Richard Rueda, Director of Community Services, is visiting Taipei, Taiwan, as part of a delegation of leaders in the blind community.

On the second day of our Taipei leadership excursion, the contingent of presenters attended a Taiwan Digital Talking Books Association (TDTB) meeting at TDTB headquarters in downtown Taipei.

Upon arrival, all presenters met with Mr. Jerry Wang, TDTB President, and were greeted with gifts from Taipei. We later discussed the critical mission of the organization and employment trends of the Taiwan blind community. After a conference briefing and a quick tour of the TDTB agency, we walked to a nearby favorite lunch spot, where we feasted on seafood soups and various rice noodle entrees.

During lunch, Mr. Wang and I discussed possible partnerships between TDTB and the LightHouse. Mr. Wang and Ludy Lee, his associate, would like to assist the LightHouse in achieving its goal of reaching out to the Chinese blind community by donating some talking books in Mandarin. Additional employment-related briefings were held to assist both organizations in understanding and best serving the global employment needs of the blind community.

Other guest presenters attending this international conference included blind leaders from Hong Kong Society for the Blind, a blind leader from Japan and Robert Turner from Bookshare.org in Palo Alto, California.

We spent Monday afternoon going over the conference agenda for the next two days, followed by another business dinner in the heart of the Taipei tourist and business district.

The TDTB conference started Tuesday. I was the keynote speaker with a presentation on best practices of employing the greatest number of blind and low vision persons. The conference was expected to attract more than 200 rehabilitation officers and members of the business sector hoping to learn about and increase their working knowledge on employment and job retention of the blind and low vision community.

Writer’s note: At the time I wrote this post, I didn’t have the complete name and title of each guest presenter. Additionally, I apologize for not including pictures; my iPhone isn’t working with the WiFi so they may have to wait until I return to the office next week.

Richard Rueda, Director of Community Services, is visiting Taipei, Taiwan, as part of a delegation of leaders in the blind community.

I arrived in Taipei City, Taiwan, with Sam Chen and Rob Turner (from Bookshare.org) early on the morning of September 12 via direct flight from SFO.

After a nearly 13-hour flight, Rob and I were met at our hotel (The Guesthouse) by two docents who provided us with a daylong tour of Taipei City. This city excursion included visiting the very popular Forest Park (similar to Golden Gate Park), where families and their children played in the playground and others meditated. There was also an international festival being set up in another pocket of the park.

Another section of the park included a 50-yard stretch of pavement with stones the size of tennis balls affixed to the sidewalk. The arrangement of these round, smooth stones was for brave folks who dared to take off their shoes and socks to walk on and between the surface (the idea being that walking one’s bare feet over and in between these stones would apply pressure to sore areas, thus creating a massage that ultimately would begin to reduce foot stress). Rob and I both took the challenge and walked part of this stone pathway. And, indeed, it was an exhilarating and foot-awakening experience.

Our tour continued from there as we next headed to a temple where the worship of five gods was a common practice. The temple visit was followed by a ride on the local Taipei mass transit bus system to a restaurant where the group tried octopus, fried radish cakes and other local samplings from a platter of snacks.

In the early afternoon we enjoyed a visit to see the changing of the guard at a nearby memorial site, complete with a 10-minute ritual ceremony.

Wrapping up the day, we headed to downtown Taipei, where we were joined by more conference presenters and guests totaling 15 persons. We lined up to eat dumplings and soup at a very popular restaurant that is known throughout Taiwan as the place to eat at. Each dumpling was handmade by the restaurant staff.

As you walk into this four-story restaurant, you pass rows of staff dressed in black and white, frantically assembling trays of dumplings for patrons. Originally famous for selling cooking oils to the community decades ago, they later learned that their calling was in pastry and dumpling production. Later, the restaurant stopped selling oil and focused on pastry and dumpling sales. Had we not had our special reservation, which is difficult to get, we would have stood in line for over two hours.