Category: Taipei

Taiwanese breakfast: Taiwanese style doughnuts sandwiched in flat sesame bread, soy milk , green onion rolls, shanghai shao long bao, some sort of breakfast burrito made with scrambled eggs encased in sweet rice.

National Museum: Wonderful collections from Imperial China, including the emperor’s seals. New found appreciation for Sung dynaster Chinese painter Ma Yuan, whose painting “Tai at Ma River” was captioned by the emperor: “I don’t know if he’s coming or going”. Had lovely Wenshan tea at the coffee shop.

Chiang Kai Shek Memorial: watched the changing of the guard — wonderful.

Hakka Cultural Society: saw some great exhibits. Hakka is an official language in Taiwan — it can be heard in the automatic subway announcements.

Night Market: ate chao tofu, wonton mein, kelbassa style lop chern sausage on a stick, passion fruit flavored ping shaved ice.

Dinner at AS’s house: massive steaks, potatoes and tomatoes, chocolate cake, creme brulee, various wines and liquors.

Flying back to Tokyo today. Will work on the missing Kyoto entries.

P and I came in to Taipei in the afternoon. Spent a lot of time in mall shops with AS. Sightseeing tomorrow with YC.

Well, looking forward to the FC & P- express train from Brooklyn here in Taipei. Sorry, but the gloomy rainy weather has returned this week with a vengeance. Pouring rain and wind making it really yucko!

This is a busy week socially as another friend from California arrived this past Sunday. He’ll be attending the SecuTech 2005 Expoin Taipei this Thursday. Some interesting stuff.

Meanwhile, I’m busy with my own baby, ML McLean & Associates Co. Ltd. in Taipei. I built the website using all open-source technologies recently and relatively painlessly. People ask me, what does ML stand for and why McLean? Well, it’s very unscientific but an educated guess in that Asia companies really like American sounding names. McLean is really anglo-saxon and ML doesn’t stand for anything. So what does it do? It’s a business and technology advisory and consulting firm, a mouthful. Essentially, we do consulting and training for companies that are looking to be more competitive. Our range of services is aimed at the locals looking internationally and the expats and foreigners looking to survive and expand their presence in Asia. We’re the classic Asia-West bridge company.

There’s hope here in Asia-Pac, particularly because of China and its black-hole affect. Compare that to the US where the real-estate market bubble, basically foreigners buying up everything is causing everyone in the US to go poor. One has to be really rich to live in the US and I fear that the longer I stay out here, the less likely I would be able to return to the US and live the life that my parents did. I think already, people have trouble doing that without racking up obscene amounts of debt. I don’t know. Seems like the proverbial, there’s no thing such as a free lunch is only half-true :-|?

=YC