Project done and update

Finally it is the 25th of November,  I am done with my project! Running with weights every weekday has been tough but I have done it. Today, on my final run, I also reached my goal of doing 4 kilometers, yay me. So, results: being able to run 4 km compared to 1 km the first time, feeling generally more fit, visible results: none.

I was hoping to see at least some difference in the way I look, apparently I was wrong. Anyway, I might keep doing it every once in a while to feel good, unless I come up with some other way of exercising.

Oh and another thing, should have written this a few days ago but I’m lazy. Last weekend me and Yini went to Yilan for a bit of exploring. They call it the rainy city and true to its name, it started raining as soon as we got off the bus. Not wanting to walk around too much in the rain we had some lunch instead. Then the rain became heavier but we decided to rent a scooter, put on our rain coats and go to the hotel. However, before driving our newly rented scooter to the hotel we had to stop for fuel, we filled paid and…couldn’t start the engine. This was starting to look like a  catastrophe of a weekend. Luckily the store next to the petrol station was a scooter rental shop owned by the same man, they replaced our scooter free of charge and we were on our way.

After unpacking at the hotel we tried to figure out something to do on such a dismal day and opted for indoor activities. The only good one seemed to be to go to a hot-spring, so we drove to the town of Jiaoxi and found the hot-spring park. An open air area where you could walk around with your feet in the warm water, with no need to change to a bathing suit. That turned out to be brilliant!

When we got hungry we drove back to the city and found a small night market under a bridge, pretty standard stuff for Taiwan but still nice. I also bought some new shoes without holes, that was great. There was not much else going on so we made it an early night at the hotel.

Much to our surprise, the next day was sunny with a clear sky. Fantastic! We started by going to the town of Luodong for breakfast then continued to the largest park in Taiwan, Luodong sports park. It was more or less a standard park but we did find a hill with a big bowl like crater on the top.

Maybe you cant see how bowl like this thing is but it’s nice.

Childish as I am, I could not help but run down one side and up the other screaming out gibberish and generally being happy. Except for the hill there was a pond with a small island, and a few other parkish things. Next, we drove south for a bit and came to Nanfangao, a place famous for it it’s bridge across the sea. It turned out that there was a sort of natural harbour there, shielded by several small islands and the bridge went from the mainland to one of those islands. It was pretty beautiful but not more special or more beautiful than other places in Taiwan.

We had some lunch in nanfangao fishing harbour then drove around a bit more, eventually finding a neat little beach. I didn’t go for a swim, oddly enough, I usually do but i did have a fun time playing in the water. I think Yini enjoyed taking photos of me. From the beach we then drove to Suao and visited the local cold spring. This place was kind of strange, a sort of brick walled shallow river, devoid of people except me and Yini. The river bottom all covered in a sort of orange mud that turned turqoise when stirred up. Pretty cool I would say.

The cold spring is a really odd looking place.

 

That was more or less the end of it, we drove back to Yilan city and returned our scooter and hopped on a bus back home. I think the street side hot spring park in Jiaoxi was absolutely brilliant but otherwise Yilan is far surpassed by Hualien as a tourist spot. Not that it’s not nice, just that Hualien is better.

Midterm är avklarad

Min midterm är äntligen avklarad och jag kan äntligen ta tag i mitt liv igen och ha lite kul. Jag tror att tentan gick vägen men jag måste vänta en hel vecka på resultat. För övrigt har jag uppnått nästa mål i mitt springande, igår sprang jag 3200 meter och nu siktar jag på 4 km men det börjar bli svårt att förbättra mitt resultat. Får se hur det går.

Midterms

Idag hade jag prov i kinesiska vilket gick ganska bra tror jag. Detta vara ett av fyra små prov i den kursen så inte jätte mycket att plugga till MEN nästa tisdag är det midterm tenta (en av två tentor) i den svåra kursen. På grund av detta har jag varit väldigt upptagen hela veckan och kommer fortsätta vara det fram till tisdag. Därmed har jag börjat sacka efter på företagskontakterna men min dagliga joggingrunda är mer djupt rotad så den kör jag fortfarande. Tar tag i resten av livet när tentan är över helt enkelt.

