Jade Market in Taichung

After a day of deadly efficient graphic designing, we hit up the jade market, which Ron described as having the potential to make me pee my pants. Truly, there were so many things to see, paw through, and take photos of. Perfect! None of us know how to tell real jade from fake, but I think it's pretty safe to assume that most of it's fake. Too shiny, too perfect, too cheap. But still a feast for the eyes. Lauren and I pored over pretty much every table while Ron and Ben tolerated us :)





I thought this guy had style.



A great carving that highlights the stone.





I tried on a few necklaces that I really liked, but unfortunately I am a woman of expensive tastes.

This one reminded me a little too much of a lariat once it was on.





This one was very Rococo (not the pizza, the art movement) in the coloring and the flouncy stylings. Amazing, though. The price was in the hundreds of US dollars.



This one was around $300, I think. After a while I stopped registering the prices, because it might as well have been $1000.





A girl can dream. And perhaps a girl can throw together her spending money for the whole trip and go back and get that one necklace she really really liked.

Koi Pond and First Impressions

Just so you know, I didn't fall into a koi pond. That's not where this is going. I don't want to mislead anyone.

Today's vendor visit started out in a fun way. Ron and Lauren said to me, "Hey, you've got to check out this koi pond the owner's grandfather maintains over here just off of the parking lot." Sure enough, it was really beautiful, nicely cared for, and the fish were rioting because they thought they were getting fed.







Well, I decided to take an underwater picture, because the camera I got for this trip is a waterproof 'tough' camera. (The camera doesn't get destroyed or dropped to the bottom of the pond in this story. Quit hoping for the worst!)

See, here's the video, and nothing bad happens.

 

 As I'm on my hands and knees on the wet ground, one hand stuck in this clearly beloved pond, one ankle being held for stability by Ben, one of the guys from our Taiwan office, the vendors come outside to greet us. I look up and over my shoulder, having just finished shooting my masterpiece. (Alas, how great would it be to have gotten a picture of this scene?) I clumsily get up from the ground, brush off my dirty knees, stuff my camera in my pocket and go to shake their hands, only to remember that my hands are completely wet and covered in bits of grass and dirt.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you make a great first impression.

Seductive Biscuits

These biscuits were leveling the bedroom eyes at me.





Particularly the monkey, who seems more than a little sinister.

The Food

Some may wonder about how I'm doing with the food here. The answer is that some nights are great, while others are not so much. Usually it's easy to find some things to fill up on, though. I eat what I like, and just pass on the rest. Like this stuff.



(Although I did eat some king crab.)

Mmmm, fish eye! My favorite.



During one dinner of Hot Pot (there are small boiling pots of broth for everyone to cook their own food in) I played with my food. Ron had told me that masters of the chopsticks were able to pick up three peanuts with them, so that's what I'm attempting here.



Did I say attempting? I mean rocking at.



That night turned out to be a real trip. The whole place was done up like an adult Barbie doll house in black, silver and white. Lots of chandeliers everywhere. There was one above our table.



Strange translation on our moist towelettes.



Fancy fruit plate.



Fresh fish.



How fresh, you ask? So fresh that the fish was still moving. It was gruesome and also entertaining. I was used to it from seeing dad clean fish when I was a kid, but even our vendors were a bit taken aback.



Squid with a squid illustration on the plate.



Shrimp-cicles. This is the hot pot, for reference.



Our dinner another night was a larger community hot pot.



So, dinner has been interesting some nights, but I'm not starving. Last night I tried the tip of an octopus tentacle, which was actually not bad. Not slimy, and kind of meaty instead of chewy, like calamari. In any case, I've got to skip along and get ready for work. Oh, as for an ear update, I still can't hear much out of my right ear, and sometimes I wake up with a little earache, but for the most part, during the day it's fine other than the lack of hearing. It doesn't pop anymore when I fly (there have been several short flights), because of the hole in my eardrum, I presume.  And so I limp along on my tour through China and Taiwan!

Golf Spa

I've got a lot to report on, but the quickest thing to write up would be the massageS I've recently gotten at the Mission Hills Golf Course Spa. Yes. That whole sentence is for real. Most nights we are entertained by the companies we're visiting. The president of this one happens to have a condo on the grounds of the largest golf course in the world. It's pretty ridiculous. The first massage last night was good, but tonight I had wanted to do something different tonight instead of going back for a second massage. Alas, back to the spa it was.

Looks rough, right?



I'm on a new experiences bender, so since we were going back to the same place for the second night in a row, I asked for a different massage to mix things up as much as I could. I got a Thai massage, which is usually pretty painful and tough, but I think I got my massage at maybe 60% power or something like that for most of it. I begged for mercy beforehand. It's like a very large and intense cat doing 'happy paws' on you - you know, kneading. But then! After the happy paws warm-up, it moves on to what feels like a strong blind man trying to gouge someone else's eyes out. Deep gouging into flesh and terrible aim. Muscles being found out and nearly plucked from your bones via thumbs of steel. Then at some points limbs get bent up into pretzel positions and you get aggressively palpated some more. At one point I was on my stomach, my knees were bent, my feet were crossed at the ankles, and the masseuse was basically kneeling on my feet, pressing them into my bum. Yes, it was painful at times, but I persevered, dear readers. All in all it was relaxing, and at the end I felt like something had really been accomplished.

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As a disclaimer, I think most of the places we’ll be seeing are newer cities and areas. For those who thought I might be steeped in traditional culture… no. From what I can tell, I don’t think we’ll be seeing any national treasures. Sometimes I think I should be disappointed, but I'm honestly not! After all, this is a work trip (and as we see, it's not too terrible). I go with the flow and I'm really grateful for everything I've gotten to do. This culture is different than our own and it’s been really exciting to see what I have gotten to see. I didn’t have any expectations going in, and I’m more than happy with the trip so far. Plus, I would love to plan an extension into the next trip so I could take some vacation over here and see some historical things. I hear China goes back quite a ways ;)

Alright, it's off to bed for me.

Chinese Hospital

It's late here, so lucky for you guys I'm going to keep it short and sweet. I went to the hospital today! No, no emergency. Here's the story: I came down with a cold upon leaving Wisconsin. Obviously it was my body rejecting leaving the Motherland. I had about two days in Connecticut before leaving for China. My boss suggested I see a doctor if I thought I needed to, but the morning of my last day before leaving, I really did feel fine. Sure, I had a cold, but it was only a cold. Then, around 2:00 in the afternoon, it moved to my ears. I had a lot of earaches as a kid, so I knew I was most likely in for it, but at that time in the day, there was not much to be done. I hoped for the best.

Getting up in the air didn't hurt too badly, but during descending, my ears hurt like crazy. Lots of pressure, and pain when they finally did pop. My hearing has not been good in either ear since landing, and my hearing was much worse in my right ear, which started leaking puss at dinner a few nights ago. Yup. I had had this before as a kid so I wasn't terrified, but I knew it wasn't a good sign.

My options were to ride it out and spend the next week+ not being able to hear people talking to me quietly from across a table, staying sick with a cold and ear infection, and have a potentially painful flight home, ooooorrr get it checked out and hopefully walk away with some antibiotics.

The vendors at the factory arranged for me to be taken to a hospital in a larger city nearby, about 30 minutes away. Luckily I was taken by a driver (which are basically skilled daredevils here) and a woman, Nancy, working for the company who had lived in the States for a few years and who speaks excellent English. She said local hospitals were frightening, but that this one would be good.

Sure enough, this VIP had been taken to the right place.



The doctor spoke fairly good English, too, and Nancy helped to translate what he didn't know. It actually helped to have had ear infections in the past, because I knew what to ask. It was fairly straightforward and normal, except at one point the doctor took a call on his iPhone, which had a cell phone cover with a sports car on it, and halfway through my appointment, his last patient walked in and they had a nice little chat about the meds she had just picked up.

Speaking of meds, let me introduce to you PILL MOUNTAIN, brought to you by a middle ear infection.



I had hoped for antibiotics, and boy did I ever get them. 12 pills and one ear drop per day.



Look at these cute lil' guys.



Ok, so that wasn't short. My posts never are. I want you all to know that I would be posting more, except in most places in China, one cannot get facebook or Blogger or any other Google thangs. Google it? Not in China, you don't. It's some kind of government law. But I have learned that this is a kind of lawless place, where you can drive on the wrong side of the road for a block if the oncoming traffic is clear. And health laws and building codes? Nope. Don't need 'em. Somehow the strictest rule I've encountered so far has also been waived at this particular internet connection at the hotel, and I'm able to facebook and blog. This hotel is a kind of lawless place in a place of lawlessness.

With that little number, I'll sign off. I might catch up on blogging about some sightseeing we did the other day if I wake up at 5:30am tomorrow (common due to jet lag).

New York ---> Hong Kong

I'm traveling to China and Taiwan for work for the next 10 days or so, doing a kind of press check on the bike frames that I've designed graphics for. I'm with two coworkers on the design team, Ron and Lauren. I'll be posting here as I can.

I've arrived in Hong Kong a mere 15 hours after departing from New York! It's 3:00am back home, but it's the afternoon here. At the suggestion of coworkers, I didn't sleep on the plane but instead watched movies like it was my job. When you look at a 15 hour flight as an opportunity to do nothing but watch current movies and eat snacks all day, it looks a tiny bit brighter. Anyway, according to calculations, being sleep deprived will help with falling asleep tonight and sleeping through the morning here.

 Aaaaanyhow, the morning started out around 4:30am, with a 5:00am date with a car service to the airport. Once there, we used Ron's super jet-setter status with Cathay Pacific to get into their plush lounge. Free snacks, beer and booze, and great lounging opportunities. It's how the other side lives, basically.

What better way to lounge than in the outfit my parents got me for Christmas for my long flights? I'm also sporting a new hat from my aunt Andy, locally made in the north woods of Wisconsin.



The lounge was classy. I am not.



The booze!





The snacks!



Cheers to the lounge.



Then, as previously stated, it was time for some of this:



I got a window seat, which is of course a hassle for a lot of things, but it was really great for gawking at scenery. When I saw the icy seas around Godhavn, Greenland (according to the electronic map on the screen at the time) I was reminded that flying is damn cool sometimes. To look down and realize you're flying over and looking at foreign lands is frankly amazing, especially for a big dork like me. I've been so busy seeing friends in family in Wisconsin over the past few weeks and organizing that trip that it didn't hit me until taking these photos that I was on my way to China.



There were lots of cool details to notice. I loved the river winding through these mountains.



Or this thing, which looks like it has a shadow - some sort of raised feature?



Fields under the snow.



The highway with one road peeling off for a small town.



Trails converging to one point, or a river branching out?



And mountains and mountains and mountains...







Lovely blues and browns.



Look at these handsome, rugged buzzards!



Just think of all you guys are in for. I've only been in airports today and look at all the cool photos I have for you.

Here's part of the Hong Kong airport, by the way. We're here for a few hours before we catch our second and last flight for the day.



I think I might try to sneak in a tiny little nap now ;)