Get back

My 2 months have come to an end. I'm heading back home tomorrow night, with a brief stop in Santa Barbara to visit my brother. Other people keep telling me "I can't believe it's been two months already." But to me it's been a long two months...and that's a very good thing. Months passing by like a blur is not what I want. I think time slows down when you travel, or just experience a bunch of new things, and that's what it's been like for me. So mission accomplished. 1/3 lb actual-beef hamburgers and live NBA playoffs in HD, absence has made the heart grow fonder. See you soon.

Stick around on the blog, by the way. I have a few more posts in me, once I get home and settle in. I went to Hong Kong last weekend which was a blast, and there are some more Taiwanese things that I still want to write about.

Tomatohead at work

I'm the one on the left.

Taroko Gorge

My mother and I visited Taroko Gorge (link to pics) last week, in Hualien County, on the east coast of Taiwan. The National Park enclosing the gorge is perhaps the top tourist destination in Taiwan. It features marble cliffs towering hundreds of feet over crystal blue water. It's quite spectacular. One amazing thing is how fast the place is changing. In Taroko, erosion is not just a theory, it's a daily occurrence. We bought a guide book upon entering the park that was published in 2008. We drove past one trailhead listed in the book on the first day because it was buried in a massive rockslide. I think that's one of the best excuses I've ever had for missing a turnoff. They just built a new road over the pile of rocks. One other trail in the book seemed to have disappeared completely. The trails that were still open were quite enjoyable.

I do have to give myself a little pat on the back for using a few of the fragments of Chinese I know on this trip. People in Hualien weren't as likely to speak English as they are in Hsinchu or Taipei. I rented a car using about half Chinese. The driving was a little sketchy in town but not too bad overall. I've ridden in enough cabs to know that anything goes here, so I didn't stress out too much about following any particular driving etiquette.

Mt. Qixing

My mother was visiting last week and I was busy showing her around Taiwan. I now have a backlog of photos to upload. To start with, here are the pictures from Mt. Qixing, in Yangmingshan national park, near Taipei. We hiked up a short but very steep trail with geothermal vents and strange vegetation. The fog rolled in and out, constantly changing the views.

Tea for two hundred

When there is something to celebrate at my company HQ here, they have a "tea party". Forget about whatever connotations that has for you. The celebration could be for someone leaving the group, having a baby, etc. They buy tea for everyone, which is usually some kind of cold flavored tea. It could be bubble tea but it usually isn't. In addition there's some kind of snack food, similar to what you might find in a night market. It's really a small meal, served at 3:30 in the afternoon. It throws off my eating schedule a bit, but I have to at least try a little of whatever it is to be polite. Plus hey, free food. In typical Taiwanese fashion, there's no real etiquette. Show up whenever you think the food will be there, grab some, stick around or not. I always try to thank the guy who bought, but sometimes we don't even know who it is.

This week they held a huge tea party for our entire division, which employs something like 1000 people here in Hsinchu. Now the next level of celebration requires a lot more stuff. You need an emcee with background music, a few people dressed up in commemorative t-shirts, with graphics that matched the posters and giveaways. They had a giant inflatable pink heart for some reason. Everyone got a box with about 6 different desserts in it. It was quite the production. I wish I had some idea what we were celebrating. My colleagues couldn't figure it out. We were sitting in a location with pretty poor acoustics and they couldn't understand the speakers. There was some kind of a caterpillar theme...like the division has gone through the larval stage and become a butterfly, maybe? Come to think of it, there wasn't even any tea.

A taste of my childhood

Remember the original McDonald's apple pie? That deep-fried pocket of pure joy with the perfect crispy, flaky crust? I hadn't had one in 15-20 years until the last time I was in Taiwan and I discovered that they still had them. Yesterday I went back to make sure that it wasn't all just a wonderful dream. It's real, and it's just as delicious as I remembered.

But seriously, US McDonald's, what were you thinking when you replaced this masterpiece with the pedestrian Baked Apple Pie? I feel like it happened long before the low-cal, low-fat hysteria really kicked in. Whatever the reason is, I'm sure if I heard it I would bang my head on a table. Wanna bet there's a lawsuit or focus group involved? Bring back the original!

