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 eventuated but I’d like to think I gave them as good a chance as any at being rehomed.

My cat Cloud was a much more delicate matter. I’d picked him out as a kitten five years prior and for his entire life I’d been all he’d known. People had come and gone but I was his constant. Both of us knew eachother’s entire behavioural spectrum and both of us had been through whatever the last five years had thrown at us together.

Giving him up was simply not an option.

The possibility of bringing him with me was always there but moving to a strange new country I decided against initially bringing Cloud over because the reality was that I didn’t know entirely what life would be like here, or where I’d initially wind up.

The last thing I wanted was to have to face uncertainty whilst trying to lug a cat around a country I myself was learning to navigate.

In the end I gave myself a six month timetable to settle down into a routine and create a stable enough environment to introduce Cloud into. In the meantime he was to temporarily stay at my mum’s, where the two cats there would hopefully stave off any anxiety he had about me leaving.

At least that was the plan. Two days after I left Australia, Cloud went missing.

What’s worse is that I only found out on Christmas eve. Wholly distracted by the experiences of life in a new country over the first few weeks of being here I hadn’t thought to ask about Cloud since I’d left.

And when I did… that’s when I found out he’d gone missing. My mother had sought to keep this from me for the time being as she figured I’d probably have enough on my plate without worrying about Cloud having gone missing.

That in itself was fair enough, but the weeks turned into months and gradually I came to accept that Cloud was gone.

Having moved on with my life and made peace with Cloud’s disappearance… it was roughly ten months later that I got a phonecall informing me he’d been found.

A woman who had been caring for Cloud had brought him into a vet and upon scanning his microchip, contacted my mother wondering why her name was on the chip of this lady’s cat.

Long story short, I then had to make the call on whether we left Cloud in the care of this woman or, although delayed, fell back on my original plan to eventually bring him to Taiwan.

Somewhat feeling like I’d already let him down, mixed with some of my own selfishness at the thought of other people looking after him, I decided to stick to my original plan and have him brought here.

For anyone else wondering what the rough process is or the costs involved with bringing a pet to Taiwan, having gone through the experience myself, today I thought I’d share my experience.

First and foremost the process of importing a pet into Taiwan can be broken down into four components:

• preparing your pet for travel
• arranging travel for your pet
• collecting your pet at the airport
• post-arrival checkups

Preparing your pet for travel to Taiwan

Depending on where you’re bringing your pet from, I’d strongly suggest directly contacting Taiwan’s Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine.

Although they have a website in English, it might be best to get someone to contact them in Chinese rather than rely on whoever you get on the line to give you accurate information in English.

Despite contacting the Bureau in Chinese initially, we still got two different answers in contrast to the information on the Bureau’s website when we contacted them on two different occasions for clarification on various things.

Coming from Australia, the main things I had to worry about were getting Rabies and Hendra vaccinations done.

Even though Taiwan and Australia are both officially rabies-free countries, vaccination was still required.

Hendra virus testing was a pain in the arse in that your cat gets the shot, and then has to be tested twice with a duration of at least 21 days between both testings. Oh and during this time the cat has to be quarantined between Hendra tests, although we were able to do this quarantining at my mum’s house.

Naturally all of this has to be signed off on with a vet certificate and general check by an accredited vet for the export of animals (which in Australia is a vet certified by Australian Quarantine and Inspection Services (AQIS)).

I’m not entirely sure if the cat needs to be neutered too, but Cloud was already neutered so it wasn’t a problem. I do note that all the official documentation regarding his health and shots mentions the fact he is neutered.

Finally I believe a microchip is required too. This is so that the cat can be tracked when it leaves and again when it arrives. Also it is used to identify the cat during post-arrival check ups.

Arranging travel for your pet

Once you have all the health stuff sorted and receive your certifications you can then apply for an import permit from the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine (BAPHIQ).

I’m not entirely sure what the process is for this but I believe my vet in Australia got in touch with BAPHIQ and after providing the relevant documentation obtained a permit.

The permit we were given was valid for two weeks and it was up to us to organise transport during this period.

We went with EVA Cargo and although the booking side of things was once again handled by my vet, on my end I had no problems dealing with EVA.

Transport wise your pet will need to be put into an airline approved crate, which for us this blue and white crate (seen here being used by us at one of Taipei’s MRT stations):

Despite my vet writing ‘Please water me!’ on the crate, when Cloud arrived the water bowl attached to the crate door was dry. Thankfully Australia isn’t too far but if your pet is coming from a great distance I’m not too sure what the rules and regulations are on water and/or food.

All documentation must be secured to the crate too, my vet did this with strong packing tape and a plastic folder. There’s a lot of it so make sure you’ve included everything and it’s secure.

I also believe a copy is handed to the airline when you drop off your pet at the airport.

Collecting your pet at the airport

We opted to pick up Cloud from Taoyuan International Airport. Although BAPHIQ have offices in Keelung, Hsinchu, Taichung and Kaohsiung – we figured it’d be easier to just go and get Cloud ourselves straight from the airport and avoid any additional quarantine/transport fees.

I also believe if you opt to pick up your pet from one of BAPHIQ’s offices you yourself are responsible for feeding it, meaning you have to do so on BAPHIQ’s (if the office is closed they won’t let you in).

Coming from Australia Cloud didn’t need to be quarantined upon arrival so picking him up was pretty straight forward (although admittedly I was nervous about the paperwork). Armed with copies of everything the vet had faxed me beforehand, we rocked up to Taoyuan airport.

The cargo area is separate from the passenger terminals and for EVA it wound up being off to the side of this large green building:

The above photo is looking at the green cargo building from the front. To get to the EVA cargo area head to the right side of the building:

and once you turn the corner of the main building you should see the EVA Cargo area:

As you head towards it with any luck the plane carrying your pet will have already landed:

The guys at the EVA cargo depo don’t speak any English but even with Chinese there was a bit of initial confusion as to what happened next. We showed them our documentation (mainly the permit) and they redirected us up to EVA’s cargo office (which is physically located in the big green building just a short walk away).

The cargo office initially sent us back down again telling us to collect something from the cargo workers. They sent us back up again and we waited whilst the cargo office worker called them up.

I’m still not sure what the problem was (I think it was that the cat hadn’t been processed yet) but we had to wait upstairs in the office till some paperwork was faxed up from the cargo workers.

When that was done we were handed some more paperwork which we then had to take down to the cargo workers and show them.

Happy with whatever was on the paperwork the cargo workers told us to wait and after about twenty minutes I caught my first glimpse of Cloud’s blue and white crate.

This was pretty emotional for me as it’d been now over a year since I saw him last, not withstanding the fact that I’d thought he’d been dead for ten months.

My glimpse of Cloud’s crate (and hearing a few meows) was only brisk though as he was hauled off for a vet check by one of the quarantine staff. Another one of the staff (customs?) took us away up to the customs office where we spend the next hour and a half or so signing all sorts of paperwork and running around different sub-departments within customs.

Again, English was pretty lacking here and I really had no idea what all the different forms I was signing were for. At times the customs office felt like the set of a 70s sitcom…

The final process was pretty much  be led by some guy to this office, sign some papers, wait, go to the cashier, pay some money, get led to some other place, sign more papers, wait, go back to the cashier, pay more money, go somewhere else, get more papers, go back to the cashier, etc. for a good nearly two hours.

The thought that we were just paying a whole bunch of bribes to different departments did cross my mind but we did get receipts for everything so I suppose it was all official.

All up I think the Taoyuan Airports Customs office charges wound up being close to $3000 TWD ($100 USD).

Finally, once all the paper work was done the guy who’d been leading us around picked up a microchip scanner and went off somewhere. About twenty minutes later he returned and we were led down back to the EVA cargo area.

