Taiwan, Part 5

I've been having no luck trying to connect using wireless from the apartment in Taiwan. Right now I'm at our office in Taipei, right across the street from Taipei 101. The office is pretty nice, probably even nicer than our Irvine office. It feels like I'm back in the U.S. except everyone is Chinese and speaking Mandarin. The conference room I'm in is right next to the receptionist. She's been on the intercom for the past hour asking people if they want to order lunch.

Anyway, back to the tour. The final day was a tour of Taroko National Park and a train ride back to Taipei. The mountains near Hualien are mostly marble so the valleys carved by rivers are pretty steep. We took a large tour bus this time since a couple more groups joined us and it was crazy seeing all these buses navigate through the twisty mountain road. At the beginning of the tour, the guide (Mr. Su) only spoke English and Japanese. Later, we had to ask him to speak Mandarin since we could not understand his English at all. It's pretty sad when I can understand his Mandarin better than his English. He also said "on your right" all the time even though he was pointing left and said left in Mandarin. :)

We stopped in several places to take pictures and then walked a 2km section of the old road.


Gate in front of the old road leading up the gorge


Old footpath made by the Japanese to access marble, jade, and other gems


View of the road and tunnel dug into the mountain


Traffic jam due to tunnel construction


Tunnel


One of many waterfalls along the roadway


Rapids along the bottom of the gorge


A pagoda and statue along the roadway


A temple near the bottom of the gorge. The tour guide said that it's been rebuilt three times, the last time due to the 9/21 earthquake.

After the tour, Mr. Su took us to lunch... at his house! He owns a store along the road that sells marble stuff. I think being a tour guide is how he gets customers to come to his store. My parents bought a couple of bracelets that supposedly had magical powers. During the tour, Mr. Su got a sore throat from talking. Someone in our tour group offered him a cough drop but instead he held his bracelet to his throat saying that will help. Hmm...

After lunch we went to a park along the Pacific Ocean that was right next to a military base and we were warned not to take pictures of the base. While we were there, eight F-16s took off from the base and flew right overhead. Finally, we stopped by a mochi store (Hualien is famous for its mochi) then the train station for a three-hour ride back to Taipei.


Some pretty marble vases for sale at Mr. Su's store/restaurant


Train


Scenery along the Pacific coast north of Hualien

The receptionist just announced that bento lunches are here. I'm eating lunch with my parents and their friends at 12:30pm so I'd better take off and find a taxi.

Taiwan, Part 4

Today was mainly a travel day from Kaohsiung to Hualien. This morning the tour bus took us around Kaohsiung city. The first stop was a large man-made lake surrounded by a park. It was pretty deserted since the entrance fee was NT$100 per person, expensive even by American standards. It was a pretty nice park though. There is a seven story pagoda that all of us climbed and took pictures, even 70-year old Mr. Lin.

The tour guide said that tour groups from China don't visit this park because they have to pay. Even though the tourists pay a lot to come to Taiwan, officials in China take a cut, and since they have to travel through Hong Kong, more people take a cut. When they finally get to Taiwan, there's not much money left so they go to places that are free.


View of the lake


A stone bridge that has nine-turns. The tour guide said that evil spirits can only travel in a straight line so they can't come across the bridge. I think he made that up.


View from the top of the pagoda

Next, we went to another lake that was surrounded by Buddhist and Taoist temples. The Taoist temples are elaborately decorated with all sorts of figures and stuff while Buddhist temples are more plain. At the 2nd temple, it started to pour, probably still due to the typhoon off to the west. We decided to call it quits and headed for the airport.


A huge multi-denominational temple


Not sure what this was. On the left is a dragon (entrance) and on the right is a tiger (exit).

The flight to Hualien was uneventful. We rode in a Fokker 50 and the flight was about an hour; the trip would have taken 5 hours by bus. Hualien airport also serves as a military airport so they told us not to take any pictures. There were several bunkers at the far end of the airport with some F-20's.


Our plane from Kaohsiung to Hualien

The hotel in Hualien is not too bad; I think it's better than our hotel in Kaohsiung. Once again, even a so-so hotel in a small city has 100-channel cable TV and wireless LAN. The shampoo and conditioner however, come in small plastic pouches, like condiments. Tonight, we ended up eating in the night market. We had some steamed buns, steamed dumplings, and a bowl of rice noodles for about NT$125. Tomorrow, we will go to Taroko National Park and take a train back to Taipei. I don't have Internet access in our apartment in Taipei so this may be my last post from Taiwan.


Night market stand where we ate dinner. I was too hungry and ate all the food before taking a picture.

Taiwan, Part 3a

Some more pictures from yesterday:


Rock off the coast of Kenting National Park. The tour guide says it looks like Richard Nixon.


