Suwalski Private Reserve
After toying with the idea for quite a while, I went off to one of the local wine-making places and started a batch of Cabernet Sauvignon back in August. After a month, last night was time to bottle the batch and take it home. Thirty bottles is a lot to carry!

I went all-out with the decals. They are a completely original design, printed by colour laser printer on Magna Carta Parchment, lacquered with Future Floor Finish, cut out by hand, and carefully applied with wallpaper paste. They add the little touch that makes this whole project fun.

The wine itself was made with minimal contribution from me. Starting with a kit, I mixed all of the ingredients in a sealed bucket and that was the last I saw of it until last night. Still, it has a decent taste, and the price was fair. Did I mention it was a fun experience.

Next, perhaps I'll attempt a merlot?

A New Chapter...
...or at least a new subsection? Life has been busier than ever since I last wrote. I meant to put a snap of something interesting from my trips to San Francisco and San Diego; something of my trip to Burwash on Labour Day, an awesome abandoned prison just outside of Sudbury. Maybe later. Is September really nearly over?

In all of the rush of life, I decided to take a night course in Chinese Mandarin. I normally pick up languages very easily: everything makes sense when I can look something up in the dictionary based on how it's pronounced, or otherwise pronounce a word found in the dictionary. Chinese has a complete separation of written and spoken language that prevents that. It's not phonetic. Without that ability, there really wasn't much point making anything of the several words picked up over the last several visits to Taiwan. Formal lessons seem like the way to go.

I don't expect to be fluent with Mandarin by the end of this, but I do expect to get a grasp of syntax and be able to pronounce Pinyin properly. The latter is actually quite easy. As it turns out, I picked much of it up on the subway in Taipei, where the text is shown in Traditional Chinese, Pinyin, and then pronounced over the speakers. There is a certain logic once the basic sounds are understood.

Nonetheless, it is a daunting task when the first sentence on page 2 of the Integrated Chinese textbook says this of the Pinyin letter "b": "b is a bilabial unaspirated plosive," and that "f is a labio-dental fricative." A what-now? That's alright, since apparently "d is a toungue tip alveolar unaspirated plosive." Yep, I've got a ways to go...

Cute
Cute, isn't it? While in Taipei, I looked all over for a die-cast model of my car. I found a mall near Ximen Station that had a whole floor of toy stores, with at least 4 die cast shops. Unfortunately, my car is a little too old; like the real car dealers, they only carry recent model years. But I did find this 1:87 plastic replica. It's pretty good, except my 1:1 car has M3 rims, a dark interior, a spoiler, and sunroof. Details, details...

Travel is coming my way once again this week. I'll be attending the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. I've visited that city twice in the last year or so. However, this will be the first time I'll be lodging downtown. Perhaps I can experience some of the night life. Should be a good time.

11990 Kilometres from Home
Still. I was expecting to be home this weekend, but decided to stay here just a few more days.

Rummaging through my suitcase, I found the GPS I completely forgot was with me. It took a good few minutes to track satellites ("Have you moved hundreds of kilometres?"... "Uh, yeah!"), and in the end it still couldn't tell me the distance to home. Garmin only does that for distances that fit four digits. I guess I could have switched to imperial units. Instead, I just plugged the coordinates into some web site. It told me what I already knew; it's far. But, with a twelve hour time difference I expected that to be closer to 20,000 km. Being some distance North of the equator makes for significantly shorter distances.

I spent the entire weekend at the Maokong mountain. This was my first time in South Taipei, and I clearly should have gone there sooner! There is a gondola there that takes people up on a 25 minute ride. As usual over here, the price and service are fair, as it's linked to the metro system. The entire mountain seems dedicated to tea production. At the top station, there are many tea venues, a tea promotion center, and most enjoyably, hiking trails. Hiking steep mountains is no easy task with the kind of humidity Taipei experiences. Nonetheless, I took a path down and then up (through a valley) to the next gondola station, Zhinan Temple Station.

There were several temples there, but Linxiaobao had the best view of the city. I waited around and read a book until sunset, then let the camera off its leash. Looking back at the photos, they don't quite capture the feeling of the actual sunset. It is impossible to capture in a photo the full sensation of watching the sun go down on a breezy mountain, at the front steps of a large temple, with the smell of burning incense.

So it was an alright weekend. It's August already. Time flies, and I'm missing my whole Canadian summer. I'll have to come back here when it's winter.

Red-Hot Glass
Today was a most interesting day. A colleague here in Taipei offered to take me to a nearby glass museum by the name of tittot. The attractions at the museum included some astonishingly beautiful glass sculptures. The museum proved most interesting to me because it provides workshops in glasswork.

Before I knew it, I was spending my lunch hour working with red-hot, molten glass, blowing myself a pretty juice glass.

What can I say? My life gets less predictable by the day. We'll see how the glass turns out after it exits the kiln in the morning. Maybe it'll warrant a comment along the lines of, "Hey, man, were you stoned when you made that thing?"

