NTU Azalea Festival + Observations

~1 month since arriving in Taipei. Last weekend there was a Quad Day event, lots of student clubs. Of course it rained like mad when I went. DIU

From 2010-03-17

I had some mad craving for pizza today, sooooo good. 8" pizza for 4 bucks aint much to get excited about but i havent had pizza for a while. Here are somethings that I have learned so far in Taipei.

1) It is HELLA wet. It rains a lot, and it rains hard. I am very thankful to unexpectedly listen to my elders for once and bring an umbrella. It's blue but its got these flower patterns on it, but its ok because I'm in Taiwan and a lot of guise wear manbags.

2) ITS MAD WET. Lack of central heating inside buildings along with the wetness make it really humid. When I first got to Taipei, the first week was around 45F but it was freezing.

3) Mosquitoes are savage. I've been to 'Nam and China before and gotten pwned by mosquitoes. But the mosquito bites here don't seem to disappear, they look like warts?

4) People are pretty friendly. More friendly than some friendly places I've gone in California. In general, people seem more approachable (though I am a foreigner, but I've been mistakened for mainland Chinese more than American) than east coast, midwest, and west coast (i have no been to the south yet).

5) Everyone looks AZN. like how many people make the distinction between asian and azn (myself included), everyone looks azn here. So lots of crazy hair cuts and fashion. Also, the younger crowd all wear converse canvas style shoes. SOMEBODY feels really old right nao. <.<'||

6) Taipei girls are very pretty, and I don't even go to the joo-lei-boos (clubs). Even ENGINEERING doesnt miss a beat. @_@ Sorry Beijing and Shanghai, but Taipei wins in this category.

7) The school internet SUCKS. it is fast BUT, the network cuts off all access to bittorrent trackers. Even hours spent configuring proxies could not defeat the GREAT FIREWALL OF TAIWAN? WDFFFF. Luckily, there is DHT discovery to save me, but this only works for public and not private trackers. SIGH

8) Taipei is not as cheap to live in as I hoped it would be. I mean, I can live off of 5 dorra for food and be satisfied (I guess my hunger may have tamed itself. but this has been occuring for a while now). But music cd's for 10 bucks!? WDFFFF I got indie cds in China for like 3 bucks a piece. 1rmb (like 15 cents) to ride the subway regardless of distance in Beijing vs 20-30 (like 66 cents to a dorra) NTD for most places in Taipei -_-||. Nonetheless, Taipei is still cheap to live in.

9) Getting around places can be kinda confusing, especially for a person like me with no sense of direction and terrible memory. Taipei is broken down into districts further followed by numbered sections of roads, then lanes, and then the number of the place. The lanes and sections are what pwns me. and then there are plenty of thin alleys that dont have a proper address, but theres plenty of stores? maybe im not looking hard enough for information.

10) stand food is great and oily. like in China as well, white rice isnt as common as you would think given the huge assortments of noodles and buns. but i tend to make rice the focus of my meals back at home home. the ratio of rice to other foods in a given meal is skewed in favor of rice almost all the time.

Thats all for nao, i need to do some hw.ＤＩＵ

2010-03-17