Getting ready to head home…

Yesterday was a relatively light day in terms of the conference. We met in the morning, briefly and had some discussion about the overall themes for the week. It was a nice wrap-up. We then quickly ate lunch and boarded a bus to visit the Palace Museum in Taipei. That was quite amazing. The museum houses artifacts from the various dynasties in Chinese history, dating back 8000 years. There was a ton to see, and we only saw a small fraction of it. Still, it was quite amazing.

We then bussed over to a restaurant in downtown Taipei that was at one point named one of the “Top 10 Restaurants in the World” by a NY Times writer. It wasn’t a particularly high-class restaurant (that’s not intended to be a put down, I had just expected a very formal place, and I was actually happy to find it was not that), but instead, a very well run restaurant with delicious food. Their specialty was dumplings, and we ate a lot. A LOT. Pork, crab, vegetable, with soup, spinach, and the list goes on. It was all very tasty. Again, it was a great way to end the week.

We then boarded the bus and drove back to Hsinchu through a pretty amazing thunderstorm. The rain was coming down very hard and there were quite a number of nice lightning strikes to see. As we approached our hotel, I started falling asleep even though it was barely 9:30…I never fully let myself adjust to the time difference.

This morning, I’ve been getting my stuff together, doing some reading, and anxiously am waiting for the car to pick us up and take us to the airport. It’s been a nice week, though I am definitely ready to be back home. It’ll be about 25 hours between when I take off from Taiwan and when I land in DC, so it’s still a ways off. However, it’s good to think about that return trip being in progress.

I’m going to hell anyway….

We were out for dinner tonight at a teppenyaki restaurant here in Taiwan. We’ve eaten well all week, though this place was more of a “above the food court in the mall” kind of place…definitely not on par with what we’ve had earlier this week.

So we’re sitting in this crowded room (because the teppenyaki in this place was brought to the table rather than having us sit at the grill). As we’re eating, from behind the wall next to us, we hear some noises. We all look up and just stare. We hear the noises again…the sounds of a dog barking. And we just freeze for a few moments—all 8 of us.

I know it’s wrong, but it’s what happened. I’m sorry.

Not too much exciting to report today. It was the longest day, I think of the workshop—not in terms of hours but in terms of just getting through the day. I think knowing that it’s near the end plays a big part in it…we’re all thinking about getting home.

I, personally, cannot wait to be home. I miss being there, I feel guilty for not being there, and I just like the comfort of being in my own place. I’m very excited to get back there.

Hey, let’s go out for Chinese!

After my last post, a bunch of went out for dinner at a restaurant on campus here. Our hosts for the workshop were unable to join us, though they recommended this place. Fortunately, one of the members of our group was a Taiwanese grad student from UCLA, and he was able to order and translate for us. I don’t know where we would’ve been without him.

There were 12 of us there, and we ordered 12 different dishes that we all passed around, as well as 6 beers that we shared (they come in big bottles here and they give you 2 or 3 oz glasses to drink them). It was a good meal. At the end of it, the bill came and the grad student did the math and told us that everyone owed 120 Taiwanese dollars…which is $4 in the US. FOUR DOLLARS! That has been the story for this week…dining out is relatively cheap.

We then went back to the hotel and I went to sleep. I got up early yesterday morning to go over my talk, which was in the afternoon. I hadn’t prepared for the talk as much as I usually do, so I wanted to remind myself of what I wanted to say. I then had breakfast and went up to the workshop.

It was another good day at the workshop. Good talks and good discussions. My talk was in the afternoon. Other than some technical issues with the projector, I think it went fine. Not my greatest presentation, but not my worst either. I knew I was in trouble, though, when I started talking about chondrule formation in shock waves (which is what my thesis was about). One of the organizers for this workshop really dislikes that model, and he wasn’t afraid to let me know. For the most part it was fine, though, whereas I’m willing to let people make their points in an argument, he is a bit more inclined to interrupt. To be honest, it seems I’m in the minority when it comes to that issue in scientific meetings, so it doesn’t bother me as much as it used to. Other than that, I think things went well.

Last night we went to a Japanese restaurant just on the edge of campus. Again it was quite good, and this time it cost $6 US. We came back to the hotel, and I read the Sports Illustrated I brought with me before turning out the lights and passing out.

One nice thing about yesterday was that I got my arrangements made for getting to the airport on Saturday to head home. It’s nice to start thinking about that. While it’ll be a monster of a trip, it’s nice thinking about being home, sitting with Nina and Emma, and having some sense of normalcy return. While there will be another trip 6 days after I get back, it’s one we’re doing together, so it’ll be much better….

