It’s 2:40am, and I’ve just come home from a trip to the ShiLin night markets, followed by a full body massage (no, not the dodgy type). My god it hurt. Elbows, knuckles, knees, bony fingers – you name it – it was pushed into me with incredible force. Lots of cracking noises. I am in pain – let’s see how I feel in the morning.

Wednesday 25th August.

Today is another typhoon day, with people again being told to stay home from work. Yes it does seem a bit of a shame and a waste for me to have come all this way and lose 2 days worth of meetings – but there’s no point in getting cranky about it. I am viewing this as a chance to spend a few days a in a country I probably would never have visited otherwise.

My manager Alan is in his room working away on a variety of things while I’m sitting here typing in my blog, chatting to people on MSN and making the odd work sponsored call back home. I’m dealing with the odd work email that comes in but that’s hardly a source of hassle.

I’ve offered to help Alan but he says he’s right – damn.

I went for a brief walk before, and took a photo of the noodle/rice+pork place for historical reasons. Across the road is this incredibly ornate buddhist temple. I got permission from the caretaker to take some shots so I didn’t feel so bad in taking photos. A small group of people dressed in buddhist garb began to chant and bang on some bells and drums. The music was reminiscent of some of the tracks on the Powaqqatsi soundtrack – almost trance like, and very solemn. Am tempted to bring home some of the incense they burn there, you can buy about 20 sticks for about AUD$0.35.

Aah, nearly forgot the news of the morning. Due to the typhoon the hotel’s laundry service will not be operating today. So remember my drenched clothes from last night?… still wet. I’ve got them hanging up in my room in the hope that the air conditioning will dry them out eventually. I find it funny that the morning after I decide to be silly and walk in the rain is the day when the laundry is closed. I have plenty of clothes here so this is not an issue, but it’s amusing to me nonetheless.

Speaking of the typhoon – the news is as follows: The streets are littered with leaves and branches (and in some cases full trees) which were blown over by the wind last night. Again I have taken some photos to try and remember it all. Taiwan must have an incredible drainage system as the streets (in my area in the centre of town) are not flooded at all. I’m sure there’s severe flooding elsewhere, but the drains just seem to swallow it all up without fuss. I suppose they’re used to typhoons here and designed the plumbing accordingly. Yes, it’s stating the obvious, but for the amount of water which has fallen here, it’s really impressive to see how well the drainage works.

One cool thing about Taiwan are the lights at the street crossings. You know how we have the green man and the red man? Well they have the same here, but above the “man” they have a numerical display which counts down how many seconds until the lights change. I think this is a fantastic idea. None of this standing at the lights hitting the button 50 times hoping it will speed up the light cycle. There are no buttons here, and since you know how long you’ll be waiting, you don’t go through the stress of wondering how long you’ll be waiting. Of course if it’s pissing down with rain and you see that you have a 70 second wait, that might be just as bad – but hey.

Time for some lunch…

Today was declared a typhoon day throughout Taipei. Most businesses were closed for the day, including the ones we were meant to visit. The day wasn’t a complete waste – one of our suppliers actually braved the elements to come see us at our hotel. The fine people from (un-named supplier) met with us for about an hour and from there the rest of the day was spent bumming around the hotel, farfing around on the internet.

We went back to that little hole in the wall place for lunch and had the noodle soup and rice with pork we had yesterday – oh and some cool steamed pork dumplings. Throw in a couple of beers a piece and you have yourself a great lunch for 2 at around AUD$13.

The rain and wind really picked up in the evening. Here are some links to news reports about the typhoon. Yes a lot of them are similar but for now I just want a decent record of what’s happening. ABCNEWS.com , CNN.com, Bloomberg.com, image of typhoon’s path , Taiwan Government , ABCNEWS(b) … you get the picture.

Around dinner time we had to decide whether we would go out for dinner or eat at the hotel. I went outside and the rain was not so much the problem, rather the wind, and the trees/branches that were falling and the debris that was flying about. I wanted to be adventurous, but the thought of calling Olivia with the news that i had been hit in the head by X was too much so based on that we opted to stay in. Note to self, don’t expect a hamburger made in Taiwan to be any good. Blecch! ( I am pleased to see that this word really does have some sort of real life application outside of Mad magazine). Nothing that a few cans of Taiwan Beer couldn’t wash away.

