Happy 2012! I hope you had fun ringing in the new year and that 2012 has been treating you well so far. I ended up going with my friends to the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall area (where it was less crowded) to watch the fireworks show from the Taipei 101 Building. The fireworks were beautiful, but I think for anyone to wait over 1.5 hours to see them is too much. The fireworks lasted, apparently, 202 seconds in total.

We walked over to the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall area from the restaurant we'd stalled for time at, in the Dunhua Street area. This area is crowded pretty much at any time of day, but on New Year's Eve, it was ridiculous. Living in New York City as many years as I have and working in the Times Square area for all of my working years, I don't think I've ever seen the mass of people I saw that night. (Of course, in New York City, I try very hard to avoid crowds.) The groups of people waiting for the crosswalk lights to change were about 15-20 rows deep! I've seen people 10 rows deep during the holidays in Times Square, but never more! We had no choice but to move slowly with the sea of people towards the Sun Yat-sen Memorial.

We were warned it would take hours to get out of the area and walk home, but it did not. It took me about 30 minutes to get home (it usually takes about 15-20), and once I turned onto my street, I saw a bunch of people setting off sparklers. Then I heard two guys say, "When?" and "Now!" And then this happened: