A Taiwanese drama actor

          I couldn’t help pressing the shutter button of my camera when I saw this Taiwanese drama actor one afternoon in February, 1988. Stepping into Hsinchu Du Cheng-Huang Temple, a temple built in 1748 governing both the “Heaven” and the “Earth”, I was first attracted by a crowd of Taiwanese drama actors rehearsing on a stage to my right. There stood a cosmetically appealing man wearing a drama costume more exquisite than anything I’d ever imagined. His drama gown was glistening silver, with a yellow dragon in the front. Both sides of the dragon embroidery were decorated with shimmering silver and gold beads dangling back and forth as he moved around. I believed the gown had been woven of pure silk and shiny satin. And his costume wasn’t the only extraordinary focus that attracted me.

Time zone of blogger.com

I like to use blogger.com to be my blog hosting service. It is one of the earliest blog hosting services. Then, Google bought it as part of its Internet empire. Of course, quite a few blogging platforms have sprout up in the past few years such as Wordpress, Vox, Blogsome, to name just a few. However, since I used blogger.com first, I just stick to it and also teach my students to use it whenever necessary. However, many of my students can't wait to post their first blog and usually forget to configure the format of their blog. Here I would like to post a photo to show how you can change your time zone so that time stamp will show correct time. First of all, you are encouraged to switch your language to English. Then, you click 'Settings' and then 'Formatting'. You just click the 'time zone' and choose '(GMT+08:00) Taipei'. That's it. I hope that all my students can change the 'time zone' of their blogs so that their postings will show the correct time.

 

By the way, when I post this blog, I just find a 'Link http://  ' under the Title of my blog entry. I am quite curious what it is. I just type my personal website URL in that blank, hoping that I can figure out what the function of that 'Link'. OK, once I posted it, I knew what the link is for. It's the URL link for my title. Therefore, I disabled it.

Typhoon Fanapi

The Central Weather Bureau just called off the typhoon alert of Fanapi on Sunday's night (September 19). From the news report, I noticed that Fanapi made landfall near the east-coast city of Hualien, but caused a widespread and heavy devastation in the southern part of Taiwan because of torrential downpour on Sunday afternoon. Luckily, Hsinchu city, an industry-based city about 60 miles south of Taipei, is usually immune to the strike of typhoon. Except for some heavy rains for a short period of time in the early morning on Saturday, I couldn't feel the power of Fanapi on Sunday. If a typhoon hits Taiwan from the east, Hsinchu usually can be protected by the high mountain range in the middle of Taiwan. Being a resident of Hsinchu city, I should feel lucky that I usually don't have to board up windows or pile sandbags at my doors when typhoon is going to hit Taiwan.