I've arrived safely in Taiwan and have been exploring a bit but most of the places were closed on Sunday. Traveling to Taiwan from Khon Kaen was kinda long. I had to get up at 5AM to catch my first flight to Bangkok. I arrived at my hotel at close to 10PM. Then I was off to Kuala Lumpur where I had to run to make my connecting flight. Once in Kuala Lumpur, I had to go through security at the gate again, where everyone is patted down at the gate, kinda annoying. The flights were pretty enjoyable but it gets a little lonely traveling by myself. On the Kuala Lumpur to Taipei flight, there was a little girl that was walking up the aisle next to me (I was in an aisle seat) who was vomiting in a bag up the aisle. She projectile vomited on the guy in front of me and across the aisle from me. I felt so bad for the guy and I was also so glad that she missed me. Other than that, nothing too out of the ordinary happened.
I started data collection today but to my dismay/disappointment, I won't be able to use this data in my dissertation. The curator had gotten confused or something because the collection I wanted to use had been returned to the National Taiwan University Medical School over a decade ago. The collection that I'm looking at now is prehistoric and the same one looked at by Howells three decades ago. So I'm measuring these skulls to test my measurement variability and all is not lost. Most of the skulls are badly damaged and fragmented so I don't have much to measure. It also means that I will have 50 less individuals to analyze, so less numbers. Yay! Thankfully, my aunt and cousin arrive next week for a week or so and we'll go sightseeing. Otherwise I will have wasted a lot of time and money being here. The collection is very well protected and I'm constantly being monitored by all the security measures. It's kinda scary.
Enough about my disappointment and onto the fun sights and sounds of Taipei. I'm excited to be in Taipei since there are a lot of sights to see. I should be done with my data collection by Thursday or Friday and my aunt and cousin arrives on Saturday. So far, I managed to walk around the area where I'm staying and have taken a couple of pictures. I'm getting my languages a little mixed up since I forget which is Thai and which is Mandarin. I took a bunch of pictures from around the area. I'm excited that there are sidewalks here!
Here's my room. It's a lot nicer than the one in Thailand but it's also smaller.
There is a river that runs through the campus and the surrounding areas that is filled with tilapia.
Here is a picture of the fountain and the front of the Academia Sinica activity center that I'm staying at.
Here's a picture of the building that I'll be working in.
Food is also cheap here, but not as cheap as in Thailand. I've eaten some pretty tasty food here and I've managed to find a McDonald's also. I have been craving french fries lately.So that's all for now. I will be able to see more sights in Taiwan than I did in Thailand, so that will be fun. I'll post again when I get to see some more of the sights. Also, no mosquito bites in Taipei yet!
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