Big and Tall

I went to the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial today. Blimey, they must have liked him. He was the General who with Dr Sun Yat Sen, founded the Republic, unified China and got rid of the last Emperor (thereby allowing an extravagant Hollywood movie). Now he was the president of ROC until the seventies and after he died Taiwan put up his memorial.

Now it's a cross between a temple and the sort of thing a megalomaniac would build for themselves ( think Mussolini if he'd not been found hanging around that lampost). It's a massive traditional chinese structure in the middle of a massive parade ground with a massive statue of the man himself smiling beatifically down on his flock. I think they were going for the Lincoln Memorial kind of thing but overshot somewhat. It's full of his old belongings and all his honours, mostly from South American dictators and the odd Order of the Bath from Blighty. There are also his bullet proof cadillacs (gifts from the grateful people of Taiwan. Although how grateful if they need to be bullet proof?) and some pictures and old artifacts. What is amusing to me is the vast amount of stuff about his great leadership up to about 1945, then a bit of a gap until about 1950. Can you guess what happened during that time? Something to do with a balding bloke called Mao I believe. All a bit hillarious really. It's as though the KuoMingtan always planned to decamp to Formosa in 1949. Which for all I know they might have.

There is also a permanent honour guard at the Memorial too and they have the most complicated changing of the guard I have ever seen. It's so amazingly well choreographed with goose stepping, step ball changes, gun twirling and box steps. I'll say this, if ever the PRC invades the ROC and asks for a dance off then the Taiwanese Army is in with a chance.

I also went to Taipei 101 today. This is/was the tallest building in the world, depending on when you read this. That's the trouble with the TBITW race, someone is always going to beat you and make your building merely very tall. At least this one still has the fastest lifts in the world: 60 kph, 90 floors in 26 seconds. I should mention this makes your ears pop like a champagne opening contest. The view from the top was spectacular but really I don't know why I get sucked into the tall building tourist thing. I've done it in Seattle, Vancouver, Paris, London and New York and really you just go up to see where you've been. This might be cool in Paris and NYC but in Taipei you just get to see the top of semiconductor plants.

There's also a shopping mall funnily enough. And another on across the road. And another next to that. All full of very high end shops. Really how many Chanels does one city need. Suffice to say all the shops were completely empty. You have to go to the electronics malls to see people buying stuff. Me included (8GB CF card for $28 Australian!).

Now for some more observations. There seems to be an inordinate amount of lesbians here. Unless, at the risk of perpetuating a stereotype, I can't tell pretty asian boys from pretty asian girls. I can bust one stereotype though. The Taiwanese are tall. Nearly everyone is as tall as me. People must still be evolving or they are eating a lot more Maccas and Starbucks.

That's enough as I'm in the lobby and trying to type this on a mac, running windoze, with some sort of prophylactic covering the keyboard.

It's a weird sensation on so many levels.

ROC

So heres a few impressions after my first day in the Republic of China (No 'Peoples' please note):

It's very friendly: everyone so far has been lovely, even if I can't understand them and they can't understand me.

It's cheap:the beer in my hotel fridge is AU$2.80 each. That has to be a record for a minibar. And a 4GB compact flash card is AU$17. Mind you they are just made up the road.

They love scooters.

Pedestrian crossings are merely a suggestion, which combined with the 8 lane wide roads makes every trip somewhat of an adventure.

I have never seen so many roadside, mobile food stalls in my entire life.

A white face is still enough of a novelty that you get stared at by little kids on the subway.

I have never seen so much unidentifiable food on aforementioned stalls. Dining out here is for the very brave.

They really love scooters.

It's hot.

Even though I have been the only white person I've seen today, all the official signs on roads and stations are in English, which is very considerate.

It's the year 98 here. Not 2098 0r 1998. Just 98.

So far it's great.

Apple Fail

I'm in Singapore and off to Taipei tomorrow. However my carefully laid plan of hotels with WiFi so I could tweet and blog has died on it's ass. My iPhone has chosen this moment to shit itself. It no longer recognises any wifi signals so I cant connect and international data roaming is too expensive to use.

