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Would you dare… if you saw this on the road?

I was just chatting to some new friends who live in the same building as we do. They just came to Taiwan a few months ago, and we were comparing how we did the driving tests (esp. the written paper!). In Taiwan, if you don’t bring an international driving license with you, if you are not from a small group of countries, to drive here you need to resit your test.

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Check out more posts about blogging, tech and money from a blogger who DARES to live and drive in Taiwan… subscribe to the RSS feed or email newsletter. There’s a lot more in the Random Walk to Wealth on InvestorBlogger dot com.
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It’s quite fine to do this and not much of a problem if you already drive, and it’s available in a number of languages online! This is a great convenience to the hundreds of thousands of visitors and foreigners living here who need to take the test but can’t wait long enough to learn to read Chinese. Try it yourself!

The motorcycle test is similar but today I was watching the news when I saw this fascinating video taken on a small phone camera: watch then comment! It’s amazing. You have to watch the entire video of this woman driving her motorcycle at night… it’s freaking awesome… She did end up in hospital though!

This is just one example of the craziness on the roads of Taiwan! I just wish I had one of those new Flip Camera’s that John is blogging about:

The main reason the Flip is so popular is because it’s so inexpensive. The 2GB unit, which can record an hour of video at 640×480x30fps, can be had for less than $150. That makes the Flip pretty much an impulse purchase.

I’m sure I could get some excellent videos of drivers in Taiwan with it! Or at least my co-pilot could! My hands are superglued to the steering wheel most of the time!

Now, of course, if the rider had a Flip, she could make a blog of her own to highlihght some of her techniques and tips!

Lots of people dream of striking it rich, online and offline, too. Whether it is the Euro-millions lottery or the Powerball, making it big on Wall Street, or selling your company to Google, the prevailing wisdom is that to make it, you need just one big score, one big sale, one big ticket, one…

Others are out there looking for the book, the website, the product, the one thing that is missing in their life that will bring them everything they want in life and more… For blogs like this one, it’s the search for the traffic kahuna (as one product is called), the audience, the reach, … But the odds against each of these events happening are quite staggering.

photo credit: aloshbennett

So what is an ‘ornery person to do given odds like that? Success seems evasive, based on luck, and available to only those who don’t really need it. Each time I hear people talking about their entrepreneurial plans, I had the same concern: if you look for the big one, what are your actual chances of finding it? Not particularly great.

It takes effort, dediction, and time!

Success in any venture requires effort. That effort starts with the initial concept, the preparations for the launch, but most importantly, it requires that you stay focused on the task or goal in the following weeks, months, and even years after launch. Our business reached the eighth year this year, and every day is a struggle at times. But it grows stronger each day as we work on it…

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For most people in the Western world and in many dozens of other countries, the mantra of one person one vote is taken for granted. Not so in China, Hong Kong, Macau, or Singapore. Yesterday’s election for the presidency of the Republic of China underscores how democratic change has become part and parcel of life here. Taiwan is still after 12 years the ONLY Chinese society in the world that has regular, full and free elections. Taiwan is still the only Chinese Society where people can speak their minds on politics freely, and without fear of prosecution. Have you tried that in Tibet recently?

Democracy in the Chinas?

Hong Kong is slowly edging towards full democracy but there is no certainty that it will happen. The Chinese Communist Party knows what will happen if it is allowed there, then Macau will want to have democracy; and because of contacts in these three places, rumors and opposition in mainland will start to mount. Agitation will begin and dissatisfaction with one party rule will become commonplace, so common in fact that it will be difficult to lock up millions for espousing their views and support of democracy.

A file photo taken in 2007 at Guandu Park, just prior to the last Taipei City Mayoral Election.

But what happened on March 22nd, and why? Well, this post tries to explain some of the background to the results. I won’t summarize the results for you, except to say that Ma Ying-Jeou as KMT candidate was elected by a landslide vote 58% to his opponent, Frank Hsieh, who was standing for the DPP as the representative of the incumbent party and president, Chen Shui-Bien. Frank Hsieh obtained about 42% of the vote, and turnout was a record 76%. Try that it in the UK or the US! Today’s Taipei Times writes:

A total of 13,221,609 people voted in the election, a turnout of 76.33 percent of the 17,321,622 registered voters. There were 117,646 invalid votes. The KMT ticket won 7,658,724 votes, or 58.45 percent of the ballots, with the DPP pair garnering 5,445,239 votes, or 41.55 percent.