Frog stools along the beach


Elanubi light house complex


Pacific Ocean from west side of Kenting National Park


Natural gas bubbling up from the ground. During the dry season, they would light the gas and it would burn all season.

Taiwan, Part 3

These guided tours take a lot of energy, getting on and off the bus at each stop. Anyway, we were pretty tired yesterday. We decided to have dinner across the street at a department store; they have a food court on the 12th floor. The most interesting part of the evening were the elevator ladies. I didn't get a picture (yet) but they were wearing uniforms (with hats and white gloves) and make sure you didn't get trapped by the elevator doors.

This morning, we boarded a different bus and a different tour guide took us to Kenting National Park. Our group of eight became twelve as a French couple (the wife is Cantonese but was born in France) plus two Japanese men joined our original group. The trip from Kaohsiung took about two hours and we drove along the coast. There is a typhoon currently moving north somewhere south of Hong Kong. Typically typhoons move from the Philippines, up the east side of Taiwan, and heads toward Japan. This typhoon is different that it's on the west side of Taiwan generating pretty large waves. The tour guide said that in his 25 years leading tours, he has never seen such large waves on the west side of Taiwan.


High waves generated from the typhoon


Wave damage at a rest stop. There were also debris on the road to Kenting in several locations.

Our first stop was a rock formation that looked like a cat. The waves were pretty large and the bus driver chickened out from driving out to the end of a pier. This was right next to a nuclear power station. I think someone had a sense of humor and built three (only three) windmills next to the nuclear reactors.


I don't see no cat... looks like a bunch of rocks to me.


No snorkeling today

After lunch, we continued along the southern coast of Taiwan to Elanubi Park, the southern most point in Taiwan. The waves were still pretty heavy and it was very windy, probably more effects of the typhoon. We drove to a couple more scenic spots and headed back to the hotel in Kaohsiung.

I'm having problems uploading pics again and running out of battery juice (no three prong outlets!) so I'll continue later.

Taiwan, Part 2

We just arrived at our hotel at Kaohsiung for the next two nights. The hotel is a bit dumpy and my room is really small. I couldn't find an Ethernet port in the room and I didn't see a business center in the lobby. To my surprise, they had an access point on each floor so I'm connected via WiFi. The room smells a bit like smoke but this hotel does not have a non-smoking floor... welcome to Asia.

We didn't see very much this morning. After breakfast at the hotel, we left at 9am for Kaohsiung. The main stop was at a small town where we walked around some alleyways. I think the town was famous for mung (green) bean cake. Lunch was at a random rest stop along National Highway #1; there is a parallel, newer, National Highway #3 that runs north-south along the west coast of Taiwan. It's 6pm local time now; I'm going downstairs to get something to eat.


View of Taichung from my hotel room


Sign pointing to a narrow alleyway (it says "touching breast lane")


Old houses away from the street. The tour guide said that some houses are 200-300 years old.


Making bicycle horns by hand (those axe-looking things are soldering irons)


Fruit stand along the street


Taiwanese shaved ice: red bean, pineapple, and aiyu (NT$20)


The two bags contain pig skin. The sign says they deep-fry pig skin, I guess to make pork rinds. Mmm... I think I'll pass.


View of Kaohsiung from my hotel room. Looks like any large city in Taiwan.

Taiwan, Part I

It's our third night in Taiwan and I finally got a broadband Internet connection. We're currently staying at the Plaza International Hotel in Taichung and it's the first day of our 5-day tour of Taiwan. I'm still a bit jetlagged so I'm trying to stay awake for a couple more hours. There are only 8 people on the tour: my parents and me, and another family from the U.S.

We left LAX Friday morning (Pacific Time) and the lines were pretty long, both at Singapore Airlines and at the baggage scanner. While we were lined up for take off, I noticed that our flight was behind a EVA Air 747 to Taipei, and a China Airlines 747 to Taipei as well. Our 777-200 was pretty full so there must be a lot of traffic from LAX to TPE.


Arrival board at TPE. There seems to be a lot of flights from California.

After being picked up by a couple of my dad's old classmates from military college, we drove an apartment near Youth Park (SW Taipei); it belongs to one of their friends in Canada who lives in Taipei only 6-months each year. I had trouble sleeping for the first couple of nights, probably a combination of jetlag, an incredibly hard mattress, and noise. The area around Youth Park is like every neighborhood in Taipei. People either live in large apartment complexes or in shorter buildings along the street, typically with a business on the ground floor. There is a small night market around the corner and a million 7-Elevens.


View from our 10th floor apartment


My room with the incredibly hard mattress/bed. Good thing there's an air conditioner.


Mmm... street vendors!

