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.