I've been wanting to go hiking the peaks of 五指山 (Wu zhi shan, literally translated "Five finger mountain") for a while, especially since I had already been to the road-accessible top several times by bike.

Even though it's not particularly high 五指山 (Wu zhi shan) is one of the most remarkable mountains in the area, partly because of its peculiar shape. Here's a picture of the mountain that I took last year on a trip to 觀霧 (Guan wu):

The hike is neither very long nor very strenuous, but given that you're hiking across five hills and back there is quite a bit of up and down involved as you can easily see from the topographic map and the altitude chart:

The entire hike is less than 6 km long and took only slightly over three hours including a 20 minute lunch break. Of course, without stopping every few minutes to take photos I might have shaved off another few minutes, but then I wouldn't have anything to show to you. :-)

I've been contributing a lot of my biking and hiking routes to OpenStreetMap recently and this one is no exception. I hope this will be useful for fellow hikers. (If you zoom out there are some rendering issues, i.e. you'll see outdated tiles, but with time that problem should disappear.)

(Click here to view a larger map)

To the average European reading these advertisements is akin to reading about the sky being blue or fire being hot. However, as you will find out quickly if you visit Taiwan, traffic ticks a little differently here and what is common sense to me may appear curious to the average road user.

Here's one such example:

There are at least two important words here that many Taiwanese seem to have trouble with:

*方向燈 ("indicator").* Based on my day-to-day experience there's a fair share of motorcyclists and car drivers who don't have a clue what that little lever with the two arrows on it is for. And, even among those who know that pulling it does more than trigger a funny clicking noise, beliefs like "people can see I'm turning anyway" or excuses such as "nobody's around to see it" are widespread.

*前 ("before").* Of the few people left who regularly use the indicator many of them have a lot of work to do in the timing department. There are people who blink two intersections too early because they intend to turn somewhere within the next 150 meters. Those are bad for traffic flow but at least rarely dangerous. But then there are the ones who blink at the same time they start turning, fully convinced that everybody is now aware of their intention and it is safe to turn without as much as a glance in the mirror.

The two single most effective accident avoiding patterns are *looking ahead* and *communicating your intentions*. Indicating properly is an important link between these two. It's common courtesy at worst and life-saving at best. Quite potent for a flick of a finger, isn't it?

That's why I've been wanting to post a link to this little riddle for a while. The article to go with it is here.

Guess what this is (click for a bigger version):

Hint: Wear your seat belt!

...

Another hint? It's not caused by the head hitting the windshield or dashboard.

...

The answer is that it's the CT scan of an unbelted _back seat_ passenger. The person's head slammed into the post of the front seat after the car was hit by another object. (Note that the accident was out of the control of the car's driver.)

Is this how you want to remember your child or friend's face for the rest of your life?

One of the most commonly followed is the "tradition" of giving a box of wedding cookies to the bride's guests. Calling it a tradition would be a little bit of a stretch because this is apparently a relatively new phenomenon. People used to give wedding cakes, which are truly Chinese-style cakes with different fillings. But in a trend of imitating Western culture those are slowly being replaced with Western-style cookies.

Unfortunately the packaging of these wedding cookies is so elaborate that they not only demand a fair amount of patience to eat, but also result in a huge pile of unnecessary trash. Let's take a little tour of such a box of wedding cookies ...

In all fairness, at least these cookies were good. Many wedding cookies I've had - and trust me, there were a lot ;-) - belonged into the 'just okay' or 'who baked these sugar mounds?!' category. There even seems to be a pattern where the quality of the cookies is inversely proportional to the fanciness of the box.

One of my favorites so far was the brand that one of my friends picked. The cookie wrappers aside, the simple and useful box has made a good home for my Clif Bar and Luna Bar stock:

So with autumn slowly approaching we decided to take the opportunity of one of the last summery weekends and head south, about a scooter hour away from Hsinchu. It's basically a hill, a few kilometers of coastline and a handful of wind turbines, but despite its simplicity it makes for a beautiful scenery.

We were a bit skeptical at first regarding the weather but we ended up lucky since the sky up in 桃園 (Taoyuan) was less cloudy than back home. The view at the top is great indeed but I'll let you see for yourself:

And, as always, the track log:

The lower arc was the first day, the upper arc the second day. These are the elevation diagrams:

It's difficult in Taiwan to avoid the traffic, especially on popular routes like the cross-island highways. Accidents on those narrow mountain roads are unfortunately quite frequent, caused by aggressively driving motorcyclists, Sunday car drivers who lack mountain road skills, but also by careless cyclists without lights or helmet.

There are a few tunnels on these roads, so any vehicle entering the completely unilluminated tunnel from the bright sunlight is unlikely to see an unlit cyclist. And the number of riders who consider a helmet nothing but an unnecessarily heavy sun shield is alarmingly high. I didn't get to shoot any "Darwin at work" photos but we did cross an ambulance on the way.

We chose - equipped with helmets and lights - to leave on Sunday morning in an attempt to minimize traffic, at least for the second day. Getting up at 0430 in the morning is probably my least favorite part about biking, and the sunrise isn't worth it, but with over 160 km to go on the first day it is a necessity.

Schedule (Day 1)

*Day 1:*

0530: Meeting point, 竹北喜來登大飯店 (Zhubei Sheraton Hotel)
0625: 關西 (Guan xi)
0630: Rest stop, 台3線/羅馬公路入口 (Highway 3 & Luo ma gong lu entrance)
0645: Departure, 羅馬公路入口 (Luo ma gong lu entrance)
0840: 羅馬公路出口 (Luo ma gong lu exit)
0855: 北橫入口 (Northern Cross-island highway entrance)
0915: Rest stop, 北橫之星 (Bei heng zhi xing)
0925: Departure, 北橫之星 (Bei heng zhi xing)
1035: 蘇樂橋 (Su le bridge)
1045: 巴陵大橋 (Big Ba ling bridge)
1125: 巴陵/拉拉山叉路 (Ba ling, La La shan fork)
1255: 四陵 (Si ling)
1315: 桃園縣/宜蘭縣 縣界 (Taoyuan county/Yilan county border)
1335: Lunch break, 明池 (Ming chi)
1455: Departure, 明池 (Ming chi)
1515: Highest point of Highway 7
1525: "777", 台7線77公里 (Highway 7, 77 km sign)
1600: 台7線/台7甲線叉路 (Highway 7 & Highway 7-bis crossroad)
1720: 圓山 (Yuan shan)
1805: 礁溪 (Jiao xi)

Distance: 162.2 km
Ascent: 2580 m
Maximum elevation: 1215 m

The second day was marked mostly by sore legs, joints, butts, and other body parts, on top of which came the heat of a clear summer day. Unlike the previous day where the mountainous climate cooled us down a little bit, wind and clouds were a rarity. After lunch an outside thermometer displayed 42 °C in the sun.

Unfortunately there is no interesting route back from Taipei to Hsinchu, so after the relatively quiet highway 110 we soon ended up on highway 3, one of the two large and long roads that connect Northern Taiwan with Southern Taiwan. The traffic on those is rather annoying and we soon ended up in the middle of rush hour traffic.

Only after 龍潭 (Long tan), where we took a shortcut, did the traffic get better again. Of course the shortcut came with a price: The last ascent of the day. But with over 250 km behind you most of your body is numb anyway, so it doesn't hurt that much.

Schedule (Day 2)

0820: Departure, 礁溪 (Jiao xi)
0935: Rest stop, 1st peak, 宜蘭縣/新北市 縣界 (Yilan county/Taipei City border)
0950: Departure
1040: Rest stop, 坪林 (Ping lin)
1105: Departure
1155: Rest stop, 石碇 (Shi ding)
1225: Departure
1245: Lunch break, 新店 (Xin dian)
1335: Departure, 42 °C outside!
1430: Rest stop, 三峽 大成國小 (San xia, Da cheng elementary school)
1455: Departure
1500: 三峽 台110線/台3線叉路 (San xia, Highway 110/3 crossroads)
1520: Rest stop, 三峽 台3線/台7線叉路 (San xia, Highway 3/7 crossroads)
1530: Departure
1700: 龍潭 (Long tan)
1715: Rest stop
1730: Departure
1800: 新埔 (Xin pu)
1815: 竹北喜來登大飯店 (Zhubei Sheraton Hotel)

Distance: 133.5 km
Ascent: 1681 m
Maximum elevation: 552 m

Photos

This time's challenge: Climb Taiwan's highest peak and come back the same day. The trail head starts at an altitude of around 2600 meters and 玉山主峰 (Yu shan or Mt. Jade main peak) stands 3952 meters tall. The distance to the top is about 12 km and the entire trip generally takes around 12 hours.

