Work hard. Period.

Overcast, humid and rainy today. My hotel room has, amongst the regular stuff, a toilet with a heated seat and "Family" wash button (in contrast to "Bidet" mode); a smoke-escaping mask which offers protection (for your face only, I guess) up to 450°F; and a desk fit for middle schoolers (clips, coloured paperclips, mini-stapler, ruler, eraser, pencil and pen!).

I don't know they do it, but all the scooter drivers must have nerves of steel. They swerve in and out of traffic, pass on both sides of cars, and congregate in large crowds at traffic lights.

The office I am working in has placed me in a room of about 8 other engineers, all gathered around a table covered in card readers, wireless networking gear, cellphone parts and laptops. We started around 09:00 and I didn't leave until about 21:00. This is apparently normal.

Fortunately, we got to go out to lunch today at Golden Mountain Fine Arts and Life Style. It's a modern building, made to look a traditional Chinese one, complete with lanterns, carved dragons, sliding wooden doors and a pond with goldfish. Riding in company cars, we drove through back alleys and side streets to reach the restaurant. I don't know what the art connection is. Here's someone else's gorgeous pictures. And the food? How about:

• tea flavoured with barley or some other grain
  
• Taiwanese beer (with a disturbing 96 10 25 expiry date)*
  
• cold platter with sashimi, canned peaches, raw vegetables in mustardy sauce, and some white, twig-like, opaque vegetable
  
• stir-fried chicken with mangos and peppers
  
• deep-fried pork (ribs I think) with butterflied surf clams
  
• shark-fin soup
  
• steamed fish
  
• seafood in tangy sauce baked in whole papaya
  
• spiky lobster on Taiwanese noodles
  
• stir-fried vegetables (peppers, asparagus, shitake mushrooms, crinkle-cut white cucumber-like vegetable)
  
• herbal soup with black chicken
  
• fresh kiwi juice blended with ice
  
• siu mai dumplings
  
• individual containers of Häagen-Dazs (!) ice cream
  
• fresh melon platter
  

Wonderful service and a relaxing atmosphere as it's partly open to the outside. An amusing soundtrack was provided by easy listening favourites played on glockenspiel. No, really. No pictures, but here's someone else's from the restaurant.

*Update: My parents tell me that in Taiwan, dates are often counted from when the Republic of China was founded in 1911. So 96 is really 2007.