Random Photos from a Rainy Time

Peter Enav of AP. "Peter, can I take your picture for my blog?" "Which blog is that?" "The View from Taiwan." "Weren't you just excoriating us for our coverage?" "Uh...yes." "Sure, go ahead!"

At the Shriver talk at the TFCC I met a whole bunch of people, including Peter Enav, above, and J. Michael Cole, a frequent commentator in the Taipei Times, and several Taipei Times reporters and editors. I also met someone I've admired for a long time, the journalist Ting-yi Tsai.

Speaking of lovely young ladies, some of my old students took me out to lunch last week. Here is Berenice, inside and out, one of the most beautiful people I know.

Lychee season is almost gone, and everyone is dumping their lychees cheap.

Usually a meandering and nearly-empty creek, the river overflows with turbid water after the rain.

The mosque in Taichung. There are about 50,000 Muslims in Taiwan, I've heard.

Fishing in what is grandiosely called a "river" but is actually, after years of "flood control" spending, now a concrete ditch filled with rocks too big for gravel manufacture.

We bought our kids laptops, and at the store where we made the purchase, my lovely former student Pheobe was working.

This fledgling fell from the nest, and no doubt became a victim of the neighborhood's many stray dogs and cats.

Every morning around 10 down in Wufeng these chubby, contented dogs are sprawled along this wall, waiting for a bath.

After the rain, this local factory had a power shovel in there frantically building a dike.

An oasis of calm during the storm.

You can see from the scouring at the bottom of the picture how high the water was last night. In the background the mountains are clear under the darkening sky, as the rain continues to move in.

At the train station passengers rush to get tickets on a crowded Saturday.

Building abandoned and burnt out? No problem! No one will notice if you paper the front with bra ads....

Downriver can be glimpsed yet another squall, on its way to fill my daughter's bedroom with leaks and make our dogs miserable.

[Taiwan]