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.