Week 6: Winds of Progress
Monday. My regular meeting with Professor Michael Kantar and Anna from the University of Hawaii at Manoa is where we made the decision to shift from website development to seminar preparation. Two reason. First, the website was running into computational capacity issues — even with a full week of run time, there were no quantifiable results. Second, it was time to begin preparing a slideshow, write a script, and practice for my seminar.
On the other hand, my speed breeding peppers had made wonderful progress. Our peppers in the speed breeding facility had finally started to flower. Typically, early flowering AVPP peppers take ~50 days to flower. The speed breeding peppers in my experiment starting flowering in ~40. Specifically, our main harvest AVPP0303 peppers were the first to flower, suggesting that speed breeding may have different effects on unique cultivars.
Tuesday. The interns were here. Seven Taiwanese, five Indonesian, and one from Vietnam, Malaysia, Italy, and the Philippines. Janice, Melody, Rhei, Paris, Ava, Jason, Annie, Ashli, Amy, Daniel, Bryan, Jonathan, Alicia, Gina, Christina, and Lodovico. In contrast to the excitement of meeting new interns, was the gloom of Assaf Ebyshitz departure. Assaf is the tomato breeding here at WorldVeg and this week he is headed off. Next time, Assaf. Tuesday was also the first night market of the week. Jacob and I go to try new street food everytime we can. This time we got a chocolate banana crepe. No words can describe how good this treat was.
Wednesday. Slides for the speed breeding project. Thankfully, I had already written my abstract, introduction, and methods. I just had to convert those ideas into an easily interoperable slideshow. Then I would just have to patiently wait for whatever preliminary results I could garner from my peppers before it was time to go home. My results, data analysis discussion, and proposed path forward would have to change accordingly to the peppers that flowered. I ended off my Wednesday by playing volleyball with Jacob, Ashli, and three PHD students: Swaroop, Aravan, and Lokesh (we joke that Lokesh should play Olympic volleyball instead of doing his postdoc at WorldVeg).
Thursday. Ultimate frisbee. Niel had come around two weeks ago as the new head of communications. He’s a 49 year old (looks 40) super athlete — iron mans, 100km bike rides for fun on the weekend, swimming, running, gym, boxing he does it all. He also plays ultimate frisbee. We thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to bring the new interns together with a game of ultimate. It’s safe to say new friendships and rivalries were made.
Friday. Like most Fridays went after work, Jacob and I asked anyone we could find what we should do in Taichung. We ended up deciding that cafe hopping would be the best way to go about it. Friday was also the second night market of the week. This time Jacob and I got Taiwanese BBQ flavored corn on the cobb, interesting but good.
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Saturday. Taichung. The second closest major city was our second to last weekend vacation spot. The day started at 7am with a 4 hour train ride to Taichung city. Slept through half watched the trees and mountains the other half. Our first spot was ASEAN. We had Banh mi for breakfast (it was 11am) and walked through 5 floors of south east asian markets. Next was Miyahara Ice Cream shop. A Harry Potter looking ice cream spot with 50+ flavors to try. I don’t remember what I got but Jacob’s kumquat ice cream was to die for. After that we went to BAA Veg, a progressive Indian restaurant where the chef learns from his grandma and serves all vegan Indian food. 11/10 beyond what words can describe. Beautiful interior as well. Did I mention, Taiwanese interior design is hilarious. It’s either a no effort interior design or a 10/10 viby spot. Then we went to the original bubble milk tea spot, Chun Sui Tang Original Store. Again wonderful bubble tea and beautiful interior design. At this point my stomach was looking more parabolic. Next was Nice to Meet (NMU) cafe near the Taichung literature museum. Side note: all spots mentioned are walking distance from the Taichung train station. NMU was a Japanese studio Ghibli style cafe. I got a latte and Jacob got tea. Then we headed off to a shopping mall. Please keep me away from Uniqlo. Ended up trying to go to a ramen spot recommended by the waiter at BAA Veg but they were all reserved so we walked in the pouring rain for a little bit before finding another ramen spot. It was good. We ended up visiting a mochi spot and another ice cream shop before visiting the shoppping center at the old Taichung station and heading back another 4 hours to WorldVeg. A good weekend trip.
Sunday. Derek’s Sunday plan had been made clear nearly a month before today. We were going to the annual Yujing mango market with Hank (another pepper breeder), his wife Ju (who had just entered the WorldVeg communications department), their one year old son Niles, and the Italian intern Lodovico. Mango ice, mangos, dried mangos, fermented mango, dragon fruit, lychees, jack fruits, durian, and much more. This is where Derek buys his yearly supply of mangos for a discounted price. First of all we did what we had to — buy a mango ice for everyone (mango ice is the best summer treat and we can argue about it). Then we sampled no less than 10 different mango cultivars and bought at least 35 mangos and a bunch of lychees and dragon fruit (dragon fruit in Taiwan has dark pink flesh instead of the white that I am used to). Derek told us a story about an old visiting scientist that had went to the emergency room after eating the dragon fruit. The color has made his poop dark pink and he thought something was gravely wrong. After our consumer desires were fulfilled we had a group lunch at the lemon chicken spot. Very good. That evening, Lourena, the pathologist at WorldVeg and the one hosting Lodovico, and Gleen, her husband and an english teacher, invited Mathu (a visiting scientist from Kenya working on agroecology), Niel, Lodovico, Jacob, and I for dinner. There, I met Andra (had just graduated elementary school) and her brother, Lourena’s kids, and Nicole, Lourena’s nephew that was attending college in Tainan. Dinner was amazing until the typhoon hit. The fastest winds in 37 years hit Taiwan just as our evening was coming to a close.
