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).
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.
🐦⬛♬ Mirlo is a collectively owned music service experimenting with novel governance concepts like “exit to community” to make sure power resides with the musicians and listeners. Only a couple days left and they are SO CLOSE to their goal! SUPPORT!
Current status: Prom dress shopping with my daughter. 👗🛍️
👧🏻: We HAVE to go together. You are supposed to whine and complain about the time and prices and generally be awkward and embarrassed and old. It’s traditional! 😇
Walking down a side alley today we saw these chefs outside a sushi joint with this 100 kilo tuna. They were selling ¥150 beers and doing a “breakdown” demonstration. So we stuck around and watched. Here are the highlights!
Philosophers ranked by their punk credentials: I would put the Buddha a bit higher on the scale since his critique of the caste system, and the workaround he created for people to escape it, was revolutionary 🪷✊🧘👨🎤
Annual medical checkup day. Just ran the gauntlet at the local health office 🏥🩺. Really wish we did this in Canada, it is a great marker. (Also, amazed at how much I have shrunk in the past couple of years! 🙀)
