I just had a superb video conversation with Mum, Dad and Granny in Taipei airport … wirelessly. I hooked up Skype, MSN and my digi cam and was talking to them from the middle of the check in hall (I am now in the departure lounge and chatting away with my sis now). Amazing.
I took some great screen shots of the conversation with the family:
I now have supa speedy ADSL in the apartment. I’ll be on MSN Messenger and also Skype for free voice calls (user name: jhbiddle). That’s all.
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:
Attempting to use a new blogging program…. this is the team a few months ago at a barbie… look out this weekend for a bunch of photos of ‘where i live’ … (now you can click the pic to make a bigger version)… I can see i will need more web space!
One of Lorenzo’s first nights out (new Swiss member of our team). Here is Ximen – Taipei’s mini Tokyo… and possibly the coolest taxi I have ever seen.
On the way to the bar, and testing out a new 2 megapixel cameraphone… and look how happy I am. What is hard to realise is the Disco Mode that the phone has. Yes, a set of
LEDs that turns any location into a funky night club. Genius. Click here to open a mini movie (you may need to download Quicktime Player from Apple).
Outside the RIP bar, and preparations for a rather hazy hangover… for some reason, in Taiwan hangovers are much, much worse than back home. I blame Taiwan beer, personally – the local brew.
Bob Su, provider of Pro Engineer confusion… and the team who were at the learning centre at the same time. From the left… Bady, Diego, Michael, Anke, MR. BOB SU, Shiao Chris, SanD, Cesare, Da Chris, me! Bob Su’s level of English was incredible – 4 days of pain from laughing at this guy. I felt guilty…. okay another lie.
Computex is the annual tech fair in Taipei. Large numbers of rubber-clad blinky girls, random costumes and singing everywhere. These were my favourites of the day – trudging around with LCD TVs attached to their backs!
Since I was still under the impression on Monday that I had an apartment at this point I decided to do some tourist things and go off and see Taipei 101 – the tallest building in the world. Sadly it was not open yet. However the mall next to it is and is more like a cathederal of shopping. EVERY brand you can think of, from UK highstreet to Italian catwalk is represented. People are crawling over themselves to get a slice of the increasingly affluent Taiwanese pie.
Taipei 101, as you can see is pretty.. tall. Very ornate. Not my taste – give me the Gherkin any day.
At this point I got the call that my flat was not available, so I went to the tech district and checked out the products on show. My word, it is like Tottenham Court Road on steroids and speed. I saw the smallest cameras, biggest TVs and more hifi’s than I have ever seen combined in my life. A very different shopping experience to the restrained european model.
Woke up pretty hungover and headed downtown just wanted to get the measure of what it was like. However, wasted about an hour walking around totally lost, convinced I could not read a map and utterly confused. When I eventually worked things out it all became clear… the exit signs on the station were marked North, South, East and West. Okay. Logical? You would think so… The North exit is in the south. The south in the north. East in west and west in east! WHAT?!?! You crazy, crazy people! I had to get a coffee and sit down at that point because my brain hurt. And of course it pissed it down raining. Ha. And the coffee shop sold ‘Yorkshire Tea’ which made me chuckle.
Also went around the equivalent of Tottenham court road. Whooooaaaa. TECHNOLOGY. Lots of fun, and I bought a calculator for doing sums as dividing everything by 60 to get the GBP equivalent was getting dull.
Again, I ate sushi. Needed some fresh veg and I think it is a good way to eat healthily. Fish, rice and fresh crunchy veg. All the chinese stuff that tastes good I am sure contains large amounts of bad stuff. Everyone eats together in the evenings in the canteen, so I expect my veins to burst with cholestorol within weeks. In fact, I am eating together with them tonight. Makes sense, as it is free and I can enlist some help looking for flats and so on.
Went to the cinema with Anke off the team. Supposed to be more of them but they bugged out. Was really nice to be in there as the Taiwanese audience really gets into the film and everyone laughs their socks off at the slightest joke.
Went to a convenience store for food last night. Another world. Went round grabbing random things. New experiences in convenience food – will be testing out final phase on the toilet in the morning.