March Breakfast Meet Up

I caught this strange bird touching down on our campus What is it?

The Meet Up on Saturday was really a blast, and I met many great people.


I got out early so I could get pics of people doing early morning stuff....


Took the metro to City Hall....


And strolled past Taipei 101.....


And the old ladies dickering in the dry goods store...


And the construction....


And the fierce monk....


And the police confused about whether they could tow....


To Swensons on Keelung Rd, where Syd Goldsmith (foreground), Jerome Keating, (center, dark sweater), and Christina MacFarquhar held court in a room crowded with noisy opinions and glad greetings.


It's so unfair. Christina is not only sleekly gorgeous, but acutely intelligent, and writes beautifully. Damn! I thought I was the only one like that.....


On the other side Jeff Martin (brown), a post-doc in anthropology whose doctoral thesis was on the police in Taiwan, sits next to Daniel from Suitcasing. Blunt, informed, insightful, Jeff makes a fascinating conversation partner. To the back there Linda Arrigo chats with Mark of Pinyin News.

Someday we will no longer have last names, just Blog Names. Just as the ancients were known as "Giles of London" or "Tom of Blanc de Ville," we will simply be known as "Michael of The View from Taiwan" or "Daniel of Suitcasing" or "Mark of Pinyin News" Those without blogs will disappear from history......


Jerome and Syd trade opinions. "If Michael puts this pic on his blog, how shall we retaliate?"


Mark of Pinyin News.

Turning to news, Linda Arrigo proposed that we set up some kind of association to push for changes in the deportation laws and practices, which are a clear human rights violation. She wanted to use the Paul Maas case, which I reported on before, as a sort of test case, but there some objections. Maas has some serious problems, such as not paying child support to his wife, that will draw little sympathy from the expat community here in Taiwan. Several other cases of arbitrary and unjust deportations were reported which we might be able to run with. If any of you know of any seriously crazy ones, by all means send them to me.

BTW, missed you, MJ.


After the blogger meeting I walked around Taipei for a while...


Then called my buddy Jeff and took off for Keelung....


Where I went out to Hoping Island. Here a group of aborigines organizes a party...


This girl was shocked to find a foreigner in front of her home...


As we wound our way along the path to the ocean, we passed a seaweed collector on his way home with a bucket of the stuff.


Fisherman lurk among the rocks, while in the background a remnant of the caldera that forms Keelung Harbor pokes from the ocean as Keelung Island. It's a bit like the Taj Mahal -- looks good in every picture, and hard to take a bad picture of.


Hoping Island plays host to some fantastic rock formations, which Jeff, an expert on the area, opined are better than those at the better-known Yeh Liu. I'll be erecting a web page on Hoping Island shortly.

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