High Speed Trains and Linux Symposium
While I planned to be back in Ottawa Saturday morning, just in time to catch the last day of Linux Symposium, my trip here in Taipei got extended by one week. I regret missing it, since this is likely to be the last such event in Ottawa for several years to come.

There is nothing like a high-speed new experience to cheer me up. This weekend I went on a trip halfway down the country, to Taichung. By normal train, this is almost a three hour trip. The high speed rail (HSR) got me there in 45 minutes. The train sped down the track at over 300 km/h, which is the fastest I've ever moved in a land-based vehicle. Good service and a fair price makes this train very practical. North America could learn from this.

Taichung is a nice city, significantly less busy than Taipei. The plan for the day was to start by exploring the Confuscius Temple. Next came the National Museum of Fine Arts. When I was all "moderned out" it was time for dinner and the train back to Taipei. A decent day excursion.

Today we didn't go to work; the whole city is closed because of typhoon. After what happened in the south end of the country last week when a typhoon struck there, no one is taking chances. While working from the hotel is somewhat boring, it is quite relaxing.

台北市 V4.5
It has now been over half of my fourth stay in Taipei. This time around, I'm focusing more or revisiting previously seen sights and shopping.

First of all, I think I generally prefer the Taiwan's winter climate. In January, it was a nice average of 18°C. This past week has been pretty much like this:

I can attest to the line that mentions it "feels like" 45 degrees. I can see why the nightlife is vibrant here; it drops off a couple of degrees when the sun goes down, from "melting" to "moist". Not that I'm complaining. Returning to Ottawa should make me appreciate the temperate northern climate.

Anyway, back to Taipei. I think this is the first trip where I took advantage of the metro system. I have to say that it is definitely one of the best out there. It's smaller than London's, but much, much smoother. The fact that trains are spaced less than two minutes apart makes it very appealing. And the price? Just over a dollar will get you from one end of town to the other.

The newly-discovered joys of the train system have made exploring all that much more fun, even if the heat hasn't. Lots of photography. Of course, some dimwit (who happens to bear a striking resemblance to me) managed to bump the camera's exposure setting to +1. As a result, most of the photos before today look like they were shot in the middle of a desert. To make up for it, I went out tonight and got some half-decent photos of the enormous Chiang Kai Shek Memorial by night.

So far it's been a rewarding, if busy, trip. I hope the remaining half continues this way. Taipei is starting to feel like a second home.

BSG Still Going Strong
Now that the vacation's over, it's time for another trip to Taipei.

To make things interesting, the stop-over is in Vancouver this time. With an evening to kill, it was the perfect opportunity to and see how Battlestar Galactica is doing.

I half-expected the show to be over. This season is supposed to be the last one, and the episodes that are airing right now are about half way through the year. I thought the sets might have been struck by now. I was wrong. Through the door that revealed the Viper to me three years ago, I now saw what is clearly the set of Colonial One. From the other side of the lot, the opened door of the next building down showed what appeared to be the CIC set.

Later, Grace Park, Boomer herself, walked down to her trailer:

Clearly, the show is still on. And the paparazzi in me is temporarily satisfied.

Other shows currently filming at Vancouver Film Studios include The 4400, Smallville, and a few smaller shows. Interestingly, across the street, at The Bridge Studios, they are much more flamboyant in showing off their current productions:

Vancouver: what a neat place.

Vacation!
So, maybe the planets aligned or something along those lines, but I've actually managed to spend the last week of my life on vacation. Strange, no?

The family vacation carried us to a wonderful beach house in the perfect small community of Salvo, North Carolina. This is my second time here, and my opinion is that North Carolina's Outer Banks is about as good as it gets for a North American summer get-away.

The highlight of the week might have been losing my watch in the ocean. A combination of keeping the cellphone away from sight and not having the convenience of knowing the time, made the trip more laid back. This open access point a few houses down, which I'm using right now, did not help things. But then, my cellphone actually had three GSM networks to latch onto in the States. Both of these are signs of the times, I guess. My one redeeming action (or inaction) is that I stayed away from eMail. Otherwise, the title of this entry could have been "How the Internet Ruined My Vacation." Seriously, it's hard to just disconnect completely.

The second highlight of the week was going Sea-Dooing. Actually, Waverunnering. Twice. The first time was on a good old two-stroke Yamaha. The second time was on one of these "newfangled" four-stroke Yamaha beasts. Something about the two-stroke units was more exilharating. I'm pretty sure it's not the top speed, where both machines were about the same. The vibration? Acceleration, maybe? Those older units just felt more fun.

Anyway, last night of vacation. Tomorrow we drive home. Did I mention I'm feeling homesick for my new car? I really am...

New Wheels
The big news from this week is that I have become the proud owner of a fine product from the Bavarian Motor Works.

Not much to say. It's a metallic blue 2002 330i with sport package. Saw it. Tried it. Liked it. Bought it.

With its 225 horse-power engine, the real challenge will be to learn some restraint and not collect too many speeding tickets. The acceleration on it is rather awesome.