Taipei: Day 3

Monday was my first day of work in Taipei. I worked from my hotel for the first part of the day, and then headed to the show grounds in the afternoon to set up the demo. After I finished setting up, I headed back to the Taipei 101 building to see if I could catch a ride on the world’s fastest elevators. They were open for business, so I bought a ticket and got in line.

It didn’t take long until I was on an elevator for the short ride up. While we ascended the 89 floors in less than 40 seconds, the ceiling of the elevator displayed a light show. I was a little disappointed by the almost nonexistent sensation of acceleration… I don’t know how they did it, the elevators feel like they are traveling normal speed. Once at the top, we filed out and were free to walk around the observation deck. The views were spectacular as you could walk completely around the deck and see the city of Taipei stretch out in all directions. I was about halfway around the deck when I saw a familiar face! It was Antonio, one of the Korean guys from the tour two nights before!!

We talked a bit, he told me where he went on Sunday and showed me some pictures on his camera. We took some pictures together, and then he told me where his booth would be at the show. He said that I must come to their booth and we could exchange business cards. So we said goodbye, and I continued my circuit back to the elevators. A quick ride down the elevator, a not so quick bus ride to the train station, and an even longer train ride back to the hotel.

Tomo and I had planned on eating dinner together so I let him know when I got back. He asked me what kind of food I would like, and I said anything is fine. So he took me to a Japanese buffet where you get raw food and cook it on a grill in front of you or in a boiler like the one at the Mongolian BBQ restaurant on Saturday. I ate a bunch of weird stuff and had no idea what I was eating. Sometimes I would ask Tomo what something was and he would just say “You eat, I’ll tell you later.” I figured “what the hell, if it doesn’t taste bad, it can’t hurt me.” After dinner he said “Do you remember that soft dark tofu-like thing you ate? That was duck blood pudding.” I thought “Wow, that’s kind of gross, but it didn’t taste bad, so no big, right?” Then he said “And you know that stick of dark rice? That had pig blood in it.”

Now I have to admit that I started feeling a little disturbed… It was really quite a strange sensation, because every time I would start thinking about it, my stomach would start feeling really upset. But, that seemed odd since it didn’t taste gross or anything. For the rest of the night, I had to actively keep my mind off the blood food or I would start feeling really sick. At the same time, it seemed that my mind wanted only to fixate on the blood! I went to bed that night trying not to obsess on my plasma infused meal.