Yesterday was an interesting day. I will expand on this at a later point in time, but after a few ups and downs (mostly downs at first, then a lot of ups) we made our way out to the Yilan coastline for a day of surfing. It had been years since my last surfing experience in Costa Rica with my sister Joanna, and I was certainly anxious leading up to it. As soon as I first hopped on the board, paddled as hard as I could and caught that first wave, it all came rushing back to me as if I’d never stopped surfing. But that is not what I came here to tell you about. Instead I wanted to very quickly describe one of the greatest sites that I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

I’ve seen a lot of dogs here in Taiwan, especially of the smaller variety. People here really seem to love their dogs, and I see them most often riding around in tiny dog carriages or riding along on the back of scooters in their little doggie baskets. I’ve even seen a select few people walking around with a Golden Retriever on a leash; however every single time so far the Golden has had a “lion” haircut. The dog’s entire body is shaved down except for the head and the tip of the tail, making it look like they have a large mane around their necks and a little poof on their tail like a lion. It’s quite bizarre, and I hope that the dog is at least more comfortable in the Taiwan summer heat with their body hair cut short like that.

After a few hours of surfing I headed onto the beach to drink some water and ensure I was staying hydrated. I was looking out into the water to try and learn the wave patterns, hoping to try and pick out the area that I would return to the water for more surfing. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw something that looked like a Golden Retriever… but it was almost like the dog was walking on the water near the shore line. As I focused my attention on this area, I did indeed see a dog, but it was simply swimming in the water. Something didn’t really add up, so I tried to keep my eyes on the dog.

After a couple of minutes I started to make my way back out into the water. I made my way through the shallow surf and the water was about up to my knees when I looked out and saw what I had thought I saw just a little earlier. There was a dog standing on top of the water. The very dog that I had seen a few minutes ago had swam out to the deeper water and was actually standing on a surf board. I was amazed, and I had a feeling that I knew exactly what was about to happen.

I stood in place, simply amazed at what I was watching — the dog simply standing on the board, legs wide, wagging his tail. Someone was holding the board, I assume it was the owner, and waiting for a decent wave. Within a few moments, a swell appeared behind them and moved up quickly on the pair. The owner gave the dog a good push, just like a surfing instructor would do when teaching you what it feels like to catch your first wave.

The dog felt the water pushing him, and went down into a “downward dog” position, his chest on the board and his butt high in the air–tail wagging the entire time. Once his board dropped into the wave and was fully being pushed by the force of the sea, he stood up and rode the wave all the way into the shallow waters by the shore. This Golden Retriever just surfed a wave, and rode it like a champ. In fact, he was riding waves better than I could. I was amazed, and it was one of the coolest things I had ever seen.

Ever.

Day 3.5 — Don’t Touch the Table

As I sat and watched a small brown cockroach run along the wall next to our table, I had a feeling that this night would be one worth writing about. I couldn’t have been more correct. After leaving the museum on Friday evening, we headed to the Shilin Night Market, which is the most famous in all of Taipei, and possibly even all of Taiwan.

When we first arrived at the night market we did a quick lap of an indoor area where all of the “classic” Taiwanese foods were being sold. The air in the building was hot, thick and full of foreign smells, but the area that was lit-up and full of food vendors was only about 25% of the actual building interior, of which the other percentage was completely dark and ominous.

We kept walking past certain vendors that were cooking something that smelled absolutely terrible. Every time we approached one of these areas, it was like walking into a steaming cloud of cattle flatulence. The smell was so strong and thick in the hot air that it never failed to make me nauseous. Initially, Eason and Hans were referring to this as Sticky Tofu, which was an extremely confusing name. After we walked past a few of the vendors and I had to choke back sickness in my throat, I finally connected the dots in my head. “Wait — do you mean STINKY Tofu?”

The mystery had finally been solved after I explained to them what the word “stinky” meant. While I described the smell as being similar to cow farts, that is putting it somewhat lightly. The smell is so offensive that it actually made me feel like I was going to be sick every time we smelled it. Apparently the process for making stinky tofu has something to do with soaking tofu in a brine of fermented milk, vegetables and meat for weeks or even months, which is a nice way of saying that you soak tofu in spoiled milk with rotting meat in it. Naturally, being that I told the local team that I wanted to eat authentic Taiwanese foods, this was the first thing that we would be sitting down to eat for our evening food activities. And this is also where our story starts to get somewhat terrifying.

We ducked inside a food vendor’s low-ceiling structure inside the brightly lit area of the building that I described earlier. The proprietor of this establishment sat us at a table directly in front of a fan that was hung sloppily from the top of her tent, and turned the power on to help push the steamy, stinky air away from our breathing apparatuses. The table at which we sat was surrounded by low stools and had a copy of the menu underneath a thin plastic layer that was lain on top of the table. A larger of this menu was strung up on the wall, and the only part of the menu that I could discern were the prices, as everything else was written in Chinese characters.

As we waited for the first dish to arrive, I was keeping watch on the area around us.  There were lots of people everywhere even though it was still extremely early in the night for the night market. I was told that usually these markets don’t pick-up until around 10 PM, and it was only about 7:30 or 8 at this point. As I scanned the tables around us and the walls on two sides of us, I started to notice the filth that we had been seated amongst. There were stains on the walls and even the ceiling of unknown substances. I noticed a roach run away from the area where the food was being cooked and along a ledge of the wall, right above one of the tables next to us. I began to question my decision to eat at one of these street vendors, but decided that it would be well worth the experience.

After a few minutes we were finally served our Stinky Tofu along with some shredded cabbage and a red pepper sauce that I took heavy advantage of in an attempt to mask the strong odor that was permeating the hunks of tofu. It would seem that nothing I could do would help to obscure the pungent, fermented aroma of the dish so I was only able to stomach eating three or four pieces. I told the local guys that they could eat the rest, as I was ready to move onto the next dish.

Before we had finished the tofu, we were brought a plate of Oyster Omelet, which was literally just an omelet with a bunch of slimy (possibly raw) oyster cooked into it (pictured at right above the tofu dish). This dish was rather enjoyable, especially with the dark, savory sauce that it came dressed in. And it was a welcome relief after the literally hard-to-swallow stinky tofu. I also made a very important discovery, which also confirmed some of my suspicions from earlier in this meal when a chunk of the omelet slipped out from the grasp of my chopsticks and landed on the table next to the plate. Before I could even consider whether I should pick the food up, Eason stopped me with much concern and told me to “Leave it”. He told me to never, EVER eat anything that touches any surface in a night market that isn’t either a cooking surface or the object that the food is served to you on. I felt that his advice was sound, and thinking back to the cockroach I saw scampering away earlier, I wasn’t going to second guess him.

Our final dish for this eating establishment was by far my favorite. Eason called it tamboulah, but searching the internets for that name only turns up the Arabic dish Tabbouleh, which is nothing at all like what we ate. The dish, which is pictured on the left, was described as smashed fish, which is then deep fried. After substantial Googling, I discovered a picture that is almost identical to my own, which was on the Wikipedia page describing Taiwanese Tempura; hoewver that is only a cooking style and not a particular dish. The best I can tell is that this dish is just Taiwanese-style Tempura Fish that just so happens to be smashed before it is fried. It was light and crispy, and the flavor of the battered fish was top-notch. The taste of this dish fully enabled me to forget the flavors of the Stinky Tofu, even though the air was thick with its stench.

