Hitting the Books and the Motherboards

Really not much to report on Tuesday, unless you are fascinated by people learning the basics of MATLAB and digital image processing. I will, of course, share some food pics! We ordered some take-out consisting of rice, your choice of meat (I had pork, Dilla had chicken), egg, vegetables, tofu and a piece of sausage all stuffed in a little wooden box and served with a very sweet yogurt drink who's name I forget (along with the names of all the other food I've tried). All for about $2.

Meal fit for a ...college student. Very yummy!

That's a pretty big piece of chicken for $2

I think Dilla brought one suitcase of snacks and one for everything else from Indonesia.

Otherwise, a lot of work on my part getting caught up enough so I can actually help the group.

The Group: Clockwise from the bottom: Dilla, Ji Shien, "Frank" and "Sun". "Jerry, another student in the lab, is in the background.

So, today (Wednesday), we took our first field trip to the Nan Ping Gigabyte plant and the UMC microchip foundry. On the way out, I wish I could have taken pictures of the many shop signs I saw, but that would have entailed me remembering to take my camera out of my bag.... I did however get a shot of a very common sight in this part of Taiwan, and that is the cart vendor. That is lunch and sometimes dinner for many people working in the area.

The difference between here and the US is that this food is probably good...

At the Gigabyte plant, we got to spend time in the lobby looking at their display of old motherboards. Laugh if you will, but we were all geeking out and taking pictures of ancient boards on display.

The GA-386SX! 80386 processor, up to 16MB(yes, MB!) of 60ns RAM, seven ISA expansion slots(perfect for your brand new, blazing fast 14.4kbps internal modem!). Zork never ran so smoothly!

I have many of these pics. I will not share them all. I WILL share a cool model of the factory they had on display, made entirely out of recycled motherboard parts:

I especially like the palm trees made out of cut up ribbon cable.

The tour was very, very cool. We couldn't take any pictures in the production area because they didn't want the workers distracted by the possible flashes and such. The top floor was an automated warehouse of sorts, where the pallets were whisked around by forklifts suspended from the ceiling to large rack structures that took up two floors. It looked very sci-fi. The motherboards start out as plain PCB boards, then go through a machine where it gets a special adhesive painted on for the chipsets. It's passed to another machine that places the chips at a very high speed, then to a "wave" solderer, which is a fountain of melted, lead-free solder that the board passes over, perfectly soldering all the contacts on the underside of the board (VERY cool!). After that, the other components are added manually, then soldered and tested thoroughly. All this was done over two floors. The final stage (on a different floor) was packaging and shipping, again all done mechanically with a very clever conveyor belt system. A very worthwhile and enjoyable tour!

Then, lunch.


It was not my fault.


I didn't choose it.


They made me eat it.

No, we traveled 6500 miles for THIS!

We were informed that we didn't have time to stop for lunch, as UMC pushed our time up an hour, so they ordered McDonalds for us. A LOT of McDonalds! The Taiwan burgers taste pretty similar to the burgers in Japan, but less black pepper. No pictures, sorry!

The afternoon tour stop was at UMC, maker of many computer chips, including the iPhone 4 processors and networking chips. There was an interesting presentation given on how they made chips, and they showed up real-time cams of the workers making the chips, but since everything is done in sealed environment conditions, they couldn't suit us all up in "rabbit suits" as they call them, so we couldn't go out and see the process, which was a shame, because it looked fascinating.

Instead, they took us over to see their fitness center. This sounds a bit silly, but a) it was like a very nice YMCA on steroids. Enormous, many rooms for classes, a lot of good equipment, ping pong and pool tables and a full 50m olympic-sized pool and b) in Taiwan, they do not have the gyms that we have. CYCU is a campus of over 12,000, and is comparable to UWM in many ways. Their rec center has exactly SIX treadmills. The center they had over at UMC was like having a fitness center complex of about a square mile in the States, so it really was a showpiece for them.

Back at about 6 and starving. Need to find a place to eat dinner!

Breakfast of Champions!

Well, I almost slept normally last night. Only woke up about 4 times, and managed to fall back asleep, so I'll hopefully be over jet lag by the field trip to Gigabyte on Wednesday.

This morning, since I had a lot of reading to do before lab, I just stopped over at the 7-11 for a "power breakfast" of all carbs. I give you, the Breakfast of Champions!

Those look like no lemon I have ever seen...

Not for breakfast, but I couldn't resist. I used to make this myself with lemonade and Coke. Not available in the US, for some reason. Also, my first soda of the trip. The Taiwanese have so much caffeine and sugar in their tea, they don't need soda!

Melon Pan and Anpan!

Nutrition Toast! Tastes like white bread, to me.

Our roommate, Gading (also from Indonesia), brought these wonderful snacks with him. It is called Nopia. Not too sweet, but very good, chocolate-like flavor. This stuff is Export Quality!

Not the most exciting of posts, I know, but you can't be exciting every day...

Food Update

We had our opening ceremony today, where all the students and faculty got up and introduced themselves and we were given more details on our schedules. I was very impressed with all the Asian students giving their self-introductions in English. I would be very nervous doing that in Japanese in front of 100 people. Afterwards we went to the cafeteria for a buffet lunch. Unfortunately, we had gone back to the same cafe this morning that we visited yesterday for breakfast, and I was so full, I didn't get to eat much. I was, however, introduced to Winter Melon Tea, a sweet tea made from the, not surprisingly, winter melon fruit. Very, very good.

The afternoon was spent with our project group, learning what we'll be doing. My group is working with Digital Halftone Imaging and Watermarking. I have a lot of catching up to do. Everyone else in the group has a) taken Linear Algebra (on my schedule for next year), b) taken a digital imaging class and c) worked with MatLab. So, yeah, I'm the weak link. I have a busy week of studying ahead.

After lab, our group went out to the Night Market by campus to do some shopping and get some dinner. One of the CYCU students, Frank, stopped at a stall that emanated a smell that I can only describe as dying rat, and promptly ordered a large bowl of something. They called it, appropriately, Stinky Tofu. This was apparently going to be a rite of passage.

I only wish I could convey the smell over the Internet...

They then led us to a small restaurant (Woo's, since 1933) and we ordered some traditional Taiwanese food:

Sausage, Chicken, Tofu, "White Carrot", Egg, Mushroom, Spinach and some other greens over rice. Delicious!

The pork version of the picture above

Deep fried breaded pork that comes with the meal.

Very good food. And I determined that Stinky Tofu is really very good, if you have no sense of smell. The only way I could eat it was to breathe out when I put it in my mouth, then move my head away from the bowl. While I liked the flavor, I don't know that it's worth putting up with the odor...

Afterwards, the other visiting student from Indonesia, Dilla (Ardilla Ayu Dewanti Ridwan, so, yeah, Dilla) went back to the dorm, and I went with the rest of the CYCU students back to the lab to try and learn enough MatLab to not be total deadweight on the group tomorrow. A long day (up at 4:30AM to run, leaving the lab at 9PM). But, this IS 3 credits in 3 weeks. Can't be all field trips and eating...

National Palace Museum....and food

Yesterday morning we were given a brief guided tour of the CYCU campus by Wesley, one of the volunteers from the program, and he took us out for a "real Taiwanese breakfast". We went to a small cafe around the corner from our dorms

How can you go wrong with a mascot like that?

The breakfast was, in a word, fantastic. Each meal set came with an appetizer, a main dish and a drink. Mine and Erik's consisted of a fried noodle dish with vegetables and chicken (like Yakisoba):

Your choice of sauce. I wanted curry, but they were all out.

A pork cutlet with small salad:

Oops, I already ate most of the salad before remembering to take a pic...

and a concoction they called Milk Tea, which is, as near as I can tell, five parts soy milk, one part tea and 500,000 parts sugar. It's the best tea I've ever had. BreeAnn, Andrew and our guide, Wesley, had.... hamburgers:

Travel 6,500 miles for this?

They looked quite good, though, and they enjoyed them. It was served with Red Tea (like the Milk Tea, but with water and some form of red tea. Same amount of sugar.) and "carrot cakes":

Not quite what I was expecting, but they are tasty. "White carrots", flour and a little sugar.

So, after the meal and tour, Wesley bid us farewell and we had an afternoon with no plans. Andrew had found some information on the National Palace Museum online, so we looked up the train information, took a cab ($4 for all four of us) to the train station, took a surprisingly full local train to Taipei($2), transferred to an MRT train in Taipei ($1) and took another cab to the museum(again, $4), all without any Chinese being spoke (other than shie shie). Ah, the power of pointing at maps, holding up fingers and a lot of nodding and smiling!

The museum was wonderful, but we weren't allowed to take any pictures inside. There was a "tearoom" restaurant on the top floor with a wonderful view, a live zither performance and some slightly overpriced snacks. We had the fortune of ordering nearly everything they were out of, and our check looked like one of my Digital Logic exam questions, but it was good (sorry,  no pics!). Unfortunately, we were all a bit too jet lagged to get as much out of the museum as we otherwise would have, but it was an enjoyable adventure.

On the way back, we took the High Speed Rail train, rather than the local train, which was very nice, and quite cheap ($6). The MRT trains use special IR tokens for fares. You scan them when you enter, and drop them in a slot when you exit. Pretty cool, actually, and saves a lot of paper tickets

After the rather full day, I, being the old man that I am, passed out around 7:30, and was awake around 1AM (yay, jet lag!). I finally got up at 4:30 and took a walk over to the CYCU track for a run before the sun came up too much. It was a very humid 80 degrees, but fine for running. The track was a little overgrown, being the middle of summer, but quite nice and quite busy:

Nice sports complex, with tennis and basketball courts a 1/4 mile cushioned track

Did I mention it rained...again?

I was afraid I'd be the only one out running that early, and would look a little suspicious and out of place, but there were about 20 people already there when I arrived, walking and running before it got hot. As is true universally, there is ALWAYS the one old guy WALKING in the inner lane to dodge, but otherwise an easy run.

Today is our opening ceremony and first project lectures. We'll see how it goes!

Arrival In Taiwan

After 17 hours on planes and another 6 in airports, we finally arrived in Taiwan!

Large painting above the gates at the airport.

It's Taiwan's Centennial this year!

Looking our best after 23 hours of travel. This is the Chung Yuan Christian University banner we are holding.

 

And here we have Milwaukee's finest, erm, engineering ambassadors? Erik, me, BreeAnn, Andrew and Prof. Dean Jen. We met up with a group from Pittsburgh Tech (from Kansas....kinda like University of Miami, Ohio) and were shuttled together to the dorms of CYCU.

The dorms are nice, clean and, most importantly, air conditioned. The heat and humidity hit us like a truck when we left the airport, and the rain started as soon as we left. That supposedly "cooled things down", but I have my doubts.

The rooms are nice and spacious

What do engineering students do as soon as they get in? Unpack? Of course not. They log on!

There are four to a room (only three of us. BreeAnn gets a separate room for having to be the only girl in a group of engineers). We each get a bunk, a desk, lots of storage space and, of course, our own internet connections!

That's all the exciting news to report today. Tomorrow we'll get a tour of the campus and a "real Taiwanese breakfast", followed by I don't know what, but I do know it will be 90 and humid again!

Japan 2011 Wrap-up....Taiwan Or Bust!

As it usually happens, the last post of a Japan trip never gets done. Between fatigue and the travel, by the time we get home where we have an internet connection, we're too busy catching up after being gone. So, to sum up the last few days of our trip:

Hell was beautiful and fun. A nice vacation spot.
Fukuoka was beautiful and fun. A nice city.

There! I'm glad we got that out of the way! I'll try and get some pictures and video of the Jigokus (Hells) we visited, at least. Our last day in Fukuoka was largely shopping and eating, so nothing too exciting to look at (other than the food!)