It's certainly not an easy hike, but very doable, at least if you don't go over the top with packing your backpack like I tend to. We stayed the night in 東埔山莊 (Dong pu mountain lodge), which is conveniently located about 2-3 kilometers from the 塔塔加登山口 (Ta ta jia trail head).

Unfortunately we had rather bad luck with the weather. The first five hours of ascent were largely dry but near the 排雲山莊 (Pai yun mountain lodge) we entered the fog and drizzle set in, which got worse as we hiked up to the peak.

A few hundred meters before the top I decided to leave my backpack at the side of the road and continued with nothing but a bottle of water, a small waterproof camera, and the Swiss and Taiwanese flags that I carry an all these trips. The heavy backpack had really worn me out and with the weight off my shoulders advancing was much easier.

We spent only a few minutes at the top to take the obligatory peak photos. After all, the fog was so thick that there was nothing else to take pictures of unless you're an artist who's heavily into gray shapes on gray background. Besides, it was too cold for eating, so we postponed lunch for a few hours half-way down.

Finally at the bottom, exactly 12 hours after we had started, we sprung for the shuttle back to the parking lot and headed home to recover our sore muscles and aching joints.

On the way home a strange feeling befell me: It just didn't feel like I had just been to the highest mountain in Taiwan. Hiking without a view is just not the same for the brain. Conquering the physical challenge was great but I'll definitely have to go back for the view and the feeling!

GPS track

Hiking log

''(The altitudes may be a little off as I hadn't calibrated my altimeter.)''

0300: Get up, eat breakfast
0330: Set out by car to the parking lot close by
0345: Start hiking from the 新中橫公路北側平面停車場 (New central traversal highway north side parking lot), 2595 m
0427: 塔塔加登山口 (Ta ta jia trail head), 2598 m
0503: 孟祿亭 (Meng lu pavilion), 2783 m
0633: 西峰觀景台 West peak view pavilon, 2988 m
0810: 排雲山莊 (Pai yun mountain lodge), 3406 m
1033: 玉山主峰 (Yu shan main peak), 3952 m
1040: Descent
1156: 排雲山莊 (Pai yun mountain lodge)
1330: 西峰觀景台 West peak view pavilon, lunch
1400: Continue descent
1545: 塔塔加登山口 (Ta ta jia trail head)
1556: Shuttle back to the parking lot

Photos

*Update (2011-05-14): *I've uploaded the GPS track to GPSies: 單攻玉山 (Yu shan one-day trip)

I had a chance to try a borrowed NIKKOR 50mm f/1.2 lens, which allowed me to get some amazing results without the help of a tripod. Very handy if your left hand is holding up an umbrella most of the time. :-)

But then I took a second look:

Carcinogenic dyes and heavy metals - if that doesn't put you to sleep, what will?

It took two layers of pants and five layers of shirts, fleece, and jackets in order not to freeze to death on the scooter. Luckily we only had to ride about fifteen minutes to meet Kevin and his heated car.

With several stops on the way we drove along 竹122線 all the way to 觀霧 (Guan wu), which loosely translates into "View of the fog". The place has its name for a good reason as especially in the afternoon it is very common to have fog in the area. But not this time; we didn't see a cloud the whole day. Unfortunately the absence of clouds also ruined our sunrise photo session. Not that I would see many of them but apparently they are quite boring without clouds. :-)

Anyway, I'll take a clear sky over a great sunrise any day and below you'll quickly see why. Of course when you're freezing at 4 am your first thought isn't exactly "pack sunscreen", so I ended up looking like a strawberry, but it was still worth it. All in all one of my favorite mountain trips in Taiwan so far. And the best part is that the scenery makes for a lot of inspiration on where to go next!

Unfortunately the weekend weather hasn't been as good as we'd have liked it and the first time we went biking with our new GPS we ended up caught in a thunderstorm and pushing our bikes through ankle-deep mud. While the pictures from that trip still aren't quite ready here are some from a more recent trip we did during perfect biking weather. Perfectly dry and neither too cold nor too hot.

Hsinchu doesn't have many tourist attractions. Aside from a 17 km bike trail along the coastline (last time I went a little more than half of it was still under construction) there's not much for easy biking, especially if you don't want to constantly turn circles around other bikers.

However, there's one bike trail that seems to be mostly unheard of: the 新竹縣濱海自行車道 (Hsinchu County Coastline Bike Trail). Even though some parts are still in construction and bikers are rerouted through small and quiet side streets it's quite nice and peaceful. It starts in East Hsinchu and leads North past the 新月沙灘 (Xin Yue Beach) all the way to 羊寮 (Yang liao).

This time we only made it a little more than half-way because it was getting dark. The rest will have to wait for another day.

Last Saturday a friend invited me to join him and his mentor to take photos at a Lotus pond near 北埔 (Bei pu). I learned a thing or two about photography, but what I realized the most was that there are at least two very different types of photographers.

** The first kind likes to get up early, say 4-6 in the morning, occupy a well-chosen spot, and patiently wait for the sun to rise to shoot the perfect photograph - a true work of art.
** The second one doesn't like to change his sleeping habits because of his camera. He likes to drag it along, though, whenever he goes some place nice and then tries to shoot a great photo given the current angle and lighting conditions.

Have you guessed which type I am? Yes, big surprise, I don't like to get up early. :-) Either way, it's very interesting to observe the differences in both behavior and outcome.

My friend is of the first kind. He'll adjust his tripod for minutes, just to get the exact angle he has in mind. I, on the other hand, will rather look for a new subject than fidget with my tripod to make it stand in the muddy slope. Cause, you know, you have to clean it later and get your hands dirty ...

Obviously, the outcome is also very different. His photo collection is full with photos that you could hang on a wall and that will make people go "oooh" and "aaah".

My photos are much simpler. Still nice, I believe, but much simpler. My only real goal when I take photos is to capture the moment and make the photo look as impressive as what I perceive. I want my photos to tell a story and give people an impression of what the place and the atmosphere was like.

Do I wish I could take some more "artistic" photos once in a while? Of course, but I don't think I'm patient enough to focus on that. I'll just be learning it slowly - after all I have plenty of time. If BP keeps their wells shut nature will be around long enough for me to learn how to ban it on (virtual) film.

So, the photos below may not exactly reach my declared goal since it wasn't an actual trip. See it as the result of my exercise for there be more beautiful trip photos in the future! :-)

We quickly found something on what by now is one of our favorite hiking blogs. The family who writes it has been to so many places in Hsinchu County that you can always find a good suggestion or directions to a hard-to-find trail.

So, we settled for a rather short but nice little hiking trail near 新豐 (Xin feng), just north of 竹北 (Zhu bei), called 鳳崎落日登山步道 (Feng qi luo ri hiking trail). It's only about 3.3 kilometers one way but that coincided well with our habit of getting up (too) late.

The GPSies map ...

... and our photos. Have fun!

Fortunately there are always (plenty of) exceptions to the rule, and _Bon Appétit_ in 竹北 (Zhu bei, Jubei, Chubei, insert your favorite spelling here) is one of them. Here's what their pizza looks like:

Pizza Vegetarina:

Pizza Giardinera:

And yes, they are as good as they look!

Of course, pizza makes hungry for dessert, and what better after pizza than chocolate? So, we went on a little shopping spree in Carrefour and bought as much stuff as we could possibly fit on the scooter. A selection of our items:

The 1.6 kg of chocolate don't quite compare with our visit of the Lindt factory store in Switzerland last summer, which looked something like this:

If you're wondering where all these calories go stay tuned for the next blog post about one of our favorite weekend activities: hiking.

Dragon boat festival also marks the end of the rainy season. This year the sky was right on time and after a few days of relatively heavy rain we had a (mostly) dry day to enjoy our hike.

After seeing a few blog articles and Panoramio photos I had got the impression that it must be a fairly easy hike with maybe one or two short segments that involve pulling yourself up on a rope. Far from it! On the last quarter of the trail your hands are just as busy as your legs.

An elevation of 800 meters on about 4 km length makes it an interesting day hike. Below are the trail record on GPSies and the photos from my gallery. Enjoy!

Since many mountains don't have official hiking trails it can be a little tricky to find the trail entrance and you never know how many different trails there are. We had found a blog post that described a hike to said mountain and decided to try and approach it from the other side - unfortunately with little luck because our road of choice turned out to be a dead end.

