I work in the FPD industry. To call business slow would be a huge understatement. Although, recently it has been picking up. And as a whole the Taiwan economy is picking up as well.
I occasionally ride the Taiwan High Speed Rail (THSR) train. These trains are fast. They top out at 300 km/h and takes about one and a half hour to get from the top of Taiwan to almost the very bottom (Taipei <-> Zuoying). Which roughly the distance between NYC and Washington D.C.
When the THSR service started a few years ago, like everyone else I was like WOW! After every business trip I'd think to myself "I can't believe I'm home already!" Fast forward to now and I've already taken it for granted. The rides feel like forever. Now, I'm complaining how there's no personal video screens, no music, no internet. . .
Reminds me of the video clip below:
Last week while riding the THSR to a customer site I noticed something very special.
The old ladies are back!
Let me explain. You basically only see two types of service people on the trains. Flight attendants which are usually young attractive girls, and garbage collectors which are usually older ladies. When business is slow, as it usually is in a recession, they layoff the garbage collectors and make the flight attendants collect the garbage. Conversely, when business picks up they hire back the old ladies and let the flight attendants do what they do best. . . look pretty and push those overpriced refreshment carts.
So. . . Young ladies picking up garbage = Taiwan's economy doing bad.
Old ladies picking up garbage = Taiwan's economy is recovering.
I won't joke about that stuff again. I think I got my hip knocked loose on the go-kart track.
Yesterday, some friends and I decided to head back to the go-kart track that we went earlier in the year. Weather was perfect and we had a lot of good racing. Most of the people in the group didn't go with us last time so the first time around I lapped everyone like twice. But by the third session, huge improvement by everyone. I couldn't lap anyone and was even passed a few times.
This is probably why my hip doesn't feel so great today. On the last session of the day, since everyone was more consistent and competitive, we were spending much more time side by side. Coming into the hairpin turn we had three people going for the apex at pretty much the same time. I had a feeling this wasn't going to turn out well.
The first person that reaches the apex loses his rear end and does a 180 spin and comes to a stop in the middle of the corner exit. By that time I've already committed to taking the inside line since I have another car directly to the right of me. I slow down as much as I can but it's too late. BOOM!
Ouch. . . and then I see my friend who took the outside line speed away, waving his hand as to say "Cya!" to the both of us. What a great friend! I know who's gonna get brake checked the next time he's behind me.
I have bruises on my elbow, my ribs, and my hip. My whole upper body is sore and I'll probably walking with a slight limp for at least a week.
I believe Ang Lee took the same flight as me, but i'm not 100% sure it was him. I only briefly saw a person that looked like him and his small entourage of people being escorted by China Airlines staff past the mass of people anxiously waiting in line to be stuffed into the economy section.
Side note: Why are people always in such a rush to get in the airplane? First of all, the last time I checked everyone has assigned seating. Secondly, it's an 18 hour flight. . . or 18 hour 10 minute flight for those lucky people that got on line early. . . way to go! 10 free minutes!
I thought I lucked out when I checked in, I got the last window seat available. After I get to my seat this chubby 10 or 11 year old kid wearing a straw cowboy hat, black t-shirt, shorts, and orange crocs shoes sits next to me. His parents nowhere to be found. Great!
He had the worst case of ADD imaginable. I'm not kidding, he couldn't sit still for 2 seconds. I had to tell him twice to stop bumping his elbow into me and stop shaking the seat. While we were waiting to takeoff he was simultaneously watching the safety video, looking out the window, and flipping through the airline magazine. He'd look at the TV for one second then out the window for one second then back to TV then to magazine then to window then to TV etc etc etc. . . And when I say flipping through the magazine I mean strictly flipping through the magazine, he didn't even look at most of the pages before he flipped to the next page.
At this point, I'm thinking, this is going to be a long flight. That's when he looked around for a second and then put his hand down his pants and scratched/grabbed/molested his private parts. That's not the worst of it, right afterwards he'd pick his nose with the same hand and bite his nails.
That was it. . . GAME OVER. I'm out. I'm not sitting with this kid for 18 hours.
This kid had absolutely no clue on what socially acceptable behavior is. What kind of parents don't teach their children how to behave in public? Then I thought probably the same kind that lets their 10 year old boy go on international flights alone with no adult supervision.
He played the testicle tug game two or three more times before the fasten seat belt light finally went out and I jumped to first empty seat I could find.
Then I started thinking, maybe this kid is really clever and he did this on purpose so he could get both seats all to himself.
