Good times in the office

So today was pretty slow, then again any day after we get out an order tends to be a little slow for most people. However, for me I was trying to redo our sales presentation, translate operating directions for a machine, organize a maintenance meeting, and deal with September's orders. All that meant it was nice to get a little comic relief.

While in Bangkok our customers forced some moon cakes upon us. Normally, this is good but this time they were 榴蓮/liu lian/durian moon cakes. These things smelled bad, as is the case with the durian, so when my coworker brought them in to the office it was like the Christmas fruitcake that gets passed around. You really had to have been here to see it when they were eventually opened but it had me in stitches as everyone tried to get everyone else to eat it. I couldn't bring myself to touch them. Even when we got rid of them the office still smelled for an hour or so.

In other news, I now have a few language partners. I have the old couple and their friend who I meet with once a week, two cool people (a guy and his ladyfriend) who are a little older than me, and some rando I ran into at dinner who is like 35.

I screwed up

Today was a first for me, not a first screw up but how I screwed up. I was late to work. I have NEVER been late to work, ever. To top it off, I was late since I tried to get up at 5:15am to go for a run but when I got up I just hit the alarm and went back to sleep until a I got a text from my boss. Damn.

Snow Day!

That's what it feels like at least. Tomorrow is a typhoon holiday since the typhoon is headed this way. The plus side is no work and I have a bit of food and water here to last me for a few days if anything goes down. The downside is that the winds are forecasted to be nearly 100 miles per hour and I'm on the top floor of the building.
Well I made it through the night. I was scared a few times since being on the top floor of the building I heard everything loud and clear. That meant all of the dripping noises constantly had me worried that there were leaks. There were a few tiny ones around my air conditioner but other than that it was fine. I'm still waiting for the typhoon to pass though. The picture is some of the rain about 10AM on the top of my building.

Birthdays and Protestants

So this is my first ever birthday as an expat. I'm slightly bummed since my streak is ending. For 22 years every birthday has been totally without rain. That looks like it's going to change since there is a typhoon headed this way and this one looks like it is going to hit near me. Oh well, that means an excuse to go buy some booze, I mean if the power is out why not have booze to make everything feel ok?

I personally think this is since I went to church today. I mean it's pretty much guaranteed that if i go to church I would get smitted (is that even a word for smite?). What's more is that it was a Protestant service. The service was all in Chinese, they basically had a rock band with electric guitars and drums. The people also got really into it and the minister was crying at the end. It was all good (ok, damn Protestants...there's my dig on them as a Catholic) except for the fact that there was almost no AC. That meant it was just warm enough to be uncomfortable and give you serious swamp ass during the two hour service.

So that stuff wasn't too good. On the plus side I have met a few cool people so far and I have a new language exchange partner. My job is also going well. The best news is that a guy down the hall from me is moving out so I may be able to move into his place, which is bigger and much nicer. Update: I'm staying where I am since the apartment down the hall was already snatched up, oh well, 11 more months to go on my contract for "the coffin."

Cathay Pacific

My trip to Thailand was my first time ever flying on Cathay Pacific. It was great. Each flight has at least one full (free) meal. They give you a newspaper for free. There is a ton of television options so I watched Flight of the Conchords, Scrubs, and Ali G on the flights. To top it off, the flight attendants were all really nice and actually very pretty. Kind of funny that the Asian airlines (Singapore Airlines, Cathay, and Thai Air) are all making money while their American counterparts are courting bankruptcy. Wait, that's not funny at all.

THE Definitive Thailand Post

Ok, sit down, grab a cold drink, and put on your reading glasses since this is long. I tried to do this in Bangkok but I was timed out of my Internet connection. So here it goes in random order...
The best part was definitely the food. Some of it was like napalm in my mouth, and I loved it. Nothing like burning fish sauce to welcome you to the country. I shocked the business partners by eating these and chilies, which is something that some of the business partners could not do. By simply eating hot stuff I gained myself a ton of street cred.

The sex industry there is huge. There are whole streets devoted to it. Some of it is thought of as the creepy Western dude coming there but maybe even more is Japanese dudes. The area across from my hotel was totally devoted to "massage" places. Any place with dark windows and Japanese on the outside was a cover, not that one really needs a cover there. On top of that in any area where people are at night there are dudes offering you trips to see "pretty woman." But speaking of massages, the legit ones are amazing, $10 for an hour is unreal. Even if they get uncomfortably close to the kibbles and bits but on the upside you get to wear traditional Thai clothes and get free tea.

