Not sure what this post is going to say about me. About how much of an out-of-touch Luddite I am? About how something so petty can change my life (I'm a simple person)?

My "life changing" experience was watching someone's vlog that was sponsored by Samsung Galaxy Buds and subsequently discovering that my laptop is a Bluetooth device. I was just watching the vlog thinking the Galaxy Buds have nothing to do with me since I don't have a "smart" phone, but then there was a portion where she was at a schedule using them without a smartphone in sight, but working on a laptop. The light bulb above my head flickered slightly as it dawned on me that if my laptop has Bluetooth, then wireless ear buds could be really, really useful. 

That set me off searching for what Bluetooth capabilities my laptop has, and the clincher was realizing that I do have a Bluetooth device in my room. Years ago, I bought a Jawbone Mini Jambox speaker which has Bluetooth, but that wasn't what I bought it for so it didn't apply. I've had it on my nightstand for when I was ensconced in insomnia and could listen to CDs with my 90s-era Sony CD Walkman plugged into them via a "cable". But I went through the steps to "pair" the speaker with my computer (working the lingo) and voilà! For me (Luddite) it was like a miracle! Music playing on my laptop over here is coming out of speaker way over there with nothing connecting them! I would've become Christian if Jesus demonstrated it to me. The benefits and applications of Bluetooth earbuds skyrocketed (the flickering light bulb over my head turned into an exclamation mark)! And that, my friends, is how in 2019 I entered the 21st Century. 

Of course, the easiest thing to do would've been to go out and buy a set of Galaxy Buds, but they're expensive, equal to my Sennheiser Momentum earbuds whose cables are veritably melting in Taiwan's heat after a year and a half of extensive daily usage. I shop around, try to do "research" (those are non-sarcastic quotation marks), but find that there are so many Bluetooth earbuds on the market (I had no idea) that I end up confounded. The brands and models in stores in Taiwan don't match brands and models reviewed online, and even though I can go for a cheaper product, I don't want to end up with something that doesn't sound decent (like my purchase of cheaper Audio-Technica earbuds which I found to be sub-par and led me to immediately buy said Sennheisers, budget be damned). The Galaxy Buds' sound quality is touted by reviewers.

Within two days of watching the vlog, I shell out US$150 for the Galaxy Buds and there are pros and cons, but pros are amazing and the cons I just have to adjust to. I don't have to decide when I want to listen to something through speakers and when to tether myself with earbud cables to listen. Now everything I listen to on laptop is untethered and I can get up and go about while listening. Actually it was mostly K-pop music show videos that I listened through earbuds, so since watching was involved I had to stand no more than three or four feet from my TV screen. Now I'm free. The even greater advantage is no sound degradation from the constant fan/air conditioner during hot weather. It's something I just had to deal with before, but when cooler weather arrove and the fan/aircon turned off, it was always dismaying how much sound I was missing in the electronics/wind drone and I had just spent however many months listening like that.

Anyway, now I have to exercise discipline with expenditures. Zero temptation to replace my Sennheisers unless the cords disintegrate and wrapping exposed wire with electrical tape is untenable. Or if they completely fritz out, but fortunately they're still going strong and sound fine, great. The Galaxy Buds are just as good as far as my ears can tell. And good thing I'm done with replacing my wardrobe for most part. I have my old shirts piled up for recycling, and looking at them I can't believe I wore them for so long. Yuck, really. All my new shirts are pretty plain and nondescript, just new. Still mostly light fabric, short sleeve, button-down shirts. Unlike my old shirts, these are mostly darker solid colors, no patterns. Everything I bought, including sleeveless and t-shirts, needed to have a front pocket for my iPod Shuffle.

I think people might like the idea of needing to replace their wardrobe, not just as a matter of vanity. I won't go so far as to say it was a bother, but like I've said, I have no idea about clothes or fashion or what 'looks good', so I won't say it was fun. I'm all about comfort and ease and taking into consideration my primary form of transportation is bike. In summer months, there's nothing comfortable or easy about riding a bike to get around. It's just HOT. Can't care how I look. Fortunately, in Taiwan people might appreciate if you dress well, but otherwise no one cares how you dress. 

I didn't have TV since the beginning of December. The provider is bbtv in Taiwan. Their internet is fine, but their cable TV service is wanting. Actually, to be fair I didn't even try to notify anyone there was a problem. I left it to other people on the floor who apparently didn't mind not having TV as much as I didn't mind. It's totally possible bbtv would have responded immediately and had service back up pronto.