Five or so minutes later one of the cargo staff walked up carrying Cloud’s crate, handed it to me and we were free to go.

After fifteen months of being separated I opened Cloud’s cage and gave him a big hug. I’m not usually an emotional person but that was one of the happiest moments of my life here in Taiwan.

Riding my scooter home with a big smile on my face… despite the massive hit to my wallet importing Cloud to Taiwan had made,

waking up the next morning to the sight of Cloud sitting on the couch reassured me that it had definitely been worthwhile.

Post arrival checkups

As Cloud began to settle into his life in Taiwan, the only thing left as far as the authorities were concerned were two scheduled visits by someone from BAPHIQ to check up on Cloud.

These visits were scheduled roughly a month after Cloud’s arrival date with a few months between the two visits. There was no charge to myself for the visits.

The first visit I believe all the guy really did was check Cloud’s microchip and tick off some boxes on the paperwork he’d brought along.

The second woman who visited actually gave Cloud a quick look over and again after confirming his microchip number was satisfied.

Since then it’s been smooth sailing and we haven’t had any problems.

The total cost of importing a pet into Taiwan

All in all the vaccinations set me back just under $700 (with Hendra being the most costly), the flight to Taiwan was about $1000 and the customs fees at Taoyuan were roughly $100.

Once I’d paid the vet’s fees I think we came to a grand total of just under $60,000 TWD ($2000 USD).

Not exactly chump change for a domestic short hair cat of nondescript pedigree, but being attached to the animals we keep sometimes leads to irrational behaviour.

Although I’m somewhat loathe to admit it, having had Cloud since a baby I’d have easily spent double that to keep him by my side.

So there you have it, that’s the story of how I imported my cat into Taiwan. Although I can’t specifically comment on the different import/quarantine requirements for countries other than Australia with any degree of authority, if you yourself are looking at bringing in a cat or dog, feel free to leave a comment below if there’s something you need more clarification on.

To be honest I found the whole process quite daunting and know how you feel. Thankfully my vet was happy to handle most of the paperwork from within Australia and all I had to do was front up the money to get it done.

Regarding getting a professional service to handle the whole affair, we found most places were charging in excess of $2000 AUD and even then, once the pet left Australia we ourselves were going to be entirely responsible for collecting it.

Ultimately this meant there wasn’t much of an advantage in going for a professional pet transport service as we’d have to handle everything once Cloud arrived anyway.

Definitely shop around and get some quotes though, personally however if you can find a good vet who’s willing to handle things this should work out cheaper for you in the long run and having gone through the process myself I’d happily recommend it.

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 of the 2011 blog awards I’ll be reviewing the winners blogs and doing a writeup.

You can vote once per 24 hours from the same IP address and voting runs from today till December 30th, 2011. All you have to do is visit the OzSoapbox Taiwanderful page and click the little + icon below the voting number (example button on the right there).

Cheers for any votes thrown my way and thanks for reading and sharing my adventures through Taiwan.

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 pannier bags, once Leela hit about 10kg or so last month sure enough I had to make the difficult decision to start leaving Leela at home.

After a few trips without our dog I realised that I had to come up with a solution to carry her. I was willing to invest in a dog trailer if need be, but having a Surly Long Haul Trucker, a touring bike designed for carrying heavy loads, a figured there must be some way to carry her along.

My first attempt at a medium-sized dog pannier involved a lot of chain and one of those metal baskets you use to hang garden pots off a balcony railing or some such.

The idea here was that the metal frame would be strong enough to carry the dog and the chain adequate enough to tie the basket to the rear rack.

Unfortunately upon rigging up the basket I soon realised that it was just too long in design to offer a stable platform for Leela to sit or lie down on. The metal frame was having trouble coping with her 11kg body weight and as such was bending towards the rear. The chain offered little support here due to the basket running past the length of the rear rack by a good 5-6 inches or so.

Additionally having the weight so high up resulted in quite a wobbly ride and the bike was nowhere near stable being wheeled around.

I realised that a ‘flat’ design wasn’t going to work and I had to go for a much deeper basket. Wanting to stick with metal for strength, I searched high and low for a deep metal basket but couldn’t find anything. At least nothing strong enough to withstand carting 10+ kg of dog around.

Giving up on a metal basket I decided to see what I could find in plastic and that first led me to laundry baskets. Plastic laundry baskets were the perfect size and depth for the dog pannier project but unfortunately being for laundry, every basket we found had holes in the exterior making the walls of the basket way too weak.

Any attempt at rigging up one of these baskets to the rear rack and placing Leela inside would inevitably lead to a collapse in the basket wall.

Kitchen bins were also another idea but again the ones we found were not designed to carry weight and had ridiculously thin walls that would also no doubt buckle.

Searching high and low, eventually I stumbled across a perfectly sized plastic tub that felt sturdy enough to carry some weight. It’s a storage tub and set me back around $350 TWD ($11.50 USD)  from Carrefour.

Already having a rear rack compatible with hooks, I hit up Hola hardware store and purchased two hooks along with a T-shaped metal bracket. I felt uneasy about a screw not digging into the plastic and over time slowly enlarging the hole it made in the wall of the tub until the wall cracked under pressure.

The T bracket I felt would take some of the load off the tub wall and prevent the hole in the plastic from cracking or growing.

I didn’t have access to a drill so but thankfully the screws the hooks came with were pointed so I just patiently turned them in with a screw driver until they’d punctured a hole through the tub wall.

Note that before you puncture the sidewall get on your bike and have someone hold up the basket along the rear rack where you want the tub to sit. This is to make sure you have adequate heel clearance when riding.

I decided not to use the pointy screws included with the hooks and instead opted to use 3/16″ x 1/2″ bolts with nuts to secure the basket. The bolts were thicker than the screws and had a flat end. I didn’t like the idea of pointy bits of the hook screws sticking out of the tub.

I had to slightly enlarge the hole with the screwdriver to fit the bolts, but after that they slid easily through.

I used the T brackets on the inside as the base of the hooks themselves acted like a washer on the outside of the basket.

I suppose if you want you could saw off the excess in the hooks for a cleaner design, but I don’t have access to a saw so I just left them as is.

I’ll also mention the design of the hooks themselves. On the rear I used just a standard one prong hook, but for the front I found this nifty two prong hook.

If you place the rack bar between the two prongs of the hook as shown, you can stop the basket sliding back along the rack railing.

Mind you, I’ve tested the tub with the two hooks towards the rear of the rack bar and noted that the tub only slightly inched it’s way back. I have my Kryptonite ‘Fahgettaboudit’ lock strapped to the front of my rack and this provided adequate pressure on the top of the hooks so that they didn’t slide around.

Finally, the last part of the design was a stabilizer around the bottom of the basket to stop it swinging around and/or lifting as I took turns.

The hooks I’ve used are quite ‘open’ in design and whilst they do securely fit the tub to the rear rack, they aren’t as secure as proper pannier hooks on my Deuter panniers. As such there’s plenty of swing movement to be found.

To secure the bottom of the tub I used a simple elasticated flat strap with hooks on either end.

Clipping the hooks onto the rear rack was resulted in adequate enough tension in the strap to keep the tub in place and stop it from rattling around.

The end result?

One very happy 12kg medium-sized dog who can now rejoin me on my travels around Taiwan.

Handling wise due to the deep design of the tub and the fact that it sits low like a pannier, I haven’t had any wobbling or steering trouble.

Even with a much lighter load on the otherside of the rack there aren’t any weight problems and the bike is quite steady to ride, even when coming to a stop at traffic lights and hopping off the seat to stand.

