Tag: Asus

  • Punishment

    The Taiwanese God of Torture was clearly in a humourous mid-winter mood. He (and it must be a he) made sure the weather was perfect for doing all the things we really wanted to do – like cycling, going to the beach or just chilling out in Taipei – and that we were instead subjected to a series of ridiculous tasks that would cause only to heighten the considerable pulsing pain in our heads.

    Round 1: Breakfast / Zao Fan

    Precisely what I did not need was precisely what I got. Taiwanese breakfast. I really do consider myself an adventerous eater, but not at breakfast, when all I want is the things I grew up with. What is it? Rice soup with fried offal, a fried egg, some stewed tofu in a spicy MSG sauce and if you are lucky some mechanically seperated pork meat (AKA pork floss, my nemesis).



    Don’t mess with the J-Man

    Round 2: Strawberry Picking

    Miaoli is famous for its Strawberry picking. Now, ordinarily I would be quite excited about this and would be looking forward to running around the local fields targeting enormous juicy red taste bombs in the quest to find the perfect one. What we got instead was a field smaller than the car park meagrely stocked with pale, tasteless fruit in neat, shrink-wrapped rows.



    Anke – you seem disappointed in the taste of the strawberries



    D&G; Winter 2005 – “Strawberry Chic”

    Round 3: Pottery

    For the second stage we went around a traditional Taiwanese (read: Japan / Dutch / Spanish) pottery. This really would have been okay, normally, but I really was not in a creative mood and had no temper to mess around. We did get to play with some clay at the end, though, put they gave us newspaper to build on, the newspaper absorbed the water and disintegrated and the newspaper neatly and evenly distributed itself through the clay.



    Rough, but laughing through it!

    But seriously… we really do enjoy these trips. It is just that us Euros enjoy more complaining about it! These are the times when we often see the true cultural differences, and we are pretty priveleged to be able to catch a ride with it.



    The clay is on my head, see…

  • Team Building

    We had another company trip last weekend – this time, only the ID dept. After the previous experience I knew what to expect a little more and to sit back and relax when 6 cars, all armed with allarming levels of GPS, head off in different directions completely lost.

    This time, we headed to Miaoli for an afternoon strategy session, a brutal night of drinking and a punishing day of strawberry picking and pottery to rub salt (plus tequila and lime) into a badly wounded head.

    At one point in the evening (I am not entirely sure when) the restaurant owners brought out a big wooded bowl full of rice and two large hammers. A harsh lesson was delievered to the poor soft grain, as teams of two pelted the bowl with blows hard enough to vibrate the floor. The resulting pathetic lump of squidge gradually became more and more glutinous until eventually the ref called time and announced humanity winner. I was quite surprised, therefore, that they turned the bowl out into a dish and let the team pull and rip at the rubber-like substance, filling their mouths until it was all gone and we started over again. This is the traditional method for making and consuming ‘Mah Ji’.



    Kyle wields the ritual rice torture mallet



    The crowd demands blood



    Diego delivers the fatal blow

    After the ricicide, a trip to the hot springs and running around the river a bit, drinking games brought whetever dignity we had left firmly to its knees. The main game involved a set of 4 dice. I would like to describe the rules, but the only one I cared about at the time was that I always seemed to drink on every round. We rapidly dispatched the beer and began on the Mexcal (Tequila’s rough older brother), and I was surprised to discover the Taiwanese keeping up and staying up much later than usual.



    Destruction passes through the local Taiwan Beer population



    Hello Nasty



    Markus and Michael laugh heartily at one of my many jokes of the evening

  • Andrew’s Birthday

    We had a nice wee celebration for Andrew’s birthday in the office today. It gives me a chance to introduce some people, too.



    Claire, Andrew, Cesare and Diego in festive mood



    The Incredible Fukang works it for the camera



    … and Mitch looks after the details (with Debbie in the background)

  • The funniest people in Taiwan

    Some of the names of people I have met, names I have heard, or names I have seen are simply astonishing in their originality and vision. This is a summary of my favourites:

    Adolf

    Angle

    Asterix

    Audi

    Ball

    Bighead

    Bluck

    Bossism

    Cupid

    Dodo

    Dog

    Dolphin

    Dracula

    Dreck

    Ear

    Echo

    Electric

    Element

    Eleven

    Elfex

    Enigma

    Forever

    King Horny

    Lover

    Loyal

    Marijuana

    Moses

    Mountain

    Mouse

    Muscle

    Penguin

    Pop

    Popkiller

    Porch

    Poseidon

    Prairie

    Putin

    Shadow

    Style

    Sweet

    Sword

    TiTi

    Unicorn

    Urania

    Variable

    This is a work in progress, so expect it to develop over time!

