Hong Kong Kosha

Will I am in Hong Kong and waiting to get my 8am flight home to England. Wow I feel pretty shattered hope I can stay awake until I need to board.

It's been six months since I was last home and I have realised that I should aim to see my family and friend at least every six months in England.

I've spend a whole year working for AmTRAN and time has really passed quickly there!

Also Gorge and Norbert finally got me in to down hill biking which has been totally awesome fun and a great way to spend your weekends in the jungle mountains of Taipei.

2010 Taipei

It's been over a year now in Taiwan. I am still having a great time although I miss my family back home. I still lucky enough to have a full time job do design and compared to last year where I struggled to find full time employment in the warm up to the recession and had to rely on freelance work. I am just about to head of too watch the new year fireworks from the 101 which will be a great way to end the year!

Marks & Sammi Wedding

Today my co-worker Mark was getting married to his lovely soon to be wife Sammi. The wedding was in Nehui at the Grace Hill chapel. They had over 300 guest so as weddings go this was a big one and it was all very Taiwan style with a twist of western essence and far to many professional photographers and camera men ready to capture every inch of detail.


















Mark is on the right and I his brother on the left.














Entrance and our wedding was happening on the right hand side, I also think I was the only western at this wedding.


















Sammi and Mark.

I do have to say though it was all nicely organised and ran thoroughly well. This is also my 4th wedding I've been to in Taiwan. So I have not officially been to more wedding in Taiwan than England.














The must have wedding album.














Show time.

We had some fantastic food and we were not bombarded with loads of meals to eat. All though we had the standard never ending speeches while you eat, which is still culturally weird to me. At first I was told to sit on number 8 table by Mark's brother which was pretty close to Mark, I though I would be somewhere in the back!

Unfortunately number 8 suddenly was invaded by a number of Marks senior relatives, I did my bested to speak Chinese, but the conversation went only so far. I suddenly realised I would be sitting here for the next three hours doing not much apart from smiling and eating away. Lucky Samuel who is one of my R&D engineers came to the rescue.


















Even Vera Wang would be impressed!


















The wedding dress really was out of a movie it was so long.


















Honey moon jet setters waiting to leave.

Death by Paint

Today I headed to Nehui for paint balling, it's fair to say it was pretty wet weather when we arrived and we almost didn't have anyone to shoot at as the other Taiwanese teams were not too keen about getting wet and muddy. But then the weather cleared up and we were on for a few actioned packed hours of shooting.

















Do you feel lucky punk!

I had a really mixed team of international guns but mostly made up of French guys, we managed to all get along, sort off. The might of been a few friendly fire incidents!














Jungle gorillas.















I'll take blue thanks you.

I've got to say I had great fun and I think we won most of our matches. The paint balling place is located in Nehui address, not exactly sure how to get there as I was on the back of a scooter taking a lift, but it's probably about a 10 minuet taxi ride from Huzhou MRT station, definitely worth a go especially as it's much cooler now and not so hot too run around.














Stick'em up.

Action Packed

What a week I've had so far, work has been totally action packed, I had to work last Saturday and Sunday in the office over the Moon Festival. So it feels like it's a Friday today, but it's is Laurence last night out with me in Taipei before he heads back to the UK so it feel like a Friday anyway as were out on the razz tonight.

Tomorrow I am heading down to Taichung for the Love Money Design Talk, I am really looking forward to Dick Powell speach on Innovation in Design can't wait for that. Then over the Sunday I'm going paint balling in Nehiu which should be awesome fun.

Friday I was thinking of doing a bit of home decoration and repainting some walls white again as they have started to go faintly gray.

Train to Fulong

Today I though I would finally visit the beach at Fulong, it's one of the nicest beaches north of Taipei and really easy to get too. I took the train from Taipei Main Station, I think my ticket was about 100NT. The journey is about one and half hours and it's pretty interesting to look out the train window and see how the landscape changes as you leave Taipei. But if you're short on conversation a book or an iPod are recommended. I think the is the option of taking a faster train which gets you there in about an hour.







Fulong in perspective.

It's very easy to know when you have arrived at Fulong practically everybody gets off at that spot. Once you're there it's about a five minuets walk to the beach and you just have to buy a ticket for about 90NT and then you're in.














Slightly overcast but still nice and warm.

The beach was pretty nice and not very crowded when I went, the sand is pretty white and the sea was warm, the is a shallow reef so you can actually walkout quite far. You can surf at Fulong but I think the waves are better for body boarding.

