mini trip

just for kicks, i've decided to take some pictures of the scene while i walk from my apartment to the lab. probably boring and not super exciting lol.

[strange pillars]

[nice picnic-y area to the left]

[this is where we found the crab][junction of the road leading to the lab][my "artistic" shot of the road, haha]

[lab building]

earlier that morning, we got to borrow some bikes from the aquarium, so in the afternoon after work, michael and i decided to bike around and this is what we saw at the junction to the main road:

[awkward? train and triceratops]

[a close up. of course, all respectable dinosaurs should have bowties right?]

[close up of train. seems that this was a cafe back in the days... hm.]

[an inside view. looks like something that could be found in a 1950s american roadside diner.]

[closest restaurant to civilization]

on our way back, we rode by this fruit orchard of some sort. michael and i concluded that they were probably mangos, and inspired by darin's similar adventure with his friend in india and mango stealing, i decided to do take one too lol. i had to climb down the rocky wall to get into the orchard (it was depressed from the main road). and now, i have a lovely, red but unripened special kenting mango sitting in my fridge lol. afterwards, the guys and i decided to cook some potstickers and we ended up sitting around and talking about random stuff like chinese history and hallucinogenic drugs, haha. then i proceeded to knocked out at 10pm.. tired from a fun exploration day.

AA

so, i think i should elaborate on why my facebook status says Winny Wen: HATES AMERICAN AIRLINES WITH A PASSION.

yes i do. in fact, i didn't mention this in my earlier posts, but when i first tried to board my departure flight from LAX, AA actually denied me entrance. i had shown them my eTicket and my passport/visa. after receiving this, they looked at my ticket, a duration of 11 weeks, and my visa, which stated 60 days of continuous maximum stay. because of this, they would not let me on the plane because my return flight would be past my visa.

at first, i didn't actually believe that they were going to go through with this. i thought, are they REALLY goign to try and argue that my visa is essentially "invalid" for my itinerary? goodness, i have to say, i LITERALLY stood at the counter and argued with the idiots who decided to deny me entrance. i kept saying, that i have a valid reason for staying the 11 weeks, and i will be able to extend the visa (which i need to do sooner than i thought) because i will have an "official" reason and have someone validate my stay. i also told them my visa was a multiple entry visa, so it means that it IS extendable, which they didn't seem to understand.

so, despite all my arguing... they still forced me to change my ticket to match my visa, which means that as of the moment, i have a return flight date of 21 AUG. this doesn't even fulfull the 9 week contract that i have with PRIME and with NMMBA, stating that i will be working the entire stay here. and also, because they forced me to change it, they also told me that they will charge be an additional $250 to change my ticket back to the original return date of 13 SEPT, which just made me go more WTF. in fact, it was AA that kept insisting that something was wrong with my visa.

because of this, i got on the phone with the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Office in L.A. and tried to see if i could figure this crap out. after confusing the lady on the phone for abotu 30 minutes and getting her annoyed at AA as well, she told me that the next best thing to do is to validate my person and get my visa renewed asap so that i may go and change my ticket.

after getting this information, i went and called the 1-800# for AA in the states. i kid you not, i was on the phone with them for 48 minutes, 43 of which was "please hold." no lie, i couldn't believe that; not only was service at the airport terrible, so was the one on phone. they finally told me that in order to change my plane ticket, i'll have to go to the office in taipei in person to change my ticket. unfortunately, they are not open on weekends, so i wouldn't have any chance of getting there on time on friday or what not to get to the office. i'll need to arrange something with my host mentor and such. UGH.

i emailed my PRIME people.. they were all as puzzled and confused as i was as to why this happened. apparently, i am a first for a case like this. fortunately, they were able to provide me with a lot of support, and also, some documentation to take to the AA office in taipei to argue my case and hopefully waive the $250 flight change fee.

i'll keep everyone updated on this. because if this all doesn't work out as i hope... some shit is going down, and i'll start getting nasty with every incompetant person i talk to on the phone. lol, jk but hopefully i won't become so nasty when i deal with them. i am definitely going to complain to the main office, or whoever, to say that the people i dealt with at LAX needed to get their training redone about flight booking and what not. i just couldn't understand why they felt the need to question my visa... UGH.

anyway, sorry for the long virtual web-rant. it's just so absolutely frustrating. but, taiwan is still extremely fun, new, and exciting. i'll post some pictures and such later on. =D

first day

wooooooow, everything is so cool! yeaah, for sure going to be blogging frequently.

so, it is only 9:30pm and i am really exhausted... but it's k. still need to work on my power point presentation of my project due tmr morning at 10. today was a really fun day though.

us 4 showed up to the lab at 10am. we were shown the facilities by one of dr. fan's assistants since he wasn't there. but maaaan, the whole place was really awesome. i'll let these pictures speak for themselves.

