PS118 – Taiwan’s Newest Motovlogger

I've discovered a new Motovlogger.  Well, let’s be fair I didn't discover him, I've known him for a while. It’s just that he just recently started motovlogging.  So what is motovlogging? 

It is a rather new art form.  Currently, the most highly watched motovlogger is Mordeth13, more commonly known as M13.  He rides through Taiwan and records his thoughts on a wide range of subjects, all while filming through his helmet.  Recently, M13 had a terrible accident in Hualien and will be laid up for several more months.  I’m sure, though, when he gets back on His feet, he’ll begin vlogging again. 

The new motovlogger that I want to write about today is called PS118.  He’s a motorcycle blogger that uses a little different twist.  On Tuesdays he uploads a video about driving a scooter in Taiwan.  So far all of these videos have been instructional in nature.

In his first “scooter tutorial” he explains the two-point left turn that is required at many intersections in Taiwan.  In heavily trafficked intersections where there are multiple lanes, there is a blue sign directing scooters to make a two-point turn.  In the intersection itself there is a small box, in front of the crosswalk where you pull your scooter in and wait for the light to change.   If you follow this rule you can avoid some serious scooter squishing.

The interesting thing is that this rule seems to be pretty effectively enforced which, is unusual for traffic violations in Taoyuan City.  The police seem to have this method of enforcement where they pick a traffic rule and enforce it for a month, then move on to another rule.  However, I often see police officers about a half block from the intersection with a video camera filming people violating the two-point turn rule and then waving them over and ticketing them.

I, of course, strictly obey all traffic laws.  I have no desire to die in the street.  Okay, so I went off and talked about driving a scooter in Taiwan and didn't mention the “different twist.” 

What makes him different begins with his channel name PS 118.  This is a reference to Psalm 118 in the Bible.  On Fridays, instead of a scooter riding tutorial He uploads a devotional.  In other words, he discusses a specific passage of scripture and tells us how it applies to his life.  He’s only just begun but his intention is to be faithful to do these weekly. His first shot at this is a devotional on Jesus’ walking on the water.  He analyzes what is happening from a spiritual perspective and them makes it personal by relating it to his own life. 

I have to applaud him on what he’s trying to do.  When I first came to Taiwan, there were things I didn’t understand about riding a scooter, here.  I figured it out on my own, but I believe that what he’s doing is helpful, to visitors or newcomers from other countries.  It is also refreshing to hear someone unabashedly put out what they believe on YouTube. 

The nature of YouTube comments makes putting your beliefs out there, sort of dangerous.  Whatever your beliefs are about anything.  If you have an opinion there is a troll out there somewhere ready and waiting to tell you your stupid, among other things.

So check out PS 118.  Taiwan’s newest Motovlogger.

Other posts you may be interested in:

Random Asianess:  Driving in Taiwan
Random Asianess:  the Written Driver's License Test
Traveling with M13:  Custom Scooters of Taiwan

Photo Source:  http://chinesehacks.com/usage/chinese-traffic-signs/

http://article.wn.com/view/2014/09/29/Hightech_system_exposes_jaywalkers_who_ignore_red_light/

Construction Boom

We live in a pretty new neighborhood.  By pretty new I mean that most of the apartments weren't here a year ago.  In fact, just in one section of street by our house there are seven apartments and one mall being built.

It’s amazing.  I see all these articles about how the population of Taiwan is declining and I wonder who’s going to live in all these places.  There is room for probably forty thousand new residents, and that’s just in my neighborhood.  The apartments that are for sale here are in about the US $450,000 to US $500,000 range.  That's a lot of Mazoola, but they're pretty luxurious.  You can rent one for about US $650 per month.  That's what we pay for a fairly large 4 bedroom apartment, that's less than a year old.  That's in Taoyuan City though, prices in Taipei are much, much higher.  

We see apartments being built all over Taoyuan and Bade Cities.  Growth is huge.  One of the reasons for that is that it is convenient for people who work in Taipei to live in Taoyuan and commute.  It’s going to get even more convenient as the MRT extends to Taoyuan. You won’t need to ride the train and switch to the MRT or a bus to get to your location.  You will be able jump on the MRT and find your way to anyplace in Taipei. 

I think the real problem with all this growth will be the local roads.  Don’t get me wrong the roads are modern and easy to drive.  Well, the roads are easy to drive on but the traffic is not easy to get through.  I think traffic will become much worse as the construction boom continues, because I notice all of the building but not any widening of the streets.  Small two lane roads serving all these apartment complexes and the mall are bound to become congested. 

 

 I’m kind of looking forward to the completion of the construction because the buildings are beautiful and modern.  I’m tired of the construction dirt and noise, and all the blue trucks.  For the uninitiated, blue trucks are the scourges of traffic in Taiwan.  They drive fast and it seems like they go out of their way to violate traffic laws and startle pedestrians and motorists.  They make taxi drivers look like concerned and careful drivers. 

