You can try this place if you’re interested in cooking Taiwanese food http://kitchenivy.com
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It seems like anyone who ever talks to me does so because they want to–excuse my language–screw me or because they want to use me as their language mule.
Find gay friends. I’m sure that there are some gay events here and there, like at gay bars/clubs or something. They won’t try to get into your panties at very least.
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Except if they’re guys pretending to be gay so they can get close to the girl. Or maybe that only happens in movies? Art imitates life imitates art…
Except if they’re guys pretending to be gay so they can get close to the girl. Or maybe that only happens in movies? Art imitates life imitates art…
That only happens in movies.
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I go to O3 fitness.
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Exhaust the student clubs on campus first. Even if you don’t end up with actual friends from those, you end up with good stories most of the time. Join the harmonica club, or the hiking club, or whatever. The actual skill level required is usually very low so no worries there.
Living in Taiwan, I had a small handful of long-term friends who – to be brutally honest – probably would not have been my friends if I were still living in the US. That’s not to say they were not friends, but the shared Taiwan experience was an important piece of that. I had many foreign acquaintances who stayed for six months or a year, as you’ve said.
If you move off-campus (don’t know/remember if you’re living in school housing or not) roommates are a good possible source of friends. Again these may not be the “perfect fit” friends you would imagine in your home country. But with any luck you’ll find that people with common problems and common goals and a common language will become friends if you give them a chance. The fact that you prefer to do things alone (as I do) may mean it’s less comfortable for you to consider people who aren’t a “perfect fit” as friends, but maybe try to not think about the details so much in that regard and just see what happens.
First off, consider hordes of people hitting on you in the way it’s intended: as a compliment, or at least an indication of your own attractiveness. 15 years from now, this particular problem will solve itself, so enjoy it while it lasts 
Also, never say “definitely not” to anything, unless you plan to go through life doing what everybody else does. As some management consultant once said, you fail at 100% of the shots you don’t take. Sometimes things pan out in ways you don’t expect; I’ve met some amazing people in, um, unconventional ways.
Secondly, are you sure that all those guys hitting on you are interested in nothing more than a quick shag, or are you making assumptions before they even get started? There definitely are a lot of furriners here with a bad attitude and an even worse collection of chatup lines, but they’re not all bozos and creeps. Is it possible that previous bad experiences are colouring your interactions with men who might, if you give them a chance, turn out to be merely clumsy with words, or shy?
Another possibility is that you’re giving off vibes that attract creeps. Get comfortable in your own skin. If you enjoy doing X, Y, Z by yourself, just do them. Become excellent at something: it’s very attractive to the sort of people you would (I’m guessing) want to attract (I don’t just mean men; friends in general). I’m wondering if “I’m having an identity crisis” is not just a throwaway remark but 50% of the problem. Do you have parents or mentors who have told you to look at the world in a certain way and follow a certain path through life? Work on who you are, so that the real “you” is the person you present to the world; the person people see. You’re then more likely to come across compatible people. Just my 2c worth of pop psychology.
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I think you are being harsh on ‘foreigners’ who are simply guys looking for a date. You speak English and are attractive, they are excited about that! A fairly rare combination in these parts…
It’s not like there’s a lot of non Asian looking women around , you seem to be coloring their intentions somewhat.
Meeting friends is HARD for most people including me.
For some reason I relate to my countrymen and westerners more.’ It’s hardly abnormal given shared backgrounds and experiences and languages in many cases.
The good news …it only gets HARDER to make friends as you get older and certainly harder to hold onto them! :). So get cracking now! OR invest in a menagerie works for some…
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You seem to know what you don’t want in friends. When you say friends, what does that mean in practice?
At least for me, the fact that I like doing certain things on my own doesn’t mean I would also enjoy doing it with others.
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Thank you, everyone, for sincere and helpful replies.
I found myself getting defensive over some of your answers. They don’t seem fair and sound very hurtful, but are valid points so maybe I should work on that.
Since I already have a handful of challenges, I won’t be returning to this thread until I get over my current problems. Thank you again.