Sleep. Sleep. And no sleep.

I’ve heard that the second day of sleep is always the worst when dealing with jetlag. I think it’s true. I went to bed right after my post last night, around 9:45 or so and was asleep before my head hit the pillow. I woke up after a period and was ready to go, which would’ve been great had it not been 2 AM. I tried to go back to sleep, and around 3 AM managed to do so, only to wake up 45 minutes later. At that point, I just stayed awake.

This morning was less productive overall than yesterday morning. That was, in part, due to my working on my talk (which is tomorrow) that needed significant revisions based on what I observed during the first day in other people’s talks (I have to make things more basic). Also, Nina was telling me about how the husband of the woman who watches Emma during the day is in the hospital and unable to watch Emma over the next few days. So Nina has to take Emma to work then, which is daunting. I was trying to help offer ways to keep Emma entertained for those few hours while Nina works…I may have helped get about 45 minutes set. Hopefully the new environment and people will help keep Emma in check.

Other than that, I had breakfast and went to the workshop for 10. Today’s talks and sessions were a bit more stimulating, I would say than yesterday’s. That’s not to say yesterday’s talks were less interesting, but rather, I think people were a bit more adjusted and ready to discuss things in detail, so the workshop was a bit more lively. Lots of ideas, lots of yelling, lots of not-so-polite dismissals of other people’s ideas…pretty much par for the course. ;)

Back in the hotel room now, feeling sleepy. It’s not quite 6 PM, yet, and a bunch of us are meeting to go to dinner at 6:30. I have a feeling that I won’t last very long tonight and will be getting to bed early again. Waking up early tomorrow will actually be a goal, however, as I still need to work on my talk…and see if I can make it stimulating without getting yelled at. There are not guarantees.

I Am the King of Ribs

I woke up at 4 AM here. That actually turned out to be a good thing. I made myself some coffee, though it was instant coffee premixed with sugar and creamer (blech), sat down, and did some work. It was actually very nice and productive. I then went downstairs for some real coffee and fruit and then headed up to the workshop around 9.

The workshop started at 10 and it was pretty low key—40 minute presentations followed by 20 minutes of discussion with lots of coffee breaks and a lunch (all fried dumplings, sorry Nina). The workshop went until 5:30. We then went back to the hotel to drop off our stuff and then caught a bus downtown to a very nice restaurant.

The food at this place was very good, and it just kept coming. I think we had 10 different courses. For the most part, they were very tasty, though I stayed away from the whole chicken soup (feet and all) and the sea urchin, which looked downright nasty. When I was looking uncertain of one dish, Frank Shu, one of the organizers of the workshop asked if I was a vegetarian. “No no no no!” I told him to many laughs. And when the next dish was brought and I was told that they were ribs, I said, “Now you’re talking.” “Definitely not a vegetarian,” Frank said. “Let the connoisseur have the first taste.” They were very good, though I didn’t have hear to tell Frank that mine are better…I prefer grilled to stewed, but I wasn’t going to complain.

On the way back, the bus had the Yankees-Orioles game playing. I guess every one of Chien-Ming Wang’s are broadcast here since he’s from Taiwan. As I got off the bus, the Orioles climbed within 2 runs of the Yankees in the fourth. I got onto the web in my room to get an update on the score, but was unable to do find it easily. That’s when I realized that it was 9 AM on the east coast of the US and that the game was being shown here on tape delay. Oh well, now I know the Yankees won the game (though are still 8 games behind the Sox). Despite it all, it was nice to see a glimpse of the game…

On the way back to the hotel, I started falling asleep, and I continue to be exhausted. So I’m off to bed…

First Impressions

Huh. That’s it.

I should’ve sensed that the weather was less than ideal after I got out of the airport at 7 AM and was met by stifling heat and very thick, humid, air. My shirt instantly tightened its embrace, and I remembered some of those summers back in New England when I was younger—not every one of them, just the extreme ones, where I would sit in the basement for most days and sleep on the floor with the fan blowing 6 inches away. I also saw haze in the sky, the likes I hadn’t seen since I lived back in Massachusetts.

So it’s hot. After checking in to the hotel here, I showered, sent e-mails to the family letting them know that I had arrived and then started thinking about what I was going to do. I was awake enough that I knew I could make it until evening time without sleeping, which would help me adjust to the time difference. So I decided to head out about 9:30-ish to explore the campus and the city around the university.

