Flight + Arrival in Taiwan

It is currently 8:53 am, Taiwanese time.

Hello there. For those who don't know, this blog is dedicated to my experiences in Taiwan as I stay here for a 9-week internship through PRIME, a UCSD program that sends undergraduates overseas to do research.

Don't want to bore you with the details, so here's the skinny: my partner Allison and I will be working with servers that connect to various sensors. We also have a real-time data viewer that allows you to see data (such as audio or video) in, as you might have guessed, real time. I will be dealing with network cameras that monitor bees and Allison will be working with microphones that monitor frog sounds. We are working under ecologists from the Taiwanese Forestry Research Institute.

I love airports. They're like little sterile malls that have airplanes in them. My lovely parents and girlfriend and I checked out the stores. I wanted to get a souvenir for my Taiwanese mentors. They had sorts of fancy food places, but my mom, being the thrifty person that she is, brought us all sandwiches and sodas, haha.

My flight from LAX was okay, minus the random shaking from the plane, which happened way more often than the last time I took a plane. I sat next to a homely Mexican couple who were on their way to their honeymoon in Thailand. They slept through about half of the flight, it seemed. Having all my books in my luggage, clumsily, and there being no outlet to plug in my laptop, I thought I was going to be severely bored, but the flight offered plenty of things in terms of entertainment: music, movies, and television episodes, both Western and Eastern ones.

So, I ended up watching four movies. Here's the skinny:

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Swedish with English subtitles. Girl had 1337 hacking skillz. Pretty gruesome and violent at some parts, but overall was a pretty good movie.

Daybreakers: English with Chinese subtitles. Vampires take over the world and harvest humans for blood. Terrible movie, don't watch it. Predictables plot, plot holes, and bad acting.

Edge of Darkness: English with Chinese subtitles. Homicide detective investigates the murder of his daughter. Mel Gibson was fantastic. Movie was pretty dark. I missed most of the important talking points though because everyone in the movie decided to talk in a low voice. Pretty annoying. Otherwise, great movie.

Saru Lock: Japanese with English subtitles. Pretty random choice of mine. A locksmith gets involved with the Yakuza in a Japanese comedy/drama/action. It was pretty funny in a cheesy way.

That's it for now. I'm going to go exploring. Will post more about my arrival and place of living later.