When I finally got out of the security area, I looked for someone carrying a sign with my name on it. I found it. It said, "Welcome Carolyn Lee to Taiwan." People still aren't used to my new name. I was surprised to find there was a whole welcome committee waiting for me; the salesman and two women around my age. Chew had flown from Hong Kong to Taiwan with me, though I was in business class and he was in coach class.
They offered to take us to a restaurant. When I got into the car, I was surprised to hear American English on the radio. It was an international radio station with an emphasis on American. It was a trying change for me to come from Singapore and Hong Kong were most people are fluent in British English, to come to Taiwan where people learn American English, but they don't get much chance to practice it and have heavy accents.
At the restaurant we had Taiwanese food, some of which was spicier than I like. They asked me if I could use chopsticks and I said that I could. Then I reached for some peanuts that had been set out. They still had some of the thin husk on them, and I couldn't keep a hold of them long enough with my chopsticks to get them to my mouth. Oh well. I didn't have much trouble with the rest of the meal, except I never have learned how to pull off a nice sized piece from a whole fish without getting a mouthful of bones with it.
After dinner, they took us to a KTV parlor. That's Karaoke TV, where each party gets their own private room where they can sit back, order food and drink and sing songs to the Karaoke videos they choose. There are Karaoke bars in Indy too, but I hear you sing in front of the whole bar there. In the Taiwan KTV there were mostly Mandarin videos, but there were also some Taiwanese, Cantonese, Japanese and English language videos too. I stuck to songs I knew by heart, or nearly so. This was a good thing because sometimes they didn't put up the words on the screen in time. I tried to work in as many faster tempo non-love songs as I could, but there just weren't enough of them, and sure enough, towards the end when I ran out, one person commented that I liked slow songs, and another said I was a romantic. I finally hit a song that was out of my range. I tried to sing it low, but that didn't work. So I sang it an octave higher and had to work hard to keep my voice from cracking. One of the women said I had a voice like an opera singer. I never thought my voice sounded like that. Everyone in the group complimented each other on how good their voices are.
I was getting tired, so we finally headed to the hotel and got to check in. Chew had carried in one of my suitcases for me and a bell hop took it from him as we entered. Chew finished checking in first, and when I finished and turned around to collect my suitcase, attached to a bell hop, it was gone. I had an awful time trying to communicate to the bell captain the situation. I suspected that a bell hop had taken my suitcase to Chew's room. Eventually I saw my suitcase being wheeled back by a bell hop, so I went off with him to my room. The bell hop scratched off Chew's room number from a tag on the suitcase, and wrote down mine. I've had a suitcase go off to someone else's room in Mexico too. Hold tight to your bags and watch out for over eager bell hops.
The main purpose of my entire trip was the next three days as a keypad supplier, accompanying Kumar, who was going to teach them how to mill his "proprietary formula" of "EDX" rubber gum. I wanted to see this all first hand. Kumar was to arrive from the US on a later flight than me. Apparently he also had troubles with one segment being delayed, so he took an alternate flight. Unfortunately he had left his business cards in his checked luggage and was unable to call ahead and tell the person who was to pick him up, that he'd be late. So Eddie, who was to pick him up, waited for 4 hours, until 2am for the flight to come in, only to find that Kumar was not on it.
The next three days we worked at the keypad supplier's factory, me mostly taking notes, and representing the interests of the Telephone Answering Systems department. Kumar is a chemist in the Technology Advancement Center.
The Taiwanese take their hosting duties very seriously and every night they made sure there was some people to take us to dinner. Usually it was a different group of people each night. It was awfully tiring to work all day and still have to be with people and converse with them every night, even without the added straing of trying to understand their accent. Every now and then, I'd think, "I wanna go home." Even being able to go to my hotel room and relax by myself was a relief. At least they are not as pushy as the Hong Kong people about "Eat, eat!" Imagine how much weight one would gain after a week of that.