Taoyuan City is an urban environment by American standards.  When I was young I always thought that I wanted to live in the country.  Away from the city and enjoying the natural scenery.  But in the US for a time, I lived in Dunsmuir, which is a small town of 1,500 near Mount Shasta in California.  I fished, I hiked, I did all the things the country dwellers did.  But since being in Taiwan and living in this type of urban environment I have discovered that I’m really more comfortable in the city.  I like having a lot of people around.  I enjoy the fact that something is happening all the time.  I liked Dunsmuir well enough, but give me that old hustle and bustle.  I guess I’m just a city guy.  

Other Posts you may be interested in:

On The Move:  Changing Places in Taiwan

On the Move:  Finding a Home in Taiwan

Random Asianess:  Driving in Taiwan

Hey it Works: Public Transportation in Taiwan

Buses at the Banciao train station

One glaring difference between California and Taiwan is seen in the use of public transportation.  In California, you see lots of empty buses, trains and rapid transit trains.  The Amtrak commuter system is rarely used.  Bus after bus passes by empty or with just a few seats being used.  Californians rarely travel by train. 

Of course, one reason that people rarely travel by train may be something like I experienced.  I was traveling to Northern California from Riverside in Southern California.  Because of the mountains near Bakersfield, there was a need to travel for a while by Amtrak bus.  So as I went to board the bus with my luggage the driver told me I wasn’t allowed to travel with luggage.  Yeah that works, if you have to stay the night somewhere, or are planning a stay for a while, I guess you have to wear all the clothes you might need.   

In Taiwan however, buses are full to overflowing, the MRT stations are crowded, and the trains are a popular way to get around.  It might be because the train system seamlessly connects with bus and MRT routes.  There are two types of trains; local and express.  They’re inexpensive, clean and pretty comfortable.  A trip from Taoyuan to Taipei takes approximately 30 minutes.  There are bus stops and MRT connections (In the MRT Service area) at every train station.

The Easy Card:  It is aptly named

Because the buses and MRT are so frequent there is rarely more than a ten-minute wait, except during peak commute hours where buses are full.  In those cases you may have wait for a while to get on a bus. 

The other nice thing about the system is that it can all be accessed with one card:  The Easy Card.  You can put an amount of money on the card at kiosks in the train station, 7-11 and other locations throughout the city.  In fact, the easy card can be used at a variety of shops and places in addition to transportation system.  Here is a look at a small part of the system between Taoyuan City and Banciao.

Trains:

Passengers waiting for the train at the Taoyuan City station.  There are many different types of users for the train:  People commuting to work, high school and college students commuting to class, shoppers and tourists. People commuting to work into Taipei, can make a trip to the main train station in Taipei in about thirty minutes.

All of the train stations have a safe "waiting zone for female passengers at night."  These are well-lighted areas with camera surveillance.  The trains run until late at night and sitting in a poorly lit, nearly empty train station isn't particularly comfortable. The waiting area adds safety and comfort for female passengers.














Crowded trains mean that many people have to ride the train standing up in the aisle, so  handy grab rings hang from the ceiling.

The photo above is the Banciao Train Station.  In addition, to transportation services, there are shops, and restaurants in many of the large train stations.  There is an entire shopping mall underneath the Taipei Main Station.

MRT:

The MRT station is also clean and well lighted.  You can see the red lights in the platform at the center of the picture.  When the train is approaching the station the lights flash off and on, then remain on as the train gets closer to warn passengers to stand clear of the oncoming train.  Note the "rough tile" next to the waiting line in the center of the photo.  This is to notify blind people that they're too close to the track.

Buses:

People line up at Banciao train station to catch the bus to almost anywhere they need to go.  Buses run from here to almost every point in the city of Taipei.

Every bus is equipped with an Easy card reader, which automatically deducts the NT$ 18 (US$ 0.57) fare.

Disability Access:














This sign on the bus shows the different levels of accesibility available on the buses.  All the trains station make some provision for access.  There are elevators for going above or below the tracks to access different platforms.  There are even people who will lift wheelchair bound people in and out of the train.  One time a man wanted to carry me on his back out of the train, I declined however, for reasons of dignity.














The turnstiles at the Banciao MRT station are equipped for easy card access and you can see the turnstile at the far right accommodates wheelchairs.  All MRT trains are designed to have the floors level with the platform for easy wheelchair access.

All Photos by Emily Banducci

Taoyuan City Confucius Temple

The Confucius Temple in Taoyuan City, located at No 40 Gongyuan Lu is built on the outskirts of Hutou Shan park.  The grounds are beautiful and have trail-heads for hiking in this "wilderness" area.

