Love, Hate, Name Something You Ate VI: Hsinchu Edition by jima

• One thing I love about living in Singapore Hsinchu is...
  ...the very nice hotel I'm staying in. It has great facilities, gives you fruit and chocolate when you check in, and is all-in-all a pleasant place to stay, with the exception of...
  
  
• One thing I hate about living in Singapore Hsinchu is...
  ...the breakfast buffet. It's your typical Asian breakfast buffet, but combine my all-too-frequent stays here with the travel that Venitha and I have been doing (meaning oh, yay, yet another Asian breakfast buffet), and it's starting to wear on me. Far past the point of starting to wear is the guy who carries the coffee around. I can't get him to stop at my table without a full check-block, and then he says, "Coffee, no problem," in a tone that leaves me wondering whether he's mocking me or just repeating a rote phrase in a language he doesn't speak too well. True, I can't even say coffee in Mandarin, but getting between me and my morning java fix is just rude.
  
  
• A new thing I ate recently is...
  ...the funky drink, a really thin orange yogurt, that they give me with lunch. It's not exactly tasty, but it is refreshing, and most importantly, no floaters. The color is a bit toxic and a bit chalky, and I'm always glad I can't read the label; I'd rather not know that it's soylent orange.
  
  
• Something I recently discovered is...
  ...that you can order long-distance train tickets in Taiwan on-line and in English. How very cool! Fill out the web forms, click a button, and get a reservation form. Take that to any train station and, viola!, get the tickets you need! Very handy considering that the train station sign board may read like this.
  
• Singlish o' the day:
  Go figure that Singlish is not particularly useful in Hsinchu. I have been getting a bunch of mileage out of a few Mandarin phrases, though: xie xie (thank you) and ni hao (hello).
  

jima
Hsinchu, Taiwan, is roughly 50 km (30 miles) southwest of Taipei. Click here for a map that shows both Singapore and Taipei. Click on the map to enlarge it.