Either way, the view was good and the hike was just right to take advantage of another rare sunny Saturday in the middle of the rain season.

Sunday first took us to 合歡山東峰 (He huan shan east peak). And the two of us who still had enough energy bagged the - admittedly easy - trophies of 石門山 (Shi men shan) and 合歡尖山 (He huan jian shan) as well. The latter two are really just better hills but the wind sure made it fun. It brought back memories of our typhoon weekend in 墾丁 (Kenting) over two years ago. It was hard to stand at times.

Unfortunately the wind also brought a lot of fog with it, so if you're looking for more great views you'll have to come back in a few weeks or so. :-)

Today I'd like to present something that takes the cake in so many ways. There's a bakery chain called 提拉米蘇 (the Chinese transliteration of 'Tiramisu') that is hugely popular, to the extent where people line up outside the shop or wait for several weeks to receive their online cake order.

Here's what the object of people's desire looks like - the Tiramisu cake:

They even have a diagram explaining the cake's structure: a base of digestive biscuit, two layers of mousse, a layer of chocolate cake, and to top it off cocoa powder imported from Malaysia.

Let's attribute the fact that half the ingredients don't show up in traditional tiramisu recipes to artistic interpretation.

What really takes the cake is how they bend the largely unknown and unspectactular history of tiramisu into a deeply "meaningful" story based on a mistranslation and an awful lot of imagination (a.k.a. 唬濫 - Taiwanese for "bullshit"):

Can you feel the Tiramisu coming back up yet?

The list of Taiwan's 100 highest mountains is pretty famous here but only few people are adventurous enough to complete it. Some mountains are only accessible after days of difficult hiking and the weather is a factor not to be underestimated.

Luckily some of these 100 mountains are quite easy to conquer. The easiest ones are all part of 合歡山 (He huan shan), so that it's perfectly possible to climb five of them in a good weekend of relaxed hiking. We managed to do four of them - two per day. On Saturday we hiked 北峰 (north peak) and walked up (it can't be called hiking ...) 主峰 (main peak).

So, what's with the frog you ask? Well, you'll see it in the photos below. Let's just say that green wasn't the color of my choice but now that I look like a frog I figured I might as well make this the motto of my Top-100 attack! :-)

Enjoy the photos! (If you liked them, there's a link to more at the bottom.)

There are more photos in my gallery, so be sure to check it out as well.

Part two will be coming up soon ...

Luckily there's an exception to every rule, so we came up with something we like to call "emergency hikes". An emergency hike consists of a) a hiking route that needs virtually no preparation and b) no expectations. Basically, they're perfect when the clouds suddenly lift and you can no longer stand to be trapped inside.

One such emergency hike was 騎龍古道 (Qi long ancient trail), not too far from here. The trail itself is very short and more of a walk than a hike, but the area is nice and very quiet:

Link to the full album

... until I noticed what song they were studying. Let's zoom in, shall we?

"Time to say good-bye - con te partirò" - a rather peculiar choice for an emergency room. :-)

We recently updated from Closet 1.0, which has served us - reasonably - well for the last three months and looked like this ...

... to the new and much improved version 2.0, which we had custom designed and looks so much nicer:

Two of the three front sliding doors are decorated with artistic renderings of Ivy's and my last names:

The inside is quite simple with five shelves and three drawers on each side and a hanger compartment in the middle.

The middle part also features a mirror that can be folded out on rails:

After about two days of heavy venting the fresh closet smell is finally disappearing, so all the clothes that are currently scattered around the apartment in bags and trolleys will soon be ready to move in. :-)

Of course the little cold and rain wouldn't stop us from hiking, so here are a few photos from our umbrella hike. One day we're going back there and we'll return with a myriad of beautiful photos of mountain and ocean views, sunrises, sunsets, and seas of clouds!

Link to the full album

To make sure we're on the same page I want to mention that when I'm talking about winter in Taiwan that means temperatures that drop as low as 10-15 °C (that's 50-59 F if you're unlucky enough to measure temperature relative to the smelly armpit of a Polish physicist's wife). That may not sound particularly cold but it sure feels cold when the humidity is 80% or higher and live in a windy city.

With a body fat percentage of under 13% which, thank you very much, puts me in the category of "Athletes", you'll naturally see and hear me shiver a lot or complain about the cold. This draws a lot of wonder from my Taiwanese friends and colleagues who think that with Switzerland regularly having sub-zero (again Celsius scale, not armpit icicles) temperatures I should be running around in shorts and a T-shirt instead of hugging my oil heater.

*Myth:* Swiss people are immune to cold.

*Analysis:* There are two important factors here:

## _Humidity._ Swiss winter is very dry and hardly windy unless you happen to live in a few particular areas. I don't know how to put the felt temperature at different air humidity in numbers, but it certainly makes a difference. (There's a formula here but, not surprising given their origin, the nice tables don't go very far towards the cold.) Whatever the numbers may say, 0 degrees at 10% humidity just feels less penetrating than 13 degrees at 80%.
## _Insulation._ Unless you've been traveling to Europe and paying attention to that detail you may not be aware that our houses (and jackets for that matter) are massively insulated. Our walls are not just made from thin wall elements (or reinforced cardboard in some other Western countries ...) but from carefully engineered bricks with layers of insulation that minimize heat transfer. Together with double glazed windows and a central heating system that makes for a cozy home and reasonable heating costs.

*Verdict:* Myth busted!

Luckily winter is short in Taiwan! Last week we've already had temperatures in the mid-20's and my summer clothes are getting ready to come out of hibernation.

Later that day Ivy and I rode our scooter to the 天恩彌勒佛院 (Voice of Maitreya area), which features the biggest 彌勒佛 (Maitreya) statue in Asia. While still under construction it is already an impressive piece of work, in particular the majestic statue that rises above the nearby lake.

Enjoy the photos!

So far, so good; there's nothing wrong with kids getting used to today's media early on. But let's have a closer look what he was playing:

I apologize for the photo quality, but you can recognize that it's a pretty violent and bloody game that involves running around simple 2D levels shooting with machine guns at others until the blood splashes and having the same done to yourself. Quite amazingly when the father noticed what his kid was doing he wasn't the least bit shocked or even surprised and seemed to smile approvingly of his son's pastime.

The next two photos speak for themselves:

In case you're wondering: Yes, "idiot" in French means the same thing as in English ...

I assume that the person who gave the idiot-ic name to the restaurant would respond to the tea shop's question with a resounding "yes!".

The area around the world's tallest skyscraper (looks like the financial crisis is buying us another few years in this regard) was more crowded than last year, but I still managed to find a little spot to put up my camera and shoot some firework pictures for the first time with my D-SLR. Given that I had no idea what I was doing and only had about two minutes to experiment I'm quite happy with the outcome.

I'll upload more photos to my gallery as soon as I get to process them (maybe together with the Switzerland photos that have been in the queue for the last four months :-). Until then here are three of my favorite pictures I took last night, directly from the camera.

Happy New Year to everybody!

In case you're wondering what the "Taiwan UP" stands for, we've had the same discussion last night. Ideas went from "Up into the sky is where the money gets shot during the fireworks" to simply "up yours", but it seems the correct interpretation is that 2010 is the year where the economy recovers and life goes up again. I like this idea. Let's drink to that!

As always the track log is on GPSies but you can also check out the map here:

Photo-wise, for now I only have a bunch of rather boring Panoramio photos but more will follow soon.

*Update (2009-11-09):* Thanks to everybody's picture sharing efforts I was able to put together a few nice group photos. Enjoy!

If you liked these pictures there are a few more in my Bike trip to 宇老 album.

The names vary and are decorated with such tongue twisters as "International Commercial Affairs Detective". The ads often feature some attractive woman sporting a camcorder or some othern modern day Wannabe-Sherlock-Holmes equipment in a much too obvious and unprofessional fashion.

In the end these companies all have pretty much the same purpose. You hire them to spy on your loved one if you suspect him or her of being unfaithful. With adultery being one of the few legitimate reasons for divorce in Taiwan little afternoon outings in a cheap motel being interrupted by police, detectives, or spouses with camcorders are not uncommon.

The other day I was browsing to a hospital newsletter when when the following article - the picture to be exact - caught my eye:

The poor girl! Not only does she have a cheating bastard of a father, but on top of (or because of?) it all she now suffers from Tourette syndrome.

Because I didn't know the name of the place before I left (ha ha ...) I had a hard time finding the small entrance road, so I decided to take a bunch of photos on the way and add them to Panoramio, so that they will eventually show up in Google Earth. Taiwan's road signs leave lots of room for improvement - this is my small contribution.