A milestone of sorts

Having been away for a month, I had to get a haircut this week. I wasn't sure how I was going to manage that over here. It turned out to be a piece of cake because the hotel offers this service. I thought the whole experience was pretty typical of goods and services here in Taiwan. Specifically...

• They're open late. In this case, 9pm.
• They have a way to work around the language issue. She had a picture book of dudes with different haircuts with zoomed in pictures of the sideburns, etc. Just point.
• It comes with a little something extra. In this case, a vigorous head-rubbing with shampoo, and a little Kim-Jong-Il-style poofing up at the end. I didn't really need those but I always appreciate attention to detail.

Unlike most goods and services here, it wasn't particularly cheap, but that's because it happened at the hotel. Plus, considering she came to me instead of the other way around, I would expect to pay a little more.

Chinese is hard

I'm trying to learn some Mandarin and, at the risk of stating the obvious, it's hard. Suppose for example that you learn that the word for beautiful in Chinese is "mei". You might think that you now know some Chinese, but you don't. Chinese is tonal, so that syllable can be pronounced four different ways depending on how you inflect your voice. Also, like English, the same syllable might have a few different meanings. So "mei" also means each, plum, younger sister, flatter and eyebrow, and several more, according to my dictionary. I believe that if you want to say that each plum flatters a younger sister's eyebrow, that would go mei mei mei mei mei, with the right tones. Now if you knew the tone you could say "beautiful" but it would be tough to understand someone else saying it in casual conversation because they don't draw out the tones like on a language CD. You could pick it up from context, but that's going to be difficult since you only know one Chinese word. And of course you won't be able to read or write your word until you learn the character, and the right order to do the strokes. Also, the characters are different in Taiwan than in mainland China. And also, some people might speak a local dialect such as Taiwanese and not understand Mandarin. Who's ready for word #2?

I took a couple of adult education classes last year, so I'm not starting from scratch. I'm starting to pick up a few snippets of conversation that I overhear. So I'll get some scrap of meaning like "this guy doesn't have something" or "there are 22 somethings". On a road sign I'll often be able to pick out "big" and "mountain" out of a string of characters. It's quite useless at this point but I think the mind likes to try to make sense of its surroundings.

The third in a series

I'm trying to start a collection of pictures of myself with person-sized anthropomorphic food. So far I have been pictured with the dhosa and the kiwi fruit. Here I am taking a bite out of a dumpling at famous dumpling restaurant Din Tai Fung in Taipei. Several people told me about this place and it lived up to the hype with delicious steamed dumplings.

I'm not trying to be snobbish and only get my picture taken with exotic foods, by the way. It just so happens that I've run across more opportunities in Asia. If I see a person-sized slice of pizza or hot dog and I have my camera with me, I'm going to add it to the portfolio.

Temples and Night Markets

Taiwan is all about their temples and night markets. I've been to a few of each already. They sometimes go together. The most lively temple I've been to is the Longshan temple in the western part of Taipei. The temple itself, like the others I've been to, is decorated to distraction with brightly colored dragons and curlicues on the roof and lots of gold on the interior. On top of that there are elaborate temporary decorations like paper lanterns and the tiger here and mechanical puppets. On Saturday afternoon the temple was full of visitors praying, singing and lighting incense and paper money. At another temple near Alishan there was a procession of people setting off fireworks, dancing and doing kung fu. If you're a young boy here, I imagine you beg your parents to take you to church.

The night markets are long pedestrian streets (plus the occasional rogue scooter) with both permanent stores and temporary stalls set up on both sides. You can buy pretty much anything--food, toys, clothes, DVDs, etc., plus there are carnival games for kids. It's a little like an American street fair but they're open every night and there's more variety of everything. I haven't scratched the surface of the street food that you can buy at these things, but it seems like a big part of the culture here. Visitor guides to different places in Taiwan always mention right up front what the local snack food specialties are.

