Flying

Well, time to go back to Europe. If all is ok, I should be already flying back to Barcelona now. Twenty more hours and I will smell a different kind of wet air. It feels strange.

Leaving East Asia for a while, and going home. Maybe it will take me some time to update this blog.

Neighbours

My kitchen window faces the same alley where the entrance to my building is. In the balcony there, I have the washing machine and some space where I can hang clothes to dry. The alley is fairly narrow and you can often hear how the neighbours of different buildings go along with their lives, because it resembles more an inner court. So, some days I can hear how somebody sings in a karaoke or, once in a while, a baby crying inconsolably . A while ago, though, I could hear the same baby, probably, laughing, in that amazing way that babies do using their whole body. Happiness.

Pomegranates

I came back from Hsinchu last night. It is also called the windy city and it lives up to that name. The wind and the lower temperatures we had reminded me of distant lands. I missed that combination, typical of my mother's hometown. As usual, people complained about the cold, but I feel fine to be in December and to feel some cold. Of course, my apartment is becomeing colder too.

Anyway, I could cook something at home today for the first time in many days. With a workshop, several meetings, two days doing observations, the last time I had dinner, or lunch, at home was a week ago. To celebrate it, some pomegranates!.

I saw them in the supermarket a few days ago and it took me no time at all to put two of them in the bag. As far as I know, they are not typical from these parts —these are from California&mdash, but I don't mind. As delicious as usual. I still have one left.

Autumn

Of course, I had been told that fall in Taipei was very nice. Now that winter is coming, at least the astronomical winter, I can confirm it. That does not mean that we did not have grey or rainy or cloudy days, some not very pleasant, or that we did not suffered sudden drops in temperatures, but it has been almost a week with clear blue skies and a very nice Sun. It was a little bit chillier towards the end of last week, but this one is almost perfect. A few real fall days, even if it is already December.

As for me, I really like these mornings when I walk to work and I can gaze at those clear skies and see how the light slips through the green trees. I could even smell the just-cut grass in front of my office this morning.

No news, I know, it reminds me of those very cold days in Columbus, when maybe all was covered in white because of the snow, the river was frozen, but there was that nice Sun that, at least, brought some warmth to your heart. Small daily joys.

And this afternoon, to Hsinchu, going to the ALMA-jT workshop, with my half-finished presentation. The forecast for tomorrow and the weekend says it will be colder. We'll see.

Triangle

If you read this today, maybe you will still have the chance to see it. These days, Jupiter (mù xīng) and Venus (jīn xīng) are getting close to conjunction, and the Moon has joined them very close today. All together creates a very nice triangle up in the sky. And in a day so beautiful as today —we are very lucky lately— the scene was complete with the last colors of sunset. Can you tell which is which?

Dialogues

I would have never imagined it. It was after 9pm, at the same time that my (for pedestrians) traffic light turns green, a scooter and a SUV stop almost in front of me. Before I can step down onto the road, the SUV driver gets out of his car, walks towards the scooter driver with a scowling face, says something to him and gives him a big shove. While I begin crossing the street, they start talking. I thought there could be a brawl right there, but no, nothing in the end. Who knows what could have happened before.

I had read that these things happened from time to time, but after seeing so many weird things in the street traffic, I was beginning to believe that they did not care at all. Well, looks like bad temper is universal.

Tickets

It took longer than I expected, because we are all so modern, but my bank seems to be always lagging behind, that I could not do it by myself through the web. So, back to analogic, through local channels, and that's it. I payed them today and I already have the receipt in my hand, because nowadays most are only electronic tickets.

The only thing left to do is to count down the days, if I had the free time to do it. I have a few very busy weeks ahead of me.

Questions

One of the advantages of being a foreigner, and looking the part, is that I save myself the bother of being stopped by people making some poll or getting signatures for any campaing in the streets, or to be offered too many shop flyers, or similar things. I would not escape in Europe or the US —as I did not, I was asked once if I wanted to register to vote in their elections—, but here they see me coming and I can tell in their faces how they are quickly making a probability estimate of my understanding any Chinese and, with good reason, they decide it is not worth it.

One day last week, as I was walking along the Gongguan zone, I went past an army of middle-aged women, dressed with white trousers and dark blue polos, that tried to stop anybody that was around. They were probably from some kind of cultural, or even political, association. They looked at me, with a slightly disappointed face, as if thinking: one that gets away. Well, I do not think I would stop for long even if I understood the language. Of course, you never know; I think I am more peaceful here.

Student activities

I have been seeing them in the little esplanade in front of my building at work since a few weeks ago. Groups of boys and girls, stretching and practicing different coreographies. O I could hear their cries and laughs from my office, but I was not sure what they were doing there. Maybe they were in some kind of body expression classes, or taking dancing lessons, because there was also music sometimes. Or maybe they were just rehearsing some play. The weather is generally good and they have enough space there to put a lot of people.

I finally realized what it was today, when I saw the large number of people at the bottom of the research building again and also, some hundred meters down the road, in front of the auditorium or gymnasium that is located half-way along the central street of campus. The shouts, choreographies, girls climbing on top of boys and jumping or making somersaults and expecting somebody else to catch them before they crash into the ground, pom-poms on the grass: they are practicing for some cheerleading show. Probably one of those competitions that are everywhere these days.

I am not at all surprised, because of the american influence on many things and because I already saw an example a few months ago in a student show in the Shida central campus. Even if some people won't like it, these are also multicultural activities, aren't they?.

Longshan temple

Yesterday,I finally made a short visit to the Longshan temple, one of the more popular and famous in Taipei. But I still had not seen it. So, why not go there on a Saturday evening, when I did not feel like doing anything else, even if it was already dark.

There was some festival going on in the square in front of the temple, and there were many stalls selling food along the streets. The temple was a little bit more quiet, but it was also fairly crowded, not by tourists, but by a lot of people, here and there, doing their offerings and praying. Many tables with food offerings and incense candles were in many places too. I cannot really express how, but even with all the people around, the place felt quite laid down and relaxed, almost familiar. Yes, there were many people praying and doing what they had to do, they had the right music and I would think it would be easy to go into a more spiritual state of mind, but at the same time you could see an old lady eating some noodles for dinner or people sitting on the sides of the main court, resting and driking water. It is a very different style.

When I went back out again, I took a walk around the nearby streets, where there are several night markets. There is a curious distribution of space. The street next to the temple is full of shops selling religious stuff: dresses, candles, Buddha figures, ghost money, whatever you like. To the South side, there is the clothes' market, that fills the streets with numerous racks of hanging clothes: trousers of all kinds, jackets, dresses, shirts, etc. I did not look for the famous Snake Alley, because I did not have the time, but when I was walking back towards the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial, I found a sector of animal shops, particularly birds. I saw all kinds of cages, which reminded me of a book of Chinese tales we had when we were kids, and many birds. Parrots, cuckatoos, peacocks and similar birds, with a leg tied with a small chain and standing there out of the cages. A big mix of colors, sounds and smells.

Since the temperature was so nice, I kept on walking all along the Botanic Gardens —which I must visit some other day— as far as the illuminated CKS memorial. A very nice walk.

Change of mind

A couple of weeks ago, I was again on my way from the Shida campus to Taipei, and I had just began the short and narrow part of Ting Choud Rd that goes along the field sports in campus. I had just walked by the small temple on the right-hand side of the road, when I looked at the facades of the buildings that line that side of the street, which are in fact the back side of the buildings that face Roosevelt Rd. It was a very beautiful day, with a sky almost completely blue, a dazzling Sun, but a nice temperature. And I thought that, even if they did not seem nice to me, they will be never be, those buildings have become part of a familiar cityscape, and I might even begin to feel a little bit of fondness for them.

Then I remembered the first impression that those same builidings, or some very similar ones, had on me the first day I arrived to Taipei, after that long trip, or when I started looking for an apartment under an almost constantly cloudy and/or rainy sky. In those moments when it can be said that your roots are exposed to the elements, when you still do not know where you will finally find a refuge —or as you might think in moments of doubt, if you ever find it—, when everything is new and different and there is no one around with whom to share some thoughts or someone who can give you some encouraging words, those buildings may seem, maybe only for a fleeting moment, like half- hideous and half-hateful symbols of everything you will never like. One is still probably comparing too much what is already known and what is in front of your eyes, which appears complicated and difficult to understand.

Change to some months later, completely settled, or as much as one can be, with a more or less reduced group of acquaintances, places that have become familiar and a whole new series of habits, and most of the negative undertones have vanished and all is simply another part of a land that is discovered little by little. It is a step more in the progressive change of impressions, as a result of daily experiences, the collection of memories, that shape the place where you are spending a substantial part of your life into another home to add to the list, maybe too short, you have been making as the years go by.

All of this is communicated to your mood. Everything feels very raw at the beginning. You discover new things every day, you are in the middle of many unknown situations, little details, small routines are transformed into very important almost vital matters. With time, all begins to blur, to soften. You find your place and become used to everything. It is then that, one somehow longs, maybe for years, for those primordial days when everything was new, when you were stepping on unknown ground and you felt as a brand new blackboard ready for lines to be written on it. But it is too difficult to stay in that state, unless you pack your bags again and move to the next place, which is something I do not plan on doing any time soon.

Faraway Eyes

Maybe it is just because of the cloudy sky, the nice temperature, and the soft but not too cold, not too warm breeze. Or maybe just because of an already forgotten dream from the previous night. There are some days, it is maybe the first one here, that make me think about the term Faraway eyes, as if my mind was wandering in a flight through far away skies over plains that extend as far as the horizon. Memories of similar moments, maybe in America, come back to me, and I feel wrapped up with a feeling of comfort and reunion. As if I was walking with somebody by my side all the time.

These are ideal days then to listen to some music of Steve Earle, or Marah, or from the record I cannot stop listening lately of Elliot Brood: a fair dose of melancholic songs, but very uplifting at the same time. Ah, a harmonica is a strict requirement.

Road crash

When I was going back home last night, I saw, at just one block from my apartment, the first example of a road accident that had happened a few minutes before. There was an ambulance on the other side of the street, its doors open, three or four policemen measuring the distances of the trajectories of the vehicles and, as I walked by, I could see a scooter driver sitting on the sidewalk and another one on a stretcher with the ambulance guys taking care of him, but he seemed to be moving. Everything looked like a crash between two scooters, but I could be wrong.

Before coming to Taiwan, I read in some guide that there were many road accidents here —I am not at all surprised—, but apart from all kind of bumps and dents on the frames of cars and scooters, and many almost-absurd evasive maneuvers in the general driving, I had not yet seen a scene like that. In the long run, you end up seeing everything.

Cakes

I just arrived home, it's almost half past eleven. Today is Wednesday and the meeting ends very late. And I even stayed for a while dicussing a couple of things with a student. But this is the second meeting in a row that I don' t feel too bad. First, I can play the game of trying to understand some word in Chinese (more and more, little by little). Two, since we moved the meeting to an office two doors down the hall from mine —because a student is going to mine, and another computer goes with her—, we have more space and it is easier to follow what is being discussed. And third, we had birthday cakes today. We were not celebrating Sun Yat-Sen's birthday (a father of the country), but the one of the head of the group. So we had a piece of cacke, some mochi too (it's a kind of rice cake, typically japanese, but very popular in Taiwan), and some beer.

We have also been entertained by the numerous talks about any subject. I got more details on last week's incidents and disturbances, and on the police work. It has reminded me a lot about the Olympic Games in Barcelona. Total paranoia.

Three Legs

It is not anything new, I know, but I have seen so many in both campuses, all made from bamboo sticks tied up together with some rope, that I thought why not put up some proof.


Some seem to be trying to stifle the tree that has grown too much, rather than supporting it.

Change in the Weather

After two days of almost non-stopping rain, the weather front that is crossing over us has brought lower temperatures. Today it was still cloudy, but it rained little, and we have been hovering around 20 degrees, almost 10 degrees less than last week. I cannot remember when was the last time I experienced such low temperatures. Maybe since last June, when I was in the Alishan mountains. I was missing a little bit having colder weather. Of course these last weeks were almost perfect in good weather and temperature. We are not so close to the tropics for nothing.

I do not think that it will last long, because the forecast is for better weather on Wednesday. As soon as the Sun turns up, the cold ends. But, looking at people on the streets today, it seemed as if it was much much colder. Some had many clothes on. I am at that point were short sleeves are still comfortable, but you'd better have some shirt to put on if it gets colder in the evening. Definetly, my stay in America changed my thermostat.

Visits from the other side

I guess that the visit to Taiwan this week of the chinese official of the department that deals with Taiwan affairs must have been somehow on the news all over Europe. From what I gathered from the news, there are a series of agreements on communications that will surely lead to better relationship and trade between the two countries. And maybe reduce the tensions.

I am not so sure about what people think, though. I guess there are all kinds of opinions. There were quite a few demonstrations against the visit and several clashes with the police. That probably was on TV. A little bit of that is part of the confrontation between the government party and the opposition, as everywhere else. But it is not all.

It is curious to talk with the people around me. I know several who are in favor of independence, others feel ok with the current situation, but nobody has clearly told me that they want the unification. Personally, I think that it is very difficult, probably impossible, that they ever do it, voluntarily. From what I have seen from both sides of the strait, I do not think that a majority of taiwanese want it, as some have already told me, and I understand them perfectly, for obvious reasons. I think it can be said that there are also substantial differences, economical and even cultural, between both countries.

What surprised me were the comments of some of the, generally very reserved, students, when they asked me about my point of view. Talking with them, they can see that the agreements will bring good things, but I noticed that they are worrying about what can happen in the long run. No wonder. As somebody said, you, meaning foreigners, can always go somewhere else.

Water and Tea

A rainy day; it has not stopped at all. In the evening, I met some friends in a tea house, japanese style, near Taida campus. A very quiet and relaxing place, a perfect refuge from the noise and rush of the outside world. In an evening like the one today, there was the added quality to the air that rainy days give to peaceful moments.

It is not my first experience in drinking tea in the traditional way, but that does not mean that it loses its charm. You can spend hours there that, with a little bit of luck, will lead to interesting conversations. We also had dinner there, much more than we planned, but it is so easy here to end up feeling so full.

There was a victim, though. My old umbrella was trashed by, I guess, a commando of pale people (from the looks, american or british); crushed under the tips of their own. What harm did it do to them?.

Heirs

I read in a local newspaper last week about the death in Taipei of the 77th lineal descent of Confucius, Kung Teh-Cheng. It can be highly doubtful that anybody has been able to control the truth about the descendants during a little bit less than 2500 years, but at least the average time per generation is not impossible. At the same time, this is probably one of the very few places in the world where the power structure has been stable enough to do it. Specially if we take into account how revered is the figure of Confucius.

One of the problems for the government now is to appoint the successor, because one of the main jobs is to act as Sacrifice Official to Confucius on the birthday of Confucius, September 28 —the celebration this year was postponed a week because of a typhoon. The deceased had been doing it since 1935, quite a while ago.

Little roofs

This is a country where it can rain a lot, and all of a sudden —as the day before yesterday, when I wondered why I took a shower that morning, because I could have saved it— and where AC units are everywhere, so it is not surprising to see that almost every exterior unit has its own little protection on top of it.


I am not really sure if it is worth it, but it sure creates nice symmetries.

Taxes

I think that just today, a day more or less, I have been in Taiwan 183 days. I am not really sure how to count the arriving and departing days, but it does not matter, I am not leaving tomorrow. What does that mean?. Not much right now, but I guess it could be said that I become some kind of tax resident. That implies that for next tax returns, the percentage applied to my salary won't be the present 20%, but something between 6 and 13%. I should get at least a 7% of the taxes taken from my salary. I won't be rich, but it will help me to have a healthier economy —not that I am having any trouble now, since I am not spending much, particularly because everything is here cheaper than in Europe. But that will happen next May, at the earliest. For the time beign, everything remains the same.

Daylight Savings Time

I think that the time changes across the world are over for now. If it was in Europe two weekends ago, it was in the US and Canada last weekend. There is no time change in Taiwan between winter and summer. That is something for countries located closer to the Poles. Nonetheless, I read somewhere that they tried it for several years long ago, before deciding not to do it again. I do not think they need it at all, assuming there is any use for it even in more northern or southern countries. And I am not against it. In fact, I like it mostly because of aesthetical reasons or because of habit, but it would not be a great loss.

So, right now, we have a 7 hour difference to the Central European Time, 8 hours to the UK, and 13 to the East Coast, but only 11 to Chile, because they changed the time in the opposite direction. These differences can be funny when you want to talk to somebody so far away. I think that it will be more difficult for me now for talking with Skype during the week: the window of opportunity is reduced.

In any case, I have a few applets in my laptop that help me to know what is the time in several parts of the world, because there are times that you'd better know if you don't want to miss a deadline. Chile's case, and also Australia's, is funny. Two weeks ago, Chile had the same time as the US East Coast; they were an hour ahead last week; and they are two ahead from now on. Difficult to remember.

Street View

It is apparently one of the biggest news right now. Google put on-line the street view pictures of Barcelona and Valencia. It is a funny thing seen from the distance. I spent quite a while last Tuesday or Wednesday taking a look at it. I had done the same thing months ago with the pictures of Columbus and it is an interesting exercise. It can be a way to prove to yourself that you still remember how things are there, and you also have the chance to see if there is anything new: that building that was not finished when you left, how that street has changed in two or three years, etc. I think that the pictures of Barcelona are from last spring, but I have seen some things I did not know (or remembered the latest changes before I left).

Then you have the stories about people you know. I looked at the balconies of my family to see what was there. Not much, lowered blinds and hanging clothes, but I think I can see the building caretaker at the front door of my building. And the other day, a friend sent us the coordinates of his position: helping the economy in the terrace of a bar.

In short, if one day you fancy it, or maybe you really need it, you can just move the little yellow man along the blue streets of Google Maps and take a stroll down memory lane.

Finals

During these days when the World Series were played in the US, the finals of the baseball league in Taiwan, known as the Taiwan Series, are also underway between the Lions and the Elephants. It reminds me of the Cheers episode in which they bet on the american football results. So, they follow more or less the timing of the american season.


It looks like there is always a baseball game being showed on television, but I do not know the teams, and there are only five or six. One of the teams playing in the finals is from Taipei and, a couple of evenings ago around 6:30 or 7pm, while we were having dinner in a restaurant near campus, there was a group of young people that had finished eating and were watching the game amid shouts, clapping and shows of happiness. It was not too exaggerated, but they are very noisy when they want to be.

If anybody cares, the series is tied 2-2 right now.

Seven

So, lately I am remembering too many things. It is seven years today since we had our show and we got a title and some paper!. Mentally, though, we had finished a month and a half before that, and it was easy to see in all the celebrations we had. How things have changed in all this time. It is what usually happens when a stage of life is finished and another begins.

As it happened several times before —it is my fault I am always somewhere else— we will not be able to have a proper commemoration. Ok, we will sooner or later.

Introductions

As I probably commented already , the first or second day of my arrival, Chien Chou, the student that shared the office with me, wrote me a list of chinese characters, and their approximate pronunciation, related to food.

It was not a long list, nor with much variety, but it was very useful at the beginning to allow me to look to a menu and be able to distinguish some of the ingredients of the dishes, if they were based on rice or noodles, what kind of meat or if it was fish, which made my choices much easier. Of course, that only gives you an approximate idea of what you are ordering, but fortunately it is not very usual to have those long descriptions so common now in the West.

I have enlarged my vocabulary a little bit since then, but this was my first real chinese lesson in Taiwan.

Half a Year

When I woke up today, I realized that it was exactly six months ago that I left Barcelona to come to Taipei. If you count them, there are quite a few days. Time goes by fast and it does not look like it, doesn't it?. Specially, at the beginning. Well, there was not anything more that maybe just stopping for a few seconds to think about how many things have happened during all these weeks. And now, keep counting them.

News

One thing I have not yet managed to do is to follow more or less regularly the local news. It is true that language is a barrier, but there are at least two newspapers in English (plus their respective websites). In fact, I tend to follow the news on the net, and I have not changed much my routine.

That can be a good thing, since from websites, podcasts and similar things, I can be in touch with what happens at home or somewhere else in the world (that's what you get from following the BBC site), but I can also miss what is happening a few meters from home. Obviously, I know where to go to look for information about typhoon alerts, in the odd chance that nobody would tell me anything. About the rest, well I don't get too many news.

But I do not worry. I think it is just a matter of time. At the beginning of staying in a place so far away and so different, you do not understand much about the political or social situation, and most of people's names or place names are mostly meaningless. After a few months in the country, you begin to distinguish among sources, where things are happening, how people think about it. That is what happened for me in Columbus. So, I guess that sooner or later I will submerge deeper and deeper into what is going on in this island and around. Another step in the process.

Shopping center

I went to the 101 Building today. Apart from finding the bus lines that can take me there instead of the MRT, I thought it was about time to pay a visit. I have not gone up the tower, even if there was probably a nice view this evening, because I was not in the mood of queuing for half an hour and it was a little late. It's no big deal, I still have many days left to do it.


So I took a walk around the shopping center that is sprawled at the bottom of the tower. As you can imagine, with a building so large, the shopping center is also very large. And typical. It is full of multinational shops, extremely clean floors, many lights and wide spaces dedicated to nothing. Not much different from any american or european mall. I can't help it, I feel emotionally empty in these places after a while, and almost dirty.


But I made a very interesting discovery in the Page One bookstore, which has a huge amount of books in English. I don't think I will have any problems of running out of stuff to read. As usual, I got a couple of books.