After we finished our meal, we decided to walk around outside for a bit. The area immediately outside of the food building was reminiscent of an old run-down carnival. There was a small, creepy train with dirty, cartoonish characters on every car that was slowly making its way around a tiny loop of track. The area was also full of carnival games, that mostly came down to different things that you could shoot with a BB gun. There was one booth where you could throw baseballs at a small board with 9 metal numbered squares, and we decided to give it a go. We each grabbed a box of 12 baseballs and tried to see how many squares we could knock out. I was able to very quickly embarrass myself as I threw six or seven baseballs straight at the ground, with another few balls that came close to hitting Hans’ target next to mine, and then finally ONE ball that actually connected and knocked out a square.

All I can say is that I quit playing baseball for a reason. Luckily I was able to redeem myself when we moved onto the next booth, which was shooting out balloons with air-soft pellet guns. What surprised me the most was that the guns on the table were connected by a simple tether, but were in no way restricted from any movement whatsoever. I could have very easily turned around and started firing these pellets at passers-by had I been a person of malicious intent. Being that I’m not that kind of person though, I simply took up the heftiest looking pistol that lay before me, and set my sights.

I’m not sure how many pellets had been loaded into the gun, as I didn’t miss a single shot. I quickly and efficiently took out every balloon with pin-point accuracy, and before anybody else finished shooting. This made me feel much better after the humiliating baseball throwing kerfluffle, and I even was able to pick out a prize. I grabbed a small wooden set of Chinese Checkers, which I’m pretty sure is actually just a Checkers set with Chinese characters on each piece. I could have sworn that I’ve seen a game before that was actually called “Chinese Checkers” and it both looked and played completely different from the classic Checkers game that I grew up with. While I was riding high on the results from our shooting game, I decided to forego trying my hand at another shooting game: trying to shoot Taiwanese Dollars down from a wooden beam, which were attached by what appeared to be toilet paper, or some other type of thin papery material. The carnies running this booth were devious enough to have  fans blowing right at all of the bills such that the material that they were attached to would start to rapidly turn the thinner that they became, which made it nearly impossible to hit those last few strands.

After moving on from this area we delved into the back alley ways of the night market, which was crowded, frenzied and full of bright neon lights. There were vendors of all kinds yelling at everyone that passed by, and the crowd was moving in a tight, slow shuffle. Every once in a while we would pass a seafood stand that looked like it was selling fish that they scooped out of the sewer, which was usually followed closely by a stinky tofu cart. These carts never failed to make me feel sick all over again, so I was trying my best to get Hans and Eason to head back out towards the main streets.

At one point we passed a Buddhist temple, and Eason suggested that I go inside and take a look around. While we were inside I learned a number of very interesting customs that the Chinese have when it comes to Buddhism, including the notion of burning “paper money” and other gifts that are made out of paper, but not necessarily real items (the money just looks like money, and there are also paper cars, houses, etc). When these gifts are burned, the people in the spirit world will receive them and be able to use them to live a better, more fulfilling life on the other side. I also learned that August was ghost month, and that people typically only perform these rituals for their own family members, but during ghost month they simply do it for all those that have passed on. According to legend, the doors to the spirit world are open during this month, so to appease the spirits the Chinese will provide gifts to the ghosts all month long.

After learning a lot of fun facts and exploring this temple, we finally made our way out to the street to try out what was described to me as the best combination of all things at any night market. Eason had been talking about this fried chicken and bubble milk tea combination all day, and even though I wasn’t hungry in the slightest, I relented and couldn’t bear to pass up this opportunity. We first went to a fairly well-lit store on the side of the road that specialized in various tea drinks. I had heard multiple times over the past three days about something called bubble milk tea. Each time that I asked about it, they told me it was milk tea with bubbles in it, but nobody was able to actually explain what these bubbles were. I decided to just get one and figure it out on my own, and was fairly impressed with the final product (pictured at right). Milk Tea is a popular drink that is sold in convenience store coolers and in many restaurants. As far as I can tell, it’s really just tea mixed with a heavy amount of milk, so I can tell you that my stomach really loves it. The “bubbles” in the milk tea are also called “Pearls” and are some sort of chewy balls that are made from tapioca starch. I would compare them to either very soft jelly beans or to very thick balls of Jello.

The drink is sweet and creamy, and very delicious — but it’s somewhat of a different experience to drink something and be required to chew at the same time. The straws they give you are pointed on one end so that you can punch it through the film they apply to every cup, and they have a big enough diameter that you’re able to easily suck the pearls up through the straw and into your mouth while you drink. With our drinks in hand, we returned to the streets to obtain the second half of this “best combination”, which was the fried chicken.

We found ourselves at a vendor on the curb who was deep frying big flattened pieces of chicken, which were being taken out of large Tupperware containers that were sitting on the sidewalk for who knows how long, and then dipped, breaded and fried. Eason told the woman who was bagging these hunks of fried chicken to apply liberal amounts of spice to it, which she did before placing one into a small paper bag and handing it over. I took a bite of the chicken and a large gulp of the bubble milk tea to give this combo a shot, and I was definitely pleased with the result. The chicken coating was very crunchy, and the flavor of the unique blend of Asian spices was satisfying without being overpowering along the likes of KFC fried chicken. The bubble milk tea also provided a smooth, milky and refreshing beverage to wash it all down with, which was nothing but delightful.

While I didn’t come even close to finishing either item on account of how bloated I already was from stuffing my face all night, I was at least able to relish in the fact that I tried what was claimed to be the greatest combination of food and drink at the most famous night market in all of Taipei.

We wandered around the night market for another half hour or so before taking off and heading to a nearby Party World, which is a rather large KTV business. KTV is a huge and popular phenomenon in Asian cultures, and is very similar to the Americanized version that we call Karaoke; however the actual KTV experience is nothing like I’ve ever seen.

This particular establishment reminded me of a small mall, with multiple levels of different rooms, each of which had its contents hidden behind a closed wooden door. We made our way to one particular room and headed inside to find a few of our colleagues amidst a classic KTV setup, which includes a large TV, a number of microphones, a small stage, couches, coffee tables and even its very own bathroom.

Basically in KTV you rent out a room like this with all of your friends. Servers periodically come to the room to serve you drinks and food, and you also have a phone should you run dry on beer or liquor and need a refill. There is a touch-screen device in the room for everyone to pick out their songs, and you pretty much just spend the night eating, drinking and singing songs with all of your friends. It was very impressive and made me question why nothing like this exists in the States. Instead we have bars that host Karaoke nights maybe once a week where everyone at the bar cringes and is forced to listen to people they don’t really know who sing terrible songs and usually ONLY come to the bar on the nights where they can sing Karaoke, and sometimes don’t even drink. It seems like we really have it backwards, and a proper KTV business like this Party World would seem like it could do very well in the right hands.

This long and eventful day was full of unforgettable moments and it was hard for me to believe that it had only been the third day in Taiwan. At this point I was really looking forward to the remainder of my trip.

I hope you caught that, but just in case you missed the title above I’ll repeat it, adding emphasis. Six showers. Forty eight hours. I have taken exactly six showers in the past two days. I can’t even begin to describe how much I’ve been sweating during my time in Taiwan, so instead you’ll simply have to infer from those numbers how much my body has perspired. This is not a joke, nor is this a test. Actually, I lied — this is kind of a test. I’m trying out my first “abbreviated” post that is not necessarily a full write-up but will help to keep you up to date on my current travels. Let me know your thoughts, or if you prefer the truck loads of words that I usually dump on you in my write-ups, and ONLY the truck-loads of words.

I’ve never really considered myself to be much of a sweaty guy. I had never broken a sweat until college when I picked up my first set of dumbbells (I’m not even kidding here). Even then, when I would go to the gym or exercise outside it was more of a light glistening that I would take on, instead of becoming a full-blown sweaty mess. I recall one time while I was living in Erie that I went to the Harborcreek YMCA for a Spin class. This was the first and the only time that I can remember the feeling of a bead of sweat running down my arm. It was a strange and foreign feeling that I’ll never forget.

Now I have a new experience, which will easily supersede that previous memory for the rest of my life. Yesterday I was taken to what was described as the best Sushi restaurant in all of Taiwan. We stood in line for about an hour and fifteen minutes, and it was extremely hot and humid outside (on par with North Carolina conditions). Even as I stood in the shade under an umbrella, I still had multiple beads–nay, bullets–of sweat dripping down my body. I felt like a sieve. My legs, my back, my chest and my arms were absolutely pouring salty liquid out of every possible sweat gland and I slowly but thoroughly drenched my clothing with the acrid substance.

After the first hour I had begun to lose all faith in humanity. I could not understand for the life of me why anybody would wait for such a long time in line to eat sushi on a tiny island like Taiwan. There should literally be a sushi restaurant on every block with the ocean never more than an hour away, regardless of where you are on the island. After we sat down inside, my host Michael ordered this for me and my brain completely asploded:

This was by far the greatest sushi that I’ve ever had in my entire life. I’ll admit that I don’t consider myself to be sushi connoisseur by any stretch of the imagination, but I have eaten a fairly respectable variety of sushi. When I traveled to China in 2009 I had an unforgettable sushi experience that I was absolutely enamored by, and I’ve eaten sushi in both the western and eastern coasts of the United States (and even in the desert of Arizona). I would say that I at least have a refined taste for quality sushi, but certainly wouldn’t call myself an expert.

With that being said, this was hands-down the best sushi that I’ve ever eaten. This was also my first experience with Uni (Sea Urchin), which is the yellow paste-looking substance above the glob of fresh green Wasabi, which was also the freshest and most flavorful Wasabi that I’ve ever tasted. The Uni was incredible, and has now surpassed Unagi (Freshwater Eel) as my favorite kind of Sushi.

Now I present to you, dear reader a challenge. Aside from the Uni, which I’ve already identified, go ahead and try to guess what other types of Sashimi (raw fish) you can spot and correctly identify in the picture above (click to embiggen). It’s harder than you think! Sound off in the comments with your best guesses.

I like you. I mean, I REALLY like you.

This on-again, off-again relationship we’ve been having hurts me. I’m fairly certain that it hurts me a lot more than it hurts you. And I mean it when I say this, but it’s not you. It’s me.

The fact is that my time on this crazy island has been exactly that: crazy. I want to share my stories with all of you, but my time is simply consumed by all of the work and the adventures that I’ve been having. Regardless of this, I still plan on sharing my stories I just might start changing up the format a bit so that you, O’ reader, may share with me in this adventure that I am living out.

I will still plan on doing my long-winded write-ups, but I would like to try some abbreviated updates that just give you a sense of what’s coming. Let me know what you think and if this is a good idea or a dumb idea in the comments.

Day 3 – Learning the History

My TSTL Colleagues were working from their homes. It was Friday, and their manager had designated today as their once-quarterly team outing. Apparently the lunch that he had treated us to the day prior did not count as an outing (especially since it was only the TE group), so he would take his entire group of reports (consisting of both TE and ME) out for a very special lunch. The local team told me that since the restaurant was so far away from work for everyone, that they would all elect to work from home and take the afternoon off, as is common after any team outing like this.

After my usual morning routine I sat in my hotel room and fired off some important e-mails that had piled up over night I would be picked up around 11:30 AM to head out to the team outing, which I still had absolutely no information about. All I knew is that it was a lunch that would be paid for, which was good enough for me. Every time I get treated to lunch, no matter what level of quality said lunch is I always think back to my college days. I had a professor, Dr. Xiu who taught a handful of Electrical Engineering courses. One of his favorite sayings was, “In this world, there is no free lunch” — well guess what Dr. Xiu, I eat free lunch all the time… wait a tick. The slave labor that I pay in return offsets any provided meals and heavily tips the scale in “their” favor, which means… *sigh*, you win Dr. Xiu. Touché.

When I finally met Eason at the front of the hotel and jumped in his car, I was desperate to find out exactly where this outing was going to be. He informed me that it would be at, “some kind of Japanese restaurant”, which was enough to satiate my thirst for knowledge. The remainder of our cross-town trek was spent trying to figure out exactly where the hell he was going. There were at least five times that he whipped out his iPhone and told me that he had lost the way, which I was okay with considering how fascinated I am by the driving habits of foreign cities and the drivers within.

One of the important lessons that I learned during this journey about the drivers in Taipei concerns the act of turning left. Now obviously, I have no idea what the traffic laws are here, but I do know that in the States one must yield to oncoming traffic when making a left turn, which is apparently not the case here. When either cars or scooters are waiting at a red light it is literally like a race to see who can make it through the intersection first. Additionally, when traffic is already flowing and a driver needs to make a left there is no hesitation to place the vehicle directly in the path of oncoming traffic, even when driving a scooter and multiple buses are barreling down on their position, they will simply block the intersection and wait for all oncoming traffic to flow around them, at which point they will continue on their merry way. It’s all really thrilling and fascinating at the same time, as the other drivers simply accept this behavior as standard practice.

After observing this completely foreign concept with wide eyes for around 30 minutes, we finally arrived close enough to our destination to search out a parking spot. One of the few things that Taipei is in severely short supply of is parking spaces. Like many other densely populated cities, most of the parking has been tucked away beneath the Earth, which is an entire adventure in and of itself. We took a severely steep and winding ramp down into a parking garage underneath a green city square to search out a space for Eason’s Toyota. As we reached a level surface I noticed a very poorly translated sign that read, “Please to secure the belunging and trun on headlight”, spelling mistakes and all, which made me chuckle.

Once we had secured a parking spot we made our way through the steamy underbelly of the city to a nearby stairwell. From my limited experience, these underground parking areas were all the same in that they were hot, steamy and looked like they might be carrying some sort of disease. Entering the dimly-lit stairwell only helped to reinforce the feeling of dread that came along with being in a dark and dirty underground concrete jungle. As my eyes adjusted to the partial daylight that was streaming in from above I saw the faded yellow tiles that lined the walls making them look sticky, as well as the tattered rope net hanging limply over the landing, which had to have served an important purpose as nets are wont to do.

The remainder of our walk to the restaurant was only but a few minutes, and when we arrived the majority of the team was already seated and sipping on their beverages. At first I couldn’t make out any details as to the name of the establishment, as the servers all wore shirts that were adorned with “Love Nature Okinawa”, and the posters of Okinawa that adorned the walls of the interior made it feel like a travel agent’s office. Adding to my confusion was the business card that I was able to secure from the head chef, which was in all Chinese and the only Latin Alphabet characters that I could make out were “Se Fa 58″, which did not return any meaningful hits on Google. Afterwards I enlisted the help of my good Taiwanese friend Jimmy to search around for these words and he found a mysterious album from another group of people who seemed to have visited the very same restaurant (where the picture at right came from). He explained to me that Se Fa (清風) meant light wind and was basically a Japanese way of describing a “breeze”. Thusly, the restaurant was called Okinawa Breeze – 58. Nobody knows why there is a number in the name, but that’s not really important.

