That Bridge somewhere over near Jiangzicui. I went there again. And even bothered with finding it's name through Google Maps. HuaJiang Bridge it's called.

This Thursday it rained again, so I decided to go for it. School ends early on Thursdays for me, so I went and saw a film in the library! My school has this kind of MTV like place where you can go borrow a bunch of films and watch them there. For free, (but only if you're studying there, of course.) You can watch them by yourself, or you can have a room for watching them in groups, should you have good classmates that aren't busy running to work part time as soon as they're off from school. So I watched The Happening.

After getting disappointed over yet another American film, I go home and pick up my umbrella and DSLR Camera. When I go home I usually take bus from Xinpu MRT station for a few minutes. I then find a free bus back to Xinpu station almost right after walking out the door, and decide to walk all the way to HuaJian Bridge from there.

At the time I arrived there, the weather had cleared a bit so it was quite light, also because I went there so much earlier in the day. I decided to take some photos, then read in my Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. Great book, great writer. Under a bridge like that is almost the perfect place for reading such books! It's like climbing into the bottom of a dried up well for me, going to that bridge during rainy days.

If any of you guys have read Haruki Murakami, please feel free to share your thoughts. Or if you have had something with bridges or other special places that normal people would just pass by. I'm now going to show you some of my creations from that day. I used Adobe Lightroom to capture them out of RAW files and decided to put some creativity into some of them.
Enjoy.

This was taken later on the day, a few minutes before I went to have dinner I believe, so it was rather dark, especially since the rain had increased. Exposure time is 8 seconds, no flash. Have been working for a good time in Lightroom to make the bridge itself more visible and reduce the high exposure from light in the background. Look closely and you will see the roof of Taipei's second tallest building (Shin Kong Life Tower) far away on the left side of the bridge.

The other side.
You'll also find Taipei 101 in the distance, second tallest building in the world. Damn you Dubai.

The bridge earlier on the day looked like this seen from below. Mind you it was raining all day.

Standing atop the bridge, this is what I see: Taipei City seen from afar on a rainy day.

It was a little cooler this Thursday compared to Tuesday when I went here first. It was not that bad though. There were this guy running around (exercising) in the area below the bridge with no shirt on for a while, so it wasn't that cold. I sat pretty still though, reading my book.

Finally I decided to part with the bridge. I was starving and believed I had to hurry a little if I wanted to go to Taipei and eat. I got to Taipei Main Station faster than I had expected, though. So I was able to stay around for a while after, drinking expensive coffee and buying really, really sweet candy. Might as well have been half as sweet as usual Danish candy, which meant that the classmates with whom I shared the candy would leave most of the jellybeans and extinguish the not-so-dense candies.

Hope you liked the pictures. Here's a Slovenian guys take on the bridge during less rainy daytime: A day of a good walk from Jiangzicui to the Huajiang bridge. I also took few more pictures than these. Some more of them made it to boonbot.com and you can see all picture from this bridge here: HuaJian Bridge.

If you feel like using any of the pictures that I've taken and put on this page, feel free to do so. I assume you will be nice and attribute and put up links, should you decide to redistribute them in some way (on the web or any digital media as well as newspapers or books.) Please have a talk with me before you start using them for commercial purposes, though. If you want to use them at a website with heavy traffic, please mind that hotlinking could put a strain to my small webhotel solution.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

Still alive and reporting from Banqiao, Taipei County, Taiwan. Been a bit gloomy lately, so I'm sorry for not having had the mood to write much.

Today it rained a lot. In the morning, it was a little cloudy and over the afternoon the city would start looking foggy when looking from the higher floors. Then it started raining a little, then more, then a little less. I decided to take a walk towards Taipei city by that time. Was told that it was impossible to walk all the way. I'd have to take a bus or MRT past the river as there isn't a lot of bridges for pedestrians. I don't know about that. Seems it's possible to cross the river walking next to the highway but I wouldn't do it for the fear that people might get angry. Besides, it rained.