In the typical Taiwanese fashion the trails are beautifully kept and easy to walk on. However, for a disabled person these trails present a problem because they are made with stairs and so are inaccessible to wheelchairs.

It is worth a visit, especially if you're into hiking and walking in a beautiful and tranquil environment.  I would recommend that you do these walks on a weekday as the trail become very full on the weekends especially with the Winter turning into Spring.

I have embedded a Google map to make it easier to find.



View Larger Map

Cruising Around: Exploring Close to Home.

Have Wheelchair will Travel

The weather here has become Autumn weather.  So the temperature has come down, a fresh little breeze is blowing and the weather is perfect for a cruise on the the old scooter.  So after I got back from my morning trip to downtown Taoyuan I decided to hit the open road.  I took a few pictures of some things that I thought were interesting or beautiful, or both, as the case may be.  I've recently been spending quite a bit of time looking at photographer Craig Ferguson's travel photos.  His photos are so good that I'm almost intimidated to take pictures.  His are art, mine should be in your grandmother's scrapbook.  You can see Craig's excellent photos at http://www.craigfergusonimages.com  and you'll see why I'm intimidated.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not that good a photographer, basically because I'm lazy.  I have a small digital camera and mostly take snapshot like photos.  I'm wanting to get a really good, digital camera, like a canon rebel with a 55mm to 128mm lens or some other technical stuff.  I had a nice SLR film camera, but film is a pain when you're using it to blog.  So, I guess I'm not too technical when it comes to cameras.  I have a friend who's so technical that he uses only numbers when he talks.  Anyway such as they are, here are my photos and a brief description

These three photos above are a a large Taoist temple.  I found this temple by following a line of lanterns hung from the telephone poles.  The lanterns are red and spherical.  They're the common lanterns that are sold in Chinese gift shops across America.  They have a purpose beyond decoration and that purpose is to point out the location of a temple.  If you see lanterns strung down the side of a road and follow them they will end at a temple site.

This is a photo of the garden in front of my apartment community.  Many apartments have a beautiful park like Garden for the residents to enjoy.  My daughter Elizabeth loves to take her laptop down to the garden to do her schoolwork.  I have on occasion sat down there in the morning to pray.  It's really very beautiful. 

This stream seems to appear out of nowhere.  On one side of the road is the pond in the picture above where the temple roof can be seen and on the other side of the road is this stream.  But I can't see what feeds the pond.  It's just there, then this stream.  But the stream isn't a trickle it's a pretty good sized creek.  In order to find the source, I'm probably going to have to get off the bike and explore, but I think it would be hard with a wheel chair.  You can see the brush is fairly thick.  So...I guess I'll have to make Emily and Elizabeth do it.

You can see how close I am to the city right here.  This is about three quarters of a kilometer from my apartment.  Elizabeth found this place while walking her dog.















This is the same field as the one in the picture above.  The birds are called Egrets, in English, I don't know what they're called in Chinese.  These are the birds that are often depicted in Chinese art.  Usually they're called Cranes, although, I don't believe they are Cranes in a  taxonomic sense.

 

The first photo in this group of two is a photo of an altar.  You can see on the altar is a small incense urn, with sticks of incense sticking out of it.  There is a statue of the Goddess on there as well.  So people in this small neighborhood probably burn incense the local deity here.  The incense sticks tell me that someone worshiped here before I came this morning.  The bottom photo is of a couple of family tombs.  These two tombs are beautifully cared for.  You cans see an incense urn and two vases for flowers on the one on the left.  The character in the circle on the top of the one on the right is Wang, a family name, which translates to King.



After I left this road, I circled back and went about 2 kilometers down another road, which leads to a city called Ping Zhen (Ping Jun).  As I came out of the city I came across another stream and found this guy fishing.

A little farther down I came across this apartment community.  the interesting thing here is that this community has a private temple for worshipers living in the community.  I haven't often seen that.

Finally, as I turned toward my own community, I came across this cool little car.  This car is run by a dog grooming company who apparently comes to your house to groom your dog.  You see a lot of these little "VW buses".  They're made from a kit.  I've seen a number of them outfitted for serving hot food off the back.  the panels fold up and in to reveal a propane grill and preparation table.  I've even seen one made to be a small van.  They used a pink one as a van in an Idol Drama, starring Joe Cheng and Ariel Lin called, "It Started with a Kiss."  I like the little paw print shaped vents on this one.

Photos by Chris and Emily Banducci

Other posts you may be interested in:

Clearing Out the Camera:  Random Shots of Taiwan
Local Color:  The Color is Green
Local Color:  The Colors of Kenting
Local Color:  The Temples of Taoyuan City

The Trees are Alive with the Sound of Music...Sort of!

We left about three weeks ago to travel to the US.  On our return we found that the trees were alive with the sound of music.  It’s not like they were playing jazz or anything but apparently we returned right into the middle of the most recent emergence of cicadas.

