Taiwan - Netherlands geographic comparison

I made this to scale geographical comparison of Taiwan and the Netherlands. I will add more to this post later.

The Place To Be

Where: Taipei City, Ximending 西門町, metro exit 4
When: Saturday Night
What: Eating Sausages 吃香腸! (Chi Xiangchang)


Don't Miss Out!

(click on it to see larger size)

Taipei 101 The Tallest

Just for fun, let's compare the Taipei 101 - with its 508 meters currently the tallest building in the world - to some buildings & structures in the Netherlands:


1. The Eiffel Tower, Paris (320.5m)
2. Grote Kerk (Grand Church), Breda (97m)
3. Taipei 101, Taipei (508m)
4. Westpoint, Tilburg (142m)
5. Gerbrandy Tower, Lopik (375m)
6. Euromast, Rotterdam (185m)
7. Delftse Poort, Rotterdam (151m)

OK, only number 1 is not in the Netherlands, but everyone knows that, right.

Buildings in Holland are not tall. I think most people are impressed by seeing, for example, the Westpoint building when taking the A58 highway. Or how about driving past Rotterdam, seeing the Delftse Poort (the 'Nationale Nederlanden' building) in the distance. I, for one, while still living & working in Holland, used to be impressed with the arising of the Westpoint. It was just finished in 2004 I think. But in imagination I always tried to think what it would be like if the Taipei 101 was standing there...

The Lopik radio tower is the tallest thing in Holland. If you could stand on the top, it would be almost as high as the observation deck at the 89th floor of T101...

Earthquake - 地震!

Last Friday, while I was at the office, an earthquake hit. It was nothing big but it still was a relatively strong one. It was a 6.1 magnitude. Here is the article that I spotted in the Taipei Times.

Although this was one of those earthquakes that can be felt easily in Taipei, still during earthquakes people - like in my office - just continue working. People will notice of course, maybe stand still for a while, because you can feel the shaking (and see for example window blinds moving), but I mean no one starts to panic (maybe I looked a bit pale, not sure if others notice that :-)

During my time in Taiwan I've experienced several minor earthquakes, but I had my scariest earthquake moment in October 2004 when a 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit. That time, I did quickly make my way out of the building (I was at home at the 9th floor) because the shaking almost became violent, but it stopped after a short while. Still, there was no or little damage in the country as far as I can remember.

I should also say that Taiwan's earthquakes are still small ones when comparing them for example, to Japan's earthquakes. It's just another aspect of life here, and it does add some excitement!!!

Thursday 29 June

It's been a while...

There's no news, so I'll just share a photo that I took last week. It's a Taiwanese girl doing some modelling at 228 Peace Park (二二八和平公園). I happened to be there, and saw a group of amateur photographers squirming around her. Since I had my camera with me, I just grabbed the chance and took a few shots :-)


Ah well now that I'm posting this anyway... like I said, nothing special happened lately. Last weeks the weather's changed though, it's really really hot every day, most days near the 35 degrees Celcius. And now the 'rainy season' is over, and July is coming... which means the hottest time of year is making its entry. Also, the typhoon season has arrived!!

Things to eat - Chou Tofu 臭豆腐

It's already a month ago these pictures were taken, but it's interesting to show some of the typical Taiwanese foods. Actually this is one of the things I want to show you in this blog: what do Taiwanese love to eat?
Over the past two years I've found out which foods I really really like (and that I would miss if I'd ever leave Taiwan); and also, there are lots of foods here that I would run away from. I promise I will show both in the posts to come.
Anyway, this food is a type of fried tofu, it's called "chou tofu" which literally means "stinky tofu". And the name is properly chosen... because indeed, it does smell terrible. It can be found in most night markets, mostly sold by small vendors in the street.


When I just came to Taiwan, I never liked this stuff and thought it must be as terrible as it smells. But after a long time I dared to try it, and I found out it's not that bad, and even started to appreciate the special taste of it.


Chou tofu is always served on a plate with crispy pickled vegetables (I think there's cabbage), soy sauce, and some spicy sauce. I think it's just like with French cheese, because it can smell really terrible but taste quite good.


If you'd ever come to Taiwan and visit a night market, you can be sure you'll find the strong smell of chou tofu when walking past a vendor, and see the people lining up to eat it.


The photos above were taken by my sweet and beautiful girlfriend Joyce.

Welcome to Taiwan Note Book

So, this will be my first post on this newly created blog page... finally!

After a long period of, ehm, thinking, I finally decided to just start a blog page on a free service. Just for the convenience of it, and I don't need to waste hours on html pages, cgi scripts, or whatever.

My previous homepage was lost after my parents changed to an ADSL subscription. (My homepage was on their available homepage space.) So, here I'm back again. And yes, it's in English as well as Dutch -- see comments for a Dutch translation. I'll still have to see how this bi-lingual thing turns out as this blog goes.

For the coming posts I just want to write some articles about life in Taiwan / Taipei; purely for sharing the joy of life in this country. I hope to write on a regular basis, but knowing myself... I won't make any promises for that :-)

Well, that's it for now I guess... I welcome you on Taiwan Note Book!

(voor Nederlands, klik op de comments bij elk bericht)