West Coast 101, 2012/05/27

• My first time to attend a cycling event. The event has 10,000 people registered, people in Taiwan are really crazy about cycling!
• Riding in a peloton is an amazing experience. Just keep an eye on the guys around me and we can easily ride at 40+ km/h without much effort.
• Traffic control is very cool, there were police at every intersection for the event and we almost always get green lights. This is not something we can get in our daily life and it causes the illusion that we are very important people. :)
• Going for a long bike ride with father-in-law can be a great bonding experience.
• All the time I spent on bike this year paid off quite nicely. It took ~3.5hr for me to complete the ~100km ride and I feel great afterwards. Probably can try a century next time.

Getting ready to go. Ann is very kind and insisted to drive us there at 5AM.

On the way back, thanks to the kind person who provided this picture.

CP is right behind me.

A cute souvenir from the event.

Because the event was organized by the Hsinchu Post Office, the certificate for finishing the ride is actually a sheet of stamps. Very cool!

Spring time at NTU

One of the best things about moving back to Taiwan is that Ann and I get to visit NTU's main campus whenever we want. The place is full of our sweet memories, not to mention how beautiful it is in spring.

When in doubt, ask wife

One thing that bothered me a lot after moving back to Taiwan is not having a bike to ride. When we lived in Tucson, I used to ride my bike to work everyday. While the bike commute can turn into a painful experience from time to time (e.g., riding in 100+ degree Fahrenheit with 20+ mph head wind), having the chance to spend about 2 hours everyday on my bike is quite a luxury. Unfortunately, with so many things going on at home and at work, I fell into the common trap of "if I cut out exercise, I'll have more time for X". Half a year later, this unhealthy and unwise decision started to take its toll and I decided I must get back on my bike.

I figured that there are two possible ways which I can squeeze out some time to ride from my busy schedule: one is to ride to work just like before and the other is to go out for evening rides after the kids go to bed. However, this creates a dilemma for choosing a new bike (my old bike was sold before our big move). For commuting, I will need a folding bike so I can keep it in my office and not have to worry about thieves. However, if I can stick to the plan of evening rides, a road bike will make it much more fun (and probably give me better results from the work out). As usual, I got caught in the details and couldn't make up my mind about which way to go. Days passed after my resolution to ride and I grew restless about all the missed riding opportunities. I finally talked with Ann about my dilemma and she suggested an easy solution: why not get two bike?

And that, is how I ended up with four more wheels. In case anyone is wondering, yes, the one and only reason for me to write this is to brag. :)

It is official!

The contract for my new job finally arrived, so I guess it is safe to say this out loud now: I will join the Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology at Academia Sinica in Taiwan this summer as an Assistant Research Fellow (a tenure-track position that's equivalent to an Assistant Professor in the universities).

We are all very excited about moving back to Taiwan, however, how we are going to handle the upcoming move remains as an unsolved mystery...

hPDA rocks

As a part of my recent experiment with GTD, I started using a hPDA to organize things in my life. Incidentally, I had to make yet another intense week-long business trip to Taiwan earlier this month, which provided a good opportunity to test out this new system.

I am happy to say that the ingenious hPDA works great for me, particularly when things are getting crazy with an international trip that was filled with dozens of important meetings in a week. The flexible formatting of hPDA worked much better than any app that I can find for my iPod Touch. Furthermore, the portability/robustness/responsiveness of a hPDA is way better than any electronic alternative. Although backup and syncing remains as an issue with hPDA, I think I am hooked.

Another trip to Taiwan

Back from my second trip to Taiwan in two months, very tired but nevertheless quite happy. It is interesting to see how my body adjust to these frequent international travel and jet lag. Last time I slept quite well from day one, but lost my appetite almost completely and couldn't taste the food at all. This time I had trouble sleeping for the entire trip, but thoroughly enjoyed all the delicious food that Taiwan has to offer.

Work aside, I got to see my mom and my brother's family again, and of course, my nephew's excellent performance of making faces:


I also visited my in-law's new house



and saw a bunch of orchids and roses that have been keeping my father-in-law busy:




Luckily, my travel schedule allowed me to stay for my father-in-law's birthday, so I prepared a Think Tigre FP for him


and also a Lamy Pico for my mother-in-law as a very late b-day gift. What I didn't expected was that I'd come away with some really awesome party favors, including a Delta Napoli limited edition FP/RB set (FPH-exclusive)




and a yellow Aurora Ipsilon.


Now while I deal with the jet-lag (yet again), I will have some great time playing with these new toys.

A short trip back to Taiwan

Still recovering from my trip back to Taiwan. It was a great trip, but in the same time totally exhausting.

During the trip, I took a chance to visit my alma mater, National Taiwan University, and had a lunch to catch up with some old friends from college.

It is stunning to acknowledge the fact that we all graduated from college more than 10 years ago. When we talk about all the amusing memories, they all seemed to have happened in last month or so. It is also very funny to see how almost everyone is pretty much the same as they do back in college.

Outside of the campus, I saw some interesting sights in Taipei. Here is a restaurant called Tamago Ya (literal translation: Egg House):

I wonder what they sell inside.

Right next to the campus, I am surprised to see that Taipei is running out of the space for everything, including bicycle parking:


The main point of taking this trip was work-related, so as rare as this sort of things happen, I need to be in suit and tie:


The evening before my return flight, I met with my mom and my brother's family. Here is my only nephew who was trying to have some fun making a mess for his mom to clean up:


Anyway, really need to get some sleep now, which is very hard to do. Will see how well that melatonin pill works.

Home sweet home

Finally get back from my week-long trip to Taiwan and settle back to my normal life. It is amazing how much stress/anxiety/excitement can do. Sleep deprivation? Not a problem! Jet lag? Doesn't feel a thing!

The only problem is that when the payback time comes (and it did), it sure is punishing.

I was (almost) wanted

Fortunately this turned out to be a funny story and I can joke about it here.

Last Friday mom got a notice from the local police department. They said that I was listed as a suspect in a burglary case. Needless to say mom was totally freaked out because they also said that if I don't report to the local PD in a week they are going to put me on the wanted list. Initially I thought that this is probably just a problem in they finger-printing process. After all, I am about 8k miles from Taiwan.

Mom tried to call the PD to straighten things out but couldn't find the officer who was handling the case. After a weekend's worth of agony (on mom's part), mom finally got in touch with the officer and found something I thought was pretty interesting.

As it turned out, the finger print they got was indeed mine!

The burglary took place in the human resource department in dad's school. I was there to sign some documents after dad's funeral, which was about 4 weeks before the burglary. With my travel record, my name was immediately cleared. I am pretty amazed that they can collect and id a finger print on an envelope after such a long period of time. Isn't forensic science fascinating?

Mom also made an interesting comment about we are very lucky that they got me and not my brother, otherwise he'll have much more trouble in store for him.

Another sign of getting old

One nice thing about staying in Taiwan is that I get to have a cup of nice bubble tea everyday. It is really amazing that these drinks are so popular in Tainan. Just within the two-minute walking distance from our home, there are at least 10 different tea shops for us to choose from. So everyday after lunch, I would stop by one of them and get a drink to fight off my jet lag.

Today while waiting for our order, the guy at the counter was eager to introduce their new specialties to us. To which Gatien replied that he has been ordering the same thing (green tea, 3/10 sugar, no ice) since he was in high school and really not interested in making any change to that. Come to think about that, I am doing the same thing too (almost always green tea with preserved plum and tapioca, 3/10 sugar, 3/10 ice). Gatien said that I am showing the sign of getting old too. So now in addition to not knowing most of the pop stars when buying CDs, I also have this "afraid of change" going against me.

Closure

We had dad's funeral today and everything went pretty well. I never thought of it this way but all these formalities make an easier transition for everyone to accept the passing of their loved ones. Somehow I feel a bit relieved after the funeral and that I can start to put my sadness behind me.

Back to Taiwan again

It's only been a month since our last visit and now I'm back to Taiwan again to attend dad's funeral. I didn't expect to be back again so soon but I guess this is not up to me.

GRR meet in Taiwan

I had a very unusual GRR meet today, which should be titled "A Taiwanese who is living in US visits an American who is living in Taiwan".

Bokonon is a very active member in our Ninja 250 club. In fact, most of the amazing FAQ is from his hard work. He is living with his wife in Taiwan now so I took the chance to meet up with him and had a very enjoyable GRR meet.

He is kind enough to come all the way from Linko to Hsinchu City to meet up with me. We had lunch in a Subway restaurant (guess you can find all major US fast food chains here now) that is close to the train station (visible in the background). In order to comply with the GRR rule that we must have a Ninja 250 in the meet picture, I took a photo of my bike to the meet. Hopefully John will let us get away with this. :)



We had a good chat about motorcycles and life in US/Taiwan. I look forward to meeting with him again sometime.

Blogging from Taiwan

After a 28+ hours trip, we finally made it back to Taiwan. The trip with three little kids was exhausting but not as bad as we expected. Tomorrow we'll drive from Hsin-Chu to Tainan to see my father, hope this will go well.