First Trip to City Hall

A list of numbers to gets a little perspective. Here are some populations in millions.

World-------------------------6783
China-------------------------1330
India--------------------------1148
US-------------------------------307
Taiwan--------------------------22.9
Washington State-----------6.5
Minnesota-----------------------5.2
Alaska-------------------------------.7

So I think China probably has thousands of "villages" bigger than all of Alaska, terms of population. Mainland China is 57 times larger than Taiwan... (For me, tabs don't work in blogger and the numbers just have to be aligned to be of any use.)

There is a new Office of Foreigner Assistance near Tainan City Hall that opened up this past Monday, so I thought I'd go check it out. From the address in the email announcement I had the general area and I thought they'd have a sign in English. Bad presumption. After a good two hour walk, I got to the right street and block but without the house number and floor I was SOL. That's OK, I got some good pictures along the way and as class is 2 weeks off, I have the time to kill. I'll try again tomorrow.

Don't believe everything you read. This one made me laugh. You got to keep on your toes when walking the streets. It's every man for themselves and the devil takes the hindmost.









Here the entrance to a park that's suppose to be for pedestrians only. The first metal rack is to keep out the motor scooters but lets fat pedestrians walk in. The second one is to let skinny pedestrians in but keep out bicycles(handle bars would hit the upper metal). As an idea is looks good, but the other entrances to the park are not so guarded so the bikes and scooters get in anyway.






















The two pictures above are of a dud that fell in Tainan during WWII. From the plaque it seems no one knows who dropped the 550 lb empty bomb in Tainan. I know the US bombed a few sights in HsinChu with real bombs but this dud is a mystery to this day. But there's no reason why it shouldn't have its own space in a public park.


This Temple is newly constructed the amount of gold trim was really impressive. I hope it was gold paint or else Tainan is a much richer city than I thought.
















This sign is at a railway crossing. The red characters are: "Stop Look Listen". Something just seem to be universal.









After a hard day working on the "internets" this is the perfect meal. "Shao Rou Fan" is the rice with a skewer of meat(pork) on top. The vegtable is optional, the beer is not.