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Last spring I predicted that the PRC would not launch a military invasion of Taiwan after the Olympics. And fortunately the saber rattling by the militant DPP has been ineffective, as the situation gets rosier and rosier.

For instance, both sides just signed transportation, shipping, mail and other agreements today.

Peace in our time? With any luck it looks that way.

See also: Not only are they better capitalists, but better peacemakers too?

I was talking to an old friend in Taiwan and realized that I hadn’t put up many pictures from my life and times there.

So here are some:

This was taken during my stay at Liuchiu Island southwest of the main island. I went with coworker of mine and we terrorized the locals and flirted with the women. Okay, maybe not, but the story behind the beer is kind of funny. Both of us were about to head to bed when we heard someone say hello. As we were the only foreigners on the island, we proceeded to track down this voice and it was attached to a group of Chinese tourists.

Actually, the group was comprised entirely of Chinese travel agents from Hong Kong that wanted to see if the island was the next Jeju-do (a Korean island that is a popular vacation spot). They proceeded to stuff our faces with dried squid and play drinking games. Unfortunately Team USA lost to the Hongs. A sad day indeed.

My coworker and I were uber popular just for being us. Seriously. You’ve heard stories of locals in Beijing approaching people just to be in a picture (my friends experienced that last month). Well, the same holds true for their rebellious counterparts in Formosa. This was taken next to the light house on Liuchiu island.

So there are a million Buddhist temples all throughout East Asia, and many of them look the same. The reason I chose this picture is because I look semi-cool with my bike helmet. Fortunately I didn’t show you the picture of my bad ass cruiser, aka 50cc scooter. Actually, if you get a chance, you would probably enjoy speeding around the hilly, yet scenic island. The weather was superb the weekend I visited Liuchiu. And, don’t tell my doctor, but I drove around without a helmet — and tried to emulate a ride down Highway 1.

This is near my home in Kaohsiung. I just wanted to point out that most urban centers in East Asia look like this: developed. Imagine that, people, just like you and I, wanting to live in an air conditioned room, far away from subsistence on rural farms… how dare they!

I briefly mentioned the March election over at AWC. This is an image of a daily occurrence during the run up to the election. Motorcades run by volunteers drive down each and every block blaring music and campaign statements through mega phones. It is kind of cool the first couple of times you see it simply because it is alien to Westerners used to automated phone calls or mass mailings. And each candidate is given a number to be identified with. This was done because it aids those who are illiterate. Thus, don’t blame me, I voted for #9!

This was taken on January 8th, my first evening in Taiwan. I was on a bridge in downtown Taipei and was amazed by the army of scooters that seemingly owned the roads. This was a few blocks away from the Shin Kong building.

I don’t recall the importance of the shot, but it is in downtown Taipei near the Far EasTone building (the easiest place for a foreigner to get a cell phone) and McDonalds (yes, I did actually eat there). Just like I ate at McDonalds in Japan and have done many a time in Korea. Be sure to also check out the Big Mac Index.

So I’m back in Seoul now. Flew out of Taipei on Saturday and am enjoying the clean(er) skies and busier, modern boulevards.

Last weekend, my friends took me to a local baseball game between the Uni-President Lions (from Tainan) versus the Brother Elephants (of Taipei). While it was a route by pretty much any definition, 9-3 in favor of the Lions, the atmosphere at the game was well worth the extremely cheap price of admission ($5 for seats right behind home plate).

For instance, fans of the teams wear the team colors and sing/yell coordinated songs at regular intervals — fan participation was encouraged through the sale of kazoos and plastic sticks. Each team also had a brass band and percussion team that will bellow tunes based upon the events occurring on the field. And young women, who were definitely not ugly, would act as cheerleaders, dancing like go-go girls on top of the dug out.

The oddest part, aside from the fact that the stadium was virtually split in half by the bouisterious crowd was that instead of having a 7th inning stretch they had a 10 minute half-time between the 5th and 6th inning. Other than that, the logistics and rules of the game appeared to be identical to their North American counterparts (e.g., wooden bats, 300+ feet to both foul poles, raised mound, etc.).

