This promo video makes the ROC armed forces look cool, presumably to attract the hordes of young gamers and Transformer lovers in Taiwan to go out and sign up. The reality is something else...
http://blog.islaformosa.com/2007/01/military-intelligence.html
http://blog.islaformosa.com/2006/12/taiwan-endgame.html
Watching this reminded me of the free computer game that is given away by the army in the US to attract recruits called America's Army.
I've written before about the anti-betelnut campaign in Taiwan that may be due to educated, 'civilized' city dwellers despising the chewing habit and making every excuse to attack betelnut trees and their betelnut chewers. You see, betelnut chewing is a part of Taiwan culture but it is considered low-class by some...
http://blog.islaformosa.com/2007/09/war-on-betel-nut-and-betel-palms.html
Betelnut trees being the root cause for disasters has come into doubt following the devastating summer typhoon of 2009.
"In the absence of any official declaration of the underlying causes, residents have filled the void with speculation.
Taiwan’s forestry bureau says native subtropical trees had covered most of the deadly mudslide areas of Kaohsiung County in southern Taiwan, doing more to hold mountain sides intact than to loosen them. Villagers had planted mainly bamboo, mangoes, peaches and taro on the lower hillsides. They had shunned betel nut plantations and high-mountain tea, which are common elsewhere on the island and are notorious for destablising soil for lack of deep roots, an agricultural official said.
Other disaster authorities point toward Taiwan’s fragile geology and ecosystem, including repeated earthquakes, typhoons and an early 2009 drought that have left hillsides at increased risk, allowing even huge deep-rooted trees to fall last month.
“Taiwan is an important case study in climate change,” said Chern Jenn-chuan, deputy minister of the cabinet’s Public Construction Commission. “We can say that natural disasters will be more and more severe. We can be sure of that.”
The villagers claim:
"Decades of forestry, farming and over-population have loosened mountain soil all over the island, leaving it prone to massive slides."
http://blogs.reuters.com/china/2009/09/17/aggressive-land-use-set-off-deadly-taiwan-mudslides/
So once again it seems that betelnut trees, often scapegoated in these disasters, are not the culprit this time. In fact, there are a wider range of factors which would fit nicely in Jared Diamond's Collapse theories.
This poster perfectly represents the typical Taiwanese family on their vacation, totally carefree and innocent while the masses of criminal types zero in on their kill.
Taiwanese travelers are most likely targeted due to their lack of street-wiseness.
This poster takes advantage of Taiwanese fears by advertising safety deposit boxes to prevent armed bandits from spoiling vacations.
Found this really screwed up web page selling shoes and boots doing a bit on betelnut girls from an article that appeared in The Los Angeles Times.
http://www.highheeldiscount.com/womens-platform-shoes/betel-nut-girls-of-taiwan-wow
Thought it was interesting to get someone's comment about the phenomenon who has never been here. He seems to be getting his jollies from the article...
BIG BIG NEWS! Google Street View is HERE in Taipei FINALLY!
View Larger Map
View Larger Map
Only for Taipei central area so far. Drag the little man over the map to see the extent of the coverage. Parts of Taipei county are in there too.
Read earlier Google Street View Post featuring pics of the Street View camera car:
http://blog.islaformosa.com/2009/03/google-street-view-confirmed-for-taipei.html
Digitimes
Forumosa chat
This picture of a plain looking table in a night market may seem on the boring side but, in fact, it you are looking a little bit of Taiwan ingenuity when it comes to the law.
I should explain. After the NIN concert was canceled I went to the website of the promoter. There were two way to refund: go there on the night of the performance to be or send in your ticket by mail and have the money wired to your account. Thinking the second method very scammy, I went in person. I'm glad I did and I have a fantastic story to go with it.
What greeted me was exactly as this post suggests, the back of a very hard to find pitch dark parking lot in the middle of a non-descript NanGang neighborhood with a table with an umbrella as in the picture (right out in the open with money in piles on the table).
As I was walking up to the table, though, a foreign guy said to me be careful because someone will tell me to F*** Off. Jesus man, I thought, don't drag me into your fight man. I just wanted my money back.
I went up and they (3 or 4 people + 2 security guards) checked my ticket with a flashlight and then gave me my money back. No problems. Phew!
Little did I know there was more to the story
http://forum.nin.com/bb/read.php?9,807431,page=5
Reading this all, though, I really feel that everyone is overacting a little. Both sides seem to have their points, however hreatening to sue people left and right really doesn't seem the right way to go though. We'll see what becomes of this all.
Someone recently posted an article about how an aquarium in Taiwan is hosting a whale shark. The article seemed to suggest that the Taiwanese are becoming more environmental, especially when it comes to sharks.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china-and-its-neighbors/090803/meet-taiwans-whaleshark
I laugh at this suggestion. Don't be fooled.
As much as we wish Taiwanese would take more of a serious look at environmental issues, the fact remains that their old habits die hard, particularly about food, which Taiwanese are obsessed with. Shark fin is and will be on the table for some time to come. Taiwanese brutally slaughter sharks by the hundreds to get these fins for Chinese restaurants all over.