One sad thing I saw near a nightlife area was the two mixed white-Thai children. Their mother was obviously a prostitute as they were in tattered clothes and were very dirty. It was sad to think that their mother had to work as a hooker to support them and that the father(s) of her kids may not have even known they had a kid in Thailand.

Elephants, I saw two within 30min of arriving. They walk the roads with handlers, who often hit them with hammer type objects, apparently as motivation. They troll the nightlife areas and take money to let people feed them tiny bits of food. Of course, this is not nearly enough for them to survive so I have no idea where they get the rest of their food from.

The crazy thing is that there are so many foreigners there. I mean seriously you cannot get on a subway without seeing at least 2 other foreigners. Many foreigners do go to Thailand for the ladies, who I found are indeed quite pretty. The thing many foreigners don't realize is that they are most likely to enter relationships with gold-diggers or the desperate ones (as once a Thai woman has divorced no Thai man will marry her, leaving only the foreigners).

Thai's also love the king and its a crime to insult him. They wear yellow every Monday since the king was born on a Monday and they wear pink every Tuesday since the king wore pink when he was recently hospitalized. For that matter, each day has it's own unique color, it's just that those two are special.

The craziest to me was the amount of Middle Eastern/Arab people there. I went to the Nana district, the Arab district, and had a hookah at a Pakistani restaurant (just down from the Jamaican bar, go figure). I was at a table with some white dude who was with a Thai hooker but I said nothing to either of them. I had a whole hookah to myself for an hour and a half and I was pretty woozy when I left. I had a conversation with my waiter it went like this: "Where are you from?" "Pakistan" "Where about in Pakistan" --some place I never heard of-- "Where is that, I've never heard of it" "You know Islamabad, very close" "Ok, I see" "Very close to Taliban" "Oh, now I know." The picture below is from my seat in the restaurant.

There are three sexes in Thailand, the third being katoey or transsexual. They are normal and accepted parts of society. Some look pretty convincing except being tall and muscular and having man hands, others are basically dudes with long hair and makeup. They were much easier to pick out of crowds than I thought.

I was also pretty pissed that night I went to Nana. I may not be the most religious person. But I saw these two guys, or one in particular, they were these street preachers. One was just belting out about how we are sinners and need to accept Jesus, I mean this dude was just yelling this out at the top of his lungs and people were stopping to see what the hell it was. I was seriously embarrassed. He was in a Buddhist country in the Arab section of town, if I was Arab or Buddhist I would never convert after seeing him.

I felt bad not knowing the language. I kept feeling like I should speak Chinese to people. Then I was super happy when I found some Chinese dudes in an elevator to talk with and shocked them when they found that I could understand them. Even though I could not speak the language all it took was a smile and nod or the traditional wai (http://wikitravel.org/en/Image:RonaldMcDonald_Wai.JPG) and people were cool, for the most part everyone was nice.

My last day I lost about $15 bucks. I know I'm a sucker, but I have an excuse. I met this cool older dude who spoke English and claimed to be a teacher. He was nice and took me to China town, then paid for a cab and gave me a guided tour of the largest sitting Buddha in the world, then paid for lunch and beers and took me on a river tour of the old Bangkok along the canals. On the way back he claimed the boat ride was expensive and he needed money, I, stupidly, handed some over. Well, I got a sweet half day out of the trip but I'll never see that money like he promised, the bastard. Oh well.

After I met him I visited the Wat Pho, very touristy but still cool, and took the pictures below of the reclining Buddha and an up-close of a stupa.
I was able to get a single entry Chinese visa while there. I wanted to get a multiple entry visa or if that failed a double entry but both those were ruled out. The government put in a new pre-Olympics regulation saying they were no longer issuing these. This shows how jittery they are getting and not wanted to let human rights activists in, or post-grad businessmen like myself. Either way I'll be in Xiamen within a week. Then maybe back to Bangkok and onward to Laos and Cambodia in the next two months.

Overall impressions of Bangkok, Thailand. Modern but traditional. Crawling with foreigners from all walks of life and all corners of the world. I could see myself living there. The people were pretty cool. The food was awesome. The sex industry is enormous there.

I will say as hot as Taiwan is it's nice to be back. Then again there's another typhoon on the way. I'm a little sad I haven't been able to watch much of Obama this week. Maybe that's why I'm up until 2am watching his speech.

There's this movie you gotta see..

Yeah, Batman rocked that much. You pretty much have to see it.

Oh yeah, I'm back in Taipei. I got in this afternoon then saw the movie. I felt like a hero as I ran out of the theater since I had 5 min to race to the subway to catch the last train (I made it). I also saw a girl wearing the shortest skirt I've ever seen. Then again, when your ass is basically hanging out it doesn't count as a skirt more than a strip of cloth. All and all a good night.

Running Thailand Post

So my trip didn't start off too well. I sweated out one undershirt trying to catch the bus, I got off at the wrong terminal, and I lost my umbrella. But its all better now, I'm sitting at my gate in the Taipei airport (on the way to Hong Kong then to Bangkok). My gate is ALL Hello Kitty. I mean everything. There are pink seats, white and pink floors and pillars, and the most obnoxious Japanese pop music playing. If the start is any indication this is going to be crazy!

So there was too much stuff to put in here and the web wasn't too good where I was (I tried to update then it gave out. Look a few posts above for my final thoughts on the trip).

One Night in Bangkok

Ok, so its more like four nights that I'll be in Bangkok, but whose counting? Well the guy in this video http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=mnqj31VPNoE for one. Anyway, I thought I would write what I expect Bangkok to be like then when I'm there I'll update about what it's actually like. Here it goes...I expect Bangkok to be hot and humid with the occasional rain shower (I checked weather.com). I expect there to be a lot of traffic and crowds in an insane city. I expect the city to be very cheap but have plenty of Western amenities. I expect the people to be pretty cool (it is called the "Land of Smiles" after all). Finally, I expect to see creepy old white sexpats with young Thai women. I'll find out for sure in 2 days.

Now that's off my chest let me tell you about the last few days. This week we have had a German engineer (ok so he's really a naturalized Singaporean) here to work on a machine we have. Simple enough except the German office screwed him by not giving him the proper software and made him stay for several days. One thing, this dude is a machine, he works crazy long hours, and since he speaks English and I'm in the international department I have to stay as long as he's here. Thankfully I got off early last night and I am also thankful he didn't want me to take him to dinner and drinks as my boss requested since that would have eaten up the entire past few days.

I felt like a beer last night when I got off so I tried to go to a real, non-karaoke, bar near me. The thing is there was only one other dude, I couldn't understand the bartender, and I only had NT 100. I thought that would be good for a beer since I have had a huge bottle here for NT 70. Apparently not, this bar's cheapest drink was NT 130 and the bar wasn't even that nice! It's pretty embarrassing to have to walk out of a bar like that.

Also last night the Germans sent another engineer here. And he was able to fix the software. But he also trained the workers and managers on the use of the machine, which is quite complex. So that meant I spent close to 2.5 today hours translating the best I could, which is not all that great mind you since my technical words are not up to snuff. My head hurts from all of that Chinese now. Tomorrow I have to come in once more and type up/translate all of the instructions we were given today. That means tonight I'm going to splurge. By that I mean chill at the coffee shop and go to a bar, since I sure could use a beer.

Business cards and Beagles

I feel so grown up now. I have my first real business card. I'm worried that I'm already so impressed with them that I will not give any of them away, ever. I got my business cards yesterday and now I am officially "Clint Bergstrom, Sales Coordinator, International Department." Personally, I had my fingers crossed for something a little cooler like "benevolent dictator of sales" or even "sales czar," but alas I'm just a lowly sales coordinator.

My random observation for the day is that there are a ton of people who own beagles here. I mean they are all over the place, and this is a great thing since I have a beagle of my own at home that I miss so having tons of beagles here is always a good thing.

My First Typhoon!

I knew it was only a matter of time, but today and into tomorrow I am going to come face to face with my first typhoon. Okay, okay, so its only a tropical storm right now (it's called Kalmaegi) and the main part won't hit Taipei. I've known about the storm for a few days now since it's been brewing north of the Philippines but I was still a little surprised by the rain we are already getting this morning. You can check out the storm here: http://www.cwb.gov.tw/V5e/index.htm.

Update: So typhoons are overrated. Yesterday morning it was raining pretty hard and its continued to rain for the last 24 hours but there wasn't much wind or anything. Then again the storm passed to the south of us and we caught the outside edge.

The BBC has some pretty good coverage of the typhoon here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7513441.stm. I had no idea that there were some deaths as a result. Some of the deaths were from landslides, which could well be the result of betel nut production. The hardest hit areas, like Kaohsiung/Gaoxiong, are at the southern tip of the island and I am at the north so I really didn't get much in the way of winds. Either way I can only imagine the amount of rain that they got down there.

Something I realized this weekend

Over the last month I always seem to find myself saying the same thing, "This is so damn hot, I've never been this hot in my life." It was one of the multiple times this weekend that I said that to myself when I came to a realization about my time here. My days are really just long periods of sweating interrupted by work. Gross as that sounds its true, but that's what happens when you live in Asia.