This particular Okinawa breeze blew in some very delicious food and we had an extremely interesting meal. I wasn’t sure if the local team’s manager kept ordering random dishes from the menu or if he had ordered a single “combo” item that everyone was just getting a small portion of each individual section. I could not get a straight explanation from any of my colleagues on what was going on, as it felt like they just kept bringing more and more food out, but it was basically a 13 course meal. It was also the worst possible opportunity for me to forget my camera, as I can’t currently recount every single thing that we ate, but I can certainly give it my best shot. Over the course of about two hours we ate the following:

• Lime flavored seaweed
• House salad
• Black beans in a sweet syrup
• Beef and cabbage mini hot pot
• Goya and tofu salad
• Deep fried pumpkin
• Deep fried steak
• Mexican cheesy rice
• Flatbread pizza with Goya
• Deep fried onion hunks
• Flatbread pizza with onions and mushrooms
• Chicken on a stick
• I know there was more… but it escapes me

A few things that I learned on this day: people eat pizza with chopsticks, they have interesting double-sided pizza cutters on this side of the world, Goya is disgusting, and all Taiwanese people seem to have the same ability to demolish me in a marathon eating contest. Now after reading that list perhaps you’re asking yourself what exactly Goya is. I had the exact same question in my head, and after Googling around for the answer, I finally understand why I thought it was so disgusting and bitter. The actual name for Goya is Bitter Melon and it “is among the most bitter of all fruit”. Now it all makes sense. It was honestly just terrible and nearly impossible to eat without making a “bitter beer face”; however aside from the dishes with Goya it was all wonderful. The only caveat was that I was put into a very strange position that I’m not sure if I’ve ever felt before. I was basically sitting there around course 10 or 11 saying to myself, “Please don’t let there be anything else to eat — PLEASE do not bring another dish out”, which of course was a silent request that went ignored as the nice Japanese chef just kept bringing out more dishes. It was really intense. My brain and my stomach were both in pain at this point, and the unlimited kiwi soda with strawberry ice cream that I had been sucking down this entire meal certainly wasn’t helping the situation whatsoever, much to my surprise.

After a quick food coma, everyone began to part ways as the afternoon rain started coming down outside. It is quite common for daily rain showers in Taiwan during the summer, and Eason was nice enough to offer to go retrieve his car and pick me up at the front porch of the restaurant while another TE Ingrid waited with me. Earlier in the day, he told me that he would be dropping me off at my hotel after lunch; however during the course of eating we had discussed going to see the most famous museum in all of Taiwan. When we saw that it had started to rain, he had called off the plans and said that we would revert to the original plan; however by the time that he had returned to the restaurant with his car and another passenger in tow, the plan had changed yet again. I had begun to lose track of what the plans were, as is par for the course, but in the end we went across town to the National Palace Museum.

Eason, Ingrid, Hans and myself settled into a tiny parking spot on the complete opposite side of town, and after a quick hike uphill found ourselves in front of the National Palace Museum. The building was home to incredibly ancient Chinese relics that were nothing but fascinating. The exhibitions that we were particularly interested in were the Jade, Bronze and Calligraphy sections. Each one was progressively more interesting, and the Calligraphy most certainly took top prize on this day. One of the most intriguing things about the ancient scrolls within this section was learning about something that we’ll call “stamping”. As the ancient Chinese dynasties rose and fall, the art of each dynasty would become inherited by the next. Regardless of whether it was an ancient scroll of text, painting or even woodwork, whoever the noble was that possessed the piece would place their own stamp upon it. Some would even go as far as to add “comments” to the art such that long scrolls started to look like MySpace discussion threads about Justin Beiber’s new hairstyle.

Seeing these ancient pieces of art with marks all over them was both fascinating and disheartening. Some of the nobles would literally stamp right in the middle of the artwork, which is very distracting. Others would be more respectful of the piece and either stamp at the very edge, or at least place the art onto a new piece of material, leaving a “frame” of sorts around the piece for them to stamp and comment on. What surprised me the most was that we went outside after touring two levels of the museum and ran down to the Chinese Garden named “The Garden of Benevolent Perfection” … Or perhaps it was “Perfect Benevolence”.  I actually don’t remember…

Either way, it was an old Chinese garden just like I had learned about in my online college course “History of Landscape Architecture”, which was incredibly interesting and really helped me appreciate this very large space. While we were touring this area and looking at the beautiful water ways and ancient, twisted trees we ducked into a pavilion to avoid the rain that had started to fall. At one side of the pavilion was a large wooden piece of art that had Chinese characters etched into it, and it was not particularly interesting for me until I went closer to it and noticed that even this had been stamped (refer to picture at left — click to see the full piece). The stamps in this case appeared to have been etched into the wood instead of being ink stamps like on the other pieces we had seen, but I certainly recognized the patterns from the displays that we had perused inside the museum.

During our time in this pavilion I also was slightly irked by a group of young Taiwanese “punks”. Before we had sought out shelter, we were walking around one of the water constructs and we saw a group of three younger boys with their obnoxiously large sunglasses, popped collars and tight girl jeans stepping over the barriers and taking pictures of each other making their best “MySpace faces”. As we walked by the group, they all stopped and stared at me. I’m not sure if they thought they were being sly or not, but they started following closely behind us and taking pictures of me. I guess I don’t understand what is so interesting about a white guy in a Hawaiian shirt walking around with a group of Taiwanese people, but maybe they just really wanted to put up pictures on me on their MySpace pages. I’m not quite sure.

After 15 minutes or so we decided to make a break for the exit instead of trying to wait out the rain. On our way out of the gardens I saw three big-ass millipedes (big ass-millipedes) chilling on a rock, which I took pictures of and I’ve included to the right! After this brief pause we continued to the car in the drizzling rain, and headed back towards our next destination. After a quick stop to drop Ingrid off at a bus stop, we headed back to the other side of town so that I could have my first night market experience. Unfortunately for you, this post has grown to be entirely too large so I’m going to cut this story short here. Stay tuned for my Day 3 Part 2 post as I detail one crazy night at the biggest, and most famous night market in all of Taiwan. It has been the highlight of my trip so far, and I’m going to do it justice by dedicating an entire post to just it (and a side note about KTV – a.k.a. a better way to Karaoke).

Day 2 – Sustenance

Like most other humans I enjoy being a creature of habit. This is precisely why I started my second day with the exact same sequence of events as the first. After waking up at 5, working out, hanging out with Allie and stuffing my face at the breakfast buffet, I finally made my first deviation from the previous day’s events. I had learned that when we arrived at work the day before it was unusually early for most of the other employees, who typically didn’t come in until around 10 a.m. This pleased me, as it gave me some extra breathing room for taking it easy in the morning and a chance to locate a nearby bank and acquire cash monies for my eventual taxi ride into work.

The concierge at the hotel provided exactly the information that I needed, which was the location of the nearest ATM to accept American Express credit cards. Oddly enough, the majority of teller machines in Taiwan don’t support this rare brand of credit card (according to the locals and my own searching), which is surprising given their slogans that usually revolve around being accepted everywhere you go. Luckily, there was a China Trust Bank only a block away where I was able to acquire a few Taiwanese Dollars.

