end of day 4

ahhh...yes the end of day 4....jet lag finally caught up with me....so i was very tired today.  it was very hard to concentrate.  jetlag is hard to explain sometimes, as you cant think straight. things that you normally could think of quickly and memory functions, do not work the same.  it takes me awhile to figure things out on days like today....which makes the days even longer. 

Work is going well still, however we have to work on saturday.  mostly because we are trying 

to meet a deadline on wednesday that is critical to the rest of my stay.  if we miss this deadline, then i will either come back early or stay an extra week.  most likely stay an extra week.....wont know the details on this until a few more days.......

Went to dinner last night and had India Food.  Was fortunate to be invited by a few expats to go to dinner.  Indian food remains to be one of my favorite foods.  If you know what to order, it is delicious!  specifically lentle items seem very tasty.

as for dinner tonight.  There was a factory dinner that i was invited to.  Basically both of the factory innovation teams along with some other folks were invited to go to a Turkish restaurant for dinner.  The food was exceptional.  good variety and all was very tasty!  Dinner was craziness as there were about 18 or so people there.  It is not a very formal dinner, people drink and walk around to the different tables and sit together, then get up and move somewhere else and sit and chat.  its very busy, always something going on.  People like to make toasts alot, which seems to be tradition in 

Asia.  make a toast have a sip.  I learned after my 2nd or 3rd trip to simply have a sip, other wise, in the course of a night, you would toast 50 or so times and would have consumed much more alcohol than you planned.  Factory dinners are very fun, however they make for a very long day...considering i get up every day at 5am...not so much because i want to, but more so because i cant sleep yet due to the time change.

Speaking of time change, wouldnt you know it, I am just getting used to the new time and figuring out what time it is at home...when here comes daylight savings....so now the time will change again.  so i am sure i will be at least an hour off.  (my apologies if anyone recieves phone calls in the middle of the night.)  Anyways, back to the long day....so after working all day at the develpment center and then heading to a factory dinner, your 11 hour day just turned into 15 to 16 hours.  If you are lucky, you didnt have to make calls back to beaverton in the am before heading to work...I 

 am not so lucky....!  : )

so for those who think i am in Thailand, you are wrong and I have attached a map.

So here is asia.  There is an arrow pointing to taiwan.  Taiwan is a very small part of asia.  It is a tropical island.  so lots of palm trees.....below is also a map of taiwan.  You can see the city named taipei.  this is the largest city in taiwan and also where i fly in and out of.  Taipei used to have the tallest building in the world, called the taipei 101.   that is until Dubai started to grow exponentially.  I always wonder what happens to buildings and how their atmosphere changes

 after they were once the tallest building in the world.  Its such a tourist attraction while they are, but what about when they are 

no longer the tallest, does tourist traffic just come to a halt? 

ok..so below is a map of taiwan....IF you can find Taichung,  that is where i spend most of my time.

the factories are 30 and 40 minutes from taichung, so it is a nice central location to go to either factory.  How do i get to the factory you might ask?  "oh, thank you for asking!" well i have a driver who picks me up everyday at the hotel and takes me to where ever i need to go that day.  Usually visitors like me borrow drivers from expats.  (by the way...an expat is someone who lives and works in another country that they are not native to.) 

I am planning to go to the southern most tip of taiwan, called Kenting for a little R&R(rest and relaxation) at somepoint durring this month.  Kenting is a beach type resort.  supposed to be very beautiful.

well it finally rained today.  Taiwan was only a few days away from running out of water, but luckily it rained...so below is the forcast for the next

 few days.

check out those temperatures!!!! that is if you brought your maginfying glass?!? oops....to tired to fix the picture.

Good Night!!! zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz