The Taipei MRT system is continuing its rapid expansion, from additional lines in the city to arms that reach far into the Taipei County cities now known as New Taipei. Beyond the obvious benefits of reducing auto traffic, creating job opportunities, reducing street-level pollution, and increasing city-dwellers ability to quickly reach different areas of the city and beyond there have been a number of secondary benefits that have come from the citys investment.
The first Maker Faire in Taipei (well, in Taiwan really) happened at Huashan park this past weekend, May 18-19. Entry was free for all-comers and it was awesome. As one would expect, there were plenty of robots wandering around and there were even robot boxing events. There were also plenty of demonstrations of Rasberry Pi and Arduino-based projects (along with a number of Arduino clones, my favorite being Motoduino which was apparently created by a maker fan of those Hello Moto mobile phone commercials).
As I alluded to in this past Streets Saturday post, I had to make a brief emergency trip back to the States. I really didnt have the time to do the things that I would normally want to do with a camera, like walk the Venice Boardwalk or hit the Santa Monica Pier, but I did have my trusty camera and mobile phone with me.
So, photos were taken and here they are:
I had a personal emergency a couple of weeks ago and didnt do much shooting. In fact, Im writing this while hurling over the Pacific to take care of it. That being said, I did happen across a few choice scenes while my mobile phone was in-hand.
So here you go.
In Taiwan, strawberries are a winter fruit. Miaoli County, which sits south of Taipei, is the center of the strawberry universe. Every weekend dozens of tourist busses leave from Taipei Main Station filled with agro-tourists ready to strip the farms bare of anything with even the slightest red tinge followed by a stop off at the center of Miaoli City for some strawberry wine, strawberry ice cream, strawberries over shaved ice drowned in condensed milk, strawberry smoothies, strawberry candies, … you get the idea. There are even strawberry-flavored corn dogs and Taiwanese sausages.
A couple days ago I published an article about a recent trip to Houtong Village, a.k.a. the Cat Village, which was only a 30 minute train ride away from Taipei city. I love taking the train outside of the city and to any of the smaller stations in the more rural areas of the country. While surface traffic and the evergrowing need for real estate means that most TRA stations in Taipei city are underground, rural stations are by-in-large out in the open air with minimal cover just in case the weather turns rainy.
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