out and about...or is it oot and aboot

No, I don't really say oot and aboot.

The one thing I love about Taiwan is how something is always happening, whether I know it or not. Yesterday proves this point. We had nothing to do so we went for coffee to come up with ideas for something interesting. We sat there longer than was necessary (mostly because it took so long to get our coffee and food) and we finally decided to go to the multicultural centre to look at the pictures they had on display. The cultural centre never really shows a lot, but the exhibits are always changing. One of the first things we noticed was this...




It is indeed a statue of Chang Kai Shek, which is totally rare right now because the government is in the process of moving all the statues of him onto some remote mountain.

The second was this..
One of the pictures on exhibit. It was on one of the silk banners that they do a lot of the Chinese art on...it was really freaking cool. This isn't the greatest picture because the panel was behind glass.

As we were leaving, this was going on...(notice the sitar...in a band. Click on the picture for a larger image)




So we wandered over to take a look. Of course being the only foreigners, we stood out and the MC's started talking to us and actually translating what was going on into English (we think they were university students and putting this event on was some sort of final project...we think) anyway, they actually came over and thanked us for coming, so of course, we stayed. I mean, they went out of their way to give us all the programs and everything and they all just kept staring at us and smiling. We stayed 3 hours (of course, drinking beer, we needed something to keep sane in the hot weather of Keelung) and listened to all the different bands. Some songs were in English, some in Mandarin, but it was a great time. Some bands were better than others, but it proved to us that that the Taiwan music scene is really growing and is getting pretty decent. It was a great day...until some weird guy sat beside Jacqui and started rubbing her arm. Then, we left.

another friday night

From these pictures you can probably gather what sort of a weekend I had. Friday was great, Saturday...well, not so much. Hurray for nice weather and being able to go to the roof-top bar again. Officially the cheapest place to get beer in Keelung, which is probably not actually a good discovery.



The elections for Keelung Mayor were on Saturday. We went "campaigning" for #2 because he loves Keelung...and he saluted T&J from his truck during a parade. I don't think he benefited from our drunken wanderings through Keelung at 4am with his cut-out. He lost to #3 (the thumbs down from the first picture)

This is my new friend, found in the lucky star!



These are my other friends..they don't look nearly as exciting as my new friend. Too bad.

random photos

I was looking through the photos of my computer today and found some shots that I haven't posted on here. I have been using Flickr a lot lately (so much so that I'm even considering paying to go "pro" for better organization of my pictures) and even joined a random group to try and make me experiment with photography more. I just figured it would give me something cool to do and actually try and get better and more creative with taking pictures. This is one I found...



It's the corner of either the National Theatre or the National Concert hall. I'm not sure which side I was on (apparently I have posted this on my flickr and it is the Concert Hall). I am going to miss all the cool buildings that I can take pictures of here.

On a side note, yay for random days off! We don't have to teach kindy today because it's Labour Day. Since not many of the kids are going to be at school, we didn't have to go in, and since I only have kindy on Tuesdays, I have the whole day off (because you know, the whole 2 1/2 hours I work on Tuesdays is just so stressful ^_^) Of course I have completely and totally wasted it, but whatever...it was a day off!