There are some really good English language Taiwan blogs out there, and almost every week I discover another one that’s worth keeping track of. With 2008 just around the corner, I thought I’ll do a special tribute to the top English language Taiwan bloggers, but soon faced the question of who are Taiwan’s English language top blogs. So, I thought I’ll do it systematically, using some tools and rankings that I have.

DISCLAIMER : this is only for my fun and play, nothing else. This could be completely wrong and messed up, and it means nothing. It’s just my way of using what’s available to try and understand something more about our little Taiwan blogosphere, but it might be completely flawed.

To …

The Alishan National Park (A-li-shan ; 阿里山國家風景區; Ālǐshān) is one of Taiwan’s most famous natural beauties. High on the mountain, around 2000 meters above sea level, this was exactly the break I needed from the hot winter of Tainan. I joined a happy Taiwanese-Russian group I didn’t know very well before but have come to like alot. I took a ride to Chia-Yi (Jia-Yi) and joined the group mini-bus from there, 2-3 hours riding up the gorgeous mountains. Once up on the mountain, I got to see one of the most spectacular views yet - what they call “The river of clouds”. …

A bit late, but that’s how we like to do things here in Taiwan… The NCKU IIM PhD students and I went off for a Christmas KTV get-together and spent a few hours breaking teeth singing their entire English song collection. So… Merry Christmas Here’s “Jingle Bells” and “Last Christmas” performed by the cute and lively Susan and Abraham (I hope they don’t kill me I posted it, I just think it’s too good to be kept private):  

It’s not that Tainan doesn’t have its own charm, but there are times when I miss the good old fashioned beauty - constantly looking for basic aesthetics and something that’s a bit more artistic, special and out of the ordinary gray. Although I’ve come to not expect any of that in Tainan, there are times when Tainan kind of surprises me, making me feel that there’s actually alot to Tainan that I haven’t seen yet.

Watching a bad movie the other week, I left the cinema with a local friend and we thought we can grab something to eat at the near by Hai-An road. Taking a few steps down our street I suddenly stopped and gazed. My friend asked me …

This weekend the NCKU international students office (ISAD) prepared a joint trip with some of the other universities in Tainan and Kaohsiung to go visit some of the beautiful interesting spots around Kaohsiung. Here’s a bit of what we saw… First off, we went to see the Kaohsiung National Science and Technology Museum, which unfortunately is still very much Chinese based, but has some good English guides. The displays are very children oriented, but there are a few cool stuff even us adults can play around with (the two wheel Sag-wai thingy). The museum also has an IMAX theater, showing various 3D nature-history mega-adventures.  …

It has already become a routine for me not to sleep on the weekends because of those celebrations. With a 130+ Gods served in Tainan, over 30 of them being what I term “class B Gods”, and almost 10 being “class A Gods”, it so happens that almost every weekend we have a birthday celebration for either a class A or a class B God. It’s quite hard to keep up which Gods or which temples serving what Gods are having a birthday, but new things keep coming up. Yesterday, driving back through Hai-An road, it was no surprise for me to find two new temple stands in the middle of the big road. I saw them preparing for something …