Increasing voter frustration

Since the legislative elections in December of 2007, there was an increasing perception here in Taiwan that change was not only inevitable, but also the preferred option after 8 years of DPP leadership under Chen Shui-Bien. And many voters were worried about the increasing prices, a slowly stagnating economy, stagnant wages, and increasing worker costs. In the past nine months, many items had risen in cost from rice to gasoline. The confidence of the mid-1990′s had been diminished to such a point that desperation was setting in. The economy was weak, inflation was picking up, things with China weren’t any better than 10 years ago, and… worst of all, a leadership that prided itself on renaming monuments and airports rather than getting on with opening up transportation, communication and finance with the mainland government.

It’s the economy, duh!

Unfortunately, the words that took Bill Clinton into office were words that the DPP consistently failed to hear: despite being told again and again – it’s the economy, stupid! So they ran an increasingly negative campaign that seriously backfired. Yet somehow, the KMT under the new President elect, Ma Ying-Jeou managed to avoid nearly all of the accusations on green cards, fake tapes, accusations, fraud, etc.

In the end, voters simply decided Frank Hsieh did not provide a credible alternative to the current situation; and their campaign ended up just making things worse. If you want to see the full results, the Taipei Times has an excellent map of the results. Just click on the image below.

The evidence of the frustration is loud and clear: all over the island regions turned blue that had previously been green, even DPP strongholds were under attack. In the end, the DPP maintained a comfortable majority in only 3 of the counties around the island. The other two were at best marginal (ie. less than 1%) and even there could be said to be victories for the KMT.

A Positive Campaign

By running a positive campaign with one of the best videos below, the imagery is very positive even if you don’t understand the campaign rhetoric.

>And the image of the end of the video is intriguing. Watch the running horses. Of course, the surname of the president elect means ‘horse’.

Fear Sells – Sometimes

There is a certain irony that Frank Hsieh would choose to run a campaign based on negativity and fear, when in fact what voters most feared was a continuation of the stupidity and directionless government of the past six years. To base your campaign on the fear of what a KMT victory might mean was shortsighted. Most swing voters had taken what they had seen in the past six years and realized that such a continuation caused a far greater fear than anything the DPP could conjure up about the KMT. What goes around comes around.

Ethnic Strife

Taiwan is and has always been a multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic, multi-religious, multi-cultural society. There are large groups of indigenous peoples, Hakka, Taiwanese, and other minorities who’ve lived here a long time. In addition, elderly people speak Taiwanese and Japanese, younger Chinese and English. Many people are tri-lingual; and many speak remnants of their ancestral tongues. In recent years, Mainlanders have come from nearly every province to marry locals; foreign workers have come from Vietnam, Philippines, South East Asia, and there is a sizeable contingent of European and N.American residents (short-term and long-term). There are also large contingents of Overseas Chinese, born overseas who have lived and worked here for decades. To complicate matters further, the legacy of the Republic of China has created a very interesting system which adds to the complexity of race relations on Taiwan. To say Taiwanese are a homogenous group is a huge obfuscation of the truth.

By continually playing on the ethnicity issue, the DPP have in fact created and raised racial tensions within the island between those who were born in Taiwan and who are considered ‘Taiwanese’ and those who were not. As a result, their support, and the current sitting president’s, has been weak among minority groups all over the island. Worse, listening to some of their advocates on TV one has the distinct impression that Europeans would class their attitudes at the very least as quasi-fascists, or even Taiwanese-Neo-Nazis.

A Perfect Storm for the DPP

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Overall, voters on Taiwan felt that the DPP under Frank Hsieh would simply continue to paint Taiwan into a corner that would turn Taiwan from a developing economy of the first order to a country that had squandered its opportunities and had slid back to a third world country. It will be interesting to see how Ma conducts himself over the coming three months, and see if he can pull any rabbits out of his hat.

Today’s Taipei Times probably has the best summary (albeit highly slanted) of the results. I, of course, do not consider myself a DPP supporter any more, and would be supportive of the KMT under its new leadership. Of course, despite being resident here for 15 years, I have no vote to exercise. Oh, well. At least, I made sure that everyone I worked with voted.

Trackposted to The Virtuous Republic, Rosemary’s Thoughts, The Beauty Stop, Right Truth, Shadowscope, Stuck On Stupid, Leaning Straight Up, The Amboy Times, Pursuing Holiness, ARISTO_GATTA, third world county, Woman Honor Thyself, Miss Beth’s Victory Dance, Pirate’s Cove, , The Pink Flamingo, , Right Voices, A Blog For All, 123beta, Adam’s Blog, Oblogatory Anecdotes, Cao’s Blog, Phastidio.net, Big Dog’s Weblog, Conservative Cat, Faultline USA, Nuke Gingrich, Allie is Wired, McCain Blogs, The World According to Carl, Walls of the City, Blue Star Chronicles, Wolf Pangloss, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Last week on Tuesday we took off for a trip around the island and to get away from the rain in the north, and for the most part we succeeded in escaping the rain. I’m including some of the pictures for you to enjoy.

