Shot in a Tainan parking garage.  You know what to do!

Lately, my MSN account has been deluged with bot spam.  Many of my local friends use MSN chat (but I can’t understand why because it sucks).  My international friends tend to use Yahoo and even ICQ.  In the last month there has been a marked increase in the number of bots trying to “chat” with me.  There seems to be only 3 or 4 scripts, such as  “annetunali@hotmail.com: wazzup thenhbushman …..I cant upload my pics to msn for some reason! lol Hit me back up on [link deleted] so I can send you a cam invite!” presumably from some young woman who just contacted you.  It’s all spam and I hate it so much that I have MSN disabled now because I can’t stand the frequent interruptions by spammers!  I hope MSN cleans up their act, soon.

Recently, the links to this blog have approached 10,000.  The strange thing is, the number of links varies greatly from day to day (by as much as 3,000), which means that blogs are going down and others are popping up to replace them.  The vast majority of these links are from worthless copy blogs that are nothing more than link banks to try to get high rankings to make money with Adsense before Google catches them and disables their account.  Pitiful.  Every week I get links to useless blogs where no one can comment and it’s nothing more than a bunch of excerpts from blogs across the board.  Every time I get a trackback from a blog like that I mark it as spam and delete it.

Internet spam uses up a tremendous amount of resources, and it doesn’t work. The only people who are making money on spam are the ones selling spamming resources. Never, ever support spammers.  Never buy products advertised by spammers.  Never allow spammers to promote their products on your blog.

Photos by MJ Klein & Hui-chen.  Warning - FOOD PHOTOS!

We admit it.  We love going to the cabin in Miaoli.  We went back on Saturday but this time we introduced some friends to Becky’s family and their very cool place to relax.  Here’s the story:

The day began with me preparing the Dutch oven for some camp fare.  These are boneless beef ribs that I’m taking out of the package.  The Dutch oven is hot and ready to go.

Browning the meat: the critical first step in preparing meat dishes in a Dutch oven.

The meat is starting to brown up nicely.  I did add a little garlic at this point.

My secret ingredient is oyster sauce.  I don’t have to add any salt to the dish and the oyster sauce gives it a very nice flavor base.  In this shot I’ve also added some bottled water to the pot.

After the meat is browned and the liquids are added, it’s time to add the remaining ingredients to the pot.  In this case it’s the standard stew vegetables, potatoes carrots and onions, plus more garlic.

Now this is the fun part.  The cabin has a large variety of herbs and fruits growing, thanks to the careful attention of Becky’s father.  I cut some fresh rosemary and put it right on top of the packed pot.

This is a baby watermelon that they have growing on the property.

Checking on the progress of the food.  We see that the rosemary has browned some.  This releases a fantastic flavor that is hard to duplicate otherwise.

In the meantime, with the Dutch oven fare coming along well, it’s time to light up the grill.

This is Carrie and Thoth, hanging out and enjoying the drinks and the company.  Those are devilled eggs in front of Carrie.  I haven’t had those for ages and I ate quite a few of them.  Thanks for making them, Carrie!  Carrie is sampling my concoction of Mekong Thai rum and CC Lemon. I’ve cut way down on cola products recently and it’s had a dramatic and positive effect on how I feel.  Fortunately, CC Lemon makes a great mixer with rum!  There is some debate whether Mekong (actual spelling is “Mekhong” on the English label) is actually a rum or a whisky.  Either way, I like it.

This is John, relaxing.  All he needs is a smoking jacket!

I was very happy to look up and see our friend Patrick arriving.  I wasn’t sure if he would be able to make it or not.  Great to have you with us, Patrick!  For those of you who don’t know, the woman is my wife, Hui-chen.

Becky checks the charcoal on the grill and prepares the cooking surface for John.

This cool looking thing is a teppanyaki plate.  Becky’s dad had it made to his own design.  It sits over the grill and makes for a nice cooking surface for that kind of cuisine.

John whipped up a sampler version of his famous burgers and cooked them on the teppanyaki plate.  There are 2 noteworthy pieces of information about this photograph.  The brick is to keep too much hot air from venting out and burning the chef (it needs a chimney and top).  The white material in the center of the burgers is blue cheese. John made it very clear that this recipie is not for the burgers that he is known for.  He didn’t want to tip his hand entirely because John has challenged me to a burger cookoff that we hope to be showing you in the near future.  This event will be judged by the attendees.  It should be a great competetion! I can tell you after tasting these burgers that I am going to have to pull out all the stops in order to beat John!

Now it’s time to check the Dutch oven and see how things are progressing:

Looking good.  Time to add something else.

I enjoy cooking with fruit and Taiwan fruit is some of the best tasting in the entire world.  I cut some nectarines and split the pieces by hand, removing the pits.  These went right into the pot and cooked for about 20 more minutes.

This is the finished pot, on the table ready to be opened and served.

This is an overview of the table.  I’ll show you what that stuff is to the far left, shortly.

The teppanyaki plate is great for cooking in butter or margarine as is done here in Taiwan.

This is the finished boneless beef rib dish.  The rib meat turned out fork-tender.  The Dutch oven is known for tenderizing meat like that.  The rosemary flavor was not overpowering but it was a dominant feature of this dish.  I’m pretty happy with how this one turned out.

After stuffing our faces with burgers, grilled vegetables and beef ribs, it was time for me to prepare one more dish.  This is my 10″ Dutch oven.  In previous photographs I was using Becky’s father’s Dutch oven, a 12″ model.  Here we see the 10″ oiled up and on the fire.

This concoction is a chocolate cake mix, with a can of cherry pie filling added.  It’s all mixed together in a bag and then squeezed out into the pot.  Yeah, I know it looks like something else.  But just wait….

Top coals are essential to Dutch oven cooking, and are in fact, one of the main aspects of successful Dutch oven cooking.  Here the fire on the bottom is minimal while there are plenty of top coals.  This assures a nice even heating for baking.

I left it like this for about 15 minutes.  The total cooking time was just about 30 minutes.

In the meantime, I heated up my other trick for the evening - my vegetable griller.

As I’ve stated many times before, the secret to great grill flavor is smoke. If you don’t have smoke, you don’t have grill flavor.  The holes allow the smoke to come back up and flavor the food.

This system actually works.  You have to be very careful of flareups, however.

Now, imagine this dish with that nice smoky flavor you can only get from grilling, and you can start to appreciate what it tastes like.

Becky’s brother wanted to try grilling the vegetables.  Its so easy and a lot of fun.

After the grilled vegetables, the cake was finished.

This is camping food at it’s best.  Chocolate-cherry cake.  So good you don’t need and frosting, and not the least bit dried out.  Moist and flavorful.  Wanna go camping with us next time?

Now, after cooking and stuffing our faces for hours, not to mention drinking, it was time to get down to the entertainment portion of the program!  That’s Carrie at the mic.

I brought my Yamaha PA system with me, along with my drum machine.  Carrie and I did some live guitar/vocals over programmed bass and drum tracks.  It was a lot of fun.

Ahhhh….  relaxing in the evening to some classic rock.

But the real fun was yet to come.  We hooked up a DVD player to the TV, and the audio to the PA system and created the Ultimate Taiwanese Experience: karaoke!  Here Thoth is giving us a rendition of I don’t know what, but it sure was fun.

Like some surreal lounge act, Carrie and I belted out some pretty-decent-sounding duets.  I can’t remember when I had so much fun just fooling around with some songs.  Carrie sings very well.  You could come with us next time and hear for yourself.

While some of us were singing, others were catching river shrimp and cooking them on the grill.

Sharon sang a couple of Chinese songs for us.  Other than a few of them, the rest of the evening was all English songs.  So we’re glad Sharon sang some Chinese songs.  She sounded great.

Our parting shot is John and Becky looking for river shrimp.  We’ve shown this activity before in the other articles about Miaoli.  You may enjoy reading them by clicking on the links at the end of this article.

I’ll leave you with one video clip.

Saturday In Miaoli from MJ Klein on Vimeo.

We hope you have enjoyed reading about our Saturday in Miaoli.  Hope you can join us next time!

I found a new service (thanks to my RSS reader) for people like me who take a lot of photos and are looking for new ideas and ways to use them. Photosynth creates a 3D model of the subject based on uploaded photos. Photosyth goes way beyond the idea of a panorama and really does give the viewer a feeling like they are viewing the actual subject.  Installing the program will also install a brower plug-in for viewing the output, called a “synth.”