Internet did go out at the end of December, the same day I killed that spider in fact. I knew someone would call the landlord for that and internet was back up two days later, but for some reason no one mentioned TV and the person who fixed the internet didn't realize TV service was out, too.

No internet was not fun. A little lonely maybe? When it was back up I wanted to run to the internet and say oh my god, i have so much to tell you! I didn't have anything to tell. That was just the weird feeling. And not to anyone, mind you, but to the internet itself. I watched three movies on my computer in those two days.

I adapted to no TV, even though it disrupted shows I was watching, notably season 4 of Fresh Off the Boat, Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown, and Discovery Channel shows How the Universe Works and How the Earth was Made. I'll watch anything on astronomy or cosmology, geology, earth sciences, earth history, archaeology. Things that span and give insight on how this all came to be.

After TV went dark, I checked every few days to see if it was back up, and after a few weeks I stopped doing that. I found new ways to completely fill up my time to the point that I felt I didn't have enough time. I started spending a lot more time with my bass as well as watching YouTube videos voraciously.

Today, after maybe a month I checked the TV not expecting anything and it was back up. Only Fresh Off the Boat is still airing. I missed a bunch of episodes, but they'll probably re-run them.

On one hand, two months without TV, I think, really did break my TV addiction. I don't even want it, I don't want it on all the time even in the background as I had it before. I'm sick of channel surfing when there's nothing on. On the other hand, it's February leading up to the Oscars in March and HBO is cramming Oscar classics and there's a lot I know I'm too weak to miss.

Another unexpected side effect, I think, was that what little of my Mandarin speaking ability went completely out the door. Even watching English language TV, Mandarin entered my ears through commercials. And at times I would have local news on as background noise. Without that I was completely in a non-Mandarin environment unless a Mandarin language song came up on my iPod and I long stopped trying to understand lyrics while listening.

As it is, my flatscreen is default connected to my laptop, not TV. I'll peek at TV schedules to see if there's anything of interest coming up, but I see breaking with TV as a good thing.

I had to buy a new set of earbuds last week.

Some time into my years in Taiwan I started buying quality earbuds. Until then, I was satisfied with the crappy earbuds that came with iPods. When they melted and fell apart in Taiwan's heat and humidity, I never spent much more than US$30 (NT$1,000) on replacements, usually Philips.

I grew up in a time when you bought something, you expected it to last. It wasn't a disposable culture like it is now, where product obsolescence is planned. I was outraged that iPods came with earbuds that were of such poor quality that they couldn't last. Did they have no pride in their product? Now I have a pile of Apple earbuds that I've never touched. It's almost an insult that they still include them.

Then one day I impulsively splurged on a set of UE (Ultimate Ears) earbuds because what the fuck. They were probably in the $60 range and had noise blocking ear pieces. They lasted probably over a year until they, too, succame to Taiwan's weather.

By then, I was sold on the sound quality of higher priced earbuds and on noise blocking, in-ear earbuds. Also at some point during a visit to the States, my brother had offered me a set of $100 Sennheisers that he said sounded terrible, but it turned out he just hadn't used them enough to burn them in. I used them for several hours and gave them back when they sounded fine. But that incident probably set my price range even higher.

For the past few years, I've gone through three sets of Monster iSport-line earbuds which were in the over-$150 range in Taiwan. Same company that makes Monster sound system cable. In high school and college, Monster cable was the gold standard for stereo systems, but at the time prohibitively expensive. What I'm saying is that their reputation preceded.

The sound quality was great, no complaints there. Construction, mostly the quality of material used, not so impressive, especially for a product at that price and advertised for sports usage. I put up with a lot for a long time for that sound quality. Actually I only bought the third set of Monsters because they were on sale for about $100 and I considered that a deal even though I had low confidence in the construction.

Eventually all three failed, finally due to right channel defects. I wouldn't buy Monster earbuds again. Maybe the right channel failures shouldn't be considered uncommon considering how hard I used them, but it's time to try something new.

I bought a set of Audio-Technica earbuds at under $90 ($60 on Amazon). So far I'm not blown away. They're muddy in the lower-mids and bass ranges. Clarity and separation are mediocre at best. One reason I bought them was to test the theory that price is an indicator of quality. This doesn't challenge the supposition.

If they continue to not impress or satisfy, I can go with even cheaper ($60 range) or more expensive ($120) Sennheisers available in Taiwan. If I'm such a stickler for quality, I should go with the pricier ones.

I also have a set of Bose noise-cancelling earbuds which I bought when I was more confident about my finances, needless to say. I only use those on rainy days when I don't go out on bike. I baby them as you would a $250 product.

They sound great, so I also use them as reference in assessing earbud quality, mindful of my age and musician past that my ears aren't as sharp as they once may have been. They only sound good with the noise-cancelling on, though. If the battery dies and switches to passive mode, they don't sound all that great.

addendum: I gave up on the $90 Audio-Technica earbuds (ATH-CKS770). The weird thing about them was that some files sounded passable; nothing special, they didn't draw attention that the sound was just par. But then other files would sound muddy. I can't make any sense of it.

So I went and bought the expensive Sennheiser Momentum earbuds which unfortunately were more expensive than I remembered and were actually $160. The miscalculation gave me pause because I'm always hesitant about big purchases and it's habit to take any excuse to not buy something unless I'm really sure.

I decided I was really sure. I hated files playing and being disappointed how randomly muddy they sounded. I know I don't have money to throw around, but it's all relative, isn't it? How much have I not spent in alcohol over the past three months? I don't know, but probably easily enough to cover the full price of the earbuds. And I didn't stop drinking to save money.

Anyway, the Sennheisers are amazing. No burning in needed. They were immediately and clearly superior to the Audio-Technicas. Clear and tight bass, sparkling highs, incredible clarity and reproduction. No random files sounding muddy.

So no regrets buying the Sennheisers. A little regret having bought the Audio-Technicas, but not a total loss since I can use them with my Korg Pandora PX5D for guitar and bass. For some reason only stereo connector plugs work with the quarter-inch to eighth-inch adapter. If it has the Apple control ring on the plug, it doesn't work. I already tried them with the PX5D and they sound fine.

My Asus laptop died with a rattle, cough and a shudder after five years and nine months of service. It's funny how I don't know how much time I myself have left, but I can't go 24 hours without a computer!

I knew it was dying. The signs were there. The screen started having a hard time coming on at start up even though something was turning on. It would take several tries with hard shutdowns and I'd always be relieved when the Asus logo appeared. Then the keyboard started getting sluggish, another sign of a waning computer.

For its last few weeks I didn't turn it off at all to keep the screen on all the time, but finally it seized up and when it did, I knew that was it. I guess I knew from recent experience, people do that, too. When it's time to go, it's time to go.

A fried motherboard is the computer equivalent of a stroke or heart attack. It froze up, the fan started whirring at high speed and after about a minute it shut off and thereafter was as it was with the screen not coming on, but nevermore to show the Asus logo. Not unlike my father after his stroke!

Since I knew it was dying, I was diligent about backing up information and data. In fact, the only thing I lost permanently was three days worth of iTunes play information since it died just after I synched my iPod shuffle, which I do every three days, but before I shut down iTunes and saved the database library and XML file, which I do every 2-3 days.

I've posted before how to retain iTunes information and transferring it to a new computer. The key is the "iTunes Library" itl database file and "iTunes Music Library" XML file, both of which are automatically created when iTunes is installed. To retain the latest information, those files need to be saved regularly, and I save them online in a cloud so they're not affected by a dead computer.

Also, once I had the new computer, I immediately removed the hard drive from the Asus and bought a casing for it to convert it into an external hard drive, which allowed me to access virtually everything that was on it, so no information or data lost (and attestation that the death was not of the hard drive but of the motherboard).

I wasn't so happy with the Asus, so I didn't buy another one. I still wanted to buy local and the person who replaced the fan in the Asus last summer opined that Acer was currently better than Asus, so that's what I went for.

My new laptop is an Acer Aspire E15, and it's not at all an upgrade. It's a completely lateral purchase. I'm happy about the larger 15" screen, but the processor is a nominal upgrade from an Intel Core i3 to an i5, but I don't notice any difference in speed or performance. If anything, it's slower.

Basically I've just been wanting my new laptop to behave like my old laptop, which means making Windows 10 behave like Windows 7. For my purposes, there has been nothing about Windows 10 that has impressed me as an improvement to Windows 7.

There were things I was unhappy about with the Asus and learned to live with (trackpad), and there are things I'm unhappy about with the Acer which I'll have to learn to live with (even worse trackpad, I'm using a mouse half the time). Lateral purchase.

The only difference is that the Asus was dying and the Acer is new and not about to die. I'm not sure I can recommend either, nor do I have fatal complaints about either. But if I was in the U.S., I'd probably have bought a U.S. machine.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Last night in New Jersey, and as short as two weeks may sound, I'm glad to be going home tomorrow. Two weeks was enough.

In addition to basically my first week here spent at the resort, it's winter and it's cold. I have no access to a car here, no bicycle as my road bike was damaged the last time I visited, not that I would go out on bike in this cold. Public transportation is laughable. Parents are retired, so no alone time at the house to practice drums or make noise. And their internet is butt-slow.

On my last day here, I took my parents' car and went on a shopping spree spending almost $600. I got two sets of earbud headphones: Bose noise canceling and Monster noise isolating iSport Victory models.

I've been using Monster iSport Immersion earbuds for almost a year and they're probably on their last legs. I gave them a thumbs down because of poor construction and design. That model has been discontinued and replaced with the iSport Victory.

I was hesitant to go for Monster again because of the Immersion problems, but despite the problems they sounded incredible and I didn't know what else to get since the Bose are too expensive to be my daily active headphones. Fortunately, it seems the Victory model is better designed and possibly more robust. I'll wait until the Immersion dies before I really start using them.

Finally I got a Jawbone Mini Jambox, almost on a whim. I don't keep up with new products and technology at all, but I've heard about these portable, decent sound quality speakers, and I'm planning to use this on my nightstand to help get through insomnia.

I've been playing music during insomnia on my sound system across the room, and it's kinda too far away. I don't want to turn it up because I don't want to disturb neighbors. So the Mini Jambox is spoiling myself to be able to listen to music in good quality while I can't sleep.

For the love of god, I have no recollection of publishing the last two posts, much less completing them. Imagine my surprise opening up the post directory and seeing those drafts published and then rushing to check if it wasn't some regrettable drunken mistake.

And they were, no doubt, drunken mistakes, but upon looking them over, I think they're what I was getting at. That's a little comforting. It used to be that drunken blogging led to sober regret and immediate deleting of posts.

So, you see, I have progressed. Now I blog drunkenly and don't remember what I wrote or when I published it and then look at what I posted, and go, "well OK, then".

I did leave out geeking out about that specific ride, which I suppose I would've boringly done if I had the Edge 800 when I was younger. Emphasizing that it was a training ride, 700ft of climbing is not a show-off point, nor an 11mph average.

41 miles is a decent length, but after the short climb, it was all flat and included a snack break in the town of Shenkeng, famous for its stinky tofu. And Shenkeng stinky tofu is the only edible stinky tofu for this foreigner because they slather it in a tasty peanut sauce and stuff it with Korean kimchi.

And a lot of the ride was slow going because we had a typhoon (Saola) last week and the government is still clearing, cleaning and fixing the riverside parks. And I give credit to Taipei for taking the clean-up seriously, they've done a fantastic job, but it takes time to make them sparkly and shiny and there were some sections they were working on that were still caked with mud.

The Edge 800 is turning out to be great. It marks the total time of rides, but it also records the time that you were actually moving. So if you're stopped at a light or taking a break, it doesn't include that.

I probably won't remember publishing this post, either. I so don't remember how my nights end that I've started to record into a micro-cassette recorder I keep on my nightstand what time I turn off the lights and what I had been doing to be turning the lights off that late.

I'm sure I haven't mentioned that I broke my only shot glass (a double) several months ago. Drinking from a shot glass kinda acted as a regulator. I'd drink a shot and then there'd be some lag time until the next one.

But now I'm just drinking out of glasses, so I just fill them up to what may look to some to be an impressive level, and I sip, but there's still more there, and so I just keep drinkin' it and re-fillin' it and all of a sudden I'm thinkin' in a Scottish accent.

You're not really drunk until you're speaking in strange accents. But since I have no one to talk to, it's just thinking in strange accents. Mind you, my kind of drunkenness still entails washing my glasses and brushing my teeth before turning off the lights.

Testing. And blowing my mind. And pondering:
FDK->ShenKeng->full bikeways home

So about that windfall I mentioned. I've been loosening my attachments towards money, about which I profess is not an issue in this lifetime, and it isn't. I really believe it isn't.

I've been buying stuff, but it's not like I'm suddenly indulging in new found luxury. Mostly I've just been replacing stuff that I've been holding out upgrading. And the things I've been upgrading have been long due.

The Casio G-shock altimeter watch replaced the Timex Helix that I've had for about 10 years and which finally died while I rode over cobblestones that it couldn't handle. My focus on G-shock was specifically related to that.

I bought new tires for my bike, which replaced tires I bought 4 years ago, and it was not the first time I rode tires to the point of being able to see the steel wires at their core. Believe me, by that point, you've been riding on tires much too long.

New cycling gloves were not a big deal, but the cycling shorts I've been riding on for the past 10 years, I can tell you 10 years is beyond their lifetime. Extended rides were getting reasonably painful and my new padded shorts have been . . . just fine.

And my new shoes are no joke. I can't believe I've been suffering my old cycling shoes for over 10 years. They'd gotten to the point of being painful on extended rides (not unlike the shorts), and with the new shoes extended distances put no further strain on my feet.

I really appreciated the local Giant bike shop from which I got my new shoes when they told me the clips on my old shoes were fine and could be transferred onto the new shoes and I didn't need to replace my pedals.

But the point of this post is the Garmin Edge 800 bike GPS I bought. All of the things I've purchased as a result of this recent windfall has been replacement stuff or enhancement of perishable stuffs. That's important. If I'm spending money to acquire stuff, there needs to be a point.

I justify the Edge 800 purchase because it is something I wanted all along. It sucks that this technology comes so late in my life. It is exactly what I would have wanted 10 years ago when I was doing rides around the Bay Area.

I'm not riding like I was 10 years ago, nor am I the rider that I was 10 years ago. 10 years ago I was tackling hills of any size with gusto to test myself. Now, I'm struggling with hills, wondering if I can do the easiest of them. Buying this Edge 800 GPS unit is basically just an overdue gift to myself.

I would have loved to have a device that recorded my rides 10 years ago in the Bay Area; climbs, altitudes, pace, routes, etc. I was just happy with my basic Cateye bike computer that told me distance and speeds.

In the same way I would have loved to have grown up with an iPod, being able to put all the music I found in one location. Keeping all the music I found despite technology advancements from LPs to cassettes to CDs to MP3s.

But without the technology lag, I wonder if artists would have found the freedom to create the music they did before technology became such a dominant factor in consumers' lives.

I was into 70s progressive rock and 90s indie rock. Could either of those genres have survived in the digital era? I honestly don't know. But they did survive in people appreciating them like me in spite of the digital era.

I can only wonder if future generations can appreciate that kind of music. If they can, it's their gain. If they can't, it's not their loss, I shouldn't wonder. If they don't appreciate it, you can't fault them. It's just not for them.

Time has passed me by through technology. I didn't need to buy this Garmin Edge 800, I don't need my iPod(s). They enhance my appreciation of my general being here, but I'm not attaching to them.

As a product review, the Edge 800 is everything a cyclist could want in a bike mounted GPS unit, I shouldn't wonder. Certainly future models might improve on it, but until that happens, you need to have a pretty specific workout routine to be unhappy with this product.

There are no words for how much I hate this Asus laptop. I'm not a computer person. I don't know the first thing about computers. Maybe a computer person could fix the things I have gripes about in 15 minutes, but I'm just an ordinary person who wants to be able to take a laptop out of the box and have the very basics work competently, if not flawlessly.

I used a Compaq laptop running Windows XP for 6 years with a hard drive upgrade after 4.5 of those years. When it finally died completely I bought this Asus K42J running Windows 7, and it's just loaded to the rafters with annoyances and inconveniences that someone in the developed world buying a brand new laptop shouldn't have to deal with.

Again, I can't really say anything since I don't know what the source of the problem is because I don't know computers. But if you also don't know computers and couldn't figure out a load of annoying behaviors if your computer displays them, then I would blanket stay away from Asus computers, if not all Taiwanese computers. Apparently they are good computer companies with good reputations, but if you don't know about computers and want to avoid frustration, look at other companies first. From one user's experience, I will be looking into getting rid of this in the long run and Asus gets the big donkey shaft from me.

Entry-level Yamaha Pacifica electric guitar

This pic was a draft post and I'm posting it at a much later date. I figure I must have bought it around this time. Good, solid entry-level guitar for cheaps. I forget how much it was, but NT$7,000-8,000 is sounding about right; in the $200 range. When I was growing up, you couldn't buy a guitar of this quality at this price, you got shit that felt cheap, sounded terrible and couldn't hold tuning. Anyway, these days with multi-fx units with digital modeling, even beginner guitars can sound downright impressive.

I don't know why I splurged on the iPod Shuffle after weeks of admiring it in the store counter. Something just snapped. But I can't tell you how cute the iPod Shuffle is. It's not perfect, it's not for everyone, so people criticizing it can just say it's not the kind of player that meets their needs and shut up. The voiceover feature is cool and cute, but not perfect. The sound clarity isn't great. 764-HERO is announced as "seven hundred and sixty-four hero" and I don't even want to guess what it was trying to say for Aereogramme. But how would it know? The Mandarin is good as far as I can tell.

I went on my second run and I need a new pair of running shoes. I got the ones I have now because they were really light, but that means not enough padding. They're good for sprints. And I am going to get a new pair of running shoes. If I have the cash, I'm going to spend it. I can't possibly go on living much longer despite having passed my second health check to get my Taiwan ID card. I don't even care if I'm spending beyond my monthly means now that I'm working again. I just don't care. I can't possibly live much longer. Although I don't know why my life consists of these opposite self-destructive parts (drinking, negativity) and healthy parts (exercise, mindfulness).

I'm supposed to get my ID card on Friday. I'm taking the all-night bus to Kaohsiung again after work Thursday. Work is going to start seriously hurting due to lack of copy editors, and I'm not going to do a thing to fill in the void. And my three-week vacation starting in mid-June is non-negotiable. If the other guy gets stuck, it's not my problem. I consider him the senior copy editor, so he's got the responsibility.

I don't know why I'm still awake. I'm going to see the early show of "Star Trek" tomorrow, my day off. If insomnia wakes me up, I'll go to the early show. If I get a full sleep, I can't complain about that and I'll go to an afternoon show.

Does anyone remember my idea for a new Star Trek TV series several years ago? The idea was to start shooting new original series episodes with a new cast. The original series is so iconic, but it's dragged down by its campiness and antiquated technology. So the idea was to reinvent the series, updating the technology so it fits with the technological timeline of later series, and releasing the characters' association with those specific actors. The new movie is not quite that idea, but I'm glad something on those lines got picked up.

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Consumer review: Giant OCR2 road bicycle

 

Rating: 7 out of 10 

I bought this Taiwan-made bike because I wanted a road bike for my time here in Taiwan, and I wanted one cheap since I had no intention of bringing it back to the U.S. when I left. At US$475, I thought this bike was a steal, and for the price I'm very happy with the bike. But being happy with the bike for the price is different from thinking it's a great bike. It's not a great bike, it's a good bike with its shortcomings readily apparent. 

I changed the brake pads almost immediately, within a week or two. I had read reviews complaining about how they felt "mushy", and that was 100% right. That's one area where Giant cut costs. For serious road riding, add the price of new, better quality brake pads to the cost (about $20). 

Also lowering the cost of the bike (but will be added after purchase) are the cheap tires, which will last longer than the brakes but you'll want to replace them sooner rather than later. Of course all tires wear out and need replacing, so this may be no big deal. If you let the originals go bald, you'll feel it in the lack of confidence on downhills and on wet roads. Nothing gets under the skin of my confidence when I feel the wheels slide several millimeters sideways on wet asphalt. They also lose all resistance to glass shards. 

The Shimano components are competent but cheap. The derailleurs are very hard to get right in tune and so the drive train is noisy. Unless you're a mechanic and put time into it yourself, it's hard to find that "sweet spot" where shifting feels really good, but at this price I can't complain too much. Emphasis on the competent. 

Also low-cost is the design and road vibration isn't absorbed in this design, so you feel every bump and crack through your hands on the headset. 

What makes this a good bike is the price. And at this price (which actually has gone up about US$300 due to inflation a year after I bought mine), this bike has satisfied me on many rides and many hundreds of miles in my short time in Taipei. It's a competent, no-nonsense road bike, and if this kind of quality is Giant's entry-level road bike, then I'll definitely look into their higher end lines if I look into something more serious.