Taichung’s skyline on a sunny day! Yes it was sunny there! And warmish.

Here in the small mountain region near Nantou called Zhushan (because of all the bamboo forests around) we spent a lovely evening and morning in the village. We also stayed at a lovely guest house there, too.

They had lovely little cabins on top of the house and in the bamboo greenery behind the guest house. Our cabin looked like one of these, too. Very nice. You can visit the guest house website to see what it’s like. i do recommend staying there, but book first! The owner and his wife were very generous and kind to us. As usual, I was offered some wine and smokes… pity I don’t do either! Wonderful hosts. And the view in the morning…

The light wasn’t so good, and I under-exposed the surrounding country to get a feel for the distance. Perhaps Craig can give me some tips on this one! This whole area is also famous for its green tea which could be seen all around the valley area.

The following day we visited a lovely and huge country park called Shitou which was huge, peaceful and very natural, despite it being a ‘park’ with roads, paths and restaurants. This picture was taken in the village outside the park entrance.

This is a bamboo bridge built over a pond in the park, and it is a bit scary, but it really works. Bamboo is strong and is used in construction and even in some house walls!

Other visitors in the park that day were also enjoying the pond area. It was so quiet … something that is very untypical of parks on holidays! But then it was COLD!

One of the beautiful flowers taken in the park that day… Anyone see a theme from other trips!?

And one of the most unusual walkways I ever used: it’s filled with woodchips and very comfortable to walk on! There were many such walkways throughout the forest park.

And I’d like to say a big thank you to our friends in Taichung who hosted us so graciously and thoughtfully, Cathy and her husband Lin-Hau. Thanks for being there and showing us around. We miss you!

Taipei is an interesting city in many ways. One of the aspects that fascinates me is how every weekend markets spring up for all sorts of things, including flowers. There are a variety of flower markets all over the city.

Today Christine asked me to take her to the flower market in Shihpai because she wanted to buy some flowers and plants for her balcony. The stores are situated in a small business block, and each of the stores has a different variety of flowers, plants and tools. It’s quite busy on a Sunday, but always interesting to visit.

So while she shopped, I snapped some pictures. I’m going to digress and publish these photos here because I had fun. And the flowers were beautiful. So here goes.

Hope you enjoyed the flowers from our Sunday trip. Inspiring! Right? Don’t worry: it’s cold now but spring is coming!

After purchasing my Panasonic Lumix camera last year, I’ve been able to take a lot of photographs, and so for Sunday’s post, I thought I would leave you with one of the shots I took from Fisherman’s Wharf in Tanhai, which is a suburb of Tamsui right by the sea.

Have a great Sunday! And a wonderful week back at work!

Despite the avalanche of zeros dished out by Google a few weeks ago, there are a number of optimistic signs that prove bloggers will blog, blogs will thrive, and visitors will come, whatever the GOOG does. And if that is the case, there is reason to believe that Google will come around to this way of thinking. So what’s been the silver lining?

• 1. Increasing Traffic to my blog, and many other bloggers!
• 2. Discovering more ways to monetize: Not Just Adsense anymore!
• 3. Rediscovering Old Friends: Yahoo search, Bloglines, and many old friends are still here!
• 4. Finding New Options: Replacing Google services, or at the very least removing 100% reliance on GOOG.
• 5. Building Relationships: By linking for Traffic, we build relationships that are based on REAL warm blooded People, not archived or ‘dead’ links from months ago.
• 6. New Tools coming on stream that will help to rank and organize this new reality, such as Real Rank.

Ah, Life goes on! Can you think of any more? My income from PPP has been affected but my linking income is holding steady at the moment. So I’d like to end Friday On A Positive Note!

The word ‘gondola’ always creates a mystique and romance that is evocative of Venice. Of course, to engineers, it refers as much to a type of ‘cable car’ called a gondola lift.

So with romance in our hearts, Christine and I decided on a trip to MaoKong via Maokong Gondola : I’m including a video from YouTube. As a weekend trip would have meant hours of standing waiting for a gondola! Neither of us have the patience, so a weekday trip was decided upon.

I’ve included some views from the cable car but pictures were taken from inside the gondola so they aren’t so clear at times:

Christine and I are waiting to board the first gondola!

A view of the lines of gondolas heading up and down the mountains.

The line has 4 primary and 2 secondary stations on the line:

* Taipei Zoo
* Corner One
* Taipei Zoo South
* Corner Two
* Zhinan Temple
* Maokong

We rode from Taipei Zoo all the way up the Mountain to Maokong. We had intended to come back from Zhinan Temple station so we could see Taipei twinkling in the early evening … but we got lost on the walk from Maokong to Zhinan and ended up catching one of the numerous Maokong area buses that ferry people around the area.

