Taipei's Japanese French Pancakes

French crepes in Taipei, via Japan.


Chocolate and banana (there is also pork floss and corn if you are not feeling so French).
Want some?

Fat Fat Fish Eyes: yuck alert!

On Sunday night we went out with a big group of people to the Fat Fat Boat Restaurant. We had one of these orange fish, it was served whole, and its eye was popping out.

Update: hey, you know, B didn't actually eat any. He stuck to white rice and icecream, the constipation diet. But he had fun with the eye...while P averted her eyes, and ate the yummy fish (but not the eyeballs).

Happy Birthday A & M

For Aaron.
From both of us.

UPDATE: And Marie, and Marie, and Marie too! Happy birthday!

Feline Friday

Here are the kitty cats enjoying a snooze outside on the balcony.

Fish are back

The fish food dispensers are back at the CKS Memorial Park!

This is just the top of a fish food dispenser, with the memorial roof in the background. The dispenser is shaped like a big fish, and if you put NT$10 (about 35 cents) into the coin slot, you get a small packet of fish food. When you throw the pellets into the pond, the giant goldfish (carp) just go crazy! Feeding the fish is a lot of fun.

Feline Friday

Our other cat friend is Tigger, a Taiwan born and bred feline furball. This guy is ALWAYS hungry!
The great photo is from S.

UPDATE: if you click on the picture of the cat, it will spin around.

Zuo tian ye...

Today we went to lots of places in Taipei. It was sunny and warm...
This is me on an overpass near the Taipei Main Station.

S'Art US in Taiwan

UPDATE: S made this picture for a birthday card. That's Taiwan my mum is swinging off.

Hike on Sunday

A couple more pictures from our hike on Sunday...


We took a train to Fulong and then a taxi out to the start of the hike.
On the trail it was like Taipei Main Station but with fresh air.
We didn't know it was National Hiking Day.
After a bit of this, we turned back and recovered by the river. We spotted a dead Formosan Pangolin wedged between some rocks. But the best bit was climbing on the rocks in the river up to the waterfall with J.

The fallow rice paddy was Tadpole Central.

Then we headed to less crowded paths...

Finally to the beach so that I could get wet and covered with sand (Oh, that's Mum writing!) and then back on the train to Taipei. We are especially lucky to have such fun and kind people to hike with, thanks P O & J!

Fulong Haiku

To mark our hike in Fulong (福隆) today, and in response to rank's post, we have composed the following Haiku:

草嶺古道 Caoling Gudao

Back from the mountains
Legs are tired but we
Don't care. Sandy toes.

Feline Friday

This is Chase. Isn't he lovely? He moved from the US to Taiwan. He is S's cat. He's very shy, so we don't often get to pat him.

Martyrs Shrine

This lion is a foo dog. Yup, a foo dog. You can also call it an Imperial guardian lion.
Foo dogs protect buildings, especially Buddhist shrines, in China, Korea and Japan.
This foo dog was at the Martyr's Shrine in Taipei. All around the shrine are mountains. Lots of people come by tour bus to see the changing of the guards, which takes about 20 minutes. The changing of the guards happens once every hour. The guards are in front of a building that looks like a Chinese palace. It is for the memory of soldiers, like a war memorial.

Mum's Fieldwork

It's not always fun. Sometimes it makes us want to bite ourselves.

We went to the Presidential Building open day today.

Halloween

Wednesday was Halloween. Halloween is a festival popular in the USA. In Taiwan some people also like to dress up and have a party, or decorate their school or office. Here is a photo from the underground mall near Taipei main train station. The decorations were all made of balloons.

Bubble Tea 珍珠奶茶; zhēnzhū nǎichá

You were wondering what bubble tea was...we know you were. So here is a photo of 'small bubble tea' from our favorite shop.
Bubble tea is sweetened milk tea with tapioca balls, served cold.

Chinese

Did you know that Chinese has no alphabet, but more than 20,000 characters? To read a newspaper, you need to know about 4,000 characters. In Taiwan the traditional form of Chinese characters is still used. In China many characters have been simplified to make them easier to learn.
About 850 million people speak Mandarin Chinese as a first language; many more than the number of people who speak English as a mother tongue. Mandarin Chinese is only one of many Chinese languages. Cantonese is another. Altogether about 1.2 billion people speak Chinese. That's one in every five people.
To learn Chinese most people first learn pinyin, which is a way of writing Chinese sounds with the Roman alphabet.
Chinese is a tonal language, which means that the meaning of a word changes depending on how you say it. Ma, for example, can mean mother, horse, hemp or scold. In Mandarin Chinese there are five tones.
First tone is high and even,
Second tone rises as if you are asking a question.
Third tone dips then rises.
Fourth tone falls sharply.
The fifth or neutral tone is short and unstressed.
The BBC Real Chinese website introduces basic Mandarin. Why not have a go?

Hongshulin Mangroves

Hongshulin means mangroves in Mandarin Chinese. Yesterday we took the MRT train to Hongshulin station. We met our friend Stacy there and together we walked along a wooden path through a mangrove swamp. Mangroves are coastal habitats that form where mud collects along the shore in an area protected from strong waves.
The seeds of many mangrove plants germinate on the tree. When the seed pod has produced roots, it drops from the tree and floats to a place where it can sink its roots into the mud and grow.
We saw mudskippers. Mudskippers are fish that thrive out of water in wet, muddy environments. We saw them flipping about in shallow muddy water.
We also saw fiddler crabs. The males have one large claw and one small one. They wave their claws around to attract female crabs. If they break a big claw, they will grow another one. Fiddler crabs live in burrows. When they are feeding they look like they are playing a fiddle (violin).
The photos of the crab and the mudskipper come from other websites--our photos were not very clear.