Alishan

I visited Alishan national park on Sunday. This area is famous for cherry blossoms in the spring (which we caught the tail end of), giant cypress trees, high-mountain tea, and a narrow gauge railroad. It's a very unique and beautiful place. I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

About Basketball

I haven't done anything of cultural interest since the weekend, so I'm going to write a post about basketball. In particular, about my views on the illegal defense rule. No, actually I've been playing basketball with the guys at work on Wednesday nights. My workplace has facilities for pretty much anything that you ever need or want, including a regulation indoor basketball court. In the evenings it gets plenty of use--I've seen at least 3 games of 3-on-3 going on at once (there are additional hoops along the sidelines.) One thing I do have in common with a bunch of the guys here is that we like to play basketball. So I'm very happy to get some exercise, do some networking and have some fun at the same time. It's the highlight of my work week, no doubt about it.

The style of play is pretty different that what I'm used to, unless I think back to games that I would occasionally play with some Korean graduate students at Berkeley. There's not much screening and practically no contact. Most of these guys are shooters and some of them are pretty deadly. I'm not the best player out there but I've been the biggest by far in all of the games I played, so I'm doing most of my damage within 5 feet of the basket.

I have no idea how many points we play to, or even how many points you get for a basket. That's not as dumb a question as it sounds--in pickup basketball some people play 1 point for any basket, some play that 3-pointers are worth 2, and practically nobody plays using the official rules of basketball. I assume that they're calling out the score from time to time, and I know the numbers from 1 to 15 or whatever we play to, but I can't make anything out. Maybe they're speaking Taiwanese instead of Mandarin? Who knows. I just keep playing until they stop, and then I can figure out who won by whoever scored the last basket.

Appendix for basketball players: It's winners-out, pass the ball in, check everything, just like back home. They pretty much switch all screens and generally pick up whoever is in the vicinity after a change of possession. I can't hear them calling out much of anything on defense. I don't think staying organized on defense is much of a priority.

Whoosh

In some places that I've visited in tropical climates, life seems to slow down to a leisurely pace, perhaps in the interest of not overheating. Taiwan is not one of those places. Taiwan is a young and energetic place. At least Hsinchu and Taipei are. This is a time for thinking big here. They're building tall buildings and fast trains and big semiconductor fabs that crank out massive numbers of tiny devices. Step out onto the street and you're already in the way of the Taiwanese youth on their scooters, getting after it while the getting is good. Don't worry, they won't slow down or stop but they'll do their best to avoid hitting you, as you will only slow them down. Step onto the sidewalk and...nice thought, but there aren't too many sidewalks. There are some used for displaying store merchandise and others used for scooter parking, but they're not much use for walking on. I didn't come here for an island holiday--I came here to make some little improvements in the ways that we make stuff, in the place that makes stuff better than anyone right now. So it's exciting in a way to be a part of it, but it's tiring. I don't know where they find the energy.

I took a trip with a colleague to Taipei on Saturday, to visit Yangmingshan, a national park just outside of Taipei. Thanks to a bit of a late start and general confusion at various points of the journey, I don't think we saw much of what Yangmingshan had to offer. The main value of the trip for me was figuring out how to take the high-speed rail, the MRT, and the bus. Hopefully I'll have a chance to go back and see Yangmingshan again, as it looks amazing on the website. A clear day would be ideal.

The high speed rail is pretty impressive. You can go from Taipei to Kaohsiung (208 mi) in 90 minutes. New York to Boston is 228 miles. One and a half hours. Want to give this a try, Northeast corridor? "Wah, government spending, snivel, snivel, boo hoo, I want my snuggie..." Yeah, that's what I thought. Never mind. Why did I ask Joe Lieberman? Anyway, to go from Hsinchu to Taipei takes exactly 32 minutes. Trains run every 25 or so, they're smooth as silk and they drop you off right in the center of the city. Mine got up to 270 km/h, according to the scrolling display in the car. All of that for about $6 US. Brilliant.

Wish I could say the same for the bus. I guess the bus is the bus. We didn't get seats either way so it was a long strenuous dangle as the bus made its way through town and up into the mountains. After hiking uphill another km or so, we found an observation tower but the views were largely obscured by the fog. Somewhere nearby, something was going on that had to do with flowers that everyone was pretty excited about. I would like to have found it, but it was going to involve some more climbing or another bus, so my colleague and I decided to head back into town.

We went up into Taipei 101. This was the second time for me but the first for my colleague. Both times I've been up there it has been pretty foggy. It's worth it for the elevator ride though, which is the vertical version of the high-speed rail.

