Showcase under attack

The Showcase was under attack by what we call 'the beggar group'. There were 3 or 4 weird looking 40 something men lurking around in the showcase area during lunch time, eating our food, taking sponsors' gifts and even stealing forks/plates!

What really annoys me is that the TCG representatives at the showcase area were just as bad as beggars. They were told by their supervisors that they should eat the buffet with all the attendees, which is a very wrong decision. They just attacked the meals without caring about whether there will be enough left for the attendees, whom the buffet was prepared for. And as a result, the attendees had nothing to eat! We had to increase the order simply to accommodate the lazy greedy TCG public servants. They honestly just treat the whole showcase as a way for getting off work and getting free food. It's humiliating Taiwan as a whole!

I can't believe I missed out on Mayor Ma of Taipei City when he visited the Showcase. It was like the only 5 minutes that I took a break to the back of the showcase are behind the partitions. Truly annoyed of not being able to see him close up, shake his hand and take a photo with him. It's the only reason why I'm doing this showcase!

I might be getting a free on-line harddisk account! My socialising skill with one of the exhibitors won me that :D

The Showcase Began

It started yesterday. The room was chaotic when I arrived at the venue. They hadn't finished decorating. But, everything managed to come into shape at 5 pm when people start to check in.

One weird thing is that whilst the light music was being played at the background, we kept on getting radio interference at the background with an old man singing kareoke! Very embarrassing. Luckily, when the VIPs were making an address, it didn't happen. One interesting thing is that there were some press people last night. It turns out that if they want the audio track of the speech, they need to hook up their microphone cord to the stereo system. Since, there was only one, it was a first come first go situation.


The Vice President of Taiwan is going to be opening the convention formally with the mayor of Taipei. There are going to be LOTS of press people coming. She's brough along 75 security staff too. 75!

Two days in the wild

Despite the DCCT is less than 4 days away and everyone else was told to come in to work on the weekend, I managed to get away with doing so by lying to my supervisor that I've already 'paid' for my trip.

The trip is the most adventurous one I've ever been on. I went with my friend in Taiwan, who I came to know in Auckland, and his other junior high classmates. There were also a group of people on the first day only who were one of the classmate's friends. To make it even more confusing, some of his classmates went on the first day only too and some joined on the first night.

I was traveling on my friend's motorscooter's for the first day. I can tell you that it's very uncomfortable for long distance traveling. I was probably on it for 40 minutes and my butt is sore as hell. But it was fun chatting to my friend, although half of the time I couldn't hear what he was talking about because of the car and wind noise and having my ears in the helmet. It's also very breezy cruising on the motor scooter, so it took away the heat, which was something I was dreading to face. We went to the Chin Mountain Fall first after walking up a reasonably easy track. We brought with us 2 watermelons and some lychee and then put them in the chilling river water in the mountain. The plan didn't quite work as well that the watermelon was only chilled on the skin.

We then went to White Sand beach nearby, where there were A LOT OF people. The beach isn't as clean and pretty as the ones in NZ or Australia, but I had fun in the water. We tried lifting each other up above the water and threw him backward so that he made a tumble. Well, most of us didn't go so well. I came up the water facing the wrong way. Another person didn't make any tumble and went into the water on the back, basically falling backward.

After that, we had a walk along another beach, which was famous because there were still remainings of the laval from previous volcanic eruption nearby. The 'rocks' were formed as soon as the lava got cooled down instantly when it met the sea water.




That evening, we went to the night market and stayed in at what we call a 'house accommodation'. It's basically someone's holiday house rented to other people whilst not at use. We played cards (big 2) till about 1.

Day 2 is the most exciting day possibly of my life so far. We went into the mountain again, but this time, we walked up a stream to its riverhead. We started off by climbing the rocks along the stream, which was quite challenging because a lot of the surface was quite slippery and there was practially no even rocks. I had to walk in the water from time to time, thus my shoes were all wet. We evetually reached a pond where we couldn't really walk any further unless we swam across. We took an alternative route of walking along the bush, where there was a difficult track. It's more like someone's footpath really. It didn't work as well as we hoped because it took us all the way to bear the fall, but impossible to get down to the stream. We came back down a little bit and found another pond nearby. We were going to swim in it, but saw a water snake swimming in it. We just sat around in the end and had our lunch. I was honestly doubting how I didn't trip over or fall from somewhere all the way through. I've never done something like this ever. The cool thing about valleys in Taiwan is that it gives you that 'Totoro's home' feel. We walked past this big tree and all I could think about was the movie. We also came across lots of bugs, which aren't something that I'm that fond of, but still, a very different experience.









We spent the rest of the day soaking in the sea at White Sand Beach again. I was taken to an Metro terminal to catch a train home. It was just so weird seeing the train going past each station so timingly and it was almost surreal that I'm back in the city again! I was still in the hiking along the stream without knowing when it was going to end or what there would be after climbing over a huge rock.


So everything was quite exciting for me over the weekend. But I still managed to get a bit depressed. I still find it hard to get into a group of people, finding it hard to take part in a conversation. It happened back in NZ and it happened in Taiwan too. I really wish I could've just stayed in one place the whole time, knowing one culture inside out. Maybe I can manage to speak in 2 different languages, but can I really speak to people from two different cultures? There's probably simply something boring about me. I don't think this weekend earned me any positive credit in front of my friends, probably giving them a negative impression about how boring I really am... Wonder if I'd be invited to any trip again...?

Exhausted

This morning, I got dragged into doing a conference call with organiser of DCCT in America. I was quite nervous at the beginning, but was lucky that our side didn't have to make any comment for the first hour, so I had time to get into the flow of conversation. The people in America were also rather tired, so were rather laid-back as they probably are normally. The issue continued to be on the funding of the cost of inviting speakers. They honestly had a major muck-up, which could have been easily avoided if they heard from sponsors about how much they were willing to fund earlier. HP has been a major problem in that it wants to do things its way (ie has their names and speakers on the important panel of the convention), but is still unwilling to provide more financial contribution. This sort of financial issues isn't really in my team's control, but we still had to sit through 4 hours of discussion. I didn't get to have lunch till 2, but I got a free lunch again!

My office is more involved in organising and preparing the actual convention, and today, only the second day at work, I was told that I was in charge of organising the showcase area. This means, I have to be in contact wigh the exhibitors from overseas about various issues they might have (such as shipping their stuff over) and be there to help them on the days of convention. I am also in control of additional staff that I will be able to boss around at the showcase! Actually, the most exciting thing is that I get to interview the applicants for the job!

There continued to be translation jobs on paper every now and then throughout the day. Couldn't get off work until 6:45...

First day at work - filled with politics

I started my day of work with missing my bus stop... Most of the buses in Taipei are like the Link bus with signs saying what the next bus stop is. I thought the stop I should get off is the name of the building I'm working at since the metro station nearby is named after it. But no, it's called something else and I didn't realise until 3 stops further down. It's alright though because I allowed myself half an hour in case if I got lost. I also took a bus that didn't have air conditioning, so I was sweating the whole time. It had a tv monitor, but I can't change the channel... (Don't think it's actually connected to the aerial anyway.)

My day started with a 2-hour meeting about the Digital Cities Convention Taipei (DCCT). I was told to go to Taipei city hall, which I've never been before. We had a meeting with the deputy mayor being the chair and representatives from all the various departments. It was filled with politics. Before anyone could speak what they wanted to say, they had to say 'may I report to the chairman...'. The organisation of the convention was a bit of a chaos from what I could hear during the meeting. They haven't finalised the speakers yet and have problem of not being able to fund guests when they promised they would. The chair was a bit mad as I could tell and started questioning. The politics came when everyone bounced questions to each other, protecting themselves from any liability. Everything just gets so complicated when people just don't say 'sorry' when they've made a mistake!

I had lunch with people in my group, which saved me NT$70. It's a lot since my salary is only NT$150 an hour... The afternoon was filled by making a poster presentation summarising what Intelligent Community Forum is, which awards Taipei the most intelligent city of 2006. This comes just in time for the DCCT event. I had to translate the English writing into Chinese. I think I'll be laughed at with my Chinese writing skill. (Luckily, my English is much better than most people in Taiwan, so they won't realise how crap it is as well.) It's a bit crazy that a co-worker of mine, who is a mother of 2, kept on asking me to teach her kids how to study. She actually dragged me down to where her kids were waiting for her to show them. Well, of course it didn't go well since I have no idea about the curriculum of Taiwnese high school studies. Also, how do I teach someone 'how' to study Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics 'in general'?

Went swimming after work today with my friends. I haven't done any exercise for ages. I made up the fat I might have burned off whilst swimming by having a scrumptuous Thai meal and a very milky pearl tea.... Very tired right now.