Read my previous shark blog entry
To understand the Taiwanese position, take for example some discussions I have had. I have talked to Taiwanese friends on numerous occasions about Canada's seal hunt and Japanese hunting whales for 'research' purposes. Why kill the cute little seals they say? I say it's to control the seal population so that fish stocks don't get too low. Still not ok. When it came to Japanese whaling, they said this the right of Japanese since whale is tradition food for Japanese (which flies in the face of what Western people feel about the whale hunt).
When I turned to shark hunting, the Taiwanese also turned a blind eye. They've always caught sharks. Sharks eat us so why shouldn't we eat them first, they said. Besides, they're delicious in soup.
To top it off, I'll leave you with a comment I heard from an avid young Taiwanese surfer friend. I asked if there were worries about sharks in the water around Taiwan where he was surfing.
To this he answered, with a smile that conveyed that it was a typical Taiwanese answer to the question, that there are no sharks in the waters around Taiwan. Taiwanese sharks can only be found on Taiwanese restaurant tables! (I am such a silly guy, of course I should know this.)
He continued to smile after cracking the 'joke,' perhaps thinking of chowing down on that perfect bowl of shark fin soup. Unknownst to him, he had given me a perfect example of the mentality Taiwanese are up against when it comes to the shark fin trade that they are unwilling to give up.
Talking with a friend of mine last night, the topic of population density came up and the often quoted statement about YongHe being the most densely populated area on Earth. I live in YongHe so it was of immediate interest to me when I had heard first heard this.
I remember hearing or reading (in the Lonely Planet?) that YongHe held this record many years ago but I have never been able to corroborate it with data until now. Turns out it is wrong. Although not the most dense, YongHe does rank among the densest populated areas on Earth though:
YongHe 41,139 per km2 making it 37th on the list
By comparison to the densest:
Marine Lines, Mumbai, India 114,000 per km2
Taiwan island ranks 6th among islands at 636 per km2
By comparison to the densest:
Ap Lei Chau HK 66,755 per km2
The Republic of China ranks 15th among 'countries,' also with 636 per km2
By comparison to the densest:
Macau 18,405 per km2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_densely_populated_country_subdivisions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_by_population_density
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density
Joined the second annual photowalk this year. The Taipei one was led by Craig Ferguson, a seasoned Taiwan-based photographer.
http://worldwidephotowalk.com/
I'm no professional. I didn't even have a decent camera (I just used my Canon 950IS snapshotter). But my friend Joe and I still had a good time taking pictures within the shadow of 101 and drinking beers all the way.
To view the Taiwan pictures, follow these links and scroll to the bottom:
Taipei leg
Taichung leg
Here's a panoramic interactive image of all the Taipei walkers to enjoy as well. Check out in the trees and on the ground as well:
http://www.theodorekaye.com/pano/photowalk.html
Craig's in red with the hat.
You can guess which person I am...
And the winner is...
www.craigfergusonimages.com
There's been a lot of coverage lately about Taiwan's highest unemployment rate ever: 5.9%
forbes
bloomberg
Taiwanese seem worried but, honestly, I can't help but laugh. Western countries' unemployment rates usually range in the 7 to 12% range in normal situations and, heck, we're in a global recession at the moment of huge proportions. By comparison, Taiwanese screaming about unemployment rates seem like Chicken Little (The sky is falling!).
Just how do unemployment statistics stack up across countries? Well there is a lot of dispute since some governments are less open about reporting unemployment statistics or have vastly different ways of calculating them (some countries do not include incarcerated prisoners in their statistics, a fact, that as some have pointed out, makes unemployment statistics in countries like the US artificially lower [feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about this]).
Wikipedia to the rescue! Found some good data to compare which needs to be taken with a grain of salt. However, the overall picture painted is clear.
Taiwan 5.82%
Japan 5.2%
China 9%
United States 9.5%
UK 7.6%
Germany 8.3%
Spain 18.7%
Russia 9.9%
Brazil 8.8%
Iraq 18.00%; 28% among youth; 83% among women
Compare these to:
Zimbabwe 90%
Andorra 0%
wiki
All this unemployment talk has made me think about ways that citizens of each country react to unemployment news. I look at a country like Spain in particular which has, in my opinion, a fairly high unemployment rate for the kind of country it is. No one is rioting in the streets there about unemployment. However, if it were Taiwan, people would be thinking it is the end of the world. So how does a country like Spain cope?
I think it has a lot to do with the capacity to absorb unemployed back home to the family and this is also a point in Taiwan's favor as well. Usually, the goal of western kids is to leave the nest and strike on their own and be independent. Living with parents has a stigma attached to it. However, traditionally, kids lived at home. In some cultures, having the kids at home later in life doesn't have a stigma attached. In fact, some parents are thrilled to keep their kids at home longer or indefinitely (think 'mama's boys' or 'failure to launch' types).
Spain is a Latin country with a strong family tradition (let's not forget those relatives too). In tough times, kids can come back home to roost. Is Taiwan so different? Lots of kids are living with their parents (who have relative huge savings compared to their kids) indefinitely or have no qualms returning home if things go wrong or they need a break.
In fact, now that I think of it, western kids trying to live apart from their family creates unecessary duplication (another house and related costs) and spending (buying bulk saves more money). If there just weren't such a stigma attached to living with parents forever!
Taiwan will do fine in the face of this higher unemployment. No riots here. The sky may feel like it's falling but the family unit and emphasis on Taiwan families taking care of their own will prevail.
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