When I first started using toilets in Taiwan I couldn’t help but notice the little bin that always next to the toilet bowl. This oddity was then later explained by Scribbler; Ha! This is so true! Vietnam is much the same except the bathrooms are even smaller and the toilet plumbing is too small to [...]

Traditionally an internet cafe is a practical experience. Upon paying for your hour you’re presented with an office like setup and apart from the odd dawdling on Facebook or Twitter, you get what needs to be done pretty quickly. In and out, in and out. Whilst we do have gaming specific internet cafes (gaming cafes) [...]

I’m not really a big fan of seafood to begin with. Seafood costs more then beef and chicken and is usually fiddly or riddled with bones. Call me lazy old fashioned but I don’t want to spend longer eating my food then somebody took to prepare it. Especially if that person is me. Having said [...]

The issue of Aboriginal child welfare is always going to be a difficult one. On one side of the fence you have the traditionalists. People who place Aboriginal heritage above all else, including the welfare of the child in question. On the other are people like me who, and you don’t have to be a [...]

I was walking around Taichung shortly after I arrived in Taiwan and as I’ve mentioned previously soon began to miss pedestrian crossings. For the most part Taiwan has road crossings which are automatically timed. You walk up to the Zebra crossing and wait patiently until the little timer counts down, then checking for traffic running [...]

You never quite know what to expect when walking down the streets of Taiwan. From the people to the buildings to the cars and scooters on the roads, the Taiwanese urban environment is always surprising me in new ways. A while back now I was walking through downtown Taichung and perched high up above street [...]

I’m a few days late with this post due to internet problems but give or take a week I don’t really think the blog is going to mind. It’s been an interesting year for me writing for this website. I started off with absolutely nothing. I had no web presence under OzSoapbox and started from [...]

Somewhere in the dark and nasty regions of Australia, where nobody goes, stands an ancient castle. Deep within this dank and uninviting place, lives Michael Atkinson “Ello!” – overworked servant of the Thing Upstairs. “Atkinson! Feed me!” …But that’s nothing compared to the horrors that lurk beneath the Trap Door… for there is always something [...]

It was about 8:30am on a Monday morning and still a little bit groggy I was waiting for a train at Taichung station. As I stood there in my shirt and pants, the sting of a lazy imprecise morning shave still tingling over my jawline I looked around at the ensemble of waiting passengers. You [...]

When I came to Taiwan there was two things I was deathly afraid of that the country wouldn’t be able to provide me with. It wasn’t the quality of life I was used to, reliable internet, cheap food, language barriers or No, what I feared most of all was the lack of slurpees and Milo.