Tara Superstar

The newest face in our Sinology society in Leiden is only a few weeks old and just starting to realize how the world around her works. The proud and happy parents are Ayleen and Tobias, they are proud to be the parents of Tara superstar:

Ticket check in Dutch train

Ticket check by a cool conductor in a Dutch train, Den Haag to Amsterdam

"Rischtisch scheeee..."

Impression from the "on-bike-perspective" heading towards the city center coming from Leiden Central Station.

Another video clip shot from my bike. Jana is obviously enjoying herself in Leiden; note on the back the other 11 girls with who I went to the beach yesterday.

Beach-feeling....

Zhuhai (English)

This city or is it a village? Well, whatever. It is nice here. Not so big, not so busy. But you have all you need. Zhuhai is another 2 hours by bus away of Guangzhou in the direction South. It is a harbour city with connections to Macao and Hong Kong.

I will fly to Shanghai from the local airport here tomorrow and will spend the night here.

I walked around downtown for a while today and made some interesting discoveries. First off all, they do have a pedestrian area here. You know what that is, right? No cars allowd on the road, and little cafes or shops in the middle of the street. But yet different from a nightmarket in Taiwan, as the roads are broader and there are trees. A really unique discovery for me in China until now. The pedestrian area actually reminds me a lot of German cities, yet a lot more lively and noisy.

Zhuhai is also a paradies for people from Hong Kong and Macao, as there are good connections to the two cities and prices are a lot cheaper then there. Prices for what? Well, I got a massage, they washed my head, haircut and beard cut for 25 yuan, that is about 2,5 Euro. One hour massage? How about 30 yuan. A meal for one person, don't think you would need to pay more then 20 yuan.

And there is another attraction, interesting for mostly the male visitors with certain desires. I cannot talk about prices, as I did not more then getting name cards from attractive young women, but as I have been told....a forget it.

Guangzhou (English)

The past 3 days and 2 nights were spent in Guangzhou. The city is located about 2 hours North East of Shenzhen by bus. The bus system in China is really good, buses are frequently available, clean, with airco and VERY fast. The last element must not certainly be an argument pro bus here. The bus drivers are the FASTEST in the whole country. Buses are taking over the role of sports and luxus cars in other countries and race on the highway or downtown. The breaks are only used when no other solution is open anymore. Really a scary experience.

But that simply also describes how China is, and how a lot of people think here: The bigger, the better and the more rights you have. Especially compared to weaker ones!

Guangzhou left a decent impression on me. It is yet another huge city though, with a lot of buildings. Guangzhou is the capital of the "business province" Guangdong. This is the province that makes everyone think and talk about money and profits, maybe more then in any other place on this earth.

We visited another few companies there and I got some nice impressions on how business in China works. (I won't publish it here, please wait for my book...).

After having a cold for a week now, I decided to get some advice from a docter and some medication. This has to be done in one of the plenty hospitals. The doctor subscribed me some Chinese medicine, which had to be infused. It took about 2 hours, to wait for the whole liquid to enter and revitalise my body. But it was worthwhile the time, I feel a lot better now.

Gaelic Football (English)

It is never to try new things! Today was the day I took part in my first Gaylic ... ehm sorry
Gaelic Football training across the full pitch.
Gaelic Football is a mixture of soccer (or football) and rugby. You are allowed to kick the ball, but also to pick it up. When you have the ball in your hands you must pass it by fisting. You get points for scoring above the goal post. The is no kick off point as there is in soccer and players stick to their position on the field and the man they are covering a lot more then in that sport.
Actually everyone is covering a player, whether offence or defence. It is rougher then soccer, but not as rough as rugby looks (I never played it myself, so I don't really know).
It was a lot of fun to play with these, definitely to some extent crazy Irish people and their fellows from other English speaking countries.We were also very lucky with the weather here in Taipei, no rain, no sun and about 24 degrees. Perfect to run around on the pitch.

PS: The team I played with are the famous Taiwan Gaelic Footballers, who recently won the Asian Cup in Singapore. Congratulations!

A short clip from the match! Thanks to 如秀 for the great camera work:

Waiting (English)

Waiting means, that what you want to do cannot be done right now.
We do have to wait a lot of times during our lives.
Waiting can put a lot of stress on us. Waiting can be very relaxing too.
We can wait for good things, that we think it is worthwhile waiting for;
we can wait for things that we don't actually want to wait for.