I got off from school in Xinpu and got as far as Jangzicui pretty quick. Walking to the river from there on was a mystery to me with all those highways and roads and stuff over there. I did find a pretty nice place though, below one of the big highway bridges connecting Banqiao and Taipei. I did have to turn around a few times to get there, and apparently all the stuff they have over there is old gas stations and metal junk yards so not many people will bother to go there I believe. Especially on a rainy day. By the time I decided to rest for a while, (or rather, couldn't move further without walking into a river,) the rain was now so strong that I would rather stand under the highway. At that time it was raining like a heavy Danish rainsquall, but without all that wind and briefness that goes with those. I took some pictures with my puny point and shoot camera, depressed for not having brought the big gear. Next time it rains on a hot day, I'm going to bring it there I hope.

Amazing how few raindrops the camera manages to catch, isn't it? I can assure you it was raining cats and dogs, but these little point and shoots just doesn't do the magic like a DSLR. * Sad face *

While I was there I felt really strange. Been reading a lot lately. Especially Haruki Murakami and I felt like I could just aswell have been in one of his books. It was really jazzy there. Dark and not so crowded in a somewhat far off and quiet place. The sound from rain slipping down over the border of the bridge and cars driving around up there above was just awesome. And then it's like the end of a small world. Usually it gets really cold whenever the rain comes. (It is a bit cold now, actually.) But at that time, the air was still hot from the last few summerdays we've had, so it was pleasant. Also. Just standing below such a giant structure that such a bridge is is something I don't do everyday. I do skitter around below grand highways daily, they're everywhere, but it's quite some months since I stood below a bridge this size. You should try it. Go find a big bridge by a river and stand under it when it rains a lot. Haha. I hope you've read Haruki Murakami yourself. Otherwise you have probably no idea of where I'm trying to get with this writing. I hope you enjoyed it, though.

Can't promise too much with all these things going on, but I'll try and drag my DSLR over there sometime.

Went to the annual Taipei Game Show today. It's on from Friday 2/6 to Tuesday 2/9, so I just reached it on it's first day. A bit late though. It's open from 10 am to 6 pm. As with the book exhibition last week, I arrived at 4 pm. Too late to try stuff. But still plenty of time to locate all the booths and take pictures of loads of stuff. Took 148 photos while there, which is almost half of what my camera can contain. And that's in just 2 hours. (I make it save a raw together with a JPEG, so total size per shot is usually about 22-23 megabyte. I could cut it down to 2-3 per shot by not saving raws, should I have to snap more when I'm going back.)

In this place there's many booths and several stages for different kinds of performance. Some of them they have turnaments. At others, you can just jump up on and get a brief instruction like this guy above is, and you're in a competition of some sort, competing for freebies.

Went to this annual event in Taipei, where a bunch of books and lots of other stuff is exhibited and, most of the time, sold. You pay 100 NT$ (students: 80 NT$) for a single entrance - which isn't an enraging price. Look out for lots of 2D gals.

TiBE. Sounds like the name of a Danish city, doesn't it? And about the i - there's apparently no real reason for it to be tiny and colored retro-apple-logo style.

Oh yeah. I didn't write much lately did I? Sorry about that.

The exhibition is split across 3 different locations, all located in storage houses around Taipei 101. There's one for childrens books and one for international books (i don't know exactly to what measure, but most of those were English, and there would be Korea-, Japan-, USA-, Federated States of Micronesia-, Afro-Asian Publishing Company-, and what-not stands).

And then, there's the one with all the people: The comic-book department.

By the entrance, (actually, I think that's the less official one), the first thing I ran into was this wall where people can draw stuff on as they like. The above was taken about 5 pm, as I entered, which is quite late as the exhibition closes 6 pm.

I bet this is a pretty good warning to what this place is all about. I didn't get an idea of it as biggest comic con evah, but I bet it's going to be more crowded in the weekend. Today was a rainy day, and students still go to school, even though they have winter vacation now. I'm hoping there'll be cosplayers on Saturday or Sunday (it'll end by then), but I have no idea if there's a chance or not.
I put the photo above here mostly because of the drawing right above the head of that little girl in the middle.

This is a photo I took just before the exhibitions closed on the 28th February. I wonder how it will look by Sunday.

Just found out I photoed something with cosplay written over it. Should probably go back there and ask someone to translate that one of the coming days.

The vampire lives eternally, for it was promised so.