Tony, the salesman had two jokes to tell us at dinner on Monday. He said he had a friend who likes music, and he asked this friend if he played a musical instrument. The friend said that he did, and when asked what instrument, said, "The radio and the TV." Tony said that Eddie had told him someone named Kumar was coming to visit their company. Tony had asked, "'Kumar', He is Japanese?" He was told no, Kumar is an American. But Tony thought Kumar was Japanese because "Kumar" means "bear" in Japanese. Tony had attended university in Japan.
Taipei is rather polluted. There are lots of cars and the congestion reminds me of NYC. However, in Taipei, unlike NYC, they drift from lane to lane quite a bit, sometimes staying straddled on a line for some distance. In Taipei, there are lots of car traffic, in Hong Kong, it was pedestrian traffic that seemed to stay heavy at all hours. Those hot steaming towels at the beginning of the meals were really nice to help freshen up.
We went to a French restaurant on Tuesday with AT&T International Purchasing hosting. I ordered filet mignon and was about to order it my usual "medium" when I remembered that "medium" in the US is more well cooked than in other places, so I added "well" and got it "medium well" which turned out to be what I normally think of as "medium rare."
In the course of various conversations, I've heard that Singapore Air is the best Airline in the world, which seems accurate to me in terms of service. Quantas is the only airline that has not had an accident, and Cathay Pacific planes spend 95% of their time in the air, but they also have good maintenance.
On Thursday I met some of our QA people in Taiwan, and then visited a telephone jack supplier. Their factory was semi-automated, which was different from the almost fully-automated jack manufacturing that I'd seen at an AT&T factory in the US. But semi-automated seems more suited to the Taiwan economy at this time. It may be changing though, as I hear they are having a shortage of workers.
At lunch they took me to a Japanese restaurant and had, among other things, sushi and sashimi. I was kinda surprised I didn't get sick. We're often warned about the water in other countries. Then again, one does not wash sushi or sashimi after cutting the fish. I liked how the soup came in a small teapot shaped container with a cover like a small teacup in which to pour the soup. That way the soup was always hot.
In the afternoon they took me sight seeing. We went to the National Palace Museum where Chiang Kei-Shek used to live. There they have some of the national treasures they had brought from Peking with them. Outside there was a garden which had some black swans in it, among other things. I'd never really known the black swans existed. I took the English language tour in the musuem and heard about oracle bones, how they would carve mushroom shapes on the back of the bone (tortoise shell or bovine shoulder) and put hot stick on the mushroom heads to create cracks on the other side of the bone to read. There was ivory carved so finely, it looked like lace and fruit pits carved into tiny boats complete with detailed occupants and working doors. There were gourds grown into shapes to be snuff bottles more precious than jade. And there were lots of other things that I've seen in museums in the US. Then two of us went to the Chiang Kei-Shek Memorial Hall where my host took photos of me with the buildings and gardens. The rain increased to more than the usual drizzle and my feet got miserably soaked. After a trip to my hotel room to change clothes we went to a restaurant for more Taiwanese food and then to a bar where my host used to work. There was a woman playing guitar and singing songs in English. The name of the bar was Waltzing Matilda, which was one of the songs that was sung while I was there. The place made me think of Mothers with the music and wood panelling. Me there drinking a soda. It was pleasant, though I was a little uneasy at times, feeling like my presence was forcing someone to host me, and me not too good with conversation.
The next day I went to another manufacturer that makes answering machines for us, including the 3 I have M.E. design responsibility for. Unfortunately none of them were in production that week. But I got a tour of the place anyway and got to talk about some issues about one of my products. The factory was in Keelung. Someone claimed that Keelung is called 'Rain Port' because it rains 360 days out of 365. I don't know if it's an exaggeration. Someone likened it to Chicago being called the Windy City. My friend from Chicago once told me that Chicago isn't named The Windy City after the winds there, which are only a little above average, but that it's called that for the hot air that comes out of its politicians.
