China's Brown Cloud of Death invading Taiwan

With a chest cold (obtained in Nanjing, China), certainly not fun to head back to the relatively clean air environment of Taiwan only to be followed by China's brown cloud o' air pollution.

David blogs quite elegantly about the bout of Mainland particulates hitting the island with the cold spell.

I blogged quite extensively about China's air quality and did analysis comparing the Pearl River Delta's air pollution index with that of the US -- the point being "so so" air in the PRD seems to be equivalent to "extremely hazardous" air in the USA.

Homelessness in Taiwan (台灣無家可歸)

Despite Taiwan's economic success over the last half a century, there are still those left behind. One such is an old man who lives in Hsinchuang (新莊), Taipei Hsien (台北縣). He lives in a three-wheeled truck that is parked in a parking lot. He scavenges cardboard and other recyclables for small income. As you can see here, he hangs his clothes out to dry on the parking lot's wall.

Toothpaste in Taiwan

In addition to racist Darlie (formerly "Darkie" or 黑人 - "black man") toothpaste in Taiwan, there is also a White Men toothpaste!

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.