Notes on Travel Part 4
Friday, 8/19/2005, 6:10 am Taipei local time
The Taipei airport looks just about like every other airport I've ever seen, except that all of the destinations are either in Asia or on the west coast of the US, and all of the signs are in English as well as some variation of Chinese. Actually, that's just a best guess— I've been embarrassed to discover how little I know about Taiwan. I'm assuming that the language spoken here is some form of Chinese, but I could be very, very wrong. If I'd known I was going to be coming here, I would have done some reading...
At any rate, the flight from LAX to Taipei is about twelve hours long. By careful sleep planning, I think I've managed to begin to get my time-sense onto something vaguely resembling local time. When we landed here, everybody had to de-plane and the passengers continuing onto Singapore had to go through security again. There was an excellent and entertainingly-named device in the Taipei security checkpoint: a large, clear box, marked "Unforced Disposal of Dangerous Goods", full of lighters, knives, etc. I tried to get a picture, but the security guards were not happy about seeing my camera out of its case. After a short but somewhat confusing conversation (in which I feel confident that the other parties involved were just as confused as I was), I decided to forego a photograph and made my way through the rest of the checkpoint without incident.
Now we're waiting to re-board our flight. There appears to be wi-fi in the airport, but, alas, it is not free. Furthermore, the instructions on how to purchase time on it are in a language that is most definitely not English— my co-worker's PC was reduced to an endless series of "Please install the xxxxx language pack to view this page" dialog boxes... my PowerBook happily rendered a very long and complex page full of foreign characters. What is very strange about all of this is that the network's initial landing page has an excellent English-language version, which very politely informs the viewer that internet access can be obtained using a pre-paid card, and that said cards can be bought online at a particular URL. The linked-to URL, however, is the one without any English option. So, no wi-fi for us. I'm afraid that PDX and its bountiful, fast, and free wi-fi has spoiled me something awful— I now seem to expect public areas to have some sort of freely-avaliable wi-fi.
My PowerBook's AC adapter has had its first taste of forgeign electricity, and is behaving admirably. At least, I think it is— there are neither sparks nor flames, and my computer seems to think that it is charging. It turns out that Singapore Air's much-vaunted laptop-related amenities are for first- and business-class only, so its batteries are still low from last night's wi-fi adventures.
The Taipei airport looks just about like every other airport I've ever seen, except that all of the destinations are either in Asia or on the west coast of the US, and all of the signs are in English as well as some variation of Chinese. Actually, that's just a best guess— I've been embarrassed to discover how little I know about Taiwan. I'm assuming that the language spoken here is some form of Chinese, but I could be very, very wrong. If I'd known I was going to be coming here, I would have done some reading...
At any rate, the flight from LAX to Taipei is about twelve hours long. By careful sleep planning, I think I've managed to begin to get my time-sense onto something vaguely resembling local time. When we landed here, everybody had to de-plane and the passengers continuing onto Singapore had to go through security again. There was an excellent and entertainingly-named device in the Taipei security checkpoint: a large, clear box, marked "Unforced Disposal of Dangerous Goods", full of lighters, knives, etc. I tried to get a picture, but the security guards were not happy about seeing my camera out of its case. After a short but somewhat confusing conversation (in which I feel confident that the other parties involved were just as confused as I was), I decided to forego a photograph and made my way through the rest of the checkpoint without incident.
Now we're waiting to re-board our flight. There appears to be wi-fi in the airport, but, alas, it is not free. Furthermore, the instructions on how to purchase time on it are in a language that is most definitely not English— my co-worker's PC was reduced to an endless series of "Please install the xxxxx language pack to view this page" dialog boxes... my PowerBook happily rendered a very long and complex page full of foreign characters. What is very strange about all of this is that the network's initial landing page has an excellent English-language version, which very politely informs the viewer that internet access can be obtained using a pre-paid card, and that said cards can be bought online at a particular URL. The linked-to URL, however, is the one without any English option. So, no wi-fi for us. I'm afraid that PDX and its bountiful, fast, and free wi-fi has spoiled me something awful— I now seem to expect public areas to have some sort of freely-avaliable wi-fi.
My PowerBook's AC adapter has had its first taste of forgeign electricity, and is behaving admirably. At least, I think it is— there are neither sparks nor flames, and my computer seems to think that it is charging. It turns out that Singapore Air's much-vaunted laptop-related amenities are for first- and business-class only, so its batteries are still low from last night's wi-fi adventures.
posted by steve | 12:23 AM
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