Woke up today at 6:30am from a phone call that I presume was my dad. Since I didn't pick up until right after it stopped ringing, I guess it'll remain a mystery forever. Anyway, he came knocking on my door five minutes later, so I couldn't fall back asleep. Breakfast was the same as yesterday, with breakfast buffet. Not very exciting.
The morning class wasn't very exciting either; the professor seemed to know what he was talking about, but his English was broken and hard to pay attention to. I nearly fell asleep again, but I guess I found enough to keep my mind occupied for two hours. Lunch was short and small ("normal" sandwiches and some pastry for dessert), and then we went to visit a software park.
The software park was called Nankang Software Park (I guess Nankang is a district in Taipei); it was a series of buildings in close proximity, but the buildings were very nice. The interiors and exterior was well-decorated with various types of art, including some sculpture where you could view two faces from one side and two faces from another, or something.
The company we toured inside was Yaox, a company that worked in 4D and 5D cinematics. Apparently 4D is 3D with special effects, and 5D adds a layer of interaction. We got to watch two 4D videos, which were really cool; last time I watched a stereoscopic video, you could see the red and blue they used to project 3D images, but I guess technology has since changed, since I didn't see any traces of red and blue. The image quality was really awesome, but I was slightly tired, so my eyes couldn't focus too well.
There was also some interesting building engineering going on. The first thing we were told was that the floor tiles, which had floor sockets and A/C vents could actually move around, which allowed a tenant to organize their office however they wanted. The second was a section that had previously been an outdoors area between two buildings. Architects basically built a roof over the area and provided a pavilion area, which apparently is used for lots of things, such as demonstrating new cars, having banquets, etc.
For dinner, a small group of us went to a Korean-ish restaurant; there was me, Juliette, Matt, Tom, and Chris; representing the Taiwanese population we had Osiris, Bella, Kelly, and Candice/Candace. The food was really good, but I didn't feel so full when we were finished. The dish we had was lamb and I think I ate about half of it, since Matt and Juliette didn't seem to like the food much. The highlight at dinner was a perhaps slightly inebriated Tom trying to hit on six Asian girls sitting near us. They kept ignoring his "Americanly" loud attempts to talk to them, until Bella asked them to take a picture with him. Unfortunately, I don't have a camera, but they actually agreed. Matt and Chris got shots in too, so we have plenty of pictures of random girls now.
We also had an argument about the ordering of rock paper scissors. All [sane] Americans say rock paper scissors in that order, but the Taiwanese students insisted that it should be paper scissors rock, even though in Mandarin it's actually scissors rock paper; they are clearly mistaken and confused.
After dinner, Osiris took Juliette and subsequently Chris back on his scooter, where we sat for awhile before the girls left. I talked to Matt for awhile before another girl came (Kathy?) with a friend. We sat around and looked at some pictures for awhile, until the group left for Room 18, which is apparently some club run by a popular TV star. Even though I'm quite the party animal, I didn't feel like going, so I went back up and got back on the Internet. Dancing and smelling like smoke just ain't my thang. I tried (and think successfully) found Osiris on Facebook, who said he registered today, so hopefully I didn't get the wrong one. I figured there wouldn't be many Taiwanese people named Osiris so I took my chances even though I didn't know his last name.
It's almost midnight again, so time to sleep.
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