Another oddity was that the event managers played many of the same songs you typically find at ball parks around the US. Such as YMCA or the da-da charge! (originally part of a calvary ditty). No one sang along though, except for the pockets of westerners (some gringo girls danced to YMCA during half-time and ended up on “national” TV…).

The only disappointment of the night was the instant replay screen was turned off so you couldn’t see the various bloopers and batters getting beaned by the ball (which happened like 4 times). That and no one did the wave.

Trivia: because of the controversial political climate between Taiwan and China, what is the name for the Taiwanese national team in international competition? Hint, it has to do with Taipei.

In the past six weeks I’ve conducted at least 1802 searches (according to my history cache). And it’s not all for super sexy helicopter porn or aesthetically unappealing crocks.

I mention this because today Sergey Brin mentioned that one of the reasons Google has so-far weathered the economic downturn:

Let me highlight search improvements in last 90 days. have launched more than 100 improvements in search quality. New tailored home pages in international markets, such as Japan. Also better job in foreign countries selecting domestic results.

I can only imagine how many searches someone like Justin Raimondo does (his articles are, in the words of Gene Callahan: link portals).

Speaking of which, I haven’t written a single new article in that time frame (the 3 previous Mises articles this year were all written in the first week of February)… so my quarterly numbers are skewed!

Incidentally, I sat in a noisy internet cafe next to several middle-aged chain smokers (who were farming gold in WoW) for a solid week between teaching hours to whip the Pulitzer-prize winning pieces together. The green tea and steroids helped.

As an aside, unless it was Scarlet Johannson in a bikini, I don’t think I clicked on any web ad. Who clicks on ads?

Very few, if any, mobile customers have voice mail enabled in Northeast Asia — they all txt. It was yet another strange lifestyle change that took some adjusting to (primarily because I didn’t care much for sending txt msgs in America).

Anyways, I was demonstrating my English abilities today at a new school near that Belgium pub I mentioned a few weeks ago.

The idea is that to recruit new students for a school, gringo’s like me typically make a public demonstration in front of the bill-paying parents… even if they don’t speak a word of ingles.

Why?

For several reasons. First, they want to try before they buy. And in all reality, they want to make sure their kid is learning angliski from someone that has blond hair, blue eyes and sounds like they are from the Midwest.

Fortunately for me, I am really good at looking white and talking like a white person (of course it helps that I read StuffWhitePeopleLike.com each week).

I mention all of this because in the lobby at the buxiban (cram school) there were various toys and trinkets for sale to the students… all blazoned with American flags and nonsensical Englishese (I’ve probably seen more American flags in Asia than I did in America…).

On one of the packages enclosing a dozen or so toy cars was a warning label printed on the front corner:

Not suitable for children 3 years old because small pieces can be swallowed.

I sent that as a txt to several of my friends and promptly won the chinglish award for the week.

Sucks to be a 3 year old. I mean if there is one thing we can all agree on: if you can’t put toys in your mouth, what’s the point of living?

Honorable mention: Last week I was at the airport and noticed a sign that combined the word sustainability and substantially: substaintantially. I no longer feel bad about my poor grammar or spelling.

Stepping off the plane, the oddest site I saw in Taipei and now in Kaohsiung was people wearing face masks. I saw a few in Seoul last year, but they were the exception and usually only used by meter maids.

Some of the masks are designed with bright colors, scary faces, or even cartoonishy (e.g., Hello Kitty). Some people don’t even bother taking them off as they stroll along the boulevard — talking through the cloth to shopkeepers whom manage to comprehend their muffled voices.

So why do they wear them?

Here the pollution is seemingly godawful compared to what I was bombarded with in Dallas. The reasons are numerous.

You can partially place the blame on externalities of factories across the straits in China or even on the local ones (there is a nice smelling one right next to the HSR terminal in Zuoying).

And because cars are expensive relative to disposable income, nearly everyone drives a scooter. And because they’re trying to save money, they don’t exactly buy the most expensive filtering system.

