LOTS more videos

I love my camera, and I've gotten lots of compliments about it. Not only that, but it's light, fast, and takes great videos! However, EDITING those video's is a pain in the arse. I think I might do a process piece next on actually making the videos.

That will have to wait however, because in the mean time I have FIVE new videos for you all.

We start out this video expedition near Xitou, where we conducted a little chemistry experiment. The rocks in the tube let off an unstable gas when sprayed with water. Let's see what happens when that gas is bunched up in a tube, and then introduced to fire by Lynn:


For best effect, turn the volume WAAAY up for the last 5 seconds.

Next, back in Taichung, we visit some fish at a teahouse we are eating at. I was particularly amused with the gaping mouthes of these fish. Kim had some other choice acronyms to describe them >:-)




This weekend, we took a trip to Sun Moon Lake. To be honest, the lake wasn't at all impressive. It was hazy, not particularly scenic, and surrounded by small vendors selling wooden penises (I kid you not - here's just one example, thanks Liz). However, after the somewhat dull park, and a 10 minute stop at a temple, we got to go to an amusement park! Just as the Native American's have started running casinos, it seems that the aboriginals here have taken up running amusment parks, this one being a CLEAR knockoff of Disneyland. The rides included Space Mountain, "Gold mine adventure" - which is a log ride, and my personal favorite "Space tours" which is a rip-off of Star Tours, although they forgot to include the horizontal tilt axis, making the ride more akin to whiplash. I was able to record the opening of the ride before the dirty looks I was getting compelled me to turn my camera off:



For those of you not familiar with the Disneyland ride, here's a video of it:



Another thing this park didn't have was lines! I was so happy to be able to ride the twisty, turny, upside down and everything roller coaster, and then be able to run around and do it again! granted, they didn't have 2 hours worth of scenery to watch as you approached the ride, but I think thats a good trade-off.

Once thing this park had more of was...er...skin. Here's a video of the dance from the Brasil Festival:



Finally, it was time to call it a day, so we hopped on our bus to return home. To keep us entertained on our 2 hour ride, we had karaoke! Here's Dan and Rachel getting down to "Let it Be" performed by Jacob S.



That about wraps up the videos for today. If you can't already tell, I am having a great time here! Hope everyone back at home is going well too.

Motorbiking around Taichung

You've all been waiting, so here is, the first video of my blog!

My adventures thus far...

So thus far I've been in Taipei, Taichung and Xitou (and some surrounding provinces). Thanks to the help of my friend Sean back in Corvallis, video should be coming soon - this time for real - but in the mean time, here are some pictures from around Taiwan!

This is a shot of the Happy Family hostel where I spent my first two nights in Taiwan - behind me is another bed. Although it's not much to look at, it had A/C and was only ~$30 US/night - split three ways that was pretty cheap.









Here's a shot of a big square in Taipei - I counted at least four ads for the new Harry Potter movie there, and the big one in the upper left is for Transformers (which I saw before it came out for all you folks in the US :P) or as it is know in Mandarine "Powerful Robots which change shape"



















These two shots are from when I stopped by the Artist Village - a small studio with ten resident artists in Taipei. I was amused when one of the assistants walked up to me and asked me if I was there with the press.

Here's me at the National Palace Museum.












That covers my stint in Taipei - I need to run off to class - Next time I'll post some shots of me since arriving in Taichung.

More coming soon!

For all my dedicated readers (I'm guessing there are about two of you if I'm lucky ;- ), I'm sorry that I haven't been posting this more frequently. I've had amazing trips to Xitou, learned far more than I ever wanted to know about making oolong tea, and even taken a few motor bike rides. I also just moved into a new dorm, and don't have internet access there. That problem should be resolved tomorrow, at which time I will post pictures, more stories, and a long rant.