Winding down in Taipei

Since the end of the Taiwan book fair Monday, I've been able to be more of a tourist. One highlight was riding the Maokong gondola at the zoo, up over three mountains in the rain and fog. Through the clear floor of our "crystal" gondola, we could look down on the tropical foliage and tea plantations. Later we plunged down the steep slope in darkness toward the city lights.

Another day the Tumblehome team took the fast train to the industrial city of Hsinchu, where we visited the national space agency and Ritek, a manufacturer of industrial diamonds for use in the semiconductor industry and elsewhere,as mentioned in my upcoming book, The Desperate Case of the Diamond Chip. Dr. James Sung, the brilliant Ritek founder, gave us a seminar on diamonds and graphene, their properties and their links to the origins of life. All fascinating stuff that I may write about more once I finish reading his book.

As for the space agency, with a small budget it has created a leading-edge system of six weather satellites circling the globe, measuring heat and density in the atmosphere to assist in the prediction of typhoons and other phenomena. In partnership with the US, Taiwan is now building twelve new, even more sophisticated satellites. In our informal visit we saw where the components are tested for stability in a vacuum and while undergoing rapid and violent temperature changes.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak at Intel Taiwan, where I showed slides and told stories about my father, some of the other Intel founders, and my memories of Intel's earliest days. Actually I think the most popular part of the lecture was when I told them I had eaten the local specialty, stinky tofu. I also gave out a number of copies of Lost in Lexicon's first edition and Advance Reader Copies of Tumblehome Learning books left over from the book fair. The audience was warm and enthusiastic, with questions ranging from what we talked about over dinner in my childhood home to how to raise children to be adventurous yet safe. At the end, Rachel Liu from corporate relations presented me with a cute blue Intel robot-like figure in a bunny suit.

After Intel, Barnas took me to the Long Shan (Dragon Mountain) temple, quite an eclectic temple in the heart of the city. It has a fantastic curved roof, carved ceilings, a waterfall, and lantern figures around the edges of the courtyards. I didn't buy incense or pray to any of the deities, which may be why I got the following fortune when I drew a stick from a pot: "You have failed. Change your boss or change your ways." Since I'm my own boss, I think the message is pretty clear about where the problem lies.

From there we went on to a couple of night markets, ending up at a very authentic, drippy (it's still raining) local one in Houshanpi. There I ate more tso doufu (stinky tofu) and a kind of oyster omelet. However, I avoided chicken rump, large intestines, bin lanh (betel nut), turtle, frog, or snake. Maybe next time.

Taipei tidbits

A few random observations from Taipei:

Somewhere near our booth is another group that starts every morning with a company cheer. I haven't been able to convince the Tumblehome Learning team to do the same.

One to two percent of people I see in any public place are wearing face masks - whether because they have colds or because they don't want to get colds I don't know.

There are lots of little cartoon characters everywhere - in windows, projected in lights on the sides of buildings, or walking down the street.

People tend to travel by taxi, subway, bus, or motorbike, so there aren't that many private cars on the road.

Wireless internet service is free all over Taipei - except in the Grand Hyatt, where it costs $9 a day.

The major intersections have diagonal crosswalks, so you don't have to cross one street and then wait to cross the other.

I've seen a couple of people pushing lap dogs around in special dog strollers. The dogs are wearing not only doggie sweaters but little doggie trousers.

When the temperature is in the fifties, people bundle up and complain about the cold.

When we applied for government ID numbers, there were multiple clerks, no lines, and no fees. After getting our numbers, we got to press a button to rate the level of service we received.

Two little Taiwanese boys, two or three years old, visited the Houghton Mifflin booth across from ours yesterday. Both wielded huge inflatable baseball bats decorated with the stars and stripes. Every couple of minutes they gave each other an enormous whack with the bats and immediately both fell down dead, sprawled completely flat on the floor. Then they got up and did it again.