This weekend the old couple I teach English to invited me on a little trip to the famous Yang Ming Shan (Mountain). It was a pretty nice drive up there and even though it was hot the park on the mountain was pretty cool. The biggest thing for me was to get out of the city since most of my days are spent in the concrete jungle so that was a welcome break to go there. Then we drove to the ocean, again, a great place to go. We had a great lunch of clams, cuddlefish, shrimp, and fish at a cool seaside restaurant and we got to pick the stuff we wanted from bins of live seafood (some of the things there I had never need before in the second to last picture). 
The weather here is finally starting to cool off a bit and by that I mean in the evenings it’s below 30 degress C with a breeze. Of course, the middle of the day is still hotter than all hell.
This last week was a ton of work since I had a bunch of orders to take care of. On top of that two engineers are coming in and I have to make all of their arrangements with hotels, transport, and working schedule. That also meant that I had to have countless meetings to go over the details with my coworkers. Then one of the machines broke…more work. Then the boss said to accept the engineer’s request only to have the GM keep delaying the decision. The worst part was my boss was in China and would randomly give me emails to prepare stuff for customers I had never even heard of (sure I can take an order of thermal paper from a company I’ve never heard of for a contract bid I’ve never heard of). No the worst part would be emailing vendors who I knew were swamped then to have a coworker come ask me to email with a new question 5 min after I sent the original email.
The strange thing was that my boss wants me to drive to the airport to pick up one of the engineers (with his car) for some reason. No way I say, the drivers are pretty crazy, I don’t know the rules of the road, I don’t have an international drivers license. No problem he says, drive my car and the cops are nice so you won’t get in trouble or care that you work here illegally. Doesn’t seem like the best bet to me. So far I’ve put it off by saying that I was too tired to drive.
Well one engineer is here this week and it’s already been a sonofabitch. He’s a nice enough guy but now I have to order a ton of shit for him, maintain the machine, translate (for him and the workers and some huge hand-written document I was handed today), and do all of my other work too.
This weekend I went back to the Bravo bar where I had been before. I actually saw other white people my age for the first time in a long long time. It was pretty strange, since I’m used to only being around Taiwanese people now. But one dude bought me a shot so it was all good. Also at the bar I also ended up talking with a group of Taiwanese people and shocked them at I speak some Chinese. People are always a little nervous to talk to you since they think their English isn’t very good but once they hear me speak Chinese they all want to talk.
The plus side to all of this is that my Chinese is getting much better, or at least it’s coming more fluently and I have been able to pick up on more of what is said. Then again I still have a hard time with the business meetings since there are so many words I still don’t know.
The weather here is finally starting to cool off a bit and by that I mean in the evenings it’s below 30 degress C with a breeze. Of course, the middle of the day is still hotter than all hell.
This last week was a ton of work since I had a bunch of orders to take care of. On top of that two engineers are coming in and I have to make all of their arrangements with hotels, transport, and working schedule. That also meant that I had to have countless meetings to go over the details with my coworkers. Then one of the machines broke…more work. Then the boss said to accept the engineer’s request only to have the GM keep delaying the decision. The worst part was my boss was in China and would randomly give me emails to prepare stuff for customers I had never even heard of (sure I can take an order of thermal paper from a company I’ve never heard of for a contract bid I’ve never heard of). No the worst part would be emailing vendors who I knew were swamped then to have a coworker come ask me to email with a new question 5 min after I sent the original email.
The strange thing was that my boss wants me to drive to the airport to pick up one of the engineers (with his car) for some reason. No way I say, the drivers are pretty crazy, I don’t know the rules of the road, I don’t have an international drivers license. No problem he says, drive my car and the cops are nice so you won’t get in trouble or care that you work here illegally. Doesn’t seem like the best bet to me. So far I’ve put it off by saying that I was too tired to drive.
Well one engineer is here this week and it’s already been a sonofabitch. He’s a nice enough guy but now I have to order a ton of shit for him, maintain the machine, translate (for him and the workers and some huge hand-written document I was handed today), and do all of my other work too.
This weekend I went back to the Bravo bar where I had been before. I actually saw other white people my age for the first time in a long long time. It was pretty strange, since I’m used to only being around Taiwanese people now. But one dude bought me a shot so it was all good. Also at the bar I also ended up talking with a group of Taiwanese people and shocked them at I speak some Chinese. People are always a little nervous to talk to you since they think their English isn’t very good but once they hear me speak Chinese they all want to talk.
The plus side to all of this is that my Chinese is getting much better, or at least it’s coming more fluently and I have been able to pick up on more of what is said. Then again I still have a hard time with the business meetings since there are so many words I still don’t know.
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