Almost exactly a year ago, I was walking along Sun Moon Lake, where all the nine frogs were visible and the level of the water was very low. Since then, no typhoons have hit Taiwan and replenished its water, the country is in severe drought, and today the lake is crackled and bare. Strange to […]
What I noticed
1. Vaccine passports 2. Attack in Mozambique 3. Jordanian thises and thats 4. A man, his plan: a very long canal 5. The reason for rape according to Imran Khan (skimpy attire) 6. Myanmar deaths 7. More talk of vaccine nationalism 8. Train crash in Taiwan 9. Deaths among the tribesmen 10. Coronavirus horrors in […]
What I noticed
1. A ship is stuck in the Suez canal. 2. Imran Khan has COVID, keeps chairing in-person meetings. 3. Lira and stockmarker jitters 4. Delhi nationalised. 5. The SNP vs Alba. 6. COVID in Pakistan, Turkey, Brazil, Mexico 7. Deaths in Myanmar. 8. Taiwan buzzed. 9. A mine in Balochistan. 10. A man, a plan, […]
High quality nose-tapping
Some high-quality nose-tapping by China hawks in the US. …the suggestion by the Republican senator Tom Cotton, a hawk regarding the Chinese threat, that Beijing could opt to attack Taiwan as early as next year. Cotton noted that Russia invaded and occupied Crimea in 2014 just days after it hosted the Winter Olympics. China, he […]
Good news story
This delightful, though probably hopelessly misrepresentative item: Taiwan official urges people to stop changing their name to ‘salmon’. The motivation is a promotion at a sushi restaurant. “I just changed my name this morning to add the characters ‘Bao Cheng Gui Yu’ and we already ate more than Tw$7,000 (£176),” a college student surnamed Ma […]
Some progress
For the last little while the GF and I have been banging our heads against various forms of bureaucracy, most recently the bank – our ATM cards are blocked, can only be unblocked by telephone, to use the telephone service we need a telephone pin, the pin is sent to our registered phone number, we’ve […]
Long day’s travel
We’ve arrived. We left Tainan around noon, a taxi to the HSR and then a train ride to Taoyuan. It was the usual one and a half hour, which seems to be the journey time in Taiwan, regardless of where one is going. At the station we were met by the Boddhisattva and the Woodland […]
Waste of a day
A terrible day and a terrible night before it, much of it awake and in pain. Woke up and got dressed, and threw up out of pain, then felt too drained and weak to even make my tea in the morning. When the GF woke up he made me some tea and a slice of […]
Last weekend in Taiwan
Today was our last Sunday here and we visited a few favourite spots: the Matzu, Confucius, Koxinga and God of War temples, a stop at Kaffun for coffee, and of course collecting our pre-ordered cake from the bakery downstairs. We also popped into the Lady Lishui temple, which is dedicated to childbirth and indeed, in […]
Great disaster
Eid began with leftovers as I ate the daal from a few days ago for breakfast. Rather pitiful, since it was stale and old and not at all Eid fare, but it was what I had that felt like home. Also, two cups of tea instead of my usual rigidly rationed one. When the GF […]