I’ve recently noticed that this Kpop group are not made up of a bunch of waifs! That in itself, deserves support. Women don’t need to be stick thin to be insanely attractive.
Plus this tune is beginning to stick in my head.
Category: Lifestyle Activities
Piano Guys
Oh my goodness – this is their best video ever!
KPOP Secret
Oh, another interesting girl-group.
World Robotics Olympiad 2012
I did not write about this earlier because I was in Taiwan!
This was my first time experiencing the World Robotics Olympiad (WRO) as it was held in Malaysia and I got to be a judge. It was an exciting experience as I got to see so many talented kids from around the world, competing for honours with their little LEGO robots.
Personally, I have always had a thing for out-reach programmes particularly if it involved STEM related fields. I’m also partial towards encouraging more girls to enter these fields as we are sorely lack of female talents, for some reason.
The WRO2012 was held across a school holiday weekend in Malaysia. As I was completely involved in the judging for the Open Category on Saturday, I could only enjoy the rest of the competition on Sunday. Things were quite interesting in the other categories too.
I particularly liked the inclusion of a new College Category this year. Their robots were a lot bulkier and more robust than the rest as they had to physically compete against each other. I actually met one of my students competing in this category.
Malaysia fared well in the Elementary categories by winning both the Open and Regular competitions though we did not do as well in the other categories. Since I was the a judge for the Open Elementary category, I got to witness some of the drama that went along with the judging.
Judging is never an easy thing to do and judging kids is an even harder task to accomplish. However, looking at some of the other categories, I was thankful that I had to deal only with the young ones. At the elementary level, there is often a clear gap between the leading teams and the rest, which did help make our jobs easier.
All said, it was a good experience for me, both in learning how to manage a small team of international judges and also in enjoying the fun of the entire event! There’s no point in doing any of this if it wasn’t FUN!
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| WRO2012 |
Museum and Memorial
While the weather held out for most of the week, our second day in Taipei was spent in a full day of rain. Bummer. So, we visited the National Palace Museum and the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall instead – to do some in-door stuff.
The National Palace Museum made an interesting visit as it was filled with all sorts of interesting ancient Chinese artifacts including stuff looted from the Imperial Palace when the Nationalists were forced to flee after losing the war. I got to learn a little about Jade-craft from the prized displays on the top floor.
The Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall was a bit of a disappointment though as there wasn’t really that much to see except its main attraction, the giant Bronze statue of the grand old man himself, on the top floor. There were other personal artifacts on display but none of it caught my attention since I’m not a scholar of Chinese history.
But the highlight of the day was our evening activity – Beijing Opera. Our tour guide commented that this isn’t something that most tourists do in Taiwan but we decided to go treat ourselves to an opera show instead. We ended up watching both a puppet show and a real opera.
It was an interesting experience. Though seated slightly further away from the stage, I was nonetheless able to watch the detailed facial expressions of the people, and the antics of the hand puppets using my new zoom lens. I laughed and clapped with everyone else when the puppets made jokes and the humans performed acrobatic stunts.
All in all, a good experience.
Taipei 101
We left the hot-spring village of Wulai to go straight into Taipei this morning. The moment that we arrived, we left our luggage at the hotel and went straight to Taipei 101 – the second tallest building in the world – and went up to the observation deck on the world’s fastest passenger elevator.
From that vantage, I came to realise that Taipei is a fairly small city. It is surrounded with mountains and hills. As a result, the city proper, doesn’t reach very far. However, the skyline is dotted with plenty of high-rise buildings. There seems to be no shortage of tall buildings.
In the evening, we went to the world famous ShiLin night market, where we had dinner made up of random foodstuff. I noticed a bunch of illegal traders selling their wares in the middle of the street and got to witness them running away from the Law, and returning back again after.
After binging on random food at the ShiLin, we went shopping for random stuff too. The regular stores around the area were all open for business as well. This brought into mind our guide’s joke that Taiwanese girls are fair because they only come out at night!
I have to say that there were a lot of people at the night market. It is unlike our pasar malam back home. They’ve got lots of games to play, and an auction! I even found this interesting arcade that had some girls at the door, attracting customers in.
All in all, an interesting day and night.
PS: I found this artist – WuChing – products quite amazing. Actually tempted me to buy something home.
WuLai Aborigines
Food, glorious food. Haha!
Well, I think that I’ll stop talking about the food in Taiwan for now. I’ve come to the conclusion that if you want to survive in the food industry in Taiwan, you’ve got to sell good food. Otherwise, you’d be out of business in a jiffy.
After breakfast this morning, we visited the Wulai cultural village where the main highlight was the native people living there. We attended a show where they storied us with the birth and lifestyle of the Ayatal people.
I thought to myself that it is quite a shame that the native shows that we have in Malaysia (particularly in Borneo) do not have the kind of production quality that this show had. While our shows are full of dancing and singing, they do not enjoy the over-arching plot-line that the Ayatal show here did.
Another thing that impressed me was the amount of effort that the people put into the tourism business. The local staff were conversant in Mandarin, Hokkien, English and also Japanese. There was a huge crowd of Japanese school kids with us and I was actually mistaken for one – must be the spanking new camera.
We went to the museum and did some shopping in their old town. Here, I learned that the Wulai area is full of hot-springs and that the government had built a special irrigation system for the hot-spring water to supply the water to all the various baths in the area.
I’ve also noticed that people here seem to be really big on alternative energy. I would find wind turbines on random roof-tops at Wulai, which enjoys a strong breeze. My hotel was situated right next to a hydro-electric dam. The farm that we were in before this had solar panels on the roof.
Interesting.
Sybreon Ones Nought 