adrian is rad

First photo album is online.

Yesterday I went to (what is officially still but not really) the world’s tallest building, Taipei 101. I like the architecture; it’s nicer than many of the very tall buildings. Cooler yet is that it has the fastest elevator at 16.83 m/s. It goes up to the top in 37 seconds. Awesome. Also it has the world’s largest tuned mass damper. They call it “damper baby”. It weighs 650 tons and can swing 1.5m in really bad winds or an earthquake. Good job, damper baby!

In other geek news, I saw a sign at the MRT that said something like “Beware. This escalator runs fast, as 37 m/ minute.” Yeah, they stated the actual speed (even though the unit is silly.)

Speaking of MRT, I “figured it out” last night and today. It’s a fast and efficient system, from the looks of it. Quiet, cheap. It’s also packed but given the other qualities, I’ll take it. Oh, and the tokens you get have RFID or some sort of other RF tags. You just swipe them to enter. It’s pretty cool.

There are 7-11s everywhere. I have been places where I am standing at one and could walk to two others each in a minute. It’s tremendous. It’s like Dunkin Donuts in Boston or Starbucks in Seattle. There are both of those here too, but not as prevalent. Mister Donut has a one-up on Dunkin Donut here it seems.

The National Palace Museum’s collection is amazing. Pieces from just about every era of China. I was amazed by some of the craftsmanship. Elsewhere I was amazed by the detail on some of the 3000+ year old pieces.

Went to Danshui for the evening and had my first night market food. Just cheap food from street vendors. You get small amounts from a few and that’s dinner. Little taiwanese tacitos, squid grilled before my eyes on a stick and “stinky tofu”. It tasted pretty good and I’m not vomiting yet.

This city is very bright and busy. I’m not sure if that’ll get old.

A common sink/ toilet maker here is Toto. Every time I see one of their products I can’t help but think: “I bless the rains down in Africa”.

(bottle reads “BIO Technology Fiber Drink”)

(I’m not the one enforcing stereotypes.)