Wheeling the bike with the tub is a bit risky as it’s quite easy to lose the rear wheel if you turn the bike too far in either direction. As such when we stop I simply stop the bike and hop off my seat. After the girlfriend has lifted Leela out of the tub I then swing my leg over to dismount.

This system has thus far worked well and I’m happy to report there was no troubles on the recent 150km test ride we took to the Old Caoling Bikeway and back.

The pannier exceeded my expectations and performed brilliantly.

Luckily for us Leela has pretty much stopped growing and apart from putting on a bit of weight and filling out her frame I don’t see her outgrowing this set up. Weight wise the tub is quite sturdy and I think dogs up to 15kg shouldn’t be a problem. Anything over that and it might be worth thinking about adding an extra hook along the top to help distribute the weight more.

There is notably no rain protection with this setup, although the tub did come with a cover with a small square cut out of it. I suppose I could enlarge the square so that Leela’s head would stick out, but ultimately she’s still going to get wet.

I guess if it did start to bucket down we’d just have to pull over and wait it out. These days I don’t really carry my rain gear around so it’s not too much of a concern.

Total cost for the dog carrying tub setup is as follows;

• Tub – $350 TWD ($11.60 USD)
• Bolts – $30 TWD ($1 USD)
• T brackets (came as a pair) – $50 TWD ($1.65 USD)
• Flat strap – $150 TWD ($5 USD)
• Hooks (2) – $100 TWD each ($6.60 USD total)


Total: $25.85


Considering I was looking at trailers coming in at a few hundred USD… I think this solution was quite economic.

As a final note I’ll mention that this set up isn’t going to work on just any bike. For starters heel clearance is going to be an issue on smaller frames. The Long Haul Trucker has long rear chainstays so it wasn’t an issue for me.

Additionally the Trucker is built from steel and being a touring bike, is built for hauling around heavy loads like this whilst still providing the rider a steady ride to get around on.

If you have any handling issues with a single loaded pannier (load it up past 10kg to check) on your bike, this tub probably won’t work too well on your bike and will compromise the ride quality.

Here’s a roadtest video of the dog pannier in action;


If you’ve got any questions about the design or parts used, feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you.

Happy riding!

‘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 from the streets of Taiwan.

I love animals but bloody messes of feathers hanging on for dear life just isn’t my thing.

Then as she slowly opened the box, much to my surprise, this little fella jumped out;

Meet Hank.

Rescued walking along the ground at a park in Ximen, Hank appears to be the lost pet of someone. My girlfriend thoroughly checked around for an owner but couldn’t see one.

Meanwhile Hank took quite readily to following her around and was quite tame, hopping up onto her shoulder and not afraid of perching on her finger.

If she walked away he’d walk behind her and then try to fly up onto her shoulder.

Getting dark, she figured he was either going to get eaten or run over if she left him there so decided to bring him home.

He’s quite a handsome bird and has a pretty feather color scheme going on.

I only ever had a pair of budgie growing up years ago and that was a brief stint, lasting barely a month before the pair mysteriously died in their cage.

As such we thought about finding Hank a home (not hard to do) but he’s kind of grown on us since then. We haven’t spotted any ‘missing’ posters in Ximen so figure we’re probably not going to find the original owner either.

Hank’s turned out to be quite a chatty little fellow, especially first thing in the morning when the sun comes up and he’s sitting in his cage.

We drape a towel on the cage overnight but he still chirps away to wake us up.

During the day Hank spends his day perched on my shoulder as I write, chattering away. He’s a great conversationist and can seemingly keep himself entertained by chattering away for hours.

Leela seems to have taken a shine to Hank too, although perhaps that should be the other way around. It usually starts with Leela minding her own business and Hank flying over to annoy her;

This can lead to Leela looking quite nervous at times, which is pretty amusing.

Completely unphased however by the fact he’s annoying an animal fifty times his size and whose natural instinct is to gobble him up, Hank then proceeds to groom Leela with his beak.

Leela being the trooper she is just sits there calmly and lets him get on with the job.

Sometime’s though, Hanks antics can get a little tiring;

But usually Leela seems pretty happy about it

And once Hank’s done, a quick thankyou kiss…

…and the two of them go back to watching tv together.

…of course they’re always under the evil eye of Cloud.

Cloud I believe just sees Hank as a moving toy and at first couldn’t wait to catch him. Over time he seems to have mellowed out but I still wouldn’t trust them alone in a room together.

A dog, a cat and now a bird. I think I’m getting ready to give Taipei Zoo a serious run for their money here.

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 at blogging in particular, in Taiwan if you’ve got a vagina, can write reasonably well, pull off the Hello Kitty look that appeals to the masses of lonely males on the island but at the same time aren’t too pretty to evoke jealousy in Taiwan’s women, and know how to start a blog… there’s a very lucrative market out there for you in the form of paid-per-post advertising.

But… as with all things solidly built on deception and the shallowness of an evaporated puddle, if Taiwan’s Legislative Economic Committee has its way – perhaps not for much longer.

Employing primarily females who would otherwise no doubt be flogging betelnut from roadside aquariums, paid-per-post blogging is where an advertiser partners with a blogger and gets them to praise the product for cash.

Get enough readers and companies on board, and a blogger can earn enough money to quit their day job. Hell, the whoriest most succesful bloggers who do this actually make quite a decent living out of it.

‘But why on Earth would anyone want to read a bunch of paid for marketing crap?’ I hear you ask…

Well, in a similar way to how betelnut is marketed, these girls almost universally are halfway attractive and aren’t afraid to show a bit of skin, albeit much more subtly then their oft sluttishly dressed betelnut selling counterparts.

This sex appeal is usually delivered by means of photo or video footage and if the blog owner publishes frequently (which all the succesful ones do), they appeal to that ‘I like eye candy’ instinct of guys which in turn leads to online popularity and a following.

This creates fans and celebrity culture which then equates to real world dollars via authority and financial partnerships with companies looking to flog their products.

Pretty much you’ve got both female and male demographics covered right there. Guys stare at the pictures and fantasize, and women rush out to buy the products featured. To say that this relationship works particularly well in Taiwan’s at times rampant consumerist society is an understatement.

Some of these bloggers make a reported $50,000-$100,000 TWD (per article written. I think part of the success model is due to the largely celebrity orientated advertising model used here.

Venture out into the streets of Taiwan and you’re instantly bombarded with cut outs of Taiwanese celebrities flogging everything you can think of. 99.9% these ads are nothing more than someone holding a product with a smile but their sheer persistency and frequency.

It’s not uncommon to walk down a street and see the same celebrity four or five times on massive billboards infront of completely unrelated shops flogging completely different products and brands.

Combine that with the internet, some racy photos and an appeal to the cute… and you might just be Taiwan’s next biggest paid-per-post blogger.

So what’s wrong with all this? Bloggers make money, people read and enjoy the pretty girls content and companies sell products.

Well, nothing would be wrong with it… if it wasn’t most of the time just a giant scam.

To illustrate the inner works of these sham paid-per-post blogs, I’ll share with you an example I first read about over at My Kafkaesque Life earlier this year.

‘HoneyQueen’ (林哈妮) had enough fans such that when she promoted a company or product, ‘her readers would flood the shop or store she would write about‘.

This is naturally a wet dream come true to companies looking to hire blog whores and as such it’s estimated that HoneyQueen (on the right there pulling ‘duckface’) was bringing in around $30,000 TWD ($1000 USD) an article.

With thousands of readers and fans, companies lining up to get their products featured on her blog and thousands of dollars to be made – it all came apart when HoneyQueen was exposed to be a fraud.

(HoneyQueen) wrote a product review about a skin care product that supposedly removes pimples and she posted before and after photos.

But one of her readers found out that she used a makeup foundation in her after photo to cover the pimple for the (nonexistent) effect.

