Idiomatic Expression

As many of you know we are renting a house from my Father-In-Law. For many years prior to this it had been rented by a couple that did not take very good care of the house, unless you consider Pepto-Bismol pink (with silver and black specks) an appropriate living room color, and enjoy the odor of burnt weasel. My F-I-L has been wonderful about fixing up the house and taking care of the many problems that we have found inside. Still the latest problem is quite a doozy and will probably require Katherine and me to move out for two-three weeks while it is repaired.

I tried to take some picture, but it is hard to take pictures of a hole under your bathroom. Hopefully I can stop by once the floor is ripped up to take some pictures.

In an effort to keep people updated on where I am in the world I am going to try and keep a list of when I am where I am in a seperate category so that a view by category in the archives will act as a sort of schedule for me. The map is just a bit of graphics to keep you amused.

Comments Appreciated.

In the latest instance of life imitating Monty Python’s Flying Circus, a teenager practicing for the upper class twit of the year award managed to run over himself with a truck he had stolen early in the day.

I believe the suspect probably looks a lot like cletus here:

I have been trying to find a way to write about some of my experiences in Taiwan, so far I haven’t thought of a really good format. As I said before things were so different from the cities I have visited in North America and Europe that noting the differences would be impossible. At the same time, in a lot of ways Taipei is like any other big city you would find in any first world country.

For now I am going to try posting one of the many pictures that I took in Taiwan, and talk about the story behind it.

Mountain Pig

Just around the corner from where we stayed with Katherine’s Xiao Yi (little aunt) there were two small pigs in cages. Just outside of Taipei city there are a lot of mountains and small wild pigs and large wild cows are pretty abundant. Local folklore has it that the Japanese released the animals (along with a number of imported breeds poisonous snakes) when the Island was returned to Chinese rule in 1945. Check out the U.S. State Department background page for a short history of Taiwan.

I haven’t had time to write about the trip to Taipei yet, but the pictures have arrived!

Well I was supposed to be in Secaucus, NJ for five days, then it was three, now it is 1.5 days. Apparently an error in communication has made me redundant. Of course this makes me very happy as now I can go home and rake more leaves!

Secaucus seems to exist soley to be the home of outlet malls, major league sporting arenas, and hotels. Luckily I am only here for a night so I won’t get too fed up with the two options I can eat on the room service menu.

If you haven’t seen it yet, Lycos has released its Top 50 Searches of 2002 list. Strangely the winner is from a Japanese cartoon that I got my fill of way back in 1994, Dragonball.

Other items from the list:

• Prom Dresses and Anorexia are pared together at numbers 39 and 40. Coincidence? I THINK NOT!


• Halloween has overtaken Christmas as the most popular holiday.


• The Bible is slightly more popular than marijuana.


• Martha Stewart, Oprah Winfrey, and Britney Spears were more popular than Halle Berry. That just isn’t right.

I have arrived safely home from Taipei. Sorry no pictures yet as I seem to have killed my W2K box by trying to install a scanner and cd-burner without rebooting enough times.

Taiwan was wonderful I promised to take notes, but when I sat down to do it I was so overwhelmed that I gave up. There were to many differences and similarites to the cities I am familiar with in the US to note either.

Hopefully I will have the time and energy to get pictures up and write something worth reading about the trip.