Hi all, not much of an introduction, so I'll just jump right in!

We took one of our new scooters up to the mountains near Hsinchu, and this is a little video of us checking things out behind a construction truck.

Cliff is eating a corn dog from one of the food stalls near the train station in Hsinchu. We stayed at a hotel in this area for a few nights before we found our new pad in Jhubei. Cliff is settling in to his job at the Giraffe school in Jhubei. He is being ' encouraged ' to be fun with the kids and play as many games with them as possible. It might just be because we are working as western English teachers, but the learning style is quite different to what we received in SA.

The number 4 is considered very unlucky in Taiwan, and some of the buildings go so far as to omit the 4th floor in the lifts. So we were staying on the "5th" floor.

I am still in hot pursuit of my full time job, and in the meantime enjoying the teaching I am doing at the Kid Castle. I have learnt most of the kids names, so the naughty little boys are having a tougher time than before. Although the one little guy, whenever he is asked to the front walks up to me and puts his hands on my knees and feels my legs! The Taiwanese are not very hairy...and it is quite a novelty to see hairy legs. But a little awkward to.

Cliff took me into Taipei on Saturday as a birthday present. I didnt really know exactly where we were going in Taipei, but it did become a little obious, with a looming Taipei 101 in the distance. This is me hanging out with the sparkley ladies.

This is a competition to win one of these Subaru cars. The winner is the person to keep their hand on the car the longest, but understand this is in 30 degree + heat, and who knows what humidity... There were 5 cars there, and when we walked past there were at least 30 people.

There is this awesome bike rental system on the streets, you use a swipe card to take a bike out and you can ride it all over and return it to any other rental station in other areas of the city.

Taipei 101 is ALMOST not the tallest building in the world. It has 101 stories above the ground and 5 basement levels. It holds a few records for tallest building, highest viewing platform etc...but it is about to lose a lot of prestige because of a truly enourmous building in Dubai, called the Burj Dubai. 101 is 509m high (to the spire) and the Burj Dubai will be 818m (with 160 stories!)

But for now 101 rocks! It has the fastest elevators in the world, travelling at about 60km/h. Fast enough that they are in a stream lined shell to make them aerodynamic.

101 cost 1.76 billion US$, and the Burj Dubai is costing (because it is still being completed) 20 billion US$.

I could go on for a while with numbers.... but that might get a bit boring!

There are a lot of nifty things about fire protection (nerdy paragraph coming up...) BUT there are fire protection rooms to each section, and fire safety balconies for each section.You can see 8 edges where each balcony is. We were there on a pretty clear windless day, and so could go outside to the outside viewing platform on the 91st floor. Cliff and I are eying out a ' running race' where you run up the staircase to the top - fastest one wins! Taipei Run up, 2 046 steps!

Big roads need big intersections! A few of the intersections have diagonal crossing walkways to move the people, so at one point in the cycle the road is completely shut to cars to allow for people traffic.

I was a happy birthday boy at the top of the tallest building in the world, for my birthday!

Scooter parking lot, in the shadow of 101.

101 has a wind damper suspended from the 92nd to 88th floor. It is a 660 ton (thats metric tons, steve) steel ball pendulam, which sways to offset wind forces applied to the building.I think it is a 5,5m in diameter sphere. There are another 2 ball dampers at the tip of the spire, but they are a lot smaller by comparison, only 7 tons.

This wind damper is the only one of its kind that can be viewed by the public, but a lot of big buildings and bridges have them, its just that this one happens to be the biggest. I guess to make it a bit more "toursity" they have turned the giant sphere of steel into something a bit more "fun"! so there are these little wind damper mascots all over. Different colour 101's have different personalities and likes/dislikes etc...

One of the art pieces at the viewing deck. Luckily I am doing the blog this week, and not Cliff because I know he would have put this flipping disturbing painting of a tiger and a mans face. So no nightmares for you.

Having some fun with the kids in a walk in water feature/fountain/shower.

Now this is eating! We went to the Shilin night market for dinner, before catching the MRT (like underground) and train back to Jhubei. This type of cooking is called Teppanyaki (it is a Japanese style of cooking) and they basically cook the food you selected right in front of you, so it is piping hot and DELICIOUS! We had steak and fish, with rice, vegetables and some other stuff.

This video is of us wandering a little around the night market. It was ridiculously hot and crowded inside but an awesome place to buy food, because there is such a big variety.

Ok cheers for now, Tim.