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Typhoon Fung-Wong, Part II from MJ Klein on Vimeo.

Please bear with us while we are still trying to get our blog back to normal. My Nikon D80 has been in the shop for parts of 3 weeks to fix a simple CCD bad pixel re-mapping, which is taking forever! Without my Nikon, I feel little compulsion for blogging, you understand.

Unless you’ve been under a rock you know that there is another typhoon bearing down on Taiwan. This thing is a full day away, and yet is dumping a fair amount of rain on us already. Last night about 01:00 (AM) the drain in the first floor kitchen started to backflow, dumping water up into the kitchen. As you recall, the last time that happened our living room was under a few centimeters of water. This time however, I was ready, for I had purchased a submersible pump the previous week while shopping at B&Q.

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Photos by MJ Klein - Attention: FOOD PHOTOS!

UPDATE: I’ve added some video to the end of the article.

It was another great weekend in Taiwan.  The weather let up on us a bit and it got something approaching cooler.  So, when Becky invited us up to their cabin in Miaoli, well we knew it was a great time in the making!

The ride up was spectacular as we took the mountain road that comes up behind the cabin.  We brought our friend Ed with us and he’s very well traveled.  His comment is that he’d never been on a road like that one before and the mountain view was one of the top things he’s ever seen.  We agree!  Taiwan is incredible but you have to get out of Taipei to find out.

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Food and other photos by MJ Klein

It’s been awhile since we had an article featuring food and last weekend had a lot of it!  So now we’re going to show you some of the dishes that we enjoyed!  You have been warned!

Hui-chen and I met some geocachers in Taichung for an event.  We’re Taiwanese so naturally the first thing on the agenda was lunch!

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This month’s issue of Next Magazine has a tantilizing cover photo of Janet Hsieh in a bright red bikini.  The magazine is worth purchasing for that alone!

I picked up the magazine and as I was looking at the photo, I think I see something.  Something that neither the photographer or publisher intended.  Or did they?

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Or, “Don’t Bother Me, I’m Eating!”

I probably wouldn’t be writing this article if it weren’t for Fili, who has 2 excellent articles this week on a similar subject. I suggest that you read those articles to get some background information and another viewpoint.

A few days ago Hui-chen and I went to see the new Indiana Jones movie at the Hsinchu Vieshow theater complex. The theater is in a mall and there are some good places to eat before the movie, and that is just what we did. Enjoying my lunch at the excellent Wasabi restaurant, I was surprised to look up and find a woman standing way too close to me, with that dumb smile on her face that only a local person can give to a person they perceive to be a “foreigner” when they are “admiring” them. If you are not native born and spend any time in Taiwan, you know exactly what I mean. A pandering, condescending smile that is akin to “Awww, isn’t it cute?” that just frosts my ass.

I’ve lived in Taiwan long enough that my personal Chinese conversational skills are sufficient to handle just such occasions.

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We spend months under cloud cover, winds, humidity and cool temperatures only to be thrust into the middle of a heat wave! Yup, that’s Taiwan for you! How do you deal with the heat?

The sun in Taiwan can burn you to a crisp. I’ve never seen anything like it. Even 6 degrees off the equator in Malaysian Borneo wasn’t as intense. Readers of this blog know what we’ve been in Thailand many times and yes, that place is hot! But there is something very deceptive about the sun in Taiwan. It seems like you are OK walking around and suddenly, you feel sick to your stomach - a sign of sun poisoning.

Fortunately there are things that you can do to beat the heat!

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I cannot tell you how many times I have seen people walking the streets of Taiwan while casually unloading a piece of trash right on the street - without so much as a single thought about it. I’ve even stopped people to ask them to pick up the trash they just threw, and they responded as if I’m a crazy person. Who would even think of putting a piece of trash in their pocket or holding it in their hand until a proper place to dispose of it could be found? Just about no one….

Restaurants like Shao-hui’s may have individual trash cans at each table

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Photos by MJ Klein

Hui-chen and I were in Nantou and we basically stumbled upon the 921 Memorial Park in Mingjian. Actually it’s not exactly named that, but that is precisely what it is - a park dedicated to the memory of the 921 earthquake. 2,416 lives were lost in the 7.3 magnitude quake that occurred at 01:47 local time. That’s after midnight, folks. I’ve been in quite a few earthquakes, and some of them big enough to be frightening but can you imagine being awakened by a huge earthquake in the middle of the night? Surely the high numbers of people lost were due to the fact that they were home in bed when their building collapsed.

The 921 earthquake has special meaning for me. I first traveled to Taiwan in April of 2000. I visited some sites in Taichung, at the northern end of the fault line and personally saw the destruction and also some of the repair efforts underway. I will never forget looking at a landslide while someone told me that there were several hundred people still unaccounted for, and they were presumed to be buried under the landslide.

This photo is of what is called (in English) the Tilting Electric Tower. It’s a fitting memorial to the earthquake and demonstrates the extend of the damage. This tower is the centerpiece of the park, and I took a short walking tour of the park with the specific goal of reporting on it. So please join me as I take you thorough the park and we get a closer look at it’s features. But first, I want to show you some historical photos I took in 2000.

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Photos by MJ Klein

With this gorgeous weather, I was up on the roof grilling my dinner last night. Of course, I had my Nikon with me.

We see gorgeous sunsets like this all the time, but the view is always ruined by wires.

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