Always an Adventure...

If you watch the news, maybe you've heard the stir recently about tainted milk products (especially milk powder) from China, and how a number of babies got sick and even died from drinking milk with toxic materials in it. Well since China is one of Taiwan's biggest trading partners (if not the biggest), it follows that some of those products may have made their way over here. There's been quite a stir about it recently, with some of my friends warning me not to drink milk tea or buy any bread or cake. I know some 3-in-1 coffees have recalled their products. Other stores have posted signs outside saying that none of their ingredients came from China. Today at lunch, the restaurant owner even brought the jug of milk over to our table to "prove" that he was using fresh milk, and not milk powder (though we hadn't actually asked... it came after he offered us all free soft-serve ice cream - made with FRESH milk). As for me, I doubt I've consumed any tainted pr...

Today I'm really happy that I ride a bike for daily transportation. Gas prices are going up all over the world, but that's especially true for Taiwan this week. The outgoing government froze gas prices after the election; maybe it was an attempt to go out with a little favor. On May 20, the new president was inaugurated, and subsequently the gas prices could no longer stay the same. Since they've been frozen since the end of March, there's quite a ways to go. Officially, at midnight tonight the price of gas will rise 2NT per litre, or about 6 cents (to just over a dollar a liter in Canadian money). In the next month it will happen twice more. So what were people all over Taiwan doing tonight? Waiting in line to get gas! The police even joined in the party doing crowd control. On the way home from Chinese class, people were lined up about 2km along the highway near the gas stations.... though I had to wonder if the gas they were wasting while idling in line was even more...

We just had an election here, but the morning before the election, my good friend Libeck was part of a duet singing The Prayer , a beautiful song that has been on my heart ever since, and quite fitting for this time that we should really be praying for Taiwan. There are lots of versions of this song, and I wish I had a record of the one they sang last week, but here is one. If you have time, check out the duet between Josh Groban and Charlotte Church, or Chloe Agnew giving it a Celtic flavor. I know the last line of the chorus is "Give is faith so we'll be safe" but I can't help but replace it with the word "saved" sometimes. Like the man in Mark who cried out to Jesus "I believe, help my unbelief!" Anyways, all that musical goodness to say: Taiwan has a new president! Well, he won't take office until May, but he was elected on Saturday. Ma Ying-jeou is the leader of the Nationalist party or KMT, or as known here, the blue party. ...