Taiwan

It has been a great 5 months in Taiwan. Plenty of accomplishments for both of us given the constraint that we had to stay near MacKay Hospital.

Florence and me
         Got my eyes fixed
         Finished the translation of Uncle's memoir
         Visited Alishan, Jiaoshi, Ilan, HsinChu, 
                      Taizhong, MacKay Hospital
         Visited the GuGong, Michaelangelo exhibit,
                      Makong Gondola, JingMei, ZhongShan,
                      GuChiFung and the Flower Exhibit
          Listen to Audio books from libraries in US
              Johnathan Franzen(2), Chad Harnach(1),
              Anne Tyler(3), Ha Jin(1),
              Voices of the South short stories(4)

Florence
         Arranged a trip to US for 36 of her relatives
         Got know her relatives better
         Learned some Mah Jhong
         Did some massage
         Learned to eat and cook well

Mike
         Knot program
         Arduino project
         Learned some Chinese
         Taught some English
         Kept up this blog
         Visit to Tainan

This is the fourth year that I have spent a half year in Taiwan. Even within these years, it seems Taiwan has been changing. The old ways are giving way to the new. It use to be that education was the only way to get ahead, but now there are many more ways to success. Like everywhere, success in defined in terms of wealth and fame. But even here, some Taiwanese are defining success on their own terms. 

In the past, we could never see such a sign, an advertisement for a children's clothing store. Nothing was more important than school.

But the world nowadays belongs to the young. This is probably the way all over the world. They have their own goals.

It's just hard to understand them, oh well, someday they'll grow up too.

Over and out.

My Eyes

Last Wednesday, I got my new glasses. It was the culmination of 5 months of eye treatments. My eyes are pretty good now but even with glasses they are not 20/20. Reading newspapers now, I like to bring the paper close to my nose. Distant signs are blurry. But it good enough, I'm thankful to the doctors and health system for what I have.

I went to the doctor for the last time before I leave last Tuesday. He gave me a prescription, I am nearsighted in both eyes now, but the left can only be corrected to 20/40.  I wouldn't be using glasses for reading but the distance will still be a problem. Before this crisis, I was on bifocals, nearsighted in one eye, farsighted in the other and close to being uncorrectable to 20/20, so am close to what I was before the crisis.

I took the prescription to the optometrist after the last visit and paid about $66 for the new lenses to be put in my old glasses frame. They were ready in one day. The new lenses in an old frame were not covered by the National Health Plan but still cheaper than Costco.

Here's a spreadsheet of the treatment:

Here is the medical bills we paid since we got here. The summary line in the end is for only the eye treatment

	description	Paid		Real Cost
11/6/2012	Teeth Cleaning	150		1060
11/9/2012	Eye exam	460		1200
11/11/2012	ER surgery	720		891
11/11/2012	surgery	0		0
11/14/2012	Check out	18213		73237
11/20/2012	laser, left	330		4830
11/29/2012	laser, left	460		4739
12/6/2012	laser, left	460		2508
12/7/2012	surgery	495		4075
12/8/2012	visit	330		602
12/13/2012	laser, both	460		2508
12/18/2012	laser both	460		589
12/27/2012	laser both	460		508
1/31/2013	Check up	480		552
3/7/2013	pre-op	0		0
3/8/2013	cataract	27715		48024
3/9/2013	Check up	310		419
3/12/2013	Check up	480		500
3/26/2013	Final check up	460		589
		52293		145771
					difference
Us dollar	1US/29NT	1803.207		5026.586	3223.3793

Summary

21 visits to the doctor                                      
   3 surgeries                                                          
      a. sceleral buckle both eye, gas in left
      b. gas in right
      c. cataract on left
 ~9 laser reattachment sessions
   3 nights hospital stay

Out of pocket costs approximately $1800 of which $1600 was surgical costs.
The rest was paid for the Taiwan National Health Plan which I qualify for as a legal resident of Taiwan through marriage.

(Compared to Obamacare, the Taiwan National Health Plan is more like the "single payer plan" that Obama quickly jettisoned to placate the insurance companies, the HMOs and doctors.)

What did I learn from this?

1. Don't wait, once you notice a change, get it investigated. I waited too long to go to the doctor, the situation just got worse. I was confused by by new glasses and though it would just take some time to adjust.

2. Question authorities. My optometrist in the US didn't recognize the detached retina during my annual eye exam, although looking back I see now that it was already present. In Taiwan, the doctors were seeing more than 50 patients a day, if you didn't ask questions their assumption was that everything was fine.

3. If technology can help, then go for it. So sense suffering for nothing.

4. Attitude means everything, if being depressed would help there would be reason to be depressed. But with Florence's help I think I was pretty upbeat, at least most of the time.

This is one of the less gruesome pictures but it has not been fun. The laser reattachment of the retinas was dramatic. Feeling something burning in your eyeball is new, wonder how long this session of burning will last tricks the mind. I actually thought I smelt smoke from the burning in my eye. Maybe it was an hallucination.  Holding still during this procedure can be tough, but what choice do you have? They're your eyes.

Misc.

Here are some miscellaneous pictures without enough companions for a separate blog entry.

Here is the top of a Daoist Temple in Danshui, a suburb north of Taipei. It has a lighting rod on top so maybe the gods that live here are not so powerful as they need the help of science to avoid lighting.

Here is a big, powerful sculpture in front of what must be a big, powerful company headquarter's building. And for good measure, the sculpture has a mirrored surface and we all know that ghosts don't like to see their own reflection. So with the power of feng shui, it also wards off the evil spirits.