When I was still studying in good old Europe one of my teachers told me that we should be busy with Chinese language all the time, for example while waiting or doing the laundry. He recommened us to listen to CD's or maybe mp3's during those waiting periods, or periods when our brain is not fully used up. The reason for that is that our brain needs to get stimulated by the language we want to learn repetition.

Another thing that need a lot of training and repetition is dancing! A young man showed us today in the MRT in Taipei that waiting for the MRT does indeed not need to be a waste of time....

5 day scooter tour: 合歡山 (English)

The next morning started a bit later then planned (due to some nice little visitors to our room who were running around "above our heads"). But after the local breakfast and a not free refill at the gas station, we were unstoppable again.

The next stop of our tour was the 合歡山 Hehuan Mountain, one of the highest peaks in Taiwan. We went up to a height of 3420 meters, with a temperature of around 20 degrees, amazing clouds floating around us and a nice cooling breeze.
As introduced earlier part of our professional equipment was my newly bought Asus Laptop and a copy of Fifa 07, so we combined both things and tried to play the game on the peak of the mountain. But the bright sunlight made it kind of hard, so we had to cancel that plan. But we had the chance to find a special bird, a species which appears to be very rare in Taiwan.
Another highlight while climbing to the peak was to see the only Taiwanese skiing lift ever, but nowadays not in use anymore and there is nothing left but rusty pillars and a ruin of the former crank house.
After climbing back to reach our scooters yet again, we headed towards the next destination. The famous and romantic Sun Moon Lake or 日月潭. A place all Taiwanese couples fancy to go.
We were amazingly lucky and found a nice room (the last one in the hotel), with flat-screen TV, and nice equipment just before the heavy rain started.
The night was filled with dinner, SPA and FIFA.

Hehuan Mountain

5 day scooter tour: Day One (English)

Yet again it was time. The road was calling. We could not ignore our instincts any more. We had to fulfil our own deep desires and go on another scooter tour. The first one was a great success. With a lot of experiences and challenges. But this tour topped everything we have seen before.
This time only Fabian "Atze Tiger vom Kiez" und Florian "Paelzer Atze" were daring the challenge.

The equipment:
- 2 x 125 CC scooter from Taiwanese brands.
- 2 x brand name backpacks
- 1x Panasonic Lumix FZ 30
- 1x Nikon Digital Camera
- 1x Asus A8Js
- 2x Joypad
- 1x Fifa 07 (original version)
- X x a lot of other stuff

The tour of our lives guided us through mountain roads, clouds, some of the highest mountain peaks in Taiwan, tropical heat, and a lot of kilometres on the road.

The first day was about leaving Taipei during the beginning of a monsoon phase and gaining kilometres, leaving Fuxing (復興) and other cities behind us. The rain and the sudden drop of temperature made it hard to start of with our tour.
The sudden lack of gas and the early closing time of the local gas station made us stop in a mountain village in a local 民宿 a kind of pension with nice little rats walking on the ceiling of our room.
We still had a chance to get to know the local people and the Filipino house keeper Lisa aka "Pugi" of our host.

Erster Tag Scooter Tour

Raining Taipei (English)

This summer is really rainy and hot. It can rain for hours or days, and it always rains heavily...

First Piano lessen after about 16 years (English)

Shida offers a couple of rooms for students to practice musical instruments for free. So I asked a friend of mine (a qualified music teacher), to give me some piano lessons. Until now, I've had one, and this great piece of music on the video is the result!
Have a look and enjoy:

Guitar never seemed so hard (English)

Just something I found to be worthwhile putting on this blog.
All references to the artist!!!

glumbert.com - Guitar never seemed so hard

Scooter art in Taipei (English)

Just a random shot of one of the many scooters driving around in Taipei. The owner of the species below seems to enjoy putting a special note to a common thing. He put some small plastic figures around the back light and scooter licence plate.
Ten points for creativity.
Another great discovery today was a scooter with an illuminating installation on the inside of the scooter tire. Only eye catching at night, but then a real threat to traffic safety.