I had been told it was pretty steep, so when the road stayed fairly flat I was doubting my navigation skills for a while. But I was not to be disappointed. The road kept getting steeper and steeper forcing me to take a few breaks. Luckily the view is so good though (on a clear day you can see Taipei 101 from there!), that you forget your sore legs for a while:

A fellow biker even went to the trouble to measure the slope at various points. I should have thought of that first. What better excuse for breaks than collecting photos and numbers for your blog? :-)

At the top of the hill is a tiny temple:

This is what it looks like inside:

The map is below and if you're curious to see some more details about the trip you can check out the GPSies track I uploaded.

Where I work a couple of weeks ago each employee received a fever thermometer and was requested to measure their temperature twice a day and take sick leave if the temperature surpasses 38.5 degrees. There's certainly nothing wrong with that, especially because, as timing would have it, I was given a free thermometer just when I was developing a fever (not from H1N1, sorry to disappoint). But the funny thing is the assumption that the average person will first discover a fever by looking at the display of a thermometer and not by feeling chilly and weak. The not so funny thing is the fact that the thermometer is made in China, which is not only boosting the wrong economy, but also doesn't exactly put my mind at ease.

At around the same time the bathrooms were equipped with bottles of alcohol and boxes of alcohol pads:

This in turn inspires people to odd behavior. Scene: Company bathroom, earlier this week, observed while I'm brushing my teeth. A guy comes in and starts washing his hands very carefully. When he's done he walks over to the urinal, does his thing, then washes his hands again, this time even more carefully, i.e. first with soap, then with alcohol. Finally, he drenches a paper towel in alcohol, uses it to open the door by clumsily grabbing the edge of the handle with it, and walks out.

It's truly interesting to observe how the pseudo-measures designed primarily to calm people down work hand in hand with the fear that is fueled by the media reports. If this doesn't stop the swine flu, what will?

Even after being sentenced to life in prison for a long list of crimes including embezzlement and laundering of millions of dollars he remains convinced of his innocence, notwithstanding friends and family members testifying against him.

With the help of his indefatigable supporters (who, I assume, now have nothing to laund... pardon, do) he has come up with another cunning plan to escape life behind bars: Sue Obama.

It's almost too good to be true. If this doesn't turn out to be yet another sloppily researched story cooked up by the Taiwanese media, then this is my favorite news of the year (right up there with Crocs in trouble).

For the fans of insanity, here are two of the original articles reporting the story:

Wu Shu-jhen and her son visit Chen Shui-bian in prison (Formosa News, 2009-09-22)
阿扁出怪招　要隔海控告歐巴馬！扁：我願到美國作證 (Yahoo! News, 2009-09-22)

These days the Taipei 101 building is displaying a big illuminated "加油" (Jia you), which is the Taiwanese way of cheering someone on.

We thought this makes a great background for such a video, so without further ado our Youtube premiere:

Don't forget to submit your own video to show your support or donate a little something!

With only marginal help from the clouds and a pair of sunglasses my trusted Casio Exilim EX-750 didn't let me down. I was able to take a few decent pictures as you can see:

Some full-sized pictures can be found in my Snapshot album.

I think this is a good occasion to dedicate a few words to my camera. In the last four years it has taken more than 10,000 photos or about 20 GB of image data. It survived the occasional drop and even came back from a salt water induced coma last year. Hats off to this amazing little piece of technology! :-)

With only eight seconds left to cross the road, shouldn't the man be walking instead of what he seems to be doing?

The saying that there is no accounting for taste is probably as old as the first cave paintings. As for me you'll much rather see me carefully remove a 30,000 year-old painting from a cave wall than spend a single dollar on one of the exhibits at these events.

I have picked two examples to class up my blog. The first one is a traditional Taiwanese set of living room furniture:

The second one (and this is the part that really worries me - after all you can't argue with tradition), is fashioned after ancient European cultural periods (possibly Baroque?). It is considered European luxury style luxury.

Maybe it's time to send a few of these designers on a business trip across European living rooms.

What's funny is that, when you take pictures at these exhibitions, it usually doesn't take long until some worried sales person comes jumping across the hall telling you not to take pictures.

At first I didn't quite understand why. After all they are trying to make a sale. And nowadays people often shop with cameras. You take pictures, go home, take your time comparing, matching styles and colors. And at the end of the day you decide. So why stop people from taking pictures? Are they too embarrassed about their design? Do they fear to be ridiculed by the blogging community?

Not at all! The opposite is the case: They are proud of their design. So proud, in fact, that they fear that people take pictures at an exhibition, then bring these pictures to the next best furniture factory to have an exact replica built at a fraction of the price. It is sad but true that this is common practice among a large part of Taiwanese.

Be that is it may. My motto is that you can take pictures of anything as long as you're fast enough. And in that spirit you can find the rest of the pictures in my gallery. But I'm warning you: They are not for the faint of stomach!

From the perspective of a foreigner, Taiwanese politics is interesting on many levels and brings up a variety of reactions in me.

My favorite is the ‘‘‘"I wish the Swiss parliament could achieve that"‘‘‘ because it confirms my decision to live abroad. (Not that I was escaping Switzerland on purpose - it just so happened, - but it's a good feeling anyway.) This happens, for example, when smoking in many public spaces is banned in the whole of Taiwan while in Switzerland this is a process that takes years of debate and votes in each individual canton and is still not complete thanks to a bunch of simple-minded gastronomy and tobacco company representatives (and their represented simpletons) who think a minority's choice to smoke is more important than the cancer-free bodies of the rest of the population.

The opposite reaction is the ‘‘‘"I want to go to Taipei and smack someone over the head" ‘‘‘. It happens quite a bit and in the majority of times it's a member of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) that I want to slap. The reason I don't do it is that it would make me no better than their own. And it would be a step backward because it's not too long ago that the Taiwanese parliament was a stage for fist fights on a regular basis.

Yet another one is the ‘‘‘"My lifelong search for irony has reached a new climax"‘‘‘ and that shall be the subject of today's post. But before I explain what happened I need to give you a little background. (Disclaimer: This is the impression I couldn't help but getting in the last two years that I've lived in Taiwan. Therefore, this may be biased by my open-minded, logic and truth searching perception.)

Many DPP members are still very angry about losing the legislative election in early 2008 and the presidential election a few months later to the Kuomintang party (KMT). The previous eight years of DPP government had been landmarked by great achievements such as:

** Temporarily stopping the construction of a nuclear plant for political reasons forcing the government to spend millions of tax dollars on breach of contract payments.
** Renaming the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall to National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall, once again at huge cost for the Taiwanese tax payers. (By the way, does this remind anyone else of Freedom fries?) Also, the memorial hall was partially closed and covered by ugly scaffolding for years, officially because of renovation work, but together with the cancelling of the guard ceremonies it seemed to be part of their general plan to destroy or make unattractive anything involving Chaing Kai-shek.
** Their president and his extended family organizing a huge money embezzlement scheme, once again at the cost of the Taiwanese people.
** Switching the Romanization system, which is the way how the Chinese language is transcribed into the Roman alphabet, from the widely used Hanyu Pinyin to Tongyong Pinyin. Aside from the unnecessary cost such changes create (do you see a pattern here?), they also render a huge service to Chinese learners like myself when the whole world adopts one system and one political party of a small country adopts another. Even Taiwanese are confused by the different systems to the extent where most of them cannot read or write Pinyin. (I'm not sure whether this would be different if the government stuck with one system but that's a story for another day because the topic is fairly complex.)

The list goes on and on. The bottom line is that all these things were, of course, done for the good of the Taiwanese people. And, as it happens for representative democracies, the currently elected people know for sure what's best for their voters. In the case of the DPP the best is protecting the country and its democracy from China and, mainly, their opposing party. Sentences like “the opposition wants to sell Taiwan to communist China” are part of the standard repertoire of any DPP politician.

Ironically, and now we're getting back to my favorite topic, they are rather generous when it comes to interpreting democracy. When Jackie Chan recently pulled off yet another one of his foot-in-mouth stunts the DPP suggested creating a law to withdraw funding from the Deaflympics if they didn't replace him as a spokesman.

Everybody knows that the Chinese Communist Party is not a big proponent of freedom of speech, but from a party that carries the word "Democratic" in its name and spends the better part of its energy into fanning fear of communism that's pretty ironic. (And even if you don't like irony you have to wonder why a sports event should suffer because politicians disagree with actors.)

