AUTHOR: jenn2jeff
TITLE: Taiwan #2
DATE: 05/10/2007 19:07:35
STATUS: publish
BODY:
When in Rome…
I should also add from my previous email that I had a dear friend of mine move to Japan for a year. She has since moved back to Dallas, but had noted a certain “trash anxiety” that one might feel. In Japan, and as far as I can tell in Taiwan, they are very diligent about recycling. It is quite difficult to find a trash can and once you do, you are confronted with 3 – 5 different choices in which to place your trash. (Scratch that! Today (5/8) I saw a six-sort bin!) When leaving the airplane I thought I’d be helpful by taking some of my trash with me that was not collected by the “friendly skies” staff and at once remembered my friend’s email about this dilemma. For the 5 minute brisk walk from the gate to the customs counter, I finally found one trash cluster, into which I had to sort my trash. Instinctually, I looked for security cameras! I think I made the right choices, as no one came after me…yet!
Throughout or trip, I’ve had several meals with my boss, David. Of course I noticed, but he actually commented on the fact that he is routinely served well before I am. In some cases, I wait as long as 10 minutes before my dish comes to the table. Ironically, in all cases, he has ordered something hot, while my dishes have all been cold. This serving order also includes drinks. It’s quite a difference from the southern hospitality I’ve grown accustomed to in Texas! He also told me that an Asian co-worker that he has known for years explained to him that it is very normal for a woman to hold open the door for a man or allow them in/out of the elevator first. Whew! As they say, when in Rome…
In Taiwan, being seated, ordering, and dining takes as long as you’d like it to. Sometimes it would be nice to accelerate the process, but it seems that it takes so long, even after we’ve asked for the bill. On Thursday, we had all meals at the hotel. The breakfast buffet was a combination of eastern and western cuisine, nothing much out of the ordinary. We spent a few hours prepping for our meetings and went to grab a quick lunch at one of the 12 restaurants in the hotel. We breezed into a French restaurant, which I’m now quite convinced had no French influence to speak of. Let me describe our lunch to you! David ordered a club sandwich, which came out as normal, but with a runny egg atop of all the other items inside the bread. I ordered teriyaki chicken. In hindsight, I should have noticed that it said, “with tortilla.” I was expecting something more like a bento box with rice, teriyaki chicken, maybe some veggies, but what came out, was a teriyaki tortilla treat I simply could not stomach. Imagine a very large tortilla, coated with refried beans, mayo, mustard, lettuce, cucumber, tomato and the most partsy chicken I’ve ever seen: yellow skin on, cold, tendon-y, with teriyaki sauce. Enough said on that topic!
We met our car at 1:00 PM and were taken to the vendor site, about an hour away. It was so nice to get out of the city. You could really begin to see the green vegetation, the mountains and a good view of Taipei 101 (the world’s tallest building) in downtown Taipei. Because the city rests in a valley, it experiences the same type of temperature inversion that you see in Denver, where the smog simply is trapped for days and days. Our meeting lasted until maybe 4:30, but with traffic it took us quite some time to get back home. We were beat, and just wanted to get our dinner and turn in. We tried a Chinese restaurant in the hotel, thinking we’d have better luck with local cuisine. David had a hot pot with all varieties of fish that he enjoyed; I ordered vegetarian noodles (I bet you could have guessed that!). My meal was much better than lunch and had a very nice broth with some unknown, clear vegetable about the size of a grape, with little flavor and the consistency of a boiled tomato. The mushrooms inside the noodle broth were unlike anything I’ve ever tried: tall spindly varieties and huge portabella-style mushroom that did not share the taste or consistency. Our wait staff had some capacity for English, but pretty limited, so it was mostly pointing and subtle bowing. I also began to notice that all of the women here were wearing nylons if they were in professional clothing. And I mean nylons! These were very thick flesh colored stockings like you would see on the ice skaters. Only on the weekend did I see the younger women out in the city wearing bare legs.
When I got back to my hotel room, the space had been converted with more fresh flowers, my bed turned down and a gift from the hotel on my pillow. It’s best described as a magnate in the form of a miniature Asian-style robe. I’m convinced they have some sensor on the door that tells the staff when you leave because used towels—even hand towels—are almost immediately changed. They have a token sign about conversation of water and saving energy, but each day they changed the towels and sheets. There is a master switch as soon as you enter the hotel room that shuts off all power to the room. I suppose that is some method of conservation. End of Thursday.
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AUTHOR: jenn2jeff
TITLE: Taiwan #1
DATE: 05/10/2007 19:05:24
STATUS: publish
BODY:
I’ll try to keep this light and breezy, but you know that’s hard for me! I usually get down in the details, but bear with me. From leaving Jeff at DFW, I had ample time to putz around the D terminal board my plane in time. My seat was a window seat which would normally be great, but on a 13 hour flight, it could get a little tight. Next to me was a middle aged American man in a track suit who had already taken off his shoes before we took off. He was also showing signs of being a “talker” and was filling over into my seat/armrest. So as soon as we were in the air, I started to look around for a new seat and immediately in front of me, was an aisle seat with a younger Asian woman (petite I might add), so I sidled up next to her. I’m not sure if she was happy with that, but she seemed okay. The flight attendants were a mixed bag. It’s apparently a very senior route because they only have to work 3 days and then have 9 days off. So, most of the old bats were very abrupt. But there were a couple of man-tendants that were friendlier. Anyhow, there was one attendant that had on lime green running shoes and I commented that they must be comfortable. Boy, was that a good move…from there, he brought me chocolate covered blueberries, always made sure my water was full and he brought me treats back from business and first class that made my flight very enjoyable. I should also mention that our little TV’s were not working so well, so we couldn’t watch any movies for the first cycle. So I wanted to walk around a bit, but the old bat attendants made sure that people did not walk around for too long. It’s so crazy. So even if I wanted to talk with David (my boss and travel companion), I don’t think they liked that. I did get to watch the Holiday and a few episodes of CSI. I have a book on CD on my ipod too, so I had plenty to do and didn’t sleep very much on this flight. Then we had a very smooth landing into Tokyo in the rain. We waited at that airport, which was very clean and nice for our 3 hour layover and then we took our flight to Taipei.
On this leg, David sat next to me and after dinner, we both slept. That meal was a mixture of some Japanese food and some American food. Also, on this flight they offered drinks. I had a great little gin & tonic, but it really hit me quickly, making sleeping all the easier! From their, our entire group (there were other TI’ers on both flights) caught our bus. They had reserved a bus for us in advance for all of our meetings. The drive to the hotel truly was amazing. There is so much “easing” into lanes and more mopeds than I’ve ever seen with more people per bike than I’ve ever seen. I should also mention that all of the moped drivers have helmets and also wear designer surgical masks. And people with any sickness (cold, cough, SARs???) wear these masks as well. It’s the opposite of the Michael Jackson phenomenon where he was trying to keep germs out and these people are trying to keep germs in.
I don’t know how or if they pay attention to the signals, but every car, moped, bus or person seems to merge in and out of traffic with very little problem. And there are so few accidents. When I asked about it later, the response is that people don’t go fast enough here to get into an accident. In our van they gave each of us a hot towel and had bottled water waiting for us. The drive to the hotel was not very long. When we checked into the hotel there were messages waiting for each of us from the vendor for our pickup times and other meeting information. I took my shower and turned in for the night. Surprisingly, I’ve really not had any jetlag problems. I slept through the night.
In the morning, we all met for breakfast at 7:00. The breakfast buffet was on the top of the hotel with a great view of the city. The food was not as good as the view. Very very very strange foods available for breakfast. (Jeff, I know you wanted me to take pictures of the food, but it didn’t seem appropriate at that time). It was one of those buffets where you take a little bit of everything, but eat a little bit of nothing. The coffee was weak, so I’ve had tea only ever since and it’s been delicious. I generally don’t eat fish for breakfast and the continental fare was just not quite right. The eggs tasted differently, the cheese, etc. But I was a good sport and tried more than I thought I would. From there, we all took the shuttle over to the vendor site and we truly were treated like VIPs. It’s very interesting how rank plays such a significant role. We entered a conference room that looked more like a UN meeting room with interior tables and concentric tables around it. The most important person sits closest to the projector screen from each side of the company. So that the vendor had its entire people seated in ranking order on their side and we had all of our people seated on our side. David and I sat in the second circle, very near to the front. The women in the room do not have the same ranking as the men. It’s difficult to explain in an email, but they are more there to take care of all of the details of getting us coffee, cokes, snacks, but are also our business contacts on a daily basis. I’m still noticing a lot of that and don’t have a good description for their function. Maybe I will be the end of my trip.
The presentation of business cards is a ceremony in and of itself. Luckily I brought at ton of business cards. You must give and receive business cards with both hands, almost using only your finger tips. A slight bow is also exchanged, but you have to beware not to bow too low. We had a catered lunch that day with several choices and then in the afternoon we broke out into smaller groups. The new conference room we entered only had one table and I tried to sit near the back of the table (more because I wanted to be able to see everyone) and they immediately had me move to the 2nd seat position behind David near the front of the room. All of the vendors had portable phones with them (not cell phones) where they were taking calls during the meetings. They would cover their mouth and the phone and talk softly into the phone. This was not specific to just one person, it was kind of odd. (I also experienced this when we were on the trains--there are signs that you should either go to the galley or cover your mouth when talking.) We finished up our meetings and had pleasant negotiations. They called us a private car to take us to the train station. We took a bullet train from Kaohsiung (at the southern end of Taiwan) to Taipei (at the northern end of Taiwan). The train was just installed in January and has apparently made the trip much faster than flight or by car. The vendor ordered us Subway sandwiches before we left and had them delivered to us on the train. Although they were tasty, like I said earlier, they just weren’t the same as they would be at home. The Taiwanese people (vendor, hotel and transportation staff) really took great care of us. From the station in Taipei, we took a taxi to the hotel. When we tried to check in, they told me we couldn’t check in at the check-in desk and that we had to go to another location. I tried to be patient, but I didn’t really understand what was going on. The man came around the counter and walked us over to a special seating area where they apparently do VIP check-in. It was intended to be special treatment, but at that point, I think David and I were just ready to get to our rooms! When we got checked in, there was a letter addressed to us in our rooms welcoming us as “TI Executives”—I was happy to get a promotion. They listed all of the top people at TI and their contact information and specific networking instructions to get our computers up and running at the hotel. As I mentioned, we really have been well treated since we got here. The rooms are a little older, but are in great condition. Both hotel rooms have scales in them (fashion scales), which I had to chuckle over.
That’s it for my first 2 full days of travel. I’ll send more later, but I’ve got to get some rest. Tonight was a very busy night at snake alley…
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