A recap of 2008

Perhaps things have been a little stagnant here, or perhaps I want to quickly get the "old" posts (pre-layout-redesign posts that don't quite fit the theme) out of the first page, or perhaps I should give a better shot at living up to someone's recent compliment, or perhaps I miss the sight of Europe and Canada. In any case, here's a recap of my favourite photos from 2008.

First, back to Sweden, June 2008. I first started taking photos upon realizing I might never return to my temporary home. I had actually planned to do more with video, but after that turned out to be much more of a hassle than I imagined, I used my video camera more for photography. Its performance was on par with a low-end point-and-shooter, so I made the best of the situation by applying lots of digital alteration. Here is my bedroom in Sweden, stitched together from perhaps 10 or 15 individual shots.

The kitchen of the house I lived in, whose style I think really matches those Ikea model kitchens. I rented my room from a recently separated man who had some extra rooms. I lived here for the first two of my four months, and then moved into his home office across the hall when another tenant moved in.

Here's in Stockholm's Gamla Stan (old town) is a statue of St. Geroge slaying the dragon, an image that appears quite frequently in the city. The picture is the product of some gentle HDR treatment.

Here, at the top of the Katerina Lift in central Stockholm, I managed to capture a sunny day in July. As it turns out, sunlight becomes steadily more scarce as the weeks went by.

By the end of August, I'd be lucky to see one sunny day per week.

An early stitch of one of the ships that frequently dock in Stockholm harbour. If you look carefully you can see where the stitch wasn't so seamless.

I visited Paris in July, which was quite nice. There were certainly too many tourists at that time of year, and it was hot beyond my comfort level. By that time I was still using the camcorder, and a simple wide angle picture like this took at least two or three shots to stitch together.

At some point I had decided that the rectangle was boring and that it was more fun if I kept the stitched image in its original form. Here is a strip mall outside my workplace that I visit daily for lunch.

What I remember most about Sweden was perhaps the snails - there were just so many of them, and some of them are just gigantic. I rode an old bike to work every day, and always made a concious effort to steer around the hundreds of snails. Dying of a cracked shell seemed pretty slow and painful. I wasn't alone - more than once I've seen people who'd pick up snails from the roads and sidewalks and toss them back into the grass.

One of Stockholm's small pleasures is its historic tram line, which is more of a tourist attraction than an actual functional transit line. When Sweden switched to right-hand traffic in 1969, Stockholm discarded most of its trams save for the few kept alive by the historical society who now runs this short line.

Stockholm's metro, the T-bana, has the self-proclaimed status of being the "world's largest art display". As I figure, since Stockholm sits on a thick layer of firm bedrock, underground caverns (such as metro stations) need no extra reinforcement. The result is a raw-cavern-like appearance at many underground stations which, with a bit of paint, is truly like nothing else I've seen.

Another example of underground art. Looking back I really wish I had better equipment to capture this with, but this will have to do.

And that's the end of Sweden.

It took a lot of work to make the camcorder photos end up presentable, so I was very excited to get my Rebel XSi on a trip to Dallas. How delighted I was to be able to take a photo like this with no need to process it thereafter!

My parents had just recently bought a house on the outskirts of Dallas, and my two weeks there was certainly a drastic change from life in Sweden. With a big house in America came a really different lifestyle. I think the riding mower says it all.

The yard was also big enough to legally house livestock. I think these were supposed to be spring kids, but came Christmas nobody actually had the heart to kill them. So now we have 3 pet goats.

Giant highways might not represent the most sustainable development, but they certainly are nice feats of engineering.

The easiest game at the Texas State Fair - the duck pond. Pick up a duck and win what is written underneath.

Finally, I can take pictures out of an airplane that are worth looking at! Here, going back to Toronto.

A back door opened up to the roof of my old apartment, where I stayed for about a week.

Here's a view of the city after some rather harsh HDR treatment, perhaps not liked by all. Personally I like an occasional deviation from reality.

My old friend Boots, who probably long forgot who I am.

I arrived at my new home Kaohsiung in November, and was greeted with weather hotter than the hottest Toronto summer day. The Kaohsiung sky also makes the Toronto smog nothing to complain about. But I really love that the city is such high-density and so nocturnal. Getting off work after dark is really nothing at all to complain about (more on that in the near future)!

Kaohsiung's new metro, the KMRT, is brand spanking new. I came at a good time, as my commute to work probably would have taken twice as long without it.

A man rides one of millions of scooters in the city.

What's most memorable in Kaohsiung so far are certainly the monkeys.

Some less aggressive-looking monkeys.

A mountaintop sunset on a corporate executive team-building kind of hiking trip I somehow got invited to.

And finally, me, at the top of Taiwan.

That's it! A lot has certainly happened last year! In the new year look for more of my adventure in Taiwan, and sooner or later, some posts about what life in Kaohsiung is actually like!

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Fo Guang Shan

Here's a flashback to a few weeks ago - a fun trip that's fallen through the cracks so far.

On the Sunday after my trip to Tainan, I went on a trip to Fo Guang Shan (佛光山), a temple complex serving as the headquarters of a worldwide Chinese Mahayana Buddhist order by the same name. I don't quite know what "Mahayana Buddhist" means, but I figure it's a branch of the main religion. Anyway, two friends had gone on Saturday morning to spend the entire weekend experiencing life in the complex, and I was to join them on Sunday morning.

The Fo Guang Shan temple compound sits on roughly 30 hectares of forested hills, hence its name referring to a "mountain" (山). At the mountain's peak sits a statue of the Amitabha, the principle celestial Buddha, rising roughly 32m in height, greeting visitors from miles away.

