A (not so) well thought out plan

We have 3 security guards in our building that work in shifts. They monitor the front door, handle mail and packages, and check people in/out of the fitness center, which involves handing you a safety cord to be used on the treadmill. The safety cord is tied in a not to make it even shorter making it so if your concentration lapses the slightest bit you will shut off the treadmill mid-run and go crashing off the front end of the treadmill.

One guard in particular is kind of wacky; he's always laughing demoniacally. One day he insisted Shirley and I follow him down the street so that he could show us where a breakfast place (sesame bread & soy milk) was. That was quite nice but afterwards he insisted that he show us his apartment which was right next door to our building. The inside of his apartment was about the size of our bathroom and it looked like Hannibal Lechter was the previous resident. I thought for sure he was about to chloroform us, tie us up, and kill us slowly. Instead he showed us his pirated collection of James Bond VCDs and sent us home with a stack. This was all while he was supposed to be watching the front door.

I came home from work today to find him and the evening guard in the parking basement with quite a predicament on their hands. Much of the floor was flooded with suds. There is no laundry room in our building so I could not figure out where the source of the suds was but it looked like they had a plan:

You can barely make out in the center of this photo that there is a broom and a dustpan. I don't know what they thought they would accomplish with a broom and dustpan. Talk about bringing a knife to a gunfight.

House Hunting Day 1

My HR group had scheduled me for 4 days of house hunting with 2 different RE agents, they said to keep it "secret" - that there are 2 agents involved. I guess they don't want me to be limited by one agents stomping ground or perhaps they might be in cahoots with certain landlords. My HR group had asked each agent to meet me in the lobby at 8AM. Both agents had contacted me in advance about what our preferences are and the second agent said she could not meet me until 9:30 Wed.

The first agent, David, never responded regarding the schedule so I wasn't surprised that even by 9:30 or so, I had heard nothing. Once I got my computer set up I reverified the schedule and appointments and called him up on Skype as I don't have a local cell phone yet and have no clue what the roaming costs are. He was very apologetic that he misread the appointment and thought I was coming next week and agreed to meet me at 2:00 PM to get started today and we could finish on Tues.

Things got off to a rocky start as he ignored my budget constraints and thought I was on some unlimited ex-pat expense account and lined up a bunch of 4 bedroom places in Taipei, even though I said we wanted a 1 or 2 bedroom. The first group of places were simply gross. Big, but gross. I think a small gross place is less, well, gross than a big gross place. What I found most gross was the layers of mold and mildew in the bathroms and  general musty smell, indicating that the apartment might not hold up well in a typhoon. And the views out the back can be a challenge, too.

We were limited in neighborhood by our desire to have easy access to the highway for me to drive to work, easy access for Shirley to get the bus to work (without too many transfers) and our desire to be near the MRT so we can explore Taipei without having to drive. When he realized I wasn't looking to pay NT$70k (about $2300USD/mo) for a bunch of grossness, he hopped on the cell phone with home base to come up with some alternatives.

He said from the start that he had one place in mind that he thought was really nice, but was a 5 floor walk-up with no elevator. An elevator was on our list as a high priority. I guess we just didn't want to walk up 12 flights of stairs and assumed that any building without an elevator would be gross, but as I had already determined, an elevator may just get you to the grossness faster. The owner met us at the 5 floor walkup and it was actually very nice. He owns the entire building and the 2 apartments on the 5th floor are available for around NT$50k. They are about 37 pings (~1300 sqft) and are very well decorated. There is a 3 bedroom, and then a 1 or 2 bedroom which he architect wife took some creative liberty with. There is a second room with glass walls with a wrap around curtain such that it can be used as a guest bedroom when needed.

We were originally looking for a place in a "luxury" building with a gym and concierge desk, etc. because looking on Craigslist, it looked like such places were within our price range. I looked at a few with David, and the problem is, they are just way too small. The price is OK and if I could get 2 of them next to each other and knock out the walls, it might work out. I asked if there was a 2 bedroom available in the building at twice the price and he said "no", they are apparently just geared toward single people.

After talking with Shirley, the apartment above is the front runner from my trip with David. At the end of day 1, David said he didn't have anything else to show me so we would skip day 2 rather than waste time. I was a bit disappointed but he wasn't well prepared to begin with so I was looking forward to working with Hope, the second agent on Wed. While the architect apartment is definitely do-able, I think it's prophetic that agent #2 is named "Hope".

corporate schwag

Flashback about 5 years...my company was rolling out the opening of this facility in Taiwan that I will be working at and my new boss came to the States on a recruiting venture. There was this engineer, Ray, that we worked with who was quite old and everyone joked about when this guy would finally retire. He was old to the point of legend, there was always debate over how old he was as though there was no means of record keeping at the time of his birth. My new boss was giving the pitch about getting people from our U.S. division to move to Taiwan and this guy, Ray, pointed out that my new boss had his facts mixed up regarding the history of the Portuguese and Dutch presence in Taiwan. Ray had grown up in Taiwan...

So I departed the plane into Taoyuan Airport wearing a backpack with my company logo on it that we received for an "end of year" present a few years ago. We typically get some sort of schwag imprinted with the company logo. As I passed one guy, I heard someone call out my company's name, I turned and looked at a guy with a baseball cap embroidered with a golf course name. 

He removed the cap and said, "I worked for the Connecticut division". 

I said, "You're Ray!"

My company is big enough that you don't know everyone and like I said, this guy was a legend, so I knew him but he didn't know me. He was shocked that I knew him and we had a good talk about how much he hates retired life. He was a workaholic type that was probably encourage to retire. His wife came by and he introduced me. 