So this weekend I was going to go to Taipei 101, but when I got there I found my camera was out of batteries and it was getting too cloudy to get any good pictures from the top of the tallest building in the world. That meant I went home reloaded on batteries and travelled to the Bao'an temple (I wanted to go to the Confucius temple but it was being renovated). It was pretty ornate and made for a great get away. Then I figured I'm close enough why not go to the Xinbeitou library and park? On my way there I met some cool Korean tourists then hung out in the coolest library I've ever seen. Beyond that it was in a nice park so I got to get away from the city for a little bit, which is nice. I wasn't planning on staying long but they had a book by George Carlin (random, I know) so I was hooked. After that I thought, I'm close, I'll just go to Danshui. So I took the short trip to what is apparently THE weekend getaway for the entire city. It is really just a long boardwalk along the ocean with lots of vendors and no real beach (there was one small area about the size of a sandbox but that had a dead dog floating in it). That said, it was really cool to see all the people out there and sample some of the food as people there love anything with squid in it. Because I went there on a whim I just wandered around the waterfront area until it got dark. On Sunday I got up grabbed my new breakfast, a big wedge of bread with nuts and raisins from a small bakery. Then I explored the college across the way from me. It was a really small campus but it had some good sports facilities and a 200m track, which is better than nothing. I also spent some time studying for the LSAT in the library and trying (unsuccessfully) to meet some of the coeds.

Later on Sunday I went out to the driving range and for under $3 I got a small bucket of balls and a rental club. For that cheap I may just have to go back. Then again, it was pretty humbling since I never was very good and I haven't hit anything for about a year. On top of that, I was using a crappy iron next to some dude with a huge Big Bertha driver. This dude was killing the ball, seriously, he was knocking the thing 200 yds almost every time. Beyond that, he had a small spectator gallery next to him. So here comes the little white dude and I'm lucky to hit the thing half of his distance, oh well, maybe next time I'll be next to a grandma.

The countdown is on. A week from today I leave for a 5 day trip to Bangkok! Whenever I think of that I get the song "One Night in Bangkok" stuck in my head. I keep telling myself this is not a fun trip but a business trip. However, the business load is pretty light since the trip is mainly for me to get to know the contacts we have there and learn from the guy I am replacing. That means its pretty light on meetings. So I should have a limited amount of time to explore the city. That also means my coworker is paying for lunch and dinner most nights! Other than that I am applying for a Chinese visa in Bangkok so when I get back here to Taiwan I'll be able to go to Jinmen Island and cross into Xiamen, China.

For more pictures check facebook.

One Month

Well, I made it. I've been here in Taiwan for one month, from June 10th to July 10th. It has been both harder and easier than I thought. The language has been harder and so has the heat. Conversely, the living situation, work, and transportation have gone much more smoothly than I would have imagined. So far work is okay, I'm not very busy since they haven't given me much and for the most part I have to worry a lot about replacement parts for machines here. However, I still have lots of time to surf the Internet. I'm also excited since I recently spent an evening out by Taiwan National University. It was pretty cool, there are some huge night markets across the street with everything there including a small water park. It was cool since there was a lot of "renao" as the Taiwanese say-basically that means there was a lot of noise and flavor there in a good way. Most importantly there are real bars (i.e. not karaoke ones) in the area too. So I'll be spending some more time there.

Where is the Library?

So I promise I'm not being the ND study nerd of the last few years, but I was looking for the library this last weekend to study for the LSAT and use the Internet--since mine at home doesn't work. But it was super hot and I had no idea where the place was. So I went to Da'an where I heard a library was located and walked a bit and found a cool road-side temple (there are tons of them here and every car repair shop has a small Buddhist shrine for some reason, but this was the coolest one I've seen).

Because it was too hot so I stopped in a coffee shop to study then went back past the U.S. "embassy" and took the train to Beitou and walked a bit before giving into the heat and going home. Then I went back to give it one more shot to find the library in Da'an I succeeded. The problem was that I got there it was closing. So I hung out in the huge park across the street.

Let me say that never in my life will I ever go in another sauna. I live in one here and since I'll be here for a few years I will have more sauna time than any sane person ever should.

Two things I miss: being able to watch the Olympic Trials live. I wished I could see Michael Phelps kick ass and my old high school nemesis, Galen Rupp, run the 10k. The second thing I miss was being able to see my cousin Rich get married with the rest of my whole extended family. And in case Rich is reading this, Congrats Man! You made it easier for all of us.

