This's our group all geared up and ready to hit the water. Love those padded helmets. You can see Marie just to the left of the center of the group.
But some people just shouldn't be told where the camera is.
But we got off. This's the best shot in the collection of Marie's and my boat. That's me on the right rear (can I say "aft" when I'm talking about a rubber boat?) and Marie is sitting just ahead of me.
We did have a fair flotilla on the water. Our group was only two of the boats.
But even our group was dwarfed in the canyons we went through. This was just leading edge of the trip. Our driver lost us here and had to pick us up at the other end.
If you want a really great view, drag and drop this picture onto your desktop and blow it up. This's where the river, I think the Hualien river, we were on empties into the Pacific. That's the Pacific between the two bits of greenery. It was a weird feeling. I've seen the Pacific many times in Washington, and I know we're living on an island. By definition there must be a lot of water out there somewhere, but it just doesn't sink in until you see it. Then you get this big whack of understanding.
And finally, I want to say "the end of the trip" which it was, but saying that gives the impression this's a sunset, and I don't think it is. We had a fair-sized mountain range behind us, so I think this must be a sunrise, but it's kinda ridiculous how beautiful it is, and I'm disappointed I couldn't take photos like this. Again, this's much better if you blow it up on your computer. This might be one I blow up and frame.
But more recently, we've been busy. We finally went to the National Palace Museum. The simplified story goes something like, when the government of China was being ousted by the Communists in the 40s and 50s, the now government of Taiwan lifted much of the historical artifacts of the last 8,000 years of China's history. And here's where they ended up.
I don't think I completely grasped the magnitude of the things we saw. No photos allowed, so I have nothing to show, sorry. But I don't think there's a thing I can do to do justice to what they had on display.
Marie and I spent a couple days in D.C. before coming here, and we were awed and impressed and humbled by the history of the creation of the United States and the great experiment which isn't doing too bad 200 hundred years later. But then you come here and they explain the importance of bronze working from something like 4,000 years ago. And they can draw an almost perfect line between some guy who did the pot you're looking at and the modern smelting methods. It's like looking at the ocean and really understanding what you're looking at, the size, the power, the time it encompasses. The best I could come up with is to have some idea of how I wasn't really understanding much of it.
Sigh. I must be old. I hate this peace sign thing in photos, no matter how socially relevant it may be. I even took another one of Marie and this lion-dragon, but she blinked in that one. But I think this gives the best idea of the kinds of things inside.
We came on our day off, on New Year's day. Apparently, this was a free admission day, so it was more crowded than usual. Good thing this's crowded, 'cause compared to inside, this's pretty sparse. But Marie and I only saw part of one floor. We agreed it'll take several trips to even begin to see something of the entire collection. We'll also need walkie-talkies and emergency supplies for when we have to find each other.
I can't decide if they keep things dark to prevent photography, or just for ambience, 'cause it certainly isn't to help with reading.
And this's a shot of the boulevard from the museum. And it's a long way up, too. The huge lion-dragon Marie was standing next to is under the left-most white pillar.
On another topic, I also wanted to mention that I'd seen our friend Michelle's blog on simplicity. She set it up to work out her and her family's attempt at simplifying their lives. With a like-new baby (Griff is a little over a year), I can't imagine why she'd just have to simplify her life now.
I liked it 'cause she mentions that if you seach "simplify your life" Google will give you 1.2 million suggestions. And after checking a few she noticed that some people are trying to reduce the amount of money they spend, or the amount of time they spend on things that aren't important, or the amount of stuff they own-are owned by, and so on. One person even had a 72 point checklist on how to simplify... ahh, that's too easy.
I mention this 'cause several of these aspects are very important to us lately. I mention Michelle's journal 'cause that's what made me follow this line, I also have to mention it 'cause any lack of simplicity on Michelle and Karl's part is why we didn't have to simplify our lives any further. Thanks to them and their suburban home and space, we didn't have to say, "well, we can't possibly take Marie's wedding dress with us, I guess we'll have to get rid of it." And the same for a desktop computer and pricy monitor, among a couple of car loads of mementoes we didn't have to "simplify" so I have to keep mentioning that. And she reads our blog.
