Longshan Temple Taipei (English)

I went today to see the famous Longshan Temple (龍山寺). The temple was build in 1738 and is located in the district of Wanhua (萬華). The central hall of the temple is to honour the goddess Guanyin, the other halls are to honour Mazu and various other goddesses.

Elf yourself (English)

Nothing to do?

Just do it as I did and morph yourself to become an Elf.
No idea what I am talking about? Just click here and you will know...

Life in Taipei III

Life in Taipei II (English)

As promised the first second episode of Life in Taipei. This time I went to a performance of my sign-language club. On the way to the venue I stopped by at the famous Shida Nightmarket and had a snack....

A movie about life in Taipei (English)

I just experimented a bit with making these .gifs a bit more interesting. It is a beginning, maybe not the end. Watch and tell me what you think about it.

Christmas Dinner (English)

I went out with a group of friends to have our traditional Christmas dinner at an American Steakhouse, called "Ponderosa Ranch". You pay a maximum of ca. 16 Euros (depending on the type of meat you choose) and get a free buffet with free refills, salad bar, dessert and a lot of other goodies.
My meat was really soft and very tasty. We had nice conversations and enjoyed it to be together. A Yan and Boukje just came back from their trip to Alishan (阿里山) and a native tribe, they had to tell a lot of stories...

The Holy Evening (English)

Picture: My Christmas gift: A red Ferrari! Yeah, you have to be humble these days, right?

Yesterday we were celebrating the Holy Evening. We first went out to a traditional Taiwanese restaurant and tasted the 5 great specialities, which were, 3 cup chicken, 3 cup beef, fish, some hotpot, beef slices and chicken slices. Very delicious!!!!
Later we went yet another evening to the bar 5.11 and had some drinks.

Heiligabend in Taiwan

Merry Christmas (English)

Dear visitor of this blog!

It is a honour for me to welcome you here! Today is a very special day, for a lot of us. It is December 24, today the last picture of the Adventskalendar from Taiwan will be revealed. I sincerely hope that you have enjoyed the last 23 pictures up until today and that by these means I was able to transport some Taiwanese Christmas feeling all around the globe.
Christmas is a very special day, a day which opens our hearts and minds to see more than just what we see with our eyes. We need to cherish these special days and try to take some of the positive spirit on for the rest of the year.
The best we can do is being open, kind-hearted and friendly throughout the whole year!
I hope that you can enjoy these days and recharge energy after all that stress of all the preparations.

Enjoy picture number 24 and I wish you a Merry Christmas

This is the Adventskalendar my mother sent me to Taiwan, as well as a Guardian Angel to protect me while being overseas... :-)

One more night...(English)

Christmas is the festival of love. Love between regions, countries, areas, people, groups and you and the one right next to you.
Love was all around during class today. Our Brazilian classmate made gifts to all the other classmates, each one got Brazilian Samba music and some sort of Brazilian snack. Our teacher added traditional Chinese tea, as well as Christmas candy....

Picture number 23 shows the Christmas-love-effect during class.

富康跟曾老師正在吃...哈哈我不敢繼續打字.

December 22nd (English)

Yes, only two more nights and Santa will knock on your door to bring you a bag full of gifts!

Let`s hope so, and enjoy picture number 22

Merry Christmas everywhere (English)

It is raining in Taipei. No, not one of these refreshing summer waves that you can enjoy and actually wait for to come. It has been raining for the past two or maybe three weeks, every day for at least a few hours.
It seems to be like one of these types of weathers were people become depressive and stop doing things or so. But I don`t have that feeling in Taipei. Life just goes on, whether you are sweating in the sub-tropical sun, and freezing in the air-conditioned public buildings or shops, or whether your clothes are just drowned in the rain that has been continuing for the past ours, while you are standing outside doing your job, which is holding an advertisement board. Life just goes on, people here are to busy to waste time by thinking or even complaining about the weather.