I was provided a business card the previous day in order to have my destination address in Chinese characters, so I waved a taxi down in front of the hotel, pointed to the address and off we went. In complete silence. The trip only took about 20 minutes, and once we got there I was able to find my way through the massive building to find the correct tower and head up to the eighth floor. The only problem was that since I had failed to acquire a temporary badge the day before, I was stuck outside the glass doors. It was also relatively early so there was not any traffic going in or out for me to tailgate, so I popped a squat against the wall, pulled out my laptop and grabbed the nearest wireless signal. Fortunately, my host Eason was onsite; however it took about 20 minutes for him to come open the door as when I told him I was “onsite”, he must have spent all of that time Googling/searching for that term before finally relenting and asking me what I meant.

The remainder of the day went fairly smoothly. Their manager took the TE team and myself out to lunch at a very nearby family restaurant that would be similar to a Perkins in the States, and offered a somewhat limited selection of dishes. I ordered a simple fried chicken dish that was certainly good tasting, but not exactly the kind of food that I had been looking forward to trying.

Later in the day, I chaired an education session that turned into a two-hour marathon meeting and extended until almost the end of the day, at which point it became a discussion about where we would go for dinner. The team eventually decided that we would do a hot pot, which was one of my favorite styles of food that I experienced while in China two years ago. The difference in this case was that many of the Taiwanese hot pots are all-you-can-eat and include an all-you-can-eat Ice Cream bar as well. I was extremely happy and excited to go to hot pot, and was even more thrilled when Eason came to me with a temporary badge that was actually working (as we had retrieved one earlier in the day that did not work whatsoever).

When we arrived at the restaurant there was some confusion on where we could sit since there was going to be ten of us in total, but we eventually settled on splitting between two booths right in the middle of the restaurant. The all-you-can-eat aspect of this particular hot pot establishment looked like it was contained within an old meat cooler that you see along the back wall of your favorite grocery store. It had large metal pans full of various food items and lots of ice both in the pans and beneath them. I really didn’t know what any of the items were except for a few of the obvious ones like shrimp and mushrooms, but there were also a number of things that just looked like blocks of various colors and textures.

One of the QE’s offered to just basically pick out a selection for me, which I gladly accepted and we headed back to the table with our plates of food. In the meantime, we also ordered our main meats from the server, of which we requested plates of rolled-up beef and lamb slices. Our table had two hot pots, each containing both a plain broth and a “spicy” broth, which were both quickly filled with an assortment of many different food items to cook.

The first item that I eventually tried was given to me without explanation and appeared to be some type of liver or dark tofu; however after taking my first bite it was revealed to be a hunk of congealed duck blood. The taste of the blood was fairly similar to the pig’s blood cake that I tried the night before, and the consistency was definitely easier to handle than I would imagine a congealed mass of blood to be. After I finished this first treat I was served a small helping of what was described as the joint of a cow. I can only imagine this was beef tendon, but I’m honestly not sure. In either case, it had the same taste as lean ground chuck with just a tougher almost jerky-like texture. It was very delicious and the toughness provided just enough of a unique eating experience that it easily became my favorite item of the night.

The remainder of the night was spent eating, listening to the local team converse among themselves in Mandarin and slowly sipping on my first and only Taiwan Beer, which was very light and crisp and tasted surprisingly like Coors Light. We must have spent a good three hours sitting there eating, and literally the entire time I was having food shoveled onto my plate by my generous hosts. At one point I had to simply declare that I could no longer eat any more, which was very disappointing for not only myself but all of my colleagues that I was sitting with.

I definitely discovered this night that my ability to overeat doesn’t even come close to the seemingly cavernous bellies of the Taiwanese. Eason told me that by the end of the night he was only about 80% full, and that he could have continued for a lot longer if he had found the food to be more “special”. Even after I had told them that I could no longer continue eating, I was still given a small cup of creme brulee and then guilted into going over and getting a dish of ice cream. I cheated and got myself barely a half-scoop of peanut-butter swirl ice cream, which I had to struggle to stuff down my gullet even though it was delicious.

In all, the night was certainly a humbling experience for me, and definitely put into perspective my ability to extend the walls of my stomach beyond their intended size, which must simply require more practice. I had no doubt at this point that the remainder of my three week trip would provide plenty of opportunity for this very task.

Day 1: Feeling It Out

My first night of sleep in Taiwan felt long overdue.  From the time that I left Durham on Monday morning, until the time I checked into my hotel on Tuesday evening around 8:30 p.m. local time (that’s +12 hours into the future from Eastern Standard for all you math nerds), I did not sleep. This was only partly thanks to the rambunctious children next to me on the airplane, but more accurately due to my own personal remedy for jet-lag.

I typically try to change my eating schedule to match that of my destination the day before travel.  When traveling forward in time (zones), I will typically attempt to bridge the gap of time change by staying awake until the next appropriate sleepy time. In the case of traveling to Taiwan, I ate a very late meal the night before travel around 3:30 am and then remained awake for approximately 27 hours the following day. I consider this approach to be somewhat of a “cold splash of water” effect to my circadian rhythm. I’ve been successful with this method in the past when traveling Eastbound (back to the future); however I’ve yet to adapt this method to Westbound travel, as the removal of hours in the day is more difficult to rationalize in my mind. So far the only method that I can picture in my head for quickly adjusting my internal clock in this type of situation requires a Delorean, a Flux Capacitor and a Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor.

So after an extended 27 hour session of travel I was relieved when I checked into my hotel room and found a few amenities left near the TV for my enjoyment. As the front desk had described, these were provided by the Hotel manager as of way of saying “thanks” for booking a 19-night stay with the Grand Hyatt Taipei. The amenities were really just a free bottle of dry red wine and two oranges (interesting combination?), but they were certainly appreciated.

My first order of business was to pop open my laptop and get connected to the internet so that I could check-in on my wife. I don’t have an international cell phone (thanks, Verizon), so I was feeling very out of touch. The last I had heard from her was that she would be stuck at the car repair shop until early afternoon having the tires on her Subaru Forester replaced, all the while dealing with the after effects of her recent surgery. I could do nothing but worry about her from the moment that I left the States, so I was more than relieved to get a hold of her through IM and learn that she was safe and sound, albeit at work — I had secretly wished that she would take another sick day. Regardless, I was simply happy to talk to her after such a long travel session, and with the comfort of knowing she was okay, I allowed myself to finally go to sleep.

My first thought when I lied on the bed was, “Wow! This mattress is ridiculously firm”, which was immediately followed by “Zzzzzzzz”. I was out like a light.

As I awoke to my 5:00 AM wake-up call, I quickly told the front desk receptionist that she should call me back in 10 minutes.

As I awoke to my 5:10 AM wake-up call, I jumped out of bed and tried my best to shake the sleep out of my head but it simply would not go away. I threw on my athletic shorts and a T-shirt and fumbled my way down to the fifth floor. It was labelled as the “Club Oasis” level on the elevator directory, so I could only assume that was where I would find the exercise room. I had not expected to find three separate rooms that were jam packed with equipment, including a refrigerator in each room with bottled water and all of the accoutrement one could desire for an enjoyable workout session. I had brought my own iPod, headphones and bottle of water, so I did not take advantage of those items, nor did I grab a sweat towel or yoga mat, but I was happy to know that those would be available to me from now on.

After spending a few minutes in the weight room I made my way down the hall to the aerobics room and joined the other sweaty people for a nice run. The room was on the front side of the hotel and overlooked the street and courtyard area, including the green square across the street in the form of a City Hall Park (we are located right by Taipei City Hall). It was pretty fantastic having this view while exercising as watching the never ending mass of scooters drive by during morning rush hour could keep me entertained for hours. At one point I even saw a wild dog walking briskly down the sidewalk. He didn’t seem to have any goals in mind, he was just going for a stroll. Some part of me had desired to run down and hug it. But he probably wouldn’t have understood my Engrish anyway.