So! Taiwan! The government of Taiwan (formerly known as Formosa, for those of us who did school reports on in back in the 60's) has, as a requirement for paying for nearly all of our trip and the cultural excursions we will be on, asked us to post a blog about the experience.Most regrettably, this trip I will be going solo, and Sumi will be staying home, as this is a study abroad program for school. Frankly, I don't think she'd find sitting in a room designing ways to produce halftone imaging all that exciting in the first place....

 All right! That about does it. Everyone enjoy your summer and stay healthy, and, as the Japanese would say, please look forward to my blog posts!

Beppu and Onsens

This morning we had a complimentary breakfast at the hotel restaurant, the same one that was responsible for the death of thousands of fish last night. Well, it was free, and besides, breakfast can't be all that bad, right? I mean, they have bakeries all over Japan.

To be fair, there was enough to almost satisfy us. Aside from the baked fish, miso soup so thick it was more like Bonito Paste, vegetables in a fish sauce, salad with some seafood in the dressing, crab croquettes and some unidentifiable stuff in a plastic cup, there were tiny omelets with what can only be described as nikuman filling (pork buns), tiny, mostly tasteless rolls, canned fruit salad(thankfully!) and a plain cabbage salad. Oh, and free Tang.

So, not starving, we headed out to the station to wave goodbye to Aoshima

Now THAT'S a train station

The four hour trip to Beppu was uneventful, other than some very quick transfers, and we found ourselves at our new digs for the next few days, Happy Neko! (Happy Kitty)

Nice topiary

She won't admit it, but she booked the room just because of the cat picture.

The place is amazingly cheap ($17/night per person), but you are renting a two room apartment, complete with refrigerator and washing machine! The owner, Bibo-san, is a younger guy from Czechoslovakia, and he spent about a half hour with us going over all the things to do in Beppu, where to eat, how to get to the sights, what the different onsens offer. It was wonderful, helpful and made our planning much easier.

Room 1: Kitchen, laundry and entry hall

Room 2: everything else

Small, but huge compared to a hotel room, and clean. This place, like many in Beppu, have no showers or baths. This is because Beppu is famous for its many hot springs (like, hundreds), and many residents just go to one of the local onsens for a ¥100 bath every night. Japanese tourists will just walk around all day in bathrobes, sampling the different onsens and what they offer. Some have special minerals in the water, some have mud baths, some have sand baths (you put on a robe they give you and are buries up to your neck in sand), and all have very hot water.

So, after hitting a nearby Italian restaurant:

All her fault. We go halfway around the world, she wants pizza.

And I wanted chocolate (and strawberries)

りんごクレープ(apple crepe). These were considered "Japanese Desserts"

we did some boring stuff, including food shopping for the next few days and laundry (the washing machines talk to you in Japan)

(she - the washing machine - said いらっしゃいませ - something shop owners say to greet customers)
and then got in our "pajamas" like the rest of the tourists, and walked over to a nearby onsen. At night, you can see steam rising from all the onsens. It looks like a bunch of smokestacks, but it's just water. Some of them have colored lights, some have special monuments:

The one we chose had special private outdoor baths that you could rent for a family or couple, rather than share with whoever else was bathing at the time. it was about twice as much, but worth it for us tonight. They are popular, though, so we had to wait about 30 minutes for one to open up (no reservations). While waiting in the common area of the onsen, you could try drinking from a special fountain

86C. The water sterilizes the cups, so they can be reused by anyone. Not sure how you are supposed to drink anything that hot.

or pray at the shrine out front

No Merry Christmas hats here

before finally getting into your bath

That just oozes relaxation, doesn't it?

We also had a steam bath in our area, though we couldn't sit in it for more than a few minutes. Too hard to breath. This particular onsen had water so hot (remember, 86C?), that you needed to mix cold water with the bath in order to be able to use it. We failed to do that at the beginning, and couldn't even stick our feet in it until we ran enough cold water in it. If you ever get the chance to try a hot spring bath, I urge you to do so. Quite possibly the most relaxing experience ever.

That was it for today. Tomorrow we visit Hell! Eight Hells, actually. Those are the ones recognized by the Japanese government. We even have a coupon for admission to Hell!