Attempting to use a new blogging program…. this is the team a few months ago at a barbie… look out this weekend for a bunch of photos of ‘where i live’ … (now you can click the pic to make a bigger version)… I can see i will need more web space!
Category: Made in Taiwan
Thoughts from an Industrial Designer living in Taiwan.
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Hello! & Picasa Software….
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Weekend Drinking
Well, I more or less managed to fill the entire weekend with drinking, or recovering from drinking. On friday I went out with the guys from the office and met Francoise – an industrial designer for an MP3 player company – and Dean – a freelance British industrial designer. Had a fun night and stumbled home, after calling all my friends in the UK on my mobile… $$$
Saturday was mainly spent feeling a bit dog awful, but I did manage to get the rest of my images up for this blog, which is good. It is actually a really nice thing that I enjoy having now – it makes me realise I am over here and doing it! Now I am in the swing of everyday life it is easy to forget that I am doing something unusual and adventurous.
Also, I had, quite simply, the BEST sashimi of my life in the afternoon, and in a restauraunt really near my house too – which I had to be pleased with! Some sparks of Chinese language meant I was able to communicate to a limited extent with the family who owned it, and even the ‘Lau Ban’ (Boss) who was splendidly gruff and Japanese. The food was prepared entirely by hand to the Chef’s specifications – no menu – freshly cut and prepared, and laid out on the table in front of you. Rather different than the Yo Sushi! belts I am used to in London.
I met up with the guys in the evening, and had a pleasant house party at Zoe and Louisa’s … and went to the nastiest meat market Club in Taipei – Carnegies. Fat American men and young Taiwanese girls. And us. Dancing on the bar. Ahem.
Sunday was spent more or less cruising around Ximen. I met up with Lorenzo and had a few beers with him at a nice Belgian bar.
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Breakfast & Typhoon
Had a great breakfast with Anke, Lars, Tanja and Mickey…. Typhoon is great because we are off work for two days!
Take a look below at the satellite image of the Typhoon…. at this precise moment it is exactly above Taipei, and all is quiet and serene outside. The only thing we can be sure of is that it will get noisy and windy again in the coming hours.
… just came back from a nice walk, and actually the eye of the storm produced a nice amount of sun – just enough to celebrate our day off.
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Temple of Doom
The second day of our central island tour saw us visiting a town, somewhere or other. Sadly, the Richard Claydermen music that accompanied the ride had subdued any meaningful mental processing, and as such memories from the day are very limited. However, when I awoke the following day I discovered I had visited a temple. First, let me show you our tour guide “Scary Dragon”… his flag and mega giga phone meant that the street traders had plenty of warning to raise all their prices in time for our arrival:
View of the interior of the temple. I certainly felt the need to enter into some kind of kung fu movie, with plenty of flying ninjas and pirates. Smooth and cool.
A shot of the pretend money that people burn, along with incense sticks, to bring them good fortune. In the shops and houses near my house you will often find people setting fire to a good pile of money to bring them plenty of luck in the future.
Temple floor:
Sets of boxes – not sure if they are for storing gifts, bottles of whisky or ashes of relatives.
Temple view outside…
The bustling streets of the town with no name:
This view of a pile of corn, with tiny chair just amused me. Earlier, there was a small teddy bear on the seat, but I think he had popped off for a cigarette.
Finally, just to show that everything is strange and weird on the island- a petrol station. View the complete lack of control of design.
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Janfusan Fancy World
We had a large company trip (400 engineers with families) to the centre of the Island in Taichung… this was possibly the most tiring thing I have ever done, since we were not allowed one split second of peace and quiet and every moment was filled with some form of mindless ‘entertainment’ … if the tour host was not telling us poor jokes, Richard Clayderman would be on the radio numbing our minds … softening them, ready for the evening entertainment of a bunch of talentless talent show performers shouting at us through microphones as loud as they could. Lorenzo likened it to North Korean Club Med, and I have to agree. Never the less, I did learn a huge amount about the culture, and sure, it makes me treasure my weekends more than before now! Here is the rolling torture chamber:
If only… we calculated that if we wanted to replicate this photo the bus would need to be balancing on its tail… look how much fun the girl is having!
One interesting thing is the Taiwanese fear of the number 4. Our bus was number 1 (obviously) but bus number 4 was called by 3+1 … you will also find that in hospitals there is no fourth floor, if you are in a restaurant the owner will get a table for 3+1 people… and this repeats itself all over the place. The reason is that the word for four is the same as for death, which is a bit of an oversight if you ask me.
