The oddest foreigner you've met here -- share your story

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
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So as not to incite lawsuits, manhunts, bar brawls, flame wars, deletion of threads, or Taiwanese style retribution wars, let’s all agree to keep proper names (of people AND PLACES OF WORK!!!) out of this.

Who is the oddest or creepiest or most mind-boggling foreigner you have met in all your time in Taiwan? This place doesn’t always attract the best and brightest, and as a matter of fact I bet there’s more than a few expats who are here for dubious reasons.

I’ll share my story first. If anyone recognizes themselves in my story or any that follow, well… what can I say? Let it be a good hard look in the mirror for you.

I was in a bookstore last year reading a book, when a younger dude who looked to be in his late 20s approached me and asked me if I knew anything about math. Let's call him "Tony". Tony was taking a math class and was looking for a good study guide. I had nothing for him, but we got talking anyway, and clicked. He was from the US, but told me his parents were from Mexico. We exchanged numbers, and I remember him saying to me, "You know, I think we have a lot in common!", which struck me as an odd thing for one American man to say to another that he just met.

So I call Tony and ask him to go to lunch. We meet up. I find out that

  • He has no job, and hasn’t had really anything to do for months, besides this math class.
  • He does little but ride his bicycle.
  • He despises eating, and subsists on protein supplements. He’s a fiercely picky eater.
  • He’s been in Taiwan for almost 10 years.

This dude calls me later, and asks me to come over to his house for breakfast on a weekday (?!!). I said no, but suggested dinner instead, including my girlfriend and his aforementioned girlfriend too. Tony picks a place to meet that isn’t a common landmark at all. His girlfriend is very quiet. He claimed he despises smoking, but from this girl’s teeth and gums, she’s obviously a smoker.

At the restaurant, Tony orders a greek salad. It comes, and he is FURIOUS over this bowlful that doesn’t match his expectations at all. So he calls the manager over and gives him a very hard time, getting very worked up. He made me and my g/f very nervous. Finally the manager walks away and mutters “not my problem” in Taiyu.

So I try and lighten up the conversation, but no. Tony won’t let it go, and at this point shaking with anger, declares his desire to “punch the manager in the f***ing face”. He sounded and looked perfectly serious. He looks at me, trying hard not to let my nervousness show, shakes his head furiously, and says, “No, WanderingDave, I thought we had a lot in common, but I was wrong. Nope, we don’t.” :s

Me and my g/f excused ourselves and left, wondering what the hell was going on in Tony’s brain. Then he calls me, not an hour later, to let me know that his offer of breakfast at his house on a Tuesday morning still stood. You can guess how I responded.

My g/f thinks Tony is a closeted gay guy and assumed me to be one too. I would definitely like to hear from anyone else (PM me!!!) who recognizes him from my story, and could fill me in as to why he is the way he is.

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Exchanging phone numbers with a man you meet in a book store would qualify as bizarre behavior in my book. Unless you are a homo.

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I’ve met so many foreign nutters here I don’t know where to begin.

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What on earth did you do or suggest to her to make her think that? :wink:

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Anyway Wolf, just what was so bad about the Greek salad?

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Sandman:

One more crack out of you and I’ll tell everyone about how you shave your back…
oops…just slipped out…

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wolf…the preferred word is gay please…homo is offensive and you know how i feel about offensive language :wink:

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If I ever go to a Forumosa Happy Hour (as I hope to some day), I’m sure I’ll gather enough material to fill several pages of this thread. :wink:

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So Homo Sapien is a nasty thing to call someone? Or do you prefer Homo Erectus? Likewise, I suppose we must say heterosexual, not simply hetero? :unamused:

Are there strange people here in Taiwan? The ones I see are pretty normal.

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I remember when I was studying in Shida 6 months ago. I made a couple of Japanese guy friends and one day we decided to hang out at Roxy on a Friday night. We get there (3 of us) and just drank pretty early in the night. A few hours later, the party begins, more and more people come in.

In comes my Japanese friends’ other Shida friend (a German fellow and Swedish girl) who were all normal, but they brought these 2 other non-Shida foreigners (one was an American). So since the guy was American (a blonde guy, looked to be 25 or so), I started talking to him.

Well, the first sentence he was alright- “hey how you doing” but after that it became all downhill. He had this eye thing going on, maybe it was just his physical problem but he kept on grinning and looking at me but every second looking at every girl that walked by. That was a little annoying talking to him.

Next thing you know he tells me his age. He is a 30-something year old guy, who teaches English part time, and thats it. He doesn’t have much savings and by that time I kind of didn’t feel very interested talking to him. Then he gets real enthusiastic and tells me if I want to catch some chicks at the club. He says the girls are easy, just speak a little Chinese, and they are all over you. He says his ex-girlfriend caught him sleeping with another girl and tore up his US passport. He started laughing so hard because of that. He says his ex was a fucking stupid whore anyways.

