Pazza Studios

Hello All.

That Pazza Studios over in Taiwan is taking some really great shots.

Also, a big shout out to Dennis - the best electrician in Edmonds, WA .

Later,

KJG

Little Liu Chiu Island

Little Liu Chiu Island (小琉球) is South-West of Kaohsiung in the Taiwan straits. The very small island is easily reached by passenger ferry from Dong-Gang (東港 - East Harbor) . See Google Map.

Freeway 3 is the easiest way to get down there. Just drive to the end and turn right. Turn left just before the big red bridge and park in one of the lots there next to the boats. We arrived just in time from central Taiwan and caught the boat at 12:35 on the Saturday after Christmas. Our friends Andrew and Sarah were there waiting for us, saying "Come on! We're going to miss the boat!" ... So, we got on the crowded little ferry boat and made the quick 25 minute trip to the island. Our helpful hotel manager met us at the dock with a sign and the keys to 3 scooters. She led us up the narrow winding streets to the hotel just near the harbor.

Life is slower on Liu Chiu and almost nobody wears a motorcycle helmet.

The harbor was completely full of fishing boats crewed by Indonesians, Filipinos and Taiwanese.

We took a wonderful trip on the under-sea boat.

An urn for burning incense near the best beach on the east side of Liu Chiu.

A hermit crab crawling out of his shell.

Liu Chiu Island is completely made out of coral. There are all kinds of interesting coral.

The view from the "Black Ghost Cave" temple.

Sunset on Little Liu Chiu island as seen from the Black Ghost Cave temple.

A beach completely made of busted up coral.

The Famous "Liu Chiu Rock" . "Held Up" by a beautiful model.

All in all, we only spent about 26 hours on Little Liu Chiu Island It was totally worth it. We barely made the ferry back with seconds to spare and again it was totally full on a Sunday. Thanks to Andrew and Sarah for the great idea. We are already planning our next trip to this pretty little island for some more beach combing on the coral sands.

Connections between Australia and Taiwan

Taiwan ... and ... Australia

There seems to be an inevitable connection between Australia and Taiwan. I was reminded of that recently while reading the story about Clare Wang on the site of my favorite blogger from Taiwan who also happens to be from Australia! Maybe I'm also thinking of a local photographer from Australia or the website Taiwan in Australia that is a strong supporter of Taiwan Pic of the Day. Heck, maybe I'm even reminded of the bottles of "Yellow Tail Wine" I see at the local hyper market, or the "Australian Beef" that seems to be more popular than ours. Anyways, just pointing out this fact on a Saturday night. Good luck to Clare Wang!

Check in soon,

Joe

All is Well in the Land of the Setting Sun

Well, here I am back in Taiwan after 35 days in the USA. It was a glorious vacation filled with beautiful scenery, clean air and lots of partying. Of course with flying, eating out and partying, there is always a heavy tax to pay. Now I'm happy to say that I'm back to work full time, saving money and working on this ole blog again.

During my vacation, Craig took over editorial duties at the TPod. He did an awesome job and hopefully I can hire him on full time. Unfortunately, we had several serious problems with the hosting company and the server. While there was intermittent service during the period, two whole weeks of data were lost in early July - right at the beginning of my vacation! Hence, there is still missing data from the July tpod archive. I think I can piece most of the photos together from the daily email, but to say the least it was a pain in the rear. Although the server is now working for the meantime, I am actively searching for new hosting. I'm thinking about getting a server here in Taiwan so it will be much faster to reach.

That's all for now. I will follow up with a few photo essays in the next few weeks reporting on our trip.

Lotto Fever!

I got to find a new investment strategy, because this buying lottery tickets is not working out so well. Yesterday, five lucky people in Taiwan split the massive jackpot of 1.2 Billion NT Dollars. This little gambler in the picture still has hope that his ticket will win. Of course, our tickets were not even close.

I had quite a lot of fun taking pictures at the luckiest lottery shop in our home town of Yuanlin. There were so many good shots, it was almost tough to pare it down to 13 of the best. I hope you enjoy as much as I did taking them. I was almost ready to leave and I passed the traffic light, but something told me I should turn back and get a few more shots. I told myself "No Regrets" and I'm glad I did, including the one you see there to the left. Of course it was almost a spectacle there, despite my low profile, so I leave you with this posed picture on the motor scooter.

Jong Shin Village Trip - 中興新村

In keeping with Today's Selection of Scooter Balloons for Taiwan Picture of the Day I have dedicated this entry to the trip to the Jong Shin Village in Nantou County, Taiwan. To get there is an easy exit from Freeway #3 just south of Taichung and slightly north of Nantou.

The Gate welcomes you to Jong Shin Village


This tree lined street is not something you would excpect to see in Taiwan.


Houses on cute little streets complete with front yards and hedges.


The paths, fields and parks here are quite impressive.


Kids enjoy playing in this park with a sand pit, maze and lots of other kid activities.


She will gladly sell you some scooops, trucks and shovels for the sand-pit.


The village and the parks are quite established with many old trees and lots of roots.

Thank you for visiting and you can find all my pictures of the Jong-Shin Village 中興新村 here

FotoZon Links

Here are some links for recent developments and coverage on the FotoZon.com Site.

Recently, a web site devoted to cultural ties between Australia and Taiwan did a piece on our web site entitled Brilliant Window on Brilliant Taiwan. I must admit the article is very flattering and paints a great picture of our web site and the progress we have made so far. It even looks like a real news piece with quotes from our interview and web site statistics to boot. Christine Sun, the editor of the web site has a degree in journalism and did a great job on the piece.

With help from a translator, I have published a page in Chinese entitled 台灣每日一照. If you can't read that text, you couldn't read the page anyways, so I will just say that it is a Chinese version of the Taiwan Picture of the Day page.

Finally, I have re-done all of the Taiwan Daily Archive Pages as well, using Light Box which is a JavaScript library for showing photographs on a web page. It is much better than the old version which used my own cooked up JavaScript that displayed the picture on the bottom of the page, rather than a cool overlay. There is one more kink to work out in Internet Explorer 6 where the previous image flickers for a second before the new image appears. To top it all off, I also added navigation menus on the side, and a listing of all the titles for the month with links to their respective pages.

That's it for a busy weekend working on the web site. Next installment will be a photo tour around our town, and a trip the the Jong-Shin Village in Nantou County.

Trip to Checheng

Just south of Sun Moon Lake on the road to Jade Mountain National park is the town of Shuei-Li. North of Shueili on a lightly travelled road is the terminus of the Ji-Ji railroad line formerly used during the Japanese occupation for logging. Originally we had planned to drive up to Yu-Shan national park, however after taking one look at the dark menacing clouds up that way, we took a left not knowing where we were going and ended up in the little town of Checheng. The locals are busy there building a logging museum and other attractions for tourists. A fine time was had by all.

First up on the trip was a stop in Shuei-li to visit the river and watch some rafters:


And also some river rescues



After that we continued to drive onto CheCheng and saw the little tourist railroad town including this little tea-house on the pond:

Pond at Checheng:



Resevoir behind Town:



After driving around the Resevoir, we came to this washed out section of the road, which is a common occurence in Taiwan:


The strangest thing in this case were the steel I-Beams in the road, presumably
to keep out the bigger trucks from driving on the weak road:

Well, those are all the updates for our trip to Checheng, tomorrow is double 10 day, Taiwanese "independence day" even though the "country" is still not really independent. More updates coming soon on the recent photo trip around our town to the plum drying factory, the lantern array and the small budhist

Fan Cleaning Day

Fan Cleaning Day!

It's fan cleaning day... Just as an example of how dirty the air can be over here in Taiwan, check out our fan! The dust and junk collects during the hot months due to the constant blowing of the fan during the hot months...

This has got to be the most boring post ever, so I will keep it short... notice the picture to the left with my reflection in the fan..


Every 2 or 3 months, I gather up all the fans in the house and unscrew them apart in order to clean all the inside parts and the grill to remove the dust. My wife has to sweep and mop the floor every few days. It's just the price you pay living in Taiwan.

End of most boring post ever... Next, I will post some exciting new developments in the Foto Zone web site for further customization of the photo viewing pages

The Fan in all its glorious filth.


After the fan was clean, I put it on a black T-shirt and snapped this picture.

All for now! End of most boring post ever...

Trip to National Aquarium

After being scorched in the hot southern sun in Kenting, it was a welcome respite to go under water for a while at the National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium on the way out of town. It is one of the best aquariums I've been to, and the large fish tank is very impressive. There are several tubes to walk under the water and look out at the fish.



Besides the photos already on my web site:

Here are a few others that are view worthy as well.

Inside the one of the tubes. I did not see any leaks.


The tubes from viewing window above. Note the people inside.

I thought these worms were impressive sticking their heads out
of the sand and looking like so many blades of sea-grass.

Taking Pictures and watching the fish

More people and fish.. I like the dark outlines...

On the way out of the main hall, there's a nice whale fountain
where the kids can splash around and also lots of over-priced
snacks and drinks.. It was soooo hot in the afternoon, I had to
buy a Mango Shave Ice. It was sure good...