Great Asian Internet disruption of 2006 continued

Although 90% of the sites I visit are not affected, I have noticed that sites hosted in Hong Kong or Mainland China are loading VERY slowly indeed. Sites and e-mail accounts hosted over there.

Furthermore, many friends in Hong Kong and China continue to complain that maybe they can get Skype to work, but not MSN Messenger and that foreign sites (such as blogspot blogs) load very, very slowly for them if at all.

Great Asian Internet Disruption of 2006

The earthquake last night near Taiwan seems to have caused quite a lot of Internet access issues.

My colleagues in China report huge problems accessing foreign sites and Hotmail and Yahoo mail. I, in Taipei, Taiwan, however, have had absolutely no problems today accessing any of the "usual suspect" sites such as Yahoo, Google, Gmail, Blogspot, Techcrunch, etc.

One friend in Taiwan indicated that he is accessing Web sites rather slowly though.

Traffic hell in Hsinchuang

Poor urban planning. Noise pollution. Crowded conditions. Too many scooters (very polluting). Taiwan.

26 types of tomatoes

A wonderful greenhouse in GuanXi, Hsinchu County hydroponically grows and sells 26 varieties of juicy good tomatoes.

Ugly Taiwanese elevator and front doof sticker ads

Middle-class Taiwanese often seem to have a deep lack of respect for "the commons." In middle-class apartment complexes, advertisers often paste annoying stickers in elevators (and on the walls and main entrance doors). It is one of the frustrations of living in Taiwan. I wish there were some way I could complain to the authorities about this.

Chiang Kai-shek's crib in Taipei

Former Taiwanese dictator, Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) kept a rolling residence in northern Taipei. This residence still takes up a lot of space in crowded Taipei, but is now a nice park within the city. One wonders if some of the rotting structures should be better preserved or not.

Taiwanese food court

A video of a typical Taiwanese food court - always bustling with activity and great tasting, fragrant food.

Democracy or noise pollution?

Video of a Taiwanese political worker riding his scooter around with candidate flag and boom box blaring. Warm-hearted democracy at work or noise pollution or both?

Taiwan's stray dog problem

台湾 = 世界性科技 + 第三世界的环境 ---> 野狗问题

Taiwan is a leader in the world economy producing some of the best and most innovative hardware. However, the social infrastructure in Taiwan is sometimes shockingly lacking. For example, I have been working in and visiting Taiwan since 1991. In those 15 years, nothing has been done to address the problem of stray dogs. Throughout the tightly backed island, one sees stray dogs -- some healthy -- some mangy and diseased -- walking around, disturbing traffic and generally being a public health problem. One would think that an island could easily address a stray dog problem given its confined space. I feel Taiwan's stray dog problem (and their excrement) speaks volumes about how "free" Taiwan is in terms of having very poor enforcement of law -- good for business but bad for society?