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you live in asia, you look asian, some guys are going to guess you are like the other asian girls here. why are you surprised by this?
honestly i think you need to be a bit more realistic about your expectations here. most people will want to be your friend to mooch language exchanges off you or something like that. learn to look out for who is genuine or not. i don’t really get anything out of those superficial english practicing small talks anymore so i don’t entertain them.
guys want to have sex with you? yea guys want to have sex with girls, bears also shit in the woods and the sky is also blue.
as for being an overseas asian that doesn’t fit in here- its not all negative. there are positives to it too, try to look on the bright side of things.
hi tpe
I am not the best person to give you advice, I am a foreigner from europe as well who can only speak a few chinese words, and spend most of my time alone or with my wife, but regarding this part:
It seems like anyone who ever talks to me does so because they want to–excuse my language–screw me or because they want to use me as their language mule.
Well, in that case try to make friends with female only i guess and that should do it
good luck.
Just another data point but I’ve been really surprised to read the following:
I’ve gone through all the posts in this thread and saw none of this. Unless something was deleted by a moderator earlier, all I see is different people trying to help you.
In fact it’s some of what you wrote that could be perceived this way. You’ve made some very broad generalizations basically leading to the conclusion that, “foreigners” and locals alike, everyone is out there to screw you, whether figuratively or literally. Unless you’re buying a second-hand car, this is not a helpful mindset to have. Most people are actually nice if you give them a chance.
Perhaps it would help to work the problem backwards: imagine you already have a couple of friends. Now, what do you do with them?
I don’t know if I would agree with you. She said she felt defensive and that some feedback felt hurtful. I don’t know about you, but if someone suggested that it was my fault for attracting creeps, I might feel offended. We have no idea how she looks or dresses. She could be extremely beautiful but dress conservatively and still attract unwanted attention from creeps.
Keoni, if you’re referring to my post, you’ve completely missed the point.
I wasn’t suggesting it was “her fault”. I was pointing out that what goes on inside your head does emerge somehow in your demeanour; don’t ask me how or why, it just does. That determines who finds you attractive (or not). Projecting lack of confidence, or an ill-defined sense of self, may be interpreted by a certain sort of person as “prey”. For an extreme example, watch the original Superman movie: there’s a scene where Christopher Reeve does an impressive job of switching between his Superman and Clark Kent persona, and then back again, on-the-fly, simply by changing his posture, voice, and expression. Observe good actors generally and you’ll see that the same person can project an enormous range of different public faces, and you can guess (if those made-up people were real) that they would attract certain types of people. We have a lot of control over how others see us; most of us never learn how to make conscious use of that fact.
Confidence - which, unfortunately, is next-to-impossible to fake - is incredibly attractive to other confident people. However, the OP may find that confident people are more likely to be carpe diem types who don’t necessarily subscribe to the theory that ‘dating’ proceeds in a certain prescribed way, and she may misinterpret this. There’s a fine line between the direct/honest approach and sheer tactlessness/creepiness; obviously, you want to brush off the latter as quickly and efficiently as possible, but it’s worth learning how to distinguish the two.
I agree with this. The OP has a lot to say about what she doesn’t want to do with or for other people. While nobody wants a one-sided friendship, there is always a certain amount of giving involved. One assumes that your friend will give back in equal measure.
I’ve had good luck with www.meetup.com because you choose what interests you, and then meet people with the same interests.
I’m currently reviewing my own multi-year “well, that didn’t work”-phase, so I’ll add an unsolicited idea: it may be better to work on challenges while still engaging in doing things.
On one hand, the “I’ll fix this first, then I can get what I want” seems to make sense, but in practice this has not worked out for me. I probably also used it as an excuse to avoid uncomfortable situations. Apart from that, I think it can also be difficult to work on stuff in isolation because it lacks a key component for learning new behaviors - the integration with actual experiences.
I can understand that some of the things that were said can be upsetting even if they were well-intended, but I hope you don’t let those feelings stop you.
I am a guy but I guess she has a point, some weirdos out there and this is of course not specific to Taiwan
I understand what you’re saying, but she never called them creeps. The first occurance of that word was by someone else. I just happened to repeat it.
It’s good to know that’s not what you’re suggesting. But I still don’t buy the predator-prey story. You’re making an assumption about her when you haven’t even met her. She’s only shared a little bit here and suddenly, people are jumping to conclusions about her level of confidence, how she behaves, etc. From what I gather, the reason for this thread was because she wanted to express her frustration in finding genuine friends. But the discussion started going sideways when people started judging her instead of encouraging her on how she could find genuine friends. I’m not saying everyone judged her. I did read quite a bit of good advice. But I also read some feedback that came across as judgemental even if it was not intended to be.