The Foreigner in Formosa

Vacation

Out of xountry for the next few weeks.  Should be back sometime in early August.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE (Aug 12/08):  Heh.  You know you're in a hurry when you can't even spell "country" properly.

Can You Give Me A Discount?

Yesterday may have been the first day Chinese tourists could visit Taiwan via direct chartered flights, but who didn't see THIS coming?

“Compared with trips to Europe, where tourists spend US$120 per night on average, several Chinese travel agencies have complained that our charges are too high,” Jack Lin (林健興), manager of the domestic tour department at Southeast Travel Service Co (東南旅行社), said yesterday.

I'm sure it doesn't help your future bargaining position when you offer 'extra-low introductory rates', expecting you'll be able to hike prices later:

Tour packages for the first wave of Chinese visitors to arrive in Taiwan via direct charter flights this weekend are worth 20-30 percent more than the selling prices [which is to say, they were sold 20-30% below cost], travel agencies said Thursday, expressing hopes their generous offers will be rewarded by good business from mainland Chinese tourists in the future.

Rather than generate goodwill, those cut-rates are only going to result in cut-throat bargaining sessions later on.  (But you gave my uncle Chow a price that was 30% lower than this only two months ago!  And that was during the peak tourism season!  Why CAN'T you give me a better price today . . .)

Maybe there's a lesson to be learned here for the Ma administration, regarding its similar eagerness to give away the store to Beijing in exchange for a few ephemeral moments of Sinic bonhomie.

Scene From The Upcoming 'Son of Indiana Jones' Movie

As you can see, the heavies are probably members of Hank Scorpio's diabolical Globex Corporation. 

Either that, or they're Chinese traffic cops.

(If it's the latter, then we can safely conclude that SOMEONE decided to live dangerously, and didn't put enough change in the parking meter.)

 

Not to spoil the surprise, but I hear that after a breakneck Segway chase, Mutt and his companions escape by falling off three waterfalls and swimming through a green algae bloom.

(Green algae?  Ewwww)

Still no word as to whether they manage to jump a shark or two along the way.

(Images from the Taipei Times and the Daily Mail.)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE:  Heh.  Don't think of them as Segways -- think of them as "Anti-Terror Assault Vehicles".  (Hat tip to Jonah Goldberg)

UPDATE #2:  "Who said it wouldn't be a 'Green Olympics'?"

UPDATE (Jul 6/08):  Whoops.  It's supposed to be "Segway", with no "d".  Stupid phonetic spelling system!

UPDATE #4:  I did not know that:  The father of the Segway's inventor is apparently Jack Kamen, one of the illustrators of the old Tales from the Crypt comic book.

Quit Complaining And Eat Your Spinach

From an editorial in yesterday's China Post entitled, "Living a simple and virtuous life":

There is a growing awareness among the Taiwan public that adopting a new lifestyle is necessary to combat inflation and keep the wolf from the door.  It is imperative to adjust one's spending habits.

[...]

All in all, our people must re-embrace the traditional virtues of thrift and diligence.

Funny, but for the last two years, the Post wasn't sternly exhorting its readers to return to the simple life.  No, for at least two years the paper busied itself with rank economic demagoguery, directed at Taiwan's pro-independence president.

(Food prices too high?  Blame Chen Shui-bian!)

But that was then.  There's a new man at the helm now -- a KMT man, a pro-communist man.  And suddenly, poverty itself has become a virtue!

(What, did they really think nobody was going to notice the about-face?)

You know, a couple weeks ago the China Post lamented the decline of its Chinese-language sister paper, the China Times.  Let me go out on a limb here and say that if the Times' respect for its readers' intelligence is anything like its English-language cousin, then perhaps there may have been a perfectly valid reason for that decline.