The first ride of the day… the G5 … actually bloody amazing, but scary as hell. One BIG drop and then a 5G turn 50 metres in the air. Argh!
This kid dreams of being tall enough to ride the G5:
The locals enjoy the good food available at the park:
… all delivered by the island’s celebrity chef hag:
Lars has a nice reaction to one of the rides (where they strap you into a cockroach and spin you round for ten minutes head first)…. or was it the food? Either way, very funny (sorry Lars, but I had to take the photo!)
The rain brings the crowds to Janfusan Fancy World:
Nice view of some local cleaning ladies… what amazing colours:
View from the splendid Janfusan Fancy Wheel…
… the evening’s activities were too loud and painful to talk about, but let me just say they invloved blowing up condoms in speed competitions and all laughing at the hilarious results of embarassed Taiwanese up on the stage. In this case, Lars won the prize (with Anke biting the end :-I )
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Shrimp Fishing
One activity that is truly Taiwanese is to go shrimp fishing. A swimming pool area is reserved for the wee crustaceans and we fire at them with bits of liver and smaller shrimp babies on the end of rods. Now, these babies really are quite a bit bigger than you may expect… and in fact are the largest shrimp (and most aggressive) I have ever come across. Not quite lobster sized… but big enough to hurt when they grab you, and grab they do, as you pull the hook out of their little mouths. Here is the pool… “come in – the water’s lovely!”
Here is the lineup of the team at work (we had a whole pool booked for our pleasure)
Michael hard at work drinking:
The lovely, appetising bait:
Rod’s eye view of proceedings (plus Lorenzo in the background):
FOOD
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Essential Beer
Some great products around the place…. “Essential Beer”…. yes it is.
And the ubiquitous Hello Kitty brand… it gets EVERYWHERE. Any product you can think of has been infected with the pink disease…. but this one is quite cool. It’s a CD player.
An amazing smoke mask that is somewhat more melodramatic than usual in Europe!
The local condom brand “Stonker Donker”
… and even numbers sprayed onto the side of crates become interesting:
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Guting
View of Guting, in the south central area of the city:
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Cha
Klara and I scoot off to the tea rooms in the mountains to the south of the city. Here is a quick view of what it may feel like to be a on a scooter… The awesome power of 150cc’s.
At the tea room, and here is the tea set we are presented with. It is a real pleasure to hang out and look out over the city. The green tea is very delicate in flavour, though it is surprisingly difficult to get the taste really good, due to over brewing, under brewing, the wrong temperature, too many leaves… and no doubt a multitude of more spiritual factors related to the stars or feng shui.
And here is an image over the city where Taipei 101 actually looks good and tall for once (it is the tallest building in the world, and yet it looks like a stack of American Chinese Take Out boxes stacked on top of one another.
On the way back we went to Ting Tai Fung – one of the most famous restaurants in Taipei. It serves the most delicious Shanghai dumplings, and the queue outside to get seats is about 40 minutes. However, they are truly a special flavour. They cook each set in a bamboo basket that pile up into a steam chimney. Quite ingenious, I think, and the food stays warm for ages. Here is the kitchen:
Klara and I in the Shi Da district of Taipei. Near here is a quite splendid ‘Shaved Ice’ cafe – they create what is effectively a pile of snow and top it with sweet, delicious mango. mmmmm….
And here is the coolest dude I have ever seen (below, not above – that’s me). This is the absolutely standard pose of people in photos in Taiwan. I have no idea why… but if a camera appears, this is the effect.
And here is the offending Shaved Ice… this time in fact at a place in Shilin food market. The expression explains things I don’t understand….
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Juming Art Museum
I had a nice day trip to Juming Art Museum on the north coast with Klara (Swedish girl who sold me her scooter… and it turned out she was a designer… and well we got along ‘very well’). The day was more like a Californian spring day (I imagine) and for once the air was really cool and clear. We had an amazing ride over Yangmingshan mountain – the volcano at the end of my street.
This is my favourite statue from his Tai Chi series. The amusing thing was watching the Taiwanese take photos of each other imitating every sculpture… and of course taking photos and sniggering.
Me, hanging out in the sun in front of one of the larger sculptures… and being truly local by being on the phone!
Wee kid.
Klara and I in a cafe on the North Coast.
