Not a meal wasted in Taiwan

A quiet but productive day at work today. We had a meeting with James, someone who’s working on the website and social media development for Pamir. He’ll start his work in August, so we’ll miss him, but since he wanted to learn more about promotions through Chinese social media, we prepared a crash course for him, which ended up being quite helpful and enlightening for all of us as we ignited discussions on Baidu’s paper ranking, the cruciality of KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders), and some other eye-opening social media trends.

Jeffrey and I grabbed boxed lunches to bring back to the office, I also tried hand-dripped coffee for the first time…the coffee beans could’ve been better. But the boxed lunch was on point, I ordered the wuhuarou (basically a strip of fatty meat), which came with vegetables, rice, and even a small bottle of Yakult (the Asian yogurt thing). Ahh darn, I should’ve taken a picture, I usually always take a picture of my food, but guess I was too hungry. I also recently realized my love for Taiwanese lunch boxes, I actually prefer it much more to expensive sushi or BBQ. Perhaps because I get the taste of home, I used to love the lunch-boxes my mom packed me during my compulsory education years.

Later in the day, we all worked on our individual projects, and I finally found some inspiration to proceed with a presentation I’m working on, which I now feel very hopeful of.

After work, I met with Jackie, a fellow Yalie Light Fellow, and his friend, Cindy, who’s an international Korean student at Swarthmore also in Taiwan studying Chinese. We intended to eat at a sukiyaki restaurant near 国父纪念馆 Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall, but we didn’t make a reservation and the restaurant was completely booked. We decided to explore the street for alternative options, which worked out perfectly fine since every other building was a restaurant. After much indecisiveness, we finally agreed on izakaya, which is basically a bunch of small dishes and kabobs typically paired with alcohol (but as the good kids we are, we only had water -insert angelic emoticon face with halo here-). Good choice, we had a good time eating and getting to know each other. Went to 50 Lan afterward, a popular Taiwanese boba chain, I was way too filled to drink a whole cup, but I tried some of Jackie’s and Cindy’s, and they were delish. They also use mini boba, super small, almost like papaya seeds, but the milk tea and bobas were both heaven. Overall a very satisfying day, hope to be just as productive in my last day in Taiwan (for now!).

Izakaya!

The dish Jackie long awaited for, tomatoes on cheese. Called it a “disappointment.”

The MRT station selfie

 

The Haunted Beimen Gate??

Quite a few days after my previous blog post, I have finally settled down to update everyone on my internship life in Taipei. Some days I come home dead exhausted from all my daytime activities and other days I get lazy, but will definitely try to update this as often as possible from now on.

A colleague at the firm took us to the Binjiang market, a huge market filled with fresh veggies, fruits, and seafood. We entered directly through the Taipei Fish Market, which sold lots of freshly cut seafood, sushi, and Japanese snacks and beverages. Many people buy some sushi, sashimi, and a drink to eat at the standing tables outside the supermarket. After a quick walk around to see the restaurants and supermarket options, we decided to eat at a sushi bar inside the market. I have to say, despite the freshness of the fish, I once again confirmed my disinterest in seafood, or perhaps raw food in general. I also ate a huge bowl of soba two hours before and wasn’t very hungry, so maybe I’ll just need to pick a better day to go back.

Taipei Fish Market

Huge selection of Japanese alcohol

King Crab

SALMON PARADISE

Crabs, say hello to my tummy

Appetizers

Ready for meal #929392

Super fresh selection at the sushi bar

After we went back, I had a conference call with our boss, Nick, who’s currently in Shanghai, about an investment immigration project I’m working on, and gathered some good advice to proceed.

For dinner, Nick arranged for us to meet up with a fellow Yalie, Sonya Wen, a former SOM student who’s currently teaching at Tamkang University and running a charity organization, and her daughter, Emily, a rising high school senior studying in California. Since Sonya is buddhist, we decided on a vegetarian restaurant in Da’an district, and I have to say, although I’m a meat lover, Taiwanese vegetarian food makes eating solely vegetables somewhat copable. Since her daughter is applying to college soon, Jeffrey, Josie, and I shared some of our advice for and personal experiences of the application process. Ahh, has it already been over two years? Sonya also brought up the recent resignation of Yale’s Pierson College dean over her insensitive comments on Yelp, commenting about “white trash” and “low class folk”. I won’t write too much about this, since…well let’s just leave it there.
On my taxi ride back home, I had an interesting conversation with the taxi driver. The taxi driver was complaining that BoAi Street, a street I always pass through on my taxi rides to work, is always jammed because of Beimen (the North Gate). He said that there used to be a very convenient elevated highway built to connect many routes along that area, but Beimen somehow obstructed the quality of the highway, and it eventually had to be taken down. I imagined that city officials decided not to take down Beimen for its historical implications, but the taxi driver said that they had actually tried to remove the gate with an excavator. On the first day, the excavator made a few indents on the gate, but the structure itself wouldn’t budge. The next day, when the construction workers came back, the indents were gone, and when they proceeded with demolishing the gate, again, the gate was unremovable. Finally, city officials decided to keep the gate. But the creepiest part is that during the Qin dynasty, the gate served as the location for decapitation, so some say that the gate is plagued by reluctant spirits. Who knows? But that’s my interesting find of the day!

Nickopedia takes us to Delish Taiwanese Food

Today marks my first full week in Taiwan and it’s been quite the learning experience. I have the most amazing boss in the world. His name is Nick and we like to call him Nickopedia because he rarely doesn’t have the answer to a question. He’s also the ultimate foodie and likes to bring us to some kickass restaurants all around Taipei. Today was a Sunday and Jeffrey and I met up with Nick in the early evening to enjoy dinner at a traditional Taiwanese restaurant. As per usual, Nick ordered a few dishes too much and we were contently stuffed to the top of our throats by the end of the meal.

After dinner, we headed to the Chiang-kai Shek Memorial Hall expecting to see the annual 6/4 Tiananmen Massacre memorial event, but when we arrived, Liberty Square seemed quite deserted, so we suspected that the heavy rain from earlier in the day prompted the event to be cancelled. Afterward, we wandered around the National Music Hall located inside Liberty Square and decided to have some tea at a cafe inside the hall called Chunshuitang (which is renowned for “inventing” boba). Conversations with Nick never lack excitement and we always end up learning something new (that either has our jaws on the table or has us laughing in the aisles) about him. So today…we talked about…wow this would take very long to explain, but in a nutshell, Nick risked his life to help a schoolmate win an election and years later ended up asking his schoolmate to return the favor by delivering him a 2 pound box of Godiva chocolate in New York, which he used to try to go after his wife at the time. My narration is awful, you’d need Nick to narrate the story to get the full effect hahaha

Tomorrow is work again! I might meet up with Gabe, who’s also a Yalie here on the Light Fellowship, and head to the night market with him. But for now, buenas noches!

Taiwan National Theater

Nick struggling to read to menu. “This is ridiculous. The words look like ants.”

Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial

Pamir Piggies enjoying food

6/4 Movement Prez