I'm so good at using chopsticks, I drink water with them

It is currently 5:3o PM, Taiwanese time.

So where was I? Oh yes, I was just starting to talk about my trip to Taipei 101.

Let me start by introducing you to the wonderful group of people who I shared this experience with.

Top, from left to right: Cato, Allison, Jason, who's that creep!?

Bottom, from left to right: Sophia, Vicki

Cato, Vicki and Allison are from PRIME. Allison is my partner and I live and work with her right now. Sophia and Jason are my coworkers and work under Dr. Sheng-Shan Lu. They are pretty awesome and we've gotten pretty close, going to lunch every day and joking around. Along with Poki (who took this picture), they have taught me most of the Chinese words and phrases I know today. I've taught them some obscure English words and, no kidding, some Spanish words. I've expanded Jason's Spanish vocabulary beyond his initial "Buenos dias, senorita". Jason is pretty funny and smart and pretty good at making puns. Sophia is a sweetheart and is very helpful whenever I need help.

Because she wasn't shown in the previous picture, this is Poki, next to Allison. She is very nice and likes to joke around and tease people. I knew from day one she would give me a hard time. The first time we all went out to get lunch, I zoned out and wandered ahead of the group, going straight when we would've had to turn left. She yelled "Bye bye!" This coming from a then-almost complete stranger. She likes to teach me new Chinese phrases and words. One day she taught me how to say "You are very beautiful" in Chinese, so that I could say that to my girlfriend. Jason joked that she taught me that so I could say that to Poki and boost her self-esteem. Jason is so silly.

So after paying the 500 NT and going up to the 90 ish floor, we were given a headset that allowed us to hear recorded messages containing information about the different stations around the floor. The stations overlooked certain important areas around Taipei.

I noticed all the green and how the trees were in harmony in the city, as they seemed to mingle with the bustling buildings quite comfortably. It doesn't hurt that Taipei is located on a basin and is surrounded by gorgeous green mountains.

One floor contained a slew of gorgeous coral gemstone carvings. The eagle is just one of many amazing carvings I saw. More pictures can be found on my facebook page, as always. Coral gemstone jewelry were also for sale, but they were prices steeply, for reasons that will be clear soon.

Coral gemstones are the hard skeleton of red coral; they are like precious stones. Coral gemstones are found at the bottom of the sea, generally in areas that too deep for regular deep sea divers. This is why they are rare and valuable. The fact that they look dazzling doesn't hurt, either.

We went to the highest point in the tower, where, despite the strong gusts, had an amazing view of the city. It was a photography enthusiast's heaven; you could pretty much see everything. It's hard for me to resist a good sunset photograph. One that's of the sun overlooking a gorgeous city is a big plus.

Well, there you go. That's a Taipei 101 in a nutshell. If you're ever in Taiwan, checking out this place is a must. Afterwards, our group got lost trying to get to a night market, so we decided to eat at a sit-down restaurant, got some delicious shaved ice (my favorite Taiwanese thing ever), and called it a day.

I figured it would be appropriate to end this blog with an obscure, unorganized list.

More Foods I've Eaten:

- Taiwanese sausage (deliciously grilled)

- Watermelon juice

- Wax apple

- Passionfruit flavored popsicles, syrups, etc

- Tomato and beef broth noodle soup (the "noodles" were actually long slices of dough)

Number of Couples I've seen in Taiwan Consisting of a White Guy and an Asian Girl (aka the Yellow Fever count): 11 (and rising!)

Times I've Eaten Way too Much: (lost count!)

Summary of this past week + weekend

It is currently 9:39 PM Taiwanese time, Sunday, July 4th.

It has been a long time since I posted something new. Well here you go. I could go on forever about what I have been up to in this wonderful island of Taiwan, but I won't. So here is a pseudo-summary of my adventures:

Food I've eaten:

More shaved ice!!!

Bottom left is mine. I assumed the white jellies were litchi jellies, which I love, but they are actually almond jellies. Note the pineapple. It was the best pineapple chunks I've ever had.

Bottom right is a special kind of shaved ice that is extra finely shaved, and is made of frozen milk instead of regular ice. It had a great texture and was very delicious.

A Traditional Taiwanese food

Don't know how to spell it, but it sounds something like li wei. You pick ingredients from pile and they boil them for use and add their secret sauce. It was really, really good. It was so good the line was super long. Thank you to June, Vicki's aunt's friend, for showing this place to us :)

Taiwanese Pizza from... Pizza Hut?

Pizza party on Thursday to welcome Allison, Dr. Wong, and I. Dr. Wong is post-doc who just joined the team. He is hoping that Allison and I would teach him everything we know about RBNB, RDV, and Java, haha. I hope I can be a good teacher ^^;

Pizzas include shrimp, mushroom and crab; kimchi and beef (no joke), shrimp and squid (with this amazing white sauce.) There were two vegetarian pizzas and some others I didn't try, unfortunately.

Another noteworthy memory would be a really really fancy place we went to, where we got treated an 8-course meal. We were treated by the mother of Tiffany, a friend of Vicky's. Tiffany and her brother Howard were born in Taiwan, and moved to the US many years ago, so they speak fluent Chinese and are familiar with Taipei. The place was sort of a Japanese-Western fusion and was pretty fancy; it had excellent service. They had the kind of food where the plating is so artistic that you feel a little guilty for eating. Everything was absolutely delicious and my company wasn't so bad either :) Unfortunately, that night I forgot to bring my camera. Luckily, Vicky took some pictures of my food for me and I should have them on hand shortly.

Work:

Admittedly, work is going slow. Coming here, I had an idea in my head of what needs to be done and what work will be like, but it turned out quite differently. Apparently communication between us in UCSD with TFRI was not very good before leaving. Networks that I thought needed setting up were already set up, and programs that I thought needed writing were already written and worked fine. The language barrier also presented a challenge. Everyone in TFRI could speak English, but it was still difficult to understand each other sometimes. This made communication project details harder.

After talking to the right people, I managed to make a mental list of tasks I need to accomplish:

- Write generic source code that can cater to any of the forms of data used by the researchers. This will be helpful to them.

In simpler terms: write a program that puts stuff into a server.

In even simpler terms: write stuff.

I won't be able to really start this until I go to the field site Lienhuachih on Tuesday. It's in the middle of Taiwan, near Taichung. The area of the field site is sub-tropical mountains. I imagine I will make fast friends with my bug spray there.

- They have a program, written by my genius and super awesome peer mentor Michael Nekrasov (you reading this? :P) that recognizes "blobs" in picture. "Blobs" are pretty much shapes that contrast the background in color. This program puts a box on those blobs and can even count how many boxes there are. The researchers use this program to count bees from pictures that they have accumulated from a network camera that takes a picture every minute, 30 days a month, 12 months a year. I have, on my laptop, pictures from 2006-2009 (missing a few months though). There are about half a million pictures, 20 GB in size (for those who are not familiar with computer memory measurements, that is HUGE.)

Anyway, my task is to run this program and compare it with average counts (per year) gained by, and I am not kidding, hand counting. I can imagine some poor undergraduate toiling away all night, counting bees endlessly. That would be enough to drive a man to despise bees for the rest of his life. Another task that was added more recently is to figure out a proper snapshot frequency that is sufficient for accuracy. That is, compare results from average counting when a picture is taken every minute vs. every 10 minutes, etc. I estimate that taking it every minute is a little excessive. 5-10 minutes sounds about right.

In simpler terms: count bees using a really smart program.

In even simpler terms: do grunt work. I'm grateful that at least I don't have do hand count any bees.

- There are another group of researchers who monitor the plant Podocarpus nakaii in Lienhuachih. Podocarpus nakaii trees are super rare and are only found in Taiwan, and is only found in Lienhuachih. These trees are endangered and that is why it's a big deal. Right now they are trying to figure how and when this plant gets pollinated and using this information, save the species.

(Podocarpus fruit)

What they really need right now is a way to detect a certain event (namely, the seed of the tree blooming into a flower, then into a fruit). The problem is, the seed is about 1-2 mm in diameter and the cameras they are using can't zoom in that close. A camera that could do that would probably be too expensive for them.

If a hardware solution is out of reach, a software one might be the only choice. I suggested some sort of event detection scheme that is related to blob detection, something that would raise a flag when the seed has turned into something of a certain size. This is actually a lot more difficult than it sounds. My focus right now are the bees, but I would really like to help them if possible, as Podocarpus nakaii fascinates me. One of the researcher suspects that this species is able to change genders.

In simpler terms: help researchers find a way to detect when and how the Podocarpus nakaii gets pollinated.

In even simpler terms: save some plants.

Places I've Been to:

June, who took us to eat the traditional Taiwanese food, works for Yahoo. It is located on four floors of a building that also had a radio station. This place was pretty fancy.

After showing us around, we went into the game room. Man, working for Yahoo! wouldn't be too bad. Although Google probably has some pretty good accommodations too. This room had a basketball shooting game, air hockey, a ping-pong table, a foozball table, and a drumming game. There was also a really, really expensive massage machine. One of those ones that looks like some sort of time machine from the future (or from the past, for that matter). Nobody uses it because it's kinda awkward to be sitting in one of those while everyone else is busy playing games.

Taipei 101! - 臺北101

The ground area of Taipei 101 is surrounded by tons of really modern malls and an amazing bookstore called Eslite that has about 8 floors (no joke). It's more than a bookstore, it's also a center for artwork and creativity. There were tons of little trinkets, funny bumper stickers, and puzzles. We only managed to check out about two floors because it was getting late. Definitely worth checking out again sometime. You could easily spend a whole day in there :) (and I probably would, sadly :P)

What is Taipei 101, you ask? It's truly a marvel of engineering, this tower has 101 floors and is over 500 meters tall. It is one of the second tallest buildings in the world and is one of the Seven Wonders of the World. According to wiki: "Planners aimed for a structure that could withstand gale winds of 60 m/s (197 ft/s, 216 km/h, 134 mph) and the strongest earthquakes likely to occur in a 2,500 year cycle."

I also saw this tower's damper, a 5.5-m diameter, 6.6 metric ton sphere there absorbs the shock from earthquakes. It is affectionately referred to as the "damper baby".

I will post a more detailed account of Taipei 101 (complete with more pictures!) and other adventures. But for now, I will retire from this blog. More to come next time!