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Dear friends. We live in momentous times. The promise of biotechnology is finally starting to yield some practical results. Some IMPORTANT results.

They’ve now grown tiny little bits of human liver in the lab.

Sure, there are some doubts. They’re just little tiny liver cells. It’s not a whole liver yet.

But I hold out great hope that we’ll all survive to see the dream brought to fruition.

So feel free to drink up and celebrate. As for me, I have a keg to somehow drain…

(PS: We recently passed a milestone. Our anti-comment-spam filter has now filtered away more comments than we have legitimate comments. That said, a few get through the filter here and there. They’re pretty obvious. Other ones, I can’t understand. You tell me — is this comment spam??)

I just got trick or treated…
 

Does everyone realise the significance of this?  Soon there will be a Starbucks on every corner…
 

Thankfully I had some emergency lollies floating around (as you do when you’re as sugar dependant as I am).

Halloween 2006 photos. Watch out for the crazy cat lady!

WARNING: may be extremely geeky.

i’m sure many of us remember fondly (?!) spinning pens around thumbs in highschool.  occasionally i find myself still doing this.  it’s ridiculous.  i don’t know why the habit persists.

the people in this youtube clip take it to another level altogether.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxW8qmKo8rs 

The Divis Tower

Scott Adams, the author of Dilbert, lost his speaking voice a little while back. No, his throat wasn’t just hoarse — his voice would just go silent when he tried to speak one-on-one with people. Strangely enough, he was OK with speaking to groups.

He was diagnosed as having an exotic affliction called Spasmodic Dysphonia which his doctor said ZERO people had ever recovered from.

But he did in what is really a triumph of mind over … well, mind, I guess.

Scott Adams gets his voice back.

From Kottke

My namesake is at it again… not cool, something that is cool:

Well quite a bit has happened since I last wrote anything here.  As you may have gathered from previous posts here, the company I have been working for has turned out to not be very well organized and quite badly run.  Eg. no general manager, no food and beverage manager, no restaurant manager.  Well now they no longer have a western chef.  Yes that means me.  Three weeks ago I was called into have a meeting with the secretary of the vice-president, and the human resources manager.  It was explained to me that I had done my job very well and that I all that they were happy with my performance but that considering the restaurant (which had been open for under two months) was not making any money, and they had already lost a considerable sum of money, by their estimations the western kitchen would not bring in enough revenue for them to justify continuing to employ me.  I was completely floored.  Not once did I forsee this happening as I had smoothly opened the restaurant for them and was in the process of implementing the necessary steps to start doing wedding banquets from the western kitchen.  But I guess seeing as how they have a completely seperate chinese kitchen they decided to cut their losses and just do chinese food.  Now lawyers are involved and I'm trying to get a decent severance package.  Guess I learned a valuble lesson the hard way.... don't gamble on new companies in Asia.  I've got Mike, Paul, and Andrew Carlisle, helping me with contacting chefs and stuff and they are definately good to have in my corner.

   Problem is now I'm jobless in Taiwan.  I've been pounding the pavement and hitting all the hotels, have even met with a few executive chefs, but at the moment there are no positions available.  My best lead is a possible position at the American Club in Taipei where the former executive sous chef of the Savoy in Londen is now the executive chef, but, if I get the job it won't start until January.  I'm pretty hopeful I'll get the job, which is the Restaurant Chef for an executive steak house, but thus far there are no guarantees.  

   Ever the positive thinking optimist, I've been trying to look at the bright side of the situation.  At least I've now had time to explore some of Taipei city and we even been to the southern part of the island to Tainan to visit with Sandra's uncle, who is a jesuit missionary and has been living in Taiwan for the past 42 years.  We couldn't have asked for a better tour guide.  He has a van and drove us around to all the important cultural landmarks and explained in explicit detail, the history behind all the places we visited.  It was a great escape from reality (which is a little scary at the moment) and we came home feeling a little wiser and a with a greater appreciation for the way things are in Taiwan. 

   Well I know how you all hate long winded blogs and I seem to have managed to give you a fair bit to read (sorry Ian) but I promise to fill you in when there is more news.  I'll include some pictures below to help break the monotomy of all this reading now:

Some good examples of the foot traffic on a typical Taipei side street

This picture is taken one block away from the busy foot traffic

A favorite past time of Taiwenese children.... Catching poor little live turtles with paper clips taped to their backs

Another favorite pastime of Taiwanese kiddies... collecting giant beetles which is what this store sells.  Look at the green sign at the top-"Starbugs Beetles".  The store was full of disgusting giant beetles and larvae for sale.  Pretty weird

This picture was taken at a buddhist university near Kaousiung city in the south of Taiwan.  They called it the temple of 1000 buddhas.  Can you guess why?

Well I've gotta go (meeting some friends to go to a climbing wall).  I'll put more pics up soon.... It just takes so long for them to upload. I wanted to put more buts it's taken like 45 minutes just to get these ones uploaded.  So TTFN and hope to hear from y'all with some news of your lives.