My coworkers mention that living in Bangkok is far worse, as is most of SE Asia and India. And those that grew up in LA didn’t notice a big transitional difference either (never been, so I can’t say).

However, as incomes increase and infrastructure is built (e.g., more subway lines, more buses, bigger/stronger roads) it is likely that scooter owners will move to alternate, cleaner forms of transportation. In addition, private property owners may begin to litigate this issue under the terms of trespass.

And no, I still don’t wear a face mask because I’m too cool. And yea, that is a picture of me parking the ol’ beast at a cafe. The trendy Ferrari jacket was later stolen by an anonymous coward : (

See also:
Pollution and Property Rights in Hong Kong
Why Socialism Causes Pollution
Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution (pdf)

The motivation behind my latest Mises piece was spurred on by Joe Dunsmore, a fellow traveler in the English expat scene. One of the questions he asked me a couple months ago dealt with why most of OPEC sells in terms of dollars, despite a weakening dollar.

While my article is hardly the most authoritative research on the matter, according to at least one email it was a “nice little history of oil markets.”

I’d also like to give a shout out to Bob Murphy who provided a useful critique to a draft copy I sent him and B.K. Marcus who stood his ground regarding gold-dollar exchange rates.

Also, while I’m fairly desensitized to receiving odd email from random readers, I just received one from “Lenny” who states, “I’m sure that there is a statue of Chaing Kai-Shek somewhere in Taiwan. Leave a flower on it for me.”

Perhaps he is a child of the ’50s who still remembers the political talking points of the Nixon vs Kennedy 1960 presidential election… in which Taiwan played center stage. For instance, the RoC controlled the islands of Matsu and Quemoy which were a few miles off the coast of mainland China.

During this time the PRC military was continually bombarding the islands with artillery shells and made several (failed) attempts to storm them by amphibious assault. And starting with Truman, every US administration had pledged the support of the US military to aide ol’ Chiang and the RoC who were now holed up in Taiwan.

For instance, in his mind, to prevent a cold war from going hot, Mao apparently phoned Eisenhower and asked that the 7th Fleet be dispersed from the mainland coast, saying that he would only shell Kinmen (Quemoy) every other day. Neither Eisenhower nor his successors felt obliged to comply and an annoyed Mao proceeded to lob volley after volley of shells, filled with propaganda leaflets, onto Quemoy — for 20 years.

The pissing contests between Mao and Kai-shek remind me a lot of those in Korea, between Syngman Rhee and Kim Il-Sung (father of today’s Jong). In fact, there are lots of similarities between these guys, but that is a story for another day.

I have no plans on laying a flower on any of Kai-shek’s statues, he was hardly Santa Clause and even massacred a number of indigenous Taiwanese tribesmen. And ironically, it looks like the party he founded (KMT) will end up being the party of peace during the future integration with the mainland.

See also: Chiang Kai-shek finally pulled from the Cold War myths

In continuing my catalog of sights and sounds that strike me as odd:

Ghost money — everyday you can zig zag down the perpetually busy streets here and witness an interesting site: flames on the side of the road. Practicing Buddhists will take a metal canister and burn paper. The paper is actually “holy” ghost money (kind of like kosher food) that people buy huge stacks of. They then spend a 20 or so minutes saying prayers and throwing sheets of it into the metal cannister.

Some of the paper has incense so it smells decent, but the subsequent ash that becomes airborne lands on everything and certainly doesn’t help the dirty polluted boulevards. Also, while you may see monks in their traditional garb, you don’t need to wear anything special when you burn the paper.

Feral dogs — I’ve mentioned this briefly before. And based on my conversations with other friends and coworkers out here, this is not an issue endemic to Taiwan. Semi-domesticated dogs roam around scavenging for food. You’ll be standing in line for a box lunch and the dogs will stand next to you looking for scraps to fall. At night you may also see entire packs of 10 or more dogs running throughout neighborhoods. All of them are very friendly and will let you pet them. And while this may seem unsanitary (especially since many of them carry and spread various illnesses) just imagine how much food is hastily thrown out on the streets for them to continue living.

