that I was by myself. After a short wait, I was on the way to the top inside the fastest elevator in the world.

Once at the observatory on the 89th floor, I shot quite a lot of photos of the view (quite spectacular), most of which look about like this one:

Many more photos and my narrative video from inside the observatory can be found here.

There were a bunch of art displays inside the observatory. Here is one piece that jumped out at me. What do you think of it?

Then I found out I could go up 2 floors higher, to 91, and go outside. Money! More video followed. This video is entails me walking the entire circumference of the observation deck (I think it was truncated somewhat, as that its length exceeded the maximum upload parameter of 1 min 30 sec). WARNING: if your speakers are turned up, I recommend you turn them down before opening this video. The wind noise and the harmonic wind-driven vibration of the personnel safety bars (to keep nutcases from jumping off) is quite loud and is at an annoying pitch.

After my time on the 89th and 91st floors, it was time to try to get back to ground level. Not so fast! First I had to see the 730 ton (!) tuned mass damper. My photos and video don't really do it credit, so if you are interested, read more about it and see more photos here. Basically, this thing keeps the building stable in high winds and during seismic activity.

Well, back on terra firma, my objective was to find another bookstore nearby, Eslite Books (sorry, they don't have an English language website). I had heard this bookstore was very big, but I was not prepared for what I found: a 6-floor behemoth that is not a pure bookstore along the lines of Borders or my favorite, Barnes and Noble, but a hybrid between a conventional bookstore and Ikea. Seriously, they have tons of other goods for sale besides books, things that will complement your reading lifestyle, apparently. I hate to admit it, but I met my match at this store - I did not have the stamina to browse the entire store. I completely lost track of time in the building, but my aching feet and growling stomach told me it was time to move on.

A (not so) quick ride on the Taipei Metro had me back where I had started at in the city, and I recorded this video as a summary of my day.

After 2 more hours of riding the high speed rail back to Kaohsiung, my day was not over. I decided to check out the Liuhe Night Market not far from where we live. Even though it is nearby, we had not yet had a chance to check it out. I had heard it was quite the spectacle, with many choice of foods and myriad goods for purchase. I wasn't hungry nor did I want to buy anything, just take a few photos. Here is the best of them:

More can be found here.

As always, all photos mentioned here and even those that aren't can be found on my Flikr page.

The Taipei trip was a long day, but a good one. I hope to go back to take in more of the city soon.

GJS

(Ha! Only 7 pictures here!)

Other activities this week, etc.

Let's do an update on our recent activities. Here goes:

On Friday evening, we went to the Dream Mall and took John to the amusement park on the roof.

Of course we found Thomas there!

Saturday morning, the movers brought our first wave of "stuff," including my regular desktop computer (I've been working off the back-up machine, the laptop, since late July). It's nice to have the computer I am accustomed to back and running, including the webcam - Skype me!

Let's do a little crude math to figure out how long it took for the "fast" shipment of goods to get here.

Jul 24 - movers take the shipment from our house in the US

Sep 5 (Sat.) arrival = 43 days (relatively fast in terms of shipment of household goods)

Our main shipment of goods has yet to *leave* the US, so no telling how much longer it will take to get that stuff. At least now we know what stuff we need to go buy - if there was something I was hoping was in the "fast" shipment that didn't show up yesterday, it's time to go out and buy a replacement!

On Saturday evening, we decided to head out Cijin Island, the piece of land that forms the outside part of Kaohsiung's harbor.

The Cijin Island Ferry - takes about 5 minutes to get out to the island

Kaohsiung city skyline from the harbor

View looking out the mouth of Kaohsiung harbor from the ferry

Along the main drag, "seafood street"

Some of the things that give "seafood street" its name

Deliberating over some Cijin Island xiao chi (small eats); in this case, kebabs of fruit and vegetables - delicious!

At the entrance to Tianhou Temple, the oldest temple in Kaohsiung

Curious grey sand beach, with the Taiwan Strait and queued freighters in the background

On the way home, we listened to a public music performance inside main subway station. Notice yet another example here of eye-pleasing public architecture in Kaohsiung (this is the "Dome of Light" inside the main station):

Here's a look at the same subway station, but from street level:

Now you can enjoy the music, too! (At least a ~30 second clip of it, along with video:)

We really like the Kaohsiung subway system.

