Saturday, March 27, 2010

Taiwan Trip Part 3

Day 2 (26th March 2010)

Everyone woke up early to attend the prayer session except Bro. Leo Lam and I. Both of us wake up rather late but fortunately we make it in the nick of time. Before I forgot, Bro. Leo Lam shares the same room with me and he represents Hong Kong. All the participants were divided into 3 groups for discussion. We had a discussion on how to manage the global resources for the IMP. We had lunch later in this fancy restaurant which offers a wide variety of food in buffer style for as little as TWD300! I have some Japanese food (mostly sushis), a steak, and a Taiwanese dish called “stir fried shellfish”. The translated name does not tell you much. If you want me to describe it, it’s actually shellfish meat and vegetable stir fried before it was cooked into an omelet. It was served with this orange colored gravy which tastes great. I will try to get a picture of this and post it in the blog. A picture is worth more than a thousand words after all. I think I will try to get myself some of this again before I leave Taiwan. :P

We have another discussion on how to fully utilized and inventory all the materials we have in the e-library.

Well that’s all for now. Later dude!

Taiwan Trip Part 2

Day 1 (25th March 2010)

I was half conscious half asleep all the time while I was in the airport. The bench is not as bad as everyone assume and the environment was serene in the early morning but it gets a bit noisy sometime around 0300 when people started to flock into the airport. Like it or not, I will have to wake up and get myself prepared for the day. Somehow, I managed to stumble into the departing hall in my pitiful condition and meet up with Pr. Fung before the flight. The trip took approximately 3 hours. Fortunately for me, I spend most of the time sleeping in the plane so it’s not as boring as it seems.

The plane touched down on Taoyuan International Airport at around 0930. The first thing that caught my attention is the weather. Although it was suppose to be Spring at the moment, the weather was exceptionally cold. Sixteen degree Celsius! That’s colder that the air condition in my office! Both Pr. Fung and me waited for another 20mins or so before the representative from Taichung church pick us up with Dn. Andrew Chu from Australia. It was another 2 hours plus trip to Taichung church from the airport.

We were given a warm welcome by our fellow brothers and sisters when we arrived at Taichung. We felt that we were at home although we are foreigners in a foreign land. We were given a brief introduction regarding the programme of the symposium before calling it a day.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Taiwan Trip

The day is here! I have been waiting for this trip for months. I am finally going to go to Taiwan in a few hours! Prior to this trip, I was in Keningau helping out with the "Workshop for Conservation of Trus Madi Forest Reserve". The workshop ended around 1500 on the 24th and I have to travel back to Kota Kinabalu on the same day or else I might miss my flight. The road trip through Tambunan was hellish. It was full of so much twist and turn that I almost throw up in the car. Despite all that, I endure all of them because I know there is a long trip ahead of me. After a backbreaking 2 hours. I am backed in Kota Kinabalu again.

Drop by HobbyKingdom to check out on their latest product before meeting up with Collin, Hadri and Math. We spend quite a lot of time chatting about models. I decided that it will be the best if I were to stay overnight in the airport for I will need to check in at around 0400 so I have Collin send me there after our chitchat session. I thought I will be able to spend the night in a one of the shop but I was wrong. Most of them were closed when I was there and there are hardly anyone around except for some security guards and a few travelers like me. I managed to keep myself busy until around 0200 when I succumbed to the exhaustion and fell asleep on one of those long benches...

To be continued...