TheNHBushman.com

Last night while browsing through products at our local mall, I noticed a new kind of video camera.  I’d seen mini video cams before but this one was different.  Called the i*dear DV30 (hey, I don’t name these things!), its a Taiwanese designed and manufactured digital video camera that employs MPEG4 compression.  It does a lot of cool things but the main point is that it can shoot 640×480 resolution digital video and save it directly to an SD card.  The files are standard Windows .AVI files that can be played on virtually any computer.  The price we paid for it was NT$5990.

We are going to Thailand tomorrow and taking it with us.  I will write a review of the unit when I return.  After playing around with it today I’m convinced that it’s a useful tool for my business and is also going to be fun to have for traveling.  I use my Nikon Coolpix 5700 in video mode often, but it is limited to 60 seconds only, and the format is Quicktime (not my favorite).  The Nikon shoots the video and stores it in standard memory, and then writes it to the CF card.  The DV30 writes to the SD card in real time, so as soon as you stop recording, its ready to go again immediately.

Company Website

Hui-Chen put on this hat while browsing a shop. “How do I look?” She asked me. What a stupid question!

How do you think she looks?

Hui-Chen, I and our guest went to Sanyi last night to look in the multitude of woodworking shops for a nice tea service. Also called a tea tray, these services are not only functional, but extremely beautiful works of art. We do not really have a place in our apartment for it yet, so for the time being its sitting on a low bookshelf. These are some quick shots I took so you could get an idea of the size and shape. I will do some followup shots once its properly situated.

Shot 1 shows the overview from the serving side of the service, the side that the guest would be seated in front of (the netting in the background is the mosquito net over the bed).

Shot 2 shows more of the darker wood and the natural attributes that the artist left in the wood. This piece was made from root stock and its very dense and quite heavy.

Shot 3 shows the working side of the service. Notice the drain and output tube in the lower right corner. This piece is a wet service, meaning that you drain water and tea right onto the service (and you can see that its wet in the photos). This service was designed for gong-fu style tea brewing. Notice the interesting radii along the various cavities. Those are designed to hold the tea items (which are round) against the carved walls and maintain a harmonious appearance. You can clearly see how the teapots seem to blend into the wood. The actual dimensions are (widest points): 74 cm (side to side) x 63 cm (front to back) x 10.5 cm (height). This thing is big!

I must add that the “specs” seen on the main flat surface are flakes of tea. I had just brewed some tea and decided to take a few shots of the new service in action (notice that one of the teacups is full).

On the way home with our new service, we decided to drop in on Mr. Gan at his tea shop in Hukou. The Master was very interested in seeing our new service so we brought it into his shop, where he proceeded to place his most prized teapots onto it and prepare tea for our distinguished guest from Australia (a Customer of mine).

Here we see Mr. Gan preparing tea for Mr. McCulloch, who was very impressed with both the artistry and skill of Taiwan’s tea culture.

The last shot that I want to share with you today Dear Reader, is a close up of the teapots that Mr. Gan was showing us. Mr. Gan personally went to Japan to commission the creation of these pots. The Japanese teapot master artisans were not familiar with Chinese teapot designs (which are quite different from Japanese designs), so Mr. Gan personally specified each and every aspect of these teapots.

2 of these teapots are made by an old master artisan, and the rest were made by his son. The handled pot is the most unusual (handled teapots are rare in Taiwan) and the design contains elements of both Japanese (handle) and Chinese (pot and spout) teapot design.

The price of each one of these teapots is US$3,700.

Some people have asked me about the different bags I often carry. These are some shots of various bags that were taken in the course of our travels:

Hui-Chen snapped this pic of me sitting in the very first row of Business Class on a KLM flight. I flashed my my Worldperks Gold Elite card and they upgraded us instantly. The bag around my shoulder is a nice black leather model I got in Thailand. That is one of my Thai silk shirts. I got 4 of them while in Kohn Kaen. They are an excellent value at 800 Baht or less than US$20 each.

My North Face bag can be seen here:

Here is another bag I got in Thailand:

That bag broke and was replaced with this one:

Note the cool US Submarine watch I got in Kohn Kaen, and the Montecristo Mini.

Often I carry a shoulder bag and my Nikon:

This shot was taken at the Black Dragon Temple, and the stone was supposedly handled by the Black Dragon himself. I sure love that green silk shirt!

If you are interested in tea, you will like these:
http://chadao.blogspot.com/
http://teamasters.blogspot.com/

I got this pipe today. I bought it used on Yahoo! here in Taiwan for a cost of NT$650 (about US$22). Its very unusual and in pretty good condition. I cleaned it up a bit using Scotchbrite and then gave it my salt & whisky sweetening treatment. I changed the shape of the bend in the stem to slightly less of an angle as it was a bit too dramatic and held the pipe too far downwards. The angle was easy to change because the stem is hard rubber. Immersion in hot water rendered it quite pliable.

This pipe is a Stonehenge, made in London England. Its basically a freehand, a block of brier, hand carved. The smoking chamber is huge and good for a nice long smoke. This thing smokes cool too, because of its mass. The heat is rapidly dissipated because of the large surface area.

Readers of my personal blog know that I am an admirer of tea. I have several tea pots and the associated trappings of a tea maker. Far from being an expert, I do have a lot of experience in the selection of tools and pots, and I try to help others when I see them shopping in the various places I go in Taiwan and other countries.

