Paying the rent

Another month has passed and it is time to pay the rent (and other bills) again. I have all the papers in order, so I can transfer the money from my bank account to the landlady's account. So, on Friday morning, before going to the last sessions of the workshop (the discussion sessions) I went to the nearest ATM to do it. It is good to be able to use the menus in English, but I found problems immediately. After typing many numbers, it looks like it is about to do the transaction, but a message tells me that I have not activated the option. I could have been told at the beginning. An example of excellent programming.

Fortunately, I tried it at normal office hours, so I went into the office just there, looked for a clerk who could speak English, filled up a form that was written only in Chinese —something that I am very used to, and that it is not difficult because they tell you what to put in each box— in order to activate the service and they did it just then. Yes, the card worked perfectly when I tried to do it again. Now, I hope I introduced the right bank account number.

Workshop

It's Friday afternoon. The fifth and last day of a workshop on numerical simulations, chemistry and radiative transfer that has been held at the IAA. It was a more or less informal meeting, with the goal of sharing knownledge and techniques of the three fields. I was told about it on last week, about Thursday, and I was really encouraged to go after my talk on models.

There were all kinds of talks, as usual, but it's been generally interesting. But I am exhausted. All day listening to talks, discussing with people; going to dinner with them; I feel as if my life is turning into chaos. Maybe it's the breakup of routine. So much that it is almost impossible to answer e-mails. But who knows what will come out of it?.

Lottery in the tickets

Every time I bought something during my first days in Taiwan, people insisted on giving me the sale receipt. Ok, they are given everywhere in the Western world and you are supposed to keep them, but it seemed a little bit odd until I was told that there is a bimonthly lottery in Taiwan where the winning numbers have to be compared with the numbers found in the upper part of the sale tickets, which already come printed out like that. The prize is higher the more coinciding numbers there are, beginning from the right-hand end.

It is part of a government program that tries to fight fraud, pirated products and, I guess, tax evasion, encouraging people to ask for the tickets, which are designed by the goverment. There is a web address on the back side where the winning numbers corresponding to the sale months of the tickets are published. I looked it up one day, out of curiosity, but all was written in Chinese. So, I either ask somebody or I will never know what is my luck. Or maybe I must look harder. Anyway, it can be difficult, and crazy, to try to find a number that has any prize


I have been keeping the tickets, but I could as well throw them away, because I understand very little on them.

ps: I made a better search and I found a webpage in English. The result?, keep on trying.

First talk

I gave my first talk at the ASIAA yesterday. It was supposed to be rather informal and I thought it would be short, but it filled up all the available time, after questions and because I (finally) did it slowly. I had been asked to explain something about chemical models of the interstellar medium. And not by people working in the same field I have been usually working, star formation, but on the other end, late stars (the ones getting closer to die, so to speak).

Since it is a rather wide subject, and I don't know that much, even if I have worked with people that know almost everything and something has probably filtered down, I tried to make a simple review and to explain the things you usually do when you make models. Several people told me that it was very clear. I don't know, I always get the impression that I bore them to death. The truth is that they asked many questions and, even more, several told me that we should look into some things and maybe start a collaboration. Excellent, that was the idea, but if things keep going like this, I will be so busy that I won't have time to do anything. What bothers me a little is how fast people tag you as 'the expert' in something. I can't deny I know how some things work, but I think I am still far from being an expert.

Anyway, it's been a way to inaugurate my departamental personal webpage and put there the file of the presentation. Mass communication!.

Taxi drivers

It happened to me a couple of days ago and it happened again last night, and at other times too. I am walking on the street and I hear that somebody is blowing the horn of a car. When I lift my head, it is a taxi driver that is trying to get my attention to see if I want to take it. Of course, they don't know my general aversion to take taxis (long stories to tell about Barcelona that don't matter now). Even then, I still miss a little bit those Columbus taxi drivers, who barely spoke English and did not know half the streets, but had the car full of little prints, trinkets and all kinds of pseudo-religious stuff. The two best ones were two ethiopian drivers, who were some strange version of christians, that didn't stop talking and telling me stories about their lifes.

I felt a little bit bad, not much really, about a guy that almost stopped his car next to me the other day and was short of getting out of it to get me. I didn't even look at him, of course. But I don't know how could they stop sometimes, if I needed them, because they usually don't slow down a bit. They probably would cause a multiple collision. It was funny last night, because the guy used the horn when I was literally under my window. Yes, it was almost midnight, but we had just had the big Thursdays meeting on Wednesday, and I had been helping two very disoriented students.

Of course, I was going with a japanese girl that was looking for a taxi one night, and there were none in sight. She ended up taking the MRT. It must be some part of the test they must pass in order to get their license.

End of term

July is here and you can tell by the amount of students I find in my building's elevator or at the cafeteria. Fewer!. It's been days since I had to share the elevator with 8 other students, while it stops in many floors. Because my office is in the last one, the eighth.

If I understood it right, the system here is of two semesters, so the last exams were last week. I could already see then a square made with tape where there were old and broken things. Since last Monday, I've seen many more. It is some order in trash. A square where people can throw all that they don't want any more. You can imagine. But with the showers that we have almost every afternoon, I don't think that anybody can make any use of them. I saw an old football today, that made me think about the past.

It is also the time when students must leave the dorms, maybe because they finished and are leaving or because they must move to a different building, as a student told me, because their dorm is closed for the summer. There are also students arriving. Yesterday, I saw on and in front of the stairs that lead to the cafeteria a large sprawl of computers, flatscreens, clothes and cardboard boxes, and several cars from which they were unloading more stuff. We only had a narrow path to go through.

Ah, the change of seasons!.

(Back from the Past) Rain

(from 23/5/2008)

I got a little wet today in my (almost) daily pilgrimage between the NTU and NTNU campuses. A hard rain just began, with lightning and thunder, when I left the ASIAA. I thought it could be one of the famous tropical thunderstoms that last about 20 minutes, so I waited a little bit. No way, I decided to risk it half an hour later. Little by litte, and taking a technical stop at a Starbucks to wait if it dissolved or under a small balcony, I reached my office. I have been fortunate of the typical porches that are in many Taipei buildings. Like these


It doesn't take a great intelligence to see what is their main utility. They are also packed with shops and more shops, with all kind of signs, little lights and things to sale.

The rain has lasted for more than an hour, but at the end, even the Sun has reappeared. I don't know if it was a tropical storm caused by the heat or what is to be expected in the rainy season, though. I think it will be a wet evening/night.

NTNU

I told you about Taida yesterday, today about Shida. Shida is the colloquial form of NTNU, National Taiwan Normal University (Kuoli Taiwan Shifan Daxue). Shida is a much smaller university than Taida, but they are really proud of the quality of some departments, specially the Chinese Culture Department. My office is in the little campus that they have in the Gongguan area, which is the Science campus. The main campus is about 2km NW from there. Not very far, but it takes a while walking.


This campus is small, specially compared to Taida's. But because of that, it is very quiet. It has some sport fields, and then an avenue with the department buildings, at the end of which it is my building

and several student dorms. Everything is near by. There is an elevated highway and the river just behind it.

There are not many vegetal decorations, but there is a little garden in front of my building, where I've been having lunch lately if it's cloudy, and a little farther away a small wet area where you can hear frogs at night.



It is a pity that there is a small hell of noise, cars, scooters, and concrete between the Shida Branch campus, as it is usually called, and Taida.