I guess it's time to read up on democracy's fundamental values or for a name change. Given their recent achievements the latter one looks like less trouble. I suggest DYOCP: Democratic Yet Opportunistically Communistic Party. Rolls right off your tongue.

Besides the typical 新年快樂 (Xin nian kuai le), which simply means Happy New Year, there are a number of idioms that Taiwanese normally like to use to bestow on others or the people living in their own house, such as:

萬事如意 (Wan shi ru yi) - May you have all your wishes
心想事成 (Xin xiang shi cheng) - May your wishes become true
財源滾滾 (Cai yuan gun gun) - Much wealth and richness

As it happens the Mandarin language only has about 400 syllables, which leads to an enormous number of homophones - and an equally large number of word plays.

For just that reason the idioms I mentioned above are not very popular this year because, without a change in sound, they can become the following less well-meaning yet rather applicable expressions:

萬市如憶 (Wan shi ru yi) - The Dow Jones at 10000 points is just a memory
薪餉四成 (Xin xiang shi cheng) - Salaries are cut by 60%
裁員滾滾 (Cai yuan gun gun) - The lay-off never stops (_or:_ Laid off - get lost!)

On that note once again a Happy New Year 2009!

For those of you who live in the Western hemisphere, coming Monday the Chinese New Year starts, which means all kinds of different things:

** We'll have a week of vacation.
** We'll be eating a lot.
** We'll give or receive red envelopes with money in them. (I don't quite understand yet who gives them to whom but as a foreigner I'm allowed a few mistakes here.)

Then there are a few things that the New Year means just to me:

** It's the year of the Ox (牛), which means that I'll be eating even more 牛肉麵 (Beef Noodle Soup). Last year was the year of the Mouse but I was unable to draw any culinary inspiration from that. Contrary to popular belief not all animals are eaten in Taiwan. Something that cannot be said for other countries, by the way.
** I was extremely happy for the first 11.5 months of the last year. This year I'm gonna try going all the way, so if my company doesn't announce another layoff plan - How could they? There's no one left. - I'm confident I might just succeed.
** I want to work harder on my Chinese. It's been almost two years since I've been here and my Chinese still - how do I put this? - well, it sucks. If you come visit me I'm able to be your food and tea guide without any problems but if you asked me to book a hotel room or get directions I'd do about as well as the aforementioned ox would.

I guess those would be my New Year's resolutions. I was going to put "blog more often" on the list but let's be realistic here. I don't want to be proven a failure before March. :-)

Happy New Year to everybody!

Even though blogging about restaurants and food is hugely popular in Taiwan now (big surprise with all the delicious things you can find here) that's not the reason for this post. It's just that trying Western food is often a big disappointment, so when it's not that deserves an honorable mention. I hope I can add to that in the future.

With all the bad news and shops that have been disappearing lately (mostly tea shops but it's not like there are not five others waiting to fill the gap) it's nice to see people trying out new stuff. Last weekend we happened to notice a tiny new place along 光復路 (Guang Fu Road), not far from Nova, that sells grilled sandwiches.

We gave it a try and were not disappointed. There are many original combinations to choose from and for a few bucks extra you get fries and a drink. (I know fries may not sound that exciting but in Taiwan they're not as common as you think. :-) From the two we've tried - BBQ Chicken and Mushroom Salami - we slightly favored the latter one, mostly because of the delicious sauce, but both were excellent. Even the bread is good and crispy, not like the soggy "bread" they serve in Subway.

The portions are slightly on the small side, so you'll need a side order, but the prices are pretty reasonable. The place is also kind of small: only three tables. But you can take away and apparently the owner is thinking about adding a delivery service.

Below is a photo of one of their sandwiches and a copy of the menu.

Mr. Toast Gourmet Grilled Sandwich Bar
新竹市光復路二段276號
Guang Fu Road, Sec. 2, #276, Hsinchu (between Nova and 清大夜市 Qing Da Night Market)
03-571 7373

Our means of transportation was a scooter, without a doubt the most convenient way of getting around. We even brought our own helmets cause riding at 50 km/h with a 100 TWD helmet (about the price of two bowls of noodles), the kind that scooter rental places offer, is just half the fun.

The thing that personally impressed me the most was a Buddhist ceremony we saw at the beach. (It goes by the name of 海之祭 or, in full, 安平海祭淨安祈福消災冥陽法會. The translation is left to the reader - and the writer - as an exercise.) The preparations were huge since the whole beach was decorated not only with traditional items such as paper ships, statues, flags, swags, and fruit, but also with modern elements like fireworks, a laser show, and an ear-shattering loudspeaker system. The ceremony itself consisted of dance, praying, music, and an abundance of fire. All of this was to honor the gods, pray for luck, and hope the people who died in the ocean can find the way to heaven. Truly an impressive spectacle.

Apart from that there were different parks, temples, flowers, and nature. (I just noticed I forgot to take pictures of food again. Maybe I'll remember next time ...)

Check out my Tainan album for all the pictures!

This and some other interesting night shots were taken during one of our walks to 象山 (Xiang shan; Elephant mountain). Check out the Xiang shan by night album for some nice photos of Taipei and 101.

For me typhoons are tremendously more interesting than the Swiss autumn storms I'm used to. I enjoy going out to see which tea stores and restaurants remain open (quite a few) and take some pictures here and there. I'm still waiting for a flying cow but the following is an impressive start:

(I apologize for the lousy image quality. One of these days I'm going to get a new, waterproof camera that takes good pictures at night.)

More pictures in my gallery ...

If you think that vacations are relaxing then you should try coming back from one of my vacations. Hundreds of photos and dozens of GPS traces are waiting to be combined and put online.

Luckily, I finally found a working program that does this job quite well: Geotag. It loads pictures from different directories and multiple GPS tracks and with a little bit of magic you'll have coordinates in your pictures in no time. The result of this can be seen here:

Turtle Island album

Turtle Island (龜山島, Gui shan dao) is a small, uninhabited island on the west coast of Taiwan. Unfortunately it's still under military control and visiting involves going with a rather large tour group or a lot of paperwork (If you have the choice, go with the paperwork! :-), but it's worthwile in spite of that. See for yourself.

Oh, and pictures from Okinawa are coming up soon. At least some of them; turns out my camera is allergic to water. ;-)

We were planning to climb 五指山 (Five finger mountain) after a little warm-up trip to 關西 (Guanxi) and back but it turns out the 50 km I had already done were a little too much to attack one of the steepest mountains in the area.

Anyway, we'll try again soon, and with a little luck one of these days there will be pictures of a nice view on my website. In the meantime, you can check out two photos I took while waiting for my friend and the map to go with it. :-)

Five Finger Mountain album

And then there's the National Chiao Tung University in Hsinchu where a walk around the lake is more like an obstacle course around dead animals:

Theories as to the reason of this animal battle ground include "bored to death by professors" and "university graduate designed aeration system". ;-)

All jokes aside, apart from the lake the university is quite nice. Take a look by visiting my Taiwanese Universities album.

If you're wondering what I'm up to these days: shopping, cleaning, and working. The former two are mostly related to my new apartment. I have the essentials to live, i.e. a desk, a couch, a decent washing machine, and a heater, but many things are still outstanding. There's carpets, curtains, a TV, a Wii, a decent computer (to replace the horrible horrible Lenovo laptop I'm forced to use), and lots of little household things.

Then there's work which is keeping me quite busy, especially shortly before the Chinese New Year's vacation where as many things as possible need to be wrapped up. Who wants to work in their vacation, after all? Well, I'll be working at least for a few hours. During my trip through Swizerland I will quickly stop by my old university with which Logitech works together. No nostalgic feelings, though.

When I'm not working or shopping, I'm trying to bike a little more often, at least when the weather allows. One such weekend was about three weeks back and there are even a few pictures in my gallery.

I finally have my GPS logger, a Wintec WPL-1000, so keeping track of my bike trips has gotten a lot easier. Check out the route of my last trip.

I'll try to post some snow pictures from Switzerland. ;-)

The activities were not too exciting (especially the paint ball for which some people had signed up and then got to play for around 10 minutes), but I got to make one of my favorite Taiwanese desserts, 愛玉. Here are two pictures of me and another one where they were making mochi (麻糬):

By the way, Loïc was a little faster than I was, he's mentioning the event in his blog as well, including some funny pictures.

