Kaohsiung Visit

I went to Kaohsiung again this past weekend. This time, instead of watching a tournament, I played in one! There is a quarterly Taiwan tourney for local teams. Last time it was hosted in Taipei. Since it's winter, this time it was down south where the weather is much warmer and sunnier.

High Speed Train Notes

• Buying your ticket near the entrance to the HSR is easier than straight off the MRT (where the lines are long). There is a fast train (2h) and a super fast train (1h36min). Check the schedule to make sure you get the super fast one - sometimes the super fast one leaves after the fast train and still gets there earlier.
• Non-Reserved Seat - cheaper ticket. Get there early so you can get a seat in cars 9-12. (website quotes $1385, but I'm pretty sure I paid $1180)
  
• Reserved Seat - assigned seat but more expensive $1490 NT
  
• If you are with a group you can rotate the row of seats around to face each other.
  
• There is a vending machine with water and coffee. There is a cart lady that brings snacks (crackers, seaweed, more drinks, pocky, etc).
• The HSR stops at Zuoying, not the Kaohsiung Main Station.
  
• There is a free shuttle from the Zuoying station to just in front of Kaohsiung City Hall (within walking distance of the Culture Center). There is one every 20 minutes.
  

15 teams at the tourney, including some middle school teams. There were 3 foreigner teams - Taipei, Taichong and Kaohsiung. We came in 2nd place, losing to a team that only let men on their team (the same team we lost to last time that had women on the team but wouldn't let them play - you can see how they avoided being criticized this time).

I regularly play with some of the Taipei players at Wed/Fri pickup. One of my favorite players is FeiFei (as in FeiPan!) - pictured here with an Old Eagle player, nicknamed Turtle. Unlike some other players, FeiFei has great spirit and awesome layouts. He is a fun person to play with or against.


There were some seriously long byes between games, so I took the opportunity to practice my Chinese. There is an organizer who I always enjoy talking to. He speaks at a level of Chinese that is challenging but comprehensible. I grabbed Phatso so he could practice too. He told us a story about how there are different dialects of Taiwanese. Depending on which part you are from, you might use "di" to say chopsticks or "du". So if you want to ask someone what region they are from, you can do so by asking them how they say 'chopstick'. In Taiwanese that would be, "linggong di a du?" However, if you say it really fast, in Taiwanese, then it sounds like the same way you would say "Your grandfather is a pig!" Haha - a good way to tease someone. He also taught us some other Taiwanese phrases like Thank You (douxia) and Disc (oops, already forgot - I'll have to ask Phatso).

After the games, I got to see my aunt. I call her Jiu-Ma (Jiu-Jiu is my mom's youngest brother, but he was away this weekend). She is one of my favorite relatives - she is so nice and so easy to talk to. She invited over two of my cousins (biao jie - my mom's older sister's 2 oldest daughters), who also live in Kaohsiung. Apparently they met me the first time I came to Taiwan about 20 years ago. However, I don't remember them. One of them is an English teacher, so her English is excellent. But we tried to speak in Chinese the whole time so I could practice. A couple hours talking with them and my vocab already increased. In natural conversation, people tend to use certain phrases over and over - a good way to increase listening power.

I caught the last train back to Taipei (it left at 9:54 pm) and hit the sack!