After I was sufficiently sweaty and started to make my way back to the elevator, I noticed a door with some bright red numbers on an LED sign. They had Chinese characters next to them, but they seemed to indicate temperature and pH levels. The door led outside to a rooftop area, and I was more than curious so I hopped outside for a quick little peek. What I found was surprising, because it was the first of my knowledge that this hotel had a rooftop pool and bar area. It was all in immaculate condition and a very gorgeous setup. Unfortunately this made me realize that I had not thought ahead once again and failed to bring any swimming trunks. Perhaps this could be my first purchase in Taiwan? Once my inspection was complete I finally made it back to the room for showering and getting ready for work. After a quick and highly anticipated G+ Hangout with my lovely wife (so glad to see her beautiful face!), I made my way to the hotel breakfast buffet.

This particular hotel had been recommended to me solely based on this buffet. To say my expectations were high would be underselling the way I felt. It would probably be fair to say I was as excited as a young boy on Christmas morning, and this feeling certainly played out once I crossed the lobby and entered the “Hyatt Cafe” area. Why it’s called a cafe is well beyond my understanding, but what I saw in-front of me literally made my jaw drop.

The hotel staff seated me at a small table in the far corner of the cavernous room that was butted-up against the glass wall, looking out to the side courtyard of the hotel. I don’t recall if I actually sat down immediately or just pretended to and hovered for just a moment before I made a beeline to inspect my options. Typically when I picture a buffet in my head I think of a single “island” of foods, which in this case would be breakfast themed. Sausages and bacon, some old sweaty eggs and then a mountain of cereals, fruits and breads. I can’t even accurately express how relieved I was to see that this buffet was a far departure from what I was expecting.

The first area that immediately caught my eye was more of less the size of the buffet I had pictured in my head; however it was populated with nothing but sweet pastries (pictured left). I saw fresh fruit danishes, local rolls filled with various creams and fruits, croissants, sweet breads (actual SWEET breads, not sweetbreads), and even a rack of raw honeycomb, which was dripping sweet, fresh honey onto a collection plate suspended below. Sadly, I was only able to get a picture from each side of this little island before one of the hotel staff caught me and told me that pictures were not permitted. Bummer, because the rest of this buffet can barely be described by words. You’ll have to suspend your disbelief for the next few paragraphs while I try my best to reproduce these incredulous sights with my words alone.

Next to the pastry area was a mini-bakery area. This was where they baked the various treats hot and fresh, but the staff behind the counter were also there to serve the customers fresh breakfast favorites. I’m not entirely sure of everything that they offer, but I’ve seen waffles, pancakes, french toast and crepes all get handed over the counter, which can then be topped by numerous fruits, creams and jellies that are splayed out along the counter top. Pushed up against the counter also lurks a time bomb. Quite literally in fact, as it’s a self-serve, hand-scooped ice cream freezer. As of this writing it has been three days that I’ve visited this buffet and I’ve yet to indulge my craving; however I’m not sure if that’s because I’ve eaten ice cream each evening before or if I’m just that strong-willed. I will be certain to enact Ice Cream Watch, and give instant updates if (when) this ticking time bomb goes off. And as a side note, all-you-can-eat ice cream is pretty common in Taipei for any type of buffet, so really this whole city is like a mine field to me and my digestive tract. But that’s an entirely different story…

Moving away from the side of the Cafe where the pastries area is, we have a large seating area that is slightly raised above the ground floor. Among the individual tables lies two islands that are equal in size to the pastry one pictured above. These are where the standard “continental breakfast” fare awaits. Plenty of fresh fruit, cereals and yogurts as well as a few slightly more “cultured” breakfast items like aged cheeses, artisan breads and smoked salmon along with all the fixin’s.

If we move past this area to the far wall we find the real meat n’ potatoes of  the buffet. And I’m not talking figuratively here, it’s literally where all the meat and potatoes are served. Every morning so far this area has had a whole leg of ham, a selection of bacon and sausage, and an assortment of potato dishes (e.g., scalloped potatoes, frittata, potato wedges). This is also where you can come to order eggs any way you’d like them; however from my limited experience the cooks at this station seem to be pretty angry or frustrated every morning. Perhaps its because they always seem to be getting pounded by numerous guests every morning, and I can see how they would be the most popular area of the buffet.

At the lowest section of the buffet and closest to the entrance is what we’ll call the Asian foods section. This area is humongous, and slightly different each day. It usually plays host to Asian-style dishes like hot buns, steamed dumplings, different styles of tofu, noodle dishes, and various selections of soups. The foods here are pretty hit-and-miss, but for the most part the dumplings and fried cucumber dishes are very often the best items that they have to offer.

If all of that food was not enough there’s one more area nearby that is entirely dedicated to juices. Oddly enough this is the only section that has a sign on the wall, which reads “Juice Bar”. They rotate the juices daily, but there’s always a selection of at least 5 different juices.

This first day was overwhelming for me. There were so many different areas to visit and an incredible amount of new things that I wanted to try, so I made a terrible decision and pretty much tried everything. Most people that know me well are aware of the fact that I consider myself to be a fantastic over-eater. Sometimes it feels like there is a trigger missing in my brain that tells me when to stop eating, such that I usually have the ability to eat until I’m literally in pain — well, more like discomfort — from all of the food that I’ve consumed. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I could ever be one of those world champion eaters that could wolf down 100 hot dogs in an hour, but I’m sure that I could at least give them a run for their money.

At some point during this face-stuffing fest, one of the servers brought over a cappuccino and placed it on the table. I cocked my head and gave her my best confused puppy face. I was on maybe my fourth plate of food and this very same server had come to fill my coffee cup around five or six times at this point. At first I thought that this could be some kind of prize for eating so much. But after she saw my confusion and I asked her why this was placed upon my work area, she quickly apologized and whisked the frothy cup away. Sadly, now that this treat had been offered to me and swiftly revoked, I had an odd craving for a cappuccino; however I was already at the point of busting the seams of my pants so I decided to simply finish my plate of food and waddle back to hotel room to lie on the floor and moan for a few minutes before I went to work.

My dedicated host Eason had told me that he would come pick me up at the hotel around 8:30, and it was nearly quarter after eight, so after I had sufficiently moaned and complained to myself for a few minutes in the hotel room I prepared my laptop and made my way back down to the hotel lobby to await his arrival.

It was only a few minutes before he pulled up in his champagne-colored Toyota Altis, and after exchanging our greetings and tossing my backpack into the backseat we headed out into the morning rush hour traffic. I was in part expecting to see a lot of slow-going, aggressive driving based on my observations of the number of cars and scooters on the streets at all times throughout the morning, but surprisingly it seemed to be a very smooth journey.

From my experience in foreign lands, I’ve noticed a common theme when it comes to drivers on the road. For the most part, the lane markings on the road have little to no meaning, and what I saw on this particular morning was even more complicated by the constant mass of scooters that were weaving in and out of traffic. Also, the use of turn signals when merging or changing lanes is non-existent and the process of merging basically consists of placing your vehicle directly in the path of the other vehicles moving at full speed, which works surprisingly well. The scooters on the other hand, don’t appear to obey any traffic laws/rules what so ever. They more or less cut off cars and trucks without any hesitation and regularly ignore red lights, even making use of the sidewalks and oncoming lanes when necessary. Nothing really seems to stop them, which at least shows that they are dedicated to their goals — but I also wonder how many accidents are caused by or at least involve these crazy scooter operators every year.

