Wedding and other Travels

I'm in the midst of a traveling spurt. I was in the US for a week to visit some friends, family and attend a wedding with some of both. It was a great time, although rushed.

I met up with M&L and caught up on what had been going on in each other's life for the past 7 months. We tend to let e-mail trail off until all of a sudden they'll get a note from me saying "What are you doing tomorrow?" It always works out, though and we end up picking up right where we left off, as though we saw each other 7 hours ago instead of 7 months.

Next I traveled north to Pemaquid to see my oldest friend (beating M by a scant 2 years) wed his perfect companion. Aside from a minor flood on the morning of the ceremony things went off without a hitch. Beautiful location, Maine weather, lobster, good beer, good friends. Happiness all around. What's not to enjoy?

Following that weekend I traveled south with my father to the Boston area to see my brother and sister. We discovered my father's googling skills aren't quite up to 21st century standards as the location he chose to meet was equally inconvenient for all three parties. We had dinner at what appeared to be a bit of a dive...The Oasis. But it turned out to be very good. Completely out of character for me, I ordered a fish soup (moqueca), which was great. It actually reminded me of Korean soups, but sweeter rather than spicy.

The next morning I hopped on a plane and crawled off another over 24 hours later. Two days of work, a Saturday spent washing and packing and I'm at the airport again, off to Thailand to use up my five remaining days of leave before the end of September. I'm planning on doing a little sightseeing, a little snorkeling, sampling some great Thai food and do a lot of relaxing on the beach. If you don't see an update here for a week or so, my plan is working.

Lost…

A quick note on the present, then I'll continue with Taipei. I lost my wallet last night. I took it out to pay the fare, realized I had change in my pocket, put the wallet down and never picked it back up. About 5 minutes later I realized it wasn't in my pocket. That was just enough time to allow the taxi to disappear into the sea of cabs. I was too late to even do what they do in the movies…run down the middle of the street looking in every window until the cabs all pull away and you''re left standing in the middle of the empty street.

I cancelled the credit/ATM cards and ordered new ones, but it's still a hassle.

Taipei 101

I did get to Taiwan and have safely returned. It looked as though the next typhoon (NABI) was swinging north to miss Taiwan, bearing down on Korea. But NABI made a quick hook to the east, deciding to hit both southern and northern Japan. Now that I've left and typhoon KHANUN is approaching Taiwan, all should be dissuaded that I am a typhoon magnet.

Aside from having one less day than anticipated, Taiwan was great fun. I'll post a recap over the next few days.


Day one began with a visit to Taipei 101. I hadn't hear about this building until earlier this year. It's currently the tallest building in the world in three categories (height to architectural top, height of highest occupied floor and height to the top of the roof). There's an excellent article on different categories, current and past record holders as well as planned construction here. I've been to the top of the Sears Tower when it was the tallest in the same three categories and while Taipei 101 is over 200 feet taller it feels shorter from the top as there's no sense of scale. Taipei is a rather flat city. The second-tallest building in the city (the Shin Kong Life Tower) is halfway across town and, at 51 stories, is dwarfed by 101. The buildings surrounding 101 are maybe 10 stories tall. From the observation deck on the 89th floor you get the sense that you're high, but as there's really nothing to compare your height with (cars look just small whether you're 50 stories or 100 stories above them) you don't really get a sense of the true height of the building.

What you do get a sense of (or at least the engineers do) is the elevator. The observation deck is serviced by a pair of elevators that are the fastest in the world, moving from the 5th floor lobby to the 89th floor travels at a maximum rate of 1,010 meters per minute (60.6 km/hr; 37.7 mph). You arrive 37 seconds after the doors close. While 37.7 mph doesn't sound particularly fast, to put it in perspective it would take a lead ball over 8.5 seconds to drop those same 360 meters.

The elevators are also pressurized while ascending and descending. Since there are three stages to the assent/decent (acceleration, constant speed, deceleration) if the cars were not pressurized the atmospheric pressure would change at different rates during the ride. The pressurization units allows for a constant pressure decrease (or increase) as the elevators are traveling up (or down).

The elevator was among the smoothest I've ridden. The acceleration of about 0.1g was the only indication we were moving. There was no horizontal motion whatsoever. To achieve this the elevators are aerodynamically shaped to cut down on wind resistance as well as incorporating an active counter-mass system that detects slight sideways motion and moves a weight horizontally in the opposite direction to counteract the motion. The system is similar in concept to the tuned-mass damper system utilized by 101, albeit a passive as opposed to active system.

That's it for today. I'll post more on the trip later.

Typhoon

I was supposed to fly to Taiwan tonight to visit a friend. Why am I still at home? Here's why: