It was not turning 40 that has brought home to me how old I am but the fact that is the third time in my lifetime that the revelation of Ophiuchus as a constellation displacing Sagittarius has rocked the world. Truly there is nothing new under the sun. Speaking of which – this was a […]
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Third time lucky
Today, our third attempt was successful. The first two had been during the week in which I absconded, to go to a tiny Japanese restaurant with 10 seats, which we had heard was very good but didn’t take bookings. The first time, we arrived before it opened and found it shut. Instead, we found another […]
Week of silence
No particular reason – I had plenty of time, plenty of interesting things happened, wasn’t feeling particularly loathe to engage with the world (at least after I decided to stop reading MetaTalk), I just… didn’t. We have finally made our plans for our next destination in August. East and SE Asia are not really opening […]
Buddha vs stegosaur
This morning we hired a car and driver and went to Fo Guang Shan, a large monastery and Buddhist site outside Kaohsiung and home of the world’s largest seated Buddha, as well as (it turned out) a menagerie of animatronic animals including a mooing stegosaurus. The place itself is immense, set on a hillside overlooking […]
Sporting excursion
This evening, we decided to go to a baseball match. Tainan’s own Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions were playing the Fubon Guardians, so we strolled down to the stadium and bought a pair of tickets for the home side. It was a warm evening, relatively few spectators, though the home side gradually filled up as time went […]
Past the inland sea
The western end of Tainan is Anping, which was once a bar of land or sand enclosing wetlands and lagoons. Yesterday we took a taxi there (I fear my resolve to take buses has been broken by the heat), stopping for a terrible lunch. The GF didn’t think it was as bad as I did, […]
Myth and history
Yesterday we went down to the Koxinga shrine and museum, a fascinating place full of history and religion. Koxinga was a half-Japanese half-Chinese Ming loyalist who fought the Manchu and the Dutch and established a short-lived kingdom in Taiwan. Like Dr Sun Yat Sen he seems to be celebrated everywhere (except by the Dutch) and […]
City gods
Yesterday we went first for lunch to perhaps Tainan’s most famous export, the home of slack season noodles, Du Hsiao Yueh. Quite tasty, and they had some very nice fresh bamboo served simply with a bit of mayonnaise. This is in one of the two historic centres of Tainan, about a 10 minute walk from […]
Earning their keep
Pakistan’s maulvis are hard at work. Mufti Muneeb says charity no substitute for animal sacrifice Mufti Muneeb Says Online Buying Of Sacrificial Animals Is ‘Un-Islamic’ CDA stops construction of boundary wall at temple’s site in Islamabad
Stinktown
Tainan is, well, not a pleasant smelling city, at least on its larger roads. The stink is varied too: drains, rotting vegetables, mould, vermin, stale food and oil, other forms of filth. I felt a bit ill last night as we went for a post-dinner stroll, our first real exploration of the town. We went […]