Work and People and Such

Hello again. Life here has really picked up speed, which of course means that I stop communicating with people back home. In short: I am really enjoying Taiwan so far. There is so much to see and do around Taipei, I know I will leave here with a long unfinished to see list and an even longer list for the island as a whole. Dad and Jeffy came for a visit this past week so it was a chance to see how much I learned about Taiwan by playing tourguide. Its hard to believe that I've only been gone for a little over three weeks, it feels like ages since I left.

I want to write about my work since its the way I got here and consumes most of my time. I am working in the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute: Forest Conservation Division. My project is to set up an acoustic monitoring system at a frog pond in the mountains in the middle of Taiwan using this program called dataturbine to facilitate streaming acoustic data. Its an interesting project, but it is very intense on the computer science side of things, with gives me headaches sometimes. I am getting used to working on a computer all day, which is unfortunate. Oh well, I'm excited to become proficient in computer science.

My coworkers are all beyond awesome. My boss, Dr. Chin is a fire ecologist who spent summers during college in the great U.S national parks like Glacier and the Cascades working as a volunteer firefighter. He now goes back to Yosemite, Kings Canyon, and a lot of the other California parks to help them with fire management. For some reason he says that "We must kill smoky the bear!!" but I'm not sure I really understood the reasoning. His motto is "work hard play hard" which is pretty much in line with my personal philosophy so I have no doubt that we will get along.

There are also a group of "young guys," as Dr. Chin likes to call them, whom Mike and I eat lunch with everyday. The group is composed of Mike and I, Poki, Jason, and Sophia (English names). After an inexplicable initial shyness, we are all great friends and lunches consist of Chinese lessons, trying lots of good food, and Poki and I poking fun at Jason and Mike (and Sophia being wonderful and unconcerned with chosing sides).

And finally, there is the Mei-Ru aka "Beer Lady" (Dr. Chin's name for her). She is a wonderfully energetic woman who is a champion beer drinker and avid runner. Need I say it... my kind of person? I'm excited to get to know her better :)

As far as my project goes, in the first week I thought I was going to get it done way ahead of schedule and be able to do another less computer intensive project after. However, a composed a song about the number of bugs I have run into along the way

Caught one bug,

now I've got its brother.

Shot one bug,

troubled with another.

Fought one bug,

now to face the mother.

I made some good progress this week, though and I go back to the field on Monday to try to implement some of my work. I'm a bit nervous about how it will go since the operating system I have to work on is all in Chinese so if I don't really know what I am doing it will be difficult to get anything accomplished. I'm definitely excited for the running up there though!!!!!!!!!! Its actually under 80 degrees sometimes and there are many pretty roads and trails. Oh man can't wait!! Last time up there I actually forgot my running shoes but I still made a point of running in my rainbows :)

Now, I absolutely have to mention that the people of Taipei are absolutely the most friendly and caring people I have ever met. My coworkers are constantly plying me with food so earnestly that I can never refuse, nobody has yet gotten frustrated with my poor Chinese skills, and anyone who speaks English is more than happy to give me directions whenever I look at a map. Its interesting that people who live in such a huge, dense city are so down to earth and caring. This of course is the opposite of the reputation of city dwellers in New York, LA and Paris. I suppose I should qualify that since I don't have enough first hand experience to judge for sure. It recently dawned on me that I have never even been to a city of this size and density, let alone tried living in one. Thank goodness for the river trail, the youth park and Yangmingshan for giving me places to escape to!

Alright, time to stop reflecting and go back to living!

Until whenever,

Allison

In the Pursuit of Exercise/Happyness

Whenever I move to a new place (which isn’t all that infrequent for me these past few years), my favorite thing to do is explore the immediate surroundings. Find every little path to run on, learn the local stores, and meet people in the area. Of course, forming exercise habits is one of the essential things that I need to do to be happy in a new place. So, I dedicated this morning to scoping out the exercise scene near my apartment.

This morning proved to be a fun kind of adventure. First, I walked about 2 blocks to the youth park, which is a large park with a pond, some concrete trails, and, as I discovered today, a driving range, a lap pool, what seemed like a scuba dive certification pool, and the “PU Track,” an orange sidewalk that wound through the park. I’m excited to check out the pools and see if I can swim some laps in the mornings before work. Anyway, I started running amid many, many groups of middle to old age women doing different calisthenics, or line dances, or taichi, I couldn’t tell. There was a variety of types of music playing the soundtrack to all the different exercises going on as I ran around and around in that park with no particular method to my madness. After I had run around the whole park enough times to feel self conscious about it, I made my way run/walking to the botanic garden. I am still not sure if it is acceptable to run on the sidewalks. I got my share of weird looks, but that is beginning to be the norm for me here.

The botanic garden is a gorgeous, lush green series of gardens, and there were many people out walking, doing a similar variety of exercises to the ones I witnessed in the Youth Park, and even a few people running. I ran through a fern garden, past a garden dedicated to famous botanists, and around a stunning lotus pond. I’m really excited to go back there with my camera, perhaps after work today (we have the morning off since the main researcher is visiting his sick mother and Dr. Lu is in a meeting all morning). The running was a tad frustrating since there were so many people out strolling and flailing their arms, but I was happy to see such a gorgeous place.

Verdict is: These parks will satisfy the immediate urge to run, but I want to find the Xindian stream, which I believe has a trail running along it so that I can really let my legs loose.

Hello Taipei!

To update my blog quickly (or else I jut won't do it), I'm going to just paste the email I sent my family:

Hey again!

I'm at my apartment rested and semi moved in. The apartment is much bigger than I imagined. Mike and I each have our own room and there is a third empty room that a Taiwanese post doc will be moving into shortly. My room faces out to the street and right in my window is a huge mango tree! Its got all the essentials, a queen bed, lime green carpet, a closet, and yes.... air conditioning!!

The apartment is on the fourth floor of an small complex (I still need to figure out what our address is...) and is right across the street from a grocery store called Wellcome (an automated voice says ne how when you walk in) and a Seven Eleven. As far as food goes, I have found that black soybean milk is delicious and Taiwan beer is not so delicious. I haven't ventured over yet, but Dr. Shau says that its a 10 minute walk to the Botanic Gardens where TFRI is located. I'm really excited to check it out and hopefully it will be a good place to run. And we are also very close to a middle school that has a track, so at some point I will have to see if I can do some speed work there, though I may scare middle schoolers with my out of shape breathing...

Also, I was really excited to see that it is very common to bike on the streets here. Just as common as bikes are motor bikes, and together the bikes and motor bikes outnumber the cars! And the motor bikes tend to group up at lights making what would be a bike gang in the US but is just a bunch of Taiwanese going about their business here. Today I saw a woman with a medium sized dog standing on her bike while she was riding.

Anyway, thats all I have to report for now, I attached some pictures. Hope all is well in Concord/Oakland/Redmond!

Love,

Allison

Pre-Pre Departure

Since I just came across my Australia blog which only has one entry... I felt like I should get a head start with my Taiwan blog :)

So far, I'm day dreaming about the beautiful scenery, scheming ways to get my bike to Taiwan with me, and raising my blood pressure trying to learn Java. I meet my host mentors via video conference next week, should be interesting...