Walking away from buying a new lens, I was amused by this underpass and the faces that jumped up at me as I walked up and down the steps.
Tag: Taiwan
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Deaflympics Parade
Beijing gets the Olympics. Taipei gets the Deaflympics. Or is that being unfair?
Anyway, some sort of opening ceremony was passing by at the end of my street, so I grabbed my camera and was met with a Batman-esque (Tim Burton vintage) floating barrage balloon parade. Sports shoes, frogs, sea horses … and all guarded by a team of Star Wars’ Storm Troopers. It just makes so much sense.
Frog (the mascot) I understand (although why choose a frog? What do they have to do with hearing impairment?) Training shoe; I understand. Sea horse? …
Storm Troopers. Yup.
Storm Troopers avec floating training shoe. Use the force!
These are not the droids you are looking for. -
Birthday Redux
It’s useful being friends with designers and photographers; they have a habit of injecting that extra element of quality into capturing events. In my case, I was lucky enough to have Abe shooting away on his rig, and Gerhard & Klara mounting their time-lapse cam in the corner of the room – lovely.
http://www.flickr.com/apps/video/stewart.swf?v=71377
Kicking off proceedings was dinner at my favourite local ‘restaurant’ – the getto shrimp van at the end of the street. We grabbed, wine glasses, bread and candles, and created a few raised eyebrows, dining to the sounds of music and shrimps being fried with a hairdryer. As the parking lot filled up, we decamped to the apartment, where a super spread of friends gathered to wish me well as I successfully managed to circumnabulate the Sun 30 times.On top of that, I am now the proud owner of a 20″ Apple Cinema display, which is significantly more pleasant to work on – to the point that I am pretty sure I am processing more photos for upload to Flickr now, and the blog. Awesome.
Nick and I discuss vases
Really special to have the HK crew in town. Appreciated!
Candlelit / neon – lit supper
Strike a pose.
Onizou Idea Nomads in Town
Shrimp pots.
A very special cooking style – eat your heart out, Heston.
Make a wish!
The team.
Champers.
After managing to offload this trash to Sam last year, it managed to find its way back here. Someone will pay for this! -
Hiking Yangmingshan in the Rain
http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=70933
It’s been a great couple of weeks of visitors, with Gerhard & Klara in town, touching down in Taipei as part of the Onizou world tour. Do take some time to check their web site at www.onizou.com to see the things they are up to, and the places they plan to go.
We hiked up into the clouds below the peak of Yangming Mountain to sample the sights of the volcano and smells of the hot springs on the other side. Super good fun, and great to get into nature on foot rather than wheels.
Village on a hillside looks Italian (from a few miles away, at least)
Cooling off after hot spring action
The team waiting to get back to Taipei, and eat Pizza! -
30
http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=70933
Blimey … I am 30!
And you know what? It feels pretty good. This is in no small part due to the amazing efforts of my friends, especially Abe who put quite some effort into setting things up, and Tanja & Michael who jetted over from Hong Kong to join us. Biking, partying, eating and hot springing – just like the old days! Cheers everyone; it was magic.
Tanja approaches with caution
Cables haven’t moved.
Preening and Prodding
The coolest old man.
Perspectives.
Changing Rooms
Feet.As you might notice from the box at the top, I am also jumping into Flickr, after years of not really diving into it. The new camera rather warrants more than 410 pixel-wide images. Speaking of which, it is becoming increasingly clear that I might need to think about transitioning to a new format that supports better photos. I’ll need to give that some thought.
More birthday photos and videos on the way, as I sort them out.
Come check out Jonathan Biddle on Flickr!
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Doggles
While I recover from another weekend, I thought I would post the most appropriate photo taken by Michael while waiting at traffic lights, that sums up the weekend … like he says, in Taipei, you don’t need to go looking for crazy things, the crazy things come to you.
More photos on the way soon.
Doggles. My new word. And happy birthday to me! -
Taipei Mega Architecture
Intersections.I live pretty much slap bang downtown in Taipei, and I am forever amazed at the scale of my local motorway at the end of the street. The thing is, they posted it up on stilts, so it really does the double trick of magically disappearing and providing an incredible space right in the centre of the city. It also seems to be lit professionally, although I suspect that was more by accident than design.
Anyway, on my way back from my semi-regular trips to the computer market, I thought I would take a few photos.
Stairway to heaven
Painting on the ceiling with light.