So no blogs I'm afraid unless I can find more internet cafes like this, how quaint. Now looking forward to the inevitable battle with Apple for a new phone when I get back to Oz.

Maybe I should have bought that Nokia after all.

Perth Airport (again...)

Well here I am again. At Perth "International" Airport at an ungodly
hour. Why do I book these early flights. Oh yeah because that's all
that's available. 0730 sounds untill you add on the two hour check-in
and queue extravaganza that PIA seems to love.

In fact it's a bit tragic here. I don't know where all the resources
income in WA has been spent but it's pretty obvious it's not on the
airport. This morning for example I got the very last parking space in
the long term carpark. At 5 am. What you are supposed to do if your
flight leaves at a sane time is beyond me. Oh that's right you park in
the short term which costs twice as much.

Oh well I'm off to kill two hours with an amazingly over priced
departure lounge breakfast.

Wedding

Here's some photos of Lauren and Dave's wedding.

Fat Cat

Just took the cat to the vet for a weight check. Wish I hadn't.

I got into trouble for having a fatso kitty. Apparently he's meant to weigh about 4.5 kg but actually weighs 6 kg. I didn't think he looked that fat but I'm obviously turning onto one of those people who loves their pets to death and can't see what I'm doing. So now it's off the kitten food and onto weight control food.

Which brings me to another fascinating new fact. It seems Loki isn't 10 months old but possibly 18 months old! This is a bit weird as when I got him in April I took him to the vet and was told that he was about 7 months old. By the vet. Now only 5 months later he is apparently 11 months older. According to the vet nurse. Who to believe? Dunno. But they did have another silver tabby kitten who is 10 months old at the vet and he was about half the size of Loki. So they really grow up fast nowadays.

I was obviously asked to adopt the other kitten there, and it would probably be a good idea to keep nut-case company. However I learned yet another thing. Apparently silver tabby cats are not like normal cats. Ok I've worked that bit out before but according to the vet chick they are very different to other cats. Much more feisty, more inquisitive and much more dog like. And that's sort of true as Loki follows me round all the time, is obsessed with food (hence the fatso-ness) and fetches his mouse. If only you could train them like a dog too.

Anyway I'll let you know how the diet goes. I foresee trouble ahead.

Crocked and Roll

Roll on the holidays. Just two weeks now and then I am off for two weeks. I can't wait, especially as I am getting progressively more and more crippled by work at the moment.

It's pretty much a given that in my job you end up with a bad back but at the moment I am not getting better. I really need to take a couple of weeks off work to recuperate but it's just too busy. Every time I move now my spine cracks and my neck burns. Hey ho, hopefully I'll get better over my holiday. Actually if I do and then get worse again when I get back to work I'm thinking of trying for workers compo. Not a road I really want to go down, but it's costing me a fortune in physio and drugs. Actually it could probably be all resolved if I just got a more acceptable chair to put the patients on.

Still I am looking forward to the holiday. I went and got the foreign currency the other day. Well I tried to. Obviously getting Taiwan Dollars in Perth is a considerable challenge. If you want US dollars or British Pounds or New Zealand Dollars then no problem. Obviously only English speaking currencies available in this town.

I understand that the little exchange booths don't have Taiwanese dollars on hand, but the fact that the ANZ bank doesn't have it, and can't even order it, it ridiculous. I mean they are a bank for god sake. Aren't they meant to handle money? Eventually I got it from a little Travelex booth in Karrinyup shopping centre. They were both helpful and polite, which was a pleasant change. Mind you I have no Idea if I actually have Taiwanese money as it's all written in Chinese. They could have given me anything. Luckily the numbers are in arabic script so I know how much each note is worth.

I've also had a few Mandarin lessons from Selene at work. I now know how to say "hello", "thank you", "excuse me", "no thank you" and "I am allergic to prawns". Well I say I know how. I might need to practice as it's a tonal language and that makes it really tricky for an English speaker, especially one like me who is hopeless at foreign languages. Thank goodness the iPhone now has a voice recorder on it. I shall be sitting on the plane practising my Chinese for 8 hours.

I am expecting some very funny looks.