In the courtyard outside the main temple gate, a small group of musicians play some light traditional music with traditional instruments. Here is where I met my friends Kiki and Martin, who had already been awake since 5am to join a 2 hour chanting celebrating one of the principle Buddha's birthday, which incidentally was today.

It takes a bit of a climb to reach the top of the hill, where the giant Buddha statue is placed. Surrounding it are hundreds of man-sized Buddha statues, representing the infinite Buddhas residing the the Pure land. Our tour guide Linda, a local nun, tells the story of a family-run paint company who annually donates golden paint to no monastery other than Fo Guang Shan. Apparently it takes a massive amount of paint to keep the hundreds of statues covered year after year.

In addition to the hundreds of man-sized statues, the giant statue also sits on a base decorated with smaller statues, reliefs and various carvings. The base also houses a small shrine where devotees can pay respect to any of 4 divine statues. In exchange, one can help himself to "holy water" from a nearby pitcher, and retrieve a small scroll that contains a cookie-style fortune.

The temple grounds are filled with structures and shrines. In addition to a place of worship, the compound is also a religious university that teaches various subjects. Our guide Linda had once studied film editing here.

Various statues in the temple also pay homage to "junior monks". As the story goes, in the old days, families who are too poor to support their children usually drop them off at a local monastery, where they can be raised under religious care free of charge, funded by the charity of more fortunate devotees. Here, a statue asks for donations.

Further down the road, an entire garden is dedicated to youth, with plenty of statues of tiny, playful monks. This guy has a bird on his head, and the guy in the back is doing a little dance (possibly the YMCA).

And this guy is a happy little monkey carrying some tree branches.

A pagoda stands next to the garden. I'm sure it would have been a nice view from the top, but we didn't get a chance to visit.

By chance, an annual meeting of a Taiwan Buddhism organization (whose name escapes me) was held on the same day, and the lunch hall had to host around 1000 people. Serving the crowd was exceedingly efficient. People entered single file to be seated at neat rows of tables. When seated, everyone faced the same way, so that kitchen staff (monks and nuns themselves) can serve food on the side of table opposite the eater. I wish I had a picture of the setup, but the entire event had to be perfectly silent save for some chanting at the beginning and end of the meal.

After lunch we visited the temple's main shrine, where devotees could pay respect to three principle Buddhas. The temple founder, Venerable Master Hsing Yun, wished the temple to be deeper, but due to a stubborn landowner unwilling to sell more land to the temple, the shrine had to be constructed much smaller than desired. It is still by far the largest single room in all of the compound.

The main shrine and surrounding buildings.

Next, a calligraphy lesson in the classroom, where we were given special "trainer" brushes that had an internal ink supply (like a fountain pen with a brush tip) and traced characters pre-printed on practice sheets. It was certainly not traditional, but was still kind of hard anyway. Upon request, the supervising nun gladly gave us more practice sheets and pointed us to the gift shop to get the "trainer" brush.

A bit down the hill, on either side of the path and behind some bushes were clusters of statues depicting monks in various poses.

A worker uses toothbrushes to keep the statues clean.

A stone lion watches over the temples main gate.

Built under the main gate is a display for the kids. It's a windy underground path filled with colourful statues that sometimes break into dance and song as a visitor passes. It's somewhat cheesy and freaky at the same time when a colourful maiden suddenly starts singing from a dark corner you failed to detect earlier.

And thus ended the tour. Me, Martin, Kiki and our guide Linda pose for a final picture. We opted to take a taxi back to Kaohsiung, which was perhaps an hour away. The taxi driver drove us to the closest town and insisted that we be driven the rest of the way by his son. Not thinking at the time, we complied, but immediately afterwards I thought that this might be exactly how foreigners are kidnapped, stripped of belongings, and held for ransom. None of those things happened and we got home safely, but I'll certainly never do that again! Fo Guang Shan was good, though; I learned a slight bit about Buddhism.

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Happy New Year!

It really is just another day. But it just happens to be a day off work and a day with nice fireworks. In Kaohsiung, the new year celebration was at the newly constructed "Dream Mall", the largest mall in Taiwan that opened about a year ago on some reclaimed industrial land. Reputedly 200,000 people showed up to the event, but I just heard that number from a single other person who could totally have been making it up. More pictures after the break!

A three-minute fireworks show blasted away from the top of the Dream Mall after the countdown. The crowd was not lacking in cheers, cameras, and general excitement while the announcer on stage was wildly screaming about what a crazy year 2009 is going to be (watch for the World Games in Kaohsiung!). Happy New Year!

The mall's entire lot is filled to the brim with people. I wouldn't be too surprised if the number really is 200,000 or higher. From here the ferris wheel known as the "Eye of Kaohsiung" can be seen. There's actually a whole amusement park on the roof of the mall, to which I must one day return to visit.

It just isn't a Taiwanese crowd at night without a market. Amidst the hoards of people here to watch the show is a row of vendors selling glow sticks, coffee, and various snacks. I really wouldn't want to walk through a crowd like that with a hot cup of coffee.

A giant Christmas tree at the entrance of the mall exclaims "Open Xmas" and "Happy New Year". I have never seen a single reference to the full word "Christmas" posted anywhere in the city save for perhaps the few churches. Perhaps in another 991 years we really would call and pronounce it "X-mas" and a giant robotic Santa will judge everyone to be naughty.

It also isn't a Taiwanese event without cute images (in this case, giant balloons) of various random cartoon mascots. The blue guy on the right is one of the mascots for the 2009 Kaohsiung World Games and the yellow guy with a rainbow on his head is the mascot for 7-Eleven stores in Taiwan. I'm not sure who the rest of them are.

Finally, another frame from the fireworks show. Happy new year!

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