Week 5 & 6: 台北 & 斗六

Monday or （星期一）

I started a new class which is up a level from my previous class. It also has over 50% more students compared to my last class. So, nice I guess.

星期二 （Tuesday）

It rained a lot, and I mean a lot! It rained so much to the point that schools and business were closed for safety. So what did I do with this time off? I watched Ryan Trahan’s 50 States In 50 Days series. (It’s awesome. Go watch it!) But I also took the time to implement a feature on my blog that I have wanted to have since day one, and that is a email sign-up form. It’s now live! Know anyone who you think would be interested in reading my blog? Send them this link to register. The form even supports unsubscribing in case you don’t want to receive my email updates anymore. (No hard feelings if that ever becomes the case, I totally get it. :) )

星期三

星期四

The day I finally got my camera. Finally!

Goodness, was this ever a journey.

I first had the idea of buying a camera about two weeks into my trip. I wanted a point & shoot/fixed lens camera as they’re the most portable. I also wanted it to have a large sensor to take fantastic photos, as well as an electronic viewfinder to make framing my shots much easier. Though there are a few solid options on the market, the Sony RX-100 VII (Mark 7) was clearly my only choice. It has everything I wanted; a large sensor, good processing to make taking great pictures easier, and a built in electronic viewfinder that’s there when you need it, and gone when you don’t.

Though Sony has not updated this camera in over six years, it still holds up well, easily beating my iPhone 15 Pro Max, especially in situations where I need to zoom.

In America, Sony appears to have stopped selling the RX-100, leaving only scalpers and grey market sites that are based out of Asia. But in Taiwan, Sony still sells it, and at a very reasonable price too. If I would have bought the camera from a scalper in the US, I would have spent about $1700 USD, but in Taiwan, I paid just a little over $1100 USD ($33000 NTD). And even though the camera is from 2019, my unit appears to have been manufactured in 2025!

Ok, so how did I go about getting this camera. I initially thought that buying online would be easier instead of shopping around at stores in the US. However, it turned out to be the exact opposite. All the websites I looked at said the camera was out of stock, didn’t reply until an attempt was made to follow up, or failed to deliver the camera a in a timely manner. So I was forced to check with the stores, as I had this Thursday to buy the camera if I wanted to use it in 台北 the following day. Checking with the shops would have been a much harder task as I would have had to have gone to every single store to see if they had the camera in stock and face the possibility that they wouldn’t. But thanks to that Taiwanese number I mentioned earlier, it was a breeze to call and check. (Well mostly as neither my Chinese nor their English was very good.)

So if you ever go to Taiwan, and you decide that you want to buy something specific or specialized, please please please buy a local sim when you arrive there, and don’t wait the five and a half weeks that I did. You’ll save yourself a lot of headache and pain.

星際五、星期六、星期日：台北

With my new camera acquired, as well as the accessories to go with it, I went to 台北！

I accidentally misunderstood a date and time setting which resulted in all the photos from 星期五 and 星期六 having a date stamp on them directly. Whoops. I’m not mad about it though. As my aunt put it, “It gives them a cool retro vibe.”

The leather case I got for the camera turned out to be very nice, even if I didn’t connect the strap properly and found out the hard way when the camera fell off as I was running up the stairs in the train station. (Fear not, it turned out to be just fine.)

Here is some photos from 台北101:

Here’s a view from above:

I should mention that most of these photos were taken from the 89th floor. The ones overlooking the balance were from the 91st.

My companions for the weekend were Professor Karl 張, and Lydia 王, a former Taiwanese graduate teaching assistant who co-taught in my Chinese 101 class this past spring. We did practically everything together including having meals together and visiting other scenic spots.

It was particularly nice having Lydia along, as in addition to being a native Chinese speaker, she also majored in English which resulted in her being able to very effectively teach me a lot of new Chinese words very quickly. Also, because she was a TA in my Chinese class this past spring, she also had the unique opportunity of being able to see just how much my Chinese has improved. Her encouragement was so greatly appreciated, as I felt that at the time, I was making slow progress in improving my Chinese.

Now enjoy some more beautiful photos of the landscapes.

After visiting this mining town, we visited another.

We then went to the northern most part of 台灣.

This is the furthest north I made it in 台灣 I had to catch the bus in time. There’s next year thankfully. 💪 (would have included the location but my camera didn’t capture the GPS coordinates sadly.)

We went to this awesome coffee shop located inside this building. Here’s some photos.