Offered Without Comment

Happy Fourth

Wait, it was the Fourth of July? Over here I would never even have noticed. It was just another day, a busy one. We had a million piece order from Thailand that had to go out this morning so I was here late, but not as late as my coworker who pulled an all nighter. So instead of watching fireworks, having a beer, and grilling with my buddies I packed boxes and occasionally got to look at results from the track and swimming Olympic Trials. By the way check out the sick youtube of Nick Symmonds winning the 800m as part of an Oregon sweep.

The best thing ever and something strange

空調, 冷氣, Air conditioning, AC, or God's saving grace...no matter what it's called it's the likely the best invention ever. Today at lunch it felt super hot so I checked the weather when I came to my computer. It was 95 degrees with 84% humidity. According to weather.com that made it feel like 118 degrees. So it was great to come into a nice AC-ed office. When I go home, however, I try to save on the electric bill (damn right! I paid a big $3 last month in power bills, which is low enough to impress my landlord) so needless to say my place is uber hot. That's why I try and go to coffee shops all the time to use their AC. So no matter how you look at it AC just may be the best thing ever.

I also found out today that Taiwan has its own date. Yes, that's right its own date. I kept seeing the year 97 posted around town and thought it was left over from 1997 for some reason. Turns out, when the Nationalist party came to power they started the calendar over from the year 0. Why do this you may ask? I have no idea. But this just means I'm Scrivens-deep into the culture and history of this place.

Reality Check

So I haven't updated for a long time since my Internet server is down at home. That means when I pay my rent tonight I'll get my landlord to work on it. This last week has been a real reality check for me. Rent and a few other things have gotten me down recently. I know and have known this is the toughest part of being over here. I am still adjusting the language big time, my hot plate doesn't work so I can't cook, I have a small and hot apartment, I have to be a mature adult and pay rent, and I know almost no one here. The toughest thing is that here I am in a city of a few million people and outside of my coworkers I know almost no one. At ND I took for granted that I could meet people for dinner, here it's just me.

That being said, I am settling in a bit. I now have an older couple that I do language exchange with so I also get a free home-cooked meal out of it. I am slowly accumulating things for the apartment but me being me I have a list and specific schedule of what I can buy and when. I also got a free meal last week since the waitress at the small cafe I was at talked with me for a long time in Chinese and since she liked it I got a meal for free. This weekend I also had my first beer since being here, it was a good choice a nice Taiwan Pijiu at a bar with a cover band. I do like the city here since it's convenient and the people are nice and pretty used to white people (so I get fewer stares than in Beijing) but most of all it's very modern.

At work I've been working with a lot of the Filipino workers as I learn the company from the ground up, which means learning all the machines (which are manned by the Filipinos). I have a ton of street cred with them because my best friend is half Filipino (good luck on the Alert by the way Eric) and taught me some swear words. On top of that my cousin is marrying a Filipina in a few weeks. All that combines to get me a ton of street cred with the workers. Today I also had some Chinese jerky, called bagua, it rocked. It's a big blow to the ego to hang out with my coworker, Mr. Yang. He is a 70 year old Taiwanese man who is super jolly and spry. But what really hurts the ego is that his English is so much better than my Chinese and his command of technical words in English (for machines and stuff) is levels beyond mine.

I am also pumped since I am going to Bangkok in two weeks for business and when I'm there I get a Chinese visa. That means in the next month I'll be going to Xiamen, China too. Moreover, in the coming months I'll likely be going to Cambodia and Laos for business too. Then my boss has hinted that I may go to Indonesia as well (he wants me to take up golf for business as well and since there is a range that has buckets of balls for just over a dollar I may just do that). Looking several months ahead I may also travel to Germany and Switzerland to learn about the machines the company uses from the vendors who are based there.

Last weekend I went to the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial. The place was crawling with Taiwanese Boy Scouts for some reason. It seemed a lot like the Temple of Heaven in Beijing in terms of architecture. As I got there the sky opened up and it just poured! Thankfully I was inside looking at thinly veiled propaganda about how awesome Chaing Kai Shek was. Once that got boring I was stuck in the foyer of a concert hall waiting for the rain to stop. After that I went out to the Shilin night market for dinner with a coworker and I had some of the special Taiwanese aiyu jelly. Sunday I was lazy and slept most of the day then Skyped my parents and did my usual evening routine of heading to the coffee shop/bookstore to use their AC instead of my own. Below are some of the pictures I took at the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial last weekend. The bottom one is a paiting of CKS and Ghand in the traditional Chinese style.