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Details: Written by: Richard_McKie; Parent Category: Travel; Category: East Asia; Published: 07 June 2015; Hits: 91228

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I’ve mentioned that on several occasions we were taken to streets where there were local food vendors or small restaurants and set loose to find our own food of choice. But on others we were taken to larger establishments where the meal was part of our tour. At several of these restaurants some dozen or more local dishes were presented as a banquet to be shared.

The Taiwanese are very proud of their food and believe it to be the best in the world.

I’m on record elsewhere as saying that I don’t like spicy food. But Wendy and Craig do with Sonia on the fence. Others in our party were mixed as to taste preference.

But no one took to a special green soup that appeared several times as a delicacy. Having said that, most other dishes quickly disappeared into the collective digestive system, some with more enthusiastic praise than others.

I certainly didn’t starve but on the whole those of us who had been to China agreed that the food on the mainland, particularly in Beijing, is better.

By the end of the trip I was glad to get to Hong Kong and then to China to eat something less monotonously 'Taiwanese'.

Anyway, the local wine and beer was good and wine and beer from elsewhere was inexpensive too.

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Travel

Bridge over the River Kwai

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One of the things a tourist to Bangkok is encouraged to do is to take a day trip to the actual bridge.

Fiction, Recollections & News

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One of his body's cells turned rogue and multiplied, bypassing his body's defences. The tumour grew and began to spread to other organs. Radiation stabilised the tumour's growth but by then he was too weak for chemo-therapy, which might have stemmed the spreading cells.

He was 'made comfortable' thanks to a poppy grown in Tasmania, and thus his unique intelligence faded away when his brain ceased to function on Sunday, 22nd May 2022.

I visited him in the hospital before he died. Over the past decade we had seldom spoken. Yet he now told me that he often visited my website. I had suspected this because from time to time he would send e-mail messages, critical of things I had said. That was about the only way we kept in touch since the death of his daughter Kate (Catherine). That poppy again.

Opinions and Philosophy

Electric Cars revisited (again)

Electric vehicles like: trams; trains; and electric: cars; vans; and busses; all assist in achieving better air quality in our cities. Yet, to the extent that the energy they consume is derived from our oldest energy source, fire: the potential toxic emissions and greenhouse gasses simply enter the atmosphere somewhere else.

Back in 2005 I calculated that in Australia, due to our burning coal, oil and sometimes rural waste and garbage, to generate electricity, grid-charged all-electric electric cars had a higher carbon footprint than conventional cars.

In 2019, with a lot of water under the bridge; more renewables in the mix; and much improved batteries; I thought it was worth a revisit. I ran the numbers, using more real-world data, including those published by car companies themselves. Yet I got the same result: In Australia, grid-charged all-electric cars produce more greenhouse gasses than many conventional cars for the same distance travelled.

Now, in the wake of COP26, (November 2021), with even more water under the bridge, the promotion of electric cars is back on the political agenda. Has anything changed?

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