Here’s more from Microsoft:

“An Entirely New Medium

Synths constitute an entirely new visual medium. Photosynth analyzes each photo for similarities to the others, and uses that data to estimate where a photo was taken. It then re-creates the environment and uses that as a canvas on which to display the photos. The potential uses of Photosynth can range from sharing experiences to storytelling and documentation.”

You may view my synths here.

For people like me who take a lot of photos of the same subject, but from different angles and perspectives, this is a perfect application to gather all those photos together for maximum effect.  Another great thing about Photosynth is that you can embed the synths into websites:

If you enjoy photography, why not give Photosynth a try?

Photos by MJ Klein

It’s been awhile since we had a visit to our local night market on Monday evenings, so this time I took my Nikon along with me.

Even from this far away you can see the bright lights in the distance.

We park our car up at the beginning of this road (same road as the above photo).  Lately, young kids have been going up and down this road very fast, on scooters, no helmuts and as many as 3 people on one scooter.  Just the week before I saw one kid very nearly crash into a line of parked cars because he took the curve just a bit too wide at that speed.  Do you think he slowed down?

Up at the entrance to the night market.  Just as I snapped this photo, someone almost ran me down on a scooter.  Why are people in such a damn hurry to go nowhere important?

Every week we eat at the “quick fry” restaurant.  Here we see the boss whipping up some great local cuisine.

Right behind the Quick Fry is one of those iron plate steak places.  Notice the space between the tables.  Can you guess what happens when any space is left between tables and chairs like this?

If you answered: “Some people, with total disregard for your meal and contents of any drinks on the table, will forcibly push past you and use that space to cut through to the other side, most likely knocking over said drinks and spilling your food.” - you would be correct.

The rocket scientist above nearly fell flat on her face as she tripped on the tires embedded in the blactop which are supposed to demark the selling spaces. We’ve had our drinks knocked over, food spilled, and we’ve been violently pushed right into the table by selfish people forcibly pushing their way past us in the dining area and not on an actual walkway.  These concepts are lost on people here.  If you get upset or try to explain it to them, they’ll think you’re crazy.  I usually position the tables so there is no gap and i sit in between them to discourage passing through.  It’s all part of the night market experience. That and being called names.

This is a parting shot of the boss cooking up another excellent dish.  This guy is on his feet all night and he really works hard.

Sometimes, Hui-chen likes to get some other dishes, and there are quite a variety to choose from.  Here you see her ordering some of Taiwan’s famous stinky tofu.

Hope you can join us in Hukou some Monday night for our excellent market!

Photos by MJ Klein

Before I forget, my Nikon D-80 just came back from the shop on Thursday, and all seems very good.  I used it to take the shots for the Ghost Month piece over the weekend.

In our last installment, I left you with this photo:

We spent some time photographing this bridge before we took off to head back home.

The cable anchors were artistically decorated.

Viewed from the road, the artwork lined up perfectly.

Some people don’t like open spaces in bridges.

I wish I didn’t happen to know the sheer strength of a stainless steel 6mm bolt, either.  The gray box is a light that comes on at night to light up the brigde (see the previous article in this series).

This is the view straight down on the left side of the bridge.

And this is the view straight down on the right side.  Stop thinking about those small bolts.

After checking out the bridge we headed back down the mountain.  Around the 1,000 meter mark, we found this little “camping” place.  The sign said camping so we had to check it out.  As soon as I saw the karaoke machine, I understood.  We won’t be camping here anytime soon.

We passed over the bridge shown in the first article and headed back on the windy route.

Along the way, it was raining very heavily.  We stopped at one of the larger Farmers’ Markets.

There are several cooperatives that help local farmers market their goods to the public.  The quality of the goods is excellent and the prices are competetive.

This is a tea master who introduced us to some oolong tea from a small farm in Nantou.  No matter what you’ve read about spring tea this year, I can tell you that it’s very good.  This year’s crop leaves little to complain about (unless you want people to think you have tasting super powers).  We bought two bags of 2008 spring tea from this supplier and the tea is excellent.  I’ve sampled spring tea from several tea farms this year.