On Saturday, we were invited to a Mother's Day buffet lunch at a hotel near Taipei 101 and on Sunday, one of my mom's relatives and her family visited then we went to my dad's friend's house for dinner. Interestingly, while we were walking around the neighborhood and checking out the night market, some guy stopped my dad. It turned out that he was in the same class as my dad but graduated 2 years earlier. They probably have not seen or heard of each other for 45 years yet the guy recognized my dad. I don't remember people from UCLA and that's only 15 years ago.


Obligatory picture of Taipei 101

This morning (Monday), the tour bus picked us up at a hotel near the main train station and took us (and the other family) to Sun Moon Lake. It appears that it's a popular honeymoon location. It turned out my parents, the old couple in the other group, and the tour guide all had their honeymoon there. Maybe I should have gone there instead of Europe. :) It was foggy and occasionally rainy due to a typhoon to the south of Taiwan. The tour guide took us to several temples and a couple tourist traps where we could buy stuff.


Lunch at some cultural center. Our reservation was around 1:30pm and we were the only table of people in the room. It made it kind of awkward when the aboriginal dancers asked for volunteers to join them on stage.


Sun Moon Lake


I think this is a hotel for teachers. My parents stayed here on their honeymoon.


Dinner for three: NT$190 (~US$6)

Arg, the ADSL connection at the hotel is flaky. I'll upload more pictures later. I must have bad luck at hotels. I usually get a smoking room and end up having to switch rooms. I already switched from a smoking floor to non-smoking floor but this room smells of smoke too. Sigh...

Work

It's been a long two weeks at work. With my parents staying with me in my tiny apartment and working late/weekends, I'm not even sure what day it is anymore. I just got home from work (1:45AM) after struggling with this month's forecast and there's a lot more to get done before my vacation to Taiwan.

I turned on the TV while eating some leftovers and G4 is showing an infomercial from Saving Lives Across America where you can make unlimited amounts of money from selling vitamins on the web. For $15, they set you up with a website and you get money when someone buys product or sign up as a "director"... typical MLM crap. Only if it was so easy to make money :)

Lake Verse?

The Lakers just lost game 6 of their series with the Phoenix Suns. I don't have cable so I listed to the game on my clock radio (AM 570). They sounded terrible in overtime.

Anyway, I was getting dinner earlier at Wahoo's and the game was on TV with close captioning turned on. Each time the commentators said "Lakers", the caption would show LAKE VERSE. I wonder if it's some kind of computer voice recognition system (which would be awesome since almost every other word was transcribed correctly) or the captioning person is not a basketball fan.

The Campus Concierge

Wow, "just like home" eh? I never got gift baskets or my laundry washed and folded at home. Then again, I went to UCLA... not Harvard.

==========

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NewSong Work Day

It was a big day yesterday at NewSong NOC; I got up yesterday at 5:30am and didn't get back to my apartment until 5:00pm. In addition to the regular two services, we had a live jazz band (Andrew Carney) and a BBQ lunch outside the theater. Inside, setup took longer than usual since it's the first time I ran FOH with Wilshire's built-in wiring instead of using an audio snake. I got a couple of cables reversed and it took awhile to figure out what happened.

I took some pictures of all the stuff we need to load/unload each week:


It take two trucks to haul all the equipment around each Sunday


Stuff


Some more stuff


Sound equipment (the big black "box" under the blue plastic bin is one of two JBL SR4719X subwoofers; they weigh 188 lbs. each)

Roses

Roses from the Brea house. I hope the new owners takes care of the flowers.

Goodbye, house

I went back to the house in Brea again today to unlock the door for the buyer's appraiser. The appraisal only took 10 minutes but I was there for several hours since I was doing laundry as well. While waiting, I went and bought some stuff at Home Depot and washed the 4Runner. I think this is the last time I will check up on the house and do laundry (I just need to dispose of Kevin's mattress somehow). My parents are coming next week and then we're headed off to Taiwan. Hopefully escrow will close before I get back.

I sat for about 10 minutes in the empty room we used as an office. I remember spending an entire weekend plus a few nights just to paint the walls of the office and the guest room when we first bought the house. Now the room looks the same as it did three years ago except the carpet is blue instead of green. As I sat there, I felt a deep sadness... it's as if we never lived there. The only evidence that someone lived there are the indentations in the carpet from our furniture.



Sometimes I feel the past 6+ years was nothing but a dream. I would now occasionally wake up in the morning confused, wondering where I was [strange apartment] or whether I was really married for so long. Maybe this "life" now is a dream and I'll wake up any minute now...

New Hire

Yay! The USC undergrad candidate that we offered my financial analyst position to accepted today. I think six of us interviewed each candidate (three senior directors and three senior managers) and most of us ranked her as #1. The only downside is that she won't be able to start until August 7th. Maybe I can give projects to one of the incoming MBA interns this summer until my new employee arrives.