Taoyuan Nights

Quick Asian housing news round up:
In Korea…
“SEOUL, Nov 4 (Reuters) – Housing prices across South Korea will rise in 2010 for a sixth consecutive year and by the fastest pace in four years, an industry association research agency forecast on Wednesday.” (when do industry association representatives ever say anything else?) , “Kookmin Bank [...]

The following link (Telegraph) is one of the better pieces I’ve read lately.
As you may know, historically, economists/financiers seem to have held the view that although Japan had horrific government debt relative to the size of its economy (GDP), this was ‘OK’ since it was all lent by Japanese citizens (because of the high savings [...]

I wrote last October that I thought Shanghai’s stockmarket had reached truly epic levels of silliness, with price to earnings ratios being many times higher than that of developed countries, but with considerably higher risks and not obviously higher rewards.
Since that post, the Shanghai stockmarket has fallen almost 50%.
The FT article (linked above) is quite [...]

I wrote a post about how it seems that the desire for friendship, purely for the sake of friendship itself, sometimes seems to be considered shameful in Taiwanese society. Instead, it feels like you must have some ‘justification’ for seeking contact with other people – research, language exchange, employment or whatever. Dating seems to be [...]

Don’t worry, this blog is still alive, and so am I.
However, I have an illness that has meant I’ve been spending a little time in hospital, and getting plenty of rest. I’ll post more as the doctors find out more about the illness. I can say though that the preliminary results are reasonably encouraging, [...]

Presently, the Red House in Ximen district is hosting a digital art exhibition, “Openplay“, which is free for the public to visit. The artwork includes graphical, audio, video, physical and interactive exhibits. The exhibition is open until Sunday, from 2pm in the afternoon till 10pm in the evening (Saturday) or 9pm (Sunday). You can play [...]

The Taipei times has an interesting article today about franchising in Taiwan. For those of you who don’t live in Taiwan, it might be useful to know that the country is nuts for franchising. Every street seems to have the same set of shops. I didn’t realised that these tiny franchised breakfast shops I see [...]

Michael Turton recently visited Ming Chuan University’s Taoyuan campus, to give a special lecture about his views on Internet Journalism and Social Activism. Scott Sommers was there too, to join in the fun.
Read more about his experience (and see some wonderful photos) here!
Thanks Michael!

Michael, Scott, Graeme (thanks to Eva Wai).

You may remember that I blogged a few times about how crazy the Shanghai stockmarket had become, back in March. Well…. it’s not been sitting around twiddling its thumbs. It’s now a full 70% more crazy. The profits being reported are now largely fictitious. Companies are reporting increases in shareprices of companies they hold, as [...]

1 minute of serious wobblyness, and 3 minutes of bouncyness here in Taoyuan.
Here are links to the data on the earthquake – biggest we’ve had for a few months.

CWB1,
CWB2
CWB1 (Chinese),
CWB2 (Chinese)
USGS

As usual, I have lots of respect for the incredible Taiwanese engineers that have built an electrical grid and internet infrastructure that just keeps on [...]