Hello everybody!

While in Taiwan recently, Lisa and I visited the world's tallest building, Taipei 101.


This was taken from a nearby mountain we hiked that morning, which gave us an interesting view of 101 and the city. Later that day, we went to the top of 101, to stare at the mountain we just climbed.

Not only is Taipei 101 the tallest building, it also has the fastest elevator (floor 5 to floor 89 in about 40-50 seconds...I was a bit creeped out), and is the only building to have one of its three wind dampers on display. What is a wind damper? It basically is a huge sphere set inside the building that keeps the building standing in high wind. They painted it a shimmery yellow and played really dramatic music to make it seem more exciting that it actually is:

To make it even more exciting (and I guess marketable), the Taipei 101 "people" created little animated damper statues which they call, of course, 'damper babies:'

This is one thing we love about Taiwan (and perhaps Asia in general?) -- their ability to anthropomorphize anything. Look:


They even put faces on their fried sweet potato balls!

Anyway, we fell in love with the damper babies and took many photos with the various statues (they come in different colors). We'll spare you the slideshow...for now. The best was the mural they have on the bottom floor right where you stand in line for the elevator:



If you're having trouble reading it, it says: Hello Everybody! We are Damper Babies!
I don't know why, but Lisa and I got such a kick out of this. That phrase became a bit of an inside joke; funniest when exclaimed at random times. I guess you had to be there...