Hello,
Sorry for the long break in contact. Library's been closed for reflooring and been busier myself, so less online time. When writing, I also get bogged down in all that comes up, trying to get everything in in one long piece. I'll try to keep things short enough that I'll dare to start. So, about Culture Classes and only about Culture Classes...
I've been enjoying Calligraphy. It's satisfying using the maobi (brush) and seeing the stroke come up so dark and sharp on the paper. My Chinese teachers have always complimented my handwriting, but there's a lot more to calligraphy than it looks--manipulating the maobi is something to get used to. I still start each class doing badly, but I've been getting better over the weeks.
First few weeks were practice of basic strokes used as components for characters. Since I'm left-handed, my teacher gave me different examples, the way characters were written in the Qing(?) dynasty--all weird and curvy. I would have rather had the normal set so I could easily use the characters that I already know, but it's not bad. Only about ten classes, barely over an introduction, so I won't be too set in one track. Mine also seem easier than the right-handers', so that could be a good thing over such a short time.
This week did signatures, in cursive. Have to move really fast, and the result is nearly unintelligable, but we have to sign whatever poems we write, so it's gotta be done. Also have to write our names in non-cursive, and not in Qing dynasty style, or else no one would be able to read mine. I use the right-handed strokes, but teacher says it doesn't matter much what mine look like since I haven't had the right-handed stroke practice.
My Chinese Painting class has been getting a lot more interesting. The first week we started off with B&W fish by diluting our calligraphy ink for a blended color. The ones I turned out were really faithful to the example and I got a lot of compliments.
Second week the teacher was on a trip, so he had some of his calligraphy students teach, but they didn't know any painting, so we repeated our fish--badly. I don't know what happened the second week, I think maybe the paper was different, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get enough water out of the brush. Even moving the strokes much faster than before, the paper grabbed the ink like a paper towel and all my strokes were too blob-shaped. I got frustrated and left early.
The next time we met, Allison and Jean-Michel, the two I sit with in calligraphy class, were inspired by my first fishes to try out the painting class. This one was a lot more fun because we got into color. The colors are a lot easier to get right without worrying about wateriness. It also looks a lot cooler. Still doing fish, but GOLDfish, so not in the same style (Googly eyes!). Today I practiced them again, this time with plants, and have the hang of it (teacher said, "Beautiful"). We all bought a box of paint tubes (only NT$50), so I can practice outside of class or when I get back. Think next up is either birds or bamboo.
Love,
Laszlo
7.27.2004
7.04.2004
Reply to "Hi, Haven't heard from you for a long time. Are you still alive?? :>" email
Hey ----,
Yeah, still alive. But our library's getting major reconstruction on the inside, all torn up, so no internet for me nights or weekends anymore. Sad.
So instead, yesterday I did some hiking. Not anything big, but just the mountains surrounding Taipei. I want to go down to some larger ones, though I'd need to get some warmer clothes. Taiwan's tallest, 玉山, is taller than Mt. Fuji. Though for that you need a permit and a guide, so I'd go on some surrounding peaks.
So I took the subway way south to the last stop and walked off towards the mountains. Few minutes from the station I hit a trail. The mountains are really close in and really steep. Lots of places it was just steps all the way up a slope. Sometimes steeper-than-normal steps and switchbacks--very steep. It was fun. Got caught in a downpour near the first peak. Sheltered with a dozen old people playing mahjong in a hut near the top.
Maybe the tail end of Typhoon Mindulle we got. People were scared it would be bad cause it was moving up the island so slow, it could have hung over us for days. But it mostly headed out again before reaching Taipei, so only the south got the flooding and mudslides.
Alright,
Laszlo
Yeah, still alive. But our library's getting major reconstruction on the inside, all torn up, so no internet for me nights or weekends anymore. Sad.
So instead, yesterday I did some hiking. Not anything big, but just the mountains surrounding Taipei. I want to go down to some larger ones, though I'd need to get some warmer clothes. Taiwan's tallest, 玉山, is taller than Mt. Fuji. Though for that you need a permit and a guide, so I'd go on some surrounding peaks.
So I took the subway way south to the last stop and walked off towards the mountains. Few minutes from the station I hit a trail. The mountains are really close in and really steep. Lots of places it was just steps all the way up a slope. Sometimes steeper-than-normal steps and switchbacks--very steep. It was fun. Got caught in a downpour near the first peak. Sheltered with a dozen old people playing mahjong in a hut near the top.
