I’m loving Taiwan’s revamped mandatory military service, which used to be two years for decades on end and has now been shortened to less than a year (and will soon go to a full volunteer military force by 2014 though all males as of the age of 18 must still complete four months of military boot camp). Such a drastic change from the 50s and 60s when primary education still talked about “retaking the Mainland and driving out the evil commies”, it’s nice to see what open dialogue and a prolonged period of cooperation and peace can bring about in international relations. Anyhoo, hot on the heels on Ethan Ruan’s discharge last week from the army, fellow serviceman/entertainer Ming Dao completed his mandatory service this week and was honorably discharged from the Army Forces Honor Guard unit where he served for the last 11 months. It was a rigorous regimen of daily training for intense Honor Guard performances and Ming Dao revealed he’s back to his weight when he was 20 years old and never felt better. As for his army experience, he was humbled by serving alongside his now very close brethren in his unit and has come away with some added maturity. It’s nice to see him back and looking so handsome and happy. While he was in the army his production company was busy producing the following up drama to SOP Queen which stars Hans Zhang and Zheng Shuang. As for when we’ll see him next, his pre-filmed modern C-drama Happiness of an Angel with Liu Shi Shi is scheduled to air in Spring of 2013 (it’s a remake of the K-drama Thank You starring Jang Hyuk and Gong Hyo Jin) and for now he doesn’t have a first post-MS project lined up yet. I’m definitely going to check that out and so thrilled to have his smiling face back to grace the screens.