A Big World from a Small Island

25/07/2021  On the 17th of December, my mother and I gave a presentation at the LioHe(六和) high school in Taoyuan, on the outskirts of Taipei. Mom's friend was a geography teacher there and she had invited us to talk about what is was like to live in Tahiti and France, to two classes of year-ten students and one class of year-eleven students, in Chinese. I was quite apprehensive as my Chinese level was that of a local eight year old but Mom said that she would talk half of the time while I switched the slides. LioH e is the biggest high school I have ever been to.  It has three buildings, a basketball court with benches on the side, a soccer field and a  FamilyMart  (a convenience store), in the main building.  Hanged on that building's facade, spread across the entire building vertically, were the names of all of the ex-student's who had entered top Universities in Taïwan that year. Spread in the middle, was the name of the only student who had entered Tai ...

21/07/2021 Diving bell design from "Sketches of Ceylon" Oil painting by Eugene Ransonnet-Villez  based off his submersible sketches(1867) Reconstruction of diving bell ( from   Nhm-wien ) Eugene von Ransonnet-Villez used a diving bell (see picture above in centre and right) to allow him to breath underwater. He sketched what he observed during his travels in Ceylon (now called Sri Lanka).  Picture on the far right: a a→ windows                                      b b b b B B → weights                                      c → air tube                                      d → level of the water inside the bell                        ...

  19/07/2021 On the 8th July, after a week of preparation, a 21hr flight with my mask on and a lot of uncertainties, I arrived in Paris with my dad. The preparations involved asking for an authorisation to re-enter our country on the  Electronic Travel Information System ( ETIS)   platform , an electronic travel authorisation, a proof of vaccination for my dad and a declaration to show that we didn't have any Covid symptoms, plus the usual passports and plane tickets.  We travelled to Paris to visit our family and friends. I was born there and it had been my home for five years. My paternal grandparents live in an apartment on the fifth floor and her neighbours had lent us their apartment so we were on the same floor as them. The apartment measured 150 square meters with a wide entrance and mirrors everywhere. There was a mirror in every living space so that you could see your reflection no matter where you were standing. There were thr...