Pronounced "gov zero, 零時政府", it is a grass-root civic tech community that promotes transparency of government information and citizen society through open source information technology that I committed my support to starting last year. Though I missed their annual banquet for donors due to my quarantine restriction, I visited their workgroup meetings and invited them to lunches, collectively and individually, to encourage and appreciate what they did.
An offshoot project from g0v, Cofacts/真的假的, is a fact-checking website and mobile app that I also supported last year. Johnson and Billion, young man and young woman in their early 30's, are cofounder/coder and promoter of the project since its inception five years ago. I went to one of their regular seminars aiming at tutoring and recruiting volunteer fact-checkers for the project and was impressed by how organized and well conducted the session was and how persistent they'd been doing this for years on volunteer basis. I continued my donation to the project and took them to a steakhouse for a treat.
Keep up the good work, doers of the world!
Still rocking
JK Yao was my junior high school buddy who loved rock 'n' roll music since we were kids. He started singing them at restaurant lounges in his early 20's, won top talent prize on TV with his guitar duet, composed and published his own songs, and has been producing and hosting an "oldies but goodies" rock music radio program broadcast every Saturday evening since two years ago, after semi-retiring from his own award winning lighting design company.
He gathered some of his old band members to have a series of public performances at a musical cafe recently. We went to the first show, it was a full house, packed with fans who enjoyed his radio program and old time rock 'n' roll music like I do. Here's his rendition of Don McLean's "American Pie" I recorded at the concert:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/
Singing through that 9-minute long classic without missing a beat on the lyric, my hat off to him!
A girl from Seattle
Doris Brougham (彭蒙惠) decided she wanted to share the Gospel with Chinese people when she heard millions of them had never heard of Jesus at twelve. In 1948, at age 22, she left her hometown Seattle by freighter for China, where she learned Chinese, taught English, and helped with Christian missions. She moved to Taiwan in 1951 in the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War and continued her evangelical work by helping tribal people groups, setting up children's choirs, organizing youth camps, teaching English classes, and hosting an international radio program broadcasting to mainland China. In 1962 she founded Overseas Radio and Television Inc. (ORTV), along with Studio Classroom (空中英語教室), an English language-teaching radio program. She was also involved in producing Taiwan’s first Christian TV program, Heavenly Melodies (天韻歌聲), formed of ORTV staff, which aired in 1963.
She is 95 years old this year. To celebrate her birthday and commemorate her life-long achievements, a musical was created and performed by ORTV staff and some theatrical professionals from the outside. We were invited to the show by our friends Daniel and Andrea Bastke, a missionary family we acquainted with in Southern California who moved to work for ORTV a couple years ago, who also played parts (Daniel as Doris' dad, Andrea her mom, and their daughter Selah as young Doris) in the show. We were thoroughly entertained and touched by the singing, acting, dancing, and the stories of this extraordinary girl from Seattle!
Doris Brougham (彭蒙惠) decided she wanted to share the Gospel with Chinese people when she heard millions of them had never heard of Jesus at twelve. In 1948, at age 22, she left her hometown Seattle by freighter for China, where she learned Chinese, taught English, and helped with Christian missions. She moved to Taiwan in 1951 in the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War and continued her evangelical work by helping tribal people groups, setting up children's choirs, organizing youth camps, teaching English classes, and hosting an international radio program broadcasting to mainland China. In 1962 she founded Overseas Radio and Television Inc. (ORTV), along with Studio Classroom (空中英語教室), an English language-teaching radio program. She was also involved in producing Taiwan’s first Christian TV program, Heavenly Melodies (天韻歌聲), formed of ORTV staff, which aired in 1963.
She is 95 years old this year. To celebrate her birthday and commemorate her life-long achievements, a musical was created and performed by ORTV staff and some theatrical professionals from the outside. We were invited to the show by our friends Daniel and Andrea Bastke, a missionary family we acquainted with in Southern California who moved to work for ORTV a couple years ago, who also played parts (Daniel as Doris' dad, Andrea her mom, and their daughter Selah as young Doris) in the show. We were thoroughly entertained and touched by the singing, acting, dancing, and the stories of this extraordinary girl from Seattle!
When receiving a registered mail in Taiwan, one needs to press a personal stamp on some paperwork as a show of ID and proof of reception. So when the postman rang my bell one morning and told me there was a registered mail for me I went downstairs with my personal stamp and gave it to the postman standing at the front door to press it on his paperwork. He then handed it back to me, and–lo and behold–I dropped it... It hopped on the ground a couple times then fell through the opening of a railed cover right next to the front door steps and landed on the bottom of the drain ditch.
After a two-second pause in shock, the postman apologized profusely to me (for an accident I thought I was at least half at fault) and started thinking how we could retrieve it. An older gentleman across the street who witnessed the whole thing suggested he had all kinds of tools that we could use, but the hard thing was to open up the railed cover–one side of it was wedged between the ground and the doorstep that the best we could do with a crowbar was a tilted opening that only I, with the smallest arm around, could enter, and even then I needed to hold an extension tool to try to reach that stamp. I grabbed a ladle, a back scratch from my apartment and taped them together and with it I could reach the stamp, but without gripping claws at the end of the ladle it could only move the stamp around, not picking it up. A lady neighbor gave me a long pinch that could grab, but not long enough to reach the stamp... We were in a quandary.
"How about using a vacuum cleaner?" the postman said. I thought that was a far-fetched idea, with electrical wiring and hoses and suction etc. in an open and raw environment like this. But my sister's studio assistant quickly pulled out their vacuum machine and hooked it all up for me. So I thought why not give it a try and laid myself down on the ground again, pulled the hose through the opening with my arm, located the stamp with the nose of the nuzzle, hooded over it, then turned on the switch... Voila, it got sucked right into the bag in one loud click!
Everyone was elated, and I thanked them, the postman, my sister's assistant, the neighbors whom I barely knew but came out to volunteer their help so generously and passionately, a show of the tenacious "human kindred feel" (人情味) that Taiwanese people are well known for that I personally experienced in this unusual rescue operation right at my front door!
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