Being a tourist in Taipei

by | Saturday, May 17, 2008

I woke up this morning, feeling maybe for the first time in this entire trip, tired and a little homesick. I ascribe the first to the rather hectic schedule I have had the past 10 days so, continually on the move, presentation after presentation, meeting after meeting, never in a place for more than a day. The homesickness I ascribe to hanging out with Hsueh-Hua, Han-Chin, and (the one most to blame) their 8 year old son Matthew. I guess I was suddenly reminded, in a very forceful way, of the three people back home in Okemos, whom I haven’t seen or talked to in a while

The day was spent doing touristy kinds of things – all of which can be gleaned better from the photographs, some of which have been uploaded to Flickr and others will be sometime soon.

Dinner, for once, was a quiet affair, a veggie Subway sandwich, in my hotel room watching Taiwanese game and reality TV shows (not that I understood a word!).

Just a couple of thoughts about Taiwan, little things that surprised me. First, it turns out that pretty much everybody is a fan of the Yankees. This is mainly because of Chien-Ming Wang who is a pitcher for the Yankees and a national hero back home. Almost every body you meet, from a cab driver to an academic follows every game and knows the most arcane of baseball statistics.

Second, is something I saw during my first evening here at Taipei. We were strolling around after dinner through the inner streets, generally looking around the shops till we came to a small public park in the middle of this hustling, bustling marketplace and people’s homes. What first drew me to this park was the sound of country music blaring through a music system. And there, in the middle of the park, were approximately 30 people, mostly middle aged women, slow dancing in formation. This combination of Alan Jackson, smells of food from the restaurants and open-air stalls, and the gentle aerobic dance was just wonderful to see.

What a beautifully crazy world we live in.

I am off tomorrow to Hong Kong, one day, two nights and then back to India.

Topics related to this post: Fun | Personal | Research | Teaching | Technology | TPACK | Travel

A few randomly selected blog posts…

Designing learning futures through reflective practice: 2 of 2

Designing learning futures through reflective practice: 2 of 2

This is the second of two posts on the topic of bringing principled innovation practices to designing learning futures. In this post (by Cristy Guleserian & Punya Mishra) we dive deeper into how these practices of PI connect with our model of design. In particular...

Vikram OR Vetaal, A Halloween Story (co-authored with AI)

Vikram OR Vetaal, A Halloween Story (co-authored with AI)

A few weeks back, Sean Leahy – friend, tech aficionado, futurist, and the co-host of the Learning Futures Podcast – reached out to me via email with an intriguing proposal. He was playing with the concept of harnessing generative AI to craft Halloween stories. The aim...

Pogue on design

David Pogue has couple of great examples in his latest posting about bad design in the world of software. Check out: It’s the Software, Not You. Potentially useful in CEP817/917...

3 pieces of wisdom, one muddled conclusion

Just came up with this in response to something Leigh had said on Facebook... thought it ought to be saved for the future: Great fools think that birds of a feather seldom differ together! I wonder what it means? Can you identify the three nuggets of wisdom that went...

Playing with Droste (on my iPad)

I have, for a long time, been interested in the Droste effect - a "specific kind of recursive picture... [in which] an image exhibiting the Droste effect depicts a smaller version of itself in a place where a similar picture would realistically be expected to appear....

Untangling a decade of creativity scholarship

Untangling a decade of creativity scholarship

How do we capture a program of scholarship in an image? This is particularly complicated when the work is a tangled web of connections between research, teaching and practice, spread out over multiple publications, presentations and people. One attempt to do...

Google ranking, a self defeating approach

Matt Koehler has an interesting post (Keeping track of the Koehlers) about his attempts to rise in Google's rankings for searches on his last name. In the last few months he seems to have had some success judging that he has moved from page 25 to somewhere in the 3-4...

Leigh Wolf @IgniteLansing

Leigh Wolf, my partner in crime as far as the MAET program goes, recently presented at Ignite Lansing. She talked about her two passions, teaching and food (not sure which order to place these). Specifically she talked about food photography and the connections she...

Happy Hanukkah: New Ambigram

Happy Hanukkah: New Ambigram

In keeping with the holiday theme (see Christmas ambigram below) it seemed appropriate to create a design for Hanukkah. That task actually turned out easier than I had expected - with some natural symmetries that I could take advantage of. The "U" at the...

5 Comments

  1. Punya Mishra

    Yes I did, and I think I did write about it too… I also have a ton of photos from 101. Check it out here. [The Taipei 101 pictures start around two-thirds of the page down and continue on to the next page. Enjoy.

    Reply
  2. Daniel

    Have you visited the Taipei 101? It sure is one of the most exciting buildings in the world.

    Reply
  3. Punya Mishra

    No, I am now in India for a few days and then I go back to the US.

    Reply
  4. Sandra

    Are you still in here(Taiwan)?

    Reply
  5. Sandra

    Are you still in here Taiwan?

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Punya Mishra Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *