Largest Typhoon of 2016 hits Taiwan - 颱風莫蘭蒂

Its been a year since we moved to Taiwan. A Typhoon greeted us last year just as we were settling in and this year, another one arrived the first week of school to welcome us back to Kaohsiung. 

Typhoon Meranti was the most powerful storm we've seen since living here.

Because its located on the coast, there was a lot of damage near our school, National Sun Yat-Sen University. This afternoon, one day after Meranti hit, we drove there to take some pictures of the ships that washed up. When we got there, we could smell the fumes coming from the wreckage. The photo above is of a boat trying to manage the oil leaking from the boats.

Below is an aerial shot we found online of the wreckage.

We also found this video of the typhoon destroying  Kaohsiung Harbor's shipping yard.

Skating with Andrew Chang in Taichung

Skating with one of my favorite skaters in Taiwan, Andrew Chang. I use to skate with him almost every week when I lived in Taichung, Taiwan between 2011 and 2012. Since coming back to Taiwan, when we go skate together, we spend half our time skating and the other half just talking to each other about our passions, families, careers, etc.

(below video edited by Andrew)

Moving to Taiwan

We have official moved to Taiwan! We flew out on August 2nd and arrived August 4th, celebrating our two year anniversary in the San Francisco Airport (8/3). The flight from San Francisco to Taipei took around 14 hours. It was a very tiring few days of travel.



After we arrived in Taiwan we met our Taiwanese friend, Nikki, who is studying at Moody. She allowed us to stay in here home and to show us around her neighborhood and reminisce about the places and food we missed that we haven't had since the last time we were in Taiwan.

We then decided to take the High Speed Rail (HSR) to Kaohsiung. Its about $25 more a person then a bus or a train. However it only took us one hour and a half verses a six hour trip! The train is a straight shot with quick stops along the way that travels over one hundred miles an hour.

We met up with Kim in Kaohsiung, who is another Taiwanese girl studying at Moody. Her family brought us to our new apartment which she rented for us. She also took the time to get our phones, internet and transportation needs all squared away. Having her here has helped the process a ton compared to if we had to figure out how to do all these things ourselves. A lot of these things would be impossible to do without a Taiwanese signature also.

Its so crazy being back in Taiwan. We feel very excited, nervous, scared, and relaxed. It's hard to explain the feeling. We really feel at home in Taiwan but are also so far away from everything that is normal to us.

Taiwan Bound: Moving Out

We just moved completely out of our home. It was a very sad and exciting moment. Seeing our house completely empty and lifeless was hard but knowing that we are on our way to Taiwan makes it all worth it.

Anne Marie played Sunday morning for the last time. She enjoyed this last memory with the band and close friends from our church.

We will be in Michigan for three weeks and then Ohio for two weeks before we are sent off to Taiwan!

Bellevue Skatepark Trip

Kickflip Tailslide

I've been trying to land a kickflip front tail on and off for five years now. Finally I started landing them on a normal height ledge about two weeks ago. Then I decided to take it down the hubba...

Power Line: Isaiah Jones

This is a video I filmed of Isaiah Jones doing a First Glance Skatepark "Power Line". This is the first Power Line video we made so far and plan on posting more weekly on the youtube channel. Isaiah kills it with how consistent he is. It took him less then 10 tries to film this line.

Double Crooks

A friend of mine, Drew Keiper and I doing crooks together.

First Glance Skateboard Deck Commercial

I filmed this video in one day, however the project got kinda pushed off to the side as I waited for an ending slide to be made for it. Eventually I just decided to make my own ending slides just so I could get the video posted. Alex Kuss is an amazing skater, I love watching his switch fs big spin in this video. He recently hurt his foot pretty bad and still tried to skate our the Holiday Hubba Contest and also film for the First Glance Christmas Video. During the filming of the Christmas Video he hurt it more trying to nollie flip the stairs in the dark. I hope his foot gets better soon. I can't wait for him to get back on his board, so we can do some more projects like this.