Christmas party at my sign-language club

I joined my first Christmas party for this year. At the sign-language club. Really a nice and freaked out group of people. They are so funny and cute, I don`t know how old they are, but some really seem to be 14 or 15 (which is impossible, as they all are university students). They enjoy laughing a lot and playing games.
The groups most outgoing person is 天天 or Sky Sky, that is his name (I have no idea, whether nickname or not), he acted as Santa Clause today and was leading through today`s Christmas party. He did a great and hilarious job. There were two highlights of the party: one was the lucky draw of christmas presents (everyone had to prepare a gift, I rapped some Germany goods in Christmas gift paper), I got chocolate from Turkey, they are supposed to bring luck!
And the second highlight was to sing a song of one`s former Highschool. As we don`t have that I sang a song of our beloved Kurt Dehn (Wann isch keen Pälzer weeer) and could amuse the Taiwanese audience with the flair of my heimat.

This is picture number 21:

Christmas window (English)

There are so many great places to put up Christmas decoration. For example in Florian`s favourite restaurant.
The restaurant is called something like the "left-handed cook" and they have the best Chaofan (炒飯) in the whole city of Taibei.
And they also seem to love Christmas, as you can see on picture number 20.

Picture 19 (English)

Christmas has many faces! One of it being a cute piggy standing in front of a Christmas tree, right besides a trash-can, a wheelchair and a film poster. This picture has been taken at Taipei`s Guting (古亭) MRT-stop.

Enjoy picture number 19

Picture number 18 (English)

Santa is talented in several ways, as you can see he knows how to play the Sax. Yes, this is our little Saxophone playing Santa in the living room!

Enjoy picture number 18.

Traffic in Taipei

MRT Taipei

Bundesliga in Taipei (Deutsch)

Es hat lange gedauert, aber letztlich, so kurz vor der Winterpause hat es endlich geklappt! Ich habe einen Schuppen (eigentlich eine super moderne Sportsbar) in Taipei gefunden, in dem man sich das Topspiel der Bundesliga anschauen kann.
Wirklich ein krasser Laden, mit ca. 5o Flachbildfernsehern und 2 riesigen Leinwänden, dazu noch attraktive Bedienungen, Fußballfanherz, wonach giert dir mehr.
Etwas nachteilig ist jedoch, dass die vermarktungstechnisch der Bundesliga weitaus überlegene Premierleague 90 % der oben geschilderten Kapazitäten einnimmt.
Für die Deutschen Suffköpp gibt es ein kleines Separée. Hat aber seinen Charme und wird nach der Winterpause des öfteren eine Reisewert sein.
Also gestern war das Topspiel dann Tabellenletzter gegen Spitzenverein, Karnevalisten gegen Großstadtschnösel, Rheinhessen gegen Bayern, kurzum Mainz hatte die Schikeria vom FC Bayern München zu Gast. Das Spiel war wild, heiß und recht schnell entschieden. Am Anfang konnte man sich noch über die neue Frisur von Olli "The Khan" Kahn erfreuen, später blieb einem nur die "Kloppsche" Fresse zu ziehen und zu hoffen, dass keine Kamera auf einen gerichtet würde.
Der deutsche Flickenteppich Vor-Ort: Also alles von echtem Bayern, geizigem Schwaben, über Pfälzer-Bauern, durch den Ossi-Osten an Cottbus vorbei (Jahwöööööööhl wüüür häben äin Pünkt gegen Stüttgart jeholt...!) bis hin zur waren Aristokratie der Bundesdeutschen Hauptstadt, Berlin, erwies sich als charaktervolle Mischung. Ohne Schlägerei und Krawalle (die Engländer waren uns zahlenmäßig einfach überlegen und die Meisten waren eh für Bayern) und sonstige Zwischenfälle erwies sich der Bundesliga-Abend in der Taverne (The Tavern) als die Reise wert.
Neben dem Fußballgenuss auf dem Flachbildschirm gab es dann noch frisch gezapftes Erdinger (200 NT Dollar, ca. 5 Euro für 0,5 Liter) und ne recht eigenartige Currywurst mit Pommes (280 NT Dollar, ca. 7 Euro).

