On our long list of things to do during Chinese New Year was a trip to 太平山 (Tai ping mountain), one of the most popular destinations in Taiwan. Everything was planned out well with the exception of the one thing you can never plan: the weather.

Of course the little cold and rain wouldn't stop us from hiking, so here are a few photos from our umbrella hike. One day we're going back there and we'll return with a myriad of beautiful photos of mountain and ocean views, sunrises, sunsets, and seas of clouds!

The entrance to the 台灣山毛櫸國家步道 (Taiwan Beech National Trail) in 太平山 (Tai ping mountain).

Parts of the trail have these funny little stepping stones, apparently a tribute to the wet weather conditions in the area.

Hiking the 太平山 台灣山毛櫸國家步道 (Taiwan Beech National Trail in Tai ping mountain) by rain.

The 太平山莊服務站 (Tai Ping Mountain Villa Service Station), a refuge from the cold and wet that day.

One of the huge riverbeds in 宜蘭 (Yilan). During really bad weather they can actually flood but in drier times they are used to grow watermelons.

A field of famous San Xing spring onions (三星蔥). Legend has it that if you steal spring onion from there you're going to find a good husband. (It doesn't say anything about good wives, so I only took the photo, not the actual spring onion. ;-)

Link to the full album

Now that we're already vaguely planning our next trip it's about time I uploaded the final batch of last summer's Switzerland photos! This one is from an easy and rather short hike that took us from Arosa to the Schwelisee and finally to the Aelplisee. Despite the easiness the scenery is beautiful!

You can find the GPS track over at GPSies and there's a link to more photos from that trip at the bottom.

Link to the full album

I'm not geek enough to Twitter and Facebook my photos in real-time from an iPhone, so with a few hours delay here are some photos from this year's Lantern Festival in Taipei. :-)

Doing product research is usually hard work and rarely fun. Not so when it comes to USB hubs! We were looking for a good USB hub the other day and came across some very funny ones. Check it out ...

Having spent hours and hours playing with Lego as a child this one immediately woke the child in me and made me want to design a USB enabled space station:

I'm sure I will wish for the next one once the temperatures pick up ...

This one just looks plain cheap and the sheer idea of having it on my desk makes me nauseous:

Not only practical but also delicious looking is this triangular USB hub. Its resemblance to a Toblerone chocolate (巧克力) bar also didn't bypass the person who put it on the Yahoo online store:

And finally, this is my favorite. If you feel a real fishtank is to cumbersome but you want to bring some life to your boring workplace, this is the one to get:

Since Taiwan has been firmly in the grip of winter for the last two months I thought it was a good time to do away with a widespread stereotype; Swiss people being resistant to cold.

To make sure we're on the same page I want to mention that when I'm talking about winter in Taiwan that means temperatures that drop as low as 10-15 °C (that's 50-59 F if you're unlucky enough to measure temperature relative to the smelly armpit of a Polish physicist's wife). That may not sound particularly cold but it sure feels cold when the humidity is 80% or higher and live in a windy city.

With a body fat percentage of under 13% which, thank you very much, puts me in the category of "Athletes", you'll naturally see and hear me shiver a lot or complain about the cold. This draws a lot of wonder from my Taiwanese friends and colleagues who think that with Switzerland regularly having sub-zero (again Celsius scale, not armpit icicles) temperatures I should be running around in shorts and a T-shirt instead of hugging my oil heater.

Myth: Swiss people are immune to cold.

Analysis: There are two important factors here:

1. Humidity. Swiss winter is very dry and hardly windy unless you happen to live in a few particular areas. I don't know how to put the felt temperature at different air humidity in numbers, but it certainly makes a difference. (There's a formula here but, not surprising given their origin, the nice tables don't go very far towards the cold.) Whatever the numbers may say, 0 degrees at 10% humidity just feels less penetrating than 13 degrees at 80%.

