August 14, 2006 - Safety concerns are not that strict in Taiwan, and when they're constructing a building, sometimes they block the sidewalk so pedestrians have to walk out onto the street to get around. Sometimes you can just go right through the construction site even if they're working on the sidewalk, if they didn't block it off.
They've been working on this building ever since I got here. New buildings unceremoniously go up here - unlike in San Francisco where each new construction site made me wonder what was being built and for whom, what consideration went into design and aesthetics, and how it would improve or benefit the neighborhood. Here, a new building is just another brick in the wall.
iTunes soundtrack:
1. Duke's End (Genesis)
2. Little Lighthouse (Dukes of Stratosphear)
3. Oom-Pah-Pah ("Oliver!")
4. Hello, Goodbye (The Beatles - Anthology)
5. The Wild Cat (Seam)
6. All Revved Up With No Place to Go (Meatloaf)
7. Do You Remember Walter? (The Kinks)
8. Teeth Like God's Shoeshine (Modest Mouse)
9. Texas Flood (live)(Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble)
10. Happy Christmas (War is Over) (John Lennon)
3 comments:
i read an article in sfgate not long ago, about the new skyscrapers they plan to build in SF. uh, hullo, did you forget about the san andreas fault you sit on??
Actually, it's amazing regarding some of the earthquake-proof technology they use around the world. At the top of Taipei 101, there is a whole tutorial about how the building is built to withstand earthquakes (counterweights). In Japan, they use watertanks as counterweights.
urgh, I keep getting these flashes that you two know each other. I know our time overlapped in S.F., but I don't know if I ever mixed home with work life.
That huge weight on top of Taipei 101 is pretty amazing, and really scary when you think of the physics involved and the amount of force it's dealing with.
S.F. is certainly transforming in our absence. I always assume they're taking earthquakes into consideration when they build new tall buildings there, but when the big one hits, and you're in one of those buildings, it's really not much consolation until after the shaking stops and the building doesn't fall down. That's quite a test!
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