FG Christmas Video 2013

FG Christmas Skateboard Video Coming soon...

We had about 10 skaters out here to film for the First Glance Skatepark Christmas Skate Video. We filmed for about three and a half hours this time. The Halloween Video was filmed in only one hour. This time I didn't film the whole thing and was actually able to skate in it.

Skating the stairs is hard enough, but imagine doing it with the lights off! The Christmas lights didn't help much but we managed to make it work. I hope to have the video out by Christmas.

Free Try Friday with Isaiah Jones

Isaiah is one of the best skaters that I've seen at First Glance Skatepark. He has amazing control in switch and nollie. I've been wanting him to come out for a Free Try Friday and he finally did and it was amazing.

Free Try Friday with James Amato

I'm trying to do more videos with the skatepark for promotion purposes and also to create a fun community and culture among the skaters that go to our park (First Glance Skatepark). A popular online website The Berrics, features daily videos of professional skateboarders. Now I don't want to try to copy everything they do, but I did take this idea from them, with a slight twist.

The first skateboarder to show up to our park, after he pays $5, we will give him a chance to win his $5 back and skate for free the rest of the night. All he has to do is land the trick we choose for him, first try. If he doesn't make it, we still give him a chance to redeem himself with more tries but doesn't receive his $5 back. This was our first "Free Try Friday".

First Glance Skatepark Halloween 2013

Making Money on Youtube

Youtube has been constantly asking me to monetize (define: to convert your videos into making money) my videos. I kept ignoring it due to the legalities and the tiny 2 cents a month I would be making. However one day I finally decided to monetize my videos. It was very easy to set up an account on Google Adsense. Linking the google account you already own and your bank account.

Google actually will deposit a small amount into your bank account (like 10 cents) to confirm that your bank account is set up right. Within the next month I had earned $10 from one video on my youtube account. To make any money from your videos you need to 100% own all the rights to the video, especially the music. You don't need to own all the rights to the videos on your account, you can pick and choose which ones to monetize.

Just because you monetize your videos doesn't mean you'll make money. If your videos are only getting 100-1,000 views you won't make much at all. The video that makes me almost $10 every month has over 500 comments (30 or more comments a month) and has a total of 113,100 views (10,600 views a month). If only I could double this by getting a second video with similar statistics. Though the best part is, I only had to make this video once, upload it, and now I just sit and watch $10 come in every month from doing nothing more.

There is two types of advertising you can use on your monetized videos.

Overlay in-video ads - the ad is displayed at the bottom of the video.

TrueView in-stream ads. - the ad is played like a commercial before the video is played.

I would suggest using the Overlay in-video ads versus the TrueView in-stream ads. Most people (unless you have a really interesting video) will not take the time to watch your video if they have to watch a commercial before hand. This will limit your views and earnings. while the Overylay in-video ads doesn't disrupt the video as much and allows more users to watch your video because they won't be irritated by a commercial.

China/Taiwan Pollution

This video is about China, but in Taiwan it was a similar circumstance. The moment I arrived in Taichung, Taiwan, I notice that my vision distance was significantly reduced. Almost everyday that you look up to see the sky, all you would see is a grey smog, clouds don't exist there. Rarely when that was a good wind that is blown through the sky would clear up forming shapes of clouds. You would notice mountain ranges that you couldn't see before because the pollution was limiting your vision. I have never seen dust collect so quickly before, you constantly have to clean everything. When you wash your clothes if you let them hang dry to long they will be dirty from the dust and pollution. Rarely did I feel like washing my clothes made them much cleaner. This is one of the reason they wear the masks to protect themselves from breathing in all the pollution.

Barn Carnage

Taiwan Always Working

This is something I have encountered, maybe not to this extreme, but generally my friends in school or those working a normal job in Taiwan, are never able to hang out during the week, because they are to busy working. Taiwan will move holiday's to the weekends because no one is able to celebrate the holiday during the week because of work.

Having fun Skating Taoyuan

Ollie Up Seven

Filmed by Micheal McDonald