the futility of capitalism: taipei afternoon

I arrived in Taiwan on Thursday night. It's interesting--despite the fact that the people are Chinese, there were some things that I noticed were quite different than mainland China right away. The accent is a lot different than the Chinese spoken on the mainland. Tons of people ride scooters here. The cities don't look very planned, in the sense that there are really old, crappy looking buildings right next to brand new, shiny ones. The people dress better and the women are more put together--makeup, hair and all that. And, it's not as crowded as I was expecting it to be.

Most of my time has been spent working, of course. I went to an LCD panel factory yesterday, which was pretty interesting--the parts I understood, anyway. I had to wear a face mask, head mask, full body suit and rubber boots to go in the factory. They don't make such things breathable, so I was covered in sweat by the end of the 30-minute tour. Yummy.

We had hot pot for dinner last night. If you're not familiar with this, it's where you sit at a table and have a pot of boiling, flavored water (e.g., curry or hot pepper) into which you put meats and vegetables to cook. I hadn't done this since 1999, so I was happy to do it again. I'll post some pictures when I get them from my colleagues.

We walked around a night market after dinner, which was fairly entertaining. There were all sorts of trinkets and strange foods for sale. I would have been up for getting food there instead of in a restaurant, but my American colleague was afraid of getting sick and thus played Officer Buzzkill for the evening.

We had meetings this morning (talk about lame--Saturday meetings suck), and decided to head into downtown Taipei after that. Our first stop was a teppan-style restaurant, which was good times. During the meal, one of my Chinese colleagues asked me what the craziest food I'd ever eaten was, so I proceeded to run through my usual list--pig blood, duck tongue, pig's ear, snake, etc. He wasn't too impressed with my answer, and then proceeded to tell me that when his sister had her baby, the placenta was cooked up and served to him and other people in the family. He claimed he wasn't told what it was until after he ate it, but since he was extolling the virtues of the placenta (i.e., it's really good for you and all that), I'm not so sure I believed him. Talk about disgusting.

We decided to hit Taipei 101 after lunch. 101 used to be the tallest building in the world, and it's still taller than anything in the U.S., which makes it the tallest building I've ever been in.

The area around 101 is quite nice--high-end shops, shopping malls, etc. I was quite surprised to find a long line of people waiting to get into the local Cold Stone. It reminded me of being back in Utah on a Friday night.

It's overcast today, so the views from the top of 101 weren't as great as they otherwise would have been.

There was some interesting art in the observatory at the top of 101. I have no idea what purpose it served, but it made for some interesting photography.