It seems like whenever I’m proud of making reasonable progress in writing a blog entry, Internet Explorer decides it ought to slow me down by screeching to a halt and painfully reminding me of why I ought to save my post every sentence.  (Saved.) 

Anyway, after Stefan and Masami’s wedding celebration and a shortcut to the Zurich airport I boarded my flight to Taiwan, with a changeover in Hong Kong (save).  I barely made it to my connecting flight to Taiwan (save).  On that flight, I only ate one of my dumplings in order not to break my intended 16-hour fast too egregiously, prompting my seat neighbour to ask if I didn’t like dumplings (save).  Thus began a conversation in which he told me about the PengHu archipelago floating by beneath our window, about the Kenting national park which apparently was threatened with removal from some list of national parks due to overcrowding, but which nevertheless is of extraordinary beauty, and about the eastern side of Taiwan and its steep cliffs (save). 

My heavy suitcase didn’t make the short transfer in Hong Kong, so not only did I not have to pay Cathay for excess baggage, but they had to bring my heavy suitcase to my hotel (save).  I also found myself confirmed in my decision not to use a Carnet this time, which I had decided mainly because Taiwan is not a signatory to the Carnet ATA (perhaps because China is) and I would have had to fill in about ten pages of repetitive information (save).  In this situation it would also have forced me to either wait around for my suitcase (and leave my business partner waiting) or write a valid power of attorney on the fly (save). 

I got to the hotel, checked in, told them to just keep the second suitcase until morning, and went to bed (save).  In the morning my business partner, his colleague, and his daughter picked me up, and we walked a couple hundred meters to a fusion restaurant so modern it came with slouching sullen-faced staff and dishes like seared scallop with orange vinaigrette or asparagus crème brûlée (one could barely taste it, but trust me, I know it contained asparagus) (save).  We combined lunch with business discussions and then departed to visit a customer of ours who wanted to discuss projects present and future and the Phoenix Mars Mission (save). 

For dinner my partner, his daughter and I went to a buffet restaurant in Danshui, a region north of Taipei known for its hot springs and its Fisherman’s wharf, where we went to walk off our excess food intake in the sweltering darkness (save).  After dark not much was going on except for the young couples taking pictures of themselves on the Valentine’s Bridge, so we soon headed back for Taipei, where I soon turned in (save). 

Today we left the hotel at 8:00 and drove to the train station, where we boarded the Taiwan High-Speed Rail to Zuoying, the stop nearest Kaohsiung, and took a taxi to a local university, where we met with a potential customer (save).  I’m not sure how much of a potential is there, as he expects to receive this year a budget of about a quarter of what he wants to purchase, but perhaps we can find a solution (save).  We took the train back to Taipei and the car down to Hsinchu to meet with another customer, whose guaranteed funding is less but who might have the ability to get a bigger chunk somehow – it seems like selling in Taiwan comes down to fiddling with budgets (save).  And a little country like this where there aren’t any decent budgets around manages to build – and privately finance – something as useful and cool as the Taiwan High-Speed Rail (save)?  Where’s the Swissmetro (save)?  And where’s a real bullet train in the DC-Boston corridor – is it really on the way (save)? 

Be that as it may, I finished the day doing laundry and writing this blog after another buffet dinner, this time in the hotel restaurant with a 6oz fillet mignon steak (save).  It’s teaching me that not only is the road to hell paved with good intentions, but also lined with all-you-can-eat buffets (save).