This trip was, alas, less interesting than many due to a lack of side excursions to do sight seeing. Nonetheless, with the right frame of mind, everything on a trip is sight seeing. The weather was cold, and I was assessed for fever a few times a day.
Painfully long travel experience. Let me just say that the airline crisis sucks. There are no longer any direct flights to Taipei from San Francisco. (Except on Singapore or EVA Airlines, which, while excellent airlines, are unacceptable because they leave late at night and arrive in Taipei at 6 am local time!). So I had to go through Narita (Tokyo), which added about 5 hours onto the journey. That means arriving in Taipei at 10 pm, and Hsinchu at 11 pm. Unless your plane is late leaving Narita, in which case you arrive in Hsinchu at 12:30 am. Aggh. Next time I'm going through LAX; I didn't think of this as an option.
Characters on the plane. At least I met a couple interesting women on the plane. I was sitting next to a Filipino woman on her way to Hong Kong to meet up with her husband and clean out his parents' old apartment after they had passed away. She told me some things about feng shui, and revealed that she performs raeki (ritual healing). But in fact she herself is a Christian. This doesn't bother her because she believes all religions are essentially related.
I also chatted briefly with a woman who works as an environmental sociologist for USAID. She was on her way to Katmandu, via Tokyo and Bangkok. What does an environmental sociologist do? She told me she studies the ways in which small groups of people come to collaborate on larger projects, such as a village deciding to clear trees for a road or establish a school. Her new house in Monterey is furnished with Nepali rugs that she can get at one-quarter the price they are in the US.
Then there were the two jolly white guys going to Bangkok. One was short and skinny, the other tall, round, and big-boned. The big guy drank continuously and was quite loud. I felt a little sorry for him sitting in coach class, where he really didn't fit in the seats, but still, drinking a lot on the plane is obnoxious for the people nearby. Especially for the poor Japanese woman sitting in front of him. He kept inadvertently grabbing her hair when he put his hand on the headrest. She finally snarled at him, which only made him laugh, but he did stop after that. When she got up to use the restroom, I saw she was limping pretty badly. She pulled open the flight attendant's seat to do some stretching, which caused the attendant to tell her she couldn't use the seat. She explained that she had just had knee surgery, and really couldn't sit in her seat without moving for 10 hours, so she needed to do some stretching. Boy, I can sympathize with that! Thankfully, the flight attendant relented.
Wide bodies on the wide screen. Making my 2-hour stay in Japan the most Japanese possible, I gravitated to the airport TV showing sumo. Of course I noticed the screen, being a display analyst. It was a nice widescreen plasma, but the correction for the wide aspect ratio was done poorly. Everything was stretched horizontally. Given that sumo wrestlers are already w-i-d-e, this made them look all the more superhuman. If you think football or golf have relatively small amounts of action compared to the prep time, try sumo. It's a big mind game, and the competitors spend most of their time psyching themselves up and staring each other down. Then they tussle for 5-10 seconds until one guy is forced out of the ring.
There seem to be two ways to win. Overpower the other guy and push him out, or let him think he is overpowering you, then step aside and let his momentum carry him out. It's sort of interesting, actually. They have these tassels hanging off their loincloths that they pull aside as they squat down. And they toss a handful of something white (looks like rice or white flower petals) every time they enter the ring [I have since heard that this is salt, used for purification]. There is ritual bowing, concession of losing, and acceptance of winning.
You have to push to the back of your mind the fact that it's exclusively male (women are not allowed in the ring because they would defile it). Even a female government official was not allowed to stand in the ring just a couple of years ago. This is serious alpha male stuff (everybody grunt together now). [Yes, I know, it's religious-- sumo was originally a Shinto practice-- but it's worth questioning which instances tradition ought to be honored. After all, animal sacrifice in Christianity has been abandoned. Tradition ain't everything; we have a choice].
SARS screening. Due to the recent upsurge of SARS cases in China, Taiwan is on high alert. All arriving passengers had to sign a form saying that we were not knowingly ill. Then we had to walk across a "disinfectant carpet," which seems a bit odd, although I guess it would cut down on us tracking buggies in on our shoes. Then we had to pass an IR camera that would detect whether or not we had a fever. Fully certified as clean, I passed through customs, where they tossed my "I am not sick" form into a pile without even reading whether I had said Yes or No. It's nice to know that Taiwan has "security theater" just like the US does.
The hotel had sent a car for me, and the sign the guy was holding said "Mr. Kim Allen"-- yep, this is Taiwan! This happened last time too. Finally got to the darn hotel after midnight, and fell asleep right away.
