wireless gingko

this photo from a book called abstract city made me laugh...

... and reminded me of the beautiful gingko trees i saw all over south korea...

... and generally of south korea...

kimchi pots

... and, of course, food!

Bibimbap (my favorite!)

they like to serve lots of little tiny white dishes - of yummy spiciness!

lights in the fog

link

miyajima: from one island to another

a true highlight of this epic trip around asia was a 26 hour stop on the japanese island of miyajima. when you take the ferry from hiroshima to the island, you are welcomed by an intriguing view of the itsukushima shrine.

a peak of the itsukushima shrine from the surrounding hills

part of the genius of this shrine is the beauty of how the design complements the tides completely. i arrived near low tide and could walk right out to this huge gate...

low tide at the gate, or torii, of the itsukushima shrine

a few hours later, the bottom of the structure is covered up with the rising water!

this is the major part of the itsukushima shrine and the high tide water rises right up to the platforms you walk along.

by sunset, the orange torii sits deeply in the water.

the torii at high tide

i love how the mountains in the background weave through the structure. this is ancient dynamic design, even though the structures dont actually move at all! gorgeous concept.

after this six week epic trip around asia, i'm now heading home to australia. one island to another.

ready for "halloween" in tokyo

in southeast and east asia, there are an amazing number of 7 elevens and KFCs. the 7 elevens in taiwan were the place to be as you could pay your bills, use free wi-fi, get stamps, have a snack, etc...

in tokyo, they have dressed up this colonel sanders in preparation for one of my favorite holidays of the year...

"halloween" ;) (it is always an annoying word to remember how to spell, isnt it?)

tokyo nightscape

today i gave the final lecture of this rather epic tour of east asia. tonight is my last night in tokyo. i like this scene of tokyo at night and can say i've seen at least three of those massive sea creatures, with limbs moving up and down, attached to buildings above restaurants.

tumblr tells me (for once!) that this image comes from a video game called "power slave."

i'm off for the weekend to visit hiroshima and then kyoto, before heading back to australia, next week.

exploration of the origin of the universe

the Center for the Exploration of the Origin of the Universe at seoul national university in south korea not only has a fantastic title, but also a good url: http://bigbang.snu.ac.kr/. i love that i get to visit and work at places with titles like this!

there are also nicely coloured temples around the city.

lady by tokyo

i arrived in japan today and during my first few hours of exploration, i wandered into an electronics and gaming market.

the amount of stuff one can store on teeny tiny little USB sticks now is remarkable!

then i found an entire floor of an arcade completely dedicated to photo booths! (i found several others later...)

no question, i had to try.

the booth i chose was called "Lady by Tokyo." being as the instructions were all in japanese, i had to guess at what was happening and therefore look a little funny in some of these shots.

things to notice:

- i am clearly taller than the average japanese person using these booths, as i was standing all the way at the back and my head was still cut off!

- you can use a machine to write things on the photos afterwards. i did lots of guessing as to what i was doing, and then the time ran out! no more adjusting.

- they *automatically* enlarge your eyes!?! i guess this is to be closer to the anime/manga image of women, but i find it a bit freaky.

ridiculous. charming. just wow.

i wish i had some friends here - this could be really fun!

bean sprouts

in jeonju, south korea, they really like their bean sprouts. two english-speaking, (drunk) old men i met at dinner laughed at this observation of mine, saying its actually "something in the special water" here that makes them delicious.

i have possibly eaten my weight in bean sprouts over the last few days.

exhibit A, breakfast: several types of kimchi, tiny salty shrimps, barley tea, and two varieties of spicy bean sprout soup! (they like to eat big breakfasts here...)

Kongnamul gukbap (콩나물국밥)

the flavours might not have had huge depth, but the spiciness more than made up for it!

actually, that dish on the right was my favorite! it was two eggs with dried seaweed mixed together (and cooked) with the hot broth from the center dish of bean sprout soup. the women who served the food prepared that dish for me, as it must have been pretty obvious that i had no idea what to do with the two raw eggs sitting silently in the bowl in front of me!