UPDATE: Gardening Australia had a segment on mangrove ecosystems on 20/10. You can watch it from the link here.
The mangrove trees at Hongshulin were not as tall as the Australian ones. The Hongshulin mangroves are mangroves of the Kandelia candel species.

Taipei Crafts Center

Today after class on our way to meet our friend Stacy we sat down to drink some bubble tea and realised that we were sitting out the front of the Taipei Crafts Center. The Center was on the 9th floor of a building so when we had finished our tea we went up in the lift to take a look. Inside there were ceramics and jewelery and some work by an artist called I-Shan Tsai. I drew some pictures on her visitor’s book. I hope that she likes them. We liked her teapots and drawings. She was born in 1981. You can see some of her work at her blog from the link.

Yong Kang St Yoghurt Me

Lunch from the 'Yoghurt Me' shop. They have two flavours, original and green tea. I like the original flavour best.

Wheels

Here I am on the back of a scooter last Sunday. We went hiking in the mountains around Taipei.

Offline

Dear Readers
Just to let you know that we have not been able to access our blog or email from home this week. But we are okay. With luck, we will be connected again on Wednesday.
This week has been much cooler than the previous weeks. The daytime tempature has been a comfortable 28 or 29 degrees.

Typhoon Damage

Photos of typhoon damage that we took today. The car is on the hill behind the apartment and the trees from the Daan Forest Park.

Tyhoon has gone

Here are some pictures from today's Taipei Times that show the wind and flooding. It wasn't as bad in the evening as we expected. There was a lot of rain and some places were flooded, and also there have been landslides. But where we are it has stopped raining.

On the edge of the storm

Here is a picture of the view from our 5th floor balcony. Mum is watching the news. 110 cable channels, many of them showing typhoon reports. All feature young female reporters out in the storm.

It's starting to get a bit noisy outside.

The cats are hiding in Sarah's room.

Super Typhoon hui lai

Super typhoon Krosa seems to be heading directly for Taipei. You can follow the typhoon here at tropical storm risk (TSR) and the Central Weather Bureau.
Satellite pictures from here.
Wind gusts to 170 km/h.
We are ready. Mum has filled the bath with water, in case the electricity goes off and the water pump does not work. We bought some bottled water, bread, fruit and eggs. The gas bottle is full. Hanging plants and washing brought in. She bought a lighter in case we need to use candles.
We really have nothing to worry about. We don't have a car or scooter, business, or live in the mountains or the bottom floor in a flood-prone area.

The Answer for Quiz 2

tor: a prominent rock or pile of rocks on a hill

It wasn't a hill, just a pile of rocks in a park. And lots of people were climbing on it.

the best breakfast in the world

The best breakfast in the world is a mixture of chips, jam, chocolate sauce and weird star-shaped thingys, and kiwi fruit.
This is what I have in the morning before my Chinese class. First we have cereal and milk or porridge in the apartment, then we walk over the hill and take a bus to uni. Before we go to our classes we go to a cafe for half an hour and I have this while Mum has a coffee.
Chips with jam...you really should try it some time.
Oh yes, and guess what it's called? The 'Sweet Baby A Breakfast.'

Quiz 2: What could this sign mean?

Any ideas?
Answer on Monday.

An Interesting Meal

Squid ink hot dogs with Guts chocolate for dessert.

Miss Piggy

Here in Taiwan, some people have interesting English names. When my Mum was a teacher here, she had a student called 'Snow' and another called 'Dinosaur'.

One of the teachers at the school that our friend Sarah works at is called 'Teacher Piggy'. Imagine this:

"Class Two, listening."

"Yes, Piggy, listening."

Made us laugh.

Quiz Answer

Here is the answer to last Friday's quiz. Thanks for the great guesses, Ella, Andrea and Sarah. We loved your answers. We're on the lookout for more curious signs.
The sign was at Taipei 101 (the really tall building). There were lots of uniformed guards there to make sure that nobody could sit on the windowsill. Hey, you'd have to like heights to want to sit on the windowsill. The lines make the person look like he or she is about to lift-off!
The other picture is the view from Taipei 101.

Friday's outing

In the afternoon we went to the Taipei Water Park in Gongguan with mum's friend Page. We had a great time. There are 3 slides, and I went down one of them twice. I want to go back there!

Quiz: What does this sign mean?

Anyone? Please post your ideas in 'comments' below.
I will post the answer on Monday.

Taipei 101

Yesterday we went to Taipei 101. It's 508 meters high, and was completed in 2004. It's the tallest building in the world. The elevator is really cool, it takes about 30 seconds to get to the observation desk.

First day in Taipei

We went on the Maokong Gondola yesterday evening. It was dark, so the views were of the city lights rather than the jungly hills and temple, but we enjoyed being the only people in the cable car on the way to the top. It goes over the zoo, so you can hear the animals, and it was a lovely way to end a hectic day.

Here is a photo of the gondola in daylight, and one of me yesterday evening in our gondola.

This is me

"I am the shopping guy. I love to shop. I am everywhere in the shopping centre".

We saw this big soft toy in the shopping centre in Hong Kong.

Mum is thinking about Mangoes

mum is thinking of mangoes in Taipei.

My first word

My first word was 'car', and my favorite place to say it was on the road with mum and dad. Back seat of the holden commodore, streets of Thornbury, "car!", "car!", lots of "car!".

My mum's first and favorite phrase as a child was "more beam!" Always a polite child, she says,"beam" meant "please". More what? Food I guess...mmmm, green beans with butter.She says that actually was her favorite food.

What was your first word, or favorite food?