But we were in the camp of simplifying by getting rid of a lot of stuff. That was a very popular comment as we were getting ready to travel: "What are you going to do with your stuff?" Everyone seemed to expect us to store it, but of course that's pretty expensive for a lot of IKEA or IKEAesque furniture. I would say that getting rid of that much stuff is really great, 'cause you just don't see how much junk there is unless you're moving and when you do, you realize you have strings of Christmas lights that you can't remember buying, an answering machine you never use, and a VCR you didn't know didn't work.
But you've probably heard most of this. The interesting part is here, now, as we're maintaining our simplicity. Much of our not buying more stuff is 'cause we don't need much. We have two spoons. I'm not kidding. There are no dishwashers here. None. Every house seems to have a dish dryer. I don't get that. We just use ours as a dish rack. I can't grasp using energy to dry the dishes. But it keeps us from wanting a lot of dishes that we'll just have to do by hand.
After that we buy what's gonna get used: the dehumidifier is used every couple of days to help with laundry, and it kinda warms the computer room. The reading lamp and the water filter are used most days. The heater is used most days now. The fan hasn't been used for weeks, but it'll run about 24-7 when summer arrives. So far, the thing we have that we haven't used much are speakers for the living room, but it's nice they were there for the Christmas party.
We're also influenced by knowing that at some point we're going to have to reduce all this again to come home. I like the Brita water filter I found, and I might buy another one, but I'm not lugging it the 16,000 miles home.
So, those are my suggestions for simplifying your life: make yourself move some place far away for months, then come home. I'm kinda hoping a little of the simplicity sticks with us and we aren't quite so prone to buying something just 'cause it's there and we can afford it. We still have enough stuff to mostly fill several hundred square feet of apartment, but we're lucky; the apartment came furnished, so we didn't have to buy a couch or dinning table or a bed, so that's some of our simplicity. And we are discovering what's important to us. In spite of weight limits and having to carry everything, we brought about five nail clippers. So there's an aspect of finding the small and simple things that are important.
I can also say there's some logic in buying the decent quality stuff once. I've been really happy I bought a backup drive for our computers. It carried several hundred discs of music I wouldn't want to store on a laptop, but I was really glad to have several discs of Christmas music. So, yeah, find what's important to you.
The funny thing is, Taiwanese are very good at not simplifying. My current working gripe is how they have a big recycling program to encourage households to recycle their garbage, and the government even demands that all sellers charge for plastic bags, to encourage people to bring their own. But then you see that EVERYTHING is wrapped in plastic. Noodles, well yeah that's kinda necessary... head of broccoli, but why d'you need... bunch of kiwi, hold on a second that's... six-pack of beer, but that's just stupid... paper-back book, just STOP right there! Or at least, that's what it feels like when I'm looking around a store and I feel like someone's about to wrap me in cellophane.
And I'm not kidding about the book. Most books in bookstores are plastic wrapped. Maybe for water protection, maybe to prevent people from reading before they've bought 'em. Your guess is's good as mine.
This may be the best example of not simplifying. I'll give up being polite and just write, to my American perceptions half of the Taiwan economy, at least the local parts, are based on selling stuff that "fell off" the back of a truck. Marie showed me this shop of shops. No, really. Each of these individual little cubes is owned by a person or some kinda seller. So it's like a micro-mall or something. All kinda of weird knick-knacks and doo-dads and other things I don't have even random syllables to try and define them with.
So, that's been our last week or so. Next time we'll get into more of the details of culture shock, hopefully without being mean, but it's definitely necessary to talk about the culture that gives you a Saturday off of work, but makes you come in on Sunday to make it up.
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