Nice perspective (English)

Taiwanese women do quite enjoy a reputation of being sexy, or at least attractive. That is what the term 辣妹(la4mei4), or hot/spicy girl refers to.
Taiwanese men instead don't really have that kind of reputation. I think this is particulary unfair, and therefore I am starting a small campain to show that even Taiwanese guys have a lot of sex appeal.
One first indicator was found in my dorm today, some really interesting perspectives on the real potential of Taiwanese dudes:

Nice one, these slips will make every woman to make you see naked (a good way to head right to where you want to go...)

Well, if one biking glove is enough, why waste resources and wash both of them?

Wrong, the reddish thing below is not a nice blanket, and whitish thing next to it is not a beautiful towel. The left one is a pant, the right one a short. I know, you cannot wait to see them being worne.

同學們等一下 - or the FarEast Tone commercial shot (English)

A new star is born, or an old star sparkles yet again...haha!
Today was my first TV Commercial shooting ever in my life. I had to get up really early in the morning to be at the set at 8.30. I was there a bit earlier though and changed clothes right away. Today's mission: I am an office guy advertising the great goods and services of the telecommunication company FarEast Tone. I actually have no idea what the advertisment in detail is all about, nor do I know if I will be visible or cut out by the director.

It was a nice experience anyway. Nice atmosphere in a nice office building in the nice and new business district called Neihu in Taipei. But most off all the crew and the other actors were really nice and fun to get to know. One funny thing for me to learn was that the crew calls the actors 同學們 (classmates, fellow students), a way to address a younger person or your students (being a teacher), I thought this sounded quite funny.

The job was really relaxing, just standing around and walking in the right moment, or getting out of a crowded lift. I had no lines, so had no one else any lines.
The best part was that we were done after 2,5 h, instead of the estimated 5 h.



The full album:

FarEastTone_Reklame

Dragonboat race (English)

Today was the first day of competition after a period of about 3 months of hardship and concentrated preparation. To be part of the dragon boat team of Shida you have to full fill certain criterias, besides being fit and hard working you also have to love the morning, training starts at 6 AM.

But all the hard times (and fun times of course, being with the team and getting to know each other better) were topped by the first great victory of the mixed team on yesterday`s contest.
I didn`t stay long enough to hear the result of the men`s team, I will update tomorrow. You can enjoy the pictures first.

Team Holland

The winners return

Turning around after the victory

The venue between bridge and 5 star hotel in the Dajia Park (大佳公園)

Japanese power...Ken and Xiazi enjoy it to be back after the hard work on board

The complete album can be found here:

Dragonboat Race

Video of the race:

Being celebrated by the numerous fans on-shore:

German restaurants in Taipei (English)

Sometimes you cannot help, but have to go back to your roots. This can be done in several ways, one is to go somewhere, where you expect dishes from back home. Taipei offers a variety of German style restaurants. Today I checked out the Goethe Gourmet Gasthaus, close to the National Taiwan University and the Gongguan shopping area. I went there during tea time, so there was no great variety in German foods offered. Instead there was a choice for 2 people including 2 pieces of home-made cake, 2 drinks (from a choice of different coffees or teas), two sandwiches with German sausage and two sandwiches with something like Saumagen (pig stomach) for 420 NT (excluding service fee of 10%). The taste was not real German, yet close enough. Generally prices in the specialities restaurants are on the higher side, so is the Goethe Gourmet Gasthaus. Yet some teas are offered with free re-fill or the re-fill for half the price. The atmosphere is not like you would expect it to be in a German Schwarzwald restaurant, but also not really intellectual as the name Goethe might suggest. There was no real flair in my eyes. The service was proper, yet cold (haha, at least some German atmosphere, one might believe).

Goethe Gourmet Gasthaus
No. 11, Lane 283, Sec.3, Roosevelt Rd., Taipei
Tel.: +886-2-2362-0060, 2362-0124
Fax: +886-2-2362-0164.

De traditie van de kolonisatie op het ijsland (Nederlands)

De Nederlandisatie van Taiwan gaat zijn gang...steeds meer mensen hier op het ijsland "lijden" onder de nieuwe kolonisators.

Introduction to Water Puppet Theatre Hanoi 2

Little sales girl in Sa pa from Black Hmong tribe (English)