What did Dr. Carpenter do recently?

I did not write anything about Dr. Carpenter. What did he do recently?

After having done all his model houses, including traditional Taiwanese architecture, bamboo-like house, and God's temple, basically he was just doing something easier since he needed to recover from surgery as I said it before in my previous article.

Recently, he was making chopsticks out of hinoki wood, which was in small pieces and could not be used for big work. So, one pairs after another pairs of hinoki chopsticks were coming out. They are now sent as gifts to Liao's family, friends, and colleagues here and abroad.

Though it's not quite delicate but it's hand-made. You will not find it in the market.

The longest day

The flight departs at 9:45 am at Taoyuan International Airport, and you live in Tainan. As a rule, you have to get there 2-3 hours before flight departure. The distance between Tainan and TIA is around 270 km. If you take the earliest Taiwan High Speed Rail at Tainan in the morning, you will get to Taoyuan Station at 8:16 am. It takes another 30-minute transfer to TIA. So, it will be around 9 am by the time you have your check-in. I would say such arrangement would be too risky. Unless you want to stay at Taoyuan one day before the departure, the only choice seems to be by public bus transportation or by private car very early in the morning. And our choice was by car.

It will take around 3 hours (plus 30 minutes for the local) to get to TIA if the average driving speed is 90 km per hour. You want to follow the rule, arriving the airport 2 hours before the departure. So, you have to hit the road not later than 4: 15 am. This means that you'd better get up at around 3:45 am. And this is what we planed for today's schedule.

What about the cost for the scenario of choice? Give you a brief quiz.

Before heading out, I filled up the fuel. On the highway to TIA, I bought a toll booklet (10 tickets) for NT$400. Note that I got two tickets left in my car before I got on the highway. Now, as we had planned, we arrived at TIA around 7:30 am. I helped Michelle check in at the service counter, saw her off, and drove back home again. As I checked my fuel meter, I thought I'd better refill the fuel before heading back home. I did refill up and the receipt shows NT$749 for the fuel. When I got exit at Tainan, I found I run out all my toll tickets. Calculate the overall cost of fuel and tickets for this mission.

What's your number? You should come up with a number, NT$1978.

When I drove on the highway, I figured out this number around NT$2000 for sending Michelle from Tainan to TIA by car. Since I already paid for this amount of money, why not paying a surprise visit at any famous scenic spot along the highway? So, I stopped by at San-yi, a town of sculpture, where I had my brief lunch (NT$90), talked to a sculptor and visited the sculpture museum (NT$80). I made another stop-by at my hometown, Ansiliao, where I greeted to my parents and took some photos as well.

It looks like I have made the best use of today.

Secret garden

For those who are visiting Tainan City Park, I would

suggest to see this nearby secret garden at National Cheng Kung University. There're some big pieces of wood artwork exhibited there. These artwork look like aboriginal style. I was told that the logs were transported all the way far from the eastern coast. During the disastrous event of typhoon Morako on August 8, 2009, tons and tons of logs were washed down from the mountain into the river and the ocean. To make the best use of those floating logs, some are now transformed into aboriginal style artwork here in this secret garden, where you may spend some leisure time enjoying another surprise of this city of Tainan.

In addition to those shown in this blog photo, come and see more artwork there.