Trip to TaiTung...

On the weekend, the Doctor and I travelled to the eastern town of Taiwan called TaiTung (literally means Taiwan East). This city faces the Pacific Ocean and is one of the least populated out of the major centres.

After organising our transportation and checking into our hotel room, we travelled out of town and came across a place where "water travels uphill". This is meant literally. How could this be possible? I really don't know. Have a look at the photo and see if you can tell? I swear that the where I took the photo was near the bottom of the small canal and the water travelled up to the people in the distance. And just in case your are wondering, there is no motor or propeller pushing the water up either... A marvel of nature...

The next place we visited was a small bridge in the mountains that was home to many small monkeys. In Kaohsiung, there mountain need the beach and it is home to many monkeys also. However, unlike their Kaohsiung cousins, the monkeys that the Doctor and visited were friendly. The monkeys that you can see in the photos seem more interested in amusing themselves than anyone who had no food to offer them.

However, when people did show up with food, it was quite a different story. One of the tourists that had stopped decided not to follow the regulations and feed the monkeys.

By judging from this photo, the monkeys did not appear that aggressive - lucky for the young lady.

When we made our way back to our scooter, another family stopped and decided to feed the monkeys all this processed food. One thing was leek cooked inside a pancake batter type thing. The monkeys quickly tore the pancake batter apart looking for the leeks but decided it wasn't that nice. The monkeys seemed more interested in the grapes or food that hasn't been processed.

After being amused by the monkeys and their tricks to find food, the Doctor and I headed back to central TaiTung. Along the way we stopped at a marine biological park. The Doctor said that wading into the water was permitted and found that there were many fish swimming around his feet. As you can see by the picture, he tried to catch a fish or two by hand but unfortunately (or maybe not for the fish) he didn't catch any.

Some other people that you can see in the background did manage to catch a fish or two. However, they had worked out a trick. Put a bit of food between their toes and the fish wouldn't swim away.

On the next day (which was Saturday), and the Doctor and I went to Dairy Farm. One of the attractions was figure cows similar to what is shown in the picture. Before I tried to jump on the cow's back, there has been a school girl try but failed. I thought I could do this and after a few attempts I managed to get up there. The Doctor had taken so many unflattering photos that I dare not post, but as you can see, I did make it successfully up there.







Apart from having many cow things to look at, they also had a live horse and carriage; however I didn't see it being used. But I think the Doctor has found another friend...

After visiting the Cow Ranch, we visited a Botanical Garden centre that had many native and interesting plants. One of the surprising plants was the Dandelion. In New Zealand and I think for Australia, this plant would be considered a weed because of fairy type flower that spreads the seeds. Funny how Taiwan think it is a plant to be kept in their Botanical Gardens.

On Saturday night, it started to rain, and rain quite heavily. The Doctor and I headed to the local convenience store for our dinner rather than drive in the rain. While we sat and ate our dinner, we saw outside someone else eating his dinner too. Outside in the rain there were many white ant flies or something of a bug type variety and many of them ended up weighed down by the water. They become easy targets for the local who lived in the greenery. I only managed to photograph one of them but he had a friend who was also hopping around too.

On the last day (that being Sunday), it pretty much rained all day. We had planned to go White Water rafting but decided against it because the rain can be heavy and come quickly in Taiwan. The last thing I wanted was to be literally washed down a raging river... So we took shelter in a book shop in central TaiTung until we caught our train back home again.

TaiTung is a beautiful town and the Doctor and I hope to travel back there soon and see more of their attractions. But until then, I'll have to settle for Kaohsiung.

Till next time, haveagoodone...

A little exercise...

I hate to admit this, but I have a Facebook account. I don't use it that much but tonight I had a look at it and found that one of my good friends in Melbourne had put this one and it seemed like a fun thing to do.

Here is goes:

Let's see how forthcoming my FB (FaceBook) friends are... Leave a one-word comment that you think best describes me using the third (3rd) letter of YOUR name... No more than one word... Then copy and paste this post on your wall... so I can leave a word about you... This should be interesting!

Blogging doesn't have a wall, so I think just ignore that part.

Till next time, haveagoodone...

Chinese Class Celebration Lunch

As my Chinese Class for the Spring semester is finishing up this week and some of my class mates are heading back to their home country, we all decided to go out for lunch. Also it was quite appropriate going out to lunch because our current Chinese lesson was on ordering food at a restaurant.

The teacher found a restaurant called "New Taiwan Restaurant" that happened to be very close to where I live. The restaurant name is also a little tongue-in-cheek because the interior is decorated in all the nostalgic memorabilia of yesteryear.