HoneyQueen claimed the before and after photos were 4 days apart, but the data proves that she first put make up on and took a photo and later used it as the after photo.

Then she gradually removed the make up from the pimple and took more photos, which she used for the before photos.

All photos were taken within few minutes.


An innocent once off mistake? Not likely!

people started to check her older reviews and found out that she’s done similar things in the past.


Here was a blogger earning a considerable amount of money to write bullshit reviews that duped the thousands of readers who followed her blog.

Given the sort of money we’re talking here, you’d have to be incredibly naive to think this fraud wasn’t going on at a major level amongst Taiwan’s more popular paid-per-post bloggers.

Infact, so out of control has the deception of bloggers whoring out faked paid reviews that the government has decided to step in.

An amendment to Article 21 of the Fair Trade Act, approved by the Legislature’s Economic Committee, includes recommendations by bloggers in the law’s definition of advertisements.

Under the amendment, bloggers who offer baseless recommendations will also be held liable, as advertisers who put out false advertisements already are.


Facing fines ‘capped at 10 times of the amounts they are paid’, the obvious question is ‘how is this going to be policed?’

I mean, in the case of HoneyQueen she was exposed by a reader… and even then that was only after years of writing fraud reviews for cash. Is the government seriously expecting police to patrol Taiwan’s blogs and search out fraudulent reviewers?

This is where my dilemma over the Taiwanese government’s decision resides. Make no mistake, I think these whores (female and male bloggers) are the scourge of the blogging world and are nothing more than scam artists that should be held accountable.

If money is paid for a review, it ceases to be a review and is instead an advertisement. Advertisements are already held up to scrutiny and advertising laws so why should misleading ‘girl next door’ reviews on the internet be any different?

But then it comes down to ‘well what are you going to about it?’ The problem is obviously large enough to warrant policing of the issue (although part of me wonders if whether or not these bloggers are or aren’t paying tax has motivated the government), policing individual reviews is a logistical nightmare.

Ultimately I think that if the public at large are stupid enough to believe these blogging shamsters, anything intervention by the government isn’t really going to achieve much.

As entertaining as it was to read about HoneyQueen being caught out (who doesn’t like a good scandal?), perhaps therein lies the answer. These scammers rely on trust and authority to perpetuate their lies, and quite honestly these paid whores deserve neither.

Expose their lies and you effectively kill off their business model.

Then again, despite HoneyQueen’s fraud getting nationwide media coverage, all it took was an apology published on her blog (now removed) plus a short hiatus and it wasn’t long before she went right back to publishing her paid-per-post garbage.

And evidently HoneyQueen’s blog is still wildly popular with her readers…

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 the bags and started to scratch my head;

‘Front feeding’? Well duh, how else am I going to feed a dog?

It wasn’t until I looked at the second bag that I realised what the vet meant…

Not a bad attempt I guess… and better than Chinese which I wouldn’t have been able to make heads or tails of.

Thankfully Leela’s worms seem to be all but behind her now and apart from growing too big to fit in my bicycle pannier (meaning she has to stay at home when we go riding which is sad), things seem to be going well.

For those of you who read about the original rescue, here’s some photos of Leela I took recently at age approximately 6 months;

She was 2kg or so when we found her and now she’s sitting on 10.5kg. We think she’s pretty much as big as she’s going to get.

My girlfriend also found a lost parrot in a park last week so we’ve now welcomed ‘Pete’ into the family too. But you’ll have to wait for a separate writeup for him later in the week.


Tackling the global economy woes another great episode by Farrant and Nanni.

I dunno how these guys are funding their Rap News but I hope they’ve got a revenue model up and running so that they can keep releasing their vids, they’re too good to lose.

Here’s to the next one guys!

My bicycle helmet isn’t heavy enough to cause any permanent deformity to my hair so when I take it off, a quick razzle with my fingers and I’m good to go. Well, so long as I don’t forget to thoroughly dry it before I set out, otherwise the air holes in my helmet can leave ridiculous bumps on the hairline like the guy on the right there has.

My scooter on the other hand is now primarily used when I’m going out. Not drinking of course, but if I’ve got a dinner to go to or am meeting someone and need to look decent – the bicycle doesn’t quite cut it. Unlike a bicycle helmet though, a scooter helmet can utterly crush your hair and mold it into the perfect box shape.

We’re talking paper-thin squashed ‘I look like the biggest nerd who spent 35 hours combing my hair to perfection’ type hair here.

DISASTER!

I’ve since resorted to carrying around a tube of hair stuff in the scooter’s luggage compartment… but surely there’s got to be an easier way to deal with scooter helmet hair?

HALP!

1. Carrying hair product around

As I said, this is what I’m currently doing and whilst it works it has two major downsides.

a. You look like a complete tool getting off your scooter and styling your hair (even for like a minute) in your scooter mirror in crowded places. With Taiwan having 3 million strong rent-a-crowds on every corner… this is hugely problematic.

b. Afterwards you need to wash your hands. Hair product leaves a sticky residue on your hands and on the off chance I need to shake hands with someone or (more commonly) eat… washing your hands is mandatory after doing your hair.

Now bear in mind these aren’t major downsides… but when the alternative back home was just jumping in my mini and driving to wherever… it’s starting to become a freaking headache.

I have thought of some alternatives myself… but they mostly suck.

2. Use the MRT

The big bonus in using the MRT is that you probably won’t die on Taiwan’s roads (yes, I accept it’s only a matter of time before I’m steamrolled by a blue truck or bus).

The problem with the MRT is that, if you live outside of Taipei – THERE IS NO MRT (from what I hear Khaosiung’s MRT is like a joke with no punchline).

That and in Taipei you’re kind of limited to where you can go… and that the last MRT trains leave around 12-12:30am’ish depending on where you’re catching one from.

Oh and did I forget to mention the giant crowds and waiting times during peak?

Taiwan’s road traffic can often be no better but it’s much more satisfying to cruise around on a scooter and feel like I’m having a direct impact on my arrival time.

That and the scooter is a lot of cheaper than the MRT. A standard round trip will set you back $50-90 TWD ($1.70-$3 USD) whereas this alternatively gets me about 100kms on the scooter.

As retarded as it sounds in Taiwan it’s actually cheaper to use a scooter than ride the MRT (or national TRA network for that matter).

3. Style my hair an hour or so before heading out on the scooter

This method kind of works, but not really. If you style your hair about an hour before heading out when you arrive at your destination you can revive something of a decent look, but more often than not the weight of the scooter helmet has permanently crushed the effectiveness of the product your using.

This means that no matter how strong it is, after twenty minutes or so your hair is probably going to revert back to its natural post scooter trip utterly flat state.

And the longer you ride, the less effective this method becomes… oh, and it also means you’ve got to regularly clean your scooter helmet as product+sweat dirties up the inside pretty quickly.

4. Don’t use product

Hahahahahhahahahhahaha.

When I first got to Taiwan I noticed that a lot of the guys here had really boring $2 job looking haircuts. At the time I just assumed it was because they simply didn’t care what they looked like because they had better things to do, like play computer games and hang out at 7-11.

Since then, I’ve started to appreciate that it’s more out of necessity than want. When you’re riding a scooter around daily (something I thankfully don’t have to do), I imagine maintaining a hairstyle becomes a downright chore.

And I’m not talking metrosexual fifteen minutes to style haircuts either… just something simple that doesn’t leave you with the straight hair boring look that everyone in Asia seems to have.

Personally I rub the product in my hands and run it through my hair for about a minute and then just rough it up. It’s cut to style and does the work for me.

I can’t be the only guy suffering from stupid looking scooter hair or the first to think about tackling it… anyone thought of something I’ve missed or got a better idea?

