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