Here's a good use of triplets in advertising.

Surrounding Taipei there are mountains with cisterns collecting rainwater. Sometimes the cistern might overflow and the excess water would wash away the footings of the cistern. So there needs to be overflow tubes to remove the excess away from the base of the cistern.

A resourceful minimal staircase of raw materials.

Color is everywhere.

I got this shot from a moving bus, the guy on the back of the scooter is carrying a plate of glass. I classify this this as dangerous.

Bikes in Taipei don't make long trips and space is always at a premium.

FaLun Gong

Last year was the first year that tourists from Mainland China because the largest group visiting Taiwan. The difference between the 2 countries is major in the area of governing. Taiwan is a democracy with elections and freedom of speech. China has a communist party dictatorship with no elections and pervasive censorship of newspapers, Internet, speech, ... 

When the Mainland tourists come to Taiwan, they must be shocked by the displays of protest that they could never see in their own country. In Taiwan, there are groups that set up their displays at the sites that are popular with the Mainlander tourists. For example, at the Alishan Mountain National Park.

Supporters of Tibet have a display at the Chiang Kaishek Memorial.

90% of all Mainland tourists go to the National Palace Museum. Most of the artifacts of the museum were moved from the Beijing Forbidden City by Chiang Kaishek to Taiwan in 1949. So the Mainlanders probably think that what Taiwan is displaying is the their stolen artifacts. But during Mao's Cultural Revolution such artifacts were smashed to destroy the old Chinese Culture to be replaced with the new Chinese Communist Culture. Nowadays, nobody in China mentions Mao Zedong, kind of like nobody in the Republican Party mentions that their last president was George Bush.

                                   

The displays are shown so that the Mainlander can read them, they are written in the simplified Chinese characters of Mainland China.

Another good spot for the Falun Gong to reach the Mainland tourists is at the E101 skyscraper.

Many of the posters are graphic with pictures of the tortured bodies of Falun Gong believers in Mainland China.

The tourists from the Mainland are like a wave washing over Taiwan, there's not much Taiwan can do to stop them. "Money doesn't just talk, it shouts". But I hope that at least some of the Mainlanders go back with a story they could never see in their own country.
Even at the Chikan Lou Exhibit in Tainan, there are the continual Falun Gong.

Waves

This time in Taiwan, I reread 2 great books:

"The Cloud Spotter's Guide" by Gavin Pretor-Pinney                 and
"The Wave Watcher's Companion" by Gavin Pretor-Pinney

With my current eyes, big things, like clouds are a good thing to be interested in. The second is a good introduction to the phenomena of waves, with examples takes from nature.  Although much of the book is about ocean waves, just reading it makes me more aware of the waves around me. Waves travel in time so many of the examples in this blog come with movies.


At the entrance to a restaurant in Xinnamen we have a little feng shui to set the mode for dinner. Flowing was has that calming effect, leaving the hectic for the relaxed.

The movie

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_yIUEvEeH7-emxYc3poUGd6WEU/edit?usp=sharing

How was this next wave made? I think the cement block was painted with a paint sprayer, the worker had to turn off the machine, but the switch was back at his truck, so he just ran back to the truck and let the nozzle of the sprayer rotate on the rubber hosing. All just speculation after the fact.

Looks a little like a sine wave but it is really a sequence of half circles.

Aquariums bring feng shui and keep out ghosts so there are very elaborate tanks in Taipei. This one has jets of bubbles illuminated with a sequence of LED lighting. Wow, if the ghosts get past this, then nobody is safe.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_yIUEvEeH7-bGFOMHBONzQ0ZFU/edit?usp=sharing

Neon - Camera as a Spectrograph

A spectrograph is an instrument for measuring the frequencies of a light source. I would guess that most spectrographs are calibrated by using known light sources. So for example, if you measured the frequency of an unknown light source and it contained the frequency of excited neon, then you could say that the unknown light source contained neon.

At the National Museum of Natural Science in TaiZhong they have a display of several exited gases. I took a picture of what I knew was neon.

 
























I then cut the red of the neon source and can overlap it on a picture of an unknown source with MS Paint and see it then matches up. For example, this Christian cross is not a neon light.

Whereas this TaiShan Buddhist Temple's backward twisted swastika is neon.

This method only works if the camera used is the same one used to take the reference shot. I know this cross is neon but the photo was taken with one of my past cameras.

There is still the problem of different glasses(with different absorption characteristics) and maybe the gas in the tube in not totally neon, but this method seems OK.

Motorcycles

We couldn't end this blog with some motorcycle/scooter pictures.

I think this guy's days on the road are over.

 

If somebody can get this motor running then I'll be surprised. In the mean time, it will stay parked on the street taking up valuable parking space until somebody realizes the inevitable.

 In Tainan, the weather is hotter, so the engines are less covered than in Taipei where it rains a lot. Maybe this guy came from the south and couldn't get use to the rainy weather.
 
 What's going on here? In front of a scooter repair shop we have all these scooters with the fronts off. Is there a scooter recall in the works. I don't know.

You don't often see a "chopped"  motorcycle in Taiwan. But if Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper from "Easy Rider" fame were in Taiwan then this is the kind of motorcycle they would ride.

 Actually in the US you would never see this one because nobody would ever "chop" a 125cc motorcycle.

 In the "bed" of this threewheeler, the owner/operators was sleeping. I guess that's why they call it a "bed".