One of the most difficult decisions I knew I had to make before moving Taiwan was what to do with my pets. With a heavy heart I decided to give my goldfish to the pet store I frequented in the hope they’d find a new home in someone elses aquarium. I don’t know if that [...]
The annual Taiwandeful Taiwan Blog Awards are on again this year and voting has opened today. OzSoapbox is up for the Central Taiwan and General categories so let’s see how I go this year. Last year I ranked 11th overall so I’m curious to see if there’s any change. Like last year at the conclusion [...]
When we found Leela the in the mountains of Miaoli County, one of the things I knew I had to accept was that sooner or later she was going to grow too large for my regular Deuter Rack Pack bicycle panniers. Enjoying her time as a small puppy being carted around in one of my [...]
One evening my girlfriend came through the front door positively out of breath. She looked like she had run a marathon and was carrying a box. ‘I’ve got something to show you’ she said, ‘it’s a bird I found’. My eyebrows went up as I expected her to pull out some dying roadkill she’d plucked [...]
Like most Asian countries where half the population live on the internet in their spare time, in Taiwan blogging and social media are huge. Largely closed off to the internet population at large (for now, the web is still dominated by English), these countries tend to evolve a unique internet culture of their own. Looking [...]
When we found Leela up in the mountains of Yonghe Reservoir in Miaoli, she unfortunately came complete with an infestation of worms. Not being familiar with dogs and worms, we took Leela to the vet and he ended up giving us two bags of medication. When we got home, I had a look at one of [...]
Got a nice surprise this morning when I saw that Juice Media’s Rap News just had a new episode released over night.
When I’m out on the bicycle, I usually don’t really care what my hair looks like. Either I’ll be heading down to the shops, cruising along the river on a leisurely ride or riding somewhere for an article. My bicycle helmet isn’t heavy enough to cause any permanent deformity to my hair so when I [...]
Taiwan is a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For some people it’s home, for others it’s China… without the crazy China’ness, a great place to learn Mandarin, a land of cheap delicious foods, a relaxing lifestyle, a place to retire, the last line of defence against China’s aggressive territorial expansion, [...]
Over the past few months I’ve had to adapt to living with Leela, the Taiwanese mountain dog I adopted after finding her abandoned up near Yonghe Reservoir in Miaoli County. Weighing in at just over 2kg, Leela is now just over 6kg and is her size aside, is turning out to be quite the well [...]