10.11.2006 The walking gods video (repost with story)

I posted the video awhile back but forgot that I'd typed up the story related to it. So here it is again:



Kelly (from Tainan) came up for a visit to Taipei the second to last weekend in April. Wu fen pu was on the list of places to go. Wu fen pu is 100s or 1000s of outdoor and partly indoor clothing stores. Really cheap, really fun stuff. One-of-a-kind stuff.

After a long day of gallivanting about we decided to stop for a beer on the patio of a Hilife convenience store before tackling the monster that is wu fen pu.

While we were sitting there we heard an explosion of fire crackers around the corner. We peaked around to see what all the chaos was and saw a big procession marching by. More fireworks were put down on the road directly in front of us. Me, taking after the crazy man who was my father, leaned over the railing as far as I could to get some video of the firecrackers, drummers and the gods.

Meanwhile, Han being the doting Taiwanese boyfriend that he is was trying to cover my ears while leaning back as far as possible away from the smoke and exploding firecrackers and shielding his own ears with his shoulders.

I asked Han why all this? He said it must be someone's birthday. Me, being the ditz (sanba) that I am said "They do this for peoples' birthdays?????" no sooner had it come out of my mouth than I realized "Oh, you mean for a god's birthday".

He just smiled and said "yea".

Labels: I'm a ditz, taiwan, Taiwan day trips, Video, Wu fen pu

Moon Festival BBQ for Two (video)

Labels: relationships, taipei, taiwan, Video

7.23.2006 Do youtube?

Well I like to jump on bandwagons now and then. At my current host I have the ability to stream video but I haven't had much success getting it to work yet so I've started uploading a few of the videos I have onto youtube.

It's great because it gives everyone access to my videos plus it uses their bandwidth instead of mine!

Also, it's inspiring me... I have some ideas.... hopefully I can get off my butt and work on them.

Of course the videos look a lot better on my computer since they're not compressed but I think you still can get the idea.

Let me know what you think. Check out the videos [here]

It's really interesting. Originally my intent with this website was to stay in touch and to amuse my family and friends back home and also to offer a window for people who were thinking about coming to Taiwan into Taiwan. Lately though my audience has been growing more and more and I seem to have more and more visitors from Taiwan. This is in part thanks to me being featured on Bloggers in Taiwan (thanks Andres!), to the new Taiwanfeed site, and thanks to google search + google image search. It makes me think I'm going to have to work a little harder to make my site appealing to my whole audience, and not just the one I've been thinking of so that I can keep everyone coming back.

step one: less laziness.
step two: more road trips and random bus hopping with lots of video.
step three: re-opening my eyes to the wonders around me.
step four: write, write, write, publish, publish, publish.

Labels: taipei, taiwan, Video, Wu fen pu

3.06.2006 Thailand: sand ball rolling crabs

Let's call them that for lack of a better term. I've tried to search the net using a variety of queries but having the keyword "ball" in there seems to bring up "other kinds" of results. Actually even more detailed queries including the words "sand" "balls" and "Thailand" still returned some interesting results. Ahhh amateur erotica. Moving on...

The beach near our resort was a "rock" beach but it was pretty cool because of the amount of shells and natural sea critters around.

One of the things we noticed immediately where these strange formations in the sand. Almost like sand crop circles!



They were everywhere and as we went to the beach at different times of the day the patterns seemed to grow and become more extreme. Most of the balls were teeny weeny little balls perfectly shaped. About half the size of a pea. in the middle of any pattern would be a small hole in the sand and a clear straight line through the patterns from it.



In some areas there were really bigger mishapen sand balls, really shoddy work. Near these were bigger holes in the sand.



Once I stood still for a bit I saw the whole thing come to life and all the crabs that I'd scared into their holes came out and started creeping around the designs.



The bigger the crab, the bigger the sand balls, and the more shoddy.



I amused myself for awhile by standing really super still and then making an exaggerated jerking motion just to watch them scurry back into their holes at lightning speed. I like to toy with nature.

And I have the video to prove it!

Can you let me know whether or not this video will play for you and what browser you're using? I'm still figuring out this streaming video stuff. Secondly, if anyone knows the actual scientific name for these little sand ball rolling guys I'd love to know. I'm sure I've seen a National Geographic documentary on them before.

Labels: Thailand, Video

12.17.2005 finally, the moment you've all been waiting for....

Live flip flap action!

Labels: Only in Asia, Video