Well if anything I
Sound advice Toasty…your words are wise :bravo:
as for everybody complaining about stares and the such…where I come from, you call a duck a duck and when you see something other than a duck where a duck should be…well then stares and open jaws curiosity can be expected.
So some kids look in your flat at the “strange” foreigners…I would just take it as a novelty and something different than the isolation of locked doors and never knowing your neighbors that you can experience back in the West.
I agree with toasty…you don’t like being talked about…take away their reason to talk about you as an oddity and become a not-so-oddity in their lives by starting a geniune aquaintance. Good luck! A vacation would do you wonders too.
Spend a year down south and then tell us how the staring compares to where you are from. I have taken my wife to some of the remotest outposts in redneckdom and she/we have never been stared at like I/we were in Taiwan, and certainly not like on the mainland.
Novelties wear out quickly. One person’s curiosity can be severe invasion of privacy for another.
Maybe I read the OP’s post differently because I have experiences that I assume to be similar. I am guessing that for him (just as it has been for me in a few situations and with a few people), he will always be considered an oddity by some locals no matter what he does. Taiwan is not a place that is populated by immigrants from diverse origins. It doesn’t occur to a good number of locals that treating “foreigners” who have lived in their midst for 10 to 20 years and adapted to Taiwanese culture as queer outsiders is not especially friendly. For some of these people, nothing that the foreigner does is going to change the way they think about foreigners.
For the extreme gossips, quite often the only way to deal with them is to not deal with them at all. Most people will treat a foreigner as a novelty until they get to know them. Some will treat a foreigner as a novelty forever, and among those, there are a few who will spread gossip that can be quite damaging to one’s reputation. It is not just a matter of sticks and stones and bones. There have been two cases when two different nosy, gossipy cows caused some very real problems for me, my wife and in one of the two cases, my wife’s family.
The more experience you have in dealing with people in Taiwan or the mainland, the easier it is to notice just who belongs to the small minority of immature dipshits who just can’t stop soiling their undies over and gossiping about the foreigner in their midsts. It’s really not much different from social interaction anywhere. You get a feeling for who you can strike it up with, who you can tolerate and who will be a pain in the ass and then deal with them accordingly. If after meeting someone and going through the normal running in period it becomes evident that that person likes to talk about me a damn lot more than talking to me, then I don’t see much point in giving him or her more to gossip about.
If we were peeping into peoples places we would be arrested or at LEAST on the front page of the Apple Daily news.
If you have stayed somewhere for a year and people still do it it’s not a novelty anymore! And after 7 years you feel as if this is your home…not some strange, weird and freaky experience.
I’d like to know what you realistically think ought to be done in this case. You can try to struggle against the behaviour patterns of locals that won’t change, feel offended, and ultimately unhappy. Or you can try to make the best out of a situation, let go of that which is beyond your control and try to be halfway happy where you live. That’s how I see it.
Toasty, you should join Los Vaselinos 
Or, are we called Los Lubricantes these days? I forget.
Doesn’t matter. What’s important is that you have the right stuff. Send a PM either to me or jdsmith to put you on the mailing list. Don’t forget to mention clothes and shoe size for the special superhero outfit.
You have any martial arts skillz? You’ll need them for the clashes with Gushing Wooshies. Now we’re finally three against three. You may take the chief on. jd’s taking TomHill and I’ll handle Bubba2Guns.
Let the games begin! :bouncy:
Not many of us are Taiwanese, and so we don’t really know what those people are thinking. But what I can tell you is that constantly narrating everything you see and hear is a common practice here, not exclusively done when foreigners are around. When we wander into view the conversation changes from, “I’m hot, this apple is delicious, my husband is stupid,” to “she has shoes on her feet, her hands have fingers and thumbs etc.”
Stupid stupid misconceptions about us: we all have aids, we eat in McDonalds 24 hours a day, we divorce each other freely. Well, this is poor education at a home, school and government level. How can we change this? I don’t know.
Feelings about us which we don’t like: we drink too much, we are here to shag their women and steal their money, we don’t have driving licences. Well, these must be, in part, based on truth. Shame on our predecessors. How can we change that? Be ourselves, which I assume means well behaved and well mannered! This morning I helped a woman cross the road whilst others were determined to ignore or kill her. As she crossed and looked at me I thought, “I hope you tell someone that a big-nose commited such a charitable act.” A racist version of ‘pay it forwards!’
We will never understand each other culturally, that’s my feeling. But we can do things to smooth away the rough edges. However, most of the work will have to be undertaken by us.
Toasty, you should join Los Vaselinos
Or, are we called Los Lubricantes these days? I forget.
Doesn’t matter. What’s important is that you have the right stuff. Send a PM either to me or jdsmith to put you on the mailing list. Don’t forget to mention clothes and shoe size for the special superhero outfit.
You have any martial arts skillz? You’ll need them for the clashes with Gushing Wooshies. Now we’re finally three against three. You may take the chief on. jd’s taking TomHill and I’ll handle Bubba2Guns.
Let the games begin! :bouncy:[/quote]
I couldn’t possibly take on JDSmith, I suspect he may be a future convert to the Gushing Wooshies. It would be like Darth attacking Luke. Also, Loretta is like our God our something. He could ponytail whip all you suckers. Toasty, join the burnt side!
Toasty, you should join Los Vaselinos
Or, are we called Los Lubricantes these days? I forget.
Doesn’t matter. What’s important is that you have the right stuff. Send a PM either to me or jdsmith to put you on the mailing list. Don’t forget to mention clothes and shoe size for the special superhero outfit.