If I have to stand at a busy intersection styling my hair in my scooter mirror one more time I think I’m going to die.

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, a place to explore…

…and then there’s this guy.

Subject: Looking for Taiwanese girl for marriage

Message Body:

I am Ron, from New York City, USA. I am a simpleman down to the earth, I am looking for a Taiwanese girl who is single, nice, kind and social and who can take care of me.

Out looking or age is not fact, just need a person.

Rahman Moh


Apparently somebody turned OzSoapbox into a matchmaking website and forgot to tell me.

But what the hell, anybody up for it? This Rahman guy sounds like a real catch… he’s ‘down to the earth‘ (short??) and all he wants is a Taiwanese girl who is single (well, duh?) and can take care of him.

Evidently Rahman is unable to take care of himself and needs a Taiwanese slave kind and social wife.

Oh and he’s not too worried about looks or age either so all you old fuglies are welcome to apply.

All he needs is a body person.

Applicants can apply for the position at whatthefuckamIsupposedtodowithshittyemailslikethis@nobodycares.com

Best of luck Rahmon!

(photo supplied)

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 behaved and mannered dog.

Not quite the Pug I wanted in August but I don’t have it in me to just give up on her.

The other week me and the girlfriend were out and about again down in Hsinchu County (just north of Yonghe Reservoir), this time exploring Emei Lake Recreational Area (also known as Dapu Reservoir).

Our main reason for heading back to Emei was to check out the lake itself but also to pay a visit to the giant 72 meter tall Maitreya Buddha statue and accompanying temple.

I was last in Emei in early 2010 and at that time the temple still had a long way to go construction wise;

Over a year later I wanted to see how things had progressed and, as you can see, progressed they had!

We wanted to get a closer look at the temple and statue but despite the grounds looking finished the security guard wouldn’t let us on site.

It was whilst trying to bargain our way in that we then met Tiger.

Skinny as hell and stumbling around the security guard told us Tiger had randomly showed up just the night before. Not sure what to do with him the guard had given him a bowl of water with some crackers and hoped for the best.

Despite having skin problems and being so tiny, it wasn’t long before Tiger was following us about as I took photos of the temple from a distance.

At that point I pretty much decided we’d have to take him in.

Otherwise I figured he had a few days at best living off water and crackers with the security guard before he died of malnutrition or something worse.

To date I’m not really sure what breed Tiger was. He has distinctive mountain dog colouring but fits in the palm of your hand.

There’s definitely some chihuahua there but he certainly doesn’t have the head or eyes of one.

Age wise the vet we took him too put him at over 2 months old so, despite being so tiny, he was well on his way to growing into a nice young dog.

One thing I’ve never liked about chihuahuas is the noise that they make. Whether it’s due to shitty training and dog ownership or the fact that as a breed they just can’t shutup, chihuahuas always annoy me.

Sadly, Tiger was no exception and over the last few weeks I really struggled with looking after him.

Being so tiny, Tiger’s protests were so high pitched and whiny that it sounded literally like a toddler screaming at the top of their lungs.

Put him in a crate – squealing.

Close the door behind you – squealing.

Take him for a walk with a leash – squealing.

Try to force him to potty in a particular area outside he doesn’t want to – squealing.

And on and on it went.

I’m all for not caving in to a dog’s demands but not being house trained, trying to train Tiger was really testing my patience.

Additionally, despite being about a fifth of her size, Tiger liked to shitstir play with Leela and get her worked up.


Problem was that he’d keep at it till she’d had enough and when she put her foot down or started to play back he’d bark and get all defensive.

Thankfully due to his size, like Pogo the pug he got lots of ‘oh,how cute!’ action everywhere we went.

As such, it didn’t take long before we found a suitable home for him.

One day as we were walking him home our neighbour’s daughter started asking my girlfriend questions about the Tiger and she replied and threw in the now obligatory ‘we found him in the mountains, do you want to adopt him?’

After asking her dad (they already had one dog) he agreed and after making sure they knew about his annoying yap, the fact that he wasn’t quite toilet trained yet and skin problems (we had medicine from the vet), they were happy to take him in.

Out time with Tiger was short and we’ve still got Leela, but at least one of the dog’s we’ve rescued now has a happy permanent home.

Mind you, I’ve pretty much accepted now that nobody is going to adopt Leela. Black mountain dogs are a dime a dozen here and she obviously doesn’t have the adoption power that a small cute looking chihuahua type dog has. Then of course there’s the whole white tipped feet ‘if you adopt me I’m probably going to bring you years of bad luck’ thing.

Still, maybe one day…

Monday we should be good to go and back to our regular publishing schedule. Comments will still function as normal in the meantime but I might be slow to approve them when applicable.

Cheers guys and thanks for reading.

Sometime in the last few hours Google have gone and changed what used to be a fully functional, efficient and easy to read mail application and have completely ruined it.

Adding a 2.0 bloated flash feel to the iGoogle application, Google have gone and made all the navigation bars HUGE.

Working primarily on a Asus EeePC, this is bloody hopeless as now I can see about half as much information as I was able to read before on about half as much space.

Design wise there’s simply way to much white space and do I really need giant freaking stars next to every email taking up valuable real estate?

Some clown has also decided to move the delete button to the bottom of the gadget so now if I want to delete anything, I have to check it and pysically scroll down. BRILLIANT GUYS!

The only new useful feature I can see is the ability to compose mail from the default iGoogle homepage whereas before I had to click on the little mail text which enabled the Gmail application to take over the browser window completely to compose anything.

Not happy Google, gimme back my original iGoogle Gmail interface!

In my current apartment, despite my best efforts to make sure nothing is left out, invariably the odd thing gets left out (I don’t have a big bin here so I have to use the communal bin outside).

Just the other day the ants took over a juice box I’d left out (it was almost empty but not empty enough for the ants), as I was using the laptop I was wondering why there was a few of them about and then realised my mistake.

Realising it was getting a bit ridiculous what with the speed in which these little opportunistic ants were appearing (sometimes whilst I was eating dinner itself), I decided to go down to the local supermarket and purchase some ant pest control.

Being in Taiwan, all the products were labelled in Chinese so apart from the universal big red circle symbol with an ant inside it, I didn’t really have any idea what I was buying. In the end though I settled for this brand;

With ‘Boric acid S100′ printed on the packet, but no other English, some quick research at home revealed that this was a common ingredient used in ant pest control.

Apparently Boric acid doesn’t instantly kill ants but rather messes up their metabolism slowly causing dehydration and eventual death. Basically you want the ants to carry back the Boric acid to their nest and eventually take out the queen.

Eager to see my unwanted visitors die off, I busted open the box, here’s what was inside;

What you’re looking at there is a shell shaped plastic container and a sealed packet of Boric acid bait. This particular brand came with 3 shell containers and four packets of Boric acid.

Setting up the trap was relatively easy. The shell traps are openable and you simply open a sachet of Boric acid bait and pour it inside.

The trap itself has seven holes (3 at the back, 2 on the side and and 2 at the front) from which the ants can easily get in, grab some bait and get out.

By putting out the juice box I’d saved from before, it was about an hour before the ants had figured out where it was and mobiles to harvest the juice. After enough of them were around the box, I removed it and placed the Boric acid trap in its place.

Evidently it’s quite difficult to snap a decent shot of ants running around like headless chooks with a mobile phone camera, but I’ve done my best to highlight the activity with some big shiny red arrows.

Expecting to see some initial confusion followed by one of them figuring it out and signalling to others about how they just found tons of food inside, to my dismay this simply didn’t happen.

Wondering if perhaps they needed a little more time to ‘get it’, I went out for a bike ride and a few hours and left the trap to do its thing. A few hours later when I returned, expecting to see them ravaging the bait inside I was disappointed to see that the ants had completely abandoned the trap (despite their being tons of them around there before) and disappeared.