It didn’t seem to occur to him in his little puny mind that he was talking to a Taiwanese American. Number 1, it was a bit insulting, and Number 2, I met a guy who actually looked similar to the same dude but was in Korea and younger as well. Definitely disgusted by his comments then I just walked away and started talking to my Shida friends.

That was a freaky guy who I never ever want to meet again.

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There once was a teacher where I worked who moved on to Austrailia. There the cuckold murdered the bastard before covering the bitch in gasoline and stricking a match.

He’s now in prision for life. He was from Scotland.

A colleague of mine once told me a creepy story out of Korea aswell.

She was employed as a replacement teacher for a teacher who had been mysteriously murdered. Apparently, the murdered teacher, a lesbian, was living with her lover when one day the lover came to school and the manager asked where her friend was. She said she had no idea. They called the apartment and her cell, but there was no answer; so the lover, worried, but still required to teach took her class with her to the apartment as an outing. When they arrived at the apartment her friend was lain bloodsplated on the floorboards, much to the horror of the students. Consequently, a police investigation followed but there were no obvious leads. A male teacher at the school convinced the lover she ought get away from it all, and offered to accompany her to the Phillipines. He was found murdered in the Phillipines a week after my colleague started work at the school. The lover was never seen again.

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[quote]There once was a teacher where I worked who moved onto Austrailia. There the cuckold murdered the bastard before covering the bitch in gasoline and stricking a match.
[/quote]
Old Stevie Ray never struck me as being particularly odd, though.

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Masturbating doesn’t count, does it sandman?

No, and he was a good teacher by all accounts. He really got the girls fired up.

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I didn’t hear that one. Himself or other people?

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Your signature you numbskull.

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What’s the point of masturbating if there’s no-one looking?

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[quote=“wolf_reinhold”]So Homo Sapien is a nasty thing to call someone? Or do you prefer Homo Erectus? Likewise, I suppose we must say heterosexual, not simply hetero? :unamused:

.[/quote]

homo erectus…ooh that sounds a bit rude innit?

no but you can say hetero no problem…it’s just that homo has become offensive…no rhyme or reason to it except that it is used as a derogatory …likewise “chinaman” is now offensive but englishman is kosher…

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My Taiwanese friends had an open room in their apartment. They liked to speak English, so they always tried to rent it out to foreigners. It usually worked out nicely.

But one roommate they had was really strange. He said he was from Chicago. They should have known when they first met him not to ask the guy with dread-locks to live with them. But they let him move in. He made music, and he made it loudly until later than three in the morning. He hated to wear the slippers that the roommates asked him to wear, so he tracked mud everywhere. He didn’t flush the toilet when he took a dump. He had, in the one month stay, a succession of five girls coming in and out. He treated the girls like XXXX. He was heard talking on the phone trying to steal a girl from her Taiwanese boyfriend. The neighbors complained about his loud bass pumping from his room at all hours. Then my friends, their neighbors and the landlord had had enough of him. They told him to get a move on, and insisted that he give them his share of the rent and the phone bill.

The guy locked his room, put on the music, and left the air conditioner running. They assumed he was inside, and kept banging on the door. A few days later, they forced their way inside through the lock, only to find he had trashed the small room. It was dirty. There was food, there were ants, and he had poured Pepsi on the mattress. The room was smelly and sticky and gross.

They didn’t know where he worked exactly. What they did know was that he worked in Mucha. So they went to the only place they knew he would frequent. It was a pizza shop he really loved. He went there at certain times during the week. They were lucky enough to see him there. Once the four of them saw him, they started chasing him. They wanted their money he owed them. He hopped on his scooter. They followed him all around town. He went to a police station, hoping that the police would stop them from chasing him. The police told my friends that they couldn’t force him to pay, but they told the natty guy that they couldn’t stop my friends from chasing him.

The chase began again. They drove all around the curvy roads in Mucha. There were narrow escapes. Finally, he realized he had to go to work, because he was already late for class. He tried to give them the slip by driving on the wrong side of the road, and it almost worked, too, but they noticed the nondescript building he went into. Ascending the stairs to the third floor they found a school. They talked to his boss, and they told him that the natty guy owed them money. The boss said ssomething disparaging about natty guy, and he gave them the money that was owed for rent, the phone bill, and the ruined mattress. He said he would deduct it from the natty guy’s next paycheck.

That’s the creepiest guy I’ve ever met in Taiwan.

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There was this guy who was a former child star teaching English here. He had become a drug addict, knocked up a girl, and lost his lucrative TV career. His roommate had a party and he proceeded to take a shit in the back yard, with everyone sitting there watching in shock, wondering what the hell his problem was. Then there was that big airplane executive. He wasn’t odd, just one really friggin’ creepy queen, not as creepy as that closet fag editor who looked like Hannibal Lechter, but somewhere up there.

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And I thought the weirdest foriegner I met were those that decide to walk across the island by foot and hitchhiking.