2. Insulation. Unless you've been traveling to Europe and paying attention to that detail you may not be aware that our houses (and jackets for that matter) are massively insulated. Our walls are not just made from thin wall elements (or reinforced cardboard in some other Western countries ...) but from carefully engineered bricks with layers of insulation that minimize heat transfer. Together with double glazed windows and a central heating system that makes for a cozy home and reasonable heating costs.

Verdict: Myth busted!

Luckily winter is short in Taiwan! Last week we've already had temperatures in the mid-20's and my summer clothes are getting ready to come out of hibernation.

In my potentially long list of Year 2009 photo catch-up blog posts here's the first one of our hiking trip to the Mattjisch Horn. The hike not only took us to a summit that reaches 2461 meters and makes for a great view, but there are many nice things to see along the way. Here are just a few of them.

Be sure to check out the full album if you like these.

Link to the full album

A few weeks ago Kevin, one of my photographically talented friends, took us to a nice maple forest near 頭份 (Toufen), just a short drive south from Hsinchu, to shoot a few photos.

Later that day Ivy and I rode our scooter to the 天恩彌勒佛院 (Voice of Maitreya area), which features the biggest 彌勒佛 (Maitreya) statue in Asia. While still under construction it is already an impressive piece of work, in particular the majestic statue that rises above the nearby lake.

Enjoy the photos!

Snapshot-wise the new year is off to a good start! The other day we were having lunch and saw the owner's son surfing the Internet for online games:

So far, so good; there's nothing wrong with kids getting used to today's media early on. But let's have a closer look what he was playing:

I apologize for the photo quality, but you can recognize that it's a pretty violent and bloody game that involves running around simple 2D levels shooting with machine guns at others until the blood splashes and having the same done to yourself. Quite amazingly when the father noticed what his kid was doing he wasn't the least bit shocked or even surprised and seemed to smile approvingly of his son's pastime.

The next two photos speak for themselves:

In case you're wondering: Yes, "idiot" in French means the same thing as in English ...

I assume that the person who gave the idiot-ic name to the restaurant would respond to the tea shop's question with a resounding "yes!".

Taiwan's capital started the year 2010 with its traditional Taipei 101 fireworks, a short but amazing spectacle.

The area around the world's tallest skyscraper (looks like the financial crisis is buying us another few years in this regard) was more crowded than last year, but I still managed to find a little spot to put up my camera and shoot some firework pictures for the first time with my D-SLR. Given that I had no idea what I was doing and only had about two minutes to experiment I'm quite happy with the outcome.

I'll upload more photos to my gallery as soon as I get to process them (maybe together with the Switzerland photos that have been in the queue for the last four months :-). Until then here are three of my favorite pictures I took last night, directly from the camera.

Happy New Year to everybody!

In case you're wondering what the "Taiwan UP" stands for, we've had the same discussion last night. Ideas went from "Up into the sky is where the money gets shot during the fireworks" to simply "up yours", but it seems the correct interpretation is that 2010 is the year where the economy recovers and life goes up again. I like this idea. Let's drink to that!

Today a few people from work decided to try their luck and go up to 宇老 (Yu lao) starting from 內灣 (Nei wan), which is about a 1,200 meter climb on a little more than 20 km. I'm glad to report that everybody made it to the top (and safely down), which is not bad given that many of us - including me - considered this trip quite a challenge.

As always the track log is on GPSies but you can also check out the map here:

Photo-wise, for now I only have a bunch of rather boring Panoramio photos but more will follow soon.

Update (2009-11-09): Thanks to everybody's picture sharing efforts I was able to put together a few nice group photos. Enjoy!

Before the start at the 內灣 (Neiwan) train station.

This photo gives you a good impression of how steep it is. Some areas are easily more than 15%.

The view at the top of the pass is really nice. All the hills make you want to climb more of them. :-)

If you liked these pictures there are a few more in my Bike trip to 宇老 album.