Saturday 12 September 2009

Back in Taiwan

It's been forever since my last post, but I just couldn't bring myself to blog writing during the summer. And after all, this is supposed to be a Taiwan blog. All in all, the summer has been great in all places that I got to spend some time in. Namely: Praha, Jablonec nad Nisou, Kirkkonummi, Turku, Helsinki, Nurmijärvi, Stockholm, Vroutek, Podbořany, Liberec, Frýdštejn, Jizerka.

But now, it is back to Taiwan, and I'm as dazed and confused about this place as ever. The flight was relatively smooth. My plan was not to bring too much stuff with me this time, so as not to have 80 kilos to take back home in a year. Somehow that didn't work out though, and for the first time that I can remember I actually had to take things out of my suitcase at the airport, because the luggage was too heavy. When I was buying the suitcase, the shop assistant explained to me that "this suitcase should be big enough for you to pack for your average 10 - 14 day vacation". Well, that made me laugh, as I have to deal with 20 kilos limit for a year's life in Asia. And out of the 20 kgs, the bag itself weighs 4 kg, two cans of beer 1 kg, shampoos and shower gels (don't like the Taiwanese ones) another 1 kg..

I met Noora at Amsterdam airport and we boarded on the KLM flight to Bangkok - Taipei. Once again, it was an old plane, without the personal 'Entertainment on demand' screen at each seat.. Maybe I'm spoilt, but I've gotten used to having those on intercontinental flights, and missed it dearly, especially on the way from Taipei to Europe in June. To make matters worse, the movie selection shown on the 'communal screens' was horrible - a Julia Roberts secret agent movie, something where ghosts of ex-girlfriends persuade a guy to get married, and it was all crowned by Night at the Museum 2, which was seriously painful to watch. Despite all this, the 15 hour flight went by fairly quickly, in part thanks to the airline magazine, which advertised an "Awesome Threesome Trip" to Incredible India. Wow.

Taipei seems to be the way I left it in June. Hot & Sticky, even though supposedly the summer is already cooling off. People spoke to me in English at the airport, which made me slightly concerned whether there would be enough people to speak Chinese to, but that went away quickly on the very next day, when I was trying to buy a Japan rail pass from a travel agent here in Taipei and spend 10 minutes explaining what's Noora's name and what's the surname (they got it wrong anyways). On the way home, three overcrowded trains on the brown line in 南京東路接運站 went past before I finally managed to squeeze myself into one, barely. Taiwan is still as effective as ever - I agreed to be a tutor at an Orientation for new scholarship recipients, answering questions of new Czech students. This session was scheduled between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. However, tutors were asked to show up at 10 a.m., to prepare accordingly for all the responsible work. What we did was:

10:00 - 10:45 - Sit around, nothing happening.
10:45 - 11:00 - Each of the 35 foreign tutors introduced themselves, in Chinese, to the other tutors.
11:00 - 11:30 - Sitting around
11:30 - 11:40 - Going to look at the conference room, where the activities were to be held.
11:50 - 12:30 - eating lunch, sitting around
12:30 - 12:35 - We were asked to change into our tutor 'uniforms'
12:35 - 13:00 - Standing around
13:00 - 14:00 - Few people were 'working', checking the visitors' temperature (H1N1!!!), the rest standing around
14:00 - 15:15 - Listening to dragging speeches
15:15 - 16:15 - Doing that group debate that we came there for in the first place, without really knowing what should be covered.

It's good to be back in Taiwan...

1 comment:

Cecilia said...

Was that the Asia air?