Today is coldest day of the year in Taiwan, so today we eat starch balls.

I changed the name of my blog. The other was kind of a place holder until something less pedantic and more experience-based came along. Let me explain.

Today I made like a situationalist and endeavoured to get myself lost to find the "real city" at the heart of Tainan. I was actually too tired to even get lost let alone find my way back again - I went to a dance club in Kaohsiung last night and didn't get home until 6 in the morning - but I did find some interesting stuff. First I was biking around and I saw a sign that said "Beetle Store." Beetles and other insects are of personal significance to me for two reasons: first, Carl Jung was inspired to develop the theory of synchronicity based on an experience he had with a scarab beetle and then also Gretchen, whom you all may know, is farely enthralled with insects and has drawn my attention to them where before they were only good for crawling in my mouth while I slept 6 times out of a year on average. So of course I went in there and they had some really incredible beetles and grubworms that you hoped for the sake of the insect were in the larval stage of a much nicer looking creature. The beetles were all busily jamming their outsized probosci into these tubs of gelatinous goo that reminded me of the cheap grape jelly you can smear on your toast at a diner. They were all so stupidly big that I began to wonder if someone along the line hadn't just made a small mistake along the evolutionary chain. There's a lot of talk over here about what pet you're going to have when you get one and I think I decided right then and there that I would get a pair of the shiny-backed japanese beetles if the opportunity ever arose.

I was riding home along chenggong road, the road that leads to my university, and I kept seeing these prominently displayed banners hanging from lamp posts and street signs all up and down the road. I finally stopped to take a closer look at one of these banners and it said "2008 is the year of health and safety." It made me wonder if the previous year had focused more on senescence and violence, but it seemed to me a concept worth pursuing. It turns out that the mayor of Tainan has, of late become particulary worried about these two key issues and so has decided to make them the focus of his current tenure. He gave these comments to a local newspaper: " Mayor Hsu expressed that the 「Health Center」had to include physical and psychological advise, and emphasized that health was the most important for people.

Everyone should take good care and adjusted if any problem occurred in body and exercise more to maintain the better physical status. Meanwhile, he also hoped that every staff would be healthy because the biggest fortune is health. And 2008 is the year of health and safety in Tainan City, every staff in Tainan City Government would manage well to implement the concept of the healthy life and propagate for all the citizens.

Furthermore, Mayor Hsu said the high-density development especially in the industrialized cities would produce the social, sanitary and ecological problems which included high-density population, crowded traffic, tense life, unlicensed drinks and foods, polluted ecologic environment, violence and trauma…etc. These problems would progressively become the important factors that threatened the human health.It is settled up the milestone of the concept of the sustained city development in Tainan City to create the 「health, ecology, technology, culture」as the developmental objectives.

In the health aspect, we would promote the healthy life, improve the prophylaxis and health care, strengthen the sanitary education and propagation, and make effort in disease controlling as the objectives to check on the health status of the Tainan citizens."

I think I just found my new favorite public servant. It seemed a good omen to me rename my blog after Mayor Hsu's initiative - if I do nothing else, perhaps I can at least be healthy and safe.