According to the National Taiwan University Insect Museum there are 65 different species of Cicadas in Taiwan.  They range in size from two to five centimeters but some can get as large as 7 centimeters, that’s 2.75 inches for you Americans.  That sounds like either a large bug or a small bird.  Fortunately, they don’t feed on human or animal flesh, although, I have no idea how I would react if a three inch bug landed on my shoulder.

Cicadas feed by attaching their proboscis into a tree and sucking the sap from under the tree branches.  They make a species specific sound to attract a mate.  That’s the sound that we are hearing, day and night, night and day, light and dark, dark and light.  It’s pretty noisy around here right now.  In fact, there is one species of cicada that makes a sound at 120 decibels.  That’s loud enough to cause hearing damage near your ear.  So imagine that three-inch bug on your shoulder YELLING at you at 120 decibels.  That might be a tad startling.

How'd you like to turn your head and see this dude yelling at you at 120 dB

Cicadas don’t make sounds like crickets.  Crickets rub their legs together to produce their sound.  Instead they click their exoskeleton to make sound.  Built into their abdominal exoskeleton are some small flexible membranes between thick ribs called tymbals. As they contract their tymbalic muscles their bodies produce a click, when those muscles are relaxed it clicks again.  Cicadas contract and relax the muscles very quickly to produce their sound.

As you might imagine cicadas have very few predators.  Mostly birds and sometimes squirrels eat them.  In my fertile imagination I can see a dogfight in the skies over Bade between a swallow and a three-inch cicada and I’m not at all sure who would end up the winner.  They have two methods of protecting themselves from predators.  The first is called the predator satiation method.  In this method so many cicadas emerge at one time that the predators can’t eat them all.  The predators eat so many that they become satiated and have no more interest in eating cicadas.  Another name for this might be the, “What cicadas for dinner again?” method.  The other method involves deception, as they emerge from the ground they shed their nymphal exoskeleton and leave it sitting around.  Birds attack the discarded exoskeleton while the actual cicada is up in the tree eating and looking for a mate.

Platypleura Kaempferi:  A species of Taiwanese Cicada

Cicadas mate and then the female cuts slits in the twigs or small branches of the tree, she may lay several hundred eggs.  When the eggs hatch the cicada nymphs fall to the ground and burrow.  They will remain there until they are ready to emerge from the ground and begin the process all over again.  A cicada nymph may remain in the ground for as long as 13 to 17 years, but more commonly, two to five years before emerging and going up into the tree to eat and find a mate. 

Photo credit:  NTU Insect Museum
Video Credit: iceanajenn

Other Posts you may find interesting;

Taiwanese Lifestyles:  Hanging at the Park
Taiwan Travelogue:  The Traditional Market
Taiwanese Weather:  Monsoons and Typhoons

Taiwanese Lifestyles: Hanging at the Park

One thing that’s nice about the Taoyuan City/Bade City area that we live in is the number of parks throughout the cities.  In a half kilometer circle around my house are five parks.  The really cool thing is that in the evenings there are large numbers of people at the parks enjoying the cool shade and other things.

The park right across the street from our apartment is a gathering place for old chess players.  This is quite a tradition in China and Taiwan.  At any given time there are several chess players huddled over boards playing the game, surrounded by up to ten others watching, offering advice, or trying to learn techniques or strategies from the old masters.   I’ve seen games going on at 11:30 at night. I have to admit that I sit there and watch, too.  I want to learn the game well enough to play without feeling intimidated.  So far I will only play the game on my computer, but I’m practicing so I can join in.

My Chess buddies in a late game

Every park is also outfitted with exercising equipment.  In the mornings the parks are full of people, exercising on the equipment, briskly walking around the park, practicing Taichi or just doing park exercises.  Park exercises seem to be peculiar to Southeast Asia; they consist of vigorously swinging arms, and shaking butts, kind of low impact calisthenics.  We saw a woman the other day, and I thought she was dancing until I saw that some of her “moves” were park exercise moves.

The parks are also a great social atmosphere.  People gather in the parks to walk dogs and generally gossip about the neighbors.  Unfortunately, because of our foreigner status we are often the topic of conversation.  People are always friendly to us and invite us to join in conversation, with them.  Some of the old chess masters have invited us to watch and learn.  They try to engage us in conversation and it’s really an enjoyable time. 

The parks are one of the reasons I like Taiwan at this time of the year.  There’s a lot of people around doing interesting things and for me one the real pleasures is to sit in the cool of the evening and just watch.

Other posts you may be interested in:

Taiwanese Travelogue:  The Traditional Market

Taiwanese Traditions:  The Hidden Temples of Taiwan

Taiwan Travelogue:  Overlooking Taoyuan City