I avoid Taiwanese news channels, as it's usually full of politician catfights (figurative and literal) and weepy family members calling for justice of something. My main news source is BBC's breaking news feed (unexpected side benefit of being on Twitter, I am ashamed to say). Some time between my last check and now the confirmed death toll has grown by 400 people, to nearly 600. Once I think about it, that's horrific.

The Taiwanese are pointing fingers at everything. ( Read more... )

In Taiwan, there are vans that drive around blaring anything from political spiels to calls for prayer (bai-bai, cf. Chinese folk religion). These prayer vans have recently replaced blaring Taiwanese oldies at top volume while circling major thoroughfares with blaring "Sorry, Sorry" at top volume while circling major thoroughfares.

Have a primetime news report. No prayer vans, unfortunately, so you can also have Filipino prison inmates dancing.

I am never going to finish writing this fic in time AHHHH.

Anyway, taking a break—so I'll catch up with LJ posting. Rah? I've decided not to write about Japan and Suzhou, so that saves you all some reading.

This past week my mother went to Taipei to take (dubious) care of her sister, who's undergoing chemo. On Friday we took the High Speed Rail back to Taichung. At the train station I saw someone with a huge (at least A3 size) Hunter×Hunter Animax paper tote bag, with another folded up bag inside ♥

Friday was the 15th day of the 7th month on the Chinese lunar calendar—i.e., the 7th full moon of the year. The 7th month is also the month of ghosts, when ghosts are most active. Thus, on the 15th day of the 7th month is Zhongyuan Jie, the day when people make a grand offering to their ancestors for the spirits' goodwill. Houses, shops, even department stores participate. (My Taoist paternal family does.) By the front door, there is a table upon which are mountains of food and sticks of burning incense. (Large businesses sometimes have a row of tables a block long shadowed by tents.) There are large bonfires of joss paper money; the belief is that ghosts receive these burned sacrifices in their afterlives. A fine ash of this paper covers the ground, fills the air. After the ghosts have partaken of the food offering, the living get to eat it.

Anyway, since Friday happened to be a weekend and a major Chinese festival, it was travel pandemonium. At the High Speed Rail station, there were staff with loudspeakers telling us to line up in three lines (for compactness), forcing us to line up downstairs instead of on the platform (so that the platform wouldn't become a crowd of anarchy), and telling us which train was departing when, on what platform and going where. I felt sorry for the tourists who had no idea what was going on. People with reserved seats got to sit and lounge until their train left. The rest of us had to rush on board to grab a seat.

Going to mainland China on Sunday.

Instead of a visa, I'll be using a Taiwan Compatriot Pass, a Chinese document which allows holders of a Taiwanese passport into China.* The Taiwan Compatriot Pass is much easier to get than a visa as a Canadian national, especially with the Beijing Olympics looming. The Taiwan Compatriot Pass has the typical passport-y information, plus the holder's Taiwan government–issued ID number.

Righty-o.

I'll be taking one of the new direct flights* to China. Despite being "direct" flights, they actually fly south-west from Taiwan to Hong Kong airspace, then north-east to various Chinese cities. Hearsay attributes the re-routing to the rushed process of getting the flights a-go, although the BBC says "Taiwan's military is on constant alert for an air attack from the mainland, and [...] cannot afford to let civilian flights clutter cross-straits radars."

Notes:
1. By China I mean the People's Republic of China (PRC), and by Taiwan I mean the Republic of China on Taiwan (ROC).

2. The new direct flights are technically charter flights, so if enough people request a new route it may happen. As far as I know getting a ticket is the same as any non-chartered flight.

An interesting note - Taipei's domestic Songshan Airport is now serving direct flights to China. Songshan was formerly Taiwan's largest international airport, but it became too small. Chiang Kai-Shek was built to replace it, and Songshan became a domestic airport. Songshan's in Taipei proper, while Chiang Kai-Shek (now Taoyuan Airport) is about an hour away. (Including Songshan, five of Taiwan's domestic airports are now serving cross-strait flights.)

As for the old Generalissimo, Chiang Kai-Shek, the previous government was intent on un-naming everything after him. It seems that the only common ground of the Taiwan's pro-independence camp and the Chinese government is their hatred of Chiang Kai-Shek.

I was watching a programme on the construction of Taipei 101, which is the tallest building in the world, at least until the Burj Dubai is completed. Taipei 101 has a higher earthquake safety rating than Taiwan's nuclear power plants, yay? However, what I've learned from this programme is highly unsettling—there are three "small" fault lines under Taipei, and by "small" I mean one of them is 10 m wide and a mere 200 km from Taipei 101—how reassuring. I haven't been able to find maps of minor fault lines in Taiwan, which is even less assuring.

IMO, the Taiwanese are a bit blasé about earthquakes. "Oh, an earthquake. Have some tea." According to the Taiwan Residential Earthquake Insurance Fund, whoever that is, Taiwan has more than 200 perceivable quakes a year. One of my earliest memories was sitting on the sofa while my parents were vacuuming, and being told that by the way, the earth just shook.

