Jonathan Biddle – Made in Taiwan

Tag: Taipei

  • Sun Yat Sen

    Lorenzo and I caught some rays near Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall – one of Taiwan’s most precious national monuments and most ugly of buildings. Lots of kites and families (and not the free single women we hoped for). Still, the ridiculous hedges made us question humanity itself.



    Hideous Taiwanese Fire-Spitting Thunder Donkey of the southern mountains



    Lorenzo arrives in Style (with SYS building behind)



    The very nice grounds of the National Taiwan University (NTU) – and still no girls to be seen



    Later, we went to eat Stinky Tofu with Ji-Ru … it smells like camel sweat, but actually tastes quite good

    The story of a British Industrial Designer in Taiwan…

  • Moon Festival

    Ele in Taipei!

    The Moon Festival is one of the biggest annual festivals in Chinese culture. It is a centre-piece of the Lunar Calendar, but mainly seems to involve the entire island making barbecues. The whole place is full of smoke (I am convinced you could see it from Hong Kong) as people cook food in the streets, on the roofs, in the parks … but it is a really nice festival where family comes together.



    Full moon … on the roof with my Chinese teacher, a couple of her students, Ele, Tanja and Michael



    Barbecue on the balcony



    Warp Factor 10



    Rebels without a cause

    The story of a British Industrial Designer in Taiwan…

  • Rain rain rain

    Well,

    Taipei certainly knows how to deliver water. Another typhoon is playing silly buggers off in the Pacific which of course means.. rain for us. Last night, after drinking with my Swiss buddy Lorenzo, I took a taxi home and the water in the road reached the top of the car’s wheels. It was crazy – especially when inebriated. (see lorenzo below)

    Last week was a good week at work. Got my groove on in several areas and generally felt happy with my work… however, these four days of success were brought back down to earth with a bang when I began learning Pro Engineer software – the toughest software known to man. Next week may be frustrating!

    The story of a British Industrial Designer in Taiwan…

  • Birds of a Feather

    Just a strange photo of a bike carrying pigeons – surely on the way to slaughter!

    The range of strange motorcycle – related vehicles you see over here is incredible. Everyday the ride to work yields another permutation on what is seen as possible to carry on a 150cc bike. I’ll gather together the images over the next few weeks and show them off… they even extend to mini sized Harley Davidsons.

    I have heard a story from one of my friends that he saw a scooter with a passenger on the back holding a medical drip in the air as they rode along – with the ambulance in the background syuck in traffic. It is common to see gas cylinders attached to motorbikes being transported to customers, families of 4 (plus dog), food vending stalls mounted on the back…. and so on. And of course the fork lift trucks on the motorway. Anyway – here is the first of the images:

    The story of a British Industrial Designer in Taiwan…

  • 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.

    The story of a British Industrial Designer in Taiwan…

  • Thoughts

    I had an interesting couple of chats with 2 designers who are working out here. They have both been out here for a number of years and they were asking me how I was getting along, and more specifically what my first few days were like.

    It seems like such a long, long time ago that I arrived. I only arrived in May, so I have been here for getting on for 4 months. That’s longer than I have ever been away from home for (the longest before that was 3 months in USA, Mexico and Central America). It was really nice to go back to this blog and see my thoughts for those first few days – it was not something that you can remember easily, since the first few days are so intense. They could not, sadly, remember a thing about their initial emotions as they have now been here for so long and the things that are exotic and strange quickly become commonplace.

    One nice thing was that we all seemed to notice very similar things on those first few days. The Beetlenut girls by the sides of the roads, the first song that we heard on the radio in English and the state of the driving! I am very glad to have those thoughts down – I can never tap into those feelings again! Especially as any subsequent trips to other Asian countries I think will have less impact for me now (although I suspect there are plenty of surprises up its sleaves!).

    So, four ish months in and how is it going? Life is certainly not easy, but it is fun and interesting and everyday has special moments. Even small things.

    The other day, I got to my scooter and found that I had a puncture. Now, in the UK this would be a really dull and boring chore to get it fixed. No sooner had I got it past the front gate on the way to the main road the security guards ran over and started chattering at me in super fast Chinese. They virtually grabbed the bike off me and one ran back with a pump. He starts pumping like hell, sweating for his life when a senior engineer comes over and tells me in absolutely perfect English that “I shouldn’ kill myself by pushing it all the way there…” and he rolls up his sleaves and starts fondling the tire looking for the hole… all the time I am standing there bemused watching the security guards pumping air (this was probably the most exciting thing that had happened to them in weeks) when they all start pointing and shouting and tell me to get on and ride as fast as I can while I still have some air left and have a chance to make it to the scooter shop (if you throw a stone in Taipei in a random direction it will either hit a 7-11 or a scooter shop). I make it there and it costs me 80 Nt (about £1.20) to fix it. I had a sudden thought to buy some Coke for the now worn out guards so I run to 7-11 and scoot back to give it back. I virtually have to thrust it into their arms to make them take it, but the next day I get a very offical salute from them as I enter the gates – something that is usually reserved for the Directors. So, a dull job made fantastically fun.

