Elephants Roaming

[Travel Taiwan] Hehuanshan Road Trip!!! 合歡山_環(半)島

‎Once upon a time ... it was really just about going AROUND the island. Honestly, the idea of going THROUGH the island never really struck me. But that's what happened over CNY break. It took me less than 24 hours to head out west from home and come back again from the east. Taking the early train from Miaoli, get on our one and most important mode of transportation and head down to Taichung into Puli and up into the mountains, and coming back from Yilan! Googlemap shows a total distance of 494km!!

[Cambodia] Children of Angkor's Tree School

I had an early start on "planning" this trip to Cambodia. Booking a flight, and finding places to stay ... and that's all I ever did. The plan was no plan, and it was a marvelous plan!

[Cambodia] Must Go!

Wow ... Cambodia, what a journey. There is so much to be written about this short but abundant one week trip, to a country where many has journeyed to before ... pilgrimages to a thousand years of magnificent history, and heartful tributes to the victims of the country's tragic past of the modern age. I can't believe I never put this on the bucket list, but I'm hoping that everyone should, visit and be awed by the remains of the Angkor Era at least once in a lifetime.

[As mentioned as one of my 24th birthday wishes!]

The Alchemist. 牧羊少年的奇幻之旅

After our first attempt in understanding spirituality, self-consciousness, our ultimate purpose in being ... and all that last week, through reading Osho, Today we turned to one of the all time best-reads - The Alchemist, 牧羊少年的奇幻之旅. by Paulo Coelho.

An Attempt On Understanding Self-Consciousness ... or Something

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[Bike Around Taiwan] Rent Your Bike Here!

For anyone who's rented a bike from the best bike rental place in Taipei, you're most likely to have taken the exact same picture as this, or similar. It reflects the genuinely whole-hearted encouragement they give you before you head off on your trip, AND when you get back!

佳遊單車，though I'm not sure if they have an English name. I highly recommend them for your choice of bike rental! They're equipped with MERIDA bikes, and have you prepared with the whole package! Anything you can think of, helmets, tools, extra inner tubes ... and a whole lot of stuff I did fine with without understanding anyways. They would also give you free personal lessons of how to work the gadgets, how to fix your bike, how to get around without any trouble.

[Bike Around Taiwan] One Year Later ...

It's been an ENTIRE WHOLE YEAR??! 365 DAYS gone past! Actually MORE than that! 365 plus 2 I think. A YEAR!!! Since we completed this trip of biking around Taiwan. Everything seems so distant yet so clear in my mind. I can still clearly re-experience every step of the pedal. Every "omg, another uphill?" Every field and coast we were so drawn to by their beauty. Every cheer and encouragement we earned from passer-bys.

[Happiness Project] Clutter Clearing

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Inspired (a little) by the Happiness Project, which I'm currently reading, and MOSTLY because of my unnerving urge to clear away all the MESS that's been just mindlessly piling and piling and piling up, ever since I LAST cleared it all away, which was when ... we got this new shelf just to "organize" all this stuff into.

Michelangelo in Taipei

After Salvador Dali in Taipei, for this month, it's Michelangelo in Taipei!!! At the 歷史博物館, where the last exhibition we went to was that of Pablo Picasso! This current exhibition was just as exciting Dali's! I've never really been that INTO art, especially those from the Renaissance ... classical art and the sort ... but now that I'm starting to see and getting to know the stories behind such renowned works of art, suddenly I can comprehend them more intimately and personally!

[rawrrrr David's ass! lol]

Socrates

Is there such a thing as natural modesty?

Wisest is she who knows she does not know ...

True insight comes from within.

He who knows what is right will do right

Salvador Dali in Taipei

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This month, we went to the Dali Exhibition in Taipei, 中山紀念堂! Rarely do I actually dedicate this much of my time to getting to know an artist! I've always found it incomprehensible the CROWDING amount of visitors a visiting exhibition can get whenever they come to Taipei. There really are that many people into this stuff? Or is it ... as some people term it ... 假文青. lol.

[via my friend's iPhone!]

But I genuinely enjoyed this one! I vaguely remembered having been to one of his exhibitions loooong long ago. There was a Dali museum in Florida too, but I never got to visit that one. This time's though, I just fell head over heels in love with this guy.

I may not be able to fully appreciate his craziness or genius, but these are works of art that I'd actually WANT to understand. All the symbolic items that appear in his works ... drawers for sexual desires, canes representing helplessness, and soft watches are the relative time that's undetermined ... or something like that.

I may not understand every concept the artist is trying to express, but I can sense maybe how the Spanish landscapes have influenced his use of colors filling his paintings. Or at least, that will be forever how I'd picture the country he's from, until I get to visit for myself. Another thing worth noting is, no matter how dreamlike his works depict his surreal mind, they're always WITH a horizon, IN a landscape, with a sky and ground, apparent with a visual perspective, unlike how I'd typically imagine dream scenarios, which would be ungraspable events, people or dreams that float around without meaning, without destination, without form.