For example: a magnitude 6.8 earthquake in March 2002 caused the collapse of 3 buildings and 100 houses and the infamous fall of two cranes from the half-built Taipei 101—and my mother has no recollection of it *facepalm*

Another example: when the Seattle earthquake occurred, my mother and her non-Taiwanese friend were having lunch in a mall. The building they were in shook noticeably.

The friend: What should we do, what should we do?!? Let's run outside—
My mother: Sit down and have some tea.

According to the US Geological Survey and the Global Seismic Hazard Program, Vancouver has a peak ground acceleration of 3.8 m/s², a.k.a. BE VERY WORRIED. The entire island of Taiwan has a peak ground acceleration of over 4.8 m/s², a.k.a. I DON'T THINK YOU CAN WORRY ANY MORE.

*

In other news, the Hakka Tulou in Fujian has been announced as a World Heritage Site. In the 60s the CIA mistook the buildings in spy photos as nuclear reactors.

Today, I finally got my ID card! I don't know why all the British and Americans complain about ID cards and pervasive CCTV, since it's old news in Taiwan.

Taiwan follows the Japanese system, so all your documents are kept at the neighbourhood district office based on your registered address. The exception is your birth certificate, which is kept in the district where you were born. My district has 315,708 registered residents, including myself.

(Since your registered address determines your school catchment area, many people register their address as the address of their friend or relative who resides close to a popular school. Sometimes a single apartment is the registered address of scores of people.)

Since it was along the way, my mother dragged me to see the Millet exhibition at the Museum of History in Taipei. ( Read more... )

Wimbledon: the ladies is much more interesting than the mens this year! Both the #1 and #2 seeds are out, beaten by the wildcards Zheng Jie (China) and Tamarine Tanasugarn (Thailand). Tanasugarn doesn't have the lithe pretty form of all the other competitors. At 31, Tanasugarn is a Wimbledon veteran, but this is the first time she's made it to the quarter-finals. So I'm cheering both of them on.

I just found out this week that Orlando Bloom's not American. ... I don't have any Orlando Bloom fans on my f-list, right?

I was dragged out to the Chinese medicine hospital yesterday, so now I have to consume some sort of herbal powder concoction D: I've also been watching Wimbledon sporadically, now that I actually know the rules of tennis. See, anime is useful for something.


The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them

( Under the cut )

ETA: I've redone it with the BBC Big Read list. Why is LotR at the top? D:

( Read more... )

My eight-year-old niece and nephew came over. They're both starting to learn English, and neither can pronounce the entire English alphabet. As their English native speaker aunt, I am bound to help them; unfortunately I'm not quite in a position to tutor them. Instead, I gave them a chart of the English alphabet (in both majuscule and miniscule) with pronunciations in Chinese phonetics. As my dad can attest, it's how NOT to learn English.

( This is what I came up with. )

While I was doing this I realized I pronounced [u] differently in English and Mandarin. My English [u] is partly unrounded. (The unrounded version is the う u in Japanese or the 으 eu (thx y2) in Korean.)

I'm starting to think that Fate wants me in Taiwan for the coming autumn.

Kato Kazuki AND Saitou Takumi BACK IN TENIMYU?

*_*

*__*

*___*

*______________*

Anyway, less about my imaginary life.

Jet lag recovery: 1 day
I'm doing the 3 am–noon cycle again.

Cockroaches killed directly or indirectly: 5
Go boric acid traps?

Mosquito bites: 7
Much better than last time, although 2 of them are bruising.

Azn doll girl haircuts: 1
It reminds me of Marc Emery's wife's haircut :x One minute of her on TV is enough to last me a lifetime. Ugh. UGH.

E-books don't work well with iPod. It's a pity—I'd never use my iPod otherwise! So now I kind of want a handheld PC, except I believe in split-screens and that really leaves me with the Nintendo DS.

(No really: I wanted a split-screen A5-sized¹ laptop back in '01. I had product designs and everything.)

Anyway, I'm in Taichung, Taiwan right now. No industrial dormitory in Hsinchu any more D: It wasn't anything to write home (or wherever!) about, but I have fond memories of the place with that summer I stayed up till 3 a.m. on a regular basis to catch Japanese-audio/Chinese-subbed episodes of Gankutsuou and cry my heart out ♥ I would keep the lights off, the only illumination from the wall-to-wall floor-to-ceiling windows that exit on to the balcony and overlook distant neon lights on aging towers. I would pick up fragments of meanings, a sliver from my poor Japanese and Chinese and the rest from the presented imagery, a multitude of gauzy and glittering patterns framed by the small television in the dark uncognizable room.

This was when I had fallen in love with vanillafire's Lights:

none of the lights were on; he could see down through the hall right out of the large window in the sweeping lounge, the Tokyo night lights glimmering in a beautiful spectrum

[...]

all the colours of a negative rainbow

The scenery of the industrial park of midnight is dimmer; it's on the edge of the concrete city barely scraping the sky. There is a forest (and a park) creeping on to the dying buildings, and welcoming carnival lights now middle-aged. It is a sort of odd peace of the dying.

If you can't tell, I'm really bad at moving on.


1. Pythagorus reveals that A5-sized is a 10.1" laptop, B6 is 8.5".