I left the trap out overnight and the next day, despite a few of them walking around looking for food – none of them took the bait – they just simply ignored it.

With Boric acid having been used for over a century for pest control, it seems Taiwan’s ants have either grown wary of it, are extremely fussy or this particular brand of Boric acid ant control is just crap.

To test, I found some different ants around outside (feasting on a dead insect on the side of the road) and same thing. None of them were interested in the Boric acid bait.

Does Boric acid bait work on Taiwanese ants?

I’d have to go with a big resounding no. Meanwhile I’m going to have investigate some other options to take care of these little annoying bastards.

By buying the triple plain yogurt pack (3 litres of Easiyo yogurt) that came in a box for $7 or so, I was still coming out miles ahead of paying $5-6 for 1 litre of yogurt from the supermarket.

When I moved to Taiwan however, I quickly found out that not only is Easiyo not really readily available here, but also that price wise, there’s no multipacks available and also you’re looking at around $3-6 just for one sachet. $3 a sachet for plain Greek and upwards for flavoured yogurt.

After a few months of this I began to investigate making Easiyo by blending the starter yogurt base with milk powder.

After a few months of trial and error, here’s how it went.

Thankfully my base recipe worked right off the bat and I never had to change it.

What you’ll need:

• a measuring cup that measures grams
• a tablespoon (measured or rough)
• milk powder
• an airtight sealable plastic container
• paperclip (optional – I think)


Instead of using the complete yogurt base sachet, use the tablespoon to measure out 1 tablespoon of yogurt base.

Then mix in 300g (1 and a half cups) of milk powder into the Easiyo jar.

I’ve only thus far used ‘KLIM’ brand which I think is just bog standard full cream powder, but I don’t see why other types of milk power wouldn’t work. So long as it isn’t some gourmet crap with additives you should be right.

After combining the yogurt starter and milk powder you then set about making the yogurt as you would normally. Add water about halfway, shake like crazy and then fill the jar with water to the top line before putting it in the thermos with hot water.

Whereas I’d normally leave a full sachet of Easiyo yogurt base out for 24 hours and find it was enough, with only a fraction of the bacteria to get you started in a tablespoon, I’ve found that a day and a half (36 hours) is about right with this method.

Any less and you tend to get watery yogurt. Leaving it longer doesn’t hurt but you do tend to get more of a slightly sour taste (too much bacteria?).

The finished product does look a bit lumpy in the photo I took but there’s absolutely no lumps or hardness to the milk powder yogurt. Whether you use milk powder or the whole yogurt base sachet, after sitting in the jar Easiyo yogurt always looks a bit blocky when you scoop it out. Taste wise it’s exactly the same. If you use Greek plain you get Greek plain yogurt, normal plain makes you normal plain etc.

I was initially skeptical that the milk powder might alter the taste but believe me it’s just as rich, creamy and delicious as using a whole Easiyo sachet.

One final note, I was disappointed to find that this method doesn’t work with the flavoured versions. You still get yogurt but it is unflavoured (due to there not being enough ‘flavour’ in only a tablespoon of yogurt base). I don’t know if I was imagining but when I tried milk powder with a strawberry (sweet) base, I felt the yogurt it made was more sour then when using plain yogurt base.

Anyway, to get around the flavour problem I just add a tablespoon of jam to each tub of 200g yogurt I make for the week (added after it’s made).

Storage wise my yogurt base sachet was fine in the fridge sealed in an airtight plastic tub with a paperclip over the opening (I rolled the bag down a bit before clipping it shut).

The main advantage of mixing milk powder with yogurt base is obviously the cost and this is where this method shines.

I go through 1kg of yogurt a week (200g a day Monday to Friday) so I went from using one sachet a week to months on end of fresh yogurt from just one sachet.

The photos from this article were taken back in March (after a few weeks of trial and error) and the sachet I was using only ran out a few weeks ago – that’s how long we’re talking here.

Compared to using a sachet a week for 3-4 months, pairing Easiyo yogurt base with milk powder is a no brainer cheaper alternative. Even with milk powder costs, roughly three yogurt base sachets a year is unbeatable value for money when compared with burning through 52.

Enjoy your cheap Easiyo milk powder yogurt!

My girlfriend recently got a Pinnacle Expede 1.0 cyclocross bike (more on that later), and along with my Long Haul Trucker we’ve been tackling mountain trails around Taiwan with the hope of completing a tour around Taiwan by year’s end.

Last weekend we found ourselves cycling up and around the Yonghe Mountain Reservoir in Miaoli County just off the sleepy township of Sanwan.

We were supposed to be following the Yonghe Mountain bicycle path just south of Toufen Township but it was proving to be quite difficult. As you get into the mountains the path is poorly signposted and you soon start to wonder if you’re still on it, or just riding random roads through the mountains.

Anyway, after feeling like we were lost for the umpteenth time, we pulled over at a busy crossroads to check our bearings.

It was then that this crawled out of the bushes with a big happy smile on her face;

Wondering what such a small puppy was doing seemingly by herself right next to a busy road intersection

(and half expecting a mother dog to run out and try to bite our faces off if we tried to touch it), I went and had a look to see where it had come from.

It was then I realised that it had been abandoned;

Left with nothing more then the bare essentials (which in hindsight I guess was better than nothing) a plastic container of green water, a bowl of putrid rotting food and a flattened cardboard box to sleep on… I immediately realised I couldn’t in good conscience leave her there.

Given the daily downpours we’ve been having due to Typhoon Meari I’ve got no idea how this little pup has survived on her own, especially in the mountains. I’ve noted that whenever she hears another dog bark she immediately goes into defense mode and wants to run – so I’m assuming by keeping her wits about her she made it.

As to why she was abandoned… you’re guess is as good as mine although I have been told that having white tipped feet is a sign of bad luck in Chinese culture so that could explain it. Go figure.

Anyway, after four flea baths (she was absolutely ridden with fleas and ticks) and some TLC she’s scrubbed up rather well;

Age wise she’s tiny, smaller I think than Pogo when I got him and he was two months. Thus I’d guesstimate her age to be at either 2 months or younger.

My original plan was to give her up to a local shelter as I thought she looked rather like a Labrador with her big floppy ears and webbed feet (thankyou Wikipedia research).

A more likely scenario I’ve been told however is that she’s part Formosan Mountain Dog and then a general mishmash of whatever lives out in the mountains.

Now with my writing commitments and dependency on my bicycle (I want to save the scooter for just long trips by the end of the year), a dog of Labrador size is simply just not feasible.

A Formosan mountain dog mix on the other hand, might just work.

But I digress. I really have my heart set on another Pug – and I still plan to go ahead with that in August.

Being a stray, I decided to keep this dog for a week and show her some care. Who knows what she’s been through and following adoption I can’t guarantee she’ll be looked after properly so at least I can make her feel welcome for a short time.

On Friday we’re taking her to the vet to get checked out and as I said earlier the original plan was to put her up for adoption. Of course there was always the worry in the back of my mind that she wouldn’t get adopted but that seems to have been taken care of with an offer from one of my TA’s relatives from work to take her in.

In the meantime whilst I keep reminding myself a Pug is more appropriate for my lifestyle it’s hard to put up resistance;

Temperament wise she’s much more relaxed than Pogo and is definitely more loyal. Pogo was an attention whore with steroid like energy who’d dump me for a wandering ‘oh how cute!’ passing female anytime, anywhere.

She hasn’t quite got the idea of walking (or a leash yet) but I’m working on it. Training wise she seems ready and keen to learn whereas Pogo (and Pugs in general I think) were always going to be an uphill battle – not that I mind.

