Eclipse

Taiwan was along the Lunar Total Eclipse path, so some astronomical work ;-).
Totality from sunset, around 6PM, to 7:22PM. Weather was not too bad, but clouds were descending from the mountains, and whole thing was in danger, here in Hsinchu.

At the dusk, thick cloud covered eastern horizon. I already thought it is over, when, around 7PM, Moon showed. Simply, it was totally eclipsed, and in these cloudy conditions, nonvisible! When it bacame a bit uncovered, I saw it.

Here is how it went:

With better equipment it would look better, and not so graphic, but my "Digimaster" of 3MPixels is not too good for such exercises.

This was with 4-times zoom, maximum for this small camera. Not too bad, anyway, although no details on the Moon. Not possible to demand too much of cheap technics. NASA has better ;-)

One "grapefruit" from here-now is Ghost Month, and this fruit is speciality now.

It is big, really:

THAT big :-)

Coffee

You know my long standing problems with coffee here, and my laments about it. Well, obviously there is a positive result recently, thanks to TIARA secretary, Rebecca. Let me show the latest developments to you.
For making turkish coffee I need my hot-plate, which is Greece-acquired one, i.e. 220V, 460W piece of equipment, costed 20 eur in Athens. But, here in Taiwan, we have 110V, and transformator costs 1000 NT$ or more, what is 25 eur. I have SOME principles, and one is that I do not pay transformator more than the equipment I use it for! Here is the beast.

So, I at first used it for long-waited-for coffee a'la Turca (sorry, my dear Greek friends ), with the rest of coffee I brought from Croatia.

But then, the next step was to use the Illy coffee Tanya, my bright Moscow star, brought for me to Azores from Palermo. Special, metal, firmly sealed container, I assure you inside was nothing but purest Trieste magic of Illy. You see, it is whole coffee mafia, here croatian-russian branch, collaborating with Cosa Nostra and involving the most remote Portuguese outpost of Ponta Delgada. Via Warsaw, where Polish "Dziad" group did not intervene, luckily, and Hong Kong, cautiously excorted by silence of Chinese mafia, we finalised the operation with a help of Tainan-Hsinchu local branch, impersoned in Rebecca.
So, to make long story short, we will not go here for dirty details ;-), I used the espresso machine:

Voila, here is the result:

I bet you'd love to have some, eh? It is delicious, magnificent, como una bella, bellissima Donna. Multo, multissimo belissima! E!

One environmental comment: waiting for coffee to be done, I was watching through the window, it is clear day, usual 30 some degrees...notice the haze above the city, it looks dirty and it IS dirty, not strange people are using masks when going around.

Typhoon season

There were 2 "typhoons" last weeks, but they were more Tropical storms than really typhoons. Probably to reach balance, now "Super Typhoon" Sepat is approaching. Winds over 195mph. Sounds interesting.
I made kind of photo journal, so that you could see how it looks from the very beginning. Day was hot, but then late afternoon clouds started to gather behind the mountains:

Picture in the morning was pretty much the same, after windy and stormy night, but without some rainfall.
In Internet (link is http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/ )I found following information:

And satellite pic was classical example of typhoon:

With this, it remained for us only to wait...
Mentioned tropical storms were false alerts, and people here, in fact, wait anxiously for such typhoons in summer season to have some day off work oroff school. Pretty much as we in Europe are glad when there is day off because of big snowfall in winter. Today, as in the News was full of Sepat coming tomorrow, people went to buy food etc. RT Mart had a good sell, and other shops also, I am sure!
I came to work morning, and here is my brekfast, unusual one, as usually it would be muesli, but I had enough of it and opted for some cheese, coffee and toast. Just for a glimpse in a life of expat ;-)

I was cleaning my pics files and found this one, which kind a reminded me that I always wanted to be vegetarian, ba, wegan!

After this, some beauty is needed. Photographers continue to use TsingHua campus for a wedding pics-curious...is it because of lack of other prominent buildings around or an aura of University is something associated with luck in married life?? I would not go to take my wedding pics even nearby Alcatraz on Bijenicka (Physics dpt. of Univ. of Zagreb). And old building, down in the city, on Marulic Square, also would not be appropriate, as it was Psychiatric hospital before ;-)

For a desert, fruit. One way of eating mango. Mnjammmm! It costs 20NTD=1/2 eur per 600gr. In Japan it is 10 or so times more expensive, in Europe...forget it, you will never get one ripe enough for this!

This is addition, post-typhoon Monday: Sepat (it was named by the fish) passed some 200km south, and except some wind and rain, it did not produce larger effects in Hsinchu. Well...TsingHua campus got a bit of wind, obviously:

(post)typhoon skies: