The reason for the ribbon on my lapel is that today is the national day of Norway. I don’t really have an explanation for the thought bubble, so instead of trying to rationalise it I’ll just go eat some ice cream and strawberries to numb the pain of being a dork.
My city seems to finally be thawing out of winter’s icy grip. I dusted off my bike and rode into town today. The warmth of the spring air against my face and the sounds of Fourplay’s “Chant” in my ears, the feeling as I pedaled off down the sidewalk was nothing short of euphoric. One of the those moments where you feel grateful for simply being.
Snapped a few photos along the way, I’ve uploaded three of those along with the aforementioned Fourplay song off my iPod. I only wish I could also share the feeling of joy at being alive. Hope you had a wonderful day today.
In honor of April Fool’s Day, JoJo sent me some artwork she doodled at work. When I woke up this morning, I found this in my mailbox under the heading of “Have a wonderful day”:
She knows I check my mail in the morning so this was apparently a ploy to challenge my sense of appetite. Later followed more random drawings, asking me to guess what they pictured:
I should perhaps explain that steamed buns are JoJo’s favorite breakfast meal.
Really, really random stuff, but they made me smile and crack up. She’s such a cheeky monkey.
I always thought one plus one equaled two. Now I have to prepare for one plus one equaling one. I’m engaged.
Bergen is known as the city surrounded by seven mountains. Mount Fløyen is the most accessible of these as you can ride the funicular from the city centre to its roof and enjoy the trademark view of the city. We went up there today on a chilly but clear day and here are a couple of photos and a short video to prove it.
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Happy Valentine’s Day, guys.
During my September 2007 visit to Taiwan, I took the opportunity to visit the world’s tallest building, the 101 in Taipei. Actually, I visited it twice.
The first time was in the evening, so the sun had set and I was able to admire the night time view of the city lights. In addition to the indoor observatory on the 89th floor, I also visited the outdoor observatory two floors above, which proved a windy and quite chilly experience. I also had a security guard confiscate my chewing gum on the way up there. Guess they’re concerned with the possibility of people spitting gum at pedestrians 400 meters below.
Window glare had made it a bit difficult to get good photos after dark, so I decided to go back a few days later during the afternoon to see the city during daylight hours and get some more photos. I also happened to take a video while walking through the observatory and that’s the video I’ve now uploaded to share with you.
Hope you enjoy this quick virtual tour of the Taipei 101, currently the world’s tallest building.
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After uploading the video from the arcade last night, I happened to see that YouTube had put up some other videos featuring the same kind of basketball arcade games in the “related videos” section. By chance I clicked one and found this:
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That’s some pretty insane stuff.
Thought I’d share another holiday memory from my trip to Taiwan in Sept-Oct of 2007, this time from one of the many arcades littering the country. This particular one was a two storey gamer’s paradise inside a mall in Taoyuan. Now, in addition to lots and lots and lots of video games, there are two things any self-respecting Taiwanese arcade hall will contain; basketball arcade machines and purikura booths.
I had never tried out one of these basketball games before, but that didn’t stop me from challenging JoJo, a native of Taiwan and its arcade machines, to a deathmatch. It didn’t go too well at first, but a combination of male competitive ego, a healthy fear of embarassment, and frustration at losing time and rhythm from having balls fly out of the cage or getting stuck to the basketball rim made me dust myself off the floor and try again. And again and again and again. Here’s a video document of the whole sordid story.
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The other staple of every Taiwanese arcade hall is the purikura photo booth. “Purikura” is an abbreviation of “purinto kurabu”, which is the Japanese pronounciation of the English words “print club”. As you might gather then, these are Japanese inventions and are best described as photo booths that allow you to decorate the photos with cutesy graphics using a pen and touch screen. The finished images are then printed out as tiny stickers which you can share and trade with friends. Like other facets of Japanese pop culture, these machines have spread throughout South-East Asia and can also be found in countries such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, South Korea and Singapore.
Here, then, are some glossy sticker memories from my trip, and, yes, I suck at posing for photos:
Happy new year, folks.
Hope you all had a nice christmas period and that the celebrations left no permanent scars. Personally I had a quiet holiday with family and relatives with no disfigurations to tell the story. It was nice, but I would still prefer to ring in the new year here (and I will at some point in the future):
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That’s the world’s highest building, the 101 in Taipei, which each New Year’s Eve is turned into the world’s most impressive fireworks display.