Breakfast is great at this hotel! I am starting to like salad for breakfast, but I doubt I'll ever go for the heavy fish stuff (who knows, though...). They even have a good cereal selection (and still have the "honey nit" sign I saw a year ago). There was this interesting flavor of Yoplait yogurt that seemed to be peach-strawberry-pineapple (and was called simply "mixed fruit")-- why don't they market this in the US? And best of all, low-fat milk!!! This is really rare in Asia.
Day 1: Catching Up. My company's Taiwan rep kindly didn't schedule meetings until the afternoon, knowing I'd be arriving late. We had two afternoon meetings, one with a company I hadn't met before (a new OLED player) and one with one I already knew, but have never really been able to get close to due to a variety of reasons.
Before the meetings, we had lunch at a swanky Cantonese place that had a great atmosphere. Lots of little dining rooms, set apart by walkways that spanned pools filled with koi. We ate shrimp dim sum, cooked cabbage, some kind of weird sea creature (I thought it was jellyfish, but they said it was something different), and pork feet. OK, I didn't have the pork feet.
I didn't realize quite the extent of the SARS screening activities! At each building you enter, you have to get checked for fever by a guard wielding an infrared thermometer. Sometimes they just stick it on your forehead, and other times you get the full in-the-ear treatment. Then you get a little sticker proving you're kosher, which you put on your left shoulder. All over the place you see people with colored dots on their shoulders. There must have been a run on those stickers at all the office supply stores in Taiwan.
I should mention, by the way, that Taiwan was enduring a "cold front" from China during the time I was there. Everyone apologized for how cold it was, which was really only about 55F. But before you laugh, keep in mind that this country is not equipped for cold, and generally only has air conditioning, not very effective heat. So it was pretty frippin' cold in a lot of places.
The meetings seemed to go well, and were even over a little too soon. I felt like I could have stayed longer and gotten more information.
For dinner, I headed to the hotel's sushi restaurant. Yes, a sushi place in Taiwan. It was relatively authentic, but had a local flavor to it. The chef didn't speak English or Japanese, which made communication a little difficult. I had fun asking the names of things in Chinese, but found that I couldn't imitate the singsong names very effectively. He smiled at me indulgently as if he were teaching a 2-year-old to speak. No, I take that back-- the 2-year-old would have done better.
Day 2: Playing Both Sides. I spent all of the next day with a client who has purchased a big consulting project from us. I had two purposes: to deliver the interim report and to gather information so that the final report can go deeper into addressing this company's particular needs. In addition, I am being pulled between two people in this company, who want to use my company's project for differing purposes. Such is the consulting life, where you always end up in the middle of internal disputes (bring in the "neutral" 3rd party ostensibly to do a reality check, but then secretly try to win them over to your side, to add weight to your position. It's a time-honored tradition). I tried to play both sides, walking a middle line.
One cool thing I got to do was to visit their Class-100 clean room. Kim on the moon! I was decked out in something resembling a space suit, and got to take an "air shower" on the way in. I've worked in a clean room, but it wasn't this clean.
After all that, I really needed some time alone in the evening. I walked along the street near the hotel, but it wasn't much fun. It was cold (lots of wind that night), and there was no real sidewalk, so I was always in danger of getting killed by cars and mopeds. There were mopeds parked everywhere too, so I was picking my way through them. And the stores weren't that interesting anyway, although I did pick up an electronic gadget for a friend.
But I couldn't even relax in my room because the hotel has no heat in the individual rooms! As noted above, Taiwan is really only outfitted with air conditioners. They brought me an extra blanket, but I was still shivering in the bathrobe they always give you in Asia. So I went to the sauna!
Woo-hoo! The sauna was 60C (=140F)!!! It must be bone-dry in there for you to be able to tolerate that kind of heat. It was really great for about 20 minutes, but then I started getting a little overheated (I am by nature always cold, so this was a very novel concept for me). Still, it was the first time I had felt warm all the way through for quite a while. Usually, I am slightly chilled 24 hours a day from October to May.
Of course, all this heat made me really sleepy. I came back to my room and tried to read, but zonked off in about 20 minutes. In a brilliant move, I shut the bathroom door before bed because my toilet was running and I wanted to cut down on the noise. Of course, I forgot this at 2 am when I went toward the bathroom in the dark, and banged my nose, causing it to bleed. Doh!
Day 3: Wrapping Up. The next day, I was off to spend more time at the same company. I had to tie up the loose ends from yesterday, and generally make nice after a few instances of bickering the day before. (OK, that's too strong a word, but I had to disagree with a few of their points, and that's not always expected in Asia. I figure I can get a away with it as an American, although I don't do it purposefully; only when it arises naturally).
They did take me out for a nice lunch at a Japanese-style place. It had a general sense of some places I've been in Kyoto, with lots of little dishes. We had sashimi, a small tomato filled with fish eggs, some sort of pickled mussels, mushroom tempura, grilled sardine, slices of abalone (or was it octopus?) with mustard sauce and cucumber, chicken surprise (with a shrimp inside, and special sauce), udon soup, fruit plate, and sweet red beans. I was stuffed but happy. I have come to appreciate this weird fruit they serve here-- I think it's a durian. It's quite dry, like an apple with less juice, and sort of a tart, half-vegetable, half-fruit flavor.