That said, whilst I did take Pogo into the mountains on some longish walks (I got away with it in late autumn and winter when it’s cooler), I have no idea how Pugs go during summer in the outdoors. From what I’ve read they overheat quickly and I’d be risking it (even with copious amounts of water) when it’s 30+ degrees outside, as it has been for the past few weeks or so.

I do however miss Pogo’s clownish antics ever so much. Personality wise he was adorable whereas this mountain dog is much more reserved. She’s started to shadow me around the house and follow me around – but I think that’s more out of insecurity than a genuine interest in what I’m doing.

Then again, even with Formosan mountain dogs not being as big as Labradors, I’m still going to struggle with the whole bike and dog thing. Whereas with a Pug they just happily fall asleep and ride in one of my panniers.

Meanwhile Friday rolls closer and I’m all too aware of the decision I’ve got to make. I suppose it’s not all that common to find a readily available home for a stray in Taiwan – but then I can’t help wonder if I’m giving up a dog that might in the long term turn out better for me than a Pug.

Being a puppy and needing frequent walks for toilet training, I think in the last few days I’ve had about ten hours total sleep. Just this morning I went to bed at 1am and was back up at 6:30am for a toilet run.

Same deal with Pogo till he got it after a few weeks but at least with him I was prepared. This unexpected drop in has completely messed up my week!

Still, how can you be mad at a face like that.

I’m not entirely sure when it rolled out but sometime over the last few hours I’ve started to get a google voice search option (a little microphone icon) appear in my search bar after I’ve conducted a search.

It could have been implemented earlier but to be honest with the amount of time I spend behind the PC I’d be more than surprised if I hadn’t noticed it earlier. I could have sworn it wasn’t there earlier today.

Regardless, as with any potential change to my search habits I decided to give it a try and test drove voice search with the simple phrase ‘ozsoapbox’.

Using my normal accent gave me this result;

Post football? What the hell is that?

Naturally this was nowhere near ‘ozsoapbox’ so I decided to try again with some different accents. With Google being a US based company, I kinda suspected that I was going to have to Americanize myself to start getting accurate results.

Or so I thought.

A northern US accent got me this;

Whilst a drawling southern accent was no better;

Kinda pondering the overall usefulness of voice search by this point, I decided to give a it a few more tries – here’s what a UK accent returned;

followed by a Scottish accent;

and even my best stereotypical Japanese Asian accent for good measure;

As you can see neither of the search results comes remotely close to ‘ozsoapbox’. Whilst I appreciate that the term isn’t your standard dictionary word, still it’d be nice for voice search to at least be in the ballpark.

As it stands for me personally Google voice search isn’t even on the same planet as what I’m searching for.

After the failed attempts I decided to give it one more shot with my normal accent and this is what I got;

Also cocks?!…

Yeah, back to text search for me I think. After seven unsuccesful attempts, Google’s voice search seems pretty useless to me.


Footnote: Argh, there doesn’t seem to be anyway to turn it off either! Looks like I’m stuck with an annoying microphone icon cluttering my search box.

‘Epsiode 8: Osamacide’ gets back to some solid rhymes and beats discussing the recent assasination of Osama Bin Laden;

I can’t say I agree with all of it but Foster does raise some inconvenient questions about the US’ jurisdiction and various issues surrounding Osama’s death (such as the Geronimo codename and decision to assasinate Osama rather than have him stand trial).

The highlight of the episode is definitely the Terrence Moonseed rant in the middle about Geronimo – loved it.

I’m happy to see Juice Media removed a lot of gimmickery of the last few episodes and gotten back to just being clever which is what I loved about the series in the first place.

Cameos and fancy pants special effects all detract from the message of Rap News which is where Hugo really shines. Hopefully the music and lyrics of Rap News will remain the focal point of the next episode!

With Planking, the basic idea is that you get someone to take a photo of yourself face down with your arms by your side and toes pointed at the ground.

Other than that, there are only four other guidelines to follow;

• More Public the Better
• Larger the Group, the Better
• No location is out of bound when playing the game
• A disregard for personal safety is to be held in higher esteem


Unfortunately as with anything that is open to the general public, in the last few weeks Planking in Australia has seen it’s fair share of idiots. Two particular idiots that have caught the nation’s attention are Simon Hallam and Acton Beale.

Beale died after falling from a seventh story balcony and Hallam is lying in a hospital comatosed after falling off the back of a moving car.

Obviously both men are complete morons and only have themselves to blame… but ask the parents however and it’s all somehow the internet’s fault.

Because y’know, the internet made them do it.

After a Saturday night out drinking on May 14th, Acton Beale returned to an apartment and thought it’d be a good idea to attempt planking off the balcony railing.

Being drunk, he lost his balance and plummeted to his death. No harm, no foul and just another not too bright spark removed from the gene pool.

Well, at least that should of been how it ended. Instead we had the police pleading with the public to not be idiots and even had PrimeMinister Julia Gillard weigh in, describing

the incident as “really tragic”.

“There’s a difference between a harmless bit of fun done somewhere that’s really safe and taking a risk with your life,” she told reporters in Sydney.

“Everybody likes a bit of fun, but focus has to be on keeping yourself safe first.”


Safety sure, but was Beale’s death really tragic? Hardly.

Beale’s death was nothing more then a completely avoidable celebration of stupidy.

Less than a week later, in what appeared to be the second national Planking story, Simon Hallam fell of the back of a moving car whilst allegedly Planking.

For his contribution to the Darwinian hall of fame, Hallam (photo right) is now lying ‘in induced coma in intensive care‘ and ‘may never recover from (his) horrific head injuries‘.

In light of his idiocy Hallam’s father, Terry Hallam, decided it was all the internet’s fault;

The internet and Facebook, they’re just dreadful things … they encourage this sort of behaviour among the young ones, and young ones don’t think about consequences of their actions, they think it’s fun, so they do it with little thought for what could happen – like this.


Yes, the internet and Facebook really are dreadful things. You know what else is dreadful though?

Shitty parenting.

To claim Simon Hallam was nothing more than an impressionable ‘young one’ at age 20 is laughable. Mate, if your 20 year old son doesn’t know that attempting to Plank off the back of a car moving at speed is probably not a good idea then that’s some catastrophic parenting failure right there – the intenet doesn’t have anything to do with it.

To further highlight the stupidity of Simon Hallam’s behaviour, turns out he wasn’t even planking. After reviewing mobile phone footage taken to no doubt impress Hallam’s mates, police are now claiming that he was ‘car surfing’ rather than planking.

Car surfing hey… well I bet the evil internets and Facebook are still responsible for that. It couldn’t possibly be as simple as Simon Hallam being a complete and utter moron now could it.

Meanwhile the planking death/injury craze looks set to continue with reports coming in this morning of three men caught Planking on top of a moving car.

A police spokeswoman told AAP the threesome had been issued with on the spot infringement notices.

The female driver, 20, will face court on June 15, for a dangerous operation of a motor vehicle charge.


Personally I welcome this sort of behaviour. I obviously don’t condone or encourage it, but I find it hard to fault idiots doing the world a favour and eliminating themselves from the gene pool.

I mean cmon, if you need someone to tell you that lying on a balcony railing of a seventh story apartment whilst drunk is a bad idea, or that car surfing off the back of a Commodore is not so smart or lying face down on top of a car with three mates will probably get you killed – it’s probably only a matter of time before you wiped yourself out anyway.

I hope this spate of Planking craziness continues and that there are many more ‘tragedies’ to come. We all need a bit of cheering up every now and then and these morons aren’t going to be missed anytime soon.

Thankfully if the last week is anything to go by, we won’t be running out of them anytime soon. Yay!

