A Morning in Taipei

I had to go all the way to Taipei this morning to renew my passport. All in all, one morning (I was back at home at one in the afternoon) to go to Taipei and back is pretty good. But that doesn't mean I'm happy about that.

It's a long way to go just to renew a passport. I wonder if the people who make these rules (such as one has to submit one's passport renewal application in person) thought about the fact that people have lives and other things they have to do. My main problems with the whole thing are in three areas: logistics, time, and money.

Logistics:

--> I need to find time to go. It's a long trip and can't be done on one's lunch break. I therefore have to find a time Monday to Friday when I'm not working.

--> I have a wife and son at home. While I'm working, my wife has to look after our son by herself; asking her to do that when I'm not working is a little unfair. When I'm working, I miss my son; when I'm not working, I would like to spend time with him.

--> To get to Taipei, I have to go to the train station, take a train, take a taxi to the Canadian Trade Office, wait there, do my business there, take a taxi back to the train station in Taipei, take the train again, then go home. That's a lot of work for one passport.

Time:

--> Home to train station: 40 minutes
--> Wait for train: 30 minutes
--> Train to Taipei: 90 minutes
--> Total time in taxi in Taipei (both to and from): 30 minutes
--> Time in Canadian Trade Office: 30 minutes
--> Train to Chiayi: 90 minutes
--> Train station to home: 50 minutes {going through the city at lunch takes longer than bright and early in the morning)

The problem isn't so much the time spent travelling to and from the stations or the time spent on the trains. The problem is that I spent three times as long just on the train than I spent in Taipei. I spent three times as long just sitting on the train going to Taipei than I spent in the Canadian Trade Office doing my business.

Money: (Canadian dollars in brackets)

--> Gas for motorcycle: unknown, but it can't have been too much
--> train tickets: NTD$1830 ($55.00)
--> coffee and sandwich for breakfast: $51 ($1.53)
--> taxi: $300 ($9.00)
--> passport fee: $2800{$84.00)
--> stamps so they can mail me my nee passport: $60 ($1.80)
--> fee to park motorcycle at train station: $50 ($1.50)
TOTAL: $5091 ($152.73)

Just for one passport.

The good news is that the woman at the Trade Office who handled my application was really nice and friendly. Too often people doing that kind of job can be anal and a little rude.

The Worst Typhoon

We're just getting through the worst typhoon we've had in the nine years I've been here. Both the wind and the rain were really bad. We had shingles falling off our roof and water leaking under our floorboards. Power went out quite a few times, once sometime Saturday night and we didn't get it back until late Sunday morning. We still don't have any water. The typhoon hit us on Friday, and it's still windy and rainy three days later. Check out the news article here.