Nope, when I looked back from my new seat a few minutes later the ADD kid was still ADD kid. The guy sitting directly in front of ADD kid had a really annoyed look on his face. Everytime the ADD kid moved or got up from his seat he'd shake the seat in front. So basically every 30 seconds. Good luck trying to sleep. . . hahahaha sucker, I got the last empty seat!
The rest of the 18 hour flight was uneventful, watched some crappy movies, food was pretty bad as usual, but the time passed by surprisingly quickly.
I went with my other group of friends to Miaoli for some go-karting. The place is a pretty far trek from Taipei, roughly two hours by car, but it's supposed to be the best go-kart track in Taiwan.
I wasn't disappointed.
The track is fairly large, has a fast left hand sweeper, a slightly technical section, uphill/downhill part, a hairpin, and a quick left/right section.
Each session costs $250 NT ($8 USD) and they let us run for about 15 minutes. Normally i think it's 10 minutes but since the weather was freezing there wasn't too many people there, they gave us a little more time.
First you go into a room where they brief you on how to drive and some safety stuff. This is nothing like the US. First thing the employee told us was, if you crash and damage the car, you have to pay them for whatever is broken. Second was that if you crash and injure yourself, well. . . that's your problem.
Then he talked about the flags, green means go, yellow means slow down, checkered means the session is over. Left foot = brake, right foot = gas. He pointed to where the helmets and balaclavas were and that was that. I don't think the whole thing took more than 3-4 minutes and we didn't have to sign waivers or anything. Very unlike the US, where you'd have to watch 3 videos, study a safety manual, tell them who to contact if there's an emergency, sign 10 forms, and give them the results from your most recent physical.
Anyways, we strap on our helmets and go outside. It's freezing and the wind is blowing pretty strong. I'm thinking, gloves would've been a good idea. Oh well. . . too late now.
We get into the cars and wait for the green flag. There's a strong smell of gasoline in the air as the go-kart motors are probably running pretty rich in this abnormally cold weather. After the owner guy sees everyone's in their cars and all the engines are still running, he waves the flag and we're off.
I immediately remember how much fun go-karts are. Everything is so immediate and responsive. You only have to think about going left and kart goes left. You get a great sensation of speed since your derrière is only an inch off the ground and there's no suspension so you feel every little bump, crevice, every imperfection of the track. The go-karts probably only go 60 kph but it feels like 150 kph.
I was both disappointed and a little relieved to see the checkered flag. One one hand, I still hadn't completely figured out how to take turn 9 properly. Also, one of the faster guys just passed me so I wanted to follow him and see what i was doing wrong. On the other hand, my brain/body was telling me I could use a break.
I ended up doing only one more session as my friends were too tired to do anymore laps.
Was a lot of fun. Look forward to going back when it's not so cold.
I can't believe the new years break is already over. . .
Friend's company let him use company car over the break. So we took advantage of it and went to a bunch of places around Taiwan.
First stop was JiouFen (九份). But getting there ended being more fun than actually being there. On the way to JiouFen we got lost, ended up driving longer than anticipated. We pass by a clump of 3-4 seafood restaurants, it's way past lunchtime, stomachs begin to make noises, mouths start to salivate. We think, no worries, we're almost there. . . 10 more minutes and we can eat at JiouFen. 10 minutes later, there's no signs of civilization. Uh oh. . . we need to ask for directions.
Immediately my friend says "That seafood restaurant we passed, they probably know how to get there." My other obviously not-so-hungry friend says "We passed by a convenience store 3 minutes ago, we can ask them for directions. Why go all the way back to the seafood restaurant?" And then my other friend says something like "Yeah, I heard seafood restaurant workers are world renowned for their ability to give road directions." LOL, I'm not sure why we had to give an excuse, other than "we're hungry", to go back to that restaurant but it was pretty funny coming up with them.
So we get to the restaurant and have our fill of crabs, clams, sashimi, etc. The lady at the front tells us the directions. And off we go. . . Except, when we walk out of the restaurant, it immediately feels like a typhoon hit us. Wind blowing our umbrellas inside out, rain flying sideways. We head for the parking lot and it feels like a war movie. We have our umbrellas out, not over our heads but pointed straight in front of us, held very low with us crouching behind it like we're dodging bullets. Since we can't see anything in front we end up bumping in to parked cars and trees and almost tripping over stuff, all accompanied by screams and laughter. After what seemed like a mile long trek, we finally get inside the nice and dry car.
10 minute drive later, we end up at JiouFen. Nothing eventful, just a bunch of small really narrow streets and a bunch of old interesting looking stores selling random crap. Supposedly the view is really good, but since the weather was so bad, we couldn't see anything. Our clothes were drenched from the constant rain and it got really cold really fast. So it was a easy decision to leave after a little over an hour of walking around.
