Andrew CP #5

Date/Time: 06/30/2021 10:00 p.m.

Location: Conversation over Line

Topic discussed: Taiwanese traffic, School and work, State of the pandemic

Cultural and/or linguistic topics you and your partner learned: Today's conversation was actually a bit surprising to me. We I had first spoke with Zhang Zhewei last week I was already impressed with his speaking ability, but this week blew me away even further. I guess he was just a bit nervous the first time around because this time his fluency, confidence, and breadth of vocabulary had all massively improved. To start our conversation, Zhewei asked me about my upcoming trip to Sarasota. He was a bit taken aback by the fact that my car ride would take about 5 hours, since you can get to anywhere in Taiwan by train in less than three. This led us to compare traffic between America and Taiwan. Unlike America, the streets of Taiwan are not packed with cars but thousands upon thousands of mopeds. Because of this, and the fact that the driver's test in Taiwan is very easy, Zhewei feels that the roads are way too dangerous. After that we talked about our college experiences. Zhewei told me about how companies in Taiwan will go scouting for new talent to bring on right after they finish school. However, since they normally just pick the top students somewhat related to the field of the company, they don't choose one with the correct practical knowledge of how to do their job. So, this leads to the company to having to put all of the new employees through training. Zhewei believes this is amazingly inefficient, and I have to say, I agree. While America doesn't have that same exact problem, I think we could still stand to have more practical education our internships. Finally we talked about the current state of the pandemic. Due to a recent break out, Taiwan has stepped up it's quarantining procedures again. On the positive side though, they have been able to get their vaccination system up and going and they seem to be making good pace. We talked about America lifting it's mask mandate, if we think Japan will really hold the Olympics, and how sad we both were to have gained weight over the last year.

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