New Year Fireworks

Since 2005 Taipei 101 has been setting off fireworks at the beginning of the New Year. The rooftop of our building has a nice view of Taipei 101, therefore our family always gather at New Year's eve to view the fireworks and ring in the New Year.

However, after a few years of watching the fireworks shooting off the building, I feel the show is getting a bit old and tired. Part of the problem is the fireworks is only coming from Taipei 101 and the typology of the building puts a lot of limitations on what can be done. The bigger problem is the duration of the fireworks is just too short.

It seems to me that of all the major cities in the world, only the fireworks in Taipei has the duration measured in seconds instead of minutes. For 2013 the fireworks lasted 188 seconds while this year it was 218 seconds. In contrast, the new year's fireworks at Singapore was 8 minutes, at Sydney was 12 minutes, Brazil was 16 minutes, and Dubai was a whopping 30 minutes.

The adage of "Go Big or Go Home" should be applied to the fireworks of Taipei 101: either produce a bigger show, or stop and do something else.