TTT experience

This summer I got on a plane as soon as school ended and headed back to where I came, Taiwan. I had planned to stay in Taiwan for four months, working at a veterinary clinic for the first two month and half, and then do an internship at the Taipei Zoo through a program titled “Taiwan Tech Trek”. Taiwan Tech Trek (TTT) brings Taiwanese youth from all over the globe back to their homeland Taiwan, and places them at different internships according to their interest. The good thing about this program is that not only do you get the opportunity to intern at institutes you might otherwise have no way of getting into, you also get paid. One thousand NT per day to be exact, which, if you live at a relative’s house for free, is a pretty hefty sum to spend on whatever.

Anyways, I got into the program and am working at the Taipei Zoo doing bat roost research. Before I went for my job, I had no idea about what I’ll be doing, the job description on the TTT website said “be prepared for field work in the Taipei Zoo Forest”. I don’t know what doing “field work” really consists of, so preparing for it was easy, I just tossed some work clothes into my suitcase. Yay, I’m done. Preparing didn’t take long.

When I got to the zoo on the first day, I met my advisor Chen Shiang-Fan and the master student whose project we’re helping out with Chiang Hai-Ning. Hai-Ning’s project is to find where Formosan tube-nose bats like to roost in the Taipei Zoo Forest. So our job is to help her with her project. To capture the bats, we set-up harp-string nets in the forest, along paths that the bats would cross when they come out for food at night. The nets are designed so that when bats hit the fishing string, they fall into a cloth bag and can’t crawl out because of the bag’s design. The nets are checked in the morning, and the bats that got caught are brought back to our office. In the office, we do measurements of all the bats we caught, and attach radio-tags to the Formosan tube-nose bats. All the bats are then fed and released at dusk. The next day we use radio-transmitters and go into the forest to search for where the tube-nose bats roost during the day. The search through-out the forest is usually a lot of fun and very educational. As we march through the forest, Hai-Ning points out the floras and faunas we see. Walking through the forest and looking at the different plants and animals made me more aware of my surroundings. I noticed things I would never have noticed before, like the green mantis on a green leaf. It’s just amazing how much things there are to see when you really look and pay attention to your surroundings. I think everyday life in the city has us walking too quickly through life, and walking everyday through the zoo forest has allowed me to slow down and smell the roses, and discover another thing I really enjoy. Anyways, if all is successful, we track the bat to where it has roosted for the day and record it in our data. Of course we are not always successful, things like the rain hinders us by interfering with the signal and harder to plough your way through the forest. Other things that made things more difficult were the radio-tags falling off our bat; the bat flying to a place we can’t track/find, the signal has gone wacko, and the radio-tags running out of battery too soon. There is also the factor that this is the first time anybody in our group has ever tracked anything, so we are not very good, even though Hai-Ning has been doing this for a long time, we hindered her more than help at the beginning. Though at the very end we got better and actually did track one bat to its roost on a rainy day all by ourselves, I was very proud of that.

When we weren’t out in the forest chasing bats, we spent it indoors reading up literatures on bats and talking to the zoo keepers. Through the literature we enhanced our understandings of bats, which is very interesting and helped with our research. Bats are a lot more common than you think, if you look up to the sky at dusk in a park, the things flying over your head is probably bats. Another great thing about the internship was that we got to share an office with zoo keepers, who are only a little bit older than us. Some of us became great friends, and whenever we go out with them, they point out interesting things about insects, animals and plants that are very cool. They have backgrounds in life science and are very knowledgeable about everything, literally you can point to a butterfly flying by and they’ll tell you the butterfly’s name. I am glad we got to meet local Taiwanese youth that are around our age, they made the work experience more fun and showed us another side of Taiwan. My supervisor Hai-Ning is also a student only a little bit older than us, she was a lot of fun to work with because we can relate to the same things, and sometimes took us around Taiwan after work, like a mini tour-guide. It’s nice to go to places local youths in Taiwan would go to.

Outside or work, I visited with relatives, shopped, went out and hung out with new friends I made through TTT. I treated my grandparents to a restaurant call Onion in Taipei. It’s a steakhouse and they have never had steak before. It was fun to see them try something new and marvel at what “young” people eat nowadays. It was a very warm and fuzzy time out and I was glad to spend some time with my grandparents.

My perspective about Taiwan changed a lot this summer I’ve been back. I think mainly because this summer I’ve been able to make a lot of new friends through the TTT program and went to different places with them. Before, when I came back to Taiwan I only went out with my parents and didn’t really know anybody my age. It is definitely a big difference having friends to go places with. Because I was more active and went out more, I discovered more of Taiwan that I liked. Also by interning at the Taipei Zoo, I learned a lot of things I would never have sitting in a classroom and I’m grateful for that. It was a wonderful summer, and I didn’t want to get on the plane. Taiwan has touched MY heart.