After our adventures, we took the THSR (Taiwan High-Speed Rail) back to 高雄, we got dinner, after which Lydia took the THSR to another event she needed to attend. And thus, just as in The Lord of The Rings, the fellowship was broken, a truly sad moment indeed. 😂

第六 （Week 6) Stuff Started Clicking:

After a wonderful weekend in 台北, it was back to my studies. I have a few interesting observations to report.

As I have been trying to apply the Chinese that I have been learning. I have reached a a point where I am now synthesizing Chinese on a regular basis. This is so wonderful! I have finally crossed this juncture! However I still have a great vocabulary deficiency. So what happens when I reach a word that I don’t know? I think it in Russian? Wait, what? Yeah, you’re just as surprised as I am. For some background, Russian was my first language. I picked up English as I heard those around me speaking it in daily conversations. After I went to school, my English skyrocketed, far surpassing my Russian. My Russian, of course dwindled, but didn’t fully die as I would speak it on occasion with those who couldn’t speak English well or just for vibes. Enter about a year ago, when I fell in love with Chinese. Especially after I started my 101 class, my ability to synthesize Russian received a significant revival. My only issue being a deficiency in vocabulary because a lot of the vocabulary I haven’t used in perhaps over a decade. Come that moment when I started to synthesize Chinese regularly, and It’s almost as if the Russian heard the Chinese knocking and was like, “Yo, wassup.” I thought of words that haven’t surfaced since I was about 8 or 7! Talk about incredible!

Also came the realization that I had two weeks left in 台灣, and as my friend put it, “traveler’s anxiety set in.” Thinking of all the things I wanted to do, all the people I wanted to get gifts for back home definitely impacted my peace and rest. Sovereignly, however, all these cares have been put to rest.

星期六 我去斗六了

This past Saturday, I went to 斗六 to go shopping for some gifts, as well as to meet up with a friend. The whole experience was truly eye-opening.

I started the day around 9 by heading to 7-11, or as the Taiwanese call it 「小七」 literally translated “small seven,” to grab some breakfast and snacks for the road. I then headed to the metro, transferring two stops along the route to the Taiwan Railway. The staff there were very accommodating, providing gracious assistance to where I needed to go on the platforms. They were perhaps, even nicer than the ones in America. This trend continued even after I arrived in 斗六. People weren’t overly helpful, but if they noticed that I was stuck, or appeared to be, they wouldn’t hesitate to come up and ask if I needed help. There was one such case where I was walking on the left side of the road back to the train station because I thought that walking on the left would be the most efficient, but I actually got a bit stuck from the oncoming traffic that wouldn’t relent. A woman saw that I was trying to circumnavigate but with little success and suggested that I walk on the right side, which did make me succeed. On that note, I want to share how I needed to almost completely needed to rethink my navigation strategy.

Seeing 高雄 with its nice, mostly unobstructed sidewalks made me think that navigating 斗六 was going to be a breeze. Well, let’s just say my expectations were quickly checked. It’s not that navigating 斗六 was hard, but It required me to almost completely rethink how I navigate in public settings. For one, some of the sidewalks were paved asphalt, making them unrecognizable at first. Second, the sidewalks were absolutely packed with mopeds/motorbikes, making them unusable most of the time. This meant that I needed to walk on the road most of the time, which is apparently completely normal in Taiwan. Because pedestrians, motorbikes, and vehicles all share the same roads, I naturally needed to take account for them when for instance, there was a car parked on the side of the road and I needed to walk around it. My walking basically became like driving:

1. Walk forward until you reach obstacle.
2. When you reach obstacle and want to merge left, check for cross traffic.
3. If cross traffic is present, asses the speed.
4. If too high, allow to pass before repeating.
5. Proceed to merge when cross traffic is not present or speed/distance is nominal.
6. Repeat steps 1–5 over and over until you reach your final destination.

Boy, that sounds like a lot (and it was) but it wasn’t too bad. I actually thought the experience is exhilarating, though certainly not for the faint of heart. Seriously kids, don’t do this at home.

Yet it is these obstacles and the environment that surrounds them that gives 斗六 a special place in my heart. As an American who is used to seeing endless cars parked along the side of roads, seeing a ton of mopeds piled every which way in addition to the much wider ferrety of architecture just screens awesome! I mean, my words are severely inadequate. I wish I could have taken more photos of this place. (I didn’t for obvious reasons. Enjoy what I have.

Quick Camera Comparison:

See you all again when I get back to the U.S.

—年泰