  • Familiarity Breeds Contempt

    I simply had to take a photo of a cup of tea I had the other day. As you can see from the top it says: “Familiarity Breeds Contempt” …



    Familiarity Breeds Contempt – I think they thought it meant ‘content’

  • Model Shop Boyz

    I visited the model shop today to get my phone model ironed out. As ever (and this only seems to happen to me) it turned into an episode that of course everyone in the office found hilarious. It brought back delightful memories of my previous visit to Sun Li – which you can see here.

    So I rock up to meet Adam at Che John Models (who is alarmingly non – Taiwanese in immediately expressing his views without holding back) and we cruise out to a really rather nice wee Italian restaurant where I have the very best Lasagne I have eaten in Taiwan so far (ie: bad). We shoot the breeze for a while and go back to discuss business. Before we got into it he showed me around and introduced me to the team of model shop workers, who immediately took an intense interest in me and fed me a pile of betel nuts. These things are common place on the streets of Taiwan – the “betel nut girls” post is a post for another time, though.

    Anyway, they fed me a couple of these things. You bite the end off, chuck it in your mouth and chew away. You spit out the horrific blood-red expectorant and continue chewing, and after a while you get a pretty strong hit of nicotine and this coincided with beginning to discuss the details of my proposal. A spinning world does not help in this and I think I approved all the short cuts they suggested – very smart of them, eh. They then presented me with a large pile of porn and suggested I take it before also giving me a book of fake blank Taxi receipts that I could make some nice money from. I managed to escape at this point with only sporadic feelings of weightlessness and gentle involuntary acrobatics.

    Perhaps I will make the following week my ‘Betel Nut Special’ – Markus is planning a Betel nut party for his birthday – it promises to be… blinky.

  • One night in Taipei

    I think this sums up Taiwan, Taipei and some of my experiences so far. One crazy night in Taipei.

    T.H., the president of our division, deemed that he would generously give us all in the department a meal out and a night out at Ministry of Sound in recognition of the fact that we have won some IF design awards for our corporate book shelf. Very nice.

    So, we went to Jogoya near Taipei 101 which is an all you can eat sushi place. On the way there I bumped into Tanja and Michael. Walking through Main Station we were marauded by a flock of school girls demanding to talk to us in Chinese for their homework. This was absolutely hilarious and it completely brightened up what was otherwise a bit of a shitty week.

    All you can eat sushi; I think my standards have shifted as the sashimi ain’t really all that good, but the chocolate is exceptional, and worth it for that alone. Henry and Cesare – two designers from our department – had their standard eating face-off (ridiculous quantities of food) and all the Taiwanese got very drunk and rowdy in typical style.

    The time came to head to MOS, so we piled into taxis and cars and promptly all headed in completely different directions to make sure that we all got as lost as possible. Some people arrived relatively directly and phoned us to inform us the queue was about 500m long and stretched around the block. Luckily we had planned ahead and booked a private room. Except, I think everyone believed it was like a restaurant and it would be possible to get a room with two hours notice. Yes, they phoned at 5:00pm, only to find out it was not possible. Well done. You fucked up again.

    Instead, we piled into our cars again (we were still driving as we headed off in the wrong direction down the motorway, and were trailing the main crew) and went to Holiday KTV near to my place in Shilin. Luckily, we managed to get a big enough room, and the Taiwanese set about populating the play list with hundreds of Chinese songs ensuring it was impossible for us to get a look in. I find that rather strange – little sense of team work between our two groups sometimes. Anyway, between us realising that, settling in to drink and leaving two hours before our songs came up we got hammered, and it ended up with Markus and I serenading eachother with a song I can’t quite remember.

    Roman, an industrial designer visiting from Munich, was clearly totally bemused, but I think it gave him a good impression of what we are up against. We want to build a world-class brand and we cannot even organise a simple visit to a night club!



