Saturday, February 7, 2009
2009-02-07 Cherry Blossom in Guangxing, Wulai
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
2009-02-03 Rescued Stray Cats
Soon my friends bought those two kittens to my apartment. It seems that they are brother and sister. They weren't timid even though they were surrounded by four people. They explored every corner in my apartment soon after they came out of carrying box.
They were really cute and energetic.
As we were busy with preparing litter box for them and trying to figure if they need toilet training, the brother came to my guest room and poo on my blankets, and soon the sister follow suit.
It seemed that they love the blankets.
They played for a while and eventually got drowsy.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
2009-02-01 Hiking In Maokong
I didn't take a lot of pictures because I didn't want to slow down my pace and I wanted to build up my ability and strength so that I can do longer and challenging hikes in the future. Here are pictures I took during our hike.
The day was balmy, we enjoyed the warmth of sunlight and soothing breeze of the day. A lot of stray animals came out to enjoy the nice day, too. A stray cat came out and had sunbath, it was completely relaxed and wasn't alerted.
This is a view of Maokong gondola line from the top of Erjiaoge shan. There was no cable cars shuttling back and forth over the valley now. I took a picture of same spot last year which I still could see a lot of cars in a line. It will take me approximately one and a half years to see cable cars again.
This is where landslide happened, which has made Maokong gondola stop running for months, and Taipei City government decided to rebuld pillar forward about 30 meters.
2009-01-26 First Hike of CNY And A Strange Taiwanese Accent
I hiked to Jiajiuliao alone on the first day of the vacation, and I revisited Jiajiuliao hiking trail with my hiking partners: Robert, Chris, Kitty, Katannya and her sister. Both hikes were pleasant even though it rained lightly.
The river bank near by the trailhead of Jiajiuliao hiking trail is known as Red River Valley (Hong-he-gu 紅河谷) by Taiwanese hikers. I read an article online that gives the origin of the nickname. The article says that the scenary of Hong-he-gu looks like few scenes from Red River, a John Wayne movie directed by John Ford in 1948. The rocks dotted in the riverbank are red in bright sunny days, but I don't think the scenary there looks anything like scenes from Red River. At any rate, it gives an possible explaination.
When I hiked alone on the trail on the first day of Chinese New Year, I ran into few Taiwanese hikers. When we gave greeting to each other and exchanged conversations, I spoke to them in Taiwanese at times. I was told by one hiker that I had a strange accent when I spoke Taiwanese. My Taiwanse is rusty because I have rare chance to use the language in Taipei, but I didn't realize it became so bad until the hiker pointed it out.
I listened to myself carefully and tried to figure out what my Taiwanese sounded like. My Taiwanese is under the influence of Mandarin. I think my Taiwanese now sounds like reading Chinese and speak what are read in Taiwanese. I found a clip that a choir sing a Taiwanese song when they read its lyrics in Chinese on Youtube. Their Taiwanese are with Mandarin accent, and it's what happened to my Taiwanese.
This song, In Love With North Raiway (戀戀北迴線), has beome famous because of Sunrise Record Store Event happened on December 4th of 2008.
Sunrise record Store is located on Zhongshan N. Road. This store doesn't have grand window to deplay albums it sells, but it has great music ablums ranged from local Taiwanese music to world music. The store usually plays some songs to promote some albums and pedestrians usually can hear melody when the pass by. During the period of CHEN Yuen-lin's visiting in Taipei, some policemen took extreme measures without consulting legal process. On December 4th of 2008, Some policemen broke into Sunrise record store and Sunrise record store was force to shut down, and some facility were taken away by policemen because it played this Taiwanese song. This event stirred up a lot of Taiwanese's anger.
(I try to translate the lyrics into English, I would make a lot of mistakes, please pardon me.)
戀戀北迴線 In Love With North Railway
詞/曲:黃麒嘉 Written by HUANG Qi-jia
火車載阮要來去 The train is taking me to
台灣的後花園 Taiwan's rear garden
世間尚水的所在 The most beautiful places in the world
攏置彼一屏 Are all located there
瑞芳金瓜石 Rui-fang, Jin-gua-shi
溫柔可愛的基隆河 Tender and lovely Keelung River.
濛朧三貂嶺 Misty San-diao-ling
青青雙溪水 Emerald green water of Shuang-xi
悠悠擱綿綿 Extended and continuous
親像一首詩 Like a poem
行到福隆 Arriving in Fu-long
看見著海邊 Seeing the seashore
轔轔嚨嚨 (describing noise made by the train)
搖過基隆河 Passing through Keelung River
唭唭喀喀 (describing noise made by the train)
攀過三貂嶺 Climbing and passing San-diao-ling
船隻漂來又漂去 Boats floating back and forth
海風帶鹹味 Sea breeze carrying salty smell
海面金金地閃熾 Surface of the ocean flickering with golden light
(To Be Continued)
日頭浮上天
北關的海湧
歸工歡喜地唱歌
熱情龜山島
陪咱鬥陣行
礁溪洗溫泉
宜蘭買膽肝
來到蘇澳
海產尚好呷
悉悉沙沙
海湧地唱歌
嚕嚕啦啦
礁溪洗溫泉
大山大海大港灣
花蓮到台東
大橋大溪大塴崆
塴崆黑籠籠
遊賞太魯閣
散步迷人的鯉魚潭
坐船秀姑巒
台東摘金針
世外的桃源
美麗的台灣
自由自在
幸福台灣人
卿卿硿硿
火車鑽塴崆
吧哪吧吧
火車地相閃
PHTOGRAPHY
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
I LOVE TAIWAN
LABS AND BLOGS OF PSYCHOLOGY
- Emotion Rules
- Change Detection: Attention, Memory and Decision
- Cognitive Training
- Kensinger/Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab (Boston College)
- Lisa F. Barrett/Interdisciplinary Affective Science Lab (Boston College)
- Diego Pizzagalli/Affective Neuroscience Laboratory (Harvard)
- Brian Scholl/Perception and Cognition Lab (Yale)
- Lynn Hasher/Hasher Aging & Cognition Lab (Toronto)
- Kevin Oshsner/Social Cognitive Neuroscience (Columbia)
- Roberto Cabeza and Kevin LaBar/Center for Cognitive Neuroscience (Duke)
- Laura Carstensen/Life-span Development Laboratory (Stanford)
- Elizabeth Phelps/THe Phelps Lab (NYU)
- James Gross/The Stanford Psychophysiology Laboratory
- Mara Mather/Emotion and Cogntion Lab (USC)
- Psychology Software Tools, Inc.