Lazyness caught up...time for some catch up (English)

You might personally know that problem: Sometimes you start things and everything seems to work out fine and all of a sudden you get distracted by several things, this could be your sourroundings, too much work or simple lazyness.
I got distracted, my Adventskalender-qi (氣) was not in order...something must have gone totally wrong that I stopped the regularity of adding new pictures.
Now I will post one big post with the necessary pictures and HOPE, certainly not PROMISE to be able to put the next pictures a bit faster online.
But my archive of ChristmasinTaipei pictures starts to run out. I haven`t been on the road with my camera for a few days, maybe weeks.
But today seems actually be a great chance to go out and make some shots, as it is the first nice (晴朗) Weather since about 1,5 weeks of rain.

Perfume, das Parfüm, 香水

Before starting loading up the pictures, I will tell you some other nice and intersting thing: I went to see another movie, this time Perfume, das Parfüm, 香水 is it already in your favourite movie theatre?
The movie has still no lable in my moviecritisim part of my brain. There are some things about it which impressed me. These are: 18th century France (and Europe) was dirty, there is no need to show it in perfect state and shining and glowing people walking down the streets...and that is exactly what they are not doing in the film. As the whole story is about smelling and smells it would have been very interesting to have watched it in a 4D-movie theatre with additional odors.
The other impressive thing was that the story is about a murderer, what do we usually associate with this kind of people? Hatred, misunderstanding, the urdge to strike back... nothing of this happened to me while watching Jean-Baptiste working on his evil and sick plan to kill 13 (?) beautiful girls to preserve their smell. The mainactor made the public understand that there is no other way for this guy to live, then fulfilling his obsession.
The downpoints of the movie were: What a weird ending? Strange happenings during the planned execution in Grasse (?). The perfume created by Jean-Baptiste developed his magic to calm down the people`s lust of murder and execution, even the fathers of the killed ladies start to make love to each other and see Jean-Baptiste as their own flesh and blood.
The last scene, Jean-Baptiste returning to his place of birth, a smelly and stinking fish market, where he opens the perfurme for a third and last time and then gets killed through the love of the people standing on the market. All being affected by the magical smell. He got killed by love and was born "while the mother was selling fish" and without love. What an ending...maybe I start to like it now.

Adventskalendar

Picture number 13


Yes, you see a lot of them around in Taipei right now. Every store does not only have Christmas decoration, no the employees are also dressed as little Santas and his sisters...

Picture number 14


Close-up of the Christmas tree in front of Taipei 101. Why do Taiwanese decorate the whole city in Christmas fashion? I have no idea, no one can give me the answer. Except that it is cool and trendy, as well a good for business.... So is there a difference between Christmas in Taiwan and elsewhere in the world?


Picture number 15


It can only become better, and it will! This is our little cute Christmas tree in my new apartment. I am not responsible for the Christmas decoration, my Japanese housemates do that....


Picture number 16


Santa in his bus again. To make it easier to follow his track he shows his destination of gift delivery, this time to "Taipei 101" and for "free". Of course Santa, we ain`t paying for our gifts, that is why we like you so much!

Picture number 17

I told you it would become better: This is the real fake MacCoy. The friend of my Japanese room mate bought this great plastic Christmas tree, you can re-build it in three parts. Holy night, silent night...We are ready for you to come!

December 12th (English)

Nothing special happened today.

But it is time to upload the picture for the day, number 12, yet another Christmas tree found around Taipei 101.

Abkürzungssymbol (Deutsch)

Schon einmal darüber nachgedacht, was ein shortcut aus der englischen Computersprache eigentlich auf Deutsch bedeutet?
Die allgemein gebräuchliche Übersetzung ist Verknüpfung. Das es auch komplizierter geht und man damit ein außergewöhnliches Wort erfinden kann beweist die Fotosoftware von Panasonic, hier hat man sich auf den griffigen Begriff Abkürzungssymbol geeinigt. Auch nicht schlecht!