Sunday - our "church shopping" continues, and we think we may have found a good one this week, unlike last week (not so hot). This one has a large congregation, bilingual worship services, and a robust children's ministry program. Here's a picture John colored today at Sunday school, just for you!

Congratulations to the Huskers on their season-opening football victory - see Huskerpedia here for all the details. I think this calls for a dip in the jacuzzi tub and a cold beverage.

Probably not one of these, though. Adult beverage, anyone? I have to sample all the Taiwanese beers to get the "lay of the land," you know? I'm still on my first brand, and there are several more to try. So much work, so little time...

As always, many, many more photos from these adventures can be found at my Flikr site here.

Only one week until classes start! I feel like I should be doing something to prepare...nahh!

GJS

Chinese character recognition at the Knox County Fair

Remember a while back I talked about having some non-sequential posts coming? It's time!

Let's turn back the clock about a month, to the 2009 Knox County Fair. This year's event took place from Aug 12 - 16, and we actually modified when we left Nebraska to come to Taiwan so that we could attend. It was a lot of fun, and I will write more about the fun everyone had another day, but today I want to start off with a look at something that shocked me - the prevalence of Chinese character tattoos on attendees of the fair.

Call me old-fashioned, but Knox County, Nebraska is not a place I expect to see this:

Since I hadn't done much in terms of Chinese in a good couple of weeks at that point, it took me a few moments to decode it, but here are the characters: 友人, yǒurén, meaning "friend." OK, I can understand this tattoo on this person, makes sense to me.

Then I saw this guy:

The first two pictures are of the left side of the back of his neck; the third photo is of the right side. The left character is 恶, è, meaning vicious or terrible, and the right one is 鬼, guǐ, which means ghost. Put them together and we have 恶鬼, èguǐ, or "vicious ghost." OK, this one also makes sense, some characters to put forth a fearsome or menacing message from a man. Interesting how we have a welcoming, happy message of "friend" from the woman and the opposite, "vicious ghost" from the man.

I was at the fair only a fraction of the time it was going on, and I saw two people with visible Chinese character tattoos. This says nothing about the people whose body markings are not visible in regular clothing. We can see from this small sample that a) tattoos are becoming more and more commonplace, and 2) people in Knox County, Neb. like the Chinese language.

Finally, this guy doesn't have any visible tattoos, in Chinese or anything else, but he is about the least-motivated looking person I have seen in a long time! OK, monitoring the bouncy house may not be the most exciting job on the midway, but come on!

"Get me out of Knox County!"

GJS

Husker Nation, Taiwan Chapter

We're far away, but not oblivious to the important events taking place in Lincoln right now - the start of another Nebraska football season! Fear not, we are listening online here. Only 10 minutes until kickoff versus Florida Atlantic. Go Big Red!

GJS

The Ball Pit

We recently learned that our building has a kid's play area, and John has taken quite a liking to it. (Big surprise, I know!) Today's video clip is of John enjoying the play area, including the ball pit.

GJS

Socks and a tile floor

Today's video is John having a good time pushing his big "train" (really a foot rest, but who's going to tell him?) back and forth in our apartment. Check it out!

GJS

Another sign of civilization (?)

Patrick, thought you might like this photo - came across this place while out walking last Sunday morning with John to try and find a newspaper. I wonder how much their cars cost in New Taiwan Dollars?

GJS

Tales from a public restroom and other recent exploits

Monday we went to the local post office to send our first piece of mail, ironically a reply to a jury summons for Barb in California (umm, not going to be able to serve on that jury, methinks it is a tad bit far to commute back and forth), and afterwards, John wanted to ride the train (subway), even though we were close to home. When we went down into the station, John told me he needed to use the bathroom, so we went into the public restroom, and here's what we found:

That's a pretty nice little restroom! We'd like to see more public facilities like that one.