As part of the event we even got a gift voucher and today was the day where we could pick it up at the warehouse (that already made me suspicious). It turned out we had the choice between a really old webcam, a really old wired mouse, and a really old wired PS/2 keyboard. It wasn't so much a gift as a "please help us empty our warehouse, it's cheaper than ordering the trash company" object.

Anyway, free stuff is free stuff (haha, I'm cheap ;-), so I went for the keyboard. If nothing else I can use it to practice Bopomofo (the Taiwanese alphabet).

For the time being, though, I put it up in my office:

(I hate to explain jokes, but in case you can't read the Chinese, it says: "Antique keyboard exhibition. Please don't touch.")

Next on my list: a nice, little cradle for my new cell phone that I once saw in 台中 (Taichung) and didn't buy for reasons that have slipped my mind. (Actually, something slipping my mind may have been the reason ...) Now, I just need a good reason to go back to 台中. :-)

Talking about Garfield ... Remember his cravings for donuts? It seems Taiwanese are not so different after all. This weekend I saw something slightly shocking. This line in front of Mr. Donut, a Japanese donut chain:

And if you're wondering, how long the line is, here's the answer:

One and a half hours. And all of this because of a special offer that gives you a free yellow shopping bag when you buy a bunch of donuts. The good news: Standing in line for 1.5h guarantees that you get a solid headstart burning the calories that you'll eat later. Maybe a good idea for certain other countries where the lines tend to be orders of magnitude shorter but also a few times wider. ;-)

So, one day, when I came home, all the bikes were outside the room, distributed among the scooters, the room was empty and some lines were drawn on the floor. (Not so much drawn but taped; they just stuck some tape on a layer of dirt to make little fields for the individual bikes.) A nice idea that should make an end to a collection of bikes randomly blocking each other.

But if you thought that what doesn't work with cars and scooters works for bikes, you don't know Taiwan. Where there is room, there are vehicles and lines on the floor are rough guidelines at best and invitations to do the opposite at worst.

Here's what it looks like now:

Ironically, the lines correspond almost exactly to the way the bikes were arranged when there were no lines. :-)

* Chiayi and Ali shan
* Yílán and Taipei
* Kenting

Some others are still on my todo list. Unfortunately, the location data for these albums is a little sparse. For one thing, I don't always remember where the places were and for another, the satellite imagery of Taiwan is sometimes of such low resolution that it's hard to locate places without GPS.

As a first step to solving this problem I recently bought a new cell phone. But it's not just a cell phone, it's a ASUS P535, which combines cell phone, digital camera, PDA, and GPS in one slick device. In case you were wondering: Yes, it's yet another reason why my blogging frequency is fairly low.

But obviously a PDA with GPS is not the most elegant way to keep track of your location when you're doing a trip. Much better is a GPS track logger like the Wintec WPL-1000. Unfortunately it's not yet for sale but it should be in the next few weeks. So, prepare for some nice location and tracking information in the near future, here on this channel. :-)

Instead of boring you with a description of the entire weekend (I'll leave that job to the photos) I want to share two little episodes that are characteristic for what I like so much about Taiwan.

Winds were rather strong on Saturday, so not many people dared (or bothered) to go outside. Given our short stay we didn't want to stay inside and live off of instant noodles, so we decided to drive around the area and enjoy the beautiful scenery. One of our destinations was the Erluanbi Lighthouse National Park (鵝鑾鼻國家公園, Éluánbí guójiā gōngyuán) at the southernmost point of Taiwan. Unfortunately the park was closed during the typhoon and we were already heading back to our car when the staff told us that we could visit anyway, just at our own risk. No need to tell us twice! We ran in and fought our way against the wind to the top of the hill on which the lighthouse is standing. We had a blast (literally and metaphorically speaking)! It's great when rules can be bent once in a while and the fear of a legal suit doesn't stifle every hint of flexibility and common sense.

Later the same day we had lunch in 恆春 (Héngchūn), a town in Southern Taiwan. With eight people it tends to become a little difficult to choose a restaurant, so our group ended up split into four people preferring rice from one store and four people preferring food from the noodle store next door. Not a problem in Taiwan. The noodle store owner saw that we were one big group and told us to go sit together, she would bring us our food over. If that's not great service, then what is? Try the same thing in Switzerland and you'll find yourself kicked out before you realize what's going on.

I'm still sorting through everybody's pictures and making a selection. Today was National Day and I was busy trying to ride a scooter. Anyway, Candy was a lot faster, so until I'm done, go ahead and check out her gallery.

*Update:* (date censored) My album is online at last. Check it out!

So, what does one do on such an unexpected vacation day? First of all, sleeping till 1pm. Next thing, looking outside (not very impressive) and making plans with a friend to go out for lunch. Despite the typhoon warning and the more or less heavy rain and the occasional gust of wind many shops remain open, so no need to starve.

Joe just bought a new bike and had it delivered from Taipei, so we went to pick it up, which gave me the opportunity to drive a car in Taiwan for the first time. It's not scarier than the typhoon, which is not exactly a surprise after almost six months of riding a bike amidst clouds of scooters and lines of cars. That's bound to harden anyone.

Right now I'm at the office and it's pretty calm. Except for a few hardcore workaholics there are not many people here. Unfortunately, Joe's manager is one of them, so they called a quick meeting with one of the executives who happens to be visiting Taiwan on the one day where no one's around.

I'll try to post some pictures or videos later tonight. So far, I have one fallen tree as a trophy and some heavy rain, but not much more. Let's just hope the electricity stays up. It's been a long time since I've last had to read a book by candle light ...

*Update:* Once again the typhoon was not that scary, here's the scariest sight I found ... :-)

The last weeks were pretty busy and the little time that was left I was doing my best to avoid a full-fledged OOS, which means (almost) no typing and reading or watching videos instead.

To at least partly make up for the recent lack of news, here are the last few weekends summarized:

** Three weeks ago: 貓空 (Mao kong), which is one of Taipei's most famous tourist attractions thanks (only) to its cable car. Unfortunately, the cable car has a slightly negative safety history, so we went there by bus, only to find out that the entire area is not much more than the cable car and a view of the city. It still made for a nice walk but no pictures this time, sorry. :-)
** Two weeks ago: Hiking trip to the 司馬庫斯 ("Sīmǎkùsī" or just "Smangus") area in 新竹縣 (Hsinchu County). We climbed 李棟山 (Lǐdòng shān) on Saturday and went walking in the 鎮西堡神木群 (Zhènxībǎo shénmùqún) forest on Sunday. Lots of pictures this time!
** One week ago: Trip to 宜蘭 (Yilan) and Taipei with Venkatesh who was visiting our Taiwan team from Logitech Fremont. Pictures still in the pipeline.
** This weekend: Spontaneous weekend at the 日月潭 (Rìyuètán or Sun Moon Lake). Pictures coming soon!

The upcoming weeks might be very similar. For the next weekend, which is the one just before Moon festival, Ivy and I are going to 嘉義 (Jiāyì) to visit a friend of hers and "climb" 阿里山 (Ālǐ shān), on Monday we're taking my father to 九份 (Jiǔfèn), and for October we're planning a 2.5 day trip to the 墾丁國家公園 (Kenting National Park).

I'm going to have a hard time keeping up with my photos but I'll sure try.

Now, the last typhoon turned out to be a real sissy (no wind, almost no rain), so everyone has high expectations for this one. And indeed, it does look a little scary:

So far it's been nothing but a tame twirl, though. Its most devastating effect was that it made the queues at the supermarket about three times longer than usual because everybody is stocking up on water and instant noodles. (Eating instant noodles in candle light during typhoons is a tradition in Taiwan.)

We'll see what happens tomorrow. I'm expecting everything from power outages to water supply interruptions because that's what I was told can happen. I'll keep you posted. And in the meantime you can even keep track of typhoons on the typhoon tracker of the Taiwanese Central Weather Bureau.

Update, 2007-08-18 12:30: Sepat pretty much vaporized the moment it hit Taiwan and all that's now left is a little bit of rain and a lot of windlessness. Very disappointing; I have to wait yet again to see my first real typhoon and flying dogs. ;-)

I went to Běipǔ (北埔) in the hills south east of Hsinchu and came back via Zhúdōng (竹東). When you only bike in Hsinchu, it's hard to believe that there are real hills and mountains. But it only takes about an hour to go to Běipǔ, which should be a good starting point for future, more serious biking trips into the mountains. The highest I got today was only about 200 meters above sea level, but they have mountains that reach almost 4,000 in central Taiwan. I feel an urge to hit some of the higher ones. It's probably my Swiss genes showing through ...

I took a few pictures of the landscape. It's mostly (sub?)tropical forest, but once you get off the busy roads, far away from scooters and cars, it's really nice and quiet.

About two weeks ago, I found two very good sets of maps. The first one is the "Formosa Complete Road Atlas". You can see what it looks like here. (But don't buy it there. In Taiwan one volume only costs around 1,600 TWD, which is roughly half of the 90 USD listed on that website.) It's an excellent collection of Taiwanese maps. All Chinese, but every tiny road is visible and there's lots of extra information. So, it's very useful for planning bike trips. (I take pictures with my camera or make copies for underway cause it's quite big and heavy.)

Then, there's the cheaper alternative, the Hsinchu City Atlas:

Unfortunately, it doesn't cover the entire Hsinchu county, but it has excellent and detailed map material of the greater Hsinchu city area. Běipǔ is just about where it stops in the south. But hey, it's free! In Switzerland, the same thing would cost at least 20 CHF. According to this announcement article you can get it at the City Hall Service Center and the Bureau of Tourism.

I got mine at the Sun and Tree Outfitters (鄉野情) store in Hsinchu, where I also bought a bunch of other things. They have a nice (albeit not cheap) selection of everything you need for outdoor sports and competent staff. (Yes, some of them even speak English!) It's a dangerous place, though. Every time I leave the store, my wallet feels like it just got off an instant-diet. :-)

*PS:* On one of the photos I posted, you can see 五指山 (Five Finger Mountain). Here are two Google Earth views of it (click to enlarge). The green pin in the second picture is Běipǔ. Looks like there should be a nice view from up there--that is if the air is clean and the weather is nice.

* This week I went for a walk around Qīngcǎo Lake (青草湖), which is only five minutes away from where I live. It's a quite peaceful place, except for A K-TV (Karaoke) place that you (un?)fortunately can't hear on the pictures. There are also a few pictures from the rooftop of the building I live in.
* Last Saturday I was invited to a wedding of one my work colleagues. A picture of the lovely couple, my new "roommate", and a few other things in the Snapshot album.
* If you're wondering why I'm not buying an X-Box, here is why. Funny, this didn't happen during the demos at WinHEC.
* And this week in the series of weird things that I ate in Taiwan: Chicken feet. They're not really my favorite food, cause they're difficult to eat (you have to gnaw off the skin) and there's not much taste to them besides the sauce. But at least I've tried. :-)

If everything (i.e. the weather) goes well, I'll go biking tomorrow. I have a bunch of new maps that open up entirely new ways to see beautiful things and get lost. If I make it back, there will be more pictures soon!

So far, it's pretty interesting and I'm learning plenty of new stuff, although not necessarily in great detail. Some of the demos are really impressive but after seeing Vista fail miserably in my personal test I'm very suspicious of some of the things I see "work great".

Anyway, here are two photos I took in the conference center:

Who would have guessed Microsoft would display the products of their hardware division's biggest competitor ...

So, what are the reasons I'm staying in Taiwan instead of going back to California like it was planned? As always my reasons are manifold.

Let's start with the intelligent U.S. immigration politics. As you may have heard the run for this year's H-1B visas was generally a little underestimated, which prompted the USCIS to resort to a (more or less) random draw procedure that favored holders of U.S. MSc diplomas. I'm not going to dive into this topic cause others have done that plentiful, but I would be very interested in the opinion of a qualified economist. To me it looks like the U.S. government is passing on a lot of income taxes and pissing off their own companies, forcing them to move their workforce elsewhere. There may be more to it but I don't see it.

Then, the more I thought about the U.S. and my future in general, the less I saw myself living in the California. The poor health care and social system, the unhealthy and repetitive cuisine, the amount of driving and traffic, or paying for unjustifiable wars with my taxes are just a few things that bugged me more than I allowed myself to believe.

The longer I stayed in Taiwan, the more I felt that I would be happier here than in the U.S., especially since I can do the same great job here. It's pretty cool to work for a company that proves flexible enough to adapt so easily to the changing minds of their employees. :-)

I think I've said the same thing when I went to California last year: Feel free to come visit me at any time! At the time it didn't work very well; few people actually took the opportunity to do so, but I'm very happy about the ones that did! If you like a beautiful country with nice people and delicious, albeit slightly "unusual", food, this is your chance! (Today someone at Logitech offered to take me to a nightmarket to eat snake one of these days. I'll try to gather a few photos of dishes I've tried and come to like around here. I'll make sure the snake is on one of them! :-)

As everyone else Taiwan has their national weather service, the Central Weather Bureau (English version here for the non-Chinese speaking reader ;-). And as everyone else's the Taiwanese CWB is occasionally wrong in their forecast. However, and this seems unlike all the others, the Taiwanese CWB can be completely off for several weeks in a row.

Have a look at the following forecasts:

Out of the eleven days covered I remember at most one day of somewhat heavy rain in Hsinchu and perhaps another one with light showers. The rest was somewhere between "overcast" and "as sunny and warm as it gets"--with a strong bias towards the latter one.

Oh, guess what wheather today was and what the CWB predicted. Right, you guessed it. So, if you ever want to know what the weather is _not_ like in Hsinchu, just go to the 7-day weather forecast. The more clouds and lightning you see, the higher the chances that I'm enjoying the sun wondering what the heck a sweater is.

This weekend I'll be in 台北 (Taipei) with a friend, so you can expect some new pictures very soon. If the weather is good, we might even "climb" Taipei 101, the tallest building of the world.

Time to get some sleep. Before the little trip starts I'll have another Chinese class Saturday morning--for the third time this week. At this rate, I'll be blogging in Chinese by the end of the year. Or maybe not quite. ;-)

One last thing: the temperatures have reached something like 37 °C this week. It is now so hot that, when I get home by bike, I come into my apartment and think "Hmm, pretty cool in here." Only to discover, a few seconds later, that the room thermometer is also at 30 °C. My shirt consumption has increased a little, and so did the electricity usage thanks to the AC in my place, but it troubles me surprisingly little so far. We'll see where it goes, people tell me we haven't reached the summer peak quite yet ...

As I already mentioned, I went on a short bike tour on Labor day along the 頭前溪 (Tóuqián river) in 竹東 (Zhúdōng/Jhudong). The captions are still not complete but I decided to make the album available anyway.

Yesterday I decided to go to the beach. The seems to make me one of the few people who live in Hsinchu and have actually been to that beach! Whoever I ask, they tell me they have never been to the beach. That made me curious and after a lovely day of biking and beach walking I must say I don't know why more people don't go there. See for yourself!

The area is called Hsinchu Coastline Scenic Area. The government is going to great lengths to build a very nice recreational area including a 17km bike path. It's not quite complete yet (I'd say half of it is there), but it's still very much worth going.

PS: Now that Google Maps finally has half-way decent coverage of Taiwan (it still doesn't find any addresses but at least they have maps in addition to the satellite imagery), I was even able to add location information to the photos. If you want to know where the pictures were taken, just scroll down and click the 'Show map' link below the photo.

Thanks to a few of my Chinese speaking friends I have a bike since about a week and a half. (Not the same people that have warned me not to bike in Hsinchu because they were scared for my health. If you are among them, you may want to skip the next three paragraphs. :-)

Anyway, so far I've had no accidents and no asthma attacks. Admitted, the air is not quite as good as in Switzerland but the traffic is fun. You can ride on the wrong side of the road to pass the two lanes of blocked cars and scooters and nobody honks or complains. You can pass scooters that go downhill and uphill with relatively little danger to yourself. All in all, a bike is a pretty efficient means of transportation in this city. You just can't be afraid of being a little hit by cars.

There's one drawback, though: the weather. It's been raining quite a lot lately, which forced me to sit out the rain at the office a few times and eventually to buy some fenders for my bike. Going at 20 km/h to avoid getting soaked is actually more dangerous than adapting to the rest of the traffic.

What's also "fun" is that some of the scooters (and most cyclists besides me) don't seem to think of illumination as something important. Many scooters only have a front light and bike lamps are slightly less common than blonds.