Picture number 11 (English)

They are numerous, you can see them everywhere, Taiwanese love Christmas trees.

Picture number 11 was taken in a pasta restaurant.

Santa is driving a bus (English)

Did you ever wonder, how Santa is able to carry all his gifts? Yeah, I know there these stories about a slay with rendeers going around. Don`t believe them, here is the truth and I have it on a photograph: Santa is driving a bus.
Ohja, by the way, do not believe that Santa is an old man from Finland (Suomi), no here comes the truth: Santa is Taiwanese and quite slim and young...
Enjoy the truth on picture number 10



PS: I have no idea how he crosses the Oceans, and whether he is allowed to deliver his gifts to Mainland China (中國大陸)...

Neuhaus Pralinen (Deutsch)

Echte belgische Pralinen sind überall ein Genuss und überall sündhaft teuer! Vor lauter vorweihnachtlicher Freude konnte ich es mir nicht verkneifen mal wild über die Stränge zu schlagen und mir im höchsten Gebäude der Welt mal was zu leisten. Was wildes, etwas, das man nicht jeden Tag kauft. Also, eine Gucci-, Versaci- or was sonst-jacke wäre schon nicht schlecht gewesen, oder ein Laptop von Sony! Ja, ja, große Träume träume ich vorläufig nur weiter, dann eben einen kleinen Traum erfüllen.
Einmal echte Trüffeln von Neuhaus aus Belgien genießen. Eine Pralinen für 66 Taiwandollar, das sind nach http://finance.yahoo.com/currency/convert?amt=66&from=TWD&to=EUR&submit=Convert
1.54381 €. Ja, genau!

Das nenne ich etwas Wildes machen, richtig wild!

Je t`aime Paris (English)

Je t`aime Paris, that is the title of the movie, which I liked. A really good one, so if you have a chance to watch it, get into a movie theatre nearby or further away and enjoy it.
Today were the elections of the mayor of the cities Taipei and Gaoxiong. I went to one of the election places to make some interviews with voters for RTI.
There was nothing special about it, the people were not really enthousiastic.
Picture number 9 is yet again a Christmas tree at Taipei 101.

Time for picture number 9 and the weekend (English)

Yes, it is weekend, eindelijk, as I would say in Dutch! This week our new classes started and I choosed to take two of them. One at a quite high and intense level, the other course is more relaxing and easier.
I like my new teachers a lot. My teacher in the morning (with the harder course) is very commited to teach us a lot and let us participate in the class. But the level is very high and my classmates are really good and fast, so I still need some time to catch up with them.
The other teacher is just incredible, she is so funny and crazy that there is no single minute in her class that we dont laugh out loud. The best is that is does the jokes on purpose and enjoys it, when we make jokes back to her. All in Chinese of course, a very nice way to get to know the language better and better.

This is it for today, enjoy picture number 8, yet another christmas tree in a shop`s window...

StudiVZ (Deutsch)

Ja, ich weiß ich bin ja nur neidisch, die Internetseite Studiverzeichnis (www.studivz.net) hat jetzt schon mehr klicks, als mein blog sie jemals haben wird, ist besser gemacht und einfach großartig.
Bei allen Klicks, und der Großartigkeit ist allerdings einiges in Vergessenheit geraten.
Ich werde mich hier sicherlich nicht als investigativen Journalisten outen, diese Arbeit haben andere für uns gemacht.
Was dabei rausgekommen ist, kann man unter anderem unter www.spiegel.de und dem blog www.blogbar.de nachlesen.
Leider stellte sich heraus, dass den Machern der Seite ihr Erfolg wohl etwas zu Kopf gestiegen ist und dass sittliches Benehmen auch nicht gerade zu ihren Stärken gehört (Fotos von Damen, während des Stuhlganges und einer scheinbaren Sympathie mit rechten Gedanken), dies wurde zwar alles regelmäßig auf dem zum studivz gehörenden blog dementiert, hinterläßt jedoch dennoch einen bitteren Beigeschmack.
Neben diesen Ausrutschern, scheinen sich die Macher um Sicherheit, der ihnen anvertrauten Daten, nicht ordentlich genug zu kümmern. Zum einen findet man Zitate, in denen deutlich gesagt wird, dass der einzige Sinn und Zweck der Studi community das sammeln und verwerten der Daten ist, zum anderen scheint es eine deutliche Sicherheitslücken zu geben.
Ich kenne mich mit den ganzen Sachen nicht gut genug aus, lese auch alles nur aus zweiter Hand und wahrscheinlich, wenn es schon längst zu spät ist.
Dennoch habe ich mich vor einiger Zeit aus diesen Gründen entschieden meinen account zu löschen, in der Hoffnung, dass die Daten-Sammler dies auch tun werden.
Es ist schade, denn die Pluspunkte der Seite, wie das Aufspüren von Freunden, kann man vermissen. Auf der anderen Seite kann man sich fragen, ob der Sucht- oder Zeittotschlagfaktor nicht vielleicht zu groß war!

