Cover of Whitney Houston by 小胖 林育群 from Taiwan Singing Show One Million Star

林育群 (小胖/Little Fattie) was a PKer on the the Taiwan singing show One Million Star (超級星光大道). Last week, he sang an amazing rendition of "Amazing Grace". This week, he choose Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You".

Seems that he's become an internet craze around the world. He's version is very good. You can tell the pronunciation is off on some of the words. But was pretty on on 90%+ of the song.

百戰鐵人王 - Wipeout

百戰鐵人王 (Wipeout) is apparently airing in Taiwan. I've been watching Wipeout since it started airing back in the summer of 2008.

It's one of those shows that you have on at 8pm while you're getting your kids ready for bed. The obstacles are ridiculous and the contestants have a screw lose upstairs.

The Taiwan version is dubbed into Mandarin. The Mandarin is also very ridiculous. I am pretty positive that it is not a direct translation of the actual English. The dubbed voice make references to Jin Yong terminology quite a few times.

If you're in Taiwan, give it a go as the show is stupid funny. The US version gives nicknames to its contestants. Looks like the Taiwan one does too, but the nicknames are a lot more "mean". Haha, let the world know Wipeout!

WTO姐妹會

WTO姐妹會 is a variety show out of Taiwan. The show has 8 guests that are not native to Taiwan. Each show presents a subject matter and the guests give their view from the country they originate from. Sometimes, the subject is how something in Taiwan is "weird" to them.

On the other side is the host and 3 (or more sometimes) celebrity guests. These guests can be random or they have some experience with the days subject matter. Nothing is guaranteed.

Most of the 8 WTO gals are married to Taiwanese husbands and have kids. However, the rotation isn't the same 8. Every show seems to have different gals.

It's slowly become one of my favorite shows because of the "foreign" experience they explore and present. Mind you that many topics on Taiwan variety shows would be considered non-PC, WTO isn't immune to this.

The guests originate from countries such as China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma, South Africa, Poland, Belarus, England, Brazil, Paraguay and the US. All of these guests are pretty proficient in their Mandarin. If I had to carry on a conversation with them in Mandarin, I would get schooled. (Yes, my Chinese gets worst by the day)

You can check out all the episodes on Youtube or look for GTV. It's on from Monday through Thursday.

YouTube's "Watch in High Quality" = Amazing!

I frequent YouTube to watch a lot of clips. Especially the Taiwanese variety shows.

But the shows are normally very bad quality and I can barely make out the guest and hosts.

But YouTube introduce the "watch in high quality" option months ago.  Its just now that many of the regular posters are starting to give this option.

It really is night and day.  You go from blurry to clear.  Its not like regular TV to HD, but quite the same effect.  You're like wow, I can't go back.

Props to those that upload in high quaility.  Keep it up.  You're doing the rest of the world a great service.

I am only subscribing to peeps that upload high quality now.  There's no going back.