Garys wedding

Yesterday Yinis friends Gary got married. I have only met him once or twice but he is a nice guy good friend of Yini so we were invited. His professor at the university next door to mine had rented a bus for all of Gary's colleges and luckily we got space on that bus too. It was interesting to see a Taiwanese wedding, but perhaps not the most fun thing I have ever been to (weddings seldomly are).  For one thing, there is no difference between the ceremony and the banquet so as soon exactly when the marriage happened, I don’t know. At the start of the wedding, everyone got seated around round tables and Gary kept walking around and greeting everybody.

 

This is the view from my seat

Then the lights dimmed and some kind of presenter told us the couple was coming, they walked down the isle between tables and we threw streamers over them and clapped our hands, smiles all around. When they had taken their seat waiters started serving the food, the chef himself serving the bride and groom.

The chef enters!

After that it was more or less just a fancy dinner with some 10 or so courses and a few speeches and a lottery.

The couple and their parents hold a speech.

Different love songs were always playing in the background. Moreover, the bride wore not one, but three different dresses so she and her husband to be had to make double entrances to show them off. As I perceive it girls normally have enough trouble picking out one dress, how can she stand with choosing three?

The couples second entrance

Yes there was a disco ball during the banquet

The whole wedding banquet was actually at lunch so in the afternoon we had time to do some other things. We and the other Tsing Hua students found a small bikepath outside the city, rented bikes and cyckled around for a while. It was actually a very nice path but, being nice, it was full of Taiwanese and Taiwanese are annoyingly slow on bicycles (fast as all hell on scooters but slow otherwise). It would have been an enjoyable little trip if I hadnt been forced to cycle at an uncomfortably slow pace due to all the other people.  Since we didnt want to stay on the track in the dark we decided to cut it short and only go to a dam across the river. Nothing really special about the dam until we came to the far end and found this:

This is the old dam that was broken in the 921 earthquake.

I think this kind of thing is very fascinating, that nature can do that to such i big piece of concrete and steel in an instant is amazing. The 921 earthquake is the same one that did this by the way: http://twetintaiwan.blogspot.com/2009/06/sista-hembesoksdagen.html

After biking me and Yini declinde to go with the others back on the chartered bus. Instead, we took a local train to nearby Taizhong city, rented a scooter and found a hotel. We spent most of the evening walking around Fengjia night market, one of the biggest, most famous and most crowded in Taiwan. In Chinese the expression for lively 熱鬧 is very close to the expression crowded 吵鬧 and this night market was bordering on the latter some times but it was still a pretty nice evening.

Today was a rather calm day in comparison. We started with some brunch and I found out that Taizhongnese are thirsty:

That rather hefty cup of drink was apparently a medium one, wonder what the big size looks like. Then we found a small alley inhabited by an old man that likes to paint:

This is just a small part of  it, possibly the most brightly colored place in Taiwan

It kind of reminds me of Christiania in Copenhagen, I like it very much just too bad it is a bit too small to spend any amount of time there. The rest of the day was more or less  just about exploring Taizhong, walking around in parks and such, not too special but not bad either.

The project

Some of you might have thought i gave up on my running project but no, I am still going at it. It is going well, at the start I thought I would run some 2400 meters the first time (6 laps on the Jiao da running track seemed like a good goal). The first time I only managed to do  1200 meters and I set the goal for myself to reach 2000 by the en of the mount. By moving the weights around so I take the big ones on my hands, I quickly managed to do more than 1200 and today I passed more than doubled that amount at 2600 m. Of course running longer means more breaks for other exercise such as situps. My new goal for the project is to be able to do 3 km.

On a different note, I am starting another “project”. Starting tomorrow I will contact companies in here in Taiwan to try to get an opportunity to do my master thesis project here. I have found some twenty companies that are interesting for me so I will contact at least 2 per day for the next two weeks. Hopefully I can set up a meeting.