I should say that I’m actually in Hsinchu and not Taipei. I don’t think I had fully appreciated that until yesterday, and I haven’t explored more than a mile away from the entrance to the university. So everything I describe is representative of that and not anything more, so don’t let me color your view of the country—as always, you should judge for yourself.

I hadn’t done much research about the place before coming here…I printed a map of the university provided by the workshop, and that map pointed to three landmarks: the guest hose I’d be staying at, the physics building (which actually is not where our workshop is being held), and the general direction of a Starbucks just off campus. Really, what more would you need? So off I went, into the heat, to explore, figuring it was better to do this at 9:30 in the morning than 1 or 2 in the afternoon when the temperatures would be at their highest.

The campus buildings remind me of 1950’s or 1960’s architecture, and it is fairly bland. By that, I mean that you could blindfold, somebody, drop them off on campus, and provided they didn’t look at the signs, convince them that they were on an American university. There are some artificial lakes, abundant with Koi fish, which are relatively serene. There is a good amount of construction going on, which, unfortunately, takes away from the atmosphere of the place. Other than that, though, the campus is pretty small, so I went off campus to explore.

That’s when it hit me…the smell of sewer. I’m not sure where it came from, but it could be strong at times. I tried to breathe through my mouth. And there was trash all over the place. At first I thought it represented a general “Who cares?” feeling of the populace, but then I never saw a single trash barrel on the street, and I started to understand. If there’s no designated place to throw it out, why not just drop it?

Anyway, that I could deal with, though, it was unexpected. The main road in front of the University, Kuang Fu Rd., was lined with shops and restaurants. Unfortunately, being 10 AM on Sunday morning, most were closed, with metal garage doors blocking the entrances and concealing what the stores actually were. A few were open, and I saw bike repair shops, a Sony store, a dry cleaner, and many formal and informal restaurants making their preparations for the day. I walked around a bit and places began to open. I walked without purpose or destination, just trying to soak up my surroundings. The shops ranged from very clean and well kept, to very old and run down. Eventually I thought of getting food and a drink, I started to search for a good place to eat. That was a struggle.

Now, I only speak one language—I never learned a second. However, I have enough familiarity to go to a Spanish or Mexican restaurant and order something I know I will like. I can do the same at a French restaurant, though I’m sure the waiter would be disgusted by my pronunciation. I even managed to order at German and Italian restaurants when I was in Europe. The advantage there, however, is that all those languages used a common alphabet. I didn’t have that advantage here…all the menus were written with Chinese characters. So I searched and searched for a place where I could go without the shame of just asking, “Do you speak English? And can I have some sort of chicken dish?” If they didn’t have English translations of the menu visible from the street, I was looking for a place that at least had pictures so I could point and grunt in the hopes of communicating what I wanted. While Mr. Donut, Japan’s number 1 donut shop, was always an option, I wanted more than just donuts for lunch, though I’m sure if Nina were with me I would’ve had to been more open-minded about that option.

So I settled in at Starbucks--but I only got an iced tea. I was determined to not eat a bagel for lunch, though I knew it was my fallback option. Eventually I found “Mos Burger” the “Happy Hamburger House” also based in Japan. It’s a fast food restaurant, and I caved. Here I was in Taiwan, eating fast food. But I rationalized it knowing that the hosts of the workshop would be taking care of us the rest of this week and would give us authentic Taiwanese food then. But I ordered a Teriyaki Chicken sandwich, to lessen my shame. With French fries and a coke…shut up!

By this point however, it was even hotter and more humid than before. So I made my way back to my hotel room—and in just a matter of a few minutes, it began to rain and thunder. So I read in my room for most of the afternoon. It was actually very pleasant to just curl up with my book and read for pleasure and without any limit on the time I’d spend doing it…something I honestly haven’t done in over two years time if I’m perfectly honest.

Around 6 o’clock, my phone rang, and I was invited to dinner with a group of the workshop participants. The organizers came with us, and we had dinner at a very nice restaurant with authentic Taiwanese food. It was very tasty—we got a variety of dishes, with the baked cod being the most impressive, as the cod was obviously fresh. Everything else—the vegetables, the cashew chicken, the tofu—was also very good, though I was surprised to find it reminiscent of food that I had at restaurants back in the US. Though I was disappointed that we didn’t get French rolls with our food. We had “Taiwan Beer” with dinner, which was a mild lager reminiscent, a bit, of Heineken. It was very enjoyable, though served in 2 oz glasses…I tried to not just down each pour that the host gave me, but it was hard.