Maybe the tail end of Typhoon Mindulle we got. People were scared it would be bad cause it was moving up the island so slow, it could have hung over us for days. But it mostly headed out again before reaching Taipei, so only the south got the flooding and mudslides.
Alright,
Laszlo
6.20.2004
"About Classes" email
Hey everyone,
I started class June 1st, Mon-Fri, 8:10-10:00. My section has ten students. There are two Koreans, two Vietnamese, three Japanese, one Omani, and one American. Turns out the American is Adam, from my Chinese class at Rutgers. He's the other one from my class that applied for the scholarship.
Unlike 101 and 102 at Rutgers, the class is taught all in Chinese, and my teacher often speaks very fast. The first day I had a headache after trying to understand two straight hours of speaking, but after a few days I was able to get used to it. I find I can understand what she says, even if I miss a few words in between.
It helps that sometimes she interjects some english words in her explanations. That helps Adam, me, and a couple others, but half the class really doesn't understand any english. It doesn't make that much difference during class, because within the context of everything else they can figure it out, but our textbook is only Chinese/English, no Korean or Japanese, so I don't know how they manage with that. I've seen some Japanese students using little electronic dictionaries, but it must be no fun to translate your textbook from a third language into something you can understand. With so many Japanese and Korean students at the school, I wonder why something isn't done about that.
During class time the focus is on speaking. We do a lot of reading aloud, repeating after the teacher, and going around the table, everyone making their own sentences using the grammar pattern. At Rutgers the focus was more on English to Chinese translation. Without the english and with the smaller class size, here things feel more intense.
We have homework every night. It can be a lot, though usually not something hard. We really don't do any writing in class, so homework's when we practice on that. I have to get familiar with the traditional Chinese characters. My other book only taught the simplified character set used on mainland China. The traditional characters often have a lot more strokes to them, but they also retain more of the meaning and you can see the relationships between characters better, so it's not that hard to learn except that I have to play catch-up for all the lessons we've skipped in this book.
We got placed in this class from a placement test during registration. It was really awful. With the traditional characters I couldn't recognize and the audio section where we had to answer questions based on a taped conversation that we could only listen to once, it was really hard.
I'm starting in lesson eleven of the first book, so about the same as starting in 102. Though technically I've gone over the grammar I'm learning now, I do need to go over it again to really get it. I also need to practice speaking, traditional characters, and the new characters that are there just because of the arrangement of the new textbook. When I skip to the end of the book, the differences are so great that I can't read it. The third scholarship recipient here from Rutgers, Ryan, finished 202 (in traditional), but he only placed into lesson thirteen.
I also signed up for Calligraphy, a Culture Class which meets once a week. There, without a textbook and board, I have no idea what the teacher is saying. I can only pick out a few words. It's okay though because the rest of the class is American, mostly at high levels, so they'll translate for me.
Though it usually takes me a while to get the jokes, our teacher's funny and we like him. Our class is 10:10-12:00, so I go with some of the class for lunch. Then after lunch the calligraphy teacher teaches Chinese Painting and we come back for that. He told our class that he'll let us attend without registering or paying. There are other classes like Chinese Cooking, Chinese Folktales or Karaoke, but the Culture Classes are relatively expensive, and many would use too much advanced Chinese for me to get much out of them.
Have some more interesting stuff to tell later,
love,
laszlo
I started class June 1st, Mon-Fri, 8:10-10:00. My section has ten students. There are two Koreans, two Vietnamese, three Japanese, one Omani, and one American. Turns out the American is Adam, from my Chinese class at Rutgers. He's the other one from my class that applied for the scholarship.
Unlike 101 and 102 at Rutgers, the class is taught all in Chinese, and my teacher often speaks very fast. The first day I had a headache after trying to understand two straight hours of speaking, but after a few days I was able to get used to it. I find I can understand what she says, even if I miss a few words in between.
It helps that sometimes she interjects some english words in her explanations. That helps Adam, me, and a couple others, but half the class really doesn't understand any english. It doesn't make that much difference during class, because within the context of everything else they can figure it out, but our textbook is only Chinese/English, no Korean or Japanese, so I don't know how they manage with that. I've seen some Japanese students using little electronic dictionaries, but it must be no fun to translate your textbook from a third language into something you can understand. With so many Japanese and Korean students at the school, I wonder why something isn't done about that.
