Desktop Notes

What can I say about Taiwan’s weather? I come from California, the west coast of the United States, where the weather is a nice 80+ degree Fahrenheit (29+ Celsius) in Los Angeles and a brisk 65+ degrees (18+ C) in San Francisco. Precipitation rarely occurs in Los Angeles while it occurs regularly around the winter/spring season in San Francisco.

Taiwan on the other hand is a tropical island surrounded on all 4 sides by the Pacific ocean. The temperature averages around 30-35 degrees Celsius (86 F – 95 F) and rains just about every other day. I don’t think I’ve gone a week yet without it raining at least once during the week. Since Taiwan is such a small island surrounded by the vast ocean, you can probably guess the weather here is completely dominated by what the ocean pumps out.

Not only is it hot and precipitation nearly constantly flowing, the high humidity is what I hate the most about Taiwan’s weather. The humidity makes it such that once you step outside, you’ll be sweating all over. Once you get back inside with the AC, you’ll develop a sticky feeling with the sweat drying up on your back.

The humidity not only makes it difficult to stay dry, but it also causes food to spoil at an exponential rate. If you don’t finish any food, you better stick it in the fridge immediately. Otherwise, you’ll start to notice little flies buzzing around and probably mold growing by the time you wake up the next day. Even dry crackers that are not properly enclosed will rot as one of my school mates here can attest to.

Back onto the topic of precipitation, rain occurs so often and at a specific time that there’s even a special name for the rain:  Afternoon Thunderstorms, or in Chinese 午後雷陣雨. The day might start out a sunny 32 degrees, but once 1:00 pm rolls around, the clouds would drift in bringing a downpour for a few hours before leaving, letting the sun make a come back before nightfall.

Even though it constantly rains, that is not the most dangerous weather around. Rain is a small matter compared to the typhoons that come here quite frequently. On my 7th week here in Taiwan at this posting time, I’ve seen 2 typhoons (one on the day I arrived, another a few weeks ago) with a 3rd coming in less than 24 hours. What’s a typhoon? I’m not really sure how it compares to hurricanes (which is what we typically hear about in the states). In fact wikipedia even combines searches for both keywords into a single article: Tropical cyclone, which leads me to believe they are the same phenomenon. In any case, typhoons sometimes causes all businesses and schools to take a break when it passes by if it’s considered especially strong. Otherwise daily life continues on without a hitch.

You would think Taiwan’s weather in all the cities would be pretty much the same since Taiwan is such a small island right? I was shocked to find out in fact it is quite different. There could be torrential rainfall in Taipei, while it’s blazing hot 25 miles (40 km) away in Yilan City. Weird, but I’ve seen it with my own eyes so I know it’s true.

So what have I learned these past few weeks living here in Taiwan? Mainly that Taiwan is completely different from where I grew up in California. While the humidity and constant rain gets annoying, the clouds in the sky can lead to some great photo opportunities, such as this:

As I’ve come here to learn more about Chinese culture, I’ve accepted Taiwan’s weather as just another part of the Taiwanese culture. For anyone coming to visit Taiwan, hope this weather guide helps you plan on what to expect.

Here’s my first Coke in weeks since I left for Taiwan.

Coke here tastes mostly the same as it does in the States. Maybe a little less sweet, but that might just be my taste buds not used to Coke anymore?

Unlike the soda/coffee drinking American culture, people here in Taiwan prefer to drink tea. Ever since I got here, I’ve had only different types of tea or water. This cannot be more obvious than taking a look at these vending machines that I snapped a picture of:

Notice out of 3 machines, there’s only a single Pepsi can.

So why am I drinking a soda now? I couldn’t stand it anymore. I need something that fizzles in my mouth.

As for the chips, I just picked some random chips from the store to try out. They had plenty of American brand chips (ie. Cheetos, Doritos, …), but I wanted to try something different.

It’s interesting to see how American brands are translated into different cultures. In this case, I’ll be talking about Chinese in Taiwan. In a nutshell, not much changes, and that’s what they love.

Romano’s Macaroni Grill: I don’t see this restaurant often in the states so I was really surprised to see one here.

Chili’s: This one I’m more familiar with and was surprised to see it right next to Macaroni Grill.

Nike: This one is about to be opened. I actually walked by the store more recently and they were advertising Kobe Bryant will be coming for the opening day.

Gucci & Channel: In the same area as the 2 previous restaurants, these two have store fronts directly on the street.

The Body Shop: Pretty much the same as the shops in America. Notice all the other Chinese stores.

Starbucks: Just like in the states, the outside of each Starbucks is very different. Although Starbucks in Taiwan isn’t on every street corner as it is in the states, it is one of the more common stores I see around. 

Blockbuster: Sorry about the blurry night picture, but here it is. Just like in America, Blockbuster rents movies. The posters on the window are all American movies. I haven’t went inside yet so I’m not sure if they rent any Asian movies.

Sony Style: Although not a common shop in the states (I only know of one in the Metreon in San Francisco), here’s one in the shopping mall next to Taipei 101 (currently the tallest building in the world).

That’s it for now. More brands and pictures next time.

Finally I’m on my trip of a lifetime. After a few weeks of preparation from leaving my job to moving my stuff, I finally got on the plane and flew out to my first destination: Taiwan.

My flight was a Malaysia Airlines 1:45am direct flight to Taipei. I arrived around 11:30pm at the airport for my flight. The first thing I noticed once at the airport was how many people there were at this time of night and the number of flights still leaving. I guess all the Asia flights leave around this time too.

The whole flight took a little over 12 hours. In order to help us adjust to the time difference, the plane followed a schedule similar to the destination. So a few hours into the flight, we were served dinner, then about 8 hours of nap time, then followed by breakfast right before arriving at the destination.

While the airline food was OK, what I was really impressed was the in-flight entertainment system Malaysia Air had. Essentially it was an on-demand entertainment system made by Select On Demand that had on-demand movies, TV shows, music, games, and flight status. Really cool! I’ve actually seen this system in a hotel before, so it was awesome to see it being used elsewhere as well. During my flight, I got to watch Spiderman 3 and Shrek 3 all in the latest movies selection. The games selection was quite poor with a bunch of cell-phone-type puzzle games. In-flight status was great because I can quickly see where the flight is currently at. About the worst part of my experience with this system was the remote was still sticky with gunk from the previous flight. I can only imagine how much germs are on that thing.

Well that’s about it for my flight. And yes, I did lose a day on my flight. I left on Friday morning at 1:45am in LA and arrived on Saturday morning 5:45am in Taipei. Now I can literally say “where has the time gone?”