Strange

My mode of blogging is to set up folders for pictures, when I get about 6 pictures on the same subject(in the same folder) then it's time to do a blog entry about that subject. But some pictures are one of a kind, so I group them together for an eclectic(SAT word) blog entry. Here goes.

As a city grows some of the original streets are not wide enough. To widen the street, the trees along the original street need to be cut down. Or not. Here we have a street widened but the tree remains.

The new asphalt just covers the ground around the trunk. Not only does the original tree survive but also an original light post.

Given that they only interfer with the parking, it was a good decision to let them be.

Here we have a nonfunctional water pump in front of a traditional Taiwanese restaurant. I think it is used as a prop to invoke the images of the "good old days" like mom's home cooking.

It must conjure up a lot of old memories from when the village moved from a well to a hand pump.

Now with every house having a faucet and maybe even hot running water it seems like so far in the past.

Why is the top of this fire hydrant so big? Is it to protect the hydrant? Or to damage the cars. I just don't see the point.

Lots of people put art up on the web, I don't think I need to do that. But here is a object 'd art made from obsolete computer motherboards. Of course it is in the Guang Hua district, the computer/electronic district.

I still can't figure out this one. It is a bunch of Taiwan beer cans string on rope and hanging in the wind in front of a betting parlor. Maybe someone lost a bet.

Specialty three wheelers, handicapped

Before the polio vaccines of the 1950s, polio struck world wide and Taiwan was no exception. As Taiwan adapted motorcycles as the most common form of transportation, adjustments were made so that the handicapped could also use a modified motorcycle. Some motorcycles were fitted out with 2 industrial size "training wheels". Here is a modern version.

You had to get a doctor's permission to drive one of these. They have brackets on the side for storing the crutches.

Even those restricted to a wheelchair can drive their own modified scooter.

The ramp in the back lowers for the wheel chair and all the controls are on the handle bars.

Three Wheelers

The number of three wheel motorcycles in Taipei seem more than what I saw in Tainan. Taipei has more that 3 times the population of Tainan and with many more high rises the density is much higher than in Tainan. Collecting recyclables and junk is what they can do well. With the engine, they can haul heavier loads than the trikes.

Most of the time they are powered by a motorcycle engine.

But sometimes with a small car engine.

They can be used as a mobile food booth.

But hauling junk is probably number 1. One way to prepare for Chinese New Year is to throw out junk, so the three wheelers have been busy.

These vehicles move slower than the rest of Taipei traffic so they get lots of honks and dirty looks. It's a tough job, I rarely see them smile.

Once in a while, I see that they off load to bigger trucks. They are feeders.

Trikes

In moving from old, traditional Tainan to new, modern Taipei, I thought there were some old things that I wouldn't see any more. In particular, I was surprised to realize that there were lots of tricycles and three wheeled motorcycles. Tainan is on a flat delta into the ocean so very flat, an ideal terrain for bicycles and underpowered motorcycles. Taipei, surrounded by mountains, I thought shouldn't be so favorable. But it turns out that the center of Taipei is located at the bottom of a basin surrounded by mountains and so tricycles and underpowered motorcycles do just fine.

The basic machine looks like this. When do think they were built? Some have a hand lever brake and all have a long chain back to the rear wheels. The spokes seem quite modern but I believe these bikes were built in the 1950's.

They can be used for all kinds of jobs, like selling home cleaning devices.

But most of the time they seemed to be used for collecting recyclables. If there was ever an industry working on small margins, it has to be the recycling job. An internal combustion machine would really cut into any profits.

Although these trikes are old, they keep on running. Sometimes it's hard to know whether the driver is older than the trike.

Chinese New Year's Eve

It's a busy time in Taiwan now as today is Chinese New Year's. Some companies are shutdown from January 21st to the 29th! But some are are open 24 hours like always, thank goodness for 7-11 and self-service laundromats.

