So it’s been way too long since I’ve posted anything. I have lots of excuses, none of them valid.. 
A lot has happened since I last posted in December. Since May, I have a new job and live in Hsinchu, in the north of Taiwan, instead of Kaohsiung, in the south of Taiwan. I’m back into the IT and networking field, which is nice, and in many ways it’s not as intense as life as a network admin at KCOnline was for me, which is even nicer. I’m finding that I definitely miss aspects of that job though too. My job at Accton (http://www.accton.com) entails writing manuals for network equipment, so far exclusively for ethernet switches. Accton is also involved in 802.11 wireless and VoIP equipment, so I’m sure I’ll get to play with some of that in the future too.
Now that I’m here in Hsinchu, I miss Kaohsiung and all my friends there, to be sure, but am loving where I’m at now too. Making friends here in Hsinchu has been a bit slow mainly because of the timing of my move, but that’s drastically improved in the last 6 weeks. I’ve been able to get involved with the youth group, called God Squad, at my church, Victory English Fellowship. What a privilege! These kids are absolutely amazing. Almost all of the kids are ABCs (American Born Chinese) because their parents studied and/or worked in the States. Most of the parents are now working at jobs in the Science Park, like me (though most of them are degreed engineers of some sort..). I never figured I’d end up being able to use my status as an MK/TCK/expat for ministry like this, but here I am, and it’s certainly been great so far.
Yay!! I’ve been productive today. I got WordPress installed (WordPress is the blogging software), and I’ve now also installed Gallery2 and just finished uploading the first batch of pictures!! I’m really excited because I have so many pictures and so much to tell about what I’ve done in the last year and 4 months, and these two things will allow me to share everything very conveniently. Link for the pictures is on the right beneath the “peugh.org” heading — “Picture Gallery”. I haven’t finished laying things out or figuring out all the options for WordPress or Gallery, so there’ll probably be lots of changes in the next few days. More to come soon!
You’ve got to be wondering, “What the heck does he mean by ‘happy horse.. spicy mama’? What a weirdo!”
So, here it is: As part of making me legal here in Taiwan, I have to have a Chinese name that’s used on official documents and stuff. My Chinese name is 樂馬, which is pronounced pretty similarly to the English pronunciation of my name (the Chinese sounds roughly like “Le ma”). Mandarin chinese has tones (4 of them, with a 5th “neutral” tone, Taiwanese has 7, and the crazy Thai’s have to deal with like 13 of them). Each syllable gets it’s own tone, so the same two syllables (such as “le ma”) in a row could potentially have 25 different meanings.
All that to explain: My chinese name literally means “Happy Horse” (Le Ma (4th tone, 3rd tone)), whereas one of the mis-pronunciations of my name means “Spicy Mama” (La Ma (4th tone, 1st tone)). Just about every Chinese person I’ve told my Chinese name has chuckled, if not just outright laughed at my silly name. I guess it probably doesn’t help that I call myself “Spicy Mama” half the time… 
Alright. I’ve finally taken the plunge and taken the time to actually do something with my website. First, this blog, which I plan to regularly update. Next, probably later tonight, I’ll set up a photo gallery so I can actually do something useful with all the pictures I’ve taken (wow - 15.6GB since I bought my camera last July!).
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