Dorms

There is a bit typhoon approaching, and it is supposed to hit Taiwan this weekend. I will use this opportunity to briefly describe the dormitories. 

The dorms for master's students have rooms for 2 people. (The poor undergrads have 4 people in a room). I share mine with a Taiwanese journalism student called Joyce. The rooms are pretty small - see the picture below. There is one double decker bed, each student has a desk, a chair a wardrobe and a bunch of shelves. Outside of that, there is probably about 5 square meters of empty space. Rooms are equipped with a ceiling fan (we haven't turned it off since i got here) and air conditioning (which we have to pay for. Hence, no aircon in our room.) There is also a telephone and sockets for the internet. That's about it. There is no mattress, pillow or sheets provided (see my previous post). Mattresses have been quite a problem for foreign students - the local people use these very thin "futon kind" mattresses, which are really hard by the western standards. There is almost nothing else available at the university and around. Not surprisingly, there are regular "IKEA missions for soft mattresses". 

Bathrooms and toilets are joined, on the floor. They are fairly new and clean. One potential problem I saw in this hall (which has quite a few foreign students) is the fact that most toilets are the squat "hole-in-the-floor" type, and only several of the western ones. However, I haven't encountered a toilet queue yet. Each floor also has a common room (with TV and microwave) and a laundry room. Inside the building, there is also a cafeteria with about 4 "Chinese fast-foods", which serve the typical selection of noodles in soup, fried rice, chinese dumplings and several other things. Finally, a little shop which sells just about anything a student may need - instant food, some drinks, some sweets, soap, toothbrushes, internet cables, towels. Probably no condoms as this is a male-only building. One big relief - they have cold beer down there! I got terrified for a moment once i found out that there are no refridgerators available.

This is what the room looks like - my sleeping roommate as a bonus.