    Elvis has left the building

  • Model Shop Romance

    When we get models made, since we do not have our own workshop (gripe no. 274), we outsource it to one of a number of model shops in the local area. When Aken, Sandie and I went along we met with the boss and chief modeller and went about explaining our concepts with diagrams and explanations and gesticulation. However, although Sandie was doing a perfectly good job of translating for me, as soon as the boss (Lau Ban) found out I was English and studied at Cambridge he insisted on getting his daughter to translate for me. This was not too bad, until he kept interrupting with random and rather derailing questions such as… “do you like Taiwan?” …. the model conversation would continue…. “do you like Taiwanese people?”…. “er, yesss….” he pauses again….. “do you like Taiwanese girls?”

    I freeze in terror, with his daughter puppy dog eyeing me, the boss probably expecting to break open the family scotch, Aken with his hand on my knee asking the same questions earnestly and Sandie in the corner almost tearing herself in two with laughter… and then there is me, stuck in the middle, unable to work out what to answer – answer “yes” and I probably need the next flight out of the country, or answer no and insult everyone (including the tough looking modellers) in the room. I opted for silence and squirming, only escaping to leave to go back to the office.

    There was no escape.

    We were offered a life in the boss’s wife’s car… and of course our friendly (and now rather creepy) daughter jumps in, eyeing me in the mirror. I am still waking up in cold sweats, expeciting her pathetic face at my window with glowing eyes.

    And of course Sandie made sure my whole office knew all the details, which of course continued the torment!

  • Work Buddies

    Some photos taken a while back with an on-loan Motorola camera phone with 1.3 Megapixels. I should note that it has a ‘Disco Mode’ with multiple colour flashing LEDs. At first I dismissed this as a meaningless blinky function… but after a couple of hours (and beers) I fell deeply in love with this essential feature. Welcome to 2004.

    Lorenzo Scazziga of Switzerland:

    Michael Held of Germany:

    Markus Wiezoch of Germany:

  • Some Notes on Corporate Life

    Good days in the office mean I find the frustrations and difficulties in the office an amazing learning experience. Bad days in the office mean I get totally wound up by being subjected to ‘The Taiwanese Way.’ I think it is important to remain philosphical and remain in the former camp.

    This week has been very interesting. I developed some designs for a set of cell phones. This project was very conservative but it allowed me to develop a design that was more like a fashion item rather than an item that was designed for the user with a rigorous approach. This was more like graphics design, and in fact I really enjoyed it – my Art School tutors I think would spin on their chairs to hear this though!

    Firstly, I have realiased that the efficiency of working out here is incredibly low. In Europe, people come in at 9:00 and work hard and intensively with the aim of leaving on time at 5:00. Meetings are as quick as possible and generally people get on with the work. Here is different. We start at 9:30, and it is not unusual for people to still be in the office at 11:00pm at night. I usually stay to 9:00pm myself. I can certainly say that I do not get any more work done in this time. Because everyone stays so late, almost as a duty, you also feel duty-bound to also stay. What this means is that instead of leaving when the work is done, you stay, maybe surf the web for 20 minutes, check your e-mail, do some low intensity work, and then it is suddenly 10:00 at night. The locals in fact usually have a sleep in the afternoon for half and hour, sometimes play a computer game or watch a DVD. This makes me mad, but I understand that if you live with your family (as most do) it is not such a bad idea to make your living room your desk. From now on, I am concentrating on working hard, fast and leaving early, and grabbing some of my lufe back in the evenings.

    The second interesting thing this week was the review of my phones. We went to see one of the most senior guys in the company and everyone is absolutely petrified of him. Our managers (also directors) quake in their boots and if he comes to the office everyone runs to their desks like rabbits running back into their holes. Meeting him was therefore a small event for me. However, although he is certainly serious and business like and very concerned with details he did not seem so intimidating to me. I can only conclude that the relative respect in heirachy compared with the UK is the major reason for this strange behaviour. It is something I will keep an eye on, but until my Chinese improves there is not much I can do about it.

    Speaking of which, Chinese is very enjoyable at the moment. The first sparks of the language igniting are occuring… but there is plenty of work still to go until I get rolling.

    Right. Some more photo – based posts on their way. But I am also trying to put down more words as my Dad wanted some more descriptive comment and analysis.