All in all it was a great trip and I well try and visit there again when it starts to get warmer.















Entrance to the beach.














Leaving after watching the sunset.

Touch Down

One of my best mates has come over to Taiwan too visit me for a whole month. I've made a plan of things to do with Laurence so he is not stuck in Taipei city for too long, hopefully we well take a trip down too Green Island which could be pretty cool as I would like to try and visit all the Island around Taiwan before I leave.

Apart from that I've had an extremely busy month at work I sometimes wonder if the is a rescission.

Jet Lag.

九份 Jioufen

This weekend I headed with some friends too Jioufen, I have been there before in November 2007 but that was before I was blogging. When I was there last it was blissfully cold then compared to the stifling heat we had today.

Jioufen is located just outside of Taipei it's about an hour and half drive from the city centre, depending on traffic. The are buses which you can take as well, and it's definitely worth a visit as you have amazing views overlooking Taipei city and you can try out all the different tea restaurants, so it's really worth to spend some time going around the town ship.
















Across the bay.

Jioufen is really busy on the weekend what ever the weather so it's worth to try and visit mid week if you can.

















Snowy.

I also found a museum which I missed on my first visit. The artist who ran the mini museum make sculptures in clay of faces he had seen in his dreams or at least that was his story. I thought his are work was slightly odd and not my cup of tea, but it was only 50NT and gave a few good laughs.






















Faces.





















Pulling faces.

It was a long Sunday because afterwards we then drove on too Gongliao I think. Where we went too have some absolutely delouses sea food. By the time I got home I was completely shattered.

Cool rock formation waterfall, which you can see as you're leaving Jioufen, it's not that well displayed in the photo from my mobile but it's is worth a visit.




















I must remember to take my digital camera with me on these outings.

Electric White

Yesterday I went to a hugh rave in the Taipei Exhibtion Centre we all had to ware white and it's was wicked fun. They had some great DJ's and a really nice crowed of people.

I am only writing about it because it's a big event which was held at the Taipei exhibition hall which is located in the exclusive Xingi district. The venue was pretty good fun and I didn't get home until 5am so I am feeling a bit under the weather and tired today. Now will follow a couple of blurrly mobile photos!






















Hail to the DJ.





















The Gathering!

Return to MOCA Taipei

I went back to MOCA this weekend as I met up with some friends who had come up from Kaohsiung and had been spending the weekend in Taipei.

I thought they would find the MOCA interesting because of that amazing installation on the top floor. I enjoyed visiting the exhibition just as much the second time especially for the Hanzi writing.

Pyramid.

Interestingly his Ivan's girl friend Nina told me the correct way of holding the ink brush, it's almost similar to how you hold chop sticks but you use the brush straight and not at an angel.





















Like a pro!

Ivan is also an Industrial Design in Kaohsiung and designs marine equipment for Horizon, which seems like a nice job to have if you liking sailing and living by the sea which I do.

Provoke Films

It's been a bit of an action packed day, and finally after two weeks I have managed to get some running in tonight! In the meantime I got an email from Laurence to say he is coming over for September and maybe for a whole month, which should be awesome as I have not seen him for now over a year. I plan to show him an amazing time so he end up staying and working here, then at least I have one of my buddies here.

As Laurence use to work for UEFA until about a month ago with the job title of international jet setter to record and watch football matches been played around Europe while staying in five star hotels, which is a cool job to get after you have graduated! But now he is on a much needed brake as I think it had been a tense 2 years for him but his real dream though is to become a film director.

I have also been researching film studio's for him in Taipei he can go to visit while I am working, amazingly I was on the bus and been in a traffic jam I got chatting to the westerner next to me, turns out he is one of the editors for Provoke Films, who are a small set up but doing well, they are currently filming the adverts for the Kaohsiung World Games and he said Laurence could hang out on set with him, which should allow for some good networking.

Shilin Night Market

I had a very Taiwanese Saturday and stayed away from all the bright light of Xinyi, which is the party centre of Taipei at the moment. Instead I headed to Shilin night market and spent most of my evening there wondering around looking at all the crazy stuff you can buy!

I end up buying  a nice belt, and trying to avoid buying other stuff which I don't need. It was a fun night and I forgot how much fun the market can be to go around when you have not been to one in a while. This will definitely be a good place to take my mates when they come over sometimes soon.