The funny moment was when I wandered into a toy store —you know, Christmas is getting closer and I must look for ideas for the little ones— in a different floor. In hindisght it was inevitable, but I did not expect it until I saw it before my eyes: so close to Japan, it is not so strange to find robots and all kinds of manga figures. I drifted back to 1978 or 1979 for a moment, in the middle of the post-Star Wars and Mazinger Z craze, when my grandparents came back from a trip to Japan and they brought us a robot from some popular TV series, that we did not know. How all the japanese packaging fascinated us.

Well, then, there were several Mazingers on sale

and I saw the same robot that must be somewhere at home. I could see how that little kid of so many years ago was smiling inside.

Up

One of the researchers here, from hungarian origins, made me realize a couple of weeks ago. He was talking to some taiwanese about food and said that it was odd, but in Europe, the US, the West, it is not in good manners to hold your plate in your hands and get it close to the mouth. It is the spoon or the fork the one that has to move. It is not so here; it is very common to see people eating with their soup bowl on their hands or, particularly, the rice bowl from which you pick up small lumps of rice to mix them with something else. And I am included in that group.

True, very different ways, but I was not surprised at all.

For lunch

I went today to what they call here a Lunch Talk, which is precisely that: a talk during lunch. These talks have two differences with the Colloqiums: they are supposed to be more informal and shorter; and if you register on time, the deadline is usually two hours before, you get a lunchbox for free to eat right there. It is a way of promoting the talks. Not everybody does it, because it can be difficult to eat and pay attention to what is said, even if I don't think it is so if you have some place where to put the box. Sometimes, the lunchboxes are pretty good too. We are on a good streak, lately.

Today it was fun, because one of the faculty, who uses to bring his own food, came into the room when the talk had already started, carrying one of those electric grills where you can toast some bread or maybe cook some sausages. He put the grill on the table next to him, plugged it in and just waited until the small pastry he put inside was done.

I can't wait for the day that somebody brings a barbecue.

Little blue trucks

Here there are two examples of the characteristic small trucks, almost vans, that run around Taipei, at any place and at any time.

The cabins are blue and they are relatively small. As far as I can tell, they are used by repairmen, deliveries or different kinds of transport. The frozen goods delivery trucks do not usually have this color, although I have seen a few too. Contrary to what could be expected, they are not from the same maker. I have seen different brands, even if at the beginning I thought they all were from Mitsubishi.

I do not know why, but I fancy them. They have a very asian look, and it is not because of the characters. Too many movies, maybe. As you can imagine, they speed by loaded with any kind of stuff, lurching from one side of the street to the other.

Writing

I read somewhere on the web last week that the number of syllables in Mandarin is approximately 1700, much less than in English (around 8000), and I guess other indoeuropean languages. I am not sure if they count the tones there, but the truth is that you notice that really fast and makes it hard to remember the words.

I also read that making use of that, a chinese writer, Zhao Yuanren, wrote a book only using the sound shi (with different tones, it can be to be, ten, stone, lion, etc). As a result, the book is readable, because the characters are different, but it is impossible to understand if it is read out loud. As it happens, a couple of days later, while I was having dinner with people of my group here, one of the students was smiling as he was reading a newspaper. When I asked him why, he showed me a short text, two or three lines, that was an example of that book. Yes, I could recognize several characters that sound as shi.

Anyway, that is like those french books by Perec —a book written without using the letter e, the most frequent in French, or one where the only vowel used is the letter e— or so many other experiments. It is a human constant; we like to play with words and we are sick in the head.

Masks

They wear them when riding in scooters, which is perfectly understandable with the pollution of the city air and all the smoke from cars and scooters that they might gulp down. They also recommend, or maybe require, to wear them in the MRT if you have the flu —something also very sensible. I have seen people that seemed to be sick wearing them, and also some people seem to wear them all the time. Some are very ugly, others are the same kind you can find at hospitals, others have all kinds of designs, colours and figures.


But I don't know why, I cannot get used to them. Those who wear them all the time, come across as maniacs. And even, if it is a protection measure, specially since the bird flu outbreak, every time I see somebody coughing and wearing those pieces of wooly cloth, I wonder if they are not another source of infection.

Anyway, the weather has not yet been one to get many colds. We still have end of summer temperatures.

Newlyweds

During the lunch break in the meeting I told you about yesterday, I went out of the building after having lunch to enjoy the wonderful weather outside. There was a very nice temperature, with a bright Sun and a predominantly blue sky. Suddenly, I see a girl with a wedding dress, with the bridegroom at her side (but brides are much easier to spot, with all the volume of the dress), posing for pictures on the grass in front of me. I remembered that I had seen a couple when I arrived to the meeting at 9am, but I had not paid any attention.

Then I looked around and I saw two or three couples more near the sculptures to my right. No, four, five if I count the ones taking a picture in front of the sports center. More behind the door or near the walkway!. A true plague of newlyweds posing for pictures or looking for a place to do it. Alone with the photographer or with their families. It was almost scary.


It was still full of newlyweds and photographers when I left, after 4pm. I do not know what could be going on in the sports center: a competition of wedding dresses?, a picture competition?, marriages in bulk?. At least, it was an ideal day for taking pictures.

Intensive

Today, I have spent more or less seven hours listening to Chinese non-stop. For some reason that escapes me, I am probably sick in the head, I went to a meeting of several taiwanese astronomers that are preparing a big proposal of several projects to ask the taiwanese government for money to fund them. It has been very interesting to see the projects they are working on, or about to start, and the amount of money they need, or ask for. And it is a lot of money. But with the exception of a talk, that I suspect has been in English because the speaker is a Cantonese-speaker, everything has been in Mandarin. Fortunately, the slides of most of the talks were in English, it would have been impossible for me otherwise.

Anyway, it was very interesting too. Aside from being able to read some chinese characters, I could understand a word now and then, even some simple sentences; I could tell how different accents or ways of speaking allowed me to make out more sounds —maybe not so many words— from one speaker to another; and the best was the large quantity of English words they put in the mix. Some, as everywhere, are technical words. I have seen that many times since I started doing this Astronomy thing, even if I do not agree with it, because I think that you can find as good a word in any language as English does. But I am wondering since six months ago, why they use so many English words when Chinese probably has an equivalent word since centuries. I have heard some spectacular examples today. And I do not think it is because I was there.

Translations

How many times have we tried to translate a word to another language, but it seems that we don't really find it?. Having a translator in the family, I have seen it a few times, even with professionals. I witnessed an exaggerated example of that last Wednesday. They are about to establish a joint center of several of Taiwan's universities in order to prepare for the use of ALMA, and they were looking for a translation of the English word Advancement, in order to translate its name to Chinese. So, they started throwing in ideas. As you can see in the picture, they found more that twenty different ways.

I cannot say how close the meaning of the proposed words were to the English one or if they were more or less acurate approximations or were only poetical. They also told me that they were not only looking for a word close enough, but it also had to sound right, even with some special added quality. All in all, very difficult.

They told me today that they finally found the word. It didn't look like that to me on Wednesday. The funnier thing will be the acronym they may end up using. It will be partially my fault.

Places you will never see again

These internet communications work in a very funny way. At small bursts. These last three or four days, I have been able to talk, through e-mail or some kind of chat, with several people I first met or found again in the US. I had not heard from them for several weeks, or months in some cases, and now all at the same time. It is always good to be updated on each others' lives and getting the latest news.

Maybe that is why I remembered a thought that crossed my mind a couple of weeks ago, and then I thought that it was coming really early. Put in a simple way: there comes a day, when you are like me in a faraway place from which you know you will leave relatively soon, that you look around, to the places that you walk by almost every day, and realize that you will leave one day and you will probably never see them again. Then, I usually feel a mix of nostalgia (of the future) and disbelief at the possibility of such a thing like that ever happening. I began having that feeling in Columbus maybe six or seven months before my stay would finish, that is why I was so surprised of thinking about it so soon.

That can also be applied to the people you meet, but that is a completely different story. There are more chances to see each other again, but, at the same time, distance can be harder too.

Don't worry, it was a fleeting thought that has not come back... yet.

Group meetings

Naturally, there are several groups of people in the IAA that meet periodically according to their interests or fields of work. I won't bore you with the names of the groups, specially because I do not know their exact number. A short time after I arrived here, I was invited to assist to the weekly meetings of the Late Stars Group. The meetings were usually very interesting, even if I have worked very little in that field. While they lasted, because after the two postdocs that were more active maintaining the flow left, there have not been any more meetings. Something similar probably happened to the meetings of the Star Formation Group, which aremuch closer to what I have been working on. I was told when I arrived that they had not met for months. I gave a talk for one meeting in August and that was all; no other meeting.

That is, until recently. Two of the postdocs and I met to draft some ideas or proposals to try to bring these meetings back to life. One of the drawbacks of these kind of meetings is that maybe too many people go and the speakers are prone to giving a kind of monolithic talk, that does not invite much to the participation of the audience and it is very tiresome to prepare. What happens then?, that once everybody has done his/her bit, nobody can be bothered to do it again.

So, this time, we decided to do it less formal, meet in a smaller room, give a little introduction on the subject and see where the discussion would take us. The first time to do it was yesterday and I believe it was a complete success. We were there almost an hour and a half, with many interventions —prompted by the controversial spirit of the director— and a wide range of questions were raised. It may not be too useful in the short term, but it is one of those things that motivate me: to learn things, to be able to discuss several aspects related to the problem (or not), and you never know where it will end.

We will see how the next meetings go. In two weeks, it's my turn. They want me to talk about something related to Astrochemistry. Let's see what I can make up.

Dates

It's been several months that, once in a while, I think that the date I see on some modern building or in the food labels is a date I lived before, several years ago. Like this one from last week

The year 97!. Well, it is this year if we follow the (I don't really know how much) official calendar that begins in 1911, the year the ROC was founded, as I talked about the other day. I guess that it connects to the tradition of numbering the years since the beginning of the reign of the emperor.

Of course, there is the unavoidable mix of both systems, the "local" and the "universal" ones. It can look like a big mess, but it is not because the year starts also on January 1. If it did not, it would be very confusing. You only must remember to subtract 11 and that's all. It's funny, though, to try to remember what could I be doing 11 years ago.

Simple things

I have seen some students make. Well, it might be something as old as the world, but if I had ever seen that before, it was a long long time ago.

I am talking about the solution they find to take away the drink from some place where there might be small cardboard boxes to put the food in, but not any cups. They put the liquid inside a plastic bag —as the ones we used to roll our sandwiches in when going to school—, a straw too, tie a noose around the straw and you are ready to go. The handles are very convenient to carry the bag too. Of course, I am afraid it is not good for the environment, which is always the problem with these things.

Churches

Walking around Taipei, you can see many temples. It looks like there is one in every street. Some are large, some not much; some have decorated grey pillars, othere are little more than a roof with an altar. It's part of the charm of the country. Apart from these, there are other places of meeting of other religions: I have seen many christian churches, catholic to evangelist, and I was told that there is a mosque near campus. I guess there are some of other religions, but I am probably missing them (language and all that)

Churches are very apparent. Because of the crosses, of course, but also because most of the crosses are illuminated at night. It is rather strange to see a cross in the distance hanging in the dark of the night. These are a couple of examples.

I would say that the one on the right is a catholich church. I am not sure to which branch belongs the one on the left. Many of the crosses I have seen at night are red —and they are not from drugstores—, but I guess that red is a must-have color in these lands if you want to have good luck.

V-3

Sometimes in life, you spend days, or weeks, waiting for a phone call. Usually, if there is anybody in a very delicate situation, it is a call you do not want to get, ever, because it will definitely bring very bad news. At other times, it is the opposite, for instance if there is a small shawarma, as the home poets say, about to arrive. The first ones always find you. It looks like it is more difficult for the second type, especially if according to all the estimates, there were still two weeks left.

That is what happened to me yesterday. By chance, via Facebook, I got the news of the big event, or the happy circumstance. It can be a little cold that way, but that is how things are. A few minutes later, I got the confirmation via chat through the same poet mentioned above and, a few seconds later, a picture sent from the cellphone of the, I guess, happy father. One more joins the party!.

And I am so far again.

Well, for a name so rare, it is the most common one in the family.

Double Ten

Today is a holiday in Taiwan. The national Holiday. Because of the date, they also call it Double Ten or Ten ten. The 101 building has been illuminated since Monday, at least, with the double ten symbol.

Note: the cross is the number 10 in Chinese. They celebrate the 1911 uprising that ended the line of chinese emperors and brought the foundation of the Republic of China, which is the name of the country nowadays. It is curious to think that, at that time, Taiwan was under Japanese domination.

Since last weekend, there were flags along the middle of the avenues in Taipei, on bridges, pedestrian passes, in many places. I guess that they would have the customary official celebrations today, but don't expect me to be near those events. It is a free day, to use it even if it is for doing nothing.

Jackets and motorcycles

I saw it just when I started walking around Taipei. If there was a little wind or it was a little bit colder, maybe in the evening, or just because the effects of speed, this is a very common way of wearing a jacket in Taipei when riding a scooter. Backwards!

Men and women wearing jackets, coats, the upper part of tracksuits, even the typical raincoats they use when it rains like that. I read somewhere that the reason is because it has less resistance to air, if you wear them the other way they tend to swell and act like a bag. It is amazing that nobody is selling jackets made this way. Maybe the price difference and the reduced usefulness do not make it attractive enough. Now that temperatures are a tiny little bit lower, I think I am seeing less of them.

I don't know, sometimes I think they do it because it's faster to put on the jacket that way if it's not cold, and do what is really important, run around with the scooters.

Guo tie

We had another group meeting today. One of those that finish so late. For once, I remembered and went back to the tradition that Chen Chou and I started of buying what they call here guo tie for dinner.

They are a kind of fried dumplings, that with a sauce, spicy or not according to your tastes, are very good. We also used to have some soy milk too. I was introduced to them a few days after I arrived, but it had been a couple of months since the last time I had them. There is a restaurant not far from here, in the Gongguan night market, that makes them and it has not been difficult to be understood. It was something very simple to say, of course, but I am amazed every time that I try to say something and people understand me.

Old smells

It has been several months since I smelled it. The use of illegal drugs in Taiwan is seriously forbidden. Drug trafficking can be punished with the death penalty. I don't know about the use, but I have not seen anything in all these months. Of course, I don't care about them, but I know some people who I doubt if they can last long enough without rolling some herbs and burning them.

That's why I was so surprised this evening, when I walked by a car with the engine on and a man inside waiting for somebody, to smell the smoke that was coming out the window. That guy was not really smoking tobacco. And maybe it is because I am not used to it, but it seemed to be very well loaded.

