Sitting at Southern Command for an afternoon beer with D-Wayne ( out on limited parole ), waiting to glean the latest from Taiwan's finest English language news sources, I had a serendipitous occurrence. The public pay phone had been taken away due to lack of use. A telecom serviceman came to remove the base plate, wires and blue and white sign from S.C. I asked if he could give me the sign and he said that he could, but first he would replace the light bulb inside. Now I have a fully functioning public telephone sign (It lights up!). Now, where to place it?

The first item that caught my attention was that the South China Morning Post was planning to publish in Taiwan. Well, I thought, not bad. Since 7-11 stopped carrying The Taiwan News I have been bereft of a decent crossword puzzle as well as any editorial that does not come from The Guardian or KMT central. However, they plan to start online and then possibly move to a print medium and articles will be mainly in Chinese. Still okay from my perspective, but I went online to see the type of content offered by the SCMP. The opinion stories went like this: Twelve-step programme for those addicted to greed; We must have crowds to cheer on marathon and Green economics. You can get about two sentences for free, after that, buy a subscription.

Well, I must say, I can get enough of that for free. Just yesterday, the Taipei Times opinion page again addressed the pressing matters of the day with Luminaries on the red carpet are going green. I learned...

• A "dapper rapper" called Andre 3000 (beat box? software upgrade?) states he/she/it would spend his/her/its last day on Earth eating "a great meal - some broccoli probably, because I'm a vegetarian."
• Taiwanese celebrity ( basically, anyone with a microphone or anyone photographed without underpants ) Barbie Hsu, or Big S, informs us that "I first went vegetarian when I realized I wouldn't eat my dog." Barbie, let me help.

1. Think about having sex with Carrot Top.
2. Drink a Coors Light.
3. Read the MC Hammer story
4. Congratulations! You have just rid yourself of all earthly desires and have been fast tracked to instant Nirvana!

• If you are a vegetarian, vegan rocker Morrissey quipped, you can look incredibly healthy, and if you eat animals, you can look as if you were dying.

1. Rocker?
2. Vegan rocker?
3. Ted Nugent

• Lastly, the sports section reminded me that Taiwan still has professional basketball, of a sorts. If you want to keep up with the other guy who cares about this, here are the teams. The first name is a translation of the Chinese. The second is their English name, according to their website and/or newspapers.

1. Taiwan Beer / Taiwan Beer or Beermen
2. Taiwan Leopards / Mobile Leopards
3. Yulon Dinosaurs / Yulon Luxgens (a car made by Yulon) or the Dinosaurs
4. Bank of Taiwan / Bank of Taiwan
5. Dacin Engineers / Dacin Tigers
6. Pu-Yuan Architects / Pu-Yuan
7. Kinmen Distillery / Kinmen Kaoliang Liquor