In the Asia Silicon Valley meeting, we talked about these kinds of things. Then it was brought out that we really need a minister with a portfolio that understand the language of the startups, the digital economy and stuff because there wasn’t a minister with that portfolio to handle this.

Lin Chuan. I met Tsai Ing‑Wen when I was sworn into the office. I didn’t have any other contact with her until then.

No.

We talked about how to redefine the Asia Silicon Valley plan to make it more...

There’s some resistance from the startup scene here around the particular way that this policy is being carried out. I was called to the meeting with the Premier and that’s the first time I met the Premier.

Around mid ’16, I was in the middle of a class, and then I got a call that says there’s a meeting by the Premier that want to talk about Asia Silicon Valley redefinition, which was one of Tsai Ing‑Wen’s main campaign during her presidential campaign.

It’s a mystery. I don’t know. What I know ‑‑ my side of the story ‑‑ is that I’ve been working with public servants as a coach, mentor, lecturer in the public servant training center since late 2014 for a year and a half or so.

Yes, of course.

Because of the surgery, yeah. When I was 12, and it took a year or so to heal. Supposedly, I am fine by when I was 15 or so.

I’ve been neglecting it for 10 years or so. As one of the perks of working this job, I was subjected to two very serious examinations sponsored by taxpayers. They found everything is fine with my heart. It should be fine.

I’m supposed to check every year or so.

For another year or half a year. Before he defended his thesis, the final step, he went back also to Taiwan. So he’s a PhD candidate.

In Taiwan, and then stayed in Taiwan.

Everybody told me that I could get a better heart surgery in Germany. That’s not quite a reason as much as the excuse. I didn’t really want to get a surgery in Germany, but there’s very complicated reasons around that, and the food, which was just an excuse.

Yeah. Or maybe Trier. I forgot the exact city name.

Yeah.

I enrolled into a fußball club. As a precondition, I had to go through this basic examination of my health. The doctor listened to my heartbeat and said there was a serious problem. "You probably want to find a big hospital."

That was one of the primary reasons, yes.

Yeah, to be treated. Then I decided to go back to Taiwan to my original doctors.

That’s right. I can’t get angry. I can’t get upset, because otherwise the brain runs out of oxygen, and my face would turn purple and I would faint. I was born with that condition. It gradually healed around four or five, but then it reoccurred when I was in Germany.

Yeah, of course. That means that I am usually at a...My body was in this condition like I was in very high altitude, with half as much O₂ in the blood in the worst conditions.

Basically, there’s two halves of the heart, and there’s a hole between the two halves in my case, so that blood containing CO₂ will remix with blood containing O₂.

It’s VSD. It’s this congenital condition, ventricular septal defect.

I kept having this problem with English. Generally as a programmer, I like rules. I like breaking rules, but having rules in the beginning was the precondition. In German culture, there’s a lot of those worlds of rules.

Yeah, warm dishes and so on, in any case. Other than that, I liked that they are being pünktlich, being punctual with time. I like being tidy with language and with social norms. I really liked the pronunciation system where you get to speak exactly as the alphabet said.

I think that it’s the temperature. It’s not the food. In Taiwan, we would probably serve a hot porridge or something like that. I think it’s the temperature that meant the most.

Right, to have this microsurgery to diagnose the actual conditions of the heart. Then I woke up from the anesthesia, and was served cold bread and wurst, something like that. I was like, "I really miss the food they have in Taiwan hospitals?" [laughs]

I went to Heidelberg, I think. Somewhere with a larger hospital.

For example, there’s a lot of interesting memories, like when I was re‑diagnosed with this heart problem that need surgery in a few years, otherwise I’ll probably die according to the doctor.

No, not really terrible, but it could be better.

Food. The food was terrible.

Yeah. I learned bicycling, and swimming, and everything in Germany.

There’s not much psychological adjustments that I need to make.

Yeah, in terms of reasonableness. In terms of emotional intelligence. In terms of being able to express myself properly and things like that. It’s like the social protocol is actually viable for me, and the vocabulary just pick up from there.

That’s what I expected my fellow classmates to do when I was in Taiwan. It was like I was the only adult in a classroom of kids during the first few years of my primary school in Taiwan. In Germany, it’s like...

Because people read those foreign languages and those expressions quite accurately. I thought that customs would be different, about the language to be different and so on. The kids behave like adults.

I expected it to be hard, but it was actually much easier than I thought. First, I don’t really need a lot of vocabularies to get around.

It used to be a coal mining town, I think. Then it ran dry for some reason. I had many classmates whose families were originally miners or working in the other related fields and so on.

Most of things. Especially the basic mathematics, and German, and things like that. History, I think. In any case, she was responsible for most of the class.

Other than sports and so on, there’s just one in general.

No, just my class.

That’s the first teacher who ran the schools this way, which is pretty standard in German education, but not as standard in Taiwanese education at the time.

I have fond memories because Frau Wagner saw me not as someone who need to specialize on anything, but to ensure my well-being, that I fit in, and well adapted, bring some interesting friendships, had something to share, and so on, with the classmates.

In the primary schcool system they didn’t put any emphasis on this kind of super specialties. They work, instead, on the social dynamics of students, and the wellbeing of people’s dignity, and things like that. Behaving like adults, that’s the main educational agenda, which I felt, at that time, that ...

I didn’t speak German at all, and not English, either. In any case, I was given preferential treatment back in Taiwan because my mathematics was really, really good.

I have fond memories. [laughs] I was stationed in this Dudweiler school at the first grade because, although technically I’m like fifth grade, but my German was so bad that there’s no way that I could just enroll...

Just once, but we corresponded with my great primary school teacher, Frau Wagner, and his professor’s widow, and so on. Frau Domas.

Yeah, sure, we went back to Saarbrücken a few years ago and visited.

That’s right.

The newspaper was called "China Times."