This is the first time Florence and I have been Taiwan for Chinese New Year's(CNY) in almost 20 years. CNY with Florence's family is more like Thanksgiving and Christmas at the same time. It's more of a family time than Western New Year's.

The Thanksgiving part is all about the food. Big meals for assorted specialties. Maybe in the past these dishes were all cooked my the hostess of the festivities, but nowadays they are catered affairs. Days ahead of CNY you can order the dishes for the number of people coming. This lets everyone enjoy the day without too much time in the kitchen.

The Christmas part of it is the "Red Envelope" part. The older generation gives "red envelopes" to the younger generation. With the younger generation promising to be good and work hard in school. A family oriented version of "income redistribution".

My camera battery ran out during the day but I did get some good pictures.
This is Florence's oldest brother's family. The youngest is holding her red envelopes.

Here is the host and hostess, Second Brother and his wife.  The dishes are arrayed in front.

And Florence and I with a little girl that thinks she should be every picture. And I agree she improves any picture.

After the meal, we play games like MahJong, Jailong and  Dice games. Money always makes the games more interesting. And  there is always drinking, all the expensive hard liquor comes out and pacing becomes important. Don't let others push you to drink more than you can handle.

SAT words

When I was unemployed and looking for a computer job for about 3 years, I took a variety of volunteer and paid tutoring jobs. For awhile, I was an SAT coach. The SAT test doesn't change too much from year to year. So there is a surplus of material to prepare the high school students. Vocabulary lists are part of this material, the words are little used in spoken English, but pretty common in literature and academia.

I know listening to "tunes" and particular modern music doesn't help students as that vocabulary doesn't show up on the SAT. I tutored a few football and basketball players, if they spent half the time of sports practice on the SAT, their scores would be much better. But usually they were too tired from practice to study much, after awhile, I just let them sleep.

I think, everyone learns vocabulary one word at a time. Reading the newspaper, listening to NPR and reading literature all work. Chatting on the web doesn't. Here are some words from the SAT vocab lists that appeared on some signs around Taipei.

Ambience: the mood, character, quality, tone, atmosphere, etc., particularly of an environment or milieu: This hotel's English name "Ambience." An more common spelling is "ambiance".

Persistence:continued existence or occurrence. This restaurant probably has good service.

apothecary: a pharmacy or drugstore. This is a pretty old word, but it appears in the Dickens novels, a favorite of the SAT test writers.

Aesthetics: the study of the mind and emotions in relation to the sense of beauty. I think in the US, we would say "cosmetic surgery" but it's all the same.

facade:a superficial appearance or illusion of something. This would be an example of a facade.

And this word probably wouldn't be on the SAT, but I was struck by how few English speakers probably know it:


decoupage: the art or technique of decorating something with cut-outs of paper, linoleum, plastic, or other flat material over which varnish or lacquer is applied.

The DIY industry is big in Taiwan.

Amazon works to Taiwan

On January 10th, I ordered a book from Amazon online. Today, January 18th, the book arrived.

The address I used was:

Michael Ess
Xin Sheng North Road Section 2
Number 38 13th Floor Apartment 1
Taipei, Taiwan 10447
Taiwan

(I give you this address in case you too would like to send me something).

For the $30 book, the postage was $10.

LED Toy part I

While out in SanXia, a suburb of Taipei, we stopped at a "dollar store". A US dollar would be about NT$30 (30 New Taiwanese Dollars). But although everything was cheap, the prices might range from NT$10 to maybe NT$200. While there, I bought 3 of these LED lights for NT$30 each.

Here's a movie of it working, the intense light overwhelms my camera movie mode.

How can such a small cheap package put out so much multicolored light? The magic of LEDs. So I started taking it apart. The first pass gives us:

The plastic covering just reflects the light, the metal case is just for the key chain ring. The innards are in the middle. Another iteration, gives us:

Another plastic casing, a push button switch(some extra), 3 button batteries in series(so it operates at 4.5V), and one LED. Nothing special yet except for the switch extra:

A push button needs a spring, but the sequencing and control is in the "extra" black piece. I'll explore that part next time.