[first look at the husbandry]

[one type of soft coral in one of the tanks]

[sea turtle!]

showed to this rosie, who then squealed (via AIM chat) in delight, haha. apparently, there is a place in the lab where they put injured sea turtles in for them to recover.

[one of the bigger coral tanks]

[sea cucumber!]

after these awesome tours, another one of tony's lab assistants then took the 4 of us out on a little town trip to get some groceries and such.

[a glimpse of town]

went and bought some noodles, vegetables, fruits, drinks, and who can forget, beer.

[types of taiwan beer]

lol, it's nice to be able to buy beer legally AND to not have people question your age or even try to figure it out when you're checking out.

Naizhen, the assistant, was really awesome for carting us everywhere in town, haha. he even bought all of us boba and such. =D

when we got back to the lab, we were finally able to talk to tony. we discussed our projects and possible equipment we might need and our objectives for the experiments. left for home afterward with michael and robert, but as we reached our aparment building, we got sidetracked by this little guy:

found this crab walking in the quad-ish area of our apartment, and as soon as it caught sight of me, michael, and robert, it hightailed out of the area... into the public restroom, which was just a room with a toilet and sink. decided to catch it and release it back into the wild.. haha.

ohhhh boy. anyway, as can be seen, i ended up at the beach for the first time. wasn't really a beach? it was very rocky, with remains of fragmented corals on the sandier/rockier area and the actual dead reef spread along the shoreline.

[calcium remains of euphyllia galabra(?)]

[town of kenting from rocky, dead coral reef shore]

anyway, got really tired, hot, and sticky, so finally went back to the apartment, took a nice long cold shower. fixed myself some noodles to eat, settled down, and started working on this blogpost, haha. now i have to work on the presentation and then heading early off to bed. more to come later... but hopefully not as long? if you survived reading this uber long post, i commend you, haha. can't wait to see what tomorrow has in store.

20 hours + 1 day

yay! so the 4 of us arrived safely in kenting, taiwan, where the weather and temperature was an expected, but unwelcome surprise.

had a few snags during the trip here. for me, i was almost denied my boarding ticket because the duration of stay on my itinerary on my eticket was longer than the 60 days of visit as stated by my visa. because of this, i had to argue with the people at the counter to explain to them that i was going for an internship and that i have a valid reason for staying past the visa. however, i couldn't get on the plane until i let them change my return date, which is the 21st of august at the moment. need to contact a few people to change it back to my original return date... complicated.

from LAX to tokyo, i was surrounded by many japanese people.. most to all wearing those SARS (h1n1) masks. made me a bit paranoid, so, following my mother's instructions, i wore one on the transpacific flight as well. i suppose it was a good thing, because the guy that sat next to me... well, let's just say that he wasn't in perfect health. started coughing occassionally, which made me go 0_0. hm, let's home that nothing happens to me... i'll be closely monitoring my health for the next couple of days.

then there was the 1 hour delay when we arrived at the tokyo narita airport. the typhoon passing through the strait between taiwan and china were proving to be bad flying conditions, so we had to wait for confirmation.. and also wait in line behind all the planes that were taking off (14 took off before us).

but despite all of this, we've all arrived safely and rather comfortably. =D

currently, i have a 1 bedroom apartment to myself (hopefully i won't have to share later if other students come?).. fully furnished with:

blue faux suede sofa
tv
internet
fridge
queen bed

[living room]

[kitchen]
[bedroom]
[bathroom]

woke up 3 times this morning (after going to sleep at 2:45 am). once at 5:30am, only to find that the sun is blazing high in the window in my room. then again at 6:30, and finally just stayed up at 7:30. looked out the window, and this is what i saw:

it's pretty nice, though the temperature makes it really hot and humid... stressing the words "hot" and "humid", haha.

well, it's almost 10am. we're all going off later to meet with tony fan and discuss details about our projects. i'll try and figure out how i can change the time zone on this blog so it doesn't look as if i'm blogging about the future. 0_0