Living it up in Taipei

Tags: 101, city, computex, dragonfruit, long exposure, sponsored by amd, taipei, taipei 101, urban, wiring

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It's 5 AM in Taipei and I'm wide awake.

Yesterday was a long day, starting on Sunday with a lot of packing and tying up loose ends, and continuing with a 13-hour flight at 1 AM non-stop to Taipei.

I was also coughing a lot because I'm getting over this throat infection and I'm still coughing more than I'd like to. The dextromethorphan isn't working like it's supposed to.

Anyway, we got into the Grand Formosa hotel and I must say, AMD/BuzzCorps really went all out. The room is huge and sports a fantastic view:

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It was cloudy then but I can totally see the Taipei 101 from my hotel window. It's supposed to light up at night from 6 to 10 PM but I totally fell asleep during all of those hours so I have yet to see it and take pictures.

The time difference is +15 hours from good ol' Pacific time so I'm awake early in the mornings and get tired at like 2 PM here.

Which, of course, means the free breakfast happens around lunchtime for me digestively. They have this Dragonfruit (which I found out is also called pitaya) at the breakfast buffet that tastes really good:

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It's slightly sweet and has a kiwifruit texture because of the delicious seeds.

In a search for Taiwanese SIM card for Jake's phone, we walked through some high-density districts in Taipei, where you distinctly get the impression of haphazard building and/or lax building codes:

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It's a very visually stimulating atmosphere but feels pretty polluted as the roads are crowded. As you can also see it was raining quite a bit, even over various exposed electrical wires:

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Didn't seem to be affecting anything, though.

There are also some very beautiful shopping centers, though.

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The Computex convention takes place at the TWTC Exhibition Hall, which has three buildings surrounding the Taipei 101. The convention halls look fantastic:

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For those of you who don't know, the Taipei 101 is the tallest completed building in the world at the moment. How tall is it?

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I snuck up to the roof of my hotel in the night. The pool is on the roof so it wasn't really off limits or anything:

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It was quite solitudinous up there and I got some sweet long-exposure shots of the cityscape. I need to do that again when the 101 is lit up, though.

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This photo is kind of cool because I accidentally moved my camera during the exposure:

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Crazy light tentacles!

That's all from Taipei for now. Tourism day is tomorrow so I'll have more photos with maximum happy.

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Now if only I could figure out these darned toilets.

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