I posted some photos at my photo site. Have a look.

Reverse ice cream truck

I have an interesting view out of my 11th floor hotel room. It would be really cool if I had a balcony but it's just a window that doesn't open. This morning and this evening I noticed a melody playing. It reminds me of the slow parts of the Blue Danube waltz. I just figured out where it was coming from. A garbage truck drives down the street, stopping every so often, playing this song. When it stopped across from my hotel, I saw about 20 people throw a garbage bag into the back of the truck. I didn't see any garbagemen get out of the truck. I guess when you hear that song, you grab your garbage bag and head out to the curb. I don't know if it's just for the shops on the street or the apartments above. It seems a little stressful to have to listen for that song and then quickly descend 5 or 10 stories to throw out your trash.

Day 1 in Hsinchu

I don't have much to report but I should post something to record the fact that I'm on the ground in Taiwan. There are a few things I'm going to have to get used to.

It's pretty hot and sticky outside for my taste and this is early spring here, so it's only likely to get hotter and stickier. More importantly, it's a little warmer in the office than I'd like it. At least I have control over the temperature in my hotel room.

Compared to what I'm used to, the food in the cafeteria, which is going to be my benchmark for average Taiwanese food, isn't as sweet or salty or hot or cold. Meaning sweet dishes aren't as sweet, and so forth.

In the office there's a very well-defined lunch hour. After you eat lunch you go back to your desk and either sleep or check personal email or something until the hour is up. There's not much need for me to check personal email throughout the day. Pretty much everyone that sends me email is asleep during my day. Even twitter was silent from noon until 7pm.

Donde esta el pato?

I'm now pleased to welcome a special guest blogger, my brother James, to tell the story of when we tried to watch Pato in Argentina. I can't really add much to this. Enjoy.

- Patrick

How to Almost See a Game of Pato

I highly recommend making an effort to see some pato while you're in Argentina. It's a unique experience and not completely un-fun. So do some research and plan a day around it. And visualize success. For the month or so before your trip, just think about how fantastic it will be, and play out the events in your head. That will give full effect to the let-down of not seeing any pato, and you won't want to miss out on that.

The sport of pato (horse-ball) is not the national pastime of Argentina despite what certain websites dedicated to the sport would have you believe. At least not near Buenos Aires. I say this because only a few people we asked had even a vague idea of what we were talking about, let alone where we could find a game, and that's assuming they knew we were referring to a sport and not a small animal (pato means "duck" in Spanish). Although we're pretty sure we came very close to the pato grounds, and an online schedule indicated that a tournament was going on the day we were there, we never actually saw a game, and thus sadly never experienced the thrill of live pato action. Here are some excerpts to give you an idea of what we missed:

The curious sport of pato can perhaps be described as a cross between polo and basketball. Originally a duck was used instead of a ball, and the sport basically consisted of two teams of men on horseback doing whatever they could to get the poor animal back to their "goal." Without much in the way of rules, the whole affair often descended into violence. Banned repeatedly by the authorities, it finally won respectability in the 1930s when some rules were thrashed out, and modern pato emerged.

…the ancient game’s practices consisted of throwing a duck upwards and two teams of horse riders got trampled under foot while fighting to grab the duck and place it in a net.

So you can see why we wanted so badly to see a game, and why we were so disappointed when we didn’t. In any case, it was a fun experience, so for future interested travelers, here's how to almost see a game of pato (we think).

There supposedly are pato grounds at or near a military complex called Campo de Mayo, which is located about 30km west and a bit north of downtown Buenos Aires. To get there, some guidebooks recommend taking a taxi, but we were able to get there in about an hour by taking one of the subway lines to the end and then Urquiza line almost to the end, to the "Campo de Mayo" station. If you choose this route, when leaving the station, continue in the direction of the train for half a block or so and then turn right and walk a short distance to the entrance of a sporting complex. If there are some guys hanging out by the entrance, talk to them in awkward conversational Spanish. Try to use the words "estadio", "pato", and "juego" in some semi-coherent way. If you are lucky, one of them will hear you correctly enough to know that you are in the wrong place and give you some long-winded directions for how to get where they think you want to be. Go there. It's about one station back in the direction you came on the Urquiza line.

