I'm moving house tomorrow, and I don't have DSL in my new place yet. Here's why. I go to China Telecom to ask about changing. As always, one of the "guards" or information men comes up to me and asks me what I need to do. I tell him, he repeats it back to me, then directs me to stand in line at desk 4. After waiting at desk 4 for 15 minutes, I get to the front of the line, where the lady behind the counter tells me to go upstairs instead and to take a number. Argh. So I go upstairs and draw number 5400. And they are now serving...uh, 5370. After waiting another 10 minutes, during which we progressed to 5372, I give up and decide to go to a branch closer to my impeding appointment across town. I get to the smaller branch, which is usually faster for paying bills, and pull another number. And wait another 15 minutes. At this point, I am really stressing my time limit for waiting in line, as I have to go and teach a class in 20 minutes, so I leave. Yes, maybe that first place would have panned out in the end, but my suspicion was that I would have reached the front of the line just as I had to drive across town. I'd like to think that it's all a trade off--things are sometimes cheaper here because they hire fewer people to do the job in order to keep labor costs low. But not at China Telecom. It's like a small city in there, with at least a hundred people working, some of them seeming to do nothing but hold up doorways or keep their desks from floating into the air. At any rate, waiting in line is a definite part of life here, and I don't yet know when to budget 2 hours for what seems like a simple task.
While I am away from guaranteed DSL, here's a photo album of a trip to a Spa hotel in Chiayi. Although this hotel has some of the same feeling as Taiwan's "love hotels," this place is more of a spa, really. Some things are somewhat the same, what with the private garage and piped in romantic music (though some channels were just corny) and multiple light settings available at the push of a button, including "comfortable" and "conversation" (or something like that) and "romantic" light settings available on the remote that controlled everything in the room.
All in all, the spa was a wonderful break from an otherwise very hectic month.
Enjoy!
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