Garbage pickup - there are few, if any dumpsters around this part of town (in fact, I can’t say that I’ve seen one anywhere in the metro). As a result, residents come downstairs and partake in an eerily communal ritual in which they stand on the sidewalk and wait for the local garbage truck to swing on by at prearranged times. Talk about a waste of time.

The truck (which looks identical to the big blue or brown ones in America) is painted yellow and has a red flashing light affixed to the top. And the way you know the garbage truck is nearby: it plays a catchy ice cream tune over and over.

I can’t imagine how the driver does not go insane… I wonder if the ditty plays in their sleep too (it does appear in my dreams!)?

Tans — while I hardly have Yellow Fever all of the hottest Asian girls I knew growing up were tan… or at least not pale. Too bad they didn’t get the memo here. Being tan or any shade of brown is stigmatized here because culturally people believe that if you are pale, you have a white-collar job and can stay inside all day. Conversely, if you are brown, people typically believe you do some kind of manual labor outside. It is a status symbol.

Thus you never see tanning salons anywhere (nor are they in Seoul), which is to their detriment… because Thai and Vietnamese women are so much more attractive because they have darker skin. Consequentially, Taiwanese, Korean and Japanese chicas would probably look a darn sight better if they stopped walking around with an umbrella and got 15 minutes of Vitamin D everyday from Mr. Sun.

Not to belabor the point but this reminds me of the first televised presidential debate in 1960 between Nixon and JFK. In the days before the debate Nixon supposedly spent day and night cramming and studying every kind of question that could be asked in this format. In contrast, JFK went to the beach and got some rays. And when Americans turned that knob, those with color TVs saw a pasty, seemingly unhealthy Nixon standing opposite to a golden, youthful JFK. Here are more details to that story.

[As an aside, one of the reasons body builders get that oompa loompa shade of orangishness is because it helps define and articulate muscle definition. You don't see albino's grunting and flexing in Bowflex commercials, but you do see 50 year-old MILFs that are tan]

Most Extreme Elimination Challenge — if you have never watched MXC on Spike TV you are either a Risk Management bureaucrat or eat babies. It is a Japanese game show that takes place with dozens of contestants running through a myriad of obstacle courses. The show is redubbed and edited for all sorts of nutty laughs. And believe it or not, but in both Korea and Taiwan there are several shows that showcase westerners in similar light (like a 24 hour station just for stuff like Candid Camera).

It certainly beats watching yet another Jeanne Claude Van Damme flick that chronically appear on every movie station.

Chinglish — I mentioned Konglish when I was in Korea (mixture of English and Korean) and a similar phenomenon exists here, although it seems to a smaller degree. The one you may encounter everyday is when you call a friend and they don’t pick up. Instead of going to voice mail (which no one on this tectonic plate has) an automated message is played. Usually the script that is read has a number of grammatical errors… which is just weird because the telecom firms here make money hand over fist. You would think they would have better quality control than the local tshirt shop that sells the “Juicy Girl” and “Go Eff Yourself” shirts to little toddlers (they really do wear them to school too).

Things I miss:

- Believe it or not, but I do actually miss Walmart. It’s cheap, has a gazillion products and is open 24 hours a day. And as a tangent, the company that commies love to hate might be up for a Nobel Peace Prize.

- Guacamole. Being raised on Tex-Mex food is bittersweet because all of the cuisine I was used to eating every week is nearly impossible to find. That includes everyones favorite avocado which is non-existent in this part of the world.

- Mosquitoes that die. I don’t care how many times you seal the door or window, these mother fuckers end up eating you alive every night. Okay, so it’s not quite sub-Saharan bad, but you’ll wake up because they’re buzzing around in your nose or ear. And then play Houdini with your fists of fury as you try (in vain) to hunt them down. Please send me more Tabasco.

[Note: yea, all of the images come from a simple search for "bowflex" -- sue me]