Creative Advertising

For a street walker like me, the street signs are always the main draw. Listening to music while walking is dangerous, the traffic is just too intense. While on the road my mind is constantly on. So when in the sea of Chinese characters there is some English, it jumps out at me. The small points catch my eye.

Some are simple spelling mistakes, like in this one where the "G" and "C" are pretty close.

Others show marketing savvy, like this one. The older sign(in blue lettering, white background) correctly spells "PLAYERS" while the newer sign(in white lettering, blue background) spells it "PLRYERS" on purpose. The misspelling catches the eye and has a certain flash. This is a video gaming establishment.

Using a high class name means you are high class. What "Champagne" has to do with dentistry is a mystery. (In Taiwan, with it's National Health Plan, dental care is included, but of course that would be government meddling in the US.)

This girl is not sixty years old, but she certainly is sexy.

The next two images are for a marketing campaign to sell sign space. The message is wrong for the picture, the implication is that with advertising you can say anything you want. In the first one, the sign says: "This is a Horse!", of course it is a deer.

In this next one, it says this is an American Blue Deer, but it is a moose.

I think, mistakes are usually just incompetence, but sometimes there really is a conspiracy.

Lost in Translation

I had a fellow student at the Cheng Da Chinese Language Institute that worked part time as a translator.  We was from France so I asked him if he translated from Chinese to French or from French to Chinese. He told me that professional translators always translate from the foreign language into their mother tongue(in his case French).With a little bit of thought we can see why this is true.

Foreign language to mother tongue:

With a dictionary and some knowledge of the grammar, the translator can get the gist of the foreign language passage. The complexities and nuances might be missed, but the general idea gets through. The sentences she produces with be simple and grammatically correct, the reader will find no fault, because the idea is clear even if the nuances and literary details are missing.

Mother tongue to foreign language:

In this case, the translator understands all of the complexities and the nuances of the passage and has to struggle with finding the equivalent in a foreign language. He will be left searching for something that conveys all that he knows is in the passage using a language which he doesn't completely understand and the language itself may not be able to convey the nuances. The product may have sentences that are not grammatically correct.

Anyway, to me the problem seem clear. In Taiwan, I often see a mangled translations into English of something that makes perfect sense in Chinese. This is the case of trying to translate from "Mother tongue into a foreign language". This is the tough direction for translation.

When the translation is tortured you know the native speaker couldn't find the right words in the foreign language.

Here is a tortured phase in English from a good idea in Chinese about architecture.

In the next sign we have a cram school saying they will "wise you up". I think I might hear that phrase just before somebody beats the shit out of me.

This coffee shop in Chinese is talking about loving the nation, nothing sexual.

I'm not sure what "sweet as" has to with pizza,(although I do use sugar in my spaghetti and pizza sauce). I'm sure that from a marketing point of view "sweet ass pizza" would bring in more customers.

And then there are those translation that just make you scratch your head.

In this case the first Chinese 2 characters  英姿 and would be spelt in the
current romanization as yīngzī, but in the old romanization of maybe 40 years ago maybe as "inch". 英姿 means "in English appearance", hopefully most of their customers are Taiwanese.

Rain Lights

Taiwan, being the number one producer of LED lights in the world has been using LEDs in ways that I haven't seen in the US. When we first came from Japan to Taiwan in early December, on the way from the airport to Taipei there were just blocks and blocks of trees covered with "Rain Lights". At night they look better but here they are in action.

They're are a strip of LEDs where the power is supplied in a sequence that makes them light in descending order.

They were used at the Christmas decorations around the Taipei 101 building.

And the best use of them that I saw was a the Lan Yang Museum in Ilan.

The museum was really modern with lots of interactive visuals.