Bushman’s Picks, January 6, 2008

Bushman’s Picks of the Week

If you want to know what blogs I’m reading and what I think about them, then read on!

• Andres missed a lot of things during his recent trip to China. Important family things like the Christmas holiday, Dongzhi festival, his infant daughter’s first haircut and her first birthday. I was chatting with Andres on MSN during his business trip to China and I really felt bad for him. I hope his company appreciates the sacrifices he made for them!
• My friend Brunty visits relatives in a Thai village in Issan country, Thailand. After a big feed, they take a ride over to the Mekong river on the Lao border. As usual there are a thousand photos accompanying this article and every one of them worth clicking. Brunty was a busy blogger this week, so be sure to check out the other recent articles.
• David Reid takes a ride on the Taiwan High Speed Rail, further than he has gone in the past. His photos reveal that the trains are pretty clean, but seem rather empty these days. It’s good to know that the new non-reserved seating trains are filling up, leaving plenty of seats for the rest of us! By the way, when David says that the furthest he’s “been on the HSR before was from Taipei to Xinzhu” one of those times was when he came to Hukou for our Blogger Grill Party!
• Thanks to this article at That’s Impossible, I found out that the President of Taiwan made some rather uncharacteristic remarks for a world leader. Wow…. It could be part of a plan, or it could just be that he is done with being President. Who knows?
• Always a great source of information, our good friend Michael Turton had a number of great articles this week, but my favorite was how he “had” to attend a faculty outing at Sun Moon Lake. If you like photographs, this is a must-click! The fog really rolled in at one point, making for an interesting boat ride.
• Todd got a mention in Lonely Planet. Holy crap Todd, how did you manage that? Way to go! Throw us a bone next time, huh?
• Carrie published some very impressive stats about her blog. What makes them even more impressive is that her blog is only 1 year old yesterday! Way to go Carrie!
• Jeff didn’t post anything this week. Jeff, we’re waiting!
• Blog Bloke documents his migration from Blogger to WordPress. This should be of interest to several Taiwan bloggers I know (link from Pro Blogger).
• Problogger tells us about 7 types of posts that seem to get links and traffic. If that’s what you want, then check it out. Personally I prefer Thai girls dancing types of articles. And I don’t care if they do get any traffic – they are just fun to “research.”
• The coolest thing on My Digital Life this week is the announcement that Philips has developed a 14.3 inch flexible electronic paper with an advanced resolution of 1,280 by 800. This is a significant development in the display world, folks. This means that you can now do stuff like you saw in the movie Red Planet with the little pull-out displays. Way cool!
• Vern blogged about how Thais seem to be more rude during holidays. He attributes it to them being stressed during these times, just like Americans. Apparently he’s been getting cut off in traffic a lot. That one bothers me too. But, remarkably Vern kept his composure when a 60 year old guy took his air conditioner – while he was using it!
• Weekly Articles About Blogging gives us 4 tips for making 2008 our best blogging year yet. These tips also work for other disciplines not just blogs, so check these out.
• Our pal Craig Furgeson has put up a second slideshow of a very interesting place in Taiwan, know as the “pod village.” It’s an abandoned, futuristic housing project that is plagued with ghost sightings and superstitious rumors. Bushman gives Craig’s work “5 machetes” so you’d better check it out!
• IslaFormosa has an interesting article about corny foreigner ads in Taiwan. Personally, I cringe whenever I see that Wei Da Li karaoke ad, and I want to hang myself from the 4th floor balcony whenever that Goosemom American School ad comes on TV. IslaFormos also brings up another very interesting point about the Dubai World Island: Who owns Taiwan?
• Owenshang managed to make my life miserable, twice this week. The first time was this post about a restaurant in New Jersey called EAST that specializes in Japanese and Asian fusion cuisine. Then he went and added clickable, full-sized photographs of the incredible food he and his wife enjoyed there. He gloats about eating “Wok Glazed Duck” as his main course, but nooooooooooo that’s not enough torture, he then teased me about an Eel and Avacado roll, and then shows us what his wife had too (and one of those things was a favorite of mine – “spider maki”). Yeah, yeah, rub it in! But that wasn’t the second thing that got me all bothered. I read this post about Taiwanese breakfast burgers and I had to go to bed hungry. Fortunately he redeemed himself by sharing the recipe with us. Thankfully now you too can know the pain I suffered late one night…. And you really should share that pain by viewing those articles!
• Fili was busy this week with several posts. News bits and interesting posts about Taiwan from 2007; suggestions for the Weblog Awards Bloggies 2008: Asia; but my favorite article from Fili this week is about his tour of Alishan National Park. Hey, nobody asked me if I wanted to go! Hui-chen and I have been talking about going there for a few weeks. In the meantime, Fili just went there. Guess I shouldn’t talk about it so much, huh?
• Last, but absolutely not least, we have a new blog on the roll this week: KTV Xiaojie. I know you are going to love this blog! Hui-chen and I do!