Here you will find a bridge over the train tracks. Look for a large sign saying "Estadio de pato" that is bent and has come loose from it moorings. This will give you no indication of which direction to go. But you might as well take a picture of it, because that may be the closest you'll come to evidence that you tried to see a pato match in Argentina. Across the bridge, you will find the entrance to some type of military complex. Meander slowly towards it with a bit of a confused but hopeful expression on your face. The guard may stare you down. Put together another question-like phrase using the keywords mentioned earlier. He probably will have no clue what you are talking about and may think that you lost your duck. He will probably point you to the head guard booth just to the right, mostly to wipe his hands clean of the situation as soon as possible. Approach this booth, and knock gently but purposefully on the door. When the head guard opens the door, you know what to do. You should be getting good at this by now. This will likely be the most knowledgeable person on the sport of pato that you will talk to on the trip. He will vaguely know that a sport with that name does exist, and that it is played nearby. Focus on the ensuing response with absolutely 100% concentration. The stakes are high. If you are to have any chance of ever seeing a game a pato, you will need to understand at least the gist of what this guy is saying. So focus on all that Spanish floating around your head, whether it's from high-school classes, or a week and a half of listening to language lessons in your car and watching Los Simpsons episodes before the trip. In our case, we are pretty sure he said something resembling, "Si, [pato] esta aqui, pero no hoy." In other words, nice try fellas, but you ain't seein' no pato today...consider this an end to your journey. Come back and try again in 10 years.

If this happens to you, you will probably feel a mix of emotions relating to the anti-climacticness of the moment. You will want to at least get a glimpse of the field. A picture of that that weird little round thing that the duck goes through represents the ceiling of joy and fulfillment that you can hope for at this point, especially if you missed taking a picture of the broken sign. So go ahead and take a walk through the complex. It will make you feel 5% better. It will. If you go all the way to the back of the complex, you may find a guard with a gun standing near the entrance to an area that you can just barely see through line of trees. Approach him confidently. If you are like me at this point in the trip, you would take a bullet for a small chance at seeing an empty pato field. Rattle off one of your trusty lost-duck questions just for fun. Even though he is a guard in the only facility to feature pato games in the greater Buenos Aires area, he is very unlikely to have ever heard of the sport. As you start to head back, take a look back through the trees at the area he is guarding. It’s just a run-of-the-mill, overgrown and irregular-shaped field. Who knows what goes on there, but definitely not pato. That's ok though. Start up a game in your head. Imagine a team of highly-skilled horseman at full gallop, weaving through defenders and deftly passing the elusive duck, while guys are getting trampled under foot left and right. Put yourself in the action...he shoots, he scores!!! Savor the moment, because this is it. You're going home now and you've accomplished basically nothing today. On the way home, it is normal to feel deflated and extremely disappointed. When you get home, I recommend writing a long-winded, and hopefully semi-amusing story about the experience, just so you can feel like something positive, however small, came out of the whole thing.

About Taiwan

If you're not familiar with my new home away from home this spring, allow me to introduce Taiwan. I mean Republic of China..er..Chinese Taipei? It's a bit confusing. When the communists took over mainland China in the 1940's, the democratic government fled to the island of Taiwan along with some folks who weren't too keen on the whole socialism thing. As I understand it, both the PRC (communist mainland China) and the ROC (democratic Taiwan) consider themselves to be the real Chinese government. The US government recognizes the PRC now and not the ROC. Luckily all three countries have a great relationship now thanks to our collective respect for humanity. Wait, check that, I meant to say "boatloads of cash". Taiwan has a booming high tech manufacturing economy. The odds are that your electronic devices were built in China, but the guts of them were made in Taiwan.

I work for a company that designs the guts of electronic devices, integrated circuits. The company headquarters are in Taiwan. I'm going to spend a couple months over there working with colleagues that I usually only get to see on a videoconference.

Other things you should know: The official language is Mandarin Chinese. The guys tell me that the most popular sport is baseball. Former Yankee ace (Current Washington National...yeesh) Chien-Ming Wang is from Taiwan. Taipei 101 was the tallest building in the world until they finished the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

More to come when I get there.

