Taiwan: Part 399

On Sunday, we were supposed to go watch the final four games of the Jones Cup international basketball tournament, but the good tickets were sold out. So we went to Ling Ku about 40 mins drive to play basketball in a mall. At the mall, they have some courts set up in the middle of a sporting goods complex (where there's a Puma, Nike, Reebok, etc etc store around the perimeter). You pay 70nt (25nt = $1 CAD) and go in and play pick up. We were five people, split into two teams of 3, and were getting killed by the "kids". For the most part, none of us play much anymore and the highschool and university students were much too skilled for us in our old age. Nevertheless, it was fun. I did a lot of sweating, which is good, since I don't sweat enough in Taiwan as it is.

Monday, I awoke at 5:50am to catch a ride with my uncle to Hsinchu. It was a half-move, with a semi-large luggage, a small carry-on luggage, a backpack, and my day pack from MEC. The first day at work was good. The people have been really friendly and helpful, and just about everything was ready for me when I arrived. I was told there was a mis-print on my business cards, so I won't be receiving those until Wednesday. That's fine, I have no one to give them to anyway. I have a decent idea now about the product we're developing, and I'm not finding the language too big of a problem. Although, I'm finding that not reading Chinese is rather tedious and irritating. Consequently, I've scheduled to have my Chinese Windows 2000 and Office converted to English versions on Thursday. My PC is a 2.80GHz P4 with 80 Gb of space, and a ViewSonic 17" ThinEdge VP171s LCD display. So far, everything is to my liking, and I don't have much to complain about. Well, not true. I have to walk outside to get lunch since we don't have a caf. But drinks are subsidized and usually only cost about 10nt.

Living with my manager isn't too bad. Basically, I do as I please and we live our own lives, but if I need anything, he's there to help. My eventual home is only about 8 minutes walk from this temporary home, which means it's 8 minutes closer to work, but 8 minutes further from the bustling street where all the store and restaurants are. With a bicycle, none of this really matters.

On the first day, I was dress pants, my nice shoes, and a dress short-sleeve shirt. I felt anal. My friend joked the other day about the engineering "dress code", where it would be plaid shirts, pants hiked up to the belly button, and black leather shoes (the soft kind). I wasn't close to that, but I wasn't far either. Anyway, I wanted to make sure I looked proper on my first day... today, I'm back to wearing what I normally wear. The shirt's untucked, my Oakley slip-on shoes, and a pair of casual slacks. I feel much better. Now I can do some work. ... which is what I need to do, since I start a weekly evening course next Monday from 6:30pm - 9:30pm on Verilog, Synthesis, and Simulation. Fortunately, only runs until the end of Aug.

That's that! All is well.

pssst... write!