Down with Ah-Bian!

Sometimes when you've had it to here, and just can take no more, there's no choice but to make yourself heard. And that's exactly what 200,000 Taiwanese (or 90,000 depending on who's reporting) had in mind about their corrupt and unrepenting president Chen Shui Bian, when they took to a peaceful protest sit-down at the Kategelan boulevard in Taipei.



Amidst the unrelenting rain and humidity of summer, we joined the teeming crowds adorned in raincoats and huddled under umbrellas to shout our hearts our in the pouring rain. Haven't felt this moved by the sheer strength of people power since the stray bullet fiasco back in 2004.

Torre d'Oriente

Situated in the picturesque hillside town of Modica in southeast Sicily, Torre d'Oriente was a pleasant surprise during our honeymoon trip, and certainly one that we could never have discovered on our own.

After driving across southern Sicily from Agrigento pretty much the whole evening, it was almost 10pm when we reached Modica, only to find that our trusty GPS - after helping our navigate half of Sicily without a glitch - failed to find our B&B for the night. Giving up, we called the owner Marco from a phone booth in front of the Chiesa San Pietro and his wife Viviana agreed to meet us there to take us to the hotel.



After we were finally settled, a faint rumbling reminded us that we had not settled dinner yet, and asked Viviana if she could recommend any good restaurants for dinner. As it turned out, she was about to go for dinner and we happily tagged along, knowing full well that anywhere that the locals go to eat couldn't be half bad.