I then returned to my hotel room at 8, and passed out. I woke up at 4 this morning and am planning on checking out Starbucks or Mr. Donut around 6 or 7 and then getting ready for the workshop.

Until the next time…

-Fred

Fixed

Ok, Blogger, I was able to decipher you....problems fixed. No longer editing in Chinese.

hmmm...

Ok, Blogger has detected that I'm in taiwan and thus all the buttons on the site are in Chinese...so I have no idea what any of the links or anything are when I try to publish to the blog. That's why there are 2 of the same posts and why the formatting is messed up.

I will try to fix this, but I don't think I'll be learning enough Chinese in the next week to know what's going on. We'll see if I can figure it out...

Arrived in Taiwan!

Hi all—Fred here, checking in from Taipei, Taiwan. What a travel experience thus far. That was by far the most amount of time I’ve spent in an airplane in a 24 hour period—over 4.5 hours from Dulles to LAX and then about 13.5 hours from LAX to Taipei. My itinerary had me leaving Dulles Friday at 5:45, arriving in LAX at 8:05 and then leaving LAX Saturday at ~1 AM and arriving in Taipei at 5:30 AM Sunday. The only glitch was that I was delayed taking off from Dulles by an hour due to weather, but fortunately, there was plenty of room in the schedule for such things.

My hope was to nap a bit on my way to LAX and then stay awake a bit into the long trek to Taipei so that I could be “waking up” close to the morning hour in Taiwan to reduce the jet lag issues. Well, I did nap a bit before landing in LAX, but I just passed out as soon as I got on the airplane in LA—it was, afterall, 4 in the morning back where I had originated. I “slept” for 6-7 hours into the flight, though, it wasn’t exactly restful. The rest of the flight was spent reading, watching some shows on my ipod, and playing video blackjack and poker on the consoles in the plane.

I flew China Airlines from LAX to Taipei. Not a bad experience. And, Nina, no there was nothing spectacular about the food. About an hour into the flight I was woken up and asked if I wanted a seafood rice bowl or some other rice bowl (I didn’t quite understand). I went with the seafood. There were three shrimp, some rice, some peas, and then some other meat that looked a lot like chicken, which worried me, as it was called a “seafood” rice bowl. I did not play “Name that Meet” so your guess is as good as mine. I also got a roll, some steamed veggies, and a cake of some sort. Not bad for airline food, but nothing to get excited about. For breakfast, about 3 hours before landing, I was asked if I wanted “Something I didn’t understand” or “Omelette.” I went with the omelette. It came with a hash brown, the blandest sausage I ever tasted, and then a very good cup of yogurt, some fresh fruit, and a very tiny croissant. Not bad. The folks sitting next to me had the “Something I didn’t understand” which looked like soupy rice with other stuff—a colleague of mine on another flight said that he had “soupy rice with seafood” for breakfast, so maybe that was it. I wouldn’t have minded being more courageous with the food choice, but I would just want to know what I was eating…I think. I won’t hold back this week.

Upon landing, customs was a nightmare, not from the hassle point of view, but rather, it was just such a long wait with “rush hour” being first thing in the morning for airline arrivals. As I said, though, no problems, I retrieved my bag, and then met up with the cab driver that was waiting for me and two others attending this workshop (one of which was on my flight). He drove us to National Tsing Hua University (about 40 minutes) in Taipei.

Taipei is a rather industrial looking city—lots of concrete buildings with some metal framework. Not a lot of cultural signatures, though I’ve had a very limited view thus far. It’s very dense in some areas, and the university seems to be located on the edge of a part of the city, though it’s hard to judge.

We’re staying at a guest house on campus, essentially a hotel run by the university. It’s nice, though it gives one the feeling of staying at one of the displays at an IKEA store: wardrobes and desks arranged in a space saving kind of way, but it works. And a hotpot with tea and coffee.

I have now showered, which was very exciting as I was cooped up in airplanes for something like 19 of the last 24 hours…maybe more come to think of it. Next, I’ll be off to explore the university and its surroundings, though I’m not sure for how long—it is very hot and humid here, and I don’t know how awake I’ll be come this afternoon. We’ll see though.

Check in later for more details. Hope you are all doing well!

-Fred

Blog Intro

This blog will be used to post stories and news about the different trips that Fred, Nina, and Emma go on. In
this way, we can keep each other, and family, up-to-date on our goings-on, even if there is significant
distance (and time zones) between us.