After dinner we decided to go downstairs and have a look around outside.

The wind and rain were really full on. I was standing outside the hotel thinking to myself “how the hell am I going to describe this” I started thinking of all the words we use for heavy rain – sheets of…. blankets of… – what’s with rain and bedware? Needless to say it was all pretty full on – I had certainly never encountered weather like this in Melbourne. It was so exciting. I had been thinking all day as to how cool it would be to walk out into the rain and get drenched. I gave in, and walked across the road. waited for the lights to change again then walked back. I was drenched – but I couldn’t stop laughing, and neither could Alan. What a wonderfully liberating feeling. The temperature was quite warm (high 20s) so it felt really nice to be out in the rain. I tried to take some photos of the rain but because of the humidity my lens kept fogging up so I have no idea as to whether the photos will come out. As I went back into the hotel all sopping wet my eyes began to sting. Not sure if it was pollution in the rain, or my hair gel dripping into my eyes.

I quite like this business trip with no work caper. People I’ve spoken to have asked “but aren’t you bored being holed up in the hotel like that?” – Simple answer is no, I’m having a ball.

Monday 23rd August.

Our first meeting of the day was with one of our major CD and DVD manufacturers. It’s was great meeting Andy, Karen and Candy. It’s quite cool to meet people you’ve been dealing with for ages, but don’t really know them as more than a name on a screen. I’m making a point of taking photos of all the suppliers I meet so I can remember them when I’m back home.

Lunch. Every street seems to have a number of little hole-in-the-wall type food stalls, many of which have a few tables and chairs indoors. I was astounded to find out that my manager who has been coming here for over 15 years had never eaten at one. He’s scared of getting food poisoning. I dragged him along to one across the road from our hotel. I had a funky beef noodle soup – the broth had a slight thickness to it, it was almost mildly gelatinous (but dont let that put you off) – would love for someone to help me identify it. We also had a bowl of steamed rice which was covered in small pieces of casseroled pork. FANTASTIC. This set us back about AUD$4 for the lot.

Our afternoon meeting was with a manufacturer of various computer parts. The meeting should have been over in a couple of hours, but we were told that the head honcho of the company was going to come see us. Mr Head Honcho basically came an hour after he said he would so the meeting dragged out for a lot longer than it needed to. Exhaustion from yesterday’s travels hit during the last hour and I nearly nodded off on a number of occasions. Oh well.

At this point we were advised that a major typhoon was going to hit tonight. Great. More on this later.

Dinner: damn it the card from the restaurant is all in Chinese (duh) so I can’t provide a name.

Our fine supplier took us to a Cantonese restaurant in the apparently famous Building 101. It’s meant to be the tallest building in the world. It’s certainly an impressive sight. We were given the choice of eating Cantonese or Italian. I thought to myself, I certainly didn’t come all the way here to eat bloody Italian. My manager later told me that our hosts probably would have preferred to go Italian “for something different”. I took a selfish stance and thought that I was the guest here and I was offered the choice. I certainly try to offer the local cuisine whenever customers/suppliers visit us in Melbourne.

The dinner was an awful lot of fun. The company was great and the food was exquisite. It was all great so I’ll spare you the detailed critique – I will however list what we had – I want to remember this in 10 years. None of these are terribly unusual and yes you get this back in Melbourne, but in each case it was probably the best version of each dish I’d ever had.

• platter with roasted beef, pork and duck
• chinese broccoli in oyster sauce.
• shark fin soup
• steamed cod with ginger and soy
• a variation on san choi bao, except the mixture was made out of lobster meat and rice
• mapo tofu – minced pork and tofu in what I could only describe as a casserole.
• dessert: gelatine in a peanut flavoured liquid. (much nicer than it sounds)

After dinner Alan and I went to the Shi Ling (?) night market. WOW – all sorts of cool food, trinkets, clothes, jewellery…etc. We only spent a short while there as the typhoon warning had been escalated and the rain was really starting to come down. I have to make it back to the market before I leave. The government decreed that people were to stay home from work tomorrow, so we weren’t quite sure what we’d be doing as the suppliers we had come to visit would not be at work to visit.

Admittedly the prospect of a sleep in was most appealing.