Beijing: Donghuamen Night Market

during my first night in Beijing, i managed to entertain some locals by eating something completely the wrong way. but i'll get to that...

the Donghuamen Night Market in Beijing, China is known for its unusual food options. this market is a bit overpriced and caters to the tourists, but you can bargain for deals if you want. in general, the strangeness of the options makes up for the overall blandness of the flavours, in my mind.

for instance, in the image below you see silk worm at the lower left, and snakes on sticks in the middle of the upper row!

you choose what you want and they either fry it or grill it over the coals in front of them, as this woman has done to the skewered snake she's happily handing off.

i did not eat snake.

i have no idea what the mound of thing below is. i couldnt guess from the items listed on their signs and they couldnt tell me when i asked. they chop it up and serve it in a stir fry or a soup. the locals seemed to like it.

then, of course, there are the creepy crawly things: scorpions, centipedes, grasshoppers, lizards, massive crickets, etc... all deep fried to order.

i did not eat anything with too many legs to count, nor did i eat or photograph the sheep's penis, the (seriously) stinky tofu, the pig ears (a true delicacy here), the testicles, you get the idea.

what i did eat were squid, oysters, dumplings, and a starfish!

a guy at the stall offered to take my photo, and my expression mostly describes the experience. i wanted to like it, but...

it had a very confusing and gritty texture. i didnt really like it at all. i took one more apprehensive bite as i walked along the stalls and was about to toss the awful thing in a bin, when an old lady mercifully waved me over to her stall and showed me the proper way to eat a starfish (between her fits of laughter with her friend)!!

apparently youre supposed to crack it open and only eat the dark flesh inside!

oops! i was completely embarrassed, but happy to learn the right part to eat! doing my best as a silly westerner to entertain the locals ;) the inside bit was definitely better, but kinda bitter and salty and not actually that tasty. a woman stopped just then and asked if i could give her some money to buy bread. i offered her the rest of the starfish, but she refused, and turned quickly to rush away. hmm.

i ended the evening on a sweet note, with fruit glazed in sugar!

Jiankou Great Wall

today was an exhausting and incredible day. i cannot believe how much we lucked out with the weather while we climbed up to and along the unrestored Jiankou section of the great wall of china. absolutely amazing.

until recently, i never really understood the desire some people had to walk along large sections of the 3500 mile long wall, but my opinion has changed dramatically. not only have i been reading a great book about a wall trek called embracing the dragon, by polly greeks, but now the experience of feeling the long mountain spine leaves me craving more.

maybe one day...

more photos sometime soon, need sleep.

a simple reminder

it's almost easy to forget where i am after a day of sitting at a desk with my laptop thinking about the same type of universe-related questions that i think about most days.

but then i get up to use the bathroom and find squatting toilets waiting for me. oh right, still in asia!

most toilets stalls dont provide handles...

many places offer both the squatting option and the western-style toilet... just remember not to flush the toilet paper!

so far this trip reminds me of something my good friend said recently about adjusting to having a new baby and a toddler in her family:

"it’s a question of managing all the moving parts and making sure everyone eats, sleeps and poops in the appropriate places."

only i just have to look after myself. props to all you parents!


ps. today i'm off to the western social media deadzone of mainland china, during their national holidays, which should be a sufficiently crazy time to visit beijing! talk to you from hong kong next week...

coastal climbing

i managed to get out of the city over the weekend and up to taiwan's northern coast. i went with some seasoned rock climbers who, thankfully, let me borrow their equipment! i'm not a very strong climber, but it was a lot of fun and the views from high up the rock face were worth the effort!

i also walked around a bit and found a family fishing. overall, the day was lovely - even when it started really raining late in the afternoon!

a talk, a recital and dumplings

the populations of taiwan and australia are roughly equal at 23 million people, yet taiwan is an island 500 km (310 mi) long and 200km across, while mainland australia is over 7.5 million square kilometers! taiwan has roughly 200 professional astronomers compared to australia's 500.