She was also surprised, "You know Ray?" To which I responded, "Ray's famous!" She had a look as though all I need to do is pad his ego even more. I noticed they exited immigration through the "Diplomat" line. Maybe he's senile. Or maybe his fame has transcended the workplace.

Getting through customs was a piece of cake and I strolled along the line of limo drivers looking for my name. Not there. I wrapped around the exit line and walked over to the group of drivers and asked if anyone knew/saw my guy. Nope. So I wait for a few minutes and then break out the laptop as I didn't have his # handy, assuming that I wouldn't need it. I got a hold of him and he was strolling around the airport looking for me. He said most people from my company exit to the left when coming out of the immigration hall so that's where he was, not with the other 40 drivers to the right. He even said he saw me come through the door and thought it might be me, but didn't track me down.

He thoroughly interrogated me on the ride to the temporary apartment and made it through much of my life story, and my wife's life story. When he picked me up, he indicated that he wasn't entirely sure where my apartment was. Again, I was assuming that he would be there and would know where to go so I didn't have the exact address handy, but I could have pointed it out on Google Maps in a second. Luckily he was able to find it and parked on the curb with his hazzards on. Parking in Taipei seems to involve walking a fine line regarding what will or will not be tolerated. This may supersede what is/isn't legal.

We went into the lobby which had a security guard behind a desk. The driver got into a detailed conversation with the guard that I could tell involved much frustration. This was at 7:45 or so in the morning and I suspected it might be an issue to check in so early. So the driver explains that they have no staff available to check me in now. OK, no big deal. Here's the drill as he explained:

The Spring Apartment lobby is on the second floor, we are on the first. The lobby is not even open yet. I must sit in that chair over there and wait for the guard to tell me it is OK to proceed to the lobby on the second floor. I can wait in the lobby until 9AM when the staff will come to check me in. OK, no big deal, I took a chair and fired up my laptop. No Wi-Fi. Oh well.

At about 8:21 the guard called me and sent me up to the second floor. He came with me and told me where to sit and directed me to the English newspaper on the rack. At about 8:30, the girl that works the desk on the second floor came in wearing street clothes. The guard must have briefed her on why I was there and she fired up a coffee grinder and made me a cup of fresh espresso. Awesome!

Before I could even finish the coffee, the next lady came by. She spoke English quite well and said that we would move me into my apartment. We first went to her office on the 12th floor where she took care of some paperwork and gave me a security badge, that scans the lock at the front door and the elevator. We went down to my apartment on the 11th floor. There is a big iron door in front of the regular door, it's quite impressive, if for no other reason than being quite heavy and a bit noisy. The regular door has a keypad with a cover. She opened the door and then set it up so that I could input my own 4 digit pin. You slide the cover up, punch in the pin, then slide it back down, and the mechanism electronically opens. The apartment is about 26' long and 10' wide with a nice sunny view out to the street and a nice shower stall with glass walls that affords a view of the TV. It's small but nice. 

Just to explain the situation: it is in a building with various businesses. The guard on the first floor controls a good chunk of the building. On the second floor is the lobby of the Spring Apartment, which is just part of the building. Then on the 12th floor is the lady that controls the 11th and 12th floors which is the ex-pat section. Hence, the hierarchy of the people I had to deal with. I realized that I had plugged in the camera charger in the lobby, the first floor lobby with the guard, that is. So I grabbed my security badge and headed down to grab it. After coming back up, I couldn't get the pin # to take. So I was off back to the 12th floor for the boss lady. We went down to the 12th floor and as we were getting out of the elevator she said, "you pushed the cover back down, right?" Well, of course NOT. I apologized and she said not to worry as many make that mistake. Sure enough, pushing the cover down unlocked the door and I was back into my home for the next month.

Finally getting all of my travel plans sorted out

Once I came away from TECO with a sense of confidence that my visa would be ready on Tues I gave my travel group the "thumbs up" to book our tickets. I'll be taking the redeye Sat night on EVA from Newark through Anchorage on to Taipei. It will arrive Monday morning 5:55A local time, and I will somehow make my way to work to settle in; that's my plan, anyway. When travelling intercontinental, it works best for me to just go straight to work. If I try to rest up for a bit, I end up crashing out for 16 hours and it just takes me even more time to get over the jet lag.

The other reason why I took this flight is Shirley will be travelling with the cat in July and she will take this same flight for several reasons:

• A connection in a foreign country, say Hong Kong, with the cat is just asking for trouble. I would guess that would mean more paperwork and I'd be worried about something going wrong.
• China Airlines does not allow pets other than guide dogs so that rules out travelling with them through LAX or SFO.
• EVA will allow you to check a pet as extra luggage. The good thing about the Anchorage flight is they only stop to take on fuel (and maybe some cargo), so there is no plane change and we don't need to rely on the cat being transferred from one plane to the next.

So I figured I would take the same flight and see how it goes. It will also allow me to get in early in the morning rather than mid-day like the Cathay Pacific flights that were available. Unfortunately you cannot fly direct from New York to Taipei.

Friends of ours threw us a going away party on Sunday which was awesome (sushi, wine, cheese and bacon-everything is better with bacon) and we got to see some more friends and family before leaving.

My HR group in Taiwan has been working to shore up my arrangements in Taipei and have confirmed a temporary home at The Spring and they got me a taxi from the airport to the apartment. Now I have to work with them on a car.

This afternoon I'm heading back down to TECO to pick up my visa.