Week 7: The Week the Sky Fell (Almost)
Monday. The typhoon hit Taiwan very hard. WorldVeg had trees (enter preposition here). Everyone was given the day off due to damages. Susan even sent us a video of powerlines falling over everywhere in Tainan city. Jacob and I went into Shanhua (the town closest to us and biking distance) to check out the damage. Everything was fine other than a few unfortunate billboard signs. We ended up at an Italian restaurant, Casa E Casa, it was actually quite good. McDonalds is crazy popular in Taiwan. Later, Annie, one of the Taiwanese interns from Kaohsiung, found a golf simulator biking distance from WorldVeg. Jacob and I went with her. It was fun.
Tuesday. Today I spent my time with the agroecology group — the group that Jacob had been working with the whole time. It was Jacob, Lukas (head scientist), Mathu (a visiting scientist), Lokesh (a postdoc student), Juan (a Taiwanese local), Jason (a Taiwanese intern), and Paris (an Indonesian intern). We had a meeting discussing the work agroecology does, checked out their lab, went to the greenhouses to learn about biochar, and saw how they take soil samples. Later that day I gave my practice seminar in front of Derek, Hank, Adele, Mikey, and Anna. They gave suggestions and I worked on my seminar for the rest of the day.
Wednesday. Today was with Lourena and her Pathology lab group. I worked with Jacob, JR (works full time and WorldVeg) and Rhei (an Indonesian intern) to sterilize seeds.
Thursday. It was seminar day. I had practiced my seminar quite a bit to my dorm wall the night before and I was feeling confident. After some more practice and IT issues it was time to go. To be honest more people than what I was expecting showed up. All of pepper breeding, all the interns, all of communications, HR, the director general Marco, all the lead scientists it was a fun party. I gave my presentation, answered questions, and took my certificate. Fortunately, Marco thought my presentation was good. He said they would work to post a story on the WorldVeg website about my work. Then I went with Hank, Derek, and Jacob for lunch at our favorite Japanese restaurant. The rest of the day I worked to clean up my office space which was the same office space as the bio tech guy at WorldVeg, he’s just in Mexico right now. That night we played pool with Annie.
Friday. I worked with Rhei and Jacob again on her project with pathology. Later, Niel took me to get some photos taken for the story and we ended off the day by playing pool with Rhei, Daniel, Alicia, and Annie.
Get Andrew Zhang’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Saturday. Hot spring time. We were headed off to Liugui to relax our last weekend. We went by local train to Kaohsiung for 2 hour and then another couple hours by bus. Quick stop at Meinong for some very authentic Taiwanese Hakka food. We actually got off the wrong stop and had to walk back to the hotel. Our hotel was right next to this really cool buddha statue. Later, we walked a couple kilometers to the bus stop and finally hiked up a mountain to the Baolai hot spring. After the hot spring we got attacked by mosquitoes and had really good curry.
Sunday. We did our little walk to the bus stop and ended up in Yibao Village. There was a really cool temple in the mountains. Then we headed back to Meinong, went through a beautiful flower shop, drank lemon Yakult tea, and walked through town. Later, we went back to Kaohsiung for some seaside locations Annie had recommended us go to. The bus dropped us off at the NSYSU campus and we walked our way through the mountains to a really cool cafe. Got mango ice again! Walked through the mountains again and headed home.
