FTV Again

Having a fun time in southern Taiwan with FTV and host Michella Jade Weng making some travel shows. Today we headed up to the mountains of Pingtung to visit some of the local aboriginal villages, including Dewen in the mountains above Sandimen. The drive up was a sphincter-clenching nightmare of poor road surfaces and long sheer drops on a steep temporary road, since the main road is under repair. The views were unparalleled however. Dewen is working to develop tourism promotion. They have nature walks and trails, and local teachers show how snares for large mammals and birds are set. I'll have pictures up later. We also got a taste of local foods. The foreground dish is a famous one, but the squash served topped with ground peanuts was a new and delicious experience. They also had a chicken soup flavored with coffee beans, which was actually surprisingly good. This evening finds me in Kaohsiung getting set for more local fun tomorrow. I'll be back posting on Thursday.

BTW, this is my first blogpost from my eeePC with Linux Mint 14 Cinnamon. I put an SSD drive in it, hoping to see if it can work as a travel computer. Very excited about entering the world of Linux, and jazzed to be seeing a command line again, ever so much faster than a GUI.

In the meantime, slurp up some links:
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Daily Links:

• How China was "lost": a new look at an old issue
• Taro town in Taiwan
• Hegemonic Warfare Watch: War of Words escalates in East Asia
• Oz impassioned over man busted for selling dog meat and and keep 400 dog penises
• The Ma Administration continues its strategy of irritating relations with Japan and the US by "not backing down" on the Senkakus.
• Philippine think tank doing feasibility study for Manila on Philippines-Taiwan FTA. Anyone remember when ECFA was going to bring us an avalanche of FTAs?
• Mormons lower age for female missionaries from 21 to 19, more missionaries forecast for The Beautiful Island. 
• Taiwan's Securities Laws and Reg translations updated.
• Ma running for KMT chairman again. KMT denies it will change the rules for him. Search your memories. Remember what happened the last time the KMT had an internal rule that prevented Ma from doing what he wanted to do? Hahahahaha.

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.