We walked into the next building and found one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen:

A highly detailed relief map of the area!

Around the perimiter are placenames and photos.  You press the button on the placename and the place lights up on the map.  Cool!

As you can see, the map is quite large.  And as you can also see, there wasn’t a single person interested in it except us.

After playing with the map for awhile, we got back on the road.  We were met with rain for more than half of our return journey, which took approximately 4 hours.

Photos by MJ Klein, including some food photos in this article.

Many of you might remember last year’s Ghost Month activites in our neighborhood.  I spent most of my time at Shao-hui’s place.

One of the offerings I photographed on the way to Shao-hui’s.

This is a new store in our neighborhood, selling shoes.  This is their offering outside.

Another Thai place in our neighborhood.

This is what Shao-hui’s place looks like these days.  At the end of this month they are going to move to the building on the right, next door.

This is Shao-hui’s nephew, whom we call “Didi” (little brother).  Didi wishes that was real money instead of ghost money.

This is what Shao-hui’s offering looked like initially.  The basin of water and towel underneath the table is for washing up.

What was interesting this year, is that Shao-hui had a photo album of shots I had taken last year.  She was looking at those photographs and comparing them to this year’s offering.  When it was time for them to begin the actual celebration, Shao-hui called me to come outside and photograph them.  Normally a private and personal affar, she wanted me to document everything on this occasion.

Ordinarily, I do not photograph people in the act of worship, but I want to reiterate that I was asked to do so.

Didi seems more interested in looking good for the camera!

Didi set off a pack of firecrackers, a normal element of most religious celebrations in Taiwan.

He placed the pack on a tree branch, lit the fuse….

…. and ran like hell!

Notice how this car is passing by on the wrong side of the road.  This pretty much sums things up in Taiwan, folks.  Fireworks are very often set off without regard for impact to others (notice the scooter 2 shots up), so hopefully you’re paying attention and can move out of the way without hitting someone else.

Once, Hui-chen and I were at the beach on a windy day when a group of people directly upwind from us were just about to set off a large (and dangerous) pack of fireworks, which would have been blown right at us.  We convinced them not to do it.  It was good that they agreed not to, but I’m still atonished that they didn’t even think about where the wind would blow them after they went off.  That kind of thing happens every day.

I was able to get a nice group shot (notice Didi holding up the ghost money).

The sky became threatening but it didn’t rain.  A few people commented that the dark clouds might be caused by smoke from all the burning.

Nearly everyone has a fire going in a ceremonial burner for sending items into the spirit world, through burning.  Here we see Shao-hui’s kids getting into the celebration.

These fish were not part of the offering, and were grilled right after the celebration.

Across the street, the people who run the beef noodle restaurant were having their own celebration.  They have a fire on the ground where they are buring ghost money, and the light and sparks coming from the side of the tree are from a pack of firecrackers just like the one that Didi set off earlier.  The air quality goes down considerably during these holiday observations.

This is the fish, steaming in foil.

Clearing the offering table.  Items that are offered are eaten, not discarded.

Our last shot for this article is a fried fish dish prepared by the chef in Shao-hui’s kitchen.  This is a Thai style deep fried fish with a sweet/sour sauce that was unbelievable.

I outdid myself and drank 3 short bottles of Sang Som Thai Rum.  I think that’s enough to last me for the rest of the week!

I’ve been wanting to write about this for some time. Every country has its dumb TV shows. Japanese TV shows are known for being outrageous and yet I find those shows to be entertaining at least. Same goes for Taiwan television. Some of those shows that have ordinary people jumping through hoops or making up raps can be fun and I admit that I watch them sometimes. But, when I stop and think about all the dumb TV shows coming out these days, and especially those shows emanating from the US, I can feel my IQ lowering.

Here is my list of dumb TV shows (plus my personal nickname for each show).

