Absurd Singularity

I don't recall seeing these when I was working in Taiwan back in 2000 but I noticed them this trip. This one was taken on one of the outer walkways connecting the multiple buildings making up the large Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Hsinyi New Life Square complex across from the Warner Village. I noticed another one in a much older department store building located across from the main Xi Men Ting shopping area entrance so apparently this type of building evacuation has been around for some time now. Wonder how effective it is.

Seven. Seven long years I've waited for the chance to burn my intestinal linings with ma la delicacies once again. Nothing on the US East Coast can compare from what I've heard. This is from one of the 2 Kaohsiung branch stores of Old Sichuan, one of the 2 best ma la hotpot places in the city. Reservations required, you get an hour and a half to shovel as much eh... "dark tofu" and other hotpot goodies down your gullet.

at our most recent "vacation" in Taiwan. It wasn't really a vacation vacation as we didn't really do any touristy stuff. I guess that's the problem when our reasons for returning the last time and this time have been major events in our lives (marriage and Devon's first birthday) and the time between each visit is so long (bit over two years) so the majority of our schedule has been taken up with being treated to lunch or dinner with relatives and friends. Not necessarily a bad thing but we're pretty much fed up (pun intended) with it after 2 and a half weeks.

Our latest culinary conquest earlier tonight was the second of the two best mala hotpot places that I had mentioned in my earlier post. I figured since we probably weren't going to be back for another 2 years that we should try both before we left this time around. Named "Tripod King" for their unique, rustic-looking brass hotpots, they were quite yummy as well. I couldn't really tell the difference in the mala portions between them and Old Sichuan but Erin liked this one better. The restaurant itself seemed a bit classier than Old Sichuan and I found it pretty amusing to see that the waitresses here would do an old-style deep bow (butt up, 90 degree angle) towards us every time they came by for anything. Took our order, bow. Brought a dish, bow. Answered a question, bow. Brought another dish, bow. Removed a dish, bow. I really felt sorry for their backs. But they're definitely a good place to gorge yourself silly in even though they did politely kick us out after an hour and forty minutes. =)

Anyway, just some random musings that have crossed my mind during the past few weeks:

Gee, I wonder who made this mess.

So I'm listening to 92.3 K-Rock in the car as I normally do when a commercial for a new strip club comes on. In it, they promise that all their girls are under 200 pounds and that there are only TWO UGLY GIRLS. Emphasis, theirs. They repeat that last part a few times throughout the spot. I'm a little confused about their advertising strategy. Why only two? And how ugly is ugly? And doesn't emphasizing that there's only two make it seem like the main attraction to their place are the TWO UGLY GIRLS? And how do the TWO UGLY GIRLS feel about this? Do they know that they're the TWO UGLY GIRLS? I'm assuming they do. And were they hired specifically to be the two ugly ones in a room full of hotties?

I think this bears investigating. Listeners of K-Rock get free admission. Anyone wanna come? ;-p

Exhibit #1 (and only): Chessboxing.

What's next, ultimate fighting and parcheesi? Tennis and backgammon? The possibilities are endless.

The 5D still comes in as the low noise king here which isn't surprising since it's the only full frame sensor of the 3. In the non-darkish areas, the CMOS D300 isn't leaps and bounds better when compared to the CCD D80.

When comparing the Nikon's with high ISO noise reduction on and off, there's a noticeable difference between on and off but as far as I can tell, not that much of a difference between the different levels of noise reduction (low, normal, high).

The rubbery parts on the D300 feels more rubbery than the similar parts on the 5D and D80 but I like the grip on the 5D better overall because of the groove that it has for the middle finger.

While 51 AF points is probably overkill for most people (myself included), the horizontal coverage in the viewfinder is pretty awesome. Vertically it doesn't get as far up to the edges but still not bad. Makes the coverage on the 5D look very, very bad.

Higher resolution LCD on the back of the D300 really doesn't seem to make too much of a difference to me compared to the 5D's. I suppose if you pixelpeep on the camera itself the Nikon may show better detail while zoomed in but overall the LCD didn't blow me away. But it's always nice to have a larger LCD like the D300 has.

The shutter sound for the D300 is a bit different. Sounds almost like the old Konica-Minolta dSLRs but a bit chunkier. Very quick sound though. Even though I like the 5D shutter sound better, the D300's gets points for being very short.

There's no doubt the D300's a fine and capable camera but I think I can patiently wait for the 5D's successor to be announced come the end of January.

For this most recent Taiwan trip, I knew I probably would want to cut down on as much weight as possible when it came to carry on luggage. That meant my regular Canon 5D with 24-70L, 70-200 f/4 IS, and 50 f/1.4 combo would probably be a bit too heavy and space-consuming. So I considered my options. I could have picked up a cheap Rebel XTi and paired it with the new Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 OS along with the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 but I figured this would be a perfect opportunity to check out the competition. So I assembled a used kit consisting of a Nikon D80, Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR, and Sigma 30mm f/1.4. I considered getting the D40x instead but I just couldn't imagine being limited to just 3 autofocus points.