They drove me back to my hotel at rush hour. It took an hour and a half, compared to the 40 minutes or so it had taken to get to the factory in the morning. The driver agreed with me when I asked if it would have taken an hour less if I had stayed at the hotel that AT&T International Purchasing had recommended instead of the Sheraton that Kumar wanted to stay at. We rode through traffic past the McDonalds, 7 Elevens, Sizzler, KFC, Burger King, Pizza Hut, and other such places. Maybe someone slipped, but for once, no one offered to host me for dinner. So I had dinner by myself in the Pizza Pub in the Sheraton. The waitresses kept talking to me in Mandarin, some forgetting even after I asked them to speak to me in English. Their gesturing wasn't enough for me to figure out what they were saying to me most of the time. I saw a customer who appeared to be a japanese woman with her face powdered white, with pink around the eyes. I couldn't help thinking she looked like a weeping ghost and wondered what the Japanese used to find attractive about it.
No longer being accompanied by hosts who handled the details, I kept noticing people trying to talk to me in Mandarin at the airport and on the plane. The ticket agent didn't even notice me putting my US passport on the counter, and it's obvious when the flight attendant speaks English to the people in the row in front of you and switches to Chinese for you. Most of the flight attendants spoke two languages, one being English, covering the most likely languages to be needed on board. At least the other attendants spoke to me in English. The Chinese didn't really cause a problem since it was pretty easy to figure out what they meant anyway.
On Saturday I considered changing my Taiwanese money into US currency, but there were these unfriendly looking forms to fill out, much like the long forms I filled out to get into the country. So I decided to wait until I got back to the US where I didn't have to fill out any forms identifying myself, though with the cost of a horrible exchange rate.
The Northwest flight magazine said that when European explorers came upon the Hawaiian islands in the late 18th century, they recorded their excitement on sea charts with the word, "Woahoo!", later given to the most populous of the islands, Oahu.
I found the hard rolls challenging to the teeth and wondered if the politically correct term for denture wearers is "Dentally challenged."
The return flight to the US stopped in Seoul, Korea. Offshore of the islands approaching Korea, I saw lots of neat rows of dark stick shapes in the shallows, often near where the water got deeper, changing from brown to blue. Maybe they are reefs, or nets or underwater gardens. The islands don't look populated enough for them to be boats, and not that far out from shore. I think reefs is the most likely. The cities looked dusty grey and the land, a reddish clay color. I'm only assuming it's Korea.
During the landing in Korea, I noticed the roads were built at least six feet above the rice patties, and the airport pavement had drainage slots in it. The airport looked different in that it had the roofs with the oriental up-turned corners instead of the usual western plain blockish buildings. We all had to get out of the airplane and take our luggage with us and go through a metal detector to get into a waiting area for transit passengers. Waiting for the plane to reboard, I noticed a very round person next to me who I thought mightily resembled Humpty Dumpty. There was a Seoul summer olympic tiger mascot on display with words under it saying something about the Seoul of the world.
Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan were all in one time zone, 13 hours ahead of EST. Korea and Japan are 14 hours ahead of EST.
Back on the flight, I got my fourth complimentary amenities kit. One for each leg of an overseas trip on Northwest. The On Board video showed the Econocycle, a 2 wheeled vehicle much like a motorcycle with a protective canopy. It has 1/5th the drag of a motorcycle and a top speed of 250 km/hr. The designer said that one person had crashed at top speed and he came out unhurt. The cycle costs about the same as a midsized BMW and comes complete with CD player. Production can not keep up with demand. The motor vehicle authorities don't know how to deal with it, what to classify it as.
At 11:30pm HK time, 10:30am EST, and dawn, local time, the sun rose. I looked out the window and it looked like another planet. I guess I wasn't awake enough to bother describing it in my travel journal.
I got back all the way to the US on time and then found my last little hop to Indy was indefinitely delayed due to mechanical problems. Well, the flight was delayed, but there was another flight an hour later which only got delayed another half an hour, so we all got rebooked on that, and I had to call Scanner at the Indianapolis airport to tell him about the change.
In Detroit, I saw a luggage truck labled, "MIA bags" My first thought was that it stands for "Missing in Action", but maybe there's an airport with MIA as it's abbreviation.
Drizzle all week in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and I got back to Detroit and Indy to find it drizzling there too.
It was awfully nice though, to come home from a two week trip overseas to be met by Scanner.