You have any martial arts skillz? You’ll need them for the clashes with Gushing Wooshies. Now we’re finally three against three. You may take the chief on. jd’s taking TomHill and I’ll handle Bubba2Guns.
Let the games begin! :bouncy:[/quote]
My ass, don’t be signing me up for any of this bullshit, I need another fuzzy-headed Pollyanna Local-Licker in my life like I need another 7-year-old kid giving me and mine the Monkey Stare, or another waterheaded bottlepicker bleating “Goo Mowneen!!!” across the road at me, or another twerp newbie in the convenience store trying to show off to his co-workers by serving me in English and then being unable to do so because he doesn’t know the fucking English names for anything…
Pass.
Toasty, you should join Los Vaselinos
Or, are we called Los Lubricantes these days? I forget.
Doesn’t matter. What’s important is that you have the right stuff. Send a PM either to me or jdsmith to put you on the mailing list. Don’t forget to mention clothes and shoe size for the special superhero outfit.
You have any martial arts skillz? You’ll need them for the clashes with Gushing Wooshies. Now we’re finally three against three. You may take the chief on. jd’s taking TomHill and I’ll handle Bubba2Guns.
Let the games begin! :bouncy:[/quote]
This all sounds like some example of esoteric humour or something. :s I’m not so sophisticated as to be able decifer the meaning. Woosh! Right over my head. 
breath
hold
don’t
But now you know that LV’s do have a bite. grrrrrr
Have a nice day.
[quote=“the chief”]My ass, don’t be signing me up for any of this bullshit, I need another fuzzy-headed Pollyanna Local-Licker in my life like I need another 7-year-old kid giving me and mine the Monkey Stare, or another waterheaded bottlepicker bleating “Goo Mowneen!!!” across the road at me, or another twerp newbie in the convenience store trying to show off to his co-workers by serving me in English and then being unable to do so because he doesn’t know the fucking English names for anything…
Pass.[/quote]
Has that infection reached the brain over the weekend or something? WTF are you on about? You ARE the Gushies! You invented them!
[quote=“TomHill”]…constantly narrating everything you see and hear is a common practice here, not exclusively done when foreigners are around. When we wander into view the conversation changes from, “I’m hot, this apple is delicious, my husband is stupid,” to “she has shoes on her feet, her hands have fingers and thumbs etc.”[/quote] :bravo: Werd. Pigeon-holers. A label for everything means you don’t have to think about it at all. It is what you label it, not what it is.
[quote=“Jive Turkey”]I am guessing that for him (just as it has been for me in a few situations and with a few people), he will always be considered an oddity by some locals no matter what he does.[/quote]For a lot of people there is no distinction at all between (say) a mormon missionary and a drug-crazed sex fiend… as long as they’re both foreign. You could be fresh off the plane, or be fluent in Taiwanese, or fully bicultural, and it wouldn’t change how they saw you.
Take a look at your knuckles and be glad they aren’t scarred from dragging. 
Do most people think like this, or are these just things you exaggerate in your mind because they are bad points? Of course, some people think like this, but the majority of people I come across here actually don’t.
Perhaps it’s a cammon misconception that we think the Taiwanese hold these misconceptions against us?
Do most people think like this, or are these just things you exaggerate in your mind because they are bad points? Of course, some people think like this, but the majority of people I come across here actually don’t.
[/quote]
So true. The cunt that vandalised my car last night, for example. Bet he wouldn’t even have dared to TOUCH it if he thought I had AIDS.
Yeah, well the amount of times I had my wing mirror kicked off back home it’s a wonder I didn’t emmigrate.
I find that wherever you are, the good things and the bad things all equal themselves out, but in different ways. It’s the same all over the world. I know for one that I would complain wherever I was after a while.
[quote=“Dangermouse”]Yeah, well the amount of times I had my wing mirror kicked off back home it’s a wonder I didn’t emmigrate.
I find that wherever you are, the good things and the bad things all equal themselves out, but in different ways. It’s the same all over the world. I know for one that I would complain wherever I was after a while.[/quote]
WOW! You’re a closeted Vaselino too! That’s grrrreat! 
the chief will be disappointed in you, though 
[quote=“Dangermouse”]Yeah, well the amount of times I had my wing mirror kicked off back home it’s a wonder I didn’t emmigrate.
I find that wherever you are, the good things and the bad things all equal themselves out, but in different ways. It’s the same all over the world. I know for one that I would complain wherever I was after a while.[/quote]
Erm, I WAS being facetious DM – there’s no way the vandal could have had any idea whose car he was trashing. (He’s still a cunt though).
On the contrary, I totally agree with you.
I should have known. You are always being facetious. 
Wanna make a bet? That’s what I have done and I think that was my mistake. Now they think they should know everything about me all the time and have the right to continuously run their mouths.[/quote]
I’ve just found my approach has worked for me best. Don’t be a stranger and you won’t be treated like one. .[/quote]
I would give my left tit to be treated like a stranger here the same way stangers at home are treated - in that no notice is giving to them, no running commentary. I have never once sat on my front porch and noted every single movement a foreigner in my home country makes. I should be so lucky to be treated like a stranger here… if only the term “stranger” carried with it the same connotation. And regardless of whether I acknowledge them, make pleasantires (as I’ve done in the past), i’m still a bloody stranger. and with that should come a running commentary-free existence like strangers “at home” have the priviledge of enjoying.