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Taiwan Quick Take

■ Politics
Chen calls for good behavior
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday said he hoped politics would not get in the way of the passage of government budgets as two elections are drawing near. The legislative election is scheduled for December while the presidential poll is slated for March next year. Chen said he hopes all candidates will engage in gentlemen's games and act rationally and responsibly. "The most important thing is: don't let the elections get in the way of the reviews of government budgets and bills concerning people's livelihood," he said. Chen made the remarks while addressing the Lunar New Year greeting at the Presidential Office yesterday.

■ Education
Boys prefer electronics
The most popular course at college and university for male senior high school students last year was electrical engineering, while for girls it was business administration, Ministry of Education officials said yesterday. The officials made the remarks while releasing statistics concerning last year's top 50 college and university departments as ranked by graduating high school students in order to help this year's high school graduates make their college selections. For male students, in second place was mechanical engineering, followed by information management, computer science and information engineering, while for females, the second choice was information management, followed by finance, according to the officials.

■ Agriculture
Orchids win prizes
Two moth orchid hybrids, named Glory of Taiwan Sugar and Red Pearl, cultivated by Taiwan Sugar Co, won prizes at this year's Tokyo International Orchid Show, a spokesman for the company said yesterday. The spokesman said the Glory of Taiwan Sugar -- a yellow moth orchid that won the first prize in the "other colors" category -- was supposed to have fewer and smaller flowers, but the company's horticultural techniques made it bloom abundantly this season, bringing it a lot of attention at the show. Red Pearl -- a small red orchid which won the bronze prize -- was exported to Japan for the first time last year and has become popular, despite a market that traditionally favors white moth orchids. This marks the second time the company's orchids have won prizes at the show, which is a big event in the orchid industry and proves the company's prowess in orchid growing as well as improving the reputation of Taiwanese orchids in the Japanese market, the spokesman said.

■ Entertainment
Casual gamers increasing
Promotion of simple games by the online video game industry has expanded the market by bringing in many people who would otherwise not be interested and changed the composition of the virtual world, according to a recent Market Intelligence Center (MIC) study. The MIC, under the quasi-official Institute for Information Industry conducted research into online video game markets and found that casual players, who spend less than an hour per day playing games, make up 36 percent of online gamers and for the first time outnumbered medium and heavy players, the MIC officials said yesterday. Heavy players, who play games for more than four hours a day, constitute 27.5 percent of the market while medium players make up 35.9 percent, the study showed, adding that compared to last year's survey, casual players have shown an increase while both the other categories showed a relative decline.

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