My father's visit

My father arrived here in Taiwan about 2 weeks ago. This Thursday he will head back to the US. It has been a fun visit. We didn't do much tourist stuff, mostly just checked out the local life and the sorts of things tourists rarely get to do or see.

My father wrote some interesting little journals to send back in e-mails, I asked him and he said it's okay for me to post those on my blog here. I took some video , but actually not a whole ton of it, we were too busy having fun. I did get some good stuff though, so I will be excited to use that.

Here are some photos to tide you over before the video gets finished:

Gotta change my lifestyle

KC + Emily + Ian @ 89k

UGH!!! I haven't written on here for a while because I have been lazy. It's really bad! I think I just need to MAKE myself a scedual. When I was in the US, I worked 40 hours a week. I woke up at 7 something, got to work by 8:30 and worked till 5. Got home around 5:30. If I wanted to get anything done I had to do it on my way home. Well my point is that I had to do things at those times because of my work time.

Here in Taiwan I work only 19 hours, and its from around 3:30 - 9:10pm. I am not a morning person and before work I am always watching the clock to make sure I won't be late. So I end up waking up really late, going to work, coming home, and staying up really late. Also because of this timing I find its harder to get dinner.

Because of this I think I really need to enforce my own schedual and change this lifestyle. Today I woke up at 11am which is EARLY for me here, haha! I feel really tired right now, but I can't let myself take a nap or I wont sleep earlier tonight.

I think I need to be asleep by 2am. Then I can wake up around 10am, that should be plenty of sleep. After waking up I can go get some proper lunch/breakfast, all the shops will be open at this time. Then I need to stop being paranoid about being late for work, just set an alarm to warn me when I need to get ready to go. On weekends I need to stick to the schedual most times too or it will get out of whack. People have told me that sleeping between certain hours gets you better rest. Not sure if that's true, but I am not getting good rest currently so I can try it.

Hm... so what else is new? I just met a few new people in the past weeks, I think I need to try to be more social - part of stopping being lazy. We went to 89k to see some bands play. Actually they were pretty good I think. After that we went to the dance club Lobby, it was really crowded but having a bunch of friends in there is more fun I think. It's funny though, I thought having all this free time would make me more productive but it doesn't. I still need to make sure I am not sinking into the lazyness cycle. I really need to get working on my video and stuff. Just right now I am really having a hard time with thinking about the structure and format...

Ian + Emily @ 89k

On Saturday night Albert and I rode our scooters down a long road that led towards the mountains, then up beitun road into the next township. Albert just bought the scooter so he is practicing still. The roads at that time didn't have much traffic so it was good, and fun to drive faster on a straight road.

Okay - that's all I got for now - I'll try to post more later!

Photos of Taiwan.

I've been looking around online and there are some really great photos of Taiwan out there. If you look in a travel book it's likely they will only show you resorts and things that look like Hawaii, but thats not what most of Taiwan looks like. These Flickr users will help you see Taiwan from their perspective:

Paogao
http://www.flickr.com/photos/poagao/

Paogao's photos are are very artistic, well composed, great subjects, wonderful lighting. Even grimy city streets look beautiful through his lens.

Michael Turton
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelturton/

Michael Turton is primarily a blogger, and a good one at that, but his photos are fun to see as well. They are more 'what you see is what you get.' He travels all around Taiwan to many different cities, museums, parks, and beaches and is always documenting as he goes.

Alidarbac
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alidarbac/

Another artistic photographer giving his insight on Taiwan. From photos of people to landscapes, all his work is impressive.

There is a lot to see on those three pages, but keep in mind they travel to other countries too so not EVERY photo there is Taiwan. Here are a few others to check out, just regular users taking photos of their daily life:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sandman1/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/frostfox/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lucybabewho/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/83102412@N00/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lupillus/

One last thing! On YouTube, and LiveVideo, check out the Motorcyclin' Mordeth13. He basically drives around Taiwan interviewing himself equiped with his trusty Helmet-Cam. Pretty interesting way to see Taiwan and he has some funny storys to tell as well. Here are his pages:

http://livevideo.com/mordeth13
http://youtube.com/user/13mordeth

I hope that when I get to Taiwan I can get a camera and take my own photos of the island! Okay, so take some time to look through those, leave them comments, and leave me comments too, tell me which ones are your favorites!