President Chen, Come Out!

This has been going on outside my friend Celia's apartment, which is across the street from President Chen's apartment, for the past couple of months (I grabbed these shots on my cell phone yesterday at around two p.m.).

When it first came out, thanks to Swiss authorities, that Chen & Family had been laundering the millions of dollars it ripped off from everyday Taiwanese people, the press was out in droves. They waited all day just to grab a pic of Chen or his wife, or perhaps a family member, shielding their face(s) as they drove out from the underground parking complex that is part of the ex-president's luxurious new pad in East Taipei, about a five-minute walk from Taipei 101 and in one of the cities swankiest neighborhoods. Since then, the amount of press stalking Chen directly outside his apartment dwindled, to where it has just been one or two student-ish individuals timidly crouching in the shadows of Celia's apartment, enough away from the secret service not to catch it, with their cameras, looking lonely, miserable and kind of cold. According to Celia, there has been one or two photographers under her eaves 24/7. With Chen's arrest last week, the mayhem has returned big time.
President Chen's lawyers (bald guy in the middle) gives a press conference right in the middle of the street out front of Chen and my friend Celia's apartment, oblivious of the traffic.

Reporters and photographers taking over Celia's apartment even brought their own chairs and playing cards. Instead of shooing them off, the security simply slept through it all with both doors to the building flung wide open.