Lone Locust Productions

Tag: Taiwan

  • Taiwan 2010 – Part I – A whole lot of waiting and cramping.

    The first part of any Arizona to Taiwan trip is a misery. There’s no long and short of it, it’s just a royal pain.

    Arrive two hours early (at 5:30AM) for a 7:30 flight.

    Flight to LA, 1 hour.

    6.5 hour layover in America’s most miserable airport – no thanks, we decided to take a train and get out of the airport.

    2 hour transit by train to a mostly random destination. If the ride had been shorter, we could have gone to the La Brea Tar pits, but ti wasn’t.

    1 hour eating at a fast food restaurant

    2 hours back to the airport by train

    Arrive 1.5 hours before flight and wait.

    Fly on plane for 14 hours in astounding agony of crampness.

    Finally fall asleep on the flight with only 9 hours remaining… wake up: there’s only 7 hours

    Repeat at 5 hours and 3 hours.

    Watched Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightening Thief. Did they even bother to read the original book? Sucked. Totally wrong.

    Arrive Taipei, go through immigration, customs and then drive 90 minutes to get into Taipei!

    25 hours to make the distance. Misery. Pure Misery.

  • Sometimes we forget the wonderful things

    Honestly, how did I forget this wonderful thing? My in-laws’ house has a urinal in the bathroom!

  • Trips and Videos

    In a couple weeks, we’ll be in Taiwan.

    I’ve upgraded (or downgraded, depending on how you look at it) all our travel video gear. This year, in addition to digital cameras and phones that can record video, we’ll be carrying two different mini-HD cameras. Chu-Wan has a “Flip MinoHD Camcorder, 60 Minutes (Black)” (Flip Video) and I have a “Kodak Zi8 Pocket Video Camera (Aqua)” (Eastman Kodak Company). So far, I’m particularly happy with the Zi8 because it uses SD cards, has a replaceable battery and a microphone jack. These small cameras really have a problem with camera shake because they’re so light your hand just naturally moves them around a lot.

    I’ve upgraded my Vimeo account to handle all HD videos and I’ve setup a dedicated channel just for videos from this trip. You can subscribe to the Lone Locust Taiwan 2010 Channel right here.

    Don’t expect greatness, but do expect some video from Taiwan…

  • It’s not quite “Money for nothing”

    It seems like just yesterday when I was waxing poetic about my thoughts on environmentalism, recycling and the Taiwanese psyche about finding news ways to skirt any inconvenient laws.

    I’m humorously reminded of it in this article Taichung: No More Full of Sh*t at The View from Taiwan. In it, Mr. Turton explains the city of Taichung’s new plan to get citizens to clean up after their dogs… by issuing vouchers… when you trade in your dog’s… you-know-what… to the government.

    Go on, read it. You know you want to…

  • Fun with traffic – Taiwan

    Here’s an amusing little video from Taiwan (fortunately, I don’t think anyone was too badly hurt.)

    In Taiwan, scooters are supposed to drive on the right, and when they want to make a left turn they are supposed to cross straight across the intersection, then stop, reposition their scooter and continue to the left when the light has changed. In short, they are obligated to follow pedestrian rules.

    One of the scooters on the right shows why you should obey traffic laws.

    Incidentally, on more than one occasion, I’ve seen taxis perform this exact same maneuver. Now that’s really scary!

    Link found at The Real Taiwan

  • Flickr Find – Kewe

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    I’ve been waiting for just the right moment to blog this one for a couple of months now. I think in keeping with my earlier post about the Out-Of-Office notice, that we should be reminded that it isn’t just the English and the Welsh that don’t always get their translations sorted out.

    This photo, from Michael Turton in Taiwan, contains a real hoot of an English… sentence?

    You be the judge.


    It reads: “Happy flavor tibet in mine secret garden brocade box.”

  • Taipei 101 Swings

    This one has been floating around the ‘net for a bit now, but it’s worth a look.

    I’ve been to the Taipei 101 and seen this thing and it is impressive. A massive counterweight that helps stabilize the building. Still, when you look at those cables (bigger around than a person) and those massive shock-absorbing legs that it rests on, it’s hard to imagine that it could move at all – but move it does.

    This video was captured by a tourist who was in the Taipei 101 when the big China earthquake happened some 1,100 miles away.

  • The Ultimate Taiwanese Restaurant Photo

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    Hat tip to Michael Turton over at View From Taiwan blog for this picture. (Posted to flickr)

    Many, many times I’ve wanted to capture the very essence of the nearly ubiquitous Taiwanese open-front restaurant, with it’s little plastic stools, fold up tables, metal work area, that strange metal box thing in the back and the consistent dingy-grey color.

    Yet, somehow, I’ve just never managed to capture one of these places in a good picture. (Partially because I’m just self-conscious about snapping photos of people’s businesses [and probably homes])

    Michael has absolutely nailed it with this photo.

  • Alishan trip, then and now

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    It wasn’t intentional (at least not on my part), but I managed to get several similar pictures on this trip as I did on my original trip to Alishan in 1998.

    In this one I’m demonstrating on the train, traveling in style in 2007.


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    These purple flowers are all over at Alishan. I’m quite certain this isn’t the exact same flower as in 1998.

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    Finally, we stayed in the exact same hotel in Fenchihu, but not the same room. It was the first time I’d ever seen a wooden bathtub in actual service. Pull the wooden plug out of the bottom an the tub drains onto the bathroom floor.

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  • …and sometimes green makes sense

    So that it doesn’t seem like I’m constantly down on Taiwan’s dubious implementations to be more “green”, here’s one that makes perfect sense at every level.

    Taiwan’s Bureau of Energy, under the MOEA, said Taiwan now has 350,000 traffic lights using LEDs as a lighting source, with the remaining 420,000 traffic lights to also use LED lighting in the next three years for a total savings in power consumption estimated to be 85%…

    link from digitimes

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