Let's not forget that this is Taiwan, so with everything Japanese, you have to mix some Chinese into it. (And just by the way: It's going to be Chinese new year pretty soon, so better keep your heads up.

Finally decided to go into a stand. Or store. Or whatever. Full of people. And I even had to stand in a line for somewhat less than a minute.

But where's the books???

Heck, who cares? They have pillows with onelegged hamster/cat-hybrids and stuffs.

Let me just tell you before it becomes too unmistakable: One piece is probably the biggest anime/manga/merchandise franchise in Taiwan while a bunch of goth stuff is competing about the relatively big market of young people who hate the world. (The size of which should be no wonder with such shitty high schools.) Stuff that's popular, or at least more or less known where I'm from such as Naruto, Dragonballz, Bleach, Haruhi with more, is less visible. Stuff such as pokemon, digimon, yu-gi-oh and other crap is apparently extinct here. Which is good. I bet people never bothered to write a manga for those?

Lot's of pillows for anyone in desperate need of a franchised bed. (Look elsewhere in this building and you'll find blanket and bed covers too.)

Long time since I watched Bleach. I wonder if they bad guys are finished explaining their German-named fighting methods yet.

Finally managed to find books. Had already bought some stuff from Hot Dog Toyz, but after I bought some heavy books from Kadokawa here, they gave me this lovely bag to carry stuff in:

You could, (and probably still can the next few days,) see lots of young people in the MRT's and nearby the exhibition buildings carrying these bags.

And there's the stuff I bought.

The anime for these books, called ご愁傷さま二ノ宮くん (Goshūshō-sama Ninomiya-kun), was one of the series that got me really hooked to that kind of stuff. (Although I must say, My Neighbour Totoro, which I believe I saw during my very early childhood, was probably the one planting the initial seed for my attraction to Japanese entertainment.)
Bought one, probably as a tribute, as I don't have much hopes of being able to read complicated Chinese soon.

I have two of these Lucky Star Books that I'm trying to study once in a while, but usually give up on within less than a minute. Also translated to Chinese, of course.

I am suddenly reminded of 4Chan, and the absence of influence from their internet memes on people here. I bet if someone here gets rickrolled, they probably don't have a clue. It's not like they rule Denmark either, but at least there's still a handful of people who know what longcat is there.

This place looks so awesome from the exit that I feel like going back in.

Suzumiya Haruhi reaching out for you there. I bet Kadokawa, with it's Japanese sounding name, is more into the stuff that's mainstream in Japan. Found much more stuff I could recognize there.

Too bad they don't even sell any of the posters they stick in the top. There was at least a few of them I'd have liked to see the price off. Oh well. There's other stores for that.

I never knew much about Spice and Wolf before I got to Asia. Saw a few episodes of the Anime, but didn't realise it was really popular before I visited some of Taiwan's Japan-dedicated areas.

Yup. There they are. Posters for sale, and for Chobits even. I don't know if it's because the franchise was never super popular or just 9 years old. I'd put my stakes on the latter. I love Chobits.

Seems to be the last picture at the exhibition. Sorry for my total un-Otakuness. I'm not a person attracted much to mainstream, but when it comes to this stuff, it just gets me. I should probably dig some more into K-On sometime soon, before it's not totally the new thing any more.

Will open this nendoroid box tomorrow. Have absolutely no idea what this stuff is all about, but I bet Google will yield me some results on "Vocaloid" or something. Right now it's kind of late. I have winter vacation of course (and there's no way I'm going to school as everyone else, but still need to walk around town with my Chinese teacher and look at stuff while practising. Like this again, perhaps.

I hope this post can make a little up for the recent lack of content. Goodnight.

I didn't really make an article on my first host familys house now tahat I think about it. Only wrote shortly about my room in Joni's house back in the days when I hadn't used half of my time here in Taiwan. But today has something more to cover. The whole building in the top of this post is belong to my host family. For Joni it was only one floor with plenty of room for one person. Here it's almost the same. There's 5 floors and 6 people living here normally. Then of course it's 7 with me, but it's not like I don't get a few floors all to myself now and then anyway.

