Home again

It was a long but pleasant journey home. Flew on a 777-300ER plane. Never been excited about a specific aircraft before, but this one takes the cake. Each economy seat came equipped with a PC running linux, a 10" LCD screen and a 110 volt socket! No battery concerns...

Somehow I managed to get some sleep in between movies, interactive video games (you can play other passengers), and live news feeds.

I got home at noon and Dedi and I went on a long walk to enjoy the sunshine and help un-jet lag me. We're having wonderful weather. Hard to believe it's January.

Taipei 101

Got a chance Friday morning prior to my journey back 'home' to see the World's tallest building, the Taipei 101. 1671 feet high, 101 floors. The elevator ride to floor 92 was impressive. Climbed at 60km/hour!

Here's the view from the top! Nothing like looking down on other skyscrapers.

This is one of 3 'dampers' and weighs 730 tons. It acts like a giant pendulum to counteract the building's movement--reducing sway due to wind by 30 to 40 percent. Pretty cool! Also should help in an earthquake..

Captain Kirk's Seat is Back

I remember these fancy toilets well from my Japan days but I will say that I am now a braver soul, more ready to try out and evaluate high tech appliances. Technology has clearly advanced since 1998 and I am very impressed with this captain seat! The seating surface is heated and you can adjust it to your comfort zone. You can also program the water temperature for the rinse functions and the water will flow for a few seconds (without hitting any targets) until the temperature is stabilized. In addition, it has separate male/female rinse options and I suspect that these both employ some sort of image or pattern recognition software. Hopefully these images are not stored in some global database as there is always concern over hackers and data security!

I tried both options (brave man no?). The male option hit with pinpoint accuracy. It also offered a rythmn option which I will only describe as 'interesting'. The 'female' choice aimed differently but seemed to have a hard time locking in on any target area. I suspect this may be related to limits in the pattern recognition algorithm. Only lesson learned was to hit the 'off' control before jumping up in search of safe refuge.

Good Thai Food

Oooohh how good it feels to get authentic Thai Food! Found a hole in the wall restaurant around the corner that our hotel claimed was 'safe'. I presume that means I won't get ill! The food was absolutely delicious...almost worth the 24 hours commute!

Taiwan

Am currently in Taiwan and despite all the years in the semiconductor industry, this is a first visit for me. Truly a mix of what I've seen in China and Japan. A first glance gives a vision of how commercial exploitation can destroy natural beauty, but once I got over all the lighted signs, huge billboards, and shanties, I started to see much of the mountains and forests.

Driving is absolutely crazy and was probably the most dangerous part of my trip.

7 Eleven is everywhere!

Pandemonium at intersection

View from Hotel...brought my good camera but discovered that the memory stick was not in it! So will have to settle for the old low res. 'capture the feeling' Palm Pilot camera...