Cosmopolitant Asian Magazine Fame

Finally after spending just over 1 year in Taiwan I have been featured in magazine, annoying it's not design related! But it was for the Rémy Cointreau party which I had dressed up and went too, rather nicely all four of us had been featured. Georg's and JD were in Men's Style and Norbit and me had landed the slightly less gay Cosmopolitan.





















Lucky bitch issue.





















Page 19.
















Now that what I call impact advertising, look at the cross cultural relations.

Ashley Saturday Soak

Ashley who i haven't seen in a while was having his 25 birthday on the R.O.C and had decided to have a pool party and a BBQ. The BBQ was fantastically good and some seriously yummy burgers were cooked up.





















I was bamboozled while leaving the shower, so had to hide behind the curtain to avoid the camera flashes!

We didn't spend a vast amount of time in the pool, as they were in the process of closing as we were getting ready to swim, but they let us have a half-an hour extra splash around.

Rémy Cointreau

A friend of Georg's had asked us to the Remy opening party for Thursday evening. I am pleased to report that we all had a really good laugh! The dress theme was orange and the four of us all went along waring the tightest orange t-shirts that money could buy with diamonds embroidery on the front to make up a shiny star.





















Spandex-man.

It was such a good night met with a lot of goofing about and it was just fantastic to get all that work pressure and stress out of the system.

ShiTing Moutain Hike

Today the hiking guru Matt organized for us to go on a six hour hike around ShiTing which apparently means Stone/Rock. Actually I think the trip was more for Georg to try and get fit for his Napole mountain challenge which happens in two weeks from now.

Hiking team.

The first part of the climb was a mega lung buster it’s was practically vertical the whole way up and very steep and we all arrived at the top like a bunch of sweating dogs! This was probably the most challenging part of the hike.

We had wanted to reach 600 meters but I think this was the highest we were able to get!

We were following the route from a book written by Robert Scott Kelly who had a hiking blog called Pashan. The book we had only had words and no pictures so we had to read along as we went to make sure we took the correct way, so the hike had quite a nice theme to it as we would stop along the way to check to see if we were on the right heading, it was almost like treasure hunting.

Matt reading the way we should go.

Top of the rock.

Laid back.

Georg taking in the views.

Simply beautiful, you can just about see the 101 tower in the background.

This was probably one of the best hiking trips I have been on so far and I defiantly plan to do more the views where amazing and it’s such a great way to get out of the city and take in the fresh air and explore the sights.

Nearly home.

Hot Spring Heaven Taiwan

After about 5 hours of waling around Yangmingshan Mountain and feeling slightly cold and completely drenched from the rainfall. Georg final treat was to take us to a hidden secret hot spring which a friend of his called Lars had found 7 years ago.

Rather nice engraving on stone.

The decent to the hot spring was really cool, because the was so much steam from the hot spring it created a very nice atmosphere.

The decent.

Jonny behind the foliage in the red jacket taking a photo, he slogged this huge Digital SLR Canon around with him all day and then proceeded to only take handle of shots, quite funny and he is on the way to becoming a full Taiwanese holiday maker. But you can see his photos here.

Really nice water full which was cold water and a great way to cool of after a bit of hot spring bathing.

Exfoliating.

Model looks.

I was told that the hot spring had been expanded by the locals, unfortunately they had uses bags filled with sand rather than natural stone and plastic pipes, which I felt was a shame as we were surround by forest of bamboo!

Lovely.

The were about 4-5 hot spring pools all at different temperatures and about the size of Ping Pong tables so quite big for a few people. The photo below should is actually quite close to where the hot spring is.

Last of the geysers.

The Geysers From Yangmingshan Mountain

I didn't know Taiwan had Geysers but then it's only recently I've been spending most of my weekends trying to get out of Taipei city and head out towards the various mountains for hiking which surround Taipei.

I love the colour of the bright  yellow sulphur on the ground.

Actually it's the fist time I've seen Geysers before, and the intoxicating smell of sulphur is really strong and slightly stings your eyes, or a least that happened with me. Mind you it was still will worth a visit.

 

Letting of steam.

A lovely combination of fog and sulphur.

In the photo above if you look at the right you can see a pile of rusty old pipes, apparently a Taiwanese company had wanted to extract the sulphur for commercialise use. But the steel structure of pipes they built was corroded by the sulphur so the gave up on the refinement.

Team photo.

The geysers are located quite close to Chingtiangang grasslands, you should be able to find your way just from the smell! 

Corina and Andreas.