Next stop was perfect for our situation. . . hot spring at BeiTou (北投). Taiwan has lots and lots of hot springs. They are typically separated into public pools (one area for men, one area for women) and private rooms. In the public pools you are required to be completely naked. We were almost going to do that and split the guys and the girls up but luckily we found a place that had a private room that could accommodate the five of us. And surprisingly not too expensive, it was $200 NT per person for 40 minutes. . . but upstairs is a restaurant. If you order $400 NT worth of food per person, you get 40 minutes in hot spring for free. (That's only $12.50 USD!) So that's what we did, we were expecting mediocre food since it wasn't really a "real" restaurant but surprisingly the food was really good, real restaurant or not.
After we finish our food, we go downstairs to our private room and jump into the tubs. If you've never gone to hot spring before, it's just like taking a bath. Except the water smells funny and you smell worse coming out of it than you did going in. The minerals and everything in the water are supposed to be great for your body but I can't tell. The only thing I notice afterwards is the smell. It took me two showers to completely get rid of the smell. Anyways, we were supposed to be in there for 40 minutes . . . but it ended up being 2 hours! So the lady tells me her boss is going to yell at her for letting us stay for so long. I'm thinking, how is that our fault? We had no idea, there's no clock in the room, and nobody had a a watch on, and it's too steamy to take out the cell phones.
Time has passed by unbelievably quick. I can't believe January is almost over. I'm pretty busy with work and school, not much time left over for anything else (like this blog). It's ironic because I now have more things to write about but almost no time to actually sit down and write. Luckily for the three people that actually read my blog, i've found a few minutes! LUCKY FOR YOU!!!
So. . . I went to Beijing a few weeks ago. . . it sucked.
For all you Beijing lovers, don't start writing hatemail to me just yet. I mean my experience in Beijing was pretty bad. The city itself is probably pretty good. But I wouldn't know, because even though my "Beijing" trip was 7 days long, I spent a grand total of about 5 hours actually in Beijing.
Why you ask? Because this trip was not for fun but for work. I spent 8+ hours a day, every single day, on the receiving end of one-on-one training, in the business suite of my hotel room. The subject is actually somewhat interesting to me, but I don't care how much you like something. . . 40+ hours of learning, 5 straight days, on the same subject makes you question your will to live. Everyday I felt like my brain got bigger but lifespan got shortened by a few days.
A guided tour of my hotel room!
Oh I forgot to mention, I wasn't actually in Beijing until the last day of my trip. I was in a small town called Shunyi for the first three days. It's an hour away from Beijing by car. At the beginning of the first day of training, I thought, hmm 1 hour is not too far away, maybe after training, i'd hop on a taxi and check out the city.
8 hours later. . . what i actually ended up wanting to do is: dig a hole, hop inside, die.
View from my room in Shunyi. It's snowing! It's been so long since i've seen snow.
After 3 days of that, I went to Tianjin for more training with a different guy. I don't remember much of Tianjin, i think my brain died on day 4. All I remember is that I didn't have new years eve off, i still had 8 hours of training that day and I spent new years eve evening watching Stealth (terrible), Madagascar (not bad), by myself, in my hotel room. I didn't even wait until 12AM, i went to sleep at like 11pm. WORST NEW YEARS EVE EVER.
View of Tianjin from my room.
The next day was the last day of the trip. I woke up early to take advantage of free breakfast, caught a morning train to Beijing and finally saw the city. I didn't have much time so I spent most of my time at the Forbidden City/Tianamen square area. The place is huge! But i wasn't that impressed, I think I've seen too many pictures of it. The buildings looks exactly how you'd imagine them to look like. And there's so many buildings and rooms it all starts to look the same. By the time I was done looking at everything it was getting dark and I was hungry.
Guards! Dork spotted in Forbidden City!
So cold, the Forbidden City needs heaters! I would've suggested it but couldn't find the suggestion box.
I walked to a street market place where they had food stands. Decided to try some of the street food. . . the food was pretty good but it was the sellers that left a bad taste in my mouth. All the menus are in Chinese only so they assume nobody can read so they almost always "forget" to give me change. It's a good thing I can read a little bit of chinese now, but it's not a good feeling knowing they tried to rip you off.
After filling my stomach, i couldn't stand the cold anymore and i went inside a huge shopping mall. Looks exactly the same as any other mall in any country. Spent a few minutes in there, realized I was pretty tired from walking so much, remembered i had 7am flight the next day and i hopped on a taxi back to the hotel.
THE END.
Lesson to take from all this. If you go to a new city, you want to spend more than 5 hours there.