Wandering

Numbers fascinate me. Today would not be a special day, if it wasn't five years today since I packed my bags and I took a plane to Columbus (OH, as they say). A nice number, it's worth it to stop for a second. Five years travelling around the world. Nothing special, I know: three continents, four countries, look for an apartment, buy everything... It often seems to me as if it was longer than that, but it's only five years. If I compare them to the previous five, quite a lot of changes and new things I have had to do.


The question is, what have I learned from it?. Or, what have I left behind, what have I found. Many things, I guess, good and bad. Meeting people, saying too many good-byes. At least, it was not boring. And it is still going.

Colors

I went to buy some food this morning. It was about time too, because the fridge was almost empty and I didn't go yesterday. Looking for some fruit, I would have never said that this was a pear, if not for the shape.

I do not think I had ever seen pears of this color: red crimson according to the label. But they are pears indeed. With a more than acceptable taste and the consistency that I like.

Window bars

This could be a typical image of many streets and alleys of Taiwan.

Window bars in the facades of buildings. Not only in the lower floors, but almost in all of them. The more modern buildings don't have them, but they are very frequent in the rest of them. I also saw many in Lanzhou, in China. I don't really know why, but apart from the tiled facades, the bars in balconies and windows are one of the first things I saw in the cities around here. Not quite beautiful, but you get used to them. In time, you even begin distinguishing different styles and some are very nice. A little like balconies in Barcelona.

Kuàizi

I cannot remember who said it, probably one of those pompous charlatan journalists that are in radio-talks or write in some newspaper, but he was shocked to think about the day when all the chinese use toilet-paper and how that would impact the trees, etc. Well, he probably did not care at all, he had to vent the typical personal obsessions of these kind of people. And anyway, they probably do already. But I am sure he never even imagined the amount of wood that is used to make all the single-use chopsticks that you get in many restaurants and take-aways. If we multiply that for, I guess, a large part of Eastern Asia, the number must be frightening. Many places do have chopsticks that can be cleaned and used again, but not on many others. It is probably cheaper for them.


Weeks ago, somebody explained that it is a big problem and the Taiwanese government is trying to convince people to reduce that expense and promotes the use of multi-use chopsticks. I have seen a lot of people that carry small detachable chopsticks, use them for eating and then put them back in the bag. There are of all kinds and colors; some with very attractive designs. I guess I will end up doing the same. It is much more convenient in the long run.

Repair shops and karaokes

I have seen in many of the cities that it looks like different parts are dedicated to different kind of businesses. For instance, some areas in Taipei are full of western shops or big department stores; other are swarming with official buildings. Around where I live, and close to the campus, there are many (small or very small) car o scooter repair shops or, in my street, many karaokes.


At the beginning, when I still couldn't understand what the signs meant, I was thinking that, from they way they looked like, some of them might be, let's say, places of doubtful reputation. Problems of coming from where I com from. I do not know if they are or not, the sign outside reads karaoke. In Chinese way, where the 'ra' syllable is pronounced 'la'. Some clichés are partially right. With the mix of Japanese and Chinese speakers that I can observe, it is very funny to check the opposing trends of both groups when it is time to pronounce those sounds.

After the Storm

This morning, I could finally take the picture of this tree felled by the typhoon just in front of Shida

with all the mess of wires that it took away with it.

At least, it can be seen that the typhoon did something. I would say that it also tore down one of the tall trees (are they cedar trees?) than line the street that leads to my office building, because there is the broken stump of a tree that I did not remember, and the cut pieces of the trunk on the other side of the street. But I am not sure, maybe it was only sick. Quite a long tree, nonetheless.

It is a pity that I can't understand the TV news, because I am sure that there were many juicy incidents. I was told yesterday about a coach that was toppled by the wind in the middle of the freeway, and about thirty people injured as a result.

The news are... that another one could be coming!. It does not look probable now, but you never know.

Technology

Internet is wonderful, especially for all the little tools to be found and to be used so easily. As you probably know, this is the English adaptation of my original blog written in Catalan. Maybe somebody reads this or maybe not, but it is a personal experiment. Recently, I added to that blog one application, if you don't deactivate javascript, that facilitates the translation of the blog to many languages using the Google translator

The translations are quite fast and the results are... well, as they are. They can be more or less good depending on how I play with the structure of sentences. But it is very funny to see what you wrote in Catalan translated to Chinese and only be able to understant a few characters. In any case, it can be used to practice or to help somebody to understand what I wrote.

This doesn't mean that I will stop writing here, at least not for now, but you know where to go if you want to read the posts I may not duplicate.

Typhoon Day

We had the visit of another typhoon, Jangmi, this week-end. They are popping up everywhere lately, almost at a rate of one per week, but not all of them reach Taiwan —I saw right now that there is one approaching Vietnam. This time, specially yesterday, the wind was much stronger at home and the rain did not stop at all. I think there was some influence from the monsoon more to the Southwest too. So we have had three days of non-stop rain.

The typhoon touched ground last evening and it apparently was lost in the (tall) taiwanese mountains. It is very curious to see in the radar images all the turns it made until it found the other coast and left. As a result, the government decreed a day off for schools and official places, and I think also for banks and other offices. So, I stayed at home, but the weather was not so bad as yesterday. It was still raining, but without any wind.

This is what they call Typhoon Day: a holiday because of the forecast of very bad weather. I am sure there are people that really look forward to it. It is my first one. I missed the previous one, because I was in China. Some people would say that I missed a holiday.

Horns

More street scenes. I was walking up Roosevelt Rd yesterday evening in the direction of the ASIAA where I had to meet two postdocs to go have dinner and talk about serveral things related to group meetings. It was past six, which is when it seems that there is more traffic, and more chaotic, and I could hear a siren. There was an ambulance trapped on the other side of the street, in the middle of many cars and scooters. While I was walking by I kept looking at it and almost nobody was moving. Probably because they could not do it, or if they did it was very difficult.

What surprised me the most, in the more or less one minute that it took to the traffic wave coming from the downstream light to arrive, was that I could not hear any car horn. I am sure that there would have been a concert in Barcelona, among the people that would have wanted to move aside to let the ambulance pass, the ones who could not do it, the ones who wouldn't do it and the ones who are more righteous than anybody else. Not here. I may have talked about it before, but they only use the horns in extreme, for them, cases. Sometimes in normal situations, too. I am grateful, because the last thing we would need is to have something like I saw in China with the huge amount of traffic here. But, at the same time, I am beginning to think that it may make it more difficult to get used to the way they drive here.

The Last One in the List

Ok, another talk done, and I have finished with all of them, even the ones that popped out of nowhere. This last one was remunerated, since I am not directly affiliated with NTNU —I am in another strange position, for a change. Not bad at all. The audience was not specialized, many people were not in Astonomy, and I tried to adapt to them. I only hope they understood something. As usual, I got a couple of ideas from them.

Not a bad day, and we even managed to do a two-way videoconference with Skype. The little one is not so much, but she moves more than ever.

Remains

When you arrive to a place so far as this one, you must look for an apartment, and then you spend several weeks looking for furniture, household things, matresses, etc. And the other way around, when you must leave the country. You spend days and weeks trying to sell them, or giving them away, or finally throwing them away. You can't and it's not worth it to take most of the things. So, there are several cycles of people passing things from one to another.

