Week of Speeches

It was a week of speeches. Monday I gave a short talk at Fengchia, in the Urban Planning Department. Thursday, I listened to a talk on core competences in teaching, pictured above. The speaker sat for two hours and spoke in a low voice. Nuff said about that presentation, rife with irony, considering it was on teaching skills. Meanwhile Friday I visited Ming Chuan University in Taoyuan, where I spoke to Professor Graeme Bell's class on blogging. I was deeply touched to see veteran blogger Scott Sommers had kindly made the trip out from Taipei just to see me, and prevent any obnoxious outbursts of ego on my part.

Ming Chuan is located in Guishan, just south of Taoyuan city proper.

The campus of Ming Chuan. I got there just at 6, for Dr. Bell had alerted me to me to the photographic possibilities of building EE, perched on a hill overlooking, well, what seemed like the rest of Taiwan.

I can see for miles and miles and miles...

The mountains look mysterious in the early morning sun.

A pan of just the mountains.

Ming Chuan from above.

Taoyuan.

A pan of the entire view.

Same thing, not quite so tilted.

Just the built up area in front of the mountains.

More Taoyuan.

I couldn't get over how beautiful the mountains looked, so I shot them again.

Panned them again, too.

Looking due....south?

The campus, which is quite new, has a couple of interesting looking buildings.

Fountains are a must.

Amazingly, there is a Mexican restaurant right on campus. I can't say as a I like the substitution of ketchup for picante sauce. The coffee also left much to be desired.

Ming Chuan was quite special. When I got to the gate, the guard asked me why I had come. I explained that I was speaking in Dr. Bell's class. This produced a blank look. The guard didn't know who he was -- and I thought to myself: "how many foreigners can there be?" After all, Chaoyang where I teach has only three.

The answer arrived over the course of the next couple of hours, as I watched in astonishment as a veritable United Nations strolled up to the teaching building. It turns out there's an English-language BA program at Ming Chuan and not only are there plenty of foreign profs, there are also what seemed like a few hundred foreign students. Dr. Bell's class was about 85% foreign students -- you know, talkative, opinionated, active, questioning...fantastic students. I was flabbergasted and challenged by their enthusiasm and hard work. It was also a pleasure to meet Dr. Bell, a modest, friendly, and acutely intelligent fellow who can solve NP hard problems in his sleep and not only knows how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but also what their names are.

I thought the talk went well, and everyone seemed to have fun. Hopefully they all got something out of it, and they'll send me pictures, since I didn't have time to take any.....

[Taiwan]