Show Name / Bushman’s Nickname

Battlestar Galactica / Battlestar Lactica: I am a huge fan of the original show. What is passed off as BG these days is a version where Starbuck is female (who in my opinion would be more suitable for working at Starbucks instead) and so is Boomer! Sorry, my suspension of believability can only be stretched so far. Starbuck and Boomer are supposed to be battle-hardened, older experienced men. So, how about Harrison Ford and Samuel L. Jackson? Someone please explain how/why this show got financing when great shows like Babylon 5 and Firefly got the crapper?  The fake sex and “realism” had my eyes glazing over in sec-cons.  The new Cylons looked cool but since they are all CGI it cost more money to show them so they don’t appear very often.  Pffft!

American Idol / American Midol: When I am forced to endure even one minute of this show I get a headache and a queasy stomach. I went to a restaurant in Taoyuan with some visiting friends from the US, and the boss actually put on a record by William Hung - just for us. No! Please, put on something else! How about some Taiwanese music? All met with blank smiles. Now this show has clones all around the world. Great. We’ll have even more William Hung types doing records while legitimately talented people get passed up. Figures.  I did watch an “outtakes” show when we were in the US recently and I couldn’t believe my eyes.  The truth is, as a former music industry professional, I would be embarassed to be associated with that show.

The Great Asian Race / The Great Loss of Face: I characterize this show as “foreigners acting rude” as they do stupid stuff to gain something which isn’t worth doing in the first place. Sure, the contestants travel all over, but they don’t stop to see or do anything, and in their rushing and impatience with local people, they make bad impressions on everyone they meet. Great PR vehicle, numbnuts.  This line taken from the show will put it all in perspective for you: “You are the worst person at this I’ve ever met.“  WTF?

Miami Ink / Miami Stink: What is the fascination with seeing people who have basically nothing going for them, getting tattoos and tattooing each other? There is some woman on the show now, who has kind of a classic look to her, but she’s covered with all these tattoos and, well, I think she has ruined her looks. To each her own and certainly she’s entitled to do what she wants, and I’m entitled to say it looks nasty.  So, now they got a new show and I’ll be dodging that one with the remote too.  I can see getting a tattoo from a tribal leader after a successful hunt, but not going into a strip mall shop and picking a pattern off the wall.  What I find particularly disturbing is how someone will come into the tattoo shop with an idea and then get a tattoo of a pictured drawn by some guy right there on the spot.  I think I’d spend just a *tad* more effort on something so permanent, like perhaps hiring a professional artist to create the artwork.  That is just one of those shows that baffle me when I think about what keeps it on the air.

American Chopper / American Hopper: I wish that show would go straight into the hopper.  I do not give 2 craps what the boss of that shop things, does or says.  It’s a mode of transportation people, not a lifestyle.  That is, unless you’ve got nothing else going on in your life.

Queer Eye / Queer Guys: If someone is gay, that is no one’s business but their own and that is their own choice. What I cannot stand about these shows is that the gay men seem to be all about being gay. I’m straight, but I don’t live my life in a celebration of being straight (if you see my point). I just do what I do and my orientation isn’t an issue and never comes up in conversation (and shouldn’t). I also refuse to believe that one’s orientation makes one more or less suitable to judge fashion. Let’s face it, none of the gay men on those shows would ever wear a bush shirt, so tell me - what do they know anyway?  Lame.  Not funny.

Lost / Lost Plot: I watched it once. They got more stuff than the castaways on Gilligan’s Island but none of the fun. I’ll pass, thanks.  The ads send me scurrying for the remote.

Survivor / Survivor Wannabees: Once I realized how fake this show was, I couldn’t endure watching it for another minute. The deal is to win the game by outlasting your opponents. They vote you off the island, as if the real game of survival follows the political rules of men. Every contestant signs a waiver in order to get on the show. The waiver limits liability right? The obvious way to win the show is to just slit everyone’s throat during the first night and wake up the next morning, the winner. Duh. Those people would be whining their asses off just camping with me. “What do you mean there’s no tent? We have to make our own shelter?” I haven’t heard any ads for this show in some time so maybe it’s gone for good.  Let’s hope so.

Now, on the other hand, great shows have disappeared!   Here is a list of shows that I enjoy watching:

• The Original Iron Chef, with Takeshi Kaga
• Numbers (which is still on in Taiwan)
• Babylon 5
• Firefly

I’d love to hear about the shows our readers like and dislike too.  I’m sure many of you like these shows I’ve trashed but that’s what makes life interesting!