All of us who have been away have done that at one point or another. In the end, at least for me, I don't care how much I can get from all the stuff, I only want to get rid of it and forget about it. So, the australian couple have spent a few weeks trying to sell their furniture. There were a couple of things I might have been interested in, but since my apartment was already furnished and they were secondary things, I did not decide to buy any.

But yesterday at midday, they called me to ask me if I wanted a foldable mattress that they initially intended to take with them, but had finally decided not to do it. Typical. So, I went to his office today —they already left this morning— to take it. It's not small. I was a colourful character walking down the street with it, I guess. Specially late this evening, it was windy and rainy.

Well, if anybody pops up at my apartment now, they won't have to sleep on the floor or on the couch.

Open House

There is only one left. Talk, I mean. I gave the one that was cancelled last week because of the typhoon yesterday afternoon. I had been asked to give this talk inside the Open House day of the department of Earth Sciences of NTNU. About "the Invisible Universe".

The talk was for high-school students that had been the whole day doing several activities. Even if their English was fairly good, from what I could hear, one of the PhD students was translating or summarizing what I was saying. That made the talk proceed very slowly, but maybe it was better for them. Taking into account that I had not had much rest the night before, the talk went really well. The students seemed to be very interested and attentive, and they asked me many questions, which doesn't seem to be so usual. Well, maybe the selection of pictures I had made was interesting enough.

After that, the real Open House started. They had installed four telescopes in the building's roof and there was also free access to the dome that holds the 45-cm reflector. I didn't stay too long, because I was very tired, but I could see many people going up, with the ever present young astronomy fans that want to know about and look at everything.


After all the work of several weeks, I believe that the organizers can be very happy. There is another typhoon nearby and we have had nice days lately again. At least, you could see Jupiter and three of the galilean satellites very well yesterday. That's no small feat for Taipei's night sky.

KTV. Part 2.

As part of the farewell party of Simon and Lisa, we went to a KTV again last night. Some of us spent more than 8 hours in that room; another, japanese, went directly from the airport to the KTV around midnight, and was welcomed with a big ovation. All in all, a memorable KTV session, that I am afraid it will be difficult to best.

It was very funny. Apart from playing the clown singing, we laughed ourselves silly. Even after the first time I went to a KTV, I didn't imagine I was going to have such a good time. This was a different one and there were many more English and Japanese songs. And you could tell.


Anyway, if I could sing the Hanoi Rocks's song Tragedy, you can imagine how it was.

Tea time

One of the traditions at the IAA is the tea time at about 3pm. It's a moment when most of the people there get together, if they are not too busy. There is coffee and tea for everybody, with cakes, cookies or fruit. Some special days, be it because somebody is celebrating something, like having a baby, to welcome somebody new, or to say goodbye to somebody who leaves, the amount of food can be larger and more varied, and of better quality. Since I am staying in a different campus, I miss most of them, if I am not there because of some talk or paperwork I had to do.

Today, we said good-bye to Simon, an australian postdoc that was here for more than a year and a half. I became friends with him and his partner, Lisa, not only because they are some of the few "westerners" here. So, we have had the traditional giving of keepsakes, good luck wishes and all that.

It's surprising how many people I have met that is leaving. The postdoc's fate. As it happens, his next postdoc is in Barcelona.

We still have KTV tonight, though.

Píjiǔ

I was asked yesterday if there was any beer in Taiwan. Of course, there is. Apart from the bars that have specialized in imported belgian beer, of high alcohol content, or other american or european beers, there is also beer brewed in Taiwan. The ones I have tried are generally similar to a Heineken, a little softer probably. There are two main brands, one maybe better that the other. Neither spectacular.

I saw one beer very different last Friday. I was told later that it was part of a special edition brewed by a taiwanese beer lover who brews his own beer. One night, I had tried one of his, 14 per cent, that he had brewed to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the bar where we were. This one has something else

a Creative Commons license. It has a version number too: 3.2. An open source beer. It wasn't bad at all, belgian type, but with a different taste. I don't think you can install Linux on it... yet.

Water

No, the typhoon has not dragged me to the sea. I have only been too busy to remember to write anything. Now I think I finished the more urgent things.

We saw the Sun again today. We had been seeing only cloudy skies for days, but there was a beautiful sunset this afternoon. The typhoon has gone away and now it is going slowly towards the south of Japan. It was still raining hard yesterday morning, softer and on and off, the rest of the day.

But, how much rain these last days. I read in a newspaper that they estimate that it fell 1 metre of water in the mountainous parts in just three days!. Looking at the maps of the rain, I'd say that it rained maybe over 800mm in Taipei. It gives you an idea of the scale of the thing. In the end, because the central part of the typhoon did no cross over Taipei, the wind was not as strong as I had expected, or so they say. I have seen pictures of the damages it has wrecked on the island. Five or six dead people, some fallen bridges, overflowing rivers. Nature does not joke.

Sinlaku

It is finally here. The typhoon Sinlaku has touched ground or it is about to do it. It is a large one and it has spent a few days getting closer, because it is moving very slowly. According to the forecasts, tomorrow is the big day, if I may say it so.


I have seen some very strange changes in the weather this last couple of days. As soon it was raining a lot for 3 minutes as it stopped, there was a fine rain a few minutes later, then another shower, anything. For instance, yesterday evening, I saw an impressive show of changes of colors in the clouds: from red to purple, then blue, and finally gray, in less than 10 minutes; water curtains that don't let you see anything farther away than ten meters, and then a clear view.

The talk that I had to give today was postponed to next week and they cancelled all the events planned for today. So, after buying some more food this midday, I will spend the weekend at home. It was raining the whole day today and, even if it's not windy yet, it's uncomfortable to walk around in this weather.

And the truth is that I have enough work to do to keep me busy for more than one day.

Second one

This afternoon, I experienced the second earthquake since I arrived to Taiwan. I was in my office this time. 6.1 too. The building swayed softly like a cradle. The feeling of rocking still took a while to go. What about people?, they do not seem to care. If the tremors are like this, it's ok.

Now, we'll see if the typhoon that is nearby comes here or not. It looked like one was brewing, because we had splendid weather and clear skies these last three or four days. But there was an odd rain this evening. Very fine, but constant, with almost clear skies on top of me. We aren't exactly bored here.

Night markets

I mentioned them many times, but I think I have never really talked about what it's known here as night markets. And that's what they are, on their own particular way.

In different parts of Taipei, or other cities, there are whole streets, usually narrow, where the shops are open until late. Late depends on every zone and the day: it can be until 9, 10 or 12pm. Every place is different. That's basically a night market: many shops, selling any thing, lots of places to grab something to eat or to drink, be it restaurants or stalls in the middle of the street. All full of little lights, many billboards and people, rivers of people. I was told that one of thing that taiwanese love the most is to go to a night maket. It really looks like it.


I don't know how many there are in Taipei. Some, as the one in Shilin, are very famous and can be found in all the guides. Others, as the ones in Gongguan, Shida or Jinmei, are not so well-known, but that does not mean they are empty, quite the opposite. I was also in one in Keelung. All have things in common, and things that set them apart. There you can buy, apparently, anything. They are specially places where you can try really good dishes, even if the environment does not look like it. So you can try stinky tofu, bubble tea, all kinds of dumplings, fried things, taiwanese oyster omelettes and all those things I have talked about in other posts. And also places where you choose where you want to eat and they cook it in the pot in front of you, while you are in the queue and keep out of the way of all the people coming and going, of course.