It was a good afternoon in all… next time we go, though, perhaps we’ll do the journey in reverse: taking a bus up the hill, then riding down on the Gondola!

For those of you who are not in Taipei, I found this great 3D animation of the trip on Youtube

Happy Trips!

In a previous post, I described how local markets work in Taiwan, and wondered how much money local vendors can make running a stall or store in one night market . But I didn’t do much of a comprehensive review of what I could find… Until now.

I took many of these photographs in low light conditions with my new camera, after losing my old Kodak, so the pictures aren’t poster perfect at all. I’m still learning how to get the best from the camera, and I think I’m going to need some help in that area!

On Saturday, after class, my wife and I went up to Tamsui for exercise, and some fun. We also went shopping on the main shopping area , as well as for dinner.

In Tamsui, the shops are divided into two basic zones: general shops and restaurants, and tourist shops and restaurants. On Saturday, we went to the general area and I walked up that street, taking lots of pictures of the treats that are available from vendors there.

And it all started with a vendor on the corner of Yingchuan Street in Tamsui, which you can see in the map, and I’ve linked to from Google, just click on the name. We walked there in the early evening after finishing an earlier walk, just as it was getting dark, so the lighting isn’t so good.

Taiwan is famous for its Little Eats, a literal translation of the word, perhaps snacks would be better. And most big towns and cities have somewhere that is the center of such treats. In Tamsui, surprisingly, it was the street that served locals, not tourists!

This is the first one on the corner I saw, and the vendor is selling baked Yams which are eaten hot. They’re usually pretty sweet and hot. But quite tasty. You can see the vendors head just behind the big iron urn.

After seeing him, I then found this lady who was selling a small rice noodle dish amongst other things. I don’t particularly like these kind of things, so I didn’t go closer to have a look.

Up the road, as the light was fading, I came across a vendor selling BBQ Corn on the Cob. There are a variety of cobs available in Taiwan, including the normal yellow sweetcorn, but there are also ones with larger and paler corn, a black variety and several others as well. I usually prefer the cobs that are steamed or boiled myself, but there weren’t any vendors selling them tonight.

A little further up the street, this guy was selling deep fried chicken wings, legs and other assorted things. These are my favorite and they are usually a lot better than anything KFC serves. Of course, you don’t get Coke with them or a bun, but hey, this is Taiwan! It’s different here. And quite delicious.

This vendor was selling Chestnuts. They’re a little pricy this year, but when winter comes, these are one of my wife’s favorites. Really! And they’re good, too.

I can’t describe exactly what this is, but it’s a popular local delicacy that is a kind of meat dumpling that is made then cooked, then soaked *(yes, perhaps I mean ‘marinaded’ in vegetable oil). It translates literally as meat ball, but it’s anything but that. I never tried it.

On this stall, you can try a variety of tofu products, chicken parts (including feet, wings, legs), duck parts (including tongues, heads, and so on!) and cow intestines. Most popular areas have at least one or two vendors selling these kinds of products. They’re considered a delicacy.

After all that food, it’s time for a nice lemonade. And this stall is a well known local vendor who makes a strong but sweet concoction. It’s great in summer. I was offered some once as a trial. I thought it would be terrible, but it was really sweet and sour at the same time. Quite refreshing on a hot day.

Shenken is famous for its Stinky Tofu products, and this store in Tamsui was able to make the tofu and stuff it with vegetables and fillings. Then they’d barbecue it for a while before selling it. Served with a spicy sauce, it’s quite popular; yet again, it’s something I have not tried.

The store in the next picture sells duck heads and other digestibles, but it’s actually a popular food from DongShan province, I think, in China. The foods were all dark or black in color, and there was a large queue outside waiting to buy, I had to shove in to get this picture.

Local markets are quite vibrant, and for most Westerners provide a glimpse at some unusual edibles not available in most regular restaurants. However, much of the snack food presents a challenge for us. I would definitely encourage visitors to be brave, close your eyes, and just try some of the things on offer here. You would be surprised what tastes good! And you might have a story to tell or a blog to post, into the bargain.

No tourists were poisoned in the making of this blog post.

Recently, I blogged about tea companies in Taiwan. It took me ages to get around to finding a picture but here is one. This company is called Coco’s and provides both hot and iced tea beverages, juices and coffees around the year. Summer is naturally a peak period and here is a picture of one of their ‘standard’ products.

It’s a 700cc of ice cold milk tea, served to go. Priced at only NT$20 (about $0.70). It’s a welcome release from the searing heat and humidity of Taiwan’s summers.

To read the full story about Taiwan’s beverage business, click on the picture. Do go read the story. It’s quite refreshing and highlights how an ordinary product can spur huge product variation, a solid clientele, and lots of repeat business.