After a quick jaunt down the highway we arrived in the Nankang Software Park, which was described to me as the Taiwan version of Research Triangle Park, and all of the biggest Taiwan companies had an office space somewhere within this area including Yahoo, HP and even those seedy bastards at Dell. The parking in this area is surprisingly limited for containing so many different companies, so Eason dropped his car off to get washed in what can only be described as a hovel in the middle of a destroyed parking lot with tarps strung about to provide cover for the “wash stations”. He exchanged some words with the old women operating this place of business and we set off towards our target destination, which was just a few blocks away.

The morning sun was blazing, but thankfully the humidity wasn’t nearly as high as it usually is in Durham, so the walk was not even close to being unbearable. That being said, entering the Software park’s main building was equally as satisfying as jumping into a cold, refreshing pool on a hot day as the air conditioning enveloped my warm and uncomfortably stuffed body. The offices where we would be located were on the eighth floor, and as we crammed into the elevator along with what felt like twenty other people I began to regret wearing backpack full of electronics and assorted cables, as we could have easily fit another two humans into the space that it was occupying. There was an awkward silence that came over the elevator as mostly everyone stared at me and tried to figure out exactly what sort of strange creature stood amongst them.

Once we arrived at the eighth floor and squeezed our way out of the elevator, we entered the IBM offices and I was given a very brief tour of the lab space and cubicles where our Taiwan Software and Technology Lab (TSTL) team spent most of their time. After meeting all of the Test Engineering (TE) and Quality Engineering (QE) team members, we walked upstairs to the 11th floor to meet the Manufacturing Engineering (ME) and Manufacturing Program Management (MPM) folks, as well as make our first attempt of many at acquiring a temporary badge for me. This initial attempt was a failure, as the receptionist told us that we needed to get an approval by the TE team’s second-line manager for some reason. Oddly enough, another Engineer from Rochester had recently visited and he had received his badge the first day with little-to-no resistance, so I’m not sure if he did something while he spent his time here to require this extra security or if the local team had simply forgotten that I would be spending time with them.

Once we returned to the eighth floor and settled back in to our seating area, a bunch of boring work stuff happened that I will spare you from having to read about; however the next exciting part came around lunch time. All of the TE’s and a small selection of QE’s and ME’s got together to go down to a nearby eatery to enjoy steamed dumplings that were cooked out on the street and brought inside to the tables in those classic stack-able bamboo dumpling containers We also ordered a round of soy milk that came in sealed plastic cups, which required a pointy straw to be jammed through the plastic film on top (not too unlike those bags of milk that I used to get in elementary school).

During lunch I had to explain twice where all of my long hair went, and that there are in fact charities that take human hair as donations. I additionally had to turn down multiple offers of silverware from my colleagues, who were unaware of my almost perfectly-honed chopstick skills. When I wasn’t being quizzed, I took a few moments to savor the delicious steamed dumplings, which were flavorful enough on their own but also complimented by a soy-based sauce that I had prepared with some “spicy” peppers and garlic. Naturally, I put quotes around that descriptor because what the Taiwanese call spicy is more akin to the spiciness level of warmed-over milk. They have even told me that in general nothing in Taiwan is as spicy as the food in China, which I’ve covered before and discovered that only the rarest of Chinese dishes even begins to register on my own personal scale.

This dumpling eatery was rather popular and a few groups of customers were eyeing our table, so once everyone had finished their meal we quickly returned back to work and did a whole pile of boring work stuff. The only notable item was that we returned to a darkened office space, which was to aid in the post-lunch napping that is common among Asian cultures. When I asked about their nap time habits, the local team said that in general less people take naps in Taiwan and even when they do, they only nap for a fraction of the time that their Chinese neighbors like to indulge in.

Near the end of the work day, my generous Taiwanese hosts offered to take me to a basketball game. The game in question was actually two games and were both part of the William Jones Cup, which is a very popular regional basketball tournament that happens every year similar to March Madness but for Amateur regional teams. The two games on the docket this evening would be Korea (the good one) vs. the Phillipines, and Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) vs. United Arab Emirates. I took the offer and a contingent of the Engineering teams took off on a 45 minute drive through rush hour traffic over to New Taipei City, which would regularly host this tournament in the Xinzhuang Gymnasium located near a busy downtown area (pictured at the top of this post). The event was even being covered by ESPN, who had two cameras stationed in the upper seating areas along with two roaming camera men on either side of the court. According to the local team, I was even on the local TV stations for a minute as I was the only Caucasian person in the entire arena. Fun!

Before we even entered the building we ran down to the corner across the street and found a food cart that was selling various local foods to purchase a Taiwanese sausage snack that came on a bun with some cooked onions and peppers. We also ducked into the 7-11 on the same corner to get some beverages. I took this opportunity to try a local favorite called Milk Tea, which was literally just tea with milk already mixed in, but was very good and almost had a sugary sweetness to it. This actually came in a carton like a juice box and continued the streak of drinks requiring the use of a pointy straw to enjoy the delicious contents within. We were not allowed to bring any food or beverage into the Gymnasium so we scarfed all of this down on the steps in front and then headed inside to catch the last half of the Korea vs. Phillipines game. The two teams were very evenly matched and the game eventually ended in the Koreans topping the Phillipines 78 to 70, which was an extreme disappointment for the crowd as “nobody likes the Koreans” according to my hosts.

During the 20 minute break before the next game started, we returned outside to get another snack. This time we found ourselves in a small school classroom that also happened to serve some traditional Taiwanese shaved ice treats  (complete with pint-sized chairs and desks for eating on). I was still full from lunch and the pre-game sausage, but Eason insisted that I try something so he got me a very popular shaved ice snack that I could barely eat. It was more or less a large scoop of shaved ice with some sort of sweet syrup that sat atop a syrupy mess of grass jelly and long white jelly pearls that looked like worms. The entire combination was sweet and savory, but hard for me to enjoy with how full I was from the day’s multiple huge meals, so I only ate about a third of it.

We departed from the school house and went back to enjoy the main event of the evening, which was the local Taiwan team vs. the UAE.  This game started out with the middle-eastern team out-pacing the Taiwan team by 12 points or more almost the entire time. It wasn’t until the last five minutes of the game that the home team turned on the heat and with a thrilling end to the game, claimed victory from the clutches of the injury-prone UAE, who had at least three separate injuries (although they might have been to the same player each time — it was hard to tell). Secretly, I had been rooting for the UAE team, since my sister lives and works in Dubai, but it was also great to see the home team pull out the victory as the crowd was going crazy with every point that they fought for at the end of the game. It really was an awesome sight to see.

We left the stadium and had a quick conference call with a small portion of the IBM Rochester team to discuss important matters. While this was happening, Nelson the QE went and found me an exciting new food item to try. I had basically been stuffed all day starting from my gorging at breakfast, but when we were at the food cart earlier in the evening I was shown a popular food item sold on a stick. It was described to me as sticky rice, soaked in blood and fried — and after searching around on Wikipedia I found that it is called Pig’s Blood Cake (I mentioned it in my abbreviated update the other day). It was very delicious and I was happy to add to my already stuffed belly just for a chance to try such a unique local favorite.

It was certainly an exciting and eventful first day in Taipei and I went to bed hungry for more. This could only be the beginning of what was sure to be a great and eventful experience in a country that is both culturally rich, and full of wonderful and generous people.