When I was in China, I saw one in Jiayuguan too, but it was small compared to the ones in Taiwan. I guess they must be very different in the big cities.

Thinking about it, it's been quite a few days since the last time we went to one, not counting going to a restaurant nearby. Oh well, I don't think it will take too long to go there again.

Storm

Nobody knows where it will begin. You thing you are going to talk about something and that it won't be long and, all of a suddent, you find yourself in the middle of a road filled with possibilities and many different ways to go. Even if it is always a little bit dark and you presume that many of the possible paths go nowhere, it is always very exciting to follow them until you reach that obstacle that definitely blocks your way.

That is what happened to a french postdoc, who has been at the IAA for five years, and me. I wanted to talk to him about a proposal we were planning on submitting to use the SMA (Sub-Millimeter Array) on a subject I do not have much experience with. We were there for more than two hours, because during the process of understanding what was the goal of the project, if it was feasible or not, what could we get from it, ideas started popping out, related to the original one or not, of other things to try. We left the room with two or three ideas that had to be further explored, and we only had written a few sketches and notes, nothing really defined and well thought-out.

I do not know what will come out of it, not much probably —we have already seen today that we'd better forget about one of them—, but there are few more attractive things than a good old-fashioned brainstorm. It is the beginning of a road that you never know where it will take you. All in all, that was one of the goals of my travelling so far from home.

Return

To finish already. The return trip began by taking the train from Jiayuguan to Lanzhou. Bunks again, but the boarding of the train was less chaotic than in the previous trip. I fell asleep very fast again and I continued sleeping, even if somebody in one of the bunks around me was snoring so loudly that he was probably heard from Beijing. I was too tired to care.

We went back to the hotel where we had left our luggage on the way out when we arrived to Lanzhou, to have breakfast in the restaurant. It was the easiest option. Even if it was mainly another chinese breakfast, there were some sweet things, even some milk, and it tasted like heaven after having breakfast that seemed lunch for a week. Chinese breakfasts are something from another world.

The more adventurous part of our trip back began when we took the taxis to go to the airport, which is located far from the city. We were about 20, counting the taiwanese, koreans, and people from other places. We took six taxis, with at least one mandarin speaker in each. I was in the last one, with a guy from the Philippines and another from Malaysia, but from chinese origins. So, when our little convoy started, I had a little bit less than two hours before my flight, and soon we saw that it would take some time to get out of the traffic nightmare of that city.


After a while, it was clear that we were not following the same route that we took on our way in: we were in the right direction, that is westwards, but we had not crossed the river yet nor taken the desert highway. When the malayan guy told the driver, they began a very curious conversation. It wasn't clear if they were quarreling or if that was their usual way to talk, as sometimes happens. The driver said that there were two ways to go to the airport. So, why did he take that one?. I don't know, we guessed later that maybe they were saving some money off the highway tolls. The ride had its own charms though: we stopped once midway in a gas station to refill the tank — and because the taxi used that compressed gas, we had to wait outside the car, standing, for security reasons; yeah, that was the last thing we needed— and later in order to fill the tires of another taxi (yeah, when they were already warm). We could also see the more industrial and poor side of Lanzhou. So much so, that the filipino guy said when we were crossing some streets, with roadwork all around, muddy and with humble houses, that it looked like the worst neighborhoods of Manila. There was also a thick smog all over that made everything look dirty and polluted, very different from the clean looking appearance of our way in.

We got into the airport highway in the end, and when I was beginning to wonder if we would ever get to the airport, we were almost there, with time enough to check our bags and say goodbye to the other groupgs. Of course, our flight was then delayed for a little over an hour, because the Changsha airport had been closed. I could then enjoy another great exhibition of how to jump the line made by the locals and also to savour the blocking abilities of one of the taiwanese students (she was as good as an NFL tight end).

There were no further problems. The luggage zone at Changsha in the domestic flights terminal was literally a madhouse —I'd better not describe how packed and "watered" was the men's room— with people running around everywhere, who knows how many thiefs. But they checked that the bags you took were really yours. The international terminal was the complete opposite, almost the definition of peace and quiet. It was closer to a hospital.

The flight from there to Hong Kong was as placid as can be, and we could see a beautiful sunset and the show of the clouds with a storm far away (I could see wonderful lightning inside the clouds). In the end, dinner in Hong Kong while we waited for our flight to Taipei. Some kind of dumplings with bubble tea. Tasty.


When we arrived to Taiwan, and thanks to the students it was easy to find a taxi to take me home, I was really tired, from the trip and from so many intense experiences in so few days. A very interesting trip. And a lot of fodder for the blog too.

Passports

I am sure that due to the unusual international status of Taiwan, there are probably many curious, strange or just plain ridiculous procedures and situations in their dealings with China and other countries of the world. I say that because I have already experienced several.

The citizens of the ROC (Republic of China) have two passports. One is the passport they use when they go around the world, Hong Kong included. With dark green covers, it's a normal passport. But if they happen to travel to China, they cannot use it and then they carry as identification a kind of passport, issued in Hong Kong, with light green covers, which is the one they must show to the chinese police. I would say that the people from Hong Kong have something similar. Of course, both documents have different numbers.

So, we were in Chengdu airport, checking our luggage again to fly to Lanzhou, when four of the taiwanese students of our group found that, because of a mistake of the travel agency, their electronic tickets had the taiwanese passport number. Well, to be more precise, the sour-grapes-faced woman who was doing the checking told them and added that they did not recognize that number, and that was all (translated, screw you).

Fortunately, in the age of internet and electronic tickets, they could phone to Taiwan and ask the travel agency to correct the numbers of their tickets. They went back to the same counter, already when the checking should have been closed (but it was China and you know...), and the same woman checked their bags without making any comment. They must make a point of it, of course. As if we didn't know already. Incidentally, my last name was wrong in all my electronic tickets (they interchanged the r with the t), but nobody said anything about it. It is not so strange, if we take into account the different alphabet and how difficult it is for them, but they don't care, I am not important.

It was even funnier when we had to check our luggage to go back to Hong Kong. The students showed the chinese document to the air company lady, but she told them, no, no, I want the other one. They had to show the chinese one to cross the last control, of course. The nice things of these non-nationalist people!.

Rainy night

Little things. Last night, it started raining, very hard. It's not anything I have not seen before, but it had been weeks since the last time I had heard raining that it wasn't in the afternoon. In fact, I could not really tell at first if what I heard was the rain falling onto the little roof of my balcony or maybe a truck. And it sure did rain a lot. There was a torrential rain for about half an hour, as many I have already seen here. After a grey and cloudy day, I did not imagine that it would finally rain like that. It kept on raining this morning for a while, and it had also been many days since we had had a day so foggy as today. It seemed that I was in a different place and in a different season, because the temperatures were also lower.


Going back to last night again, the street turned into a kind of river and the cars and buses were splashing all over. It stopped raining before midnight, while I was finishing, really eating up, a Raymond Chandler book (The Lady in the Lake). Imagining that Marlowe is Bogart, following the characteristic rythm of Chandler's stories, and enjoying his always excellent dialogues and plot twists could not have a better backdrop than the sound of the tires of the cars rolling over the wet asphalt. It does not matter that it's not LA, you cherish that feeling so vital and distant at the same time, with a little touch of loneliness and emptiness, that a good 40s film noir movie is always able to convey.