Happy Feet Christmas (English)

Everyone has seen the great movie Happy Feet (快樂腳) I guess, except for me ;-). Todays Adventskalendar picture has some relation with that movie.
Though I did not watch that computer animated penguin blockboster, I was able to enjoy some other productions during the last month. I still remember watching the new 007, and some scary Japanese movie, the Grudge 2, (don`t watch it, it is not worth your nerves and money) as well as a great French (?) movie. I forgot the name, as I am usually bad with names, but it was really great. Content of the movie are some smaller stories all told with and around people of Paris. The stories were really nice and it is just great to see the city d´amour, a marvelous city, a place that I like.

Further more my new classes have started. I took 2 classes this semester to increase my speed of improving my Chinese. The two courses are really different, one is at a quite high and intense level, the other is really relaxing with a crazy, yet funny teacher.
The teacher of my other course seems to be a very nice and caring person, but also very demanding. I will really need to study to be able to keep up with the speed of my teacher and my classmates.

So, that is enough of it for now, enjoy picture number 7

Nikolaus (English)

Today is the day of the Heiligen Sankt Nikolaus.

I am a bit lazy, and just upload picture number 6, a christmas tree close to Taibei 101.

Christmas on the Taoyuan International Airport (English)

The airport is the meltingpoint of international cultures, the gate to come and leave. It is of course necessary to create a certain Christmas mood there.

The Taoyuan International Airport (previously Interntational Chiang Kaishek Airport) is no exception on this one.

Picture number 5 is representing some airport Christmas mood:

Another bunny...(English)

...this time a christmas bunny! Sex sells in Western societies and it does here too.


A hot and nice looking lady wearing something like a Santa dress, doesn`t that make you wanna celebrate Christmas underneath a palm tree somewhere in the south with 30 degrees?

Enjoy the temptation of picture number

4

Rudolf the red nosed reindeer for dec 3rd (English)

Yeah, right I cannot fool you guys, you see it on the pic that this is not really Rudolf! But anyway another nice example of how people, businessmen and the government of Taiwan promote the Christmas feeling here.

Enjoy picture number

3

Some cute reindeers with a car full of gifts close to Taipei City Hall and Taipei 101

Schandaal om Rabobank! (Nederlands)

Hier gaat het om een interessante informatie voor alle uitwisselings studenten buiten het gebiet van de EU (Europeese Unie): Met ingang van 1 januari 2007 is het niet meer mogelijk om met je RABO pasje gratis andere valutas dan de Euro van je rekening te pinnen. Dat betekent dus, dat het voor mensen in Taiwan of der VR China (of ergens anders) veel minder makkelijk wordt om geld vanuit Europa naar hun tijdelijke heimat te sturen.
De Rabobank geeft aan, dat er te veel gebruik van de klanten van gemaakt werdt en dat de kosten voor de bank te hoog zijn. (ik dacht al dat de Leidse uitwisselingsmafia erachter staat, of de Rabo bank heeft het aantal nieuwe eerste jaar sinologie gezien en is nu al bang, dat in 2007 100 mensen een jaar lang iedere dag hun RABO pasje gaan gebruiken)
Nou, nu moeten ook de RABO klanten (net als klanten van andere banken) per transactie minstens 4,50 € betalen...Jammer, jammer, jammer! (bron: een brief van Rabobank aan hun klanten)

