Jonathan Biddle – Made in Taiwan

Tag: Miaoli

  • 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…

    The story of a British Industrial Designer in Taiwan…

  • 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

    The story of a British Industrial Designer in Taiwan…