Looking up in Puli
Waiting to Burn
The Longteng Broken Bridge
The Longteng Broken Bridge [龍騰斷橋]
The Longteng Bridge is located between Sanyi Township’s Shengsing Train Station Station [勝興車站] and Yutengping Station [魚藤坪車站] on the Old Mountain Line Railway [舊山線]. This beautiful red-brick bridge was built in 1905 during the period of Japanese colonial rule. On the morning of April 21, 1935, the massive 7.1 magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake destroyed the Longteng Bridge.
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E-People
Hello Kitty Self Check-in Kiosks
The Cult of Sanrio
Tired of monotonous self check-in kiosks at international airports? Taoyuan County resisted calls to become the only Hello Kitty-free zone in East Asia and allowed Eva Airlines to install Hello Kitty-themed self check-in kiosks at Taoyuan International Airport. Now you too can surround yourself in Hello Kitty before getting on an Eva Airlines Hello Kitty-themed airplane.
Beam Me Up
Nathan’s Anti-Drooling Ceremony

A very important milestone for a baby in Taiwan is his or her fourth month celebration. Parents celebrate by hosting an Anti-Drooling Ceremony [收涎 (shōuxián)]. To perform an Anti-Drooling Ceremony one must prepare cookies (in multiples of 6 for good luck) and red string. The cookies are made into a necklace to be worn by the baby. These cookies are used by family and friends to wipe the lips of the baby as they say auspicious phrases.
We did this ceremony with Josie when she turned four months old. We may have goofed up part of the ceremony because her drooling increased in the weeks following the ceremony rather than decrease. We didn’t want to make the same mistakes with Nathan so we opted for better cookies this time. We ordered our cookies from Jinny’s Creations [吉尼餅乾] – a company that specializes in Anti-Drooling Ceremony cookies.
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An Instax Tour of Caotun
TDBT’s Best of 2012
Our household has been very exciting this year – We went from raising a toddler to raising a toddler and a newborn baby. Although blogging has been light as a result, there have been a few high quality posts that I would like to share with you in case you missed them the first time around:

Two Pair
In January I published two posts featuring plum blossoms: The Plum Blossoms of Fenguidou and The Plum Blossoms of Liujia.
At some point during the year I started making info cards for the butterflies I’ve been photographing. I’ve only completed a handful and have many more to go.
Crosswalk Diagonals
For a few weeks I was hip and shot with a Lomo Supersampler. After six rolls of film the camera broke and my hipness rapidly dissipated.
Pedestrians
During a rare period of blogging clarity I produced The Jump Project [One through Thirty].
The High Road and the Low Road
I ran into a couple of celebrities and photographed a lot of trees at Nantou’s Sitou Forest Recreation Park.

Another year of going to the Jhongsing Village Lotus Ponds. This year’s pictures were by far my favorite.

Cathy and I welcomed our son Nathaniel into the world on September 10. We have plenty of collages like this on Our Children’s Page.
Page Two
The post: Transformers 4 – Scene 24 Leaked Storyboards was a collaborative project with a coworker and reeks of awesomeness. We’ve recently acquired an Optimus Prime figure and will be putting together an Optimus Prime and Megatron battle sometime after the Lunar New Year.
Hope you enjoyed this year’s posts! See you next year!










![Jump [8 of 30]](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7279/6862360724_cc97558e5e.jpg)