This is my bamboo tray with a new pot I purchased in the center. Also of note are the 2 aroma cups on the far left. I will get to them in a moment. I have been looking for a solid wood tray with a drain and although I have found several, I just haven’t found the one that I want to get - yet. In a few weeks Hui-Chen and I will travel down to Miaoli and Sanyi to check out the woodworking shops for one.

This is the new teapot, which is made from sand and not clay.

This is the area where I keep my tea stuff these days. Notice the water kettle. It keeps the water at the boil automatically and shuts off if there is no water. I keep the tea in the airtight containers on the lower shelf. Most of the time the teapots themselves are in another place, on display. At some point I will put up a proper display for the pots because they look interesting.

I use a bamboo measuring scoop to put the tea into the pot. You really should not touch the tea with your hands and impart any skin oils to the tea. The principle is to use more tea than you would use for a simple tea steeping (such as British style) and brew multiple, short-duration infusions. The tea maker stops the brewing process by pouring out the tea into the gong-bei (the pitcher) thus arresting the brewing process for that infusion. The timing of each infusion is critical and comes with experience. Subsequent infusions are longer as the tea loses flavor each time. Each infusion is a unique experience as the tea ages in the pot (and cooks to some degree) and the temperature of the water lowers. One always uses the gong-bei and never pours from the pot! This way, each cup of tea from that infusion is the same.

This is an aroma cup. First you fill the aroma cup with as much tea as the drinking cup holds (so it won’t overflow when you invert it).

Next, place the drinking up over the aroma cup.

Invert the aroma and drinking cup together like this….

Then slowly remove the aroma cup, exposing the drinking cup and the perfectly brewed cup of tea.

The aroma cup is thin at the bottom and becomes wider towards the top. This contributes to the development of the tea aroma. Each infusion has its own unique aroma, which changes significantly as the aroma cup cools. The tea should be enjoyed between inhaling the aroma of the tea.

Hui-Chen and I took off this afternoon for an interesting area nearby. We went to the old city of Dasi (“big river”) and checked out the woodworking shops on the old street. Dasi is noted for having some of the oldest buildings around, some of which date back to the Ching Dynasty. Also, there are some fine examples of baroque architecture, the result of Spanish influence long ago. Dasi is famous for a tofu product called “do-gun” and also for some very fine woodworking, both furniture and sculpture.

Dasi has a really cool temple that looks like it belongs in a movie. Every time I am there I think I am about to hear a director yell “cut!” lol Just like in Biblical times, the temples nowadays are centers of commerce (often seemingly more commercial than religious). You can see children’s toys laid out for sale right in front of the temple.

Here Hui-Chen is seen checking out some of the hand-crafted baskets. Stuff like this is very well made and yet inexpensive in Dasi. This township lies in the foothills of an area called Fu-Shing and is also on the doorstep of an area called Lalasan, which is a mountain resort area. Dasi is a great place to start a day tour of some of the most interesting topography in northern Taiwan.

After walking around, taking photographs and visiting some of the coolest woodworking and tea shops around, we decided to check out nearby Shimen Dam ???? (literally “stone door”) because its been in the news recently due to overflow from the last 2 typhoons. This is a 5-shot panorama of the lower basin which is the output of the spillway seen in the distance on the right 1/3 of the shot. We wanted a closer look at the dam itself, but we had to hurry because daylight was fading fast.

This is a shot of the spillway, taken from the same location as the above panorama, but using my 8x zoom. An hour later we were walking along the top of the dam itself.

This shot should give you a good idea just how large this sucker really is. I’m looking over the railing from the top of the spillway. This shot is grainy because I set the Nikon to 800 ISO because of impending darkness. Yeah, those are cars at the bottom.

There is a scenic overlook at the far end of the dam, so we walked up the long flight of stairs so you could get this view from the top. Taken at dusk, the photograph has a cool blue hue to it, and the exposure time was over 1 second (notice the blurred people walking). The dam has some nice tea shops and restaurants up on the top, but you have to put up with the annoying salespeople trying to hustle you into the restaurants. Just ignore them.

Time to leave the dam and head back. We again passed by Dasi, where by night they light up this beautiful pedestrian bridge. There are food vendors here (like most places in Taiwan) and you can get some local dishes and enjoy them while looking at the bridge. I took this shot from our table.

The last shot for this entry is Hui-Chen, standing on the bridge, doing what she always does: look awesome. There were more cameras on this bridge than I saw anywhere else throughout the day. So many people were taking photographs that I’m sure I’m in at least 20 of them! Hey, it will give them something to laugh about later when they review them, right?

The basketball backstop was put back very quickly this time - on the actual evening of the storm. I have no idea how it got put back. This shot was taken from my apartment window and not the roof.

Well, not really, but the camera angle sure makes it look like a giant killer snail. This shot was taken with my Sony-Ericsson S700i mobile phone with the 1.3mp camera. Not bad for a point and shoot (with the built-in LED light too). Overall, this thing was about 17cm. We found it wandering around near one of the shelters in the garden. We were sitting outside enjoying the night air (after the typhoon) and noticed the Giant Killer Snail. A rodent noticed it too and tried to munch on it but we shooed it away!