At the end of the day, I headed back to the sauna again, and also went in the hot tub, which was outfitted like a traditional bath. Luckily, the weather (and hence the hotel) was warming up, so it wasn't totally necessary, just pleasant. Of course, I had forgotten my bathing suit, so I did the hot tub in shorts and a T-shirt. I was the only one there, so no one got to admire my lovely wet T-shirt. It partially dried in the sauna :-).
I went to bed early (tired again from the heat), but figured it was no problem since I wanted to get up early. You have to sleep on the return flight, which would be leaving Japan at about 7:30 pm. So I got up at 4:15 am (5:15 Japan time) in hopes of being able to sleep by the early evening.
Home again, home again. In the morning, I got a whole bunch of work done in the dawn hours. When the city awoke, I went out into the lovely sunshine and, now, warm air (the cold front had passed, and it was up to about 70 degrees). I really am a sunshine person! I spotted a grocery store across the street, and it only took me about 10 minutes to get there. Seriously, there are no pedestrian signals to help you cross the street, and there is a constant stream of cars and mopeds all over the place. Sure, they obey the lights, but they go about 1.5 times as fast as we do in the US, and the accepted space between cars is much closer. Plus the mopeds are allowed to pretty much do whatever they want. They weave in and out of the cars the way faster walkers navigate around slower ones on the sidewalk. But I did manage to cross the street eventually by just being brave, stepping off the curb, and signaling for a nearby moped to stop for me. Luckily, he did, and seemed to think it was normal for me to do that.
I bought a few trinkets and food items at the store, but mostly I just looked. I don't know why, but I find foreign grocery or drug stores fascinating. I often go to them, and often buy a few things. Somehow, it's magical to see the ordinary parts of life in other countries. I like the spectacles, grand castles, museums, and temples also, but there is something very special about grocery stores too. It's where basic needs are fulfilled, and it's interesting to see how different (and how similar) these places are across the globe.
Then I took the hotel car to CKS Airport and cruised up to Tokyo. I was on Cathay Pacific, which is a great airline. The food is actually edible. I had baked fish and vegetables, a roll that wasn't painfully dry, and decent red wine. And there are many movies to select from, at least eight. Come to think of it, any international airline that isn't from the US is pretty decent these days. Sorry, but it's true.
From Tokyo to San Fran I was back on United. I was able to use mileage to get into business class. That means using the "red carpet club" in the airport, which is a giant lounge with free food, beer, coffee, etc, as well as phones and power outlets for your computer. It also means a decent seat for sleeping! Too bad I didn't need dinner after the good lunch just a few hours before. Business-class food on United is about as good as coach-class food on Cathay Pacific.
I slept pretty soundly for about 5 hours, and when I got up, blinking, and headed to the restroom, the flight attendant stopped me and said with wide eyes, "What did you take???" Huh? I replied. She couldn't believe I had been able to sleep without taking some kind of drug. Whatever.
The new security rules are getting more and more ludicrous. Luckily, SFO isn't one of the airports that is now automatically snapping the photo and taking the fingerprints of all foreigners, but still, the tightened security is 100% theater. (It would not have kept out any of the 9-11 terrorists, and arguably makes us less safe by diverting resources from actually helpful activities and by lending a false sense of security). The silly measures even extended to US citizens like me. The customs clerk read the entire computer screen of information that popped up about me when he scanned my passport. I guess he got to learn all the destinations I've been to on totally legitimate business over the past 3 years. (All of the trips purchased in my own real name with a totally traceable corporate credit card belonging to an above-board, easily identifiable company). Gee, I sure look like a threat. Then when I left the baggage area, I was checked again by an arrogant guard who asked what I did for a living (like it matters, and like I would tell him if I were doing something illegal) and what company I work for (to which he replied rudely, "Never heard of it," as if that's some kind of factor in how truthful I'm being). I know it's all a ruse to get me to look nervous if I'm lying, but really, if I were an accomplished criminal, it would be no problem to look suave. I'd smile and say I worked for IBM, Sun, or Intel. It's not like he can check right there on the spot.
Message to the Department of Homeland Security: Your new tactics at airports are not making us safer. Please tell me why you are wasting my money on this schlock. I will happily pay you money if you use it responsibly for measures that will make me safer. I see no evidence of that yet, and you've had years to work on these things! How long do we have to wait? (And I don't mind saying this in public. As Bush loves to say to foreigners when they heckle him, "I love free speech!" So do I, buddy).
Copyright © Kim Allen 2004