Cathedral of the Automobile
Juicy couture. And home. -
A.L.L. (Anke, Lars & Linnéa)
Hi guys!It has been a really busy, really brilliant couple of weeks of having friends and family converging on the region. By luck / design, Markus has been here (need to work out what photos I have of that … seems so long ago now!), Anke & Lars have brought Linnéa on her first world tour, and even my parents have been traveling through HK on the way back from New Zealand. The fun hasn’t stopped though – fear not – Gerhard and Klara will be trucking through in just a matter of weeks.
But first, Anke & Lars, and their little bundle of ice-cool baby style, Linnéa.
Wulai ho! The river has been narrrowed, I think. The hot springs remain, and the diving board is removed much of the time (like all areas of water in Taiwan, people tend to throw themselves and die at alarmingly regular intervals).Since the guys left the island, the amount of hiking I have done has dropped significantly. I can’t be too worried as I am in the mountains most weekends on my wheels, but none the less it was great fun to jump into Mattieu’s car (pretty much the only forriner that I know that has one) and jaunt down to Wulai; world capital of the crazy hot spring.
It was more or less impossible to stop taking photos of Linnéa, but for that I am not sorry; she was an utter delight for the whole time. Great work, guys.
Back on the trails – feels good.
Linnéa – stop it!
Tongue-tied.
Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.
It was amazing to see her at this age – prodding, probing, testing, fondling … and just occasionally falling over (usually when Anke walked over to Lars and I).
Okay, I’ll stop for a while.We stayed overnight in a sweet little hotel, and the next day considered what to do. Somewhat as a joke over breakfast, I suggested we ride the cable car at the waterfall, and see what was up there. No foreigner I have ever met has been up there; most of us avoiding it, assuming it was a Taiwanese tourist trap. Everyone I know just rides past it on the way to waterfalls / hiking / camping.
We were correct about the tourist trap; stuffed toys, haunted houses, boating lakes, cross-bow firing ranges etc. But it really was a bit of a magical feeling up there: completely absurd, but set in a wonderful environment above the valley. So, I hate to say it, but it comes recommended!
The Waterfall.
Boating lake at the top of the waterfall.
Bye bye guys! (see you in Hong Kong)Now, I need to get posting the other stuff, and exporting the photos of Linnéa … A.L.L. have been chasing me!
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Down With the Kids – Mountain Biking in Taipei
SchooledWe struck it lucky with the yesterday, and penned in an afternoon ride to make room for the previous night’s activities (Japanese Rockabilly Punk, anyone?). As ever, Mark and I winched up for the climb and met the taxi crew at the top. Just before we got there, we passed a group of really rather young mountain bikers riding alone, and on quite decent wheels. This, quite simply, does not happen in Taiwan, so we were delighted to meet some young ones getting out into the hills, and jumped at the chance to guide them down some of our trails. These, dearest industrialists, are the future of Taiwan’s chance of becoming a real force in sport and culture, and the best way it can maintain a lead in Bicycle technology. Take note.
It was quite clear that the kids were going to comprehensively smoke us on the descents after about five minutes of practice – indeed, they grabbed Georg’s new super rig and schooled him in wheelies and bunny hops to his dismay / delight. We descended for over an hour together, managed to avoid getting any of them killed, but left them with Mark to take the easy route home after seeing them begin to get exhausted before the final section.
I have to show super respect to them – we were especially impressed with their flip-flop / body armour combo, and the non-stop hair-combing of one them when we stopped. I hope – really hope – that is is a trend. Really great day of riding again, and hopefully we bump into those kids again soon.
Latest aprés-slope style
Irony, in shoe form… thanks for the photos Georg! -
Goodbye Year of the Pig
It’s a little bit late to celebrate Chinese New Year, but these pictures have been sitting on my hard drive yearning to be posted. After living in Taipei for so long, it’s rare these days that I get a ‘holy shit!’ moment. But happen they do, and in this case, we had three of us with our jaws on the floor screaming a mixture of expletives, ‘gnarrrly duuude’ (Moshe), ‘crazy scheisse eh! (Georg) and ‘goodness gracious me!’ (yours truly).
It seems at one of the temples we ride past on our ‘Gas Plant’ ride to the south of the city bids farewell to the year of the Pig with a rather special … what’s the word … not quite sure what it is. It’s one of the craziest things that I have ever seen anyway, and I’ll let the pictures do the talking.
Sorry for the crap quality – cam phone.
Yum
Completely spherical!
Check out the Mohalk hairdo … I still can’t believe they managed to stretch the skin out like that. And I don’t want to ask how they keep it so perfectly spherical.