The attacking dog in question was none other then my neighbours pet Doberman. On the day of the incident we spoke with who at the time I thought was the owner of the dog, an old man completely indifferent to the attack.

Since the mauling, I learnt that the doberman actually belonged to the old man’s  son, which could explain why he didn’t really seem to give a crap.

Unfortunately however, the old man’s son proved to be just as indifferent about the whole incident.

It’s been a difficult month or so for me but sitting in a Taiwanese police station last Thursday night, I was finally able to put the issue of Pogo being attacked to rest.

Shortly after the mauling, I was required to go down to the local police station and file a report. Thankfully this was mostly done by my bosses sister while I just sat there absolutely dumbfounded and emotionally shut down at what had just happened.

Following this, a few days later my boss received a call from the police station advising her that they didn’t really want to get involved, and that it was in our best interests to sort the matter out of Taiwan’s legal system.

From here my boss contacted the owner of the doberman and what proceeded was a month long process of stuffing around.

After the first call, my boss informed me that the gentlemen didn’t want to offer any money up as compensation, but rather wanted to buy me a new dog.

As a pet owner for over a decade, this simply wasn’t good enough.

I didn’t particularly care about the money but who just accepts an animal as a pet without knowing anything about it or it’s temperament.

Call me superficial, but anytime I’ve chosen a pet I have searched high and low till I found ‘the one’ I’ve felt that connection with. In my head I know what I’m looking for in a pet and previously I haven’t stopped looking until I’ve found it.

No way was I going to let someone else decide what pet I was going to have.

Then of course there was the question of money. We got Pogo for $10,000 TWD, which is admittedly cheap for a purebred Pug with a kennel certificate. Originally he was priced for $14,000 but my girlfriend talked them down (in part I think because one of Pogo’s eyes was lazy) and we got him cheaper.

How was this guy going to come out any cheaper by buying us a new Pug puppy – and then of course there was the $1500 TWD fee I was charged to incinerate Pogo’s body and my hospital bill.

Needless to say I flatly refused this offer and insisted I be properly compensated for my loss.

Again, it wasn’t about the money and all I was asking for was $10,000 TWD to cover the price of Pogo, $1500 TWD to cover the vet bill and another $1000 TWD to cover the hospital visit.

When I told my boss this, she said that I was also entitled to ask for a little extra for compensation. To be honest, the idea of accepting money for Pogo’s death felt like I was somehow legitimizing what happened and made me uncomfortable.

Still, with her advice I rounded up my claim to $15,000, adding $2,500 TWD (less then $100 AUD) on top of my expenses to cover what I’d been through.

Over the next week or so a series of phonecalls took place between my boss and the owner. Stuffing us around he said he didn’t know what kind of dog it was but that he could get us one if we agreed not to ask for any additional money, then when it was explained to him it was a pug he claimed he had no idea what that was.

Telling him it was in his best interests then to just cover my costs and be done with it then, he started going on about how he didn’t know what his dog had done.

When challenged with the fact that we’d filed a police report, had video footage of the attack and an eyewitness – things got a bit nasty.

First the owner made an offer of $11,000 TWD, $1500 below what I paid for Pogo, my hospital bill and the cost of incinerating him.

The reason for such a low offer was because he claimed he didn’t have that good a job and simply couldn’t afford it.

Sympathetic, I told my boss that I’d be happy if he just covered my costs – a whopping extra $1,500 that would have brought his payout to $12,500 from his offer of $11,000.

I even said I didn’t care if he wanted to pay in installments… I just wanted to put the incident behind me and move on.

The owner refused to cover my expenses at $12,500, instead standing firm on his $11,000 offer. He claimed he simply couldn’t afford it.

Keep in mind this family owned a four story high house, owned two cars, a giant truck out the front and at least two scooters.

When I rejected his $11,000 offer for the second time – his response was that either I take the money or that we could take him to court – he didn’t care either way.

Finding absolutely no logic in his reasoning, I did some research and found that it wouldn’t at all be entirely unreasonable to ask for $25,000-$30,000 if the matter did go to court. Given the way Pogo died, arguably it was one of the worst things a dog owner could mentally go through.

In a final effort to reason with the owner, my boss contacted him again and stated that we were still asking for $15,000, and that if he refused and the matter went to court, the amount being claimed would be $25,000 (not because I needed it, but because by now I was starting to get right royally pissed off at the owner personally).

His response was the same as before, take my $11,000 offer or take me to court – I don’t care.

This of course pushed the limits of my patience.

After some discussion with my boss and girlfriend, I decided that I didn’t really have any other choice at this point other then to proceed with legal action.

We informed the police of our decision and they said they’d have to take a an official statement from the owner regarding the incident before any court proceedings could commence.

About a week later we received an odd phonecall from the police department informing us that after contacting the owner, he’d expressed to them that he wished to settle the matter outside of the legal system.

A complete reversal of what he’d told us.

Not entirely sure what sort of response we’d get, we contacted the owner again shortly after and informed in that the amount we were asking for hadn’t changed. $15,000 out of court or $25,000 if we had to waste time going through the legal system.

He stated that he didn’t want to go through the legal system (why would you, it was a slam dunk case against him), but after all the bullshit he’d pulled, had the balls to ask if we could lower the amount we were asking for.

On the principle of the matter, I refused.

And that was how I found myself sitting in a police station looking at some form of contractual agreement written in Chinese which I couldn’t read.

It was also the first time I’d seen the owner himself. A tall, well built man, he didn’t match the typical skinny short profile of Taiwanese males. Dressed in jeans and an old sweater, he looked like he was some kind of tradie.

Initially after going over the agreement my boss informed me that it basically said that by accepting the $15,000, I would agree to not pursue any further action against the owner.

This I obviously agreed to but I was curious as to why I couldn’t see $15,000 anywhere on the paper.

My boss pointed to a blank space and told me it would later be filled in.

Yeah, not buying it. After all the crap I’d been through over the last month I said I wasn’t signing anything until the contract clearly had $15,000 written somewhere on it that I could see.

This resulted in the owner taking the contract back to the police and them apparently changing some of the details of where the attack took place that weren’t entirely correct.

I’m not sure exactly what this had to do with the $15,000 sum not being on there, but I let them do their thing.

About twenty minutes later I was presented with a new contract which the man then added the $15,000 sum to.

Happy enough given the circumstances I was given my money infront of the police and signed the contract.

The owner and I were then each given a copy, after which he just walked out without saying anything.

To date, nobody has apologised for the death of my dog other than the police officer who attended the scene and had to present Pogo’s body to me in a plastic bag.

The issues of the last month or so aside, personally I’m just happy that I can finally put this all behind me and move on.

I don’t know if I just lucked out and ran into the king of dickhead dog owners in Taiwan or whether ultimately trying to screw the other party when you’re clearly in the wrong is standard cultural practice, but the entire experience has certainly left a bitter taste in my mouth regarding Taiwanese dog owners.

Meanwhile, I’ve put the money aside to buy a new Pug in a few months. Not just right now as I think I need a bit more time to emotionally properly deal with it.

I’ll leave you with a photo of Pogo happy as can be on top of Yangmingshan;

Not a day goes by without me realising just how much I miss his little smile.

The Australian Sky news feed is currently streaming some very serious looking newsmen and commentary on the announcements following Bin Laden’s death.

Meanwhile overlayed on top of the broadcast is a live feed from public gatherings outside the Whitehouse. Trying to take the news commentary seriously is kinda hard when the news crew have focused on a Pug and its owner for the last twenty minutes or so…

Despite the somewhat confused face on the Pug (‘what on earth is going on, who are all these people?! PUT ME BACK TO BED!!‘), I’m glad to see the Pugs of the world approve of Bin Laden’s death and stand in solidarity with their owners.

Bless.