work, an exploration, and a beer

i worked all day yesterday. though i was not that productive. i spent a great deal of it trying to figure out why i was getting errors from attempting to load a symbol from a dynamic library. geek tech i know, but that's my line of work. anyway, i gave up on that and tried the exact same thing on a linux box, and it worked immediately. so i suspect that as with all the wierd errors i've been getting in the past few months, it's a 32/64bit compatibility issue on the mac. good thing i brought 3 laptops with me to taiwan!

at night, i decided to go explore the chunghsiao fuxing area. other than xinyi area (which has taipei 101), it's the most vibrant modernized area. i walked the back streets to see what was hidden behind all of the high rises. quite a bit! i found that the wonton place from the other day was actually a small chain. they have 3 or 4 stores in that area, all just as crowded as that first one.

and i found a "french" place that serves a pretty good variety of beer, including leffe blonde, westmalle, bitburger, anchor steam (3 varieties!). i put the quotes around "french" because the food seems very poorly executed french food, but i dont really expect more, given it's taiwan. anyway, i stopped in there for a beer. the woman was shocked that i was alone and only wanted a single seat at the bar, but was very accomodating once she got over that shock. i guess people don't really go out by themselves in taiwan. order a leffe blonde, and heard the two women sitting next to me speaking in english, so i asked one of them where they were from. she said that she was local, which i believe is a lie, because she speaks english perfectly, and her attempts to speak both chinese and taiwanese were laced with a heavy foreign accent. so i ended the conversation, finished my leffe (my first beer in a couple of weeks), paid, and left. i have to find more bars that serve good beers.


observation: the bus drivers in taipei are paid a base salary plus a commission based upon the number of fares they pick up. that means, when you are lost at a bus stop, you can always ask the driver if they're headed somewhere, because they want you to board if possible. it also means that they're willing to stop when they see you running towards the bus, and that they'll pick you up if they're at a stoplight still within the vicinity of the bus stop. contrast this with the buses in los angeles. the combination of union pay rules and liability laws means that the drivers do not open the door for you even if you've banging on it, if you're not standing on the curb where the bus stop is located. it also means that they won't wait 5 seconds for you to catch up if you're running like mad towards them. rare, but in this aspect, the bus companies in taiwan actually provide better customer service than their western counterparts.