One of the Taiwanese cultural habits,very similar to the Japanese, is to take a photo of almost everything in life. And this was no occasion. My Chinese Language teacher bought her camera and took many photos of us (her students) and also each plate of food that was served. However, below is a photo taken by one of my Japanese classmates and she was kind enough to print a copy for everyone in the class.

To give you a quick introduction starting from me in the bottom right corner and going clockwise:

• My Chinese teacher language teacher.
  
• A young South African guy called Johnny.
• A very smart Korean girl Xiou Xi (and she is returning to Korea soon).
• A Vietnamese lady.
• A Japanese lady who kindly gave everyone this photo.
• Another Japanese lady.
  
• A young Vietnamese guy.
• The next Two are Vietnamese girls.
• The tall looking guy is from Mexico called Fernando.
• A German girl called Nina and she is also return home to Germany at the end of this week.
• An American born Taiwanese called Alex. And finally
• Another Mexican called Yu-An.

Sorry I couldn't remember all of their names, many months we had name cards but they have long gone. Although I don't feel too bad because the two Japanese ladies have very similar names and the teacher always calls them by the other name.

Anyway, all of this is going to change in a couple of weeks when we enter our Summer semester. I am going back a class to redone the second work book as I found the pace was too fast for me so it will be good to concentrate on grammar rather than on the new characters.

Till next time, haveagoodone...

Results received of my first two Masters assignments...

Regarding the International Conference that I mentioned in my previous post, thank you for your comments. It was exciting to do. Even it is was only a small conference with only ten people in the audience and conducted in a classroom. But nonetheless, it was in front of other academics.

I have also received some other news yesterday. Early last month I submitted three assignments for my Masters that I am studying for. My Masters is in the field of Professional Education and Training. What I am hoping to do with it when I finish are two things. One is that I can find a job teaching Business English in Taiwan. This will give me the same holidays as the Doctor and we can travel. Our holidays will be about two months over June and July as well as during January. Also, should we happen to move to Australia, this will allow me to find a job within the banking industry as a trainer.

Anyway, my news about my assignments is that I received results from two of the assignments. One assignment was on the topic of diversity and I received the result of Distinction (70~79%). For the other assignment on assessment, I received the result of High Distinction (80~100%). These marks were very surprising because I was only expecting between 60~70% as this is the first time I have studied Education. My forte is in Banking and International Trade. So this has provided me some motivation to keep going and complete my Masters.

Sorry, no photos today and I think I better end this posting here. I don't want to jinx myself too much for my assignments.

Till next time, haveagoodone...

What did I do today - something I have never done before...

After settling into (I am not sure of that is the right term as some days it seems to have taken over me) my studies, Chinese Language in the morning, Masters in the afternoon, Chinese homework in the evening, another month has flown by. Although I did get an afternoon off a couple of weeks ago when I met up with a friend (MaLiTa) who studied in my class for a month or so.

MaLiTai has lived in Taiwan for about 8 years but has generally only taught English. She has decided to take a break and learn to read and write after all these years. Her speaking and listening is very good, and I guess it should be after 8 years. MaLaTi is a very particular about her teacher and decided to try a few different Universities. Unfortunately she started in my class and moved on, but luckily we get to meet every month of so.

A couple of weeks ago when I finally got around to catching up with MaLiTa, we met just after my class around 12:15pm. After having lunch, going for a bit of window shopping, having afternoon tea, a walk around the Culture Centre and then having dinner we finally called it a night around 8:00pm. Boy, I didn't know that we could talk for so long. I look forward to meeting MaLiTai again in a couple of weeks time.

Anyway, on to the news of today. I did something that I haven't done before. I spoke at an International Conference for teaching English. Yes that is correct, I did speak as a presenter, well joint-presented with the Doctor. The Doctor as part of his life in the Academic Ivory tower, needs to attend and present his research work. The reason I became involved, apart from my association with the Doctor, was that my Masters is in the field of Education and I used an article in my last essay that the Doctor used as the focus of his talk today. My role, although very small, was to introduce the "Learning Strategies" that students use in learning a foreign language. I also added a small example for each of the strategies. Then the Doctor took over and went into the detailed Statistical Analysis and results.

When the Doctor first mentioned to me that he wanted to co-present with him, I was very nervous. However, going over the script and I felt a little bit more comfortable. After speaking my part, I was happy to hand it over to the expert.

As you can see below, the Doctor is going into great detail discussion his statistical analysis results.


When over and done with, I think the presentation went reasonably well and it was a good experience.

By the time that I finish my Masters, I'll need all the speaking practice in front of people to prepare me teaching in University.

An interesting thought that I just had, I remember one of my English teachers in secondary school has asked me to write about what I would be doing in ten years. That was about 27 years ago now. I think I wrote about being an Accountant in my own firm, but what I did today would never have entered my mind. How things change and life takes an unexpected path.

Anyway, till next time, haveagoodone...