    The story of a British Industrial Designer in Taiwan…

  • Weekend Drinking

    Well, I more or less managed to fill the entire weekend with drinking, or recovering from drinking. On friday I went out with the guys from the office and met Francoise – an industrial designer for an MP3 player company – and Dean – a freelance British industrial designer. Had a fun night and stumbled home, after calling all my friends in the UK on my mobile… $$$

    Saturday was mainly spent feeling a bit dog awful, but I did manage to get the rest of my images up for this blog, which is good. It is actually a really nice thing that I enjoy having now – it makes me realise I am over here and doing it! Now I am in the swing of everyday life it is easy to forget that I am doing something unusual and adventurous.

    Also, I had, quite simply, the BEST sashimi of my life in the afternoon, and in a restauraunt really near my house too – which I had to be pleased with! Some sparks of Chinese language meant I was able to communicate to a limited extent with the family who owned it, and even the ‘Lau Ban’ (Boss) who was splendidly gruff and Japanese. The food was prepared entirely by hand to the Chef’s specifications – no menu – freshly cut and prepared, and laid out on the table in front of you. Rather different than the Yo Sushi! belts I am used to in London.

    I met up with the guys in the evening, and had a pleasant house party at Zoe and Louisa’s … and went to the nastiest meat market Club in Taipei – Carnegies. Fat American men and young Taiwanese girls. And us. Dancing on the bar. Ahem.

    Sunday was spent more or less cruising around Ximen. I met up with Lorenzo and had a few beers with him at a nice Belgian bar.

    The story of a British Industrial Designer in Taiwan…

  • Shrimp Fishing

    One activity that is truly Taiwanese is to go shrimp fishing. A swimming pool area is reserved for the wee crustaceans and we fire at them with bits of liver and smaller shrimp babies on the end of rods. Now, these babies really are quite a bit bigger than you may expect… and in fact are the largest shrimp (and most aggressive) I have ever come across. Not quite lobster sized… but big enough to hurt when they grab you, and grab they do, as you pull the hook out of their little mouths. Here is the pool… “come in – the water’s lovely!”

    Here is the lineup of the team at work (we had a whole pool booked for our pleasure)

    Michael hard at work drinking:

    The lovely, appetising bait:

    Rod’s eye view of proceedings (plus Lorenzo in the background):

    FOOD

    The story of a British Industrial Designer in Taiwan…

  • Guting

    View of Guting, in the south central area of the city:

    The story of a British Industrial Designer in Taiwan…

  • Cha

    Klara and I scoot off to the tea rooms in the mountains to the south of the city. Here is a quick view of what it may feel like to be a on a scooter… The awesome power of 150cc’s.

    At the tea room, and here is the tea set we are presented with. It is a real pleasure to hang out and look out over the city. The green tea is very delicate in flavour, though it is surprisingly difficult to get the taste really good, due to over brewing, under brewing, the wrong temperature, too many leaves… and no doubt a multitude of more spiritual factors related to the stars or feng shui.

    And here is an image over the city where Taipei 101 actually looks good and tall for once (it is the tallest building in the world, and yet it looks like a stack of American Chinese Take Out boxes stacked on top of one another.

    On the way back we went to Ting Tai Fung – one of the most famous restaurants in Taipei. It serves the most delicious Shanghai dumplings, and the queue outside to get seats is about 40 minutes. However, they are truly a special flavour. They cook each set in a bamboo basket that pile up into a steam chimney. Quite ingenious, I think, and the food stays warm for ages. Here is the kitchen:

    Klara and I in the Shi Da district of Taipei. Near here is a quite splendid ‘Shaved Ice’ cafe – they create what is effectively a pile of snow and top it with sweet, delicious mango. mmmmm….

    And here is the coolest dude I have ever seen (below, not above – that’s me). This is the absolutely standard pose of people in photos in Taiwan. I have no idea why… but if a camera appears, this is the effect.

    And here is the offending Shaved Ice… this time in fact at a place in Shilin food market. The expression explains things I don’t understand….

    The story of a British Industrial Designer in Taiwan…