Night Owl

The blog has been stagnating recently with my posting becoming more infrequent and sporadic. I have three essays I want to write: one on defence, one on a comparative analysis of theories of the business cycle and one on aesthetics. I'll get around to each of them eventually. My enthusiasm occassionally has rotten periods, which, though I can drag myself out of them of course, they do mean I spend more time on other things which I might otherwise have neglected, such as taking the dog out on long drives into the countryside.

I stayed out all night Friday (Tainan) and Saturday (Kaohsiung) this weekend, which is unusual for me. Nothing better to post at the moment than some recent pictures and this studio vid - someone mentioned not being a "night owl" like me and this was immediately what I thought of. Somebody else, who shall go unnamed, plays far too much Hank Williams than can possibly be healthy - in my opinion! Gerry Rafferty and his band were very good and they don't get played often enough for my liking.


This is the Tainan City skyline as seen from the north side of the Anping River (westward, i.e. the river is flowing from left to right and the picture was taken with my right side facing toward the river delta).


The same shot using the long lens to bring into focus three particular buildings: to the left is the Shangri La hotel tower behind the train station; to the right is the red-roofed watch-tower adorning the remains of the Dutch Fort (I believe the tower was built by the Tainan City government with much of the rest of the site being the "reconstruction" of the Japanese colonial administration - only a few wall fragments and so on remain of the original construction). In the middle of the image is a cluster of three buildings in the city's financial district.


This is another shot from my west-side balcony just before dusk. To the far left you can see the Shangri La hotel tower; I live about ten minutes from the train station.


Last wednesday, I drove out to Tseng-wen reservoir as I had the day off. This is the waterfall just off the main approach road to the damn where me and the dog stop to cool off (Tseng-wen reservoir is over an hour's drive away in the blistering heat). It's quite small and doesn't have a pool deep enough for swimming, which is something I'm on the lookout for (I know one or two spots in Kaohsiung county for this, but that's an even longer drive out).




I can't decide which of these two shots I like best. The first one captures the profile of the bird better since the shape of the tail is obvious, whereas it isn't in the second image. However, the tributary inlet in the background to the second image helps to make a better overall composition by framing the bird in the centre.


Dog pictures. I should create a seperate page for these since I have so many. This one shows Black & White yawning earlier this afternoon.


This is a good one, showing the two white pups with one in focus and the other blurred. I still haven't given them names yet, and actually just earlier tonight when I was out feeding them chicken, I found someone had dropped another puppy off at the park - tiny little thing, whereas these fellas are starting to get big enough to play with the adult dogs. I've got to find someone to adopt them or consider it myself - there's been a few times already when I've had to stop the locals from beating them, but I can't be there all the time.


Here's all four of the puppies together - two brown, two white - with a black dog in the background (he and his brother get brought here occassionally by their owner who then comes round a few hours later to pick them up, which is just irresponsible - even though the two of them generally behave themselves).


This is my mate's Vespa sitting outside the pub. Great colour, shame about the rusty wheels - he wants to switch them to "moon caps". I think he should get rid of the spare wheel at the front too and mount a pair of mirrors on the handlebars - driving without mirrors is anathema to me.

I got plenty of people shots as well, but naturally I'm reticent about putting up pictures of other people without their permission. Somebody did take a picture of me on Friday night smoking a cigar... compositionally it was almost quite good, but technically it was retarded - he was drunk and managed to focus on the wall behind me. Come to think of it actually, I haven't got any good pictures of myself. Aside from passport pics, and the Kenting one I use for my avatar, all the pictures of me are blurred (taken by other people) or out of focus. I'd prefer a shot of me drinking a whiskey or actually doing something rather than just a blank mug shot.

Oh, and if anybody would like to referee the debate in this thread, feel free. I may be guilty of getting a bit too rough at times.