During class time the focus is on speaking. We do a lot of reading aloud, repeating after the teacher, and going around the table, everyone making their own sentences using the grammar pattern. At Rutgers the focus was more on English to Chinese translation. Without the english and with the smaller class size, here things feel more intense.
We have homework every night. It can be a lot, though usually not something hard. We really don't do any writing in class, so homework's when we practice on that. I have to get familiar with the traditional Chinese characters. My other book only taught the simplified character set used on mainland China. The traditional characters often have a lot more strokes to them, but they also retain more of the meaning and you can see the relationships between characters better, so it's not that hard to learn except that I have to play catch-up for all the lessons we've skipped in this book.
We got placed in this class from a placement test during registration. It was really awful. With the traditional characters I couldn't recognize and the audio section where we had to answer questions based on a taped conversation that we could only listen to once, it was really hard.
I'm starting in lesson eleven of the first book, so about the same as starting in 102. Though technically I've gone over the grammar I'm learning now, I do need to go over it again to really get it. I also need to practice speaking, traditional characters, and the new characters that are there just because of the arrangement of the new textbook. When I skip to the end of the book, the differences are so great that I can't read it. The third scholarship recipient here from Rutgers, Ryan, finished 202 (in traditional), but he only placed into lesson thirteen.
I also signed up for Calligraphy, a Culture Class which meets once a week. There, without a textbook and board, I have no idea what the teacher is saying. I can only pick out a few words. It's okay though because the rest of the class is American, mostly at high levels, so they'll translate for me.
Though it usually takes me a while to get the jokes, our teacher's funny and we like him. Our class is 10:10-12:00, so I go with some of the class for lunch. Then after lunch the calligraphy teacher teaches Chinese Painting and we come back for that. He told our class that he'll let us attend without registering or paying. There are other classes like Chinese Cooking, Chinese Folktales or Karaoke, but the Culture Classes are relatively expensive, and many would use too much advanced Chinese for me to get much out of them.
Have some more interesting stuff to tell later,
love,
laszlo
6.01.2004
'Nother email, "From Taiwan". Also long.
So the computer lab is only open weekdays. Can still go to the library weekends to check mail, but they ask that people not use their computers for that.
With the buildings I was surprised with how tall they were. Not tall-tall like New York, but most of them have a few more stories than I'm used to. My hostel was on the eighth floor and now my classes are on the eighth floor of my school too. My room for the summer is in a house that's only one story, but it's really uncommon for a building to be that low.
The room's good and very close to the school. It's only a few minutes walk from the back entrance instead of having to take the MRT from the hostel. It's NT$8100 a month, so with NT$33 to the dollar, around $245 US. A couple other places that I looked at were cheaper, NT$5000-6000, but weren't as nice and were bus-distance away. Mine actually would be 1000 less without air conditioner, but it's already getting over 90 some days with high humidity (though humidity isn't reported with the weather here). The last few days we've had afternoon thunderstorms so the temperature's been ok, but before that, any un-cooled space I was sweating. I don't want to know what my room would be like out by August, but it will be getting a lot hotter. I've been assured that these are still spring-time temperatures.
It can really rain here. Yesterday I was lost for a while coming back from Da'an Park and I got soaked. Most people keep umbrellas handy, so they looked at me funny walking around without one. I think they're so prepared because they use umbrellas against the sun. Only girls so far, though boys will hold the umbrellas for their girlfriends. But on TV, even the guys have really white skin. I'm told that virtually all of the skin products here have some kind of whitener in them.
The TV channels offered here are pretty funny. On one kids show the characters are just what look like toy action figures moved around in front of animated backgrounds. The Chinese ads are loud and gaudy. Mostly in Chinese, but a large dose of English in the advertising too. There are always a few cable channels carrying low-quality dubbed movies out of Hong Kong. They're dubbed to Mandarin, but keep the sub-titles so that Cantonese-speakers or Japanese can read along.
That's the way it is with most of the channels, though cartoons are straight dubbing. However there are still American movie channels like HBO and Starz where they're only subbed, so I can kind of follow along with the subs but still understand what's going on. I watched a bit of TV with people at the hostel when it was really hot outside.
The people at the hostel were basically all English teachers and it looks the same way at my house now. It's really good money--around NT$600 an hour or more. This one guy at the hostel, Barry, only worked four hours per week. He had an instant noodle diet and didn't do much of anything beside sleep in his bunk, but he was able to live on that much.
I've been having a few instant noodle meals myself, but because it's hard finding out what the food is from the menus. None so far have been in English. I recognize the characters for rice, noodles, soup, beef, pork, and chicken, but that's about it. Those are usually half of the listing, so not enough to assure me of what I'm getting. So far I've mostly stuck to buffets where I can see and choose on that. There was one near the hostel for NT$60 that was really good.
For most everything else you can visit a 7-Eleven (they're eeeverywhere). No slushies, but sandwiches and payphone cards and everything else. Even bags of popcorn you can pop in their microwaves. Not cereal though. For that I had to go to a supermarket. There's one near school called Wellcome. Some things were really expensive. An American granola cereal was NT$320 for a normal-sized box. That was the most expensive--most come in line with NT$60-80--but that was just a whole lot. I noticed many prices lower than the US, but for the most part not as low as I had expected (though maybe I'm not too familiar with normal U.S. prices). Fruit I think is more--NT$11 per apple when on sale. Those instant noodles also eleven or twelve, so not as good a deal. Guess the most obvious savings are when eating out where meals are US$2-4.
I'll mail later about classes and stuff,
love,
laszlo
With the buildings I was surprised with how tall they were. Not tall-tall like New York, but most of them have a few more stories than I'm used to. My hostel was on the eighth floor and now my classes are on the eighth floor of my school too. My room for the summer is in a house that's only one story, but it's really uncommon for a building to be that low.
The room's good and very close to the school. It's only a few minutes walk from the back entrance instead of having to take the MRT from the hostel. It's NT$8100 a month, so with NT$33 to the dollar, around $245 US. A couple other places that I looked at were cheaper, NT$5000-6000, but weren't as nice and were bus-distance away. Mine actually would be 1000 less without air conditioner, but it's already getting over 90 some days with high humidity (though humidity isn't reported with the weather here). The last few days we've had afternoon thunderstorms so the temperature's been ok, but before that, any un-cooled space I was sweating. I don't want to know what my room would be like out by August, but it will be getting a lot hotter. I've been assured that these are still spring-time temperatures.
It can really rain here. Yesterday I was lost for a while coming back from Da'an Park and I got soaked. Most people keep umbrellas handy, so they looked at me funny walking around without one. I think they're so prepared because they use umbrellas against the sun. Only girls so far, though boys will hold the umbrellas for their girlfriends. But on TV, even the guys have really white skin. I'm told that virtually all of the skin products here have some kind of whitener in them.
The TV channels offered here are pretty funny. On one kids show the characters are just what look like toy action figures moved around in front of animated backgrounds. The Chinese ads are loud and gaudy. Mostly in Chinese, but a large dose of English in the advertising too. There are always a few cable channels carrying low-quality dubbed movies out of Hong Kong. They're dubbed to Mandarin, but keep the sub-titles so that Cantonese-speakers or Japanese can read along.
That's the way it is with most of the channels, though cartoons are straight dubbing. However there are still American movie channels like HBO and Starz where they're only subbed, so I can kind of follow along with the subs but still understand what's going on. I watched a bit of TV with people at the hostel when it was really hot outside.
The people at the hostel were basically all English teachers and it looks the same way at my house now. It's really good money--around NT$600 an hour or more. This one guy at the hostel, Barry, only worked four hours per week. He had an instant noodle diet and didn't do much of anything beside sleep in his bunk, but he was able to live on that much.
I've been having a few instant noodle meals myself, but because it's hard finding out what the food is from the menus. None so far have been in English. I recognize the characters for rice, noodles, soup, beef, pork, and chicken, but that's about it. Those are usually half of the listing, so not enough to assure me of what I'm getting. So far I've mostly stuck to buffets where I can see and choose on that. There was one near the hostel for NT$60 that was really good.
For most everything else you can visit a 7-Eleven (they're eeeverywhere). No slushies, but sandwiches and payphone cards and everything else. Even bags of popcorn you can pop in their microwaves. Not cereal though. For that I had to go to a supermarket. There's one near school called Wellcome. Some things were really expensive. An American granola cereal was NT$320 for a normal-sized box. That was the most expensive--most come in line with NT$60-80--but that was just a whole lot. I noticed many prices lower than the US, but for the most part not as low as I had expected (though maybe I'm not too familiar with normal U.S. prices). Fruit I think is more--NT$11 per apple when on sale. Those instant noodles also eleven or twelve, so not as good a deal. Guess the most obvious savings are when eating out where meals are US$2-4.
I'll mail later about classes and stuff,
love,
laszlo
5.28.2004
"Mostly MRT"; The Monster
Below's an email I wrote, entitled "Mostly MRT". You'll find it very long and detailed, mostly unabridged, not broken down (à la I Corinthians/II Corinthians :).
-----------------------------------------------------
Hey,
It's been going good here. I spent a few days walking around, finding the school, looking at the housing listings on the school bulletin board.
The metro here is really impressive. The stations are all big and air-conditioned, with escalators and elevators. There are big maps on the walls oriented to where you're standing, so that you can find your way to places outside of the station. There are also pamphlets at an information stand, but the good english-language maps were always out, so it took me a while before I got one and could figure out where I was going.
The ticketing's very easy. You can buy a ticket from a wall machine using a map that lists the fares to each location. One-way fares start at twenty New Taiwan dollars, and going most places won't get higher than NT$35. That's equivalent to US$0.6-US$1. You insert and get back your ticket at the turnstile. You also need to insert your ticket to exit. When you get to your destination and the ticket's spent, it just keeps the ticket.
You can also get an EasyCard, which is faster and easier. It's shaped like a credit card and you don't need to swipe it through anything. All you have to do is pass it within 5cm over a sensor to register it. Lots of people just leave it in their purses and wallets and hold those up to the sensor instead of getting it out of their bags.
Same thing for exiting, and the amount's automatically deducted. When you run low, there are EasyCard value-adding machines by the ticketing wall. You can add with either cash or debit card, in Chinese or English. There's a 20% discount with EasyCard to encourage use.
Overhead displays on the ticketing level tell the time till each train's arrival so you know if you have to run. The other overhead signs are really clear, so transfers or finding the bathroom are very simple. There's also a board for people getting off the trains telling them which exit to take to get to where they're going fastest. Buses from the subway, usually NT$15, are free if you've ridden the MRT in the last two hours.
The MRT trains are fast and frequent. When they're approaching, floor lights flash beyond the yellow line. The trains must be computer controlled, because they always stop in the exact same spot. There are lines painted on the floor to guide the formation of lines during busy times.
The cars are all connected on the inside, so you can see from end to end. The ride is really smooth compared to NYC. There's no klackety-klack on the rails. There's also a NT$1500 (US$45) fine for smoking, drinking, or eating (including chewing gum) within the MRT, so everything is really clean. Even outside the subway, there's hardly any gum on the ground.
Outside, the traffic is really bad. I haven't seen traffic jams, but there are just a lot of vehicles, all of the time. I heard that Taiwan has 1300 vehicles per square mile--20 times that of the U.S. Most people here ride motor scooters instead of cars. The cars here don't look different at all, but all of the vans or trucks are small Isuzus and the vans are very mini. I don't know the gas prices here, but they are higher. I've only seen a couple SUVs.
There don't seem to be any rules for the scooters. I've seen four people on one scooter, dogs between peoples' legs, and really big loads strapped onto the backs of the scooters. Scooters and bicycles are allowed on the sidewalks. The buildings usually overhang half the sidewalk where the people walk in the shade. When the scooters take the sidewalk, they usually ride on the outside of the pillars where they park. Usually. They still race down the inside sidewalks all the time. They're comfortable coming quite close to people at high speeds. They even go the wrong way down one-way side streets.
It's OK though. The traffic lights give the same amount of time on the crosswalks as the traffic. Instead of a 'Walk' signal, there's a little walking guy animated in green LCDs. When time gets low, the animation starts flashing and the guy speeds up into a run. Also, above him is a timer display that shows a countdown of the number of seconds left for crossing. On alleys I've seen it as low as seven seconds. Big boulevards get over ninety. Lots of big intersections also have tunnels going underneath or sky walks above the street so people can get to all of the corners without having to wait for traffic.
Though it's not hard to get around, all the traffic makes the air pretty bad. Taipei's located in a natural basin, actually used to be a lake, then volcanism pushed up the mountains around it even more, so it traps the smog. After a day of walking in it, your thought feels a bit scratchy. Some of the scooter-riders wear masks against the pollution.
Everything is really fast-developing. The city was only a fishing town a hundred and twenty years ago. Twenty-five years ago there were no scooters and everybody rode bicycles. Now it has the tallest building in the world, Taipei 101, named for the number of stories it has. And this week bullet trains from Japan capable of going 300km/h arrived. They'll allow trips between Taipei and the second-biggest Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung in ninety minutes instead of the current six hours.
I'll write later about food and where I'm living,
love,
laszlo
-----------------------------------------------------
Hey,
It's been going good here. I spent a few days walking around, finding the school, looking at the housing listings on the school bulletin board.
The metro here is really impressive. The stations are all big and air-conditioned, with escalators and elevators. There are big maps on the walls oriented to where you're standing, so that you can find your way to places outside of the station. There are also pamphlets at an information stand, but the good english-language maps were always out, so it took me a while before I got one and could figure out where I was going.
The ticketing's very easy. You can buy a ticket from a wall machine using a map that lists the fares to each location. One-way fares start at twenty New Taiwan dollars, and going most places won't get higher than NT$35. That's equivalent to US$0.6-US$1. You insert and get back your ticket at the turnstile. You also need to insert your ticket to exit. When you get to your destination and the ticket's spent, it just keeps the ticket.
You can also get an EasyCard, which is faster and easier. It's shaped like a credit card and you don't need to swipe it through anything. All you have to do is pass it within 5cm over a sensor to register it. Lots of people just leave it in their purses and wallets and hold those up to the sensor instead of getting it out of their bags.
Same thing for exiting, and the amount's automatically deducted. When you run low, there are EasyCard value-adding machines by the ticketing wall. You can add with either cash or debit card, in Chinese or English. There's a 20% discount with EasyCard to encourage use.
Overhead displays on the ticketing level tell the time till each train's arrival so you know if you have to run. The other overhead signs are really clear, so transfers or finding the bathroom are very simple. There's also a board for people getting off the trains telling them which exit to take to get to where they're going fastest. Buses from the subway, usually NT$15, are free if you've ridden the MRT in the last two hours.
The MRT trains are fast and frequent. When they're approaching, floor lights flash beyond the yellow line. The trains must be computer controlled, because they always stop in the exact same spot. There are lines painted on the floor to guide the formation of lines during busy times.
The cars are all connected on the inside, so you can see from end to end. The ride is really smooth compared to NYC. There's no klackety-klack on the rails. There's also a NT$1500 (US$45) fine for smoking, drinking, or eating (including chewing gum) within the MRT, so everything is really clean. Even outside the subway, there's hardly any gum on the ground.
Outside, the traffic is really bad. I haven't seen traffic jams, but there are just a lot of vehicles, all of the time. I heard that Taiwan has 1300 vehicles per square mile--20 times that of the U.S. Most people here ride motor scooters instead of cars. The cars here don't look different at all, but all of the vans or trucks are small Isuzus and the vans are very mini. I don't know the gas prices here, but they are higher. I've only seen a couple SUVs.
There don't seem to be any rules for the scooters. I've seen four people on one scooter, dogs between peoples' legs, and really big loads strapped onto the backs of the scooters. Scooters and bicycles are allowed on the sidewalks. The buildings usually overhang half the sidewalk where the people walk in the shade. When the scooters take the sidewalk, they usually ride on the outside of the pillars where they park. Usually. They still race down the inside sidewalks all the time. They're comfortable coming quite close to people at high speeds. They even go the wrong way down one-way side streets.
It's OK though. The traffic lights give the same amount of time on the crosswalks as the traffic. Instead of a 'Walk' signal, there's a little walking guy animated in green LCDs. When time gets low, the animation starts flashing and the guy speeds up into a run. Also, above him is a timer display that shows a countdown of the number of seconds left for crossing. On alleys I've seen it as low as seven seconds. Big boulevards get over ninety. Lots of big intersections also have tunnels going underneath or sky walks above the street so people can get to all of the corners without having to wait for traffic.
Though it's not hard to get around, all the traffic makes the air pretty bad. Taipei's located in a natural basin, actually used to be a lake, then volcanism pushed up the mountains around it even more, so it traps the smog. After a day of walking in it, your thought feels a bit scratchy. Some of the scooter-riders wear masks against the pollution.
Everything is really fast-developing. The city was only a fishing town a hundred and twenty years ago. Twenty-five years ago there were no scooters and everybody rode bicycles. Now it has the tallest building in the world, Taipei 101, named for the number of stories it has. And this week bullet trains from Japan capable of going 300km/h arrived. They'll allow trips between Taipei and the second-biggest Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung in ninety minutes instead of the current six hours.
I'll write later about food and where I'm living,
love,
laszlo
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