That's the tallest building in the world just for your information.

Yeah, yesterday I went there to have a look at the city. Actually my home ma suggested we go there last Saturday but it was a rainy day so the view would probably be terrible.

Taipei 101 has different heights depending on how you want to count it. The antenna of it reaches up to 509 meter while the roof is at 449 meter. Although Burj Dubai reaches up 818 meter with it's spire, Taipei 101 still holds the title of the tallest building in the world since the definition requires the building to be finished and habitable. And again... even though Burj Dubai is probably going to finish in December and thus beat it, there's always Taipei 202. (Hey, Burj Dubai is just like a big spire really. Taipei 101 has ~30% more floor space than Burj Dubai actually.)

Nearby Taipei 101 is a bunch of other interesting buildings and stuff. This is apparently the place everyone has to take a picture with whenever they go here the first time. Oh just by the way: This is going to be a very tall post, but click more and read it anyway, ok? :) Iz taeken lotsa naic pohtos.

I hope you know what I'm talking about when I'm saying Presbyterian Church. It is, after all the Chinese code for a very special and now secret organization that people will only know about if they have seen backstroke of the west.

Well, I went their to speak with the council. As you can see, I am very happy as I just got my documents recognized as I demanded.

Thing is, I can not tell you yet what the documents were for or why I would go talk with cheddar monks. I can only tell so much that it has something to do with this building behind me - the one that is known as the tallest building in the world.

For you see. After all, my plot is very sinister. You should zoom into the above picture to see my awesome bad guy face really.

I'll tell you about my doings in the worlds tallest building tomorrow. (And yes, it is indeed still the worlds tallest building.)

So yeah. I completely forgot to tell you about this part of my life here. I guess I got to focused on writing 'more objective' with a personal degree that I completely forgot that a blog can also be used for something completely personal and still be something about culutre.

So today it's exchange student culture I guess. Have a look.

So that's the view from my bed. A little messy maybe. I don't think so though. Really. I am being orderly here and those who know me should know.

I left almost all of the stuff that were here before I came in the exact same place as were. Only moved a bookshelf away because my bed would otherwise be too small.

I tell you - this ceiling has got some badass lighting effects.

Yup, your dolls are still there at the exact same spot, Christy. I hope my mess wont upset the feng suei too much untill you get back.

That's the view from my window. Hey, it's not some dirty wall with ugly marks running down from dried whatever-people-throw-out-of-their-window or whatelse. Actually I can have my window open all night without having to be worried about ninjas coming in and disturbing my sleep. (Or would that have to be samurais if I am a ninja myself?). Heck. I am in Taiwan so maybe I should be more worried about Chinese ghosts and the Axe Gang.

Yesterday I just got a new blanket since it's getting cooler in the weather. So yeah, this one is probably 1 or 2 mm thicker than the other one I had. But it has little 'hairs' just like a towel all over so it's very soft.

Look at that. I made some sort of system in my stuff. Mandarin music ftw. I should try and get some more info on that subject some time soon, actually.

Da Cha Wan An. Wo Jiao Shuei Jao.

Today I got a pretty nasty surprise when I opened up my blog to check if there were any comments for me. Usually the spammers will just leave their vandalism on 3 or 4 blogposts and eventually make a spam trackback once in a while so that I have to use a few seconds for cleanup but today I just found out one spambot had gone to every commentable post on my blog leaving one comment at each thus forcing me to go through a lot. Luckily for me, I made comments close automatically when the post is more than 3 months old, but most of my posts are still very recent since I've just been in Taiwan for a little more than 2 months now.

That's unacceptable. Before it was just stupid random spamming, but this actually made me feel a little like someone making fun of me, (well, ofc. they're not but still... they can be bots but they definately have to die,) so I was willing to implement captchas even if they were going to annoy my visitors and myself most of all.

So I went and used my evening for plugging in an extention to BlogEngine that's called Askimet Extension. It's using Askimet which has an API that you can implement on your blog to prevent comment and trackback spam by checking it towards a database before letting content in. It's managed by the same people as are running wordpress and is free for any private person earning less than 500 US$ on his blogging business. By using this, I hope that I can keep spammers away. I won't know if it's working before some days have passed but I know there's no captcha's inside it, which surprises me actually.

Wish me luck. * Crossing Finger *

Btw: I uploaded more photos to the portal-thingy and am starting to put up tags on some of them. You should check it out.

That's one of the entrances into Ximending. I went there with my classmates yesterday. It reads Shimen in Latin letters, but you know... There's a very good reason why Taiwan has it's own system of phonetic characters instead of the Latin alphabet. Actually, Xi means west. Men means door. So Ximen is actually the location of the west door of old Taipei.

This is one of the more popular places in Taipei so they have bus-stops equipped with screens that will tell you when the next bus will arrive. Neat.