Friday, September 14, 2012

The Colour of Yangmingshan National Park, Taiwan

I've been extremely focused on schedules of presentations with my industry counterparts mostly from the advertising and media agencies.

EnSurvey, is going to be my key focus in months to come, I'm full of passion for such a web start up since LifeLogger time, a social networking company I worked with in my early work days.

I had to cancel my trip to complete some critical tasks.

Oh yeah, almost forgetting to mention Amily, she's is coming tomorrow, I'm hosting this awesome Taiwanese girl during her stay in Kuala Lumpur.

One that always misses us whenever we are away

Vivi is always the one that everyone of us in the family would miss terribly while we are away, and he would always miss us. Strangely, he acts very differently whenever we are away, good and bad.

Vivi, our precious family member for 7 years 我们家的宝
He would jump on the car and follow us on a 30 minutes journey to the airport every time when one of us flies.
My mom travels with me first time the light backpacking way, I'd use "us"in referring to both of us. I've previously mentioned in 11 days travel Taiwan itinerary that I tried to schedule a more relaxing trip this time and gradually increase the pace but it turned out to be remarkably busy trip. 
Yangmingshan National Park, 阳明山国家公园

It was the second day and we had visited Yangmingshan in hope of witnessing the awesomeness of cherry blossoms at the park.

One of the eight amazing national parks in Taiwan, Yangmingshan is situated at the North-east of Taipei, Beitou District, it takes less than an hour to reach Yangmingshan main bus stop from Shilin MRT station.

When you reach the famous destination, you could have decided to walk up from where the main bus station is, or take another trip of bus that would traverse the mountains to reach the higher spot.

Natural beauty, Yangmingshan national park, Taiwan

There's travel info counter, the handy helper pointed us to the right direction to take the bus near the MRT station exit to our next destination on that morning.

The friendly travel info counter was particularly helpful for tourists, it's stationed mostly at train stations and MRT/LRT stations, easily being spotted.

Foot shot

Yangmingshan National Park

Madam Goo was positioning to try a few camera angles
As she walked to the crowd resting place

The mountain peaks are accessible by a few networks of well maintained hiking trails, we did not attempt to hike the peaks.

We could have witnessed the most beautiful cherry blossoms if we were there a week or two earlier during the Spring season, but we have very little to complain.

Cherry blossoms - Image taken from jenningsandgates.blogspot.com

A warmth feel of the natural beauty

A different feel for the natural beauty

We did not make it to the top as we gradually came to the end of our hike as mom felt the tiredness after the long morning activity, we picked a spot to rest near the waterfall through this what seemingly as the walkway that linked to the hiking trail.

Walkway that linked to the hiking trail of Yangmingshan

Make sure you stop by at the humble restaurant where they serve the unforgettable Yam noodle 芋头面线 and Minced pork rice 卤肉饭 for only $NTD140 include drinks.

Yam noodle 芋头面线

Minced pork rice 卤肉饭

We went on to leave the national park and visited National Palace Museum 台北故宫博物馆, no camera allowed in the museum which housed more than ten of thousands of Asian art collections of ancient artifacts.

Huge crowd could be found at the museum, could be annoying, try to go in the morning to avoid the long queue.

It required some good stamina to stay on our feet especially after the morning hike at Yangmingshan, by this time, mom was already complaining she felt her back aching, me too.

$NTD100 - 180 was the entrance fees before and after discount using the youth travel card I applied at the airport.

These were a few shots of the statues at the long front walkway to the museum, it required tremendous efforts to even raise my hands to keep the camera straight at this point of time.

Chinese lion statue found in front of the National palace museum

Google translated this as tripod for Chinese word 鼎,  4 legged tripod? Whatever =)

I did not bother whether I had taken enough shots at the museum, was eager to head home. That would conclude our second day in Taipei City with my mom.

Now, the fun part had just started as the night got closer, I was invited by my Taiwanese host to a private party at one of the pub at Zhongxiao east road 忠孝东路...

Thursday, September 6, 2012

EnSurvey - The Online Survey Community That Pays Your For Your Opinions

www.ensurvey.com
If you are wondering why you haven't heard from me for some time I have a perfect explanation for my readers. I have an extremely important milestone to complete this time around.

This is going to be pure business blog, the business side of me for many of you probably won't be seeing. But I can assure you, I have the same passion for web business as much as for traveling and meeting new friends around the world.

It's been two remarkable years of conceptualization since the day I was with the advertising agency and finally EnSurvey has gone live. 


I could use some of your blessings, cheers! =)

What is it all about EnSurvey?


For many, it's going to be interesting to know that EnSurvey pays you to answer to some quick and fun surveys. Suitable surveys will be shown to you as your profile matches the client's requirements.

For others, EnSurvey is my latest venture, we help clients to gain quick market intelligence to justify business ideas and marketing initiatives, our clients are the marketeers (business owners, executives of brands, the advertising and media agencies, human resource and business units). You can work all within your budget and control.



Key features to EnSurvey

We are an online survey community where anyone can launch survey and target our respondents. You can target your private group too. Meaningful real-time results are generated real-time to assist you in achieving goals to deal with your industry.

Our model is pretty straight forward, our clients pay us, we pay our respondents. Think of us as the AirAsia or commonly known as the low price budget model, now more people have the opportunity to survey the market at higher frequency compares to when there’s no EnSurvey. 


We believe findings are very important to businesses where the strategy is built on, and we are the source of getting them in the most efficient and fastest way possible.


To put them into perspectives, I've included a findings below about a survey of Malaysian's Environmental Awareness in an attempt to understand the level of commitment from Malaysian people generally aged between 18 - 45 years old in doing their part saving the planet Earth.




Snapshot of EnSurvey

Surveys listing

Creating survey 

Targeting and setting up questions

Sample report

There are many great features such as:
  • The Question Bank that would assist first time surveyor
  • Incredibly powerful real-time analytics
  • Precise targeting from day one to eliminate the unnecessary market noises
  • Stay anonymous to survey the competitors
  • Bidding for survey to achieve maximum result (this has got some similarity to bidding for keywords in Google Adsense and Facebook advertising)
  • And many more
Alright, time to wrap up and I will definitely spend time blogging my next trip and clearing some of my backlog travel posts.

Until then, cheers and stay well, leave a comment of blessings for support! Thank you.