my 4 months in taipei (4)

Good food is aplenty in Taipei, from the street corner soybean milk breakfast shack to fancy hotel food court to gourmet coffee/tea house to indigenous Taiwanese delicacy night market... Just pick one and answer the question: "Where do you want to eat today?"

Or just "Gomaji"!

Gomaji.com is a Groupon-like website that offers deep discount deals at participating restaurants that we happened to get wind of. We just picked those nearby with the kind of food we like, purchased the tickets and made reservations and went. Foods we thus tried included exquisite seafood (http://www.gomaji.com/Taipei_p75875.html), gourmet steak (http://www.gomaji.com/Taipei_p76224.html), fusion buffet (http://www.gomaji.com/Taipei_p78507.html), Mongolian hot pot (https://food.gomaji.com/s29661.html), Japanese eel noodle (http://www.gomaji.com/Taipei_p74621.html), generic hot plates (http://www.gomaji.com/store-detail.php?store_id=37114), etc.

Other great eateries I recall included a country kitchen with farm-raised chicken (http://www.paine0602.com/blog/post/29542147), a Shanghai deli with exotic dumplings (http://lovedach.pixnet.net/blog/post/402434689), a "goose house" just a couple streets from where we lived (http://www.acheng.com.tw/php/product_list.php), and a bakery with international prize winning bread that commands waiting line all day long (http://www.wupaochun.com/).

Eating really is just half the fun of feasting, where the people you eat with constitute the other half of the fun. Through these feastings and various other events, I am glad I got to reacquaint myself with my sisters, in-laws, cousins, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, friends of old and new, knowing them better each time we got together. 

The world is a transient place, even the city I grew up with I have long given up trying to trace back all the places my memories like me to reminisce, because they are recognizable no more, just like the South Orange County I've been living in for the past 29 years having been in transition all these years. What's ever lasting, or we can try to make ever lasting, is relationships and compassion with people, wherever we live, whenever we meet. 

With that, I conclude this long log of my long stay in Taiwan. The old saying "a picture is worth a thousand words", and in this new age of Instagram writing text without accompanying photos is borderline criminal, so here is a link to a collection of photos of my 4 months in Taiwan I have put in my Facebook photo album for those of you who may like to view them:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10206320083586118.1073741829.1387569224&type=1&l=b0de2ea607

Adios!

my 4 months in taipei (3)

One "mission" I set out to do on this trip was to explore and understand the ecosystem of internet startup businesses in Taiwan. I went to events sponsored by government innovation promoting agencies, seminars and "meetups" organized by formal and informal professional groups, such as "Startup Taiwan", "Taipei Entrepreneur Community", "Young Professionals Network - Taipei"... and met an interesting crop of entrepreneurs, professionals, organizers, expatriates (foreigners living in Taipei), etc.:

Jamie is a young man who came back to Taiwan after studying/working in the States and started one of the first internet startup accelerator programs in Taiwan--and I later found out he also hosts one weekly news-magazine show on TV; Ellen is a young woman who also came back from the States after finishing her school in Texas and went to work in the manufacturing and trading businesses in China and is now getting ready to embark on another venture there; Clio also came back from China after working there for years for an international software company and is trying to set up some innovative IT professionals network in Taiwan. 

Winston is a local young man who had tried an online business with social cause; Ben is currently working for a niche printer part company but itching to start a business of his own; JP is the co-founder of a cloud-based video monitoring startup which has established some footing in Taiwan and is now looking to expand to world markets; Rebecca is a college English teacher who had published 19 books on English learning and has an app idea to help foreigners learn Chinese in a fun way. 

Zack is a young programming wiz kid who's building a software tool that he plans to use in his own future company; Marco is a nice kid just came back from the States to fulfill his military obligation and take care of his ailing mother while in the same time tries to start a business implementing the startup plan he had won prize for in the States before graduation. 

Jake is an American from Oklahoma who graduated from the same University of Southern California I went to and did the same technological venture (VoIP) I did during the same period (late 1990's), except he was doing it here in Taiwan while I was doing it there in the US. He's happily married to a Taiwanese woman, with kids, and managing a technical consulting firm he co-owns that has over 30 software engineers in Vietnam; Jim is a guy from UK who came to study MBA here and decided to stay and is now editor of a startup newsletter while working for a law firm whose founder is a (Caucasian) American who became a naturalized Taiwanese citizen whose office building in downtown Taipei is probably one of the first to install roof-top green house in the city that the newly elected mayor of Taipei was invited to visit (and Jim showed me around after our lunch near the office).

Troy is a Canadian from Toronto who had long established passive-revenue generating e-commerce sites before he moved to Taipei 7 years ago to enjoy internet prevalent, foreigner friendly, relatively low cost living here. He has just set up a business book club to meet like-minded people while planning on starting some new online business venture; Karen is an American woman who's been in Taiwan for over 30 years who teaches English, linguistics and phonetics at National Taiwan University and are now exploring the possibility of launching a startup with former students to develop and market English-learning apps.

Sebastian is a German who had a neat language exchange app for which he's looking for funding to monetize the service; Robert is a Swiss who owns an international translation agency while on the side organizes monthly startup meetups at a cafe restaurant whose young owner Donnie is an entrepreneur and the co-organizer of the events.

Bernard is a Hong Konger who gained his hi-tech startup experiences in Boston, Beijing, Singapore, and started some months ago an "entrepreneurial skills" training school here teaching coding and online marketing; Richard is a non-technical Taiwan native whose eclectic life experiences through Australia and Japan convinced him to come back and organize and manage a startup innovation center here sponsored by the city. 

And Asics is the energetic owner of a newly founded accelerator company from mainland China who came here to convince young Taiwanese entrepreneurs to move to the city just across the strait to start their businesses there, promising to provide all the "grounding" logistics and a gateway to the biggest internet/mobile markets of the world! 

my 4 months in taipei (2)

Meeting old friends is a joyful thing to do when returning to the place you came from. There were many reunion parties I went to, from little ones to big ones, rural to metro, public or private, planned or impromptu.

Two major ones were both from my college classmates: One guy invited us to the rolling orange hill estate he purchased a few years ago right off the silicon city of north-central Taiwan. Everybody got a full pack of organically grown, delicious tasting oranges on their way out, after a pleasant afternoon of scenery walk in the farm and happy chattering in an elegant cottage house they built. 

The other was held in a newly renovated and converted chic old house Italian restaurant in Taipei city for fine dining. We were each issued a VIP membership card at the end--courtesy of our "honcho" classmate whose company sponsored the renovation and the event--that allowed for a few free gourmet coffees, for example. That I actually took advantage of afterwards because the restaurant was just a few minutes walk away from where I lived.

One little reunion was with a couple elementary schoolmates, at the backyard of a city dwelling, which is kind of unusual, judging from the expensive real estate landscape here. But there we were, 3 couples sitting around the patio table drinking, snacking, sharing stories of old and new in a delightful sunny-blue-skyed Taipei city afternoon for a good time.

Another little get-together was with a few college friends in a residential setting as well. This ingenious college classmate of ours created a chip design ahead of its time and started his own company many years ago that has been doing good and sustainable business ever since. He bought one floor of this nice apartment building for residence and another for office so his daily executive job is to walk downstairs, and up. We had an exotic dinner his wife prepared and then sang Karaoke in his well suited entertainment room, realizing some of my college classmates have many otherworldly talents than just knowing electrons. 

And I led a bike-ride reunion with a few campus fellowship alums, to finish one last leg of the great bike routes around the city and its outskirts that I started trekking on some 4 years ago and continued to do so every time I came back. 

I also met my usual "street scholar" friend who's been teaching Greek in a seminary school while ministering to street people every weekend at the seedy part of the town, and another guy who's been living and working in North Africa translating Bible to local language in secret for years and just got back to Taiwan a couple years ago.

And here's another campus fellowship alum, a girl who's been doing a ministry called "Telling Tales to Adults" that uses movies or arts or literature as discussion materials to explore the true meaning of love, life, and faith. Going to her events is like going to the movies, which I did a couple of times: 

One showing was a Korean movie (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/milyang-secret-sunshine/) that depicted a young woman who's been clammed up in deep grief after losing her husband and then her son tragically until she found God in church but then lost her faith when she found out "God has forgiven the killer of her son before she did".

The other was the true-love story between C. S. Lewis--the famous Christian writer--and a divorced American woman (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108101/). 

Yet another one she and her crew was working on that I watched while visiting their work session was about how a campus shooting killer's parent struggles to put his life back together after that tragic event (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798243/). The light rock music in the movie was pretty good, too.

my 4 months in taipei (1)

For the past 10-15 years or so, my wife and I go back to Taiwan around the Christmas-New Year time for vacation, usually for 2 or 3 weeks, one month top. 

This year--or should I say last--was different. With my wife's early retirement, she decided--and I complied--to try out a long stay there that started early November and lasted over the end of February, for a total of almost 4 months.

The following are a few memorable moments there I thought worth noting down.

My chronically aching feet started acting up again just about a week after I arrived in Taipei. In hind sight, it probably started way early in October, through my trip to Turkey, never got completely healed, before I foolhardily started my aggressive daily morning walk to a neighborhood park here.

So here I was, in the middle of the night, lying in bed with excruciating, bone gnawing pain at my left heel and ankle, trying to find any pain relieving medicine in the kitchen drawer without success. In similar situations back in the States, I either went to the ER which turned out to be no emergency care at all, or having to wait until the morning and drove myself to some local clinic when they were open. Here, I called a 24-hour drug store to ask if they had the anti-inflammation/pain relieving medicine I wanted, they didn't, but suggested I try a pharmacy store across street that might have. I did and they had. Then I called a taxi, which came to my apartment almost the moment I hung up the phone, drove me a few blocks to the pharmacy. I hopped (literally) out of the car, bought the medicine, asked for water and took a couple pills right then and there, hopped back to the street, got another cab and went home.

The next day I went to a neighborhood municipal hospital and saw a bone specialist. He took the x-ray, checked my foot, gave prescriptions, for both medicine and physical therapy for two weeks (and then two more weeks in a follow-up visit, and then another two after that), all in one morning's worth.

Then my wife broke her arm by accident over a weekend visit to a town 50 miles away from Taipei. The local hospital ER took x-ray, re-aligned the dislocated joint, put on the cast, before sending her on an ambulance back to Taipei city for a bone surgery, which took place the next day without a glitch.

The total out-of-the-pocket expenses, including the emergency services at both hospitals, the hired ambulance, the surgery, 2-night stay in the hospital, and the non-insurance-covered high-end artificial joint we opted to use for my wife: around $2600.

And I opted to do my regular colon exam here this time. Again it was just a local municipal gastroenterology specialist, who arranged to have the exam done in another bigger and better facilitated municipal hospital branch, with painless anesthesia-assisted procedure, just like those performed in the States. The nice thing about doing it here is I didn't have to drive, or have someone else drive me there. Just took a subway and walked there, and a taxi back.They did require a second person accompanying through the exam, due to the full-body anesthesia, though.