Let's quickly cover a few other things that happened or are happening:

* I'm now taking Chinese classes twice a week. ('我叫陸馬丁.') Currently I'm learning bopomofo, which is the alphabet used in Taiwan. It goes something like this: ㄅㄆㄇㄈㄉㄊㄋㄌㄍㄎㄏㄐㄑㄒㄓㄔㄕㄖㄗㄘㄙㄚㄛㄜㄝㄞㄟㄠㄡㄢㄣㄤㄥㄦ一ㄨㄩ. I feel like I'm back in kindergarten. ㄎㄎㄎ
* Last weekend Joe invited me to a wedding reception in 宜蘭 (Yílán). More about that soon. Let's just say that, in my opinion, the Taiwanese approach to weddings beats the European by a landslide.
* Tuesday was Labor Day, so no labor for the day. Instead I went biking with Michael to 竹東 (Zhúdōng) and along the 頭前溪 (Tóuqián river).
* Photos tend to be a little late in general because I'm having a bad memory and a hard time finding good maps and usable romanizations of names. I'm working on it, though. :-)
* Blog posts and mail responses tend to be even later. I'm not entirely sure about the reasons but somehow there's always a lot going on. Bear with me!

I know, I promised I would tell you my Chinese name one of these posts. Or did I do that already? ;-)

Luckily, I'm surrounded by very nice people at Logitech who helped me find an apartment for the next two and a half months, who take me out for dinner and shopping, and who help me translate basic household devices like water cookers.

Even easy tasks like doing laundry suddenly turn into a minor adventure. Here's what the front panel of my washing machine looks like:

It took me nearly two hours of dictionary work to be able to wash my clothes with the necessary confidence level. :-)

Yesterday I met a few people in 竹北 (Zhú Bĕi), a little North of 新竹 (Xīn Zhú), for Thai food. Again, that sounds easy enough. But without scooter or bike it's pretty nothing but a taxi driver who barely speaks English, a helpless Swiss guy whose Mandarin is even worse, and an address like the following:

竹北市光明一路396號

Luckily, for such situations I have my loyal digital camera! So, before I leave home, I just photograph the address off my computer and show the camera to the taxi driver. Works like a charm; the Thai food was delicious!

Later we went shopping to Géant, a "local" hypermarket. (Interestingly enough French supermarkets are popular in Taiwan, Carrefour can also be found here.) As part of my search to adopt local habits I had a crash course in making tea with tea leaves and a tea set. The lady at the store was so nice she even gave me a very cleverly engineered tea cup that supersedes the teaball.

Because the weather is still rather bad (albeit at a pretty high temperature) I spent most of today studying Chinese and fixing some Chinese-related computer issues. As you may have noticed since today my blog posts can contain Chinese characters. Obviously, unless you install support for East Asian languages, you won't see much but a bunch of squares. So, if you saw but squares above I strongly suggest you install East Asian language support because in one of the next posts I will reveal my Chinese name. ;-)

PS: I've added some more pictures to the Taiwan Snapshot album in my gallery.

Loïc and I were having dinner at a small restaurant here in Hsinchu. I had pork fried rice because it's one of the few dishes I can safely recognize on a local menu. Half-way through dinner a door opens and what do I see?

That's right, pork. Did I mention Taiwan doesn't stop being fascinating? _(Click the pig to see some more pictures ...)_

Beitou is a city a little North of Taipei, about 1.5h from Hsinchu, that is famous for its natural hot springs and many outdoor baths. There seems to be a constant layer of mist hanging over the city, which looks great in combination with the city lights. We went there with Joe, a Taiwanese guy who just started at Logitech this week. He's a great guide and--unlike Loïc and myself--not afraid of driving.

Completely relaxed we visited the Shilin Night Market, the largest of its kind in Taipei. There's almost nothing you can't buy there. It consists of a combination of small businesses and stands, so you can walk through the market and just grab a bite here and there. The food is very inexpensive but delicious and diverse.

Apart from that I went apartment hunting last week! To be honest, it wasn't so much comparable to exciting hunting than to sitting still until the prey happens to cross the barrel's direction. The great people from the Logitech's Taiwanese video group are helping us out with everything that we can't do for lack of the language.

We looked at two places, the first one was downtown and looked okay, albeit a little old and cool. Carpets don't seem to be very popular from what I've seen so far. I could live with that, but what bugged me more was that there was no place to cook.

Luckily, someone at Logitech happens to be renting out an apartment in a fairly new building complex, so just a few hours later we got to look at a second place. It's not quite as well situated (i.e. not downtown, but in a very green area, and closer to Logitech) but it looks _really_ nice. (I was warned it would look a little girly but for the short time I can very easily make my peace with that. ;-)

On the culinary side the week had a few highlights like the dinner with the video driver team, from which I now finally have some photos (awaiting more), and a great hot pot dinner that we had with Rebecca the other night. Hot pot (huoguo) is something slightly similar to what we know in Europe except that you just throw everything into the (very spicy) pot and let it simmer. Kind of like Fondue Bourguignonne but chop stick compatible. :-) (Sidenote: cow stomach doesn't taste better in a hot pot than it does in tomato sauce ...)

Today, I realized that the language is not the only communication barrier for a Western person in Taiwan. Even the hand gestures for indicating numbers are different, which explains why I didn't get _two_ skewers for lunch today. To make things worse, when I got home I started learning the mainland Chinese gestures until I noticed that Taiwan uses a different set. Just one of the reasons why I don't see boredom coming up in the next couple of weeks.

I guess that covers the week. I put a number of assorted pictures together, enjoy!

The food was very good so far despite a number of weird things that crossed my plate (metaphorically speaking--none of them were alive and moving):

* Marinated jellyfish (for breakfast)
* Chicken hearts skewer
* Squid
* Blue potatoes (I had my doubt if they are really considered potatoes but I was told so)

Talking about weird things, who would have thought that I would have my first chocolate fondue in Taiwan! The video system software team took us out for dinner to a French restaurant in Hsinchu. (Pictures coming soon.) I had "Zürichgeschnetzeltes" (it wasn't quite called that but the name had "Zurich" in it), which is not exactly French but close enough. Apart from this special event I try to steer clear of Western cuisine (breakfast excluded so far) and McDonalds, there's just too many good things to try out. I'm a big fan of fried chicken, the spices they use here are awesome.

Enough about food, though, let's talk for a minute about another all-time classic topic, the weather. After the lovely weekend things took a turn for the worse and it has been raining a lot since Monday. Also, the temperatures have dropped to around 15C, time to add another layer of clothes.

The great Sunday gave us a chance, however, to walk around the city for a bit. I took some pictures that you can find in my my gallery. We visited the Eighteen Peaks Mountain Park, which is located on a hilltop not far from downtown.

Finally, I also shot two short videos. The first one is to prove that Hsinchu got its nickname "The Windy City" for a good reason. The second one shows one of the rather musical stones that can be found along the park roads.

For the next three months my home is Hsinchu, Taiwan where we currently have between 20 and 30 celsius--all day long, notably.

Everything is still slightly scary because of my tiny knowledge of the language and my even smaller knowledge of Chinese writing, but after all the English and French speaking places I needed a challenge. ;-)

Despite my jetlag and the fact that it's almost 2am here I managed to upload a few pictures. No comments yet and no location info because Google Maps doesn't work very well (read: not at all) in Taiwan.

More experience reports (in particular about my first Chinese meals) and photos will follow shortly! Zàijiàn!

The nice people of Logitech Taiwan are currently looking for accommodation and they sent us a selection of hotels. Naturally, I want to see where they're situated, so what does the Internet savvy computer engineer do? Right, he turns to Google Maps. But, surprise surprise, once you leave the United States and Europe the results are not exactly satisfying.

Luckily, Karen, Taiwanese herself, was able to recommend me a pretty good site that specializes in Taiwanese maps: Yam. Too bad it doesn't understand English addresses. Let's take a little detour then ...

Since the hotel website (BTW: Does a seemingly professional company like Lemon IT really only have Internet Explorer to test their pages with?) has a little map and Loïc had a Hsinchu city map left from his last trip to Taiwan I thought it would be easy to pin down the exact location of the hotel.

Here's the hotel map:

And this is the "corresponding" area of the city map:

I encourage you to spend a minute or two to see how many streets or points you can map. Whoever can tell me the 10 _similarities_ wins! ;-)

With the help of the Chinese version of the hotel map, a few hours of time, and a non-negligible amount of phantasy I rose to the challenge and I was finally able to match the different streets and find them on Yam:

If you compare the Yam map with the above two, what do you notice? Right, the creators of the first two maps were fairly generous when it came to angles, directions, or leaving out and adding streets.

All in all an encouraging start into one of the most basic activities when you arrive in a new country. :-) Finding my way around Hsinchu definitely probably won't be easy. And neither will asking for directions with my limited Mandarin that is barely good enough to order chicken fried rice and water in a restaurant. Nevertheless I'm very excited about going to Taiwan. The more painful the learning, the better the chance for good results. I like those odds!