X Beyond O - MOCA

Saturday was rather rainy and the weekend was spent at Georg's place with Ash and Jeroen watching The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, which is a great movie, men were men then.

Anyway the rays were out on Sunday, so I was really keen to get out of the apartment and do something, luckyily I checked out Jonny Blog which is my life line sometimes too not having a boring weekend. I have a small circle of friends and when they are booked up, you're kind of on you're own.












Not sure what it means, but the projection shows the stroke order to writing the Hanzi character.





















Trying out my ink brush Calligraphy skills, looks like those MTC lessons are starting to pay off!

The exhibition which I visited had the running theme was Calligraphy - Sign - Space. It was a bit dry to start with but ended amazingly, with a fantastic exhibition space up stairs and I thought the artist for me had really captivated in my eyes what I think the modern china style is.
















Awesome.

They had this vast room completely pitch black with a swimming pool the height of a table which was filled with to the rim with black ink. Running along the pool side was a scroll of white paper complete with brushes to practice you Hanzi calligraphy.
















The humming sound of air conditioners created a rather wonderful sound.

Ray Chen, amazing exhibition space, I have not been able to find much information about him, which is a shame, but I guess I have to keep searching.





















Ray Chen's exhibition in perspective.

Another equally interesting exhibition by Hsueh-Yi-Chien, which Incorporated a white room filled with fluoresce lights. The idea is that you take a Chinese fan and hold it next to the hole so you can see the hidden Hanzi images which are projected.
















Reminded me of the an integration room crossed between staring up at you're office lights the photo has come out quite dark but I think that because of the camera, it was amazingly bright and white!
















Mathias Woo and his interactive projected images.
















I also like the images project on to steel and wood surfaces.

I can also see a new investment been made in the near future to buy an SLR. I think, the Sony T2 is at the end of it's days and the photos just don't make the cut anymore. I have to say I am rather jealous of Jonny crystal clear photos.

Cycling Danshui

This Saturday Rita, Rocco, Rainy and me all headed up to Danshui which is the northern part of Taipei to go cycling. First I meet up with an old MTC friend Christos, who took us all to a nice lunch along the river sided before we got on our bikes.

Rita and Me at the Danshui coast line.

Sunsets over the mountains.

They cycling trip was great fun, Rocco who like to be leading the group most of the way is not the most adventurous of cyclists and he likes to stick to the road. I was always going of down the beat track to see if we would end up at an interesting place along the river front. But all in all it was a lovely way to spend Sunday evening.

Nice old bicycle.

Cycling in Taipei has become really popular recently and especially the fold up bicycles which everybody seems to have at the moment.

Fishing boar low tide.

Towards China over the horizon!

As the sun goes down.

Taipei Hustle Vs Braking Into Asia

I’ve been thinking about changing the name of my blog to Braking into Asia! Things have become so complicated Visa wise. And all these stories on Forumosa with sudents and visa troubles I really don’t know what say about it all.

But even just studying is becoming incredibly complex with all these new government regulations. This term at Shi-Da it has been really difficult you now need two types of stamps on your ID card to show you have been study after class in the library.

Previously you had to do a minimum of 2 extra hours of study after your class per week. But now you have to do a minimum of 8 hours per week. This is no bad thing but they only allow you to stamp your card for three hours of study time in the library for that day, because the extra hours you do after that now don’t count.

So in affect the maximum amount of hours your suppose to clock up over the week has to be spread evenly thought the week, in order not to get visa problems. I can see why they do this in order to stop students teaching English illegally but the problem is that if you want to do anything else with your free time like visit the south of Taiwan or take a road trip it starts to get complicated.

The Ride

This is how my bike looks glittering in the sun and so far it’s been a great investment and very relaxing to have a short ride along the pavement to Shi-Da every morning.

It’s also been five nights since I left it chained to a lamp posted outside the Guting MRT and it’s still there when I have arrived in the morning!

Just classic.

Problems: My front trash can is collecting litter and the saddle needs tighten as it a little bit jerky sometimes.

Teacher Luck

Well I am having a great time studying Chinese at Shi-Da, I think I am very lucky to have another good teacher who so far has made the lessons very interesting because she relates everything we learn in class to popular culture.

New Teacher 新的老師

I have a new teacher she seems quite young maybe only 25 years old, but are lesson was good fun and I think she could turn out to be another good teacher.

It was nice to have a recap on everything I had learnt before from 段文佼 and also relaxing to do a lesson which I fully understood.

All signed up

Well I have renew my visa for another two months and hopefully I can apply for Student ARC at the end of September to finish off my Chinese study at MTC, otherwise I’ll be jet setting off to Bangkok for a short brake.

Guess you can’t fix all the bugs!

Also spotted little Microsoft error message on one of the MRT information display screens.

Schools Out

Well this was my last class with this crazy lot. Our teacher had bought us all these little moon cakes to eat. We sang a few Taiwanese pop songs which was a bit of a laugh.

