Another video from the parade.

This is the other video from the parade the other night. I've been trying for three days to get it up, but youtube is suddenly not accepting about half of the videos I upload. Whenever I try another service (revver, dailymotion, etc.), my computer freezes.

Fanfan and I are leaving this afternoon for Thailand where we'll be for the next three weeks. I'll be attending the East-West Center's Summer Seminar on Transitional Justice in Bangkok, and she'll be wandering in Bangkok.

After the Seminar, we'll be heading to Ko Samet for a couple of days, then (if all goes well with my visa) we'll make our way back to Taiwan.

The simultaneous rally in New York.

Someone posted this in the comments of a recent post I wrote. It turns out the rally that I mentioned a while back was held simultaneously with the huge rallies here in Taiwan:

A record number of more than 3,000 Taiwanese expatriates living in the United States attended a rally outside the U.N. headquarters in New York City Saturday to promote Taiwan's bid to join the United Nations under the name Taiwan.

The rally, organized jointly by the Taiwan-based United Nations for Taiwan Alliance and the New York-based Committee for Admission of Taiwan to the United Nations, was linked via satellite to a mass rally simultaneously held in the southern Taiwan port city of Kaohsiung.

...

Besides Taiwanese expatriates residing in the greater New York and New Jersey areas, many others traveled from Washington D.C., Connecticut, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Kentucky and Montreal, Canada to attend the rally.

Meanwhile, Scott Garretta, a [Republican] member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nauru's Ambassador to the United Nations Marlene Moses, Tuvalu's Ambassador to the U.N. Afelee Pita, and Ian George Williams, a former president of the U.N. Correspondents Association also turned up at the rally and voiced their support for Taiwan.

[Read the whole article]

In other news, I've found some pictures from New York, ads promoting Taiwan's UN bid, pictures from the rallies, and so on:

[Credit Joe Jones]

[credit Jimmy Lin]

.....then blogger suddenly stopped working and won't let me upload photos. So, here are the links: "UN For Taiwan" written in the sky, and there's this photo set.

The goddess of the sea to weigh in on the United Nations debate New York

I have not found any stories about this on any English websites, but maybe a little later this afternoon there will be more information.

Last night, during a Mythbusters commercial break, we were watching the nightly English hour on one of the umpteen Taiwanese news channels.

One of the stories struck me, so I took a couple of notes. Most of this is from memory, though, so I'll try to find more on it this afternoon.

Allegedly, there will be a group of Taiwanese devotees to the goddess of the sea, Matsu, marching in procession through the streets of New York soon. Even though they will be receiving around NT$3 million from the Taiwanese government to get from Chiayi, in the South of Taiwan where this procession normally takes place, to New York, the government assures the world that this is simply a cultural event that has nothing to do with the ongoing UN entry debate.

The report also mentioned that Taiwan would be buying advertisement space on buses whose routes pass by the UN buildings in Manhattan.

The main reason I'm writing this is that I know there are readers of this site who are in New York. If you have any info or could take some photos/videos of either the procession of Matsu or the bus ads for me, I'd be really interested in seeing them and posting them on this site.

As I mentioned, once I can find some better information, I'll post it. All of the above is from last night.