Taken at a cemetery after I spent an hour trying to get Catriona to sit/stand still for a few minutes so I could take her picture in natural light as a Christmas gift for her grandparents. Getting her to not run around when she is outside is pretty near impossible.
I'm thinking of creating an application using Google Maps API to allow other foreigners here in Hsinchu to find all the quiet semi-secluded areas I have been visiting lately. In Taiwan you always pause before sharing any place with trees and grass that you find do to the belief that it will soon be overrun with people. The result being a litter strewn landscape and no more quiet. The good places become a shared secret between friends. It's always such a pity when traveling (or simply driving down the road) to a beautiful location in Taiwan only to find it overrun with garbage and generally misused. I remember visiting Hualian and Taroko gorge a few years ago - very beautiful places - only to be confronted with mountains of litter. I guess those that live here don't value these places. Parks are somewhat the same except that they sometimes have a small cadre of volunteers who regularly go around to collect garbage. The largest parks employ people to plant flowers that inevitably will be ripped out shortly after.
This area where the photo was taken is entirely peaceful with a path taking you through unkept areas. The garbage only comes during the times of year when people come to "clean" the graves. The plant growth covers this garbage fairly quickly so that when I walked through you hardly see it at all.
Comments
November 28, 2005 02:59 AM
Great photographs!
I am wondering how well does Google Map API work with Taiwan? From what I can tell, Google Map only has satallite view of Taiwan, and they don't even have the street names down yet.
November 28, 2005 07:03 AM
Something like this http://thebus.ca/ might work. It's a shame there are no "map maps" but for what I was trying to do it might not be necessary. Bubbles and coloured route might be fine.
November 28, 2005 12:17 PM
It seems like google map API would work only if they have the roads stored in a database, meaning that you can view it in "map" mode (not Satallite mode). I don't think Google has Taiwan's map stored in a database, yet. :(
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