Hey Doc

As the clock ticking closer to midnight, I sat in front of the monitor looking back at year 2004. What a year it was, to me personally and to mankind on earth. There are many reasons to celebrate but I would rather celebrating with a somber note. The news in the pass 5 days has been filled with the devastation of the earthquake in Indonesia and the following tsunami that has killed more the 120,000 people in 11 countries. This year was also filled with many terrorist attacks and suicide bombings. The train bombing in Spain and the school hostage in Russia involved many innocent people. The continuing war in Iraq with no ending in sight. 1300 soldiers and an untold number of Iraqis have been killed in the war. Not only that, it alienated our country with the rest of the world. Nothing more tragic then the lost of human lives senseless or not.
I wish we will learn how to respect each other because we all have the rights to live on this planet earth. I wish we will learn how to take care of this planet earth because there is only one.

Farewell 2004, Welcome 2005


(The firework off the world tallest building - Taipei 101)

For Christians in the world, December 25th is the day to celibrate the birth of Jesus Christ. For many others, this is an excuse to getting presents, eating foods and party. Either ways you believe, The ture meaning of the holiday is to love and bring peace to mankind. God bless the earth.
Now for the photo. I don't have the detail info of this project, but it was made of white duck feathers. The tree was created by the local artists and its been displayed at this art center. I have a few more photos of this tree that you can find here.

I have spent the last 5 days in the hospital keeping my mother company while she is taking a series of tests for her cancer treatment. It has been 3 years since she was first diagnosed of cancerous tumor in her abdomen. She had fought courageously in the pass, went through 3 operations and 17 chemo treatments. There are more to come but I think she will pull through just like before. I will have to tip my hat to the nurses in the hospital for their dedication and care they have for human beings.
I have selected few photos I scanned from my parent's photo album, uploaded to my PBase site. I expect to hear the stories behind those photos before they become a faded memory.

Wow, I did not realize that it has been a week since my last entry. One of the things I promise my mother to do is to clean out their storage area. As a pack rat my father is, I am not surprised to see lots of empty jars and cans. But plastic lids ? Those re-sealable lids used on tin cans ? What will you do with those things? Yep, his famous words "You never know when you're going to need it".
I learned that it is not easy to throw things away here. Their recycling program will put Santa Clara's to shame. They recycle everything here. But there is a catch, you can only put certain items out on a given day or you get yell at by the collector. I got yell at by a woman because I dumped the kitchen waste into the compose bin. Oh, here, the garbage is collected daily but you bring the garbage to the truck on an assigned time and location. If your time happens to be around 7:00 PM, you better eat your dinner fast and try to catch that garbage truck or you will have to wait for tomorrow. If your have been seen bringing home fully loaded garbage bags, that's a tell-tail sign that you have missed the "Truck".
One nice thing about this system, you are forced to get to meet your neighbor's while waiting for the truck.
I took the opportunity while cleaning, dust off few old photo albums and spent a whole day re-living through the old memories. Too bad that all of the negatives for the photos taken while my parents were young are gone. Thanks for today's technology, I scanned a bunch of them and now they are in my PC, safe and sound. Humm, I better run a backup in case the hard drive crashes. I will load a few up to my photo site in next few days, so stay tuned.

I must admit that I was totally impressed with the MRT system in the Taipei Metropolitan Area. They are clean, on time and fast. I am sure there are glitches here and there but over all they are reliable. There is one memorable event that have shut down the system for up to 6 months in some parts. September of 2001, typhoon Nari ravaged Taipei with heavy rain. Subsequently flooded 16 stations and the control center. Six months later, the system was brought back to its original glory. There are more routes been built and is expected to be complete by 2006. The ridership is an impressive of 950K daily. It is expected to replace most of the bus lines which will further reduce the air pollution from the vehicle exhaust.
If you are interested, here is a link to their official website.

I double checked the calendar, yep, we are in December. Typhoon in December? This is got to be the first. Typhoon Nanmadol swept through Philippine on Friday. Took 600 lives with her and now is heading toward Taiwan. She has lost some strength after made landfall on northern half of the main island of Luzon . Although it has been downgraded to a medium force typhoon but it is still bringing heavy rain. Rain actually does more damage then the wind. Flash flood and landslide are the results of over development and miss use of the hillsides.

A new shopping center opened last Friday in Nei Hu District where it is becoming the "Silicon valley" of the software industry. This is the first of its kind in the Taipei metropolitan area. I don't have the stats of the structure but it took 17 minutes to go around once and costs $4.68 for the ride. It was a little scary at the top when wind blows 20 knots an hour that day. I have also up loaded some black and white version of the photos to my photo web site, Check it out.
I found the peanut butter I was looking for at this fancy grocery store, the old fashion kind, no additives, just plain old peanuts. This one is even labeled organic grown. I can enjoy my PBJ sandwiches again.