December 2 (English)

Even the Easter Bunny in Taibei loves Christmas. That is why the decoration in this shop`s window is making an interesting cross-over of typical elements of Easter and Christmas decoration.
Enjoy pictures number
2

My home is my castle! (English)

After three months living in the dorm with my two Dutch friends, I decided to look for my own room to experiance some other living quality.
My new room is looks like a luxurous prison cell. I share the flat on the fourth floor with two Japanese men and a Japanese woman.
The apartment is not very new and there is nothing special about it, but there is one great advantage: it takes only 2 minutes to walk to the Mandarin Training Centre. This will make life a lot easier for me...

Adventskalendar!!!! (English)

Dear Readers of this blog, (I know this is a big audience, I must be addressing a million people)
I had an idea recently, one of which I actually think , could be a nice one. Don`t we all love CHRISTMAS? You know, that thing where you wish everyone a MERRY CHRISTMAS, FROHE WEIHNACHTEN, JOYEUX NOEL, 聖誕節快樂, or MERRY HOLIDAYSEASONALGREETINGS (for our American friends), the days where you get together with your beloved ones, eat a lot of food and get great gifts. YEAH, I knew, you know it!

Ok, now some German tradition: Everyone who loves WEIHNACHTEN, also has his or her own ADVENTSKALENDAR, this calendar has 24 little doors (you may only open one door a day, until december 24), and behind every door you usually find a nice picture or maybe chocolate, you also have custom made calendars, where parents might hide fancy cars, or other toys behind the doors.

So, I want to use this blog to offer you my special TAIWAN-ADVENTSKALENDAR, that means, I will put every day one picture showing TAIWAN in christmas mood.

Here is picture number

1
Santa is coming to town, even to Taibei.....

Pictures from holiday in Kending and Gaoxiong (English)

While most readers are probably wearing heavy clothing, such as hats, warm jackets and so on, I am freezing as well. The only difference is, that the actual temperature in Taibei is around 20 degrees Celcius right now. Hard to believe, but yeah, it makes me freeze. And certainly wear a jacket.

But let`s move on to more interesting things: after a while of, let`s name it a strike (by giving it that name, I feel some intellectual notion), I am back to put stuff on my beloved blog.

The first input are some pictures from my latest holiday destination, Kending. In the far south of the beautiful island. A really beautiful place, with temperatures around 30 degrees celcius, blue sky, sometimes white clouds, sometimes dark clouds, but no rain.
Riding around on a rented scooter, staying in nice hotels, having a great time with friends.

Ohja, I almost forgot: Before we went to Kending we first stopped by in Gaoxiong (the second largest city of Taiwan, with a large harbour and a lot of industry) for a night. Gaoxiong, though the second largest city of Taiwan, is still a lot smaller than myTaibei. They don`t even have a metro system yet, but are very busy to build it. But the nice climate gives Gaoxiong some advantages you cannot find in Taibei, anyway, here the pics:

The frog mountain, viewed from the Tower in the Kending National Park (墾丁國家公園)

Kending National Park (墾丁國家公園)

Soji and Justin taking a rest, while hiking in the Kending National Park (墾丁國家公園)

The White Sand Beach (白沙灣), close to Kending (墾丁)

The blue sky, with white clouds

Mark (何睦), climbing up a tree in Kending National Park (墾丁國家公園)

Nice picture, right?

Ever seen a dog (on the left) being able to do that move? I was impressed!!!!!

Sunset in Gaoxiong (高雄)

Some Taiwanese youngsters waiting for the bus in Gaoxiong (高雄)

Yeah, after 5,5 h in the train, we reached Gaoxiong (高雄), Nicole, Justin and Harm

I love cows, but I also like pigs, like this one in Gaoxiong (高雄)