Travel

The national Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa is a very impressive building. Built in “Scottish Baronial” design, it features of all sorts of animals 🫎🐺🦬🦫 on the outside and depicted in the stained glass. Also it has giant Earth 🌎 and Moon 🌖 globes!

nature.ca

A castle like building made of stone, but on one side is a giant glass cube housing a model of the MoonFront of a stone building with stone moose heads above the doors. The third floor is a giant glass cube with a Moon insideChad selfie looking up at a giant model of the MoonChad selfie looking up at a giant model of the Earth

Made it to the capital 🇨🇦

Canada Parliament Building at dusk. There are many tower cranes as the place is under renovation. In the foreground is the Flame of Confederation

Crossed the plains of Quebec to the capital city, founded in 1608 by Samuel de Champlain and the only walled city north of Mexico. We checked in at the hotel, did a walkaround, and ate some crepes. Tomorrow we reunite with our older daughter who has been here 5 weeks studying Français!

Chad at the Fairmont Le Château FrontenacLong shot down the Rue Saint-Louis which looks very EuropeanSome delicious savoury crepesSaint François de Laval Monument with the steeple crosses of Notre-Dame de Québec Basilica-Cathedral all in silhouette

Today was “Dome Day” in Montréal for us. We first visited the Biodome by the Olympic stadium dating from Olympics in 1976. Afterwards we saw the Biosphere designed by Buckminster Fuller himself for the 1967 Expo.

Black and white image of Montreal tower vaulting over the Montreal Stadium which is technically BESIDE the BiodomeChad selfie in front of Buckminster Fuller's Biosphere

The sun sets on a hot and smoky day in Montréal. We walked around quite a bit. Sunburned. Saw The Ring. Ate crepes. Hit Schwartz’s. Walked by a ton of murals. Drank with witches. Daughter pet cats. What a day!

Chad selfie in front of the giant Ring in MontrealMural of an emerald beingThe oldest deli in Canada: Schwartz. Big lineup in the sunOrange sun in a smoky sky sinking behind the horizon. To the left is Mont Royal and the big cross looking down over the sun

Had a full day in Montréal: met with a friend, a lot of walking around, visited the Notre Dame Basilica, ate lobster poutine, and saw Just for Laughs on stage! #travel #photography

Chad selfie outside Notre Dame Basilica Inside Notre Dame Basilica with its ceiling of stars Big plate of poutine with lobster meat on top A comedian on a stage with big screens showing closeups of him delivering his routine

Boats to Nanaimo for the National Association of Japanese Canadians conference

This past weekend we were blessed with gorgeous clear blue skies as we took the ferry from Tsawwassen across the Georgia Strait to Swartz Bay on Vancouver Island. Swartz Bay? But, it says “Nanaimo” in the title? you observe. And yes, you are correct. Although there is a ferry from Tsawwassen direct to Nanaimo, we decided to land at the southern end of the island and spend the Friday afternoon driving up the east coast of the island, visiting all those tiny little towns that I have heard about but have never actually visited before.

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Suddenly Tokyo

It had been years since I had been to Shinjuku, at least, around the JR Station. It was a lot dirtier than I remember, but more than 25 years had past. It was a whirlwind trip this time to Japan, all for an important meeting for a client that asked me to come and help out. Except for taking my client to Ginza by taxi for some shopping, I stayed put in Shinjuku.

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Taiwan Trip Report pt 4: Inconclusion

Now that we are at the end of the year, and I have this arbitrary deadline looming, I thought I’d better finish off my series on travelling to Taiwan. Taiwan was extremely stimulating, and I have been promising to write my conclusions after doing a series of posts. At the same time I held off for fear of putting my foot in my mouth (this post might actually accomplish that 😅), so, rather than conclusive statements or “insights”, maybe I will conclude with some questions, lines of inquiry that you or I or whoever is next travelling to Taiwan to take with them.

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Notes from Germany

I didn’t notice it in Frankfurt, but maybe that was because it was such a sunny day and after the 10 hour flight from Vancouver I was a bit jetlagged. Happy people enjoying the warm rays, walk the river under the watchful eyes of the statue of Karl de Grosse (aka Charlemagne), King of the Franks in the 9th century. Whether it was the weather, jetlag, or the cute little historical towncenter of Römerberg, I didn’t notice it.

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My DWeb Seattle Social Trip Report

Here are some photos and a bit of an overview of our recent, cross-border #DWeb event whtwnd.com/chadkoh.c…

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Had a nice time walking around Mannheim taking selfies in front of old/impressive things

Mannheim

Mannheim Gallery on Flickr

Taiwan Trip Report pt 3: Taipei

This post is part of a series. See the introduction here → Despite being the beginning of May Taipei was very warm. The sun was out as we walked the wide sidewalks around Taipei Station downtown, cars and scooters zooming by. Even when it was cloudy, crossing the Keelung River through the tech area of town (I spotted the Foxconn tower), the lush green mountains of the north were a tropical reminder.

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Jiufen

This post is part of a series. See the introduction here → (see the whole album in full screen on Flickr here) The gold rush at the turn of the 1900s caused a boom in the small mountain town of Jiufen, with its sweeping views of the sea towards both the northwest and northeast. The narrow road switches back upon itself numerous times as you climb up the rugged mountainside.

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Kaohsiung and Tainan, featuring Fo Guang Shan

This post is part of a series. See the introduction here → (see the whole album in full screen on Flickr here) Kaohsiung is a port city in southern Taiwan, developed by the Japanese as an important industrial hub. We hired a tour guide who carted us around to different locations including the port area, the old British consulate, the art walk, and to one of the most intensely nerdy coffee shops I have ever seen (run by what I am pretty sure are devotees of the Falun Gong new religious movement , check out the art to see what I mean).

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Taiwan trip report - Introduction

Taiwan has been on the bucketlist for a while. In the year 2000 I was an exchange student in Kyoto learning Taiwanese from a fellow exchange student who was so excited for elections that he flew back to Taiwan to vote. That was only the second presidential election since the military dictatorship (which ruled from 1949) had transitioned to democratic elections in the nineties. In 2000 things were very exciting since it was the first time an opposition party won the presidency.

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Pano of Jiufen for you

youtu.be/qNs1X7AdP…

Networking our networks

The HN Tokyo Meetup. As one Kansai person told me: “I can tell it’s a meetup for people who are into frameworks.” Last week I went up to Tokyo on my annual pilgrimage to meet with old friends and make new connections. I timed my trip to coincide with the monthly Hacker News Tokyo Meetup. These social events regularly see a hundred or so hackers, entrepreneurs, and tech enthusiasts of all kinds come out to drink and be merry.

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Hagia Sophia

As described in my previous post, Istanbul is a city of layers. Nothing demonstrates this more than one of the gems of the city: the Hagia Sophia. Built on the site of an earlier Christian church erected in 336 AD by Constantius II (son of the Emperor Constantine) the current building was made in the 532 AD by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I. For a thousand years it was the largest building in the world.

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Istanbul — Look around, feel history

Istanbul, Constantinople, Nova Roma — the city at the crossroads of the world — is a city of layers. First settled 6000 years ago each new community was built on top of the previous. And being located at such a strategic point as the world’s only trans-continental city, there have been a lot of different people groups and empires with designs on the city. I was in town for just over ten days, mostly for work, but my old pal Chris Gunson flew up from Dubai and we toured around together for a few days.

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