Taipei #8 - Saturday

Saturday dawned bright and sunny, of course it would do that on the day I leave. Cab ride to the airport was uneventful. I rode in a Toyota Wish, which I believe is a Matrix here, but I thought that perhaps it was somewhat like the “Wish sandwich” from the Blues Brothers, in that you wish it was a different car. It’s actually pretty comfortable, but the joke is fun to make. On the ride, I snapped the picture you see here, my cabbie saw 140kph, and I got a better view of the construction work being done to build an extension of the MRT system so that there is rail service between downtown Taipei and Taoyuan airport, which is more than 40 minutes away even in light traffic. Most of it is elevated rail, and it’s pretty interesting to watch it being built.

The highlight of the morning came while standing and waiting to check in. While it may sound like I’ve lost my mind because I'm happy about waiting in line at the airport, the reason it was the highlight of the morning was that one of the screens was showing what the English subtitles called, “Airport Safety Propaganda.” It went over all of the standard stuff, but had the unique angle of using these very ornate puppets which appear to be traditional Chinese string puppets, complete with mouths that open and close, and traditional costumes. To make the anachronism even more pronounced, they go through the security check point, boarding, using portable electronics (a cell phone and a tablet pc) on the plane, etc. As if that wasn’t bizarre enough, the English translation was either done by someone with a sense of humor or is just one more unintentionally hilarious example of Engrish. I wish I could find a video of it online, but so far no luck. I know that a colleague was taking some video, but I’m not sure if it’s been posted or if it even came out well enough to read the subtitles.

Fortunately, because I was with several colleagues from IETF, they were able to get me into the airline lounges both in Taipei and Narita as a guest, so while I waited for my flight in Taipei, I was able to get some breakfast, including a can of Pocari Sweat, which you may remember from Japan. But even better yet, the United lounge at Narita had these great automatic beer pouring robots. You took a frosted glass from the case, placed it in the cradle, pressed a button, and the machine tilted the glass, filled it almost full, then straightened the glass and dispensed foam to give it a nice head. I was so impressed that I took video.  

The flights in and out of Narita were both pretty bumpy this time. Turbulence doesn’t really bother me, but I was somewhat surprised, because it was severe enough that they had the flight attendants in their seats for a good 30-45 minutes longer than normal, and for such a big plane (777), there was a lot of dancing. Another interesting quirk of the 777 – it rains inside of it! During take-off and landing, at least where I was, near the exit rows, the vents above the aisle and near the window drip a significant amount of water intermittently. I’m not sure if it’s because water freezes up inside the vents while airborne and then thaws as the temperature rises, but all 4 777s I flew on this trip did this.