May 9, 2005 – Cheating Death in Taiwan 1993

May 9, 2005 – Cheating Death in Taiwan 1993

One of the most memorable trips I had as an editor of Electronics magazine occurred in June 1993. I was traveling with my boss, JA, the vice president at the Cleveland-based publishing company that owned the magazine back then. He was flying United to Tokyo from Cleveland by way of Chicago. I was flying American to Tokyo out of San Jose. We both left on Monday June 7th and we met at Narita on Tuesday June 8th where we were both booked on a Singapore Airline flight to Taipei. We made the connection at Narita as planned and then boarded our Singapore Air flight to Taipei—about a three-hour journey. Our hotel in Hsin Chu had provided a limousine service from Chiang Kai-shek Airport. We checked into the hotel after midnight. The one saving grace was the hotel was luxurious. We both had mini-suites and I got a quick bath to wash off the 20 hours of travel I had just experienced and fell asleep waking just after 5:00 AM. I went for a run and returned to get prepared for the day.

The purpose of the near two-week trip was to promote the magazine and hopefully sell some ad space. I was the editorial representative along to describe the magazine’s mission. JA was along to provide as much hard sell as could be accomplished on a first sales call. Our Taiwan representative, UD&P, had arranged our itinerary and accompanied us on our calls to interpret and to provide all the follow-up we hoped these meetings would engender. The details of our visits were routine and not very productive. Our hosts were gracious, listened attentively to our presentations and bid us a pleasant stay in Taiwan. What I remembered most about the trip was the drives between appointments: the sight of new-built modern buildings—awash in advertising spelled out in Chinese characters in the midst of turn-of-the-20th-century Taiwan buildings, the streets of Hsin Chu crowded with cars that were outnumbered considerably by the number of motor scooters and motorbikes, the speakers in our taxis blaring talk radio shows in Chinese—one featuring an American, speaking Mandarin, who would lapse into English (with a New Jersey accent of all things) every so often.

After two days of sales calls, I could tell JA was not pleased with the results—no one was buying what we had to sell. Furthermore, UD&P obviously had not been doing much in the year or two they were in our employ to make locals aware of our company or what we sold. The final straw however was the sales person that accompanied us on our calls, an earnest young woman who had just been promoted from secretary to sales person, I suspect just before we arrived. JA had only praise for her but was incensed that UD&P had not assigned at least a seasoned sales person to us. Also accompanying us was an editor who wrote for the newspaper publishing company that owned UD&P. His purpose was to help open doors that the sales person might find closed to her. For the most part, the strategy worked, but the local companies were more familiar with the English-language newspaper the editor wrote for than the Cleveland publication attempting to get their business.

There we were four of us in our sales person’s small car traveling from our last call on Thursday June 10, 1993 to Chiang Kai-shek airport sometime mid afternoon. She was not a good driver and I’m not saying that because I was in the back seat behind JA. The editor sat beside the driver and would occasionally engage in conversation with JA and me. The two of us in the rear had seat belt, which we used as did the driver. The odd person out was JA who had a seat belt but the buckle failed to latch. On the way to the airport, our driver had the habit of driving in the fast lane but failing to keep up with the speed of drivers in the lane. The result was lots of fast moving cars passing us on the right along the Sun Yat-Sen Expressway. She would move to the right when several cars overtook her then return when the lane was clear. This continued until we exited the expressway and merged on to the four-lane highway that led into CKS airport. At this point, she moved into the right lane and remained there with no indication she planned to give way.

The passengers in the rear seat reconciled ourselves to allow her to pilot the vehicle and since we were nearing the airport it was pointless to try to affect her driving. JA was dozing in the front seat oblivious of the traffic zooming by him on the right. We were nearing the airport when the unthinkable happened. A truck had been tailgating our car in the fast lane using as much intimidation as possible without ramming us in the rear. Our driver, too afraid to pull over and ever more cautious because of sense of danger the truck was posing. When the truck driver realized that the only way to achieve his goal of going faster was to pass on the right, he pulled into the right lane and began to accelerate, he was gaining speed as he came abreast of us on the left and his driver’s side wing mirror clipped the passenger side wing mirror on our car. The force of the impact was just enough to pop the passenger side door. The sound of the impact jolted JA from his slumber just at the moment the driver realized that the passenger door had opened. The driver, shocked by the sound began to swerve from side to side overcompensating first to right as she swerved the car left to avoid the truck, then to the right to avoid running off the road. As she over steered left following the impact the passenger door swung open and JA jolted awake at the abrupt motion. He grabbed the side of the seat with his left hand and kept himself from being ejected at the same time the driver screamed and grabbed his arm. By now, her foot completely off the gas pedal she managed to get control of the car and JA righted himself in the seat. His normally red Irish face and head beneath thinning hair was white with shock and fright. After a moment when the car slowed sufficiently that the danger had passed, we all took a collected sigh of relief as the driver began to profusely apologize. She slowly steered the car into the right lane to allow the sparse traffic behind us, which had slowed when it saw the driver in distress, pass her on the left.

The editor explained to JA what had happened and JA took the driver’s side saying that she had been the victim of a hit and run driver. “Did either of you get the license number?” he asked, to which we both replied negative. I had not thought to look and I’m sure the editor next to me hadn’t either. JA held the door close as our driver continued to apologize as we drove up to the passenger unloading area in front of Singapore Air Lines in Terminal 2 at CKS Airport. JA and I got our bags from the trunk of the aging red Toyota four-door sedan that had nearly been the death of JA. We rolled the passenger rear window down and tied the useless seat belt around the damaged door and the post between front and rear window. It would keep the door from flying open every time the car came to a stop and should get the two of them back to Hsin Chu in one piece. We bade our farewells on the sidewalk in front of Terminal 2 and walked into the terminal to the Singapore Air check in counter. We were both greatly relieved to be winging our way out of Taiwan to Seoul Korea away from the craziness we had just experienced. However this trip had a few more surprises in store for us before we were winging our way home.