Overdue thoughts about Argentina

My brother and I spent a fun and memorable week in Argentina last fall. I promised myself that I was going to post some of the things that we learned. I had better do it now before my next trip. We didn't speak much Spanish or know anybody there, so we had to rely on what we learned from the web and guidebooks to get around. Here are some things I can think of that surprised us. This is from the American perspective--I'm sure Europeans would be surprised by different things.

Taxis: I was prepared for the possibility that we might get ripped off by cab drivers. Sure enough, it happened in the first cab we caught from the airport. It looked exactly like a licensed "Radio Taxi" but the driver must have rigged the meter because it ran up a bill that was 4-5x too high. In retrospect the dispatcher and driver seemed way too anxious to get us into the cab, so we probably should have waited for a less enthusiastic driver. Better yet, you might try doing what we did when we arrived into Buenos Aires for the second time, at the domestic airport. We found a taxi service that had a booth at the airport. We prepaid a very reasonable fare for the ride, waited a couple of minutes and a driver whisked us away to our hotel. The price was so low that we were expecting it to be a shared-ride service, and maybe it is sometimes. We didn't have trouble with any of the other taxis we took from hotels or hailed on the street. Don't expect the drivers to hablar any Ingles, of course.

Restaurants: If you like steak, pizza, empanadas, and not spending much money, you'll love eating in Buenos Aires. If you want to blend in with the locals, you'll sit down for dinner around 9 or 10 and make it last for 2-3 hours. We did our best to adapt to this schedule, but there were times when we were starving at 6pm and weren't going to make it until dinner time without splitting a pizza, and no one really gave us any weird looks for doing this. The service is a lot more hands-off than in the US. They're not going come around with "how did everything come out for ya"s and "are you still workin' on that"s. Thank goodness, I say. But when you want the check you have to flag someone down. Paying was a little different everywhere we went, especially if you wanted to pay with a credit card. Sometimes they would bring the machine out to the table. Tipping 10% seems to be pretty standard, and sometimes the waiters would ask if we wanted to add 10% to the bill. Other times they would assure us that the tip had not been added. I guess don't worry about forgetting to tip because they'll probably remind you. I particularly liked El Sanjuanino in Recoleta for empanadas and El Mirasol, also in Recoleta, for steak.

Soccer - Going to a soccer game was an unforgettable experience. Apparently there are services that will escort tourists to a soccer game and hold their hands so they don't get scared. My advice--just go to the game. We went to a Racing Club game. There weren't any Boca Juniors or River Plate games that fit our schedule. (Also: Racing Club rules!) My biggest worry was getting caught in between some rabid supporters wearing the wrong colors and becoming the victim of some ruffian antics, or even hooliganism. I think it's pretty hard for this to happen. It looked to us like the visiting supporters were escorted into and out of their own section of the stadium by vans full of riot police and that there was no way they could encounter any of the home fans. Moreover, as far as we could tell, everyone was there to have a good time and there wasn't a hint of violence. Perhaps it would have been a different story if River and Boca were dueling for the league title rather than Racing and Tigre trying to stay out of the cellar? Somehow I doubt it. Anyway, we bought the most expensive seats we could get, which were about US$20, I think. For those who don't follow soccer much, like me, the best seats at a soccer game are along the sideline and up high, in the upper deck if there is one. There were different ticket booths for the different sections with diagrams showing where the seats were. So it was pretty easy to figure it out. After the game everyone filed out to the gates, which stayed closed for 10 min or so before they let us out. My guess is this is to give the police time to get the visiting fans into buses and out of the neighborhood. So leave your worries behind and go spend 90 minutes with some singing, jumping, banner-waving soccer fans having the time of their lives.

Random: Just about everyone in Buenos Aires is caucasian like me, but just about everyone in Buenos Aires had me pegged as an American from about a mile away. If you're ethnically Italian or Spanish and you have some stylish jeans-and-sport-coat ensembles, you might blend in, but otherwise, you might as well be wearing a star-spangled fanny pack. I don't think it matters that much because the attitude in Buenos Aires is very laissez-faire.

I guess I'll start a travel blog.

I'm going to be in Taiwan for two months starting March 15. If anything interesting happens to me, I'll write about it here.