The family business is water. Or that is, water dispensers and anything related to water in that way. Also that is why my host father has the nickname Water in my host club. (In Banciao Rotary Club, and many other clubs it seems, (almost) everyone has an english nickname depending on what their business is in. All of the clubs members are more or less heavy guys when it comes to money and that results in many charming names such as Ocean, Gas, Printer, Car, Money, etc.) Oh yeah, and if you're an upcoming YEP Student, bound for Taiwan, you're probably going to live mostly at rotary members houses. My current host parents are both rotarians, and so was Joni, whose father is also rotarian. Actually, Joni is going to be the only host family at which my host father wasn't a member of Panciao Rotary Club.

All around the area, and sometimes even really far away, my host family members can spot water dispensers that's from this company. Especially my host brother and sister, whom I use most of my time with, both being members of the Banciao Rotaract Club just by the way.

Someone living in this house is possesed with these little things that shake their head or makes some other movement with the help of tiny solar cells.

A lucky toad to bring in good business.

And an arsenl of highly advanced japanese missiles ready, should China decide to start an invasion.

Apart from a feature that I can't tell you about because of the chance that China might be spying my blog, this ion technology-based machine can also give you pure water with any pH-value you like.

I recommend you use a pH somewhere up in the 13's. Aim for the eyes. Remember to collect the acidic water coming out of the small pipe to the left. You might be able to use it in crafting usefull toxic gasses.

Having a good relationship to the god(s) of business is never a bad thing either. They are in acute need of C-vitamins and like burning stuff. Especially if it's money, so people will burn ghost money on the street by their shop every few weeks. Everywhere.

These are not part of the family. Hired here on part time, but can take me to eat dinner outside nonetheless. Taiwan rox. The guy talking in the telephone works part time as a butcher too. And no, I'm not talking about the one walking outside. That would be the guy that makes stinky tofu right next to our house.

The house has an elevator. Mostly because second floor is for storage and it would be troublesome to move water dispensers up and down a stair all the time. There's an office where my host mother likes to sit and spy on people through the security cameras, but it's not of much interest as I've only been there two or three times and didn't take any pictures. As you can see, there's no fourth floor.

On third floor there's a few rooms where half of the family lives. That is the two rotarians, Uncle Water & Selina (my host parents), Maxine (host sister), me and this little rodent that's gotten itself a reputation for being stupid - or even slightly mentally retarded. Which I've concluded that together with it's also rather retarded looks makes it charming, but annoying. Her name is Jili.

That's my host parents room in there.

Maybe hello kitty is not as big where you live, but here they have dedicated multifloor stores. You can get virtually anything with hello kitty. Telephones, cars, houses, Weddings, dog accesories or vibrators, they're out there somewhere for sure. Here in this house it's not completely crazy, but I'd say, a bit of a different experience.

Actually I kind of like this Japanese style insanity.

And that's the door that leads into my room. Actually, it's almost soundproof, so it's kindof hard to communicate chinese to people that they can enter if they want. Hafta go over at open it myself and cant keep it open because of the dog.

That's where I use those few treasured 6-7 hours of daily break I have. Can you see which book is lying next to that hello kitty lamp?

Of all these devices, there's only one that I don't use, and that's the telephone. Actually they're everywhere in the house, but I'd have no idea how to operate nor see if people are calling me or any other phone in the house. It's kindof broken anyway and makes some sound every few seconds that drove my host parents crazy every time they got into my room, so we just unplugged it. The other stuff is: Mew / Pink Floyd player, water heater (heated water in my room is totally awesome), electric heater (they've never heard of insulation nor warm water heating here in Taiwan), and finally a Mitsubishi Dehumidifier to prevent tiny rainclouds from forming near the windows during night.

And that's the view from my room. Well, there's a little more to it, but it's not an enormeous improvement. I'm not complaining of course. I can go for a walk and find myself a good view of a lot of city anytime I want. I am, nonetheless, super jealous of some of those exchange students that get to live on 10th or 20th floors near rivers, parks or stuff in central Taipei or Tokyo.
There's a somewhat better view from Marks home on the sixth floor from which you can see a monstrous office building on top of Banciao MRT and bus station.

But that'll have to wait for now. I've written a lot, and I should go to bed now. I can cover the last two floors and hopefully get some pictures of the crew in that one. Here's another building that you can see from my room if you stand the right place: