Our Travels In Japan (and other places): Harry Potter!!!

Had my second presentation today for the professor. Went much better, now that I've had a week for the material to sink in. We're almost done with the technical part of the project. I just need to get my functions working properly and finalize the program, and we're done, ahead of schedule. Lunch was quite the spectacle. They ordered two whole chickens to be delivered to the lab. Take out whole chicken? Sure enough, they came wrapped in aluminum foil (they have been roasted, not fried! Yay!) with french fries, some very tasty sauce and.....plastic gloves?

We needed them. The chicken was incredibly juicy.

You eat it by tearing off chunks with your hands (in gloves) and putting it on your rice. It was great.

So, I got an email from Bree. When we were in Danshui, we had talked to Maggie about wanting to see Harry Potter. They were going tonight, leaving right after lab so we'd have enough time for dinner and a movie before curfew (seriously). So, after lab, I ran back to the dorm, dropped off my stuff and ran back to campus to meet up with a dozen of us, half CYCU students, half US students.

It was too far to walk, so we had to take 2 taxis and 2 scooters (4 per taxi). Here is where I finally complain about something in Taiwan, because everything else has really been nice.

<rant>Their taxis are bad. Very, very bad. And I don't mean dirty or anything like that, they are actually spotless and well maintained. But the cabbies drive like absolute crap, and there's no way to sugarcoat it. They weave in and out of traffic, cut people off, squeeze places they have no business driving a car, speed very badly and are a general menace and danger to anyone around them, and possibly in them. I don't care how good a driver you are, or how confident you are in your skills. As a former professional driver, I can tell you there are things you just don't do in a vehicle that can kill someone by turning at the wrong time, and they did them all and some that I had never thought of, to boot. If I can, because I will unfortunately have to be in one of them again this weekend, I will secretly film the ride to show what I mean. I wish I would have done that for both of the taxi rides to and from the theater.

OK, </rant>

So, we arrive at the theater somehow in one piece

Ah, Venice...

and the 2D Harry Potter shows are all sold out until 8:20 (too late). The 3D movies are sold out until 7:50 (just enough time), so we had about 80 minutes to kill. Perfect time for some dinner at....the mall?