Sunday, July 28, 2013

Taipei's heights (part 2)

After getting off the gondola, we decided to hike up Elephant Mountain, which is right next to Taipei 101. We walked past several street performers, but I didn't think to grab a picture of any of them...however, here's a picture with an Iron Man statue...
 and a shiny rhinoceros outside the Bank of China
We arrived at the mountain's base and proceeded to climb up 1000 feet worth of stairs to get to the top of the mountain. To provide some perspective - if you have ever climbed Bunker Hill...well, that's only 220 feet.
Here's what you find at the peak.

However, the view of my temporary home was fantastic. The tall building is the ever-present Taipei 101

 Here we are looking down into the neighborhood at the base. Folks from this neighborhood make the trek up the mountain everyday to use a community gym at the top. I didn't want to stick my camera in the local's face while they were exercising, so I don't have a picture of it.
 You can tell the difference in home construction as you get closer to the mountain side (and possible mudslides).






 And, one last picture of the city at sunset

 Here I am at the base of the mountain...after a shirt change.



Taipei's Heights (part 1)

On Sunday a group of us decided to head out to the Maokong Gondola. It is part of Taipei's mass transit system and provides a spectacular view of the city. However, it closes inclement weather...which is often. If you're interested, here's a link to it's wiki page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maokong_Gondola

Here Amit and I are taking simultaneous selfies...didn't work so well



 We visited the Taipei Tea promotion center at the top of the mountain and were able to taste several variations of Taiwan's teas.
 There cups make my hands look huge
 We also had  a tour of the gardens behind the center.

We passed several tea plantations on the way back to the gondola. We learned that most quality tea is only made from the top 3 leaves of a tea plant. The rest is left alone.
 We hopped on a glass-bottomed gondola for the trip down. Somehow, we had a shorter wait by taking one of these. The glare off the bottom made it hard to get a good picture.

 We also passed over several rice plantations at lower elevations.

A few folks grabbed a fried squid snack at the bottom


Sunday, July 21, 2013

Taiwan and water

For future travelers to Taiwan

Do not drink the tap water! Yes, they filter the water, but the earth shifts so often that we never know if the pipes have been compromised. Most hotels and schools will have these nifty little machines available.

They dispense filtered hot, cold and warm water. I actually didn't know this and drank out of the tap my first few days at NTHU. Nothing bad happened...but you never know.

Bike ride/beach trip





I am on an island in the middle of the Pacific, but it took me 3 weeks to finally make it to the beach. Another fellow, Mylene, mentioned she was going and I decided to tag along. She was taking the subway to the end of the line to catch a bus. I decided to ride to the end of the line and meet up with her. I ended up riding about 17 miles along a nice river path. I did not have to deal with automobile traffic once because the path actually went under every road. It was nice... until it wasn't. It turns out there is a tributary that bisects the bike path without a bridge over it! I was about 3 miles away from the station when I realized this

 So, I ditched my bike at a station and took the subway the rest of the way. Here is a link to my route:
http://goo.gl/maps/qTU5g 
Here is my bike



It may not be the best angle for this, but note my bike seat is a few inches higher than everyone else's

 So, I made it to the station and met up with Mylene. We then proceeded to ride a bus for an hour to the beach. Here Mylene is on our rented mat
 We only spent a couple hours there before we had to turn around. I wanted to catch a beer fest near my apartment. Here are a couple Harley's passing us while on the bus
 I then retrieved my bike and began the ride home. About a mile away from my apartment, my bike chain gets hopelessly lodged between my wheel and gears and I had to walk home (which is why there aren't more pictures of this really awesome ride)
 I then showered and met up with everyone for the beer festival....and then we came across a woman walking a parrot.
 Here the gals are with my lab mate, Sergio (In case you're wondering, he's not Taiwanese)
 You can drink in public here.





Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Week 1

This is hopefully the last of my marathon posts:

The whole purpose of this trip is to conduct research in a lab here in Taipei. In preparation for this, I had been in contact with my professor here, Professor Snow Tseng. I finally was able to meet him after wrapping up our final orientation activity.
 
He picked me up in a taxi cab. I held my breathe the entire way to National Taiwan University as this taxi driver drove through stop lights and aimed for pedestrians. When we finally arrived at the University, I was whisked off to the lab where we had a meeting until 8.

After getting my bearings, I set off to explore some of the city that weekend. It took a while to find coffee and breakfast but I was treated to a few spectacular views while searching.


 

Then the week started and I headed into the lab. I should probably include a few pictures of that experience, but just imagine any other lab you have ever seen. It's basically the same.

I was asked to pose for a picture almost everyday during my first week on campus. At one point my lab mate, Sergio, and I were actually interviewed by some high school students.



We all took a few pictures together - notice the ubiquitous peace sign?

 I was asked to judge a high school competition. The kids had a few hours to explore the campus, find college students in their major, interview them and then put together an English presentation for a visiting American CEO (me!). Most of these kids have taken years of English and their accents were
minimal. The US is a big deal here in Taiwan and most high schools seem to put a major emphasis on learning our culture.
Here I am with some of the winners

 I then got a chance to talk to Snow and present him with a little gift for having me in the lab this summer

Of course, exploring the city also requires the use of a subway. It's really clean, but that is primarily because they don't allow food, drinks or gum in the cars.

 
Everyone is encouraged to line up while waiting for the subway cars. Of course, the second the doors open, people jump out of line and madly rush to get in.


Apparently sexual harassment is rampant enough on the subways that signs are required.

 

A bunch of Fellows getting together for dinner

 We hit the night market afterwards and came across this lil' ride. Note the generator and the lack of effort in hiding it.

The next day I went for a long ride along one of the rivers. I managed to ride 10 miles without having to worry about crossing a single road! The only reason I turned back is because I was out of water...


 So, it turns out the symbol for temple looks very familiar...All the locals take great pains to point out that the direction is reversed.
 So, our first "real" week ended with a typhoon. For those of you who have forgotten - a typhoon is just like a hurricane, just on this side of the dateline. So, we headed to the grocery store
 stocked up on the essentials

 And had a lil' party
 I wandered around surveying some of the damage Saturday morning.



 ...And then headed to Taipei 101

 Later that night, I met up with some of the Fellows and SIT staffers for a post-typhoon get together. We hit up another night market for dinner

 ...and then went bowling.

 Sunday morning, we hit up a hot spring