Taiwan is a truly fascinating and culturally rich country. Unfortunately, it’s so terribly all-consuming that I have not had nearly enough sleep nor time to lovingly craft these delicious blog posts for your consumption.  In lieu of today’s post recapping the first two days of my stay in Taiwan, I’ll instead simply gift the following picture to you (click the link to find your present):

Yes.  That is Spider-Man planking on a garbage can on the side of a bus.  And in case you were wondering: yes, your argument is invalid. I’m sorry but this is the internet.

I also have a very small food status update: I’m now 2 for 2 in trying a new “blood as food” dish, of which today’s was blood tofu. This food item is more or less just congealed blood that is cut into blocks like tofu and then cooked. We had some this evening when we went to eat “Hot Pot” (refer to this previous post for an explanation of Hot Pot). It was surprisingly good, but I think I preferred the Pig’s Blood Cake from the night before.

Also don’t forget to ogle my Web Album that I am updating much more regularly than this blog (sorry — I would really love to have more time to write these posts, but it’s just not in the cards for me).  Maybe if you all send good tidings my way I can carve out a few hours this weekend to write a super-post.

Also, I promised Brandon a better version of the “Run through this door” sign, so here it is:

You cannot deny that this sign is literally showing a man fleeing through the exit door.

Also, clicking the above picture will take you to my “Taiwan Aug 11” album, which I will update daily with random pictures and maybe a video or two of whatever catches my eye.  And don’t worry if you see pictures of things before I post a write-up about them. Consider it a sneak peak into what’s yet to come!

Thanks for reading!

—

It was a normal August morning in Durham. The air was thick and sweaty, and the mosquitoes were starving. My lovely wife Allie offered to drop me off at the Raleigh-Durham airport even though she was still in the process of recovering from her surgery on Friday, and we agreed to get up and leave around 8:00 am, so naturally we were out the door by 7:15. My wife dislikes being late or coming anything close to it, which in this case was more of a blessing than anything else.

It was only a 15 minute drive to the airport from our house. A quick dog-leg up I-85 and then the majority of the route consists of fighting off rush-hour traffic and stop lights along Route 70. As I took a slow, banking turn onto 70 towards Raleigh, our rather newish Subaru Forester suddenly lost control. Within an instant my slow turn morphed into swerving. Thanks to my totally sweet Grand Theft Auto driving skills I was able to regain control without plowing into the concrete barrier separating us from the oncoming highway traffic and come to a stop on the generous shoulder.

I didn’t even have to step out of the car to know that we had blown a tire. And the low tire pressure light on the dashboard had nothing to do with that knowledge, it was simply science. As I made my slow lap to confirm the damage I saw it was the rear driver-side tire that was completely devoid of all air. What a wonderful way to start a trip. And an even better way to start the week (ugh, Mondays). Thankfully Allie had taken a sick day for her surgery and was more than happy to spend most of it away from home, sitting in a repair shop waiting for the tires to get delivered? For whatever reason it took all morning just for the shop to get the tires, not to mention install them and then let her know that the tire pressure sensor broke off and that they went ahead and Jerry-rigged it. We’d just have to deal with the warning light on the dashboard until we could get it fixed… Thanks, guys?

Knowing all of this as I made my excruciatingly slow and painful hop from Raleigh-Durham to Washington DC certainly put a damper on my mood. All I had wanted was for Allie to get ONE day of relaxation and recovery before going back to work. Unfortunately, thanks to a fat screw in her rear tire that just wasn’t going to happen on this particular day.

After arriving in DC, I luckily didn’t have any time to spare for a layover, so I immediately headed to my gate where they had just started boarding. I was flying on a United flight to Tokyo, Japan in a classic 1977 Boeing 777. Everything about this metal tube with wings was in original condition. The wool seats were still brimming with the aroma of dried tobacco, and the 2.8 inch CRT montitors that were implanted into the headrest of every seat in Economy were still attached with the original beads of Elmer’s glue from the factory. Even the VCR that they used to loop the in-flight entertainment had never been cleaned, which delighted every passenger with the joy of watching scan lines scroll along the screen throughout every viewing experience.

Luckily United invested in some recent VHS tapes for us to watch and I was at least able to catch the constant advertisements for their first-class bed seats with on-demand entertainment and somewhat modern LCD monitors (sad and jealous face). In between the ads I was also able to watch a few movies like Rio, Fast Five and Dumb & Dumber. The channel that was looping Dumb & Dumber was called “American classics” and somehow this classic motion picture was the clearest picture out of all of the other more recent films.

Regardless, there I sat for the entire 12.5 hour flight in the middle aisle of seats in the classic 2-5-2 configuration. On one side I had two Japanese children that were under 7 and could not speak English, which they told me repeatedly. On the other side, and more importantly blocking my shortest path to the aisle, sat a 50-something Naval lawyer. As I sat down she optimistically told me she would be taking an Ambien and “passing out for the entire flight”, which somehow was supposed to provide me solace since I had just given up my comfortable window seat so that an older Asian woman could sit with her 10 year-old son. As the words escaped her mouth and I noticed the sleeping mask around her neck, I could literally feel the doors and windows of my hopes and aspirations slamming shut. I knew that I was in for one long, painful flight.

At some point during this half-day ordeal, I was fully away that I would not be able to escape into the aisle to stretch my legs. In lieu of this basic human pleasure, I decided I would try to take a nap. Little did I know that the tiny human to my immediate right was what we would call “clumsy”. The first time I tried to close my eyes her hard-bound notebook landed in my lap. Hard. My eyes were closed, so I can’t accuse her of throwing it at me, but I also can’t absolve her of the act. The very next time I dozed back into slumber and her Hello Kitty notepad landed in the same spot, I would say that I was slightly curious of what exactly she was doing that resulted in her belongings flying towards my groin region, but alas I let it go.

It wasn’t until an hour or two later when I was fully awake and enjoying a delicious coffee did I realize that she had a penchant for kneeling in her seat and flinging her blanket around aimlessly. The coffee that was just a moment before resting comfortably on my tray table had thankfully cooled to a mildly warm temperature, such that it didn’t burn my flesh when it spilled all over me. Regardless of the temperature, when she turned to me and stated for the fifth time, “I don’t speak English” instead of apologizing in any language, I simply could no longer take it. A quick elbow to the rib cage and the Naval lawyer woman was mildly awake, and more than happy to let me out so that I could dry my shorts.

Upon returning to my seat I felt consolation in the fact that I only had about 5 hours to go and the children were fast asleep. I even had a chance to enjoy two more cups of coffee without any flailing blankets in my vicinity, and only one other child periodically kicking the back of my seat. Naturally, I spent the majority of my new found free time glaring at the back of the woman’s head who goaded me into trading seats with her son. Of course I’m only slightly joking. But not really…

When we touched-down in Tokyo, the security checkpoint for International flights only took about thirty minutes to getthrough. This was my first experience in Japan and all of the suspicions that I had gained from the internet had almost immediately been confirmed within just those first few minutes of queuing. Japan is crazy and quirky, and every sign has a cartoon cat on it or at least some kind of cartoon and they all look like they’re written in Comic Sans, which makes it hard to take anything seriously:

Thankfully, nothing else took place that was terribly interesting for the remainder of my trip.  So instead I will leave you with a picture and a question: How would you interpret this sign (and yes I know what it really means)?

When I look at it, all I can think is, “Run through this door. Right now”.