after my talk yesterday, there was a reception with an array of snacks set out to welcome a mexican concert pianist who gave an amazing piano recital! the event was to honor mexican and tawainese relations as they move forward to build a telescope in mexico with the aim of detecting small (~1 km diameter) objects in the Kuiper Belt at the edge of our solar system.

listening to piano music in a lovely recital hall is now officially my favorite way to relax after giving a talk.

my hosts then took me out to dinner to a very famous dumpling restaurant in taipei city. there were many people standing outside waiting and i thought we would never get into the tiny place, but they took our table of six up and up and up 5 flights of stairs to a room with a large table!

the food was incredible! some of the steamed dumplings actually had soup inside so they morphed their shape as i picked them up with my chopsticks, dipped them in the vinegar, soy sauce, and ginger mixture, and placed them on my spoon to cool. the bite was an explosion of goodness.

i was so entranced by the textures and flavours of the food and the scientific conversation, that i forgot to take any photos! i realized this at the end of the meal and so my hosts insisted on ordering another round of red bean dessert buns so they could take this photo for me ;)

some food in taiwan

anyone living in australia during the last ~year knows how exorbitantly priced bananas have been since the floods hit queensland and wiped out most of the crops.

anyone who knows me reasonably well understands how devastated i have been about this unfortunate occurrence! but despite my love of bananas, i refuse to pay $15 to $20 AUD per kilo (or even more) for this delicious fruit.

now i hope everyone can appreciate just how big my eyes must have grown today at lunch with astronomers in taiwan, when i was finishing my bowl of noodles and the woman placed on our table one tasty, tiny, bright yellow, gorgeous looking banana for each of us!!

maybe it wasnt the best early impression to make on the professionals here, but i dont really care, because i was incredibly excited. and after hearing the sad story of the floods, i was offered another banana, which i happily accepted!

the other dessert offering was a bowl of hard candies. i took two that looked peculiarly interesting, pictured above. one was corn flavoured, which didnt seem quite as odd as the apparently goldfish flavoured sweetie. the fish one was colored pink and surprisingly tasted quite good! i ate it first in case it was horrid and i needed to cover the flavour. this was a mistake, because the brown colored "cornee" thing was absolutely awful! i cannot do any more justice to the flavour other than to say that i had to spit it out.

in other food news: sushi-flavoured pringles!?!

ps. there were probably supposed to be at least 10 hyphens in the post, but i gave up trying to remember the rules and just removed them all! please forgive me (or teach me...).

light reading

successfully made it to taipei! it has the old familiar smell of asian cities in the summer: sewage.

the trip was mostly uneventful, but i managed to get in a bit of light reading on the plane ;)

off to work today - give my first talk tomorrow. the extragalactic astronomy community in taiwan is rather small, but quite active, and apparently they will all be at my talk tomorrow! looking forward to it.

angkor temples of cambodia

exploring the ancient temple complexes around angkor, cambodia was an amazing experience! angkor is said to be the largest religious monument/complex in the entire world as there are hundreds of temples surrounding angkor wat, covering something like 1000 square miles! the pictures i share here are spread throughout the temple complexes that we explored over three days!

the ankorian period of khmer rule started in the 9th century A.D. by the khmer hindu monarch, jayavarman II. the main temples began construction in the 1100's and the khmer ruled the region until the mid 1400's when the thai forces conquered, forcing the khmer to move their capitol to the present location of phnom pehn.

[sorry if this takes a while to load, i added the big pictures to show the details...]

must start the day with a solid cambodian breakfast!


the most famous temple of the bunch: angkor wat (with monks!).


a huge statue of buddha as you enter angkor wat.


monkey crossing.








the traditional peacock hats were fantastic!


the tourists were sometimes goofy ;)


conservationists have struggled to decide whether to restore all the temples to their original forms or let the trees continue to grow throughout. i'm glad they left some trees!






i love the details of the carvings, even though these structures are SO old!! i cant imagine what they looked like in their prime! the colors of the stones are amazing as well.




a decorated elephant!


some temples required serious(ly sweaty) climbs up steep stairs!




i loved the temple of faces, bayon!!









peace out!



more photos here!!