Precision.

Learning Chinese is still kicking my ass but I have signed myself up for another three months of study starting September.

The learning gang.

I got about 48% in my last exam which is below average for Shi-Da students, but I felt pretty good about the grade! Still have loads to learn though.

The Big Exam

I have an exam tomorrow it’s a bit of an important one. I haven’t taken an exam in about 5 years so should be quite a fun experience. Wish me luck!

Ali Shan Farm

The farm house in perspective, very traditional country living in Taiwan lots of little rooms which back onto a forecourt. Image should in large if you click on it.

Rita’s family and I drove up to Ali Mountain to see, a family friend who is a retired university professor and now runs his farther farm which is about 1,000 acres of jungle forest and lot’s of battle nut trees.

You can just about see the mountains in the back ground, cover in misty fog.

Rather nice decaying effect. Image should in large if you click on it.

Out back.

It was very quiet with maybe the odd scooter or car passing by now and again, it was much cooler in the mountains with only a nice warm breeze rather than a baking heat, which meant you could sit outside comfortably without getting hot and do a spot of MTC homework!

Doing my homework!

Me.

Making Progress at MTC, Shi-Da

Annoyingly I am only taking in about 40% of my Chinese lessons, the rest I just can’t understand what my teacher is saying to me. But today we had to make a sentence using Chinese Radical characters.

And even though I didn’t really know how to construct a sentence, I recognized all the characters I wasn’t quite sure what they all stood for. But I know if I can just spend more time practicing, I would be able to visually understand what they mean!

Designer Meet Up

Whats really nice about been out here is that every six to seven weeks we have a designer meet up. As the youngest out here, its pretty cool I get to meet all the western art directors and design managers who are working out here they also happen to be really nice and supportive too.

I have also just got back from dinner with my university class mates at MTC, we all went to a restaurant called KiKi which was very good and well priced it is located in Zhongxiao Dunhua and definitely worth going too.

Day 30

This is my 30^th day of studying Mandarin at MTC, and this is one of my homework’s, which I found really complex to do I actually needed help from Rita to complete it.

If you click on the image you should enlarge!

The course is going well and I am still enjoying it, I am behind quite a lot now and I just find that I don’t have time to recap on everything I have learnt plus the fact I don’t have a full time study partner either which I think is a bit of a disadvantage too.

Studying Chinese at MTC

I had a really good day today at MTC and I feel I am slightly improving and making a little progress in learning this super complex language.

The class is still covering a lot of topics and I can’t really take it all which is slightly annoying but other than that I am still enjoying my studies.

Young Hurne Fruit Market

As part of my study programs at MTC I had to visit my local fruit market and buy three items of fruit. I ended up buying one pineapple, half a watermelon and a fruit called Huo Long Guo, which tasted pretty good.

I must admit that it was a bit of a lazy Saturday spent lounging around the flat and a visit to our local park for a walk, when it wasn't so hot. But it was nice just to recharge the batteries and not do much.

Feeling tropical.

The oddly shaped Huo Long Guo fruit.

The fruit slasher.

Speaking The Lingo

I actually had a lesson today where I nearly understood all of it. I did have a morning exam, which I well probably have to retake, as I wasn’t too hot when it came to remembering the stroke order for the radical charters.

View from the classroom, where on the 9th floor and we have a little outside balcony which is really nice.

I am still behind in my study but I've stopped worrying about it and I am just learning as it comes. The lessons are still really good fun and enjoyable which I am sure is a good thing and we defiantly have a fantastic teacher teaching us who is very patient. I also managed to remember the stoke order for six charters which are used for measuring a words.

Classmate whos is from Indonesia. William doesn’t speak a word of English but he is a great guy!

Feed Back

My exam at MTC went better today that it did yesterday, but I still got stuck on the other topics such as translating sentences, I found this particularly difficult. I just want to add, don’t go to 金色三麥 the food is expensive and not good, but they do have a few electronic dartboard machines at the back of the restaurant which were good fun to play with.

Exam Mode

My first exam in mandarin and it wasn’t a great start, I found it really difficult to remember the stroke order of all the radical characters and I don’t think my paper will get a high mark.

I have another exam tomorrow, which is to remember all my MPS initial tones. I have spent four hours in the library learning and remembering all 21 characters today, and I think I have them all under my belt, so tomorrow's exam should go well.

A Tad Behind

I think over the last few days I have fallen behind in my classes which is really annoying.

I need to project manage my time more efficiently between learning mandarin and design and not get to wrapped up in the design process.

My teacher is really good, but I have to learn a lot very quickly, I have an exam tomorrow I need to know all my MPS tones and practice my radical character writing, so I’ll be doing extract revision tonight!

Keeping The Flow!

I’ve been rather preoccupied thinking about with my freelance work, and I didn’t take in much of my Mandarin lesson today either, partly due to the late working night. But were having a designer meet up tonight, which should be a good laugh.