I see 101

From my desk!
Aaah yes, my internship. I was fortunate enough to get a lot of help and set this up at DraftFCB for my time in Taiwan. I had been checking out the account management side of things for a while, but there are so many pieces that work together in an advertising agency, which makes my time every Thursday very interesting. Let me start off with the commute.

I leave my room in the morning at about ten minutes to 6 and walk to the bus stop. The sun is rising and the air is usually pretty clean, so I can see the big mountains off in the distance. It makes the morning hater in me pretty happy. The free High Speed Rail shuttle takes me to the train, then it's about an hour to get to Taipei. From there it's a pretty quick rapid transit train ride to the stop where I walk about 20 minutes to work. The way back is a little more messy because I save money and take the bus. By the end of the day, I've commuted for about 6-7 hours! It's not so bad once a week, but it definitely makes me want to live within biking distance from work for my first job.

Day 1 involved meeting everyone, learning a bit about what the account people do, and sitting through some meetings. Most of the communicating is done in Chinese, which really helps me practice, even if there are times that I am lost. Lots of people there speak English, and better than I speak Chinese, so it isn't too hard to ask questions. An interesting thing I see with the people I sit near is that most of the emails are done in English. I think a lot of clients have some English speaking employees, even when the majority of things are done in Chinese.

Meeting #1 was pretty short. They made some ads for 3M water filters a while back, but the new filter doesn't look the same, so they need to re-shoot the picture. This was my first lesson in the importance of lighting. For this ad, the picture will be shot without a label and the label will be added via computer because of the glare they would get.

The second meeting involved the account team and the creative team. The accounts director Arthur was giving the creative team a briefing on the product to be advertised: Nexcare 3M face masks. Many of you know that these things are way popular in Asian countries, which makes it a plenty big market to get into. What I like about the account side of the job is that these people need to be involved with every step of the process, and they really keep it flowing. This briefing was to introduce what the client had in mind for their product, as well as teach the creative team everything they needed to know about these face masks. The quality, what they're made of, how much they cost, the target market, where the ads will be, what makes it better than the competition... Arthur has to know it all, which I think is pretty cool.

The final meeting was with a bunch of people from the office and the production company that was shooting a commercial for some more 3M products: Scotch Brite scouring pads. This was the final meeting between both sides before shooting began, so they basically went over finishing touches and some last ideas anyone had. Luckily for me, the commercial was shot the following Thursday, and they all let me check it out.

Coming up: Day two at the commercial shoot and Day three- my first project.

Oh by the way, I went to the bike shop across town and rented a bike the other day. They have a really fun bike path and it's pretty cheap. I had pictures but my external harddrive and iphoto collaborated against me and decided to lose all of my pictures from Taiwan. Actually, the only new pictures I have from here are two of me sporting a mustache. Yeah.

很糟糕

東海大學的校園有一家餐廳叫紅林花園餐廳。因為這個地方有一個素食的自助餐，我常常去那裡吃午餐。不過今天我吃自助餐的便當裡面有一條小小的毛毛蟲，所以我應該找別的餐廳吃飯。

我最愛的句子就是“姚明高得要命!"

By the way, this isn't about my internship, duh. Maybe tomorrow.

Breaking Records

I've done a few things since getting my hair cut a month ago...


The biggest jazz fest in Taiwan went on for a couple weeks in Taichung last month. I went both Saturdays that it was going on. The festival kicked off with an attempt to break the world record for largest saxophone ensemble. They just slipped by, beating the previous record of 900 people with a powerful 918. After listening to the crowd of saxamaphone players play some songs, we checked out the rest of the fest. It was a pretty good time; basically every foreigner in the city could be found there. Good food (they had a vegetarian booth), good drinks and good fun hanging out at a table with friends.


On the second day of going to the Jazz Fest, I saw a pretty popular band here called The Money Shot Horns. After that, my group of friends grabbed another table and we hung out for a while again. The Taichung Jazz Fest was a pretty good time. It reminded me of just about any other fest back home, and sometimes it's just fun to go out where there's lots of people and see what happens.

Halloween was lots of fun this year. My friend Wyatt invited me to go to a heavy metal show that a couple of his friends' band was headlining. It was cool to see a different side of young Taiwanese people. The show took place in the basement of Peace Coffee, a really cool fair trade coffee shop not too far from my school. Monster Boogie started it off by rocking some Metallica songs, then Out of Survive played their hardrock/poprock with Flesh Juicer finishing it off.

Flesh Juicer screaming out some songs. The lead singer is a really nice guy and an environmental studies major

After the show, I picked up my Halloween costume and it was off to a bar that was letting people in for free if they were dressed up. Walking through the biggest night market in the city while being dressed as an old Taiwanese woman was a good way to start the fun.

Last Sunday was Tunghai University's Founder's Day Celebration. It was a full day of sporting event competitions between all of the different departments at school. I was on the international students team. We rocked. Not only did we win the 球不是圆的 "ball that is not round" event, we completely dominated about 30 teams in the three legged race. We got plaques! Oh, and I got extremely sunburned too. But it's November, so I'll take it.

For the last month, I've been commuting to Taipei every Thursday for my internship at the advertising agency DraftFCB. I think I'll start writing about my awesome weekly experience tomorrow. 晚安