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.