(Back from the Past) Travel Memories: 1. Seat neighbours

(from 4/5/2008)

A flight Frankfurt-Hong Kong —which, according to the pilot when we took off, would take 9 hours and 50 minutes, but rather turned out to take almost 11 hours— is long and complicated enough for having "curious" seat neighbours on top of it. Somehow, since an Amsterdam to London flight a few years ago, where I had two seat neighbours that looked like pakistanis or indian, who never took off their coats and apparently weren't able to fit into their seats, never stopped hitting one side or the other and had smelling customs different that the ones in the West, I am not surprised by anything. I wasn't dissapointed by the ones I had this time.

I had the window seat, so one side was all mine. Luckily. The guy who was sitting next to my left looked chinese, from his aspect and from his clothes. He started hitting me with his elbow or to occupy the whole armrest very soon. In his fifties and thin, he was of the kind "not regarding western conventions". You can imagine. It wasn't too exaggerated, but I attended to a good show of sounds. I slept a lot, I think he didn't judging by the difficult body positions he took. I always feel bad seeing people who try to sleep resting their heads on the seat in front of them. I guess that not taking his jacket off, which scratched quite a lot (see above), didn't help.

The guy next to him was also of a special kind. Dressed in a western fashion, but with eastern traits, a big belly, and a round face, I was surprised when I saw him reading a book of Pérez Reverte in Spanish (a spanish writer). I knew why later. His clear southamerican Spanish accent was explanation enough. So, he ate for two (he always asked for a second ration to the flight assistant), drank for three (he drank many beers, plus wine for dinner) and kept looking lasciviously at the apparently Spanish-speaking flight attendant. Really annoying when buying at the duty free, he had it all. To top it off, he turned on his mobile phone three seconds after landing at Hong Kong, while the plane was still braking. A man used to the good life.

And then they say you don't have any fun on planes.

Bars, cafés and company

Taiwan is, from what I have seen, a very different place in some aspects; familiar in others, but with a very hard to understand language. Starting during my first weekend here, I have had the chance to visit some places that could be qualified as curious: the bars around the Taida (NTU) campus. It's no surprise that there are bars there; nor that they have a westerner look, this is a country with many american-looking things; but if you go to a bar where most of the beers are from Belgium, that's surprising. And not any kind of beers, most of them are the high alcohol content kind. Of course, it can be surprising to be surrounded by japanese people there, but it is very normal here. This is a very international environment, but there are many japanese; taiwanese do not generally drink much alcohol, but japanese sure do. The perfect storm.

The first bar where I was is named "Cafè Odeon". Postdocs and such know it as CO2 (chemistry joke included), because it is the second one with this name, even if the original one has already disappeared. It is in a street near the avenue that is the western boundary of campus. A few meters from that bar, we find the "Cafè Bastille" and "Cafè Lumière", the former one owned by rivals/ex-buddys of the owner of the first bar, and the latter owned by the same guy as CO2 —gossip runs fast. How french!. It must be because of the beers.

That's not all, there is also a "Cafè La Comune" not far from there, with a commemorative plaque outside in honor of the dead of the 1871 Comune, where I have not been yet, and a cafe, very nice, called "Norwegian Wood Cafè" (because of the Beatles or Murakami?), where I had a latte in very good company, surrounded by good music and posters from very different movies.

I was also in a supposedly english bar (the owner said he was english) a little farther away. Of course, in company of japanese. In fact, I was the only non-japanese there. I do not know if I will ever learn any chinese, but if things keep going this way, I may learn japanese.

(Back from the past) Conventionalities

It is really curious. From what I have seen until now, women are always red and men blue. I do not know if color blind people have problems with this

First post

Ok, I started the blog Un cel ple de brases more than a month ago to explain, as much as I could, the little adventures that I might have in these faraway lands. It was a way to tell people back home, or wherever they might be, what I am doing. For those who do not know what I am talking about, it's been a little over a month since I landed in Taiwan. It may seem a short time, but many things happen in a month when you start a new life in a very different place.

At the beginning, I didn't know what I would use this blog for, and I doubted I would regularly maintain it. A month later, it looks like I am finding a way of telling about things without being too boring, hopefully. And there are many things left to tell. It's also a way of showing some pictures and saying something about them.

So, I will try to adapt/translate the posts I put in the other blog. I think it's the best solution —not everybody can read English back at home. I will try to post some of the old posts too. Ok, that's it.

Today it's sunny and very warm, again.