John has also become quite proficient in stair-climbing and now almost always chooses to walk up the stairs when faced with an option of stairs or escalator. He is now big enough that he can step up one stair with each foot as he goes, alternating left and right legs up as he goes, instead of having to step up with one foot, then bring the other foot up to the same tread as the foot that just stepped up. The easy way to imagine this is that John can go up stairs just like an adult now, and he likes it; he doesn't have to go up the steps like a little kid any more. Now he likes to race Mom or Dad on the escalator as he goes up the stairs:

And when the adults get to the top, here is what they see:

Yes, that's right, that's John standing at the top, basking in his victory and PUSHING on the escalator hand rail in order to make it go faster! Mom and Dad are too slow for him!

On Tuesday we made a trip to the grocery to get some food items, and since where we shop is fairly close to where we recently discovered we will be going for medical care during our time in Taiwan, we decided to wrap several errands up into one by walking over to the hospital (seems that most medical care here, even routine treatments and appointments, is delivered at the hospital, not at a private doctor's office) to lay eyes on it and see what sort of things were around it. We discovered a Carrefour store (a French-owned retail store that carries pretty much anything you would find at a Wal-Mart or Target in the US), a Starbucks (pretty much the first one that I have seen in Kaohsiung that is not either inside the High Speed Rail Station (not even remotely close to where we live) or inside a Carrefour store. Yes, believe it or not, there are places in the world where Starbucks have not yet proliferated, and Kaohsiung is one of them. Alas, do not think that there are not many Western things available to us here - McDonalds, anyone?

These Ronald McDonald benches are like magnets for little kids - American ones, anyhow. John went right up to this last one with no prompting and crawled up on Ronald's lap.

At any rate, back to my discussion of today's trip. Between the subway stop and the hospital happened to be a really nice park.

John really enjoyed this park because it was shaded (the kid's play area at the park closest to our house is not shaded) and it had swings - he really likes swings. (Ditto on the swings - none at the park near where we live.)

The park also had some nice scenery. We saw this pagoda with laoren chatting in the shade:

There was also a public library and some artwork incorporated in with the footpaths:

From the 2 weeks I have now been here in Taiwan, it seems to me that the public infrastructure by and large is quite good, and what they have is nice to look at and well-designed, with one example being the footpaths above, and here are a few more:

Public artwork at "Urban Spotlight" in Kaohsiung Central Park

Central Park Subway Station

In case you missed it, yep, you're right, we try to put the boy to work when we can:

Here he is pulling the little cart we use to bring things back from our trips to the store. He likes to do things for himself and to be "really useful" like his favorite little playthings, Thomas and Co. We figure it is good for him to help out. Lord knows he is going to have to next year when his brother or sister comes.

Oh, and if you want to see more photos from the adventures mentioned in this post, please navigate here to enjoy them. I cherrypick the ones I want to use to tell my story here; it is but a representative sample of all the photos I take on any given day. I will try to put the preponderance of my pictures on the Flikr page so you can see more of us.

I'm going to try to get the webcam up and working now in case anyone wants to give it a shot sometime.

GJS

Slideshow

The small photos in the "Slideshow" on the top right of this page come from Flikr. You can see them all at your leisure here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gjsamps/?saved=1

Enjoy!

GJS

Technical problems with Part 3

...too large a file to upload, it seems. We may or may not try to create a shorter version to post, depends how motivated we are.

GJS

Apartment video, Part 2

Number 2 of 3...

GJS

Apartment video, Part 1

Today Barb created a series of short videos to take you on a brief tour of our new apartment. The first installment (of three total) is below. We hope you enjoy it!

GJS

Ironman, again

Congratulations to cousin Mike on his excellent showing today at Ironman Canada. He finished in just over 12 hours, which is an awesome time, one that I am quite impressed by. If you go to the Ironman Canada website here, you can enter his bib number (742) and check out all his time and splits. Great job, Mike!

GJS

Beware - non-sequential posts to come!

I must warn you, I am planning to do some "catch-up" posting here to cover the time we were home in Nebraska, and those will be intermixed with new stuff from Taiwan, so pay attention, and don't get confused by what is going on!

First, a few pictures from our new city.

The first two pictures are from a street market near our home. John was enamored to see live chickens there. We explained to him that they would not be live for long, that they were going to be easten by people! The next photo (#3) is from the park across the street from where we live (we live in the tall building visible in the background), and the last one is from our balcony looking across the street to the park, with Kaohsiung's tallest building, the 85-story Tuntex Sky Tower, behind.

GJS