Can there be any more PRAGMA?

Whew! What a day! I went all over Taipei today!

National Taiwan University College of Medicine (國立臺灣大學醫學院)
CZheng came to visit us PRIME students in Taiwan and I must say, she likes to take pictures! Anyways Dr. Lin asked me to wait at NTUH at 9am. It was so early for me. I have been getting up progressively later and later (haha). When I first got to TW, I woke up around 0500. And then I woke up around 0700. Now I wake up around 0930am (I would sleep even longer if I didn't have to do anything). I used to get to work at 0900, and would have even liked to go even earlier,but no one goes in that early. Ironically, the day after my professor gave me the keys to my lab, I have never been the first person to arrive. Except for today, but only cause I had to.

It takes me around ~35 mins from the time I leave my room to get to NTUH, which meant that I had to get up at like 0700 this morning, very painful (LoL). The funny thing is, I wake up at around 0730 each morning because the sun shines directly into the room and makes the room very hot, but I always go back to sleep, no such luxury this morning.

So Dr. Lin and I met up with CZheng and he gave us a tour of NTUH and NTUCOM.

outside of NTUCOM
Picture of me at my cubicle
and with Dr. Lin
Here is a picture with the Chairman of the school of pharmacy!
view of Taipei taken from on of the windows on the 12th floor of NTUCOM. I will walk around all 4 windows and take pictures from each eventually
a more "artistic" version

Academia Sinica (中央研究院)
Then we headed over to AS and he showed us his office. Afterwards, CZheng visited some PRAGMA related people at AS. I was basically ignored the whole time. When the people finally figured out that I was an "exchange" student from the US, they gave me two bookmark gifts they gave to CZheng, but they didn't give me the fancy key ring chain thing she got. =( I felt extremely left out.

me next to Dr. Lin's computers
When they were gathering to take this group picture, I almost asked if I could hold the camera instead (don't know, Dr. Lin, Vicky, me, CZheng, Eric)

LUNCH!!!!
We then went to lunch with Cheyenne Chen and Franz Cheng (which I later found out that they were ALSO PRAGMA related... at this point, my PRAGMA tolerance was down to 50%. CZheng had already been talking about it all morning with Dr. Lin and people at AS). HLin was there too. We had porridge with a variety of dishes for lunch. It was pretty decent. I thought that the fresh guava juice was the best, and the pineapple =)

Group picture (again). (HLin, Franz, Dr. Lin, Cheyenne, CZheng, and yours truly =D)

National Applied Research Laboratories (NARL)/(國家實驗研究院)
After lunch, CZheng and I went to visit HLin's lab. I think it was either NTU's department of oceanography or marine biology, most likely the latter. His mentor wasn't there, so he showed us around. NTU does not fund this department well. Afterwards, we went to Cheyenne and Franz's office, National Applied Research Laboratories (NARL), and chilled there a bit. It was so nice and fancy. Cheyenne even brought us a drink. (yay) and of course, more PRAGMA talk... (AAHHH!!!!!!!!! If I here that word anymore, I am going to jump off a cliff). Franz did a presentation of what NARL was about after we watched an infomercial (which was very well written/produced... i know becasue I was totally planning to sleep through it, but it caught my attention well). Before he started, he asked if I understood Mandarin. (LIVING PROOF that he was not paying attention to me when I answered his question earlier at lunch AND that I was being ignored because of PRAGMA!!!...ugh)

excercise machines in the meeting room ?!?
the table (LoL)

NCREE (國家地震工程研究中心)
We FINALLY head off to NCREE to see LJue and SPiras. They were so so welcoming, and "host like," unlike mine =(. They even gave us a pair of NCREE chopsticks! LJue had shown me hers before, and they are really pretty. They showed us around their lab until KC Tsai, their mentor, came. Then we headed off to dinner.

looking on at NCREE's lab
hold on, group picture first! (HLin, CZheng, SPiras, Ching-Yi Tsai, LJue, me, An-Chien Wu)
We went to a buffet at CZheng's hotel and took another group picture before the night ended. (Dr. Tsai, HLin, CZheng, SPiras, An-Chien, me, Ching-Yi, LJue)
An-Chien drove us back to NCREE, and then LJue and I rode back on bicycle (my very first time in TW! and in TW's crazy traffic) I did pretty good! I didn't crash into a car/motorcycle/biker/pedestrians/poles/concrete =) Thank God there was little PRAGMA talk at NCREE.

你也有PRAGMA嗎？
>.<