This picture was taken from the 76th floor of Tuntex Sky Tower, Kaohsiung.

Kaohsiung is like Taipei, a very big, Taiwanese city. It's the second biggest and located in the opposite corner of Taiwan. In Kaohsiung it's hot and there is more space between the buildings. Roads are bigger. If you plan to be in Taiwan during winter, I can strongly recommend Kaohsiung. Taipei is a bit cold right now, actually. In summer though, it's probably a little too hot to feel utterly comfortable in Kaohsiung. You could go to the beach, which is much much better down in the southern part of Taiwan, but Taipei is already a bit uncomfortable hot for most people during summertimes, so personally, I think I'll prefer to stay up here when it gets warmer.

They do have MRT too in Kaohsiung, so getting around wont be a big issue. MRT is a little smaller and slightly different there, but mostly the same experience.

Ya. I'm not dead. And what an awfully boring title this post has, don't you think?

Since last time I wrote it has become Year of The Tiger. Or year 99 in Taiwan. It's Chinese new year and I've been celebrating it with doing lots of stuff and being all depressed while doing it. Not that the Chinese New Year is depressing. Not in any way. Except that it's usually rainy and cold, from which this New Year didn't make the slighest deviation. Loneliness, that's what you get for not socializing with the other exchange students.

But ya, I'm not dead so whatever. Lets see if I remember anything from the activities.

Oh yeah. I could start out with the red envelopes called 紅包 (Hong2Bao1 - red bag). During the Chinese New Year, which lasts for a few days after the Chinese "New Years Eve", people will be giving out these. The norm is that "adult" family members give out Hongbao to kids and the elderly. Also, companies will usually give away some envelopes to their employees. You'll also see famous people giving away Hongbao to actor kids on television shows during these times.

My host father is crazy about these things. And I will say as much as I don't dislike them either. It goes under the names Sugar-Apple and sweetsop and in Taiwan it's also known as Buddhas Head Melon, as it resembles the head of the Gautama Buddha.

They're some little Taiwanese that, according to one of my readers, probably originated from South America. Thanks goes to Carlos. He seems to have referred to the Cherimoya, which is not exactly this fruit as far as pictures from the web tell me, but I could imagine that they still have something in common about origin.

I believe there are a few little details that makes the Taiwanese Sugar-Apple slightly different from other countries sugar-apples. A more important thing is, however, that you don't mix it up with other fruits in the Annona family such as Soursop, Cherimoya, Custard-Apple or Atemoya, (which is a hybrid between Cherimoya and Sugar-Apple.)

In the picture above, you see that it is possible to rip the peel off of the fruit without much effort should your fruit be mature and soft. Don't eat it while it's hard, wait a while instead, and it will taste better.

Allow me to cite Wikipedia for a suiting description of the meat:

The fruit flesh is sweet, white to light yellow, and resembles and tastes like custard. The edible portion coats the seeds generously; a bit like the gooey portion of a tomato seed. Sugar-apple has a very distinct, sweet-smelling fragrance. The texture of the flesh that coats the seeds is a bit like the center of a very ripe guava (excluding the seeds). It is slightly grainy, a bit slippery, very sweet and very soft. The seeds are scattered through the fruit flesh; the seed coats are blackish-brown, 12–18 mm (0.47–0.71 in) long, and hard and shiny. - Wikipedia on the Sugar Apple

You'll usually pick out the little chunks of meat with a spoon as they are covered in sticky fruit juice. One thing you can also see on this picture is a bit of the contents that Wikipedia forgets completely about. There's also some substance with a much different texture and taste yet still creamy and sweet in between the clusters of meat and the peel of the fruit - possibly as a protective buffer. It can also be eaten and although it's not the major part of the fruit, you can still eat a bit of it, especially if you scrape the peel from the inside lightly. Look at the picture above and you can see some of it running down the side of the fruit almost in the middle of the picture.

There's still a lot left for me here, so I'll get back to you another day. If you get the chance some day, try it!

Hello again. I'm sorry I didn't write recently. Had other things to deal with. Some of which I might still need to work a bit on.

As I am writing, I am upping my recently taken 354 pictures that I didn't manage to load into the computer since wednesday last week, as I couldn't find my connector. As always, I am tired while writing this, so I'll just post a few pictures to summarize my recent activities. Hopefully I can use this post as an against myself to write blogposts about the stuff.

This fruit is awesome. Taiwan has many many fruits, more than just a few of them even unique to Taiwan. After all, Taiwan has been isolated from other landmasses for a long time, and has therefore evolved a number of distinctively taiwanese (or formosan) plant and animal species. I'll have to get an English name on this one before I can write about it, so I guess I better stop being so lazy and ask someone soon. So far, all I can say is that is has an awesome and creamy texture, and it's very sweet. I mean, so sweet that when I am halfway through it, I start to find it a little too much. And I like sweet very much just by the way.

That's me and, I guess... my third host family brother. He's the brother of my third host family sister. I should blog more about hanging out with the older young people here. They're very good memories.

Especially because of stuff like this.

I also went to this Buddhist retreat at Ling Jiou Mountain on the northeastern coast of Taiwan with the most amazing view I've seen in my life. Let's see if I'll be satisfied enough with the trip myself to write about it. I can promise you that it's a really great place, and I have plenty of material to make a big post.

Also held a makeshift christmas party just yesterday which I should definitely write about soon.

So, I just reestablished connection after my periodical strategic relocation of the HQ to tell you about some interesting stuff happening around here these days.

The last two days, a Buddhist temple in Wanhua (Southwestern Taipei City) called Ching San Kong has been having it's yearly festival with activities all day long, and today it ended with a big parade to celebrate that certain temples god whose birthday is today. It was not a festival by the other much bigger temple, Longshan Temple which is also located in the Wanhua district, yet it was still one of the destinations of the parade. - I did read some posters advertising for an upcoming festival by Longshan Temple in the near future, so there might be more like that to cover soon.

They started about noon and, while I am writing, haven't even stopped yet. They're going to continue untill 12 in the night where they will finally reach to their home temple. Impressive is barely describing enough.