The news this week reports that Taiwan

“has stalled a proposal that would see cyclists in Taipei City fined for carrying passengers or riding at speeds greater than 15kph”

NOTE This is for CYCLISTS. NOT the scooter seen here. Some of the offenses include:

• NT$180 (~$6USD) for failing to install brakes, lights and bells.
• NT$300-$600 (~$18USD) for those who carry another person, fail to ride in bike lanes, break traffic regulations or park their bikes illegally.

By my account I am guilty of all of these except fail to install brakes, lights, and bells (How far do you get if you fail to install brakes?). The “other person” is Gioia who I often carry to and from school on the bike. I am not sure the government has their priorities straight here. I know they “stalled” it and that is good, but why is it even being considered in the first place?

We haven’t owned a car in 3.5 years and are darn proud of it (sorry GM)! This means, no fuel, no insurance, no car taxes, no repair costs, and most importantly no pollution. Taiwan is super easy to get around on bike, foot, and taxi and it just makes no sense. When we need to we rent a car and go a lil farther out of town.

Now Taiwan would also have you only ride on approved (cough, cough) bike paths.
The problem is unless I want to go to a river, a river, or a river, there are just not too many “approved” bike paths. Fortunately Ren-Ai Road (where we live) IS an approved stretch so we don’t run into too many problems, but come on. Share the Road!

I guess it makes sense that they “Stall” this week, especially since they just started the U-bike system where you can rent a bike and ride it around town. Only problem is you need to be rich and own a credit card. (Dear Taiwan, here’s a tip: The rich aren’t riding their bikes!)
Taiwan is also currently holding Taipei Cycle 2009 this week. Guess it would have looked bad to fine everyone you were trying to get excited about riding bikes.

So, in short:
Bikes with babies and no pollution = BAD
Families of four on scooters = GOOD
…and we will “un-stall” later and fine bikers. Great.

In the mean time, don’t get your testicles in a bunch ;)

…and I thought the bugs died from bug spray. Maybe it was because of these guys digging a hole in the street (sorry, the video below is a little bright and for some reason only 1 second long). So, what are they working on so hard that they need to pour black smoke into the air day and night for over 3 days now? They are already in China, so I know that is not where they’re going :) The fact that it blocks the road to Starbucks is not surprising. The fact that they have been at it for so long AND they are using machinery is!

In reviewing my posts, it seems I have been on this pollution kick for awhile now.

Recently, some friends of mine came to Beijing. They have heard me complain many a time about the pollution here. However, when they arrived Beijing had just had one of the worst thunderstorms everywhere. Trees and power down all over the city. The good thing about thunderstorms is that it cleans the air for at least two days! (NOTE: This should tell you where the pollution is coming from, just look two days outside the city and find the factories.) Well, my friends arrived just after this and experienced a glorious week in Beijing. Even the traffic was light for some reason. This photo was taken downtown from my car yesterday. You could not see the end of the street you were standing on. Just for the record, that dot is a not a reflection of camera flash or anything. It is the sun! Sadly, most days are like this in Beijing. My only wish is that reporters and athletes during the Olympics see the same city I do and help China clean up its act.

With a face only a mother could love, who wouldn’t want to come home to this? Well, my lovely wife had a very hard and long week last week. She started on Sunday due to the Chinese New Year, worked until 11pm or later almost every night and stumbled head first into the weekend to crash. Just enough of a break before she returned to work this week to find she will be hitting at least 4 different cities in the next two weeks. Just in case you thought our weekend was all glitz and glam, I wanted to share with you some photos:

Sunday morning was like any other morning. Heavy curtains shielded the pollution…er…sunlight from our room. As I go to look out the window, I am amazed to see what was clear the day before is covered in snow. Guess we are not warming up soon after all. Guess I am not going to drum practice on my bike either.

This weekend we also got a new washing machine. We have bought a new washer and dryer for many reasons:

• The old washer was inefficient and took a long time to wash
• The dryer needed to vent to the outside and could not in its present location. It also did not dry well.
• The washer would not heat water internally and would not be good for washing baby clothes, diapers and underwear.
• The old washer shocked the crap out of the Ayi every time she stuck her hand in it.

It is hard to say which reason was the most important… Anyway, it was delivered Saturday and of course we wanted to test it out. So we threw in some assorted towels and some detergent and hit what we thought said go. I say, “thought” because of course the machine is in Chinese so we have no idea what it says. We also do not know what the instruction manual says. We (“I”) also did not understand when I bought it that a man would be coming on Monday to install the washer, for good reason. 45 minutes into the cycle, we heard what sounded like an earthquake. The washer had gone into its spin cycle and was shaking its way out of the bathroom door through glass, marble, door stops, etc… I could not believe it, and by the time I got downstairs it had stopped. I pushed the machine back in place and waited. Sure enough, it did it again. It looked like a 747 taking off, with the washer spinning extremely fast and the machine actually lifting off the ground with me trying desperately to hold it down. I pulled the plug and started to complain. “Why can’t stuff in China just work?” “Why is everything so difficult?” Discussions ensued about taking it back, calling the Whirlpool, throwing it out the window. You know the usual.

Well, it turns out that it can work if you can read. The first step in the manual actually indicated that 4 LARGE plugs needed to be pulled from the back of the machine before using it. I can only assume this is for the counter spin and the pins were holding it in place so it was not damaged during shipping. If it was not damaged during shipping, we probably burnt the rotor out when we ran it at full speed while still screwed down! The pictures show the size of the bolts and the rather SMALL warning on the guide. Who knew you had to remove this stuff before using it, and why isn’t there some sort of red tape over the start button or the door to tell you this? Ikea, please teach Whirlpool how to print instruction manuals for the truly stupid. I guess that is why you have someone come and install it for you. I just did not pay attention to my own advice and watch first. Needless to say it is all right and the Ayi is slightly less crispy this week.

I will leave you with two more examples of our exciting weekend:

Those Chinese will ride anything.

Our super fabulous guard dog.

I knew it was bad in Beijing, but this is ridiculous. Check out this article. The image is generated by taking an average over 18 days. “Honey, How soon can we move to Argentina?”

In this month’s copy of “That’s Beijing” it details some of the ways China is preparing for the Olympics. For all of those who have not “heard” me on how EVERYTHING in China is fake, check this out. Instead of actually looking at ways to make Beijing “greener” by planting trees or cutting down on pollution they will be painting the town green, literally. Beijing is concerned about the first impression visitors will get when they fly over, so any roof deemed undeserving of a garden will be painted green to look like a garden for the benefit of plane passengers overhead.

This, however, is not the best part. The next biggest issue facing the China image is the food. It seems they are concerned of having some Olympian doing backstroke in the remnants of their own dinner so they are instituting “ancient Chinese secret” of food protection: mice. The food needs to be tested before it is eaten and the most sophisticated technology is white mice.

“Emperors had their test testers and Olympic athletes shall have a fleet of white mice nosh on the rice, milk, cooking oil and other edibles. If it is in fact tainted, effects will manifest themselves in the mice within 17 hours of ingestion…”

Dude, I could not make this stuff up if I tried. The other Olympic initiative is the smile patrol to get the Chinese to smile more. Points of emphasis are smiling at strangers and smiling from three meters away.

Con”Beuk”cius says, “Beware of smiling China man eating rice.”