Oh, boy! You’re one of THOSE parents who want their kids to take violin and Latin and soccer and… poor chieflette 
[/quote]
Learning another tongue is something that will always come in handy…
Oh, boy! You’re one of THOSE parents who want their kids to take violin and Latin and soccer and… poor chieflette [/quote]
Learning another tongue is something that will always come in handy…[/quote]
Sure, but not everyone is gifted in tongues. I wouldn’t put all that pressure on a kid that early on. But I guess you’re the father, so you know best, right? Right.
I will tell you though, if I see that she’s tired in classes with me because of this new load, I’m suspending them immediately.
Some people are though. On gmail. 
You’ve never met half the people I am now privileged to call my friends then? Some of them have been acting weirdly for years, and sharing details of my personal life doesn’t help. Maoman comes round regularly to play with my collection of small rocks, but he’s still the weirdest neighbour I’ve ever had.
Seriously, BB, people are weird everywhere. One of my TW neighbours was complaining bitterly to me a few weeks back about the busybody next door who has told ‘everybody’ what a sad lonely old man he is, and how he doesn’t have a friend in the world so now he bought a dog and blah blah blah. Tell me that wouldn’t happen in a ‘normal’ place in ‘the civilised world.’
You know as well as anyone that we tend to judge the whole society by our own personal standards, completely forgetting that we are not representative of the average member of the public in our own countries. We are weird, and there’s no getting away from it. Normal people are always going to discuss that because they don’t have a lot else going on in their lives.
My solution: Move to Lotus Hill, where the majority of people are relatively sophisticated, limit your teaching to adults only (ie more educated internationalised people) so you never have to meet idiot parents, and wear sunglasses/earphones whenever you go anywhere. Move out of the goldfish bowl into the bubble.
[quote=“bushibanned”]
living behind Taipei 101 is hardly small town. However, all my neighbors seem to be over 50 and their most exciting social hour is when the garbage truck comes. They clammour around, inspect eachother’s waste (my landlord just freely opens my garbage bags and picks out the stuff she wants to keep), and I highly doubt any of them know of my deviant sexual tendencies. I don’t think they’d know a homo if one spit binlang on them. I’ll never forget moving in here and the landlord asking me if we had the moon in America. I turned to her and said, “yes, of course. In fact, we have 4.”[/quote]
LOL :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao:
You can’t blame them for this. After all, maybe they’ve heard that there are things called ‘stars’ visible in the sky in the West. It’s not too far a leap to think there might be other differences as well.
Even the color of the sky is different here. How confused they must be to read a Western publication (if they ever do, of course) stating that the sky is blue.
My experiences in the short time that I’ve been here are almost the exact opposite.
Far from staring at me, I find a great many Taiwanese people actively ignoring me.
In fact I often feel like the invisible man here.
More than once when in a shop I’ve been tempted to just pick something up and walk out with it.
- They obviously can’t see me. Would they notice if this shirt mysteriously started floating out the door?
And I don’t think it’s just a “language thing”.
You might be aware that pedestrians frequently use eye contact to communicate. A split second meeting of the eyes tells us which direction the other person is headed, and helps us avoid walking into each other.
As far as I know, all humans do this, and it’s not specific to any particular culture.
When walking around Taipei I frequently find locals (women especially) actively trying to avoid making any form of eye contact with me whatsoever. As soon as they’re aware that there’s a foreigner in the vicinity, they’ll turn their head away, flick hair over their eyes, look down at the ground, pretty much do anything except look me in the face.
(As a side note, I was working as a model before coming here, so I’m pretty sure that it’s not because I have two heads or something).
It may sound trivial, but I actually find this blanking far more dehumanising than being stared at like a monkey in a zoo.
Why_Guoren, where are you from? (If you don’t mind me asking.)
You should try travelling on the London Underground for the ultimate being-blanked experience.
Do you (the royal you) still notice anymore? After a while you get inured Unless someone is in my face I really don’t notice anymore.
If they are really in my face usually a quick, unassuming, mildly worded question in thier direction breaks the death stare or annoying commentary and promps a hasty retreat.
Interestingly it is my wife that gets a bit annoyed the nth time she gets asked about the kids and what langauges they speak.
[quote=“joesax”]Why_Guoren, where are you from? (If you don’t mind me asking.)
You should try travelling on the London Underground for the ultimate being-blanked experience.[/quote]
I used to live in London and catch the tube every day, so I understand what you’re talking about.
I guess there is a degree of big cities becoming more impersonal.
wow…the Taiwanese don’t ignore me…the foreigners do. And after almost 6 yrs of being here I have perfected the ‘oooh I think I got a text message’ and ’ oh wow, there is a new mole on my arm’ distraction moves to prevent any eye contact with a foreigner.
Especially when in a small alley!!!
[quote=“Battery9”]wow…the Taiwanese don’t ignore me…the foreigners do. And after almost 6 yrs of being here I have perfected the ‘oooh I think I got a text message’ and ’ oh wow, there is a new mole on my arm’ distraction moves to prevent any eye contact with a foreigner.
Especially when in a small alley!!![/quote]
I thought I was the only one with those moves!
Why do we do that? :loco:
Can we make a pact, Battery9, that when you and me see each other in a small alley, we both make the same move at the exact same time? First the text message one and then the new mole one… we can end the choreography with the “where’s that damn thing I thought I put in my bag earlier rummage, rummage”
It’ll be like a secret handshake of the “Foreigners That Go Out Of Their Way To Avoid Each Other Society”.
The only dilemma is… Once we recognize each other, do we keep ignoring or do we go for a drink to the nearest pub? Hmm.
It is a strange thing indeed. I’ll bet we’re all guilty of it. I think it’s mostly because it’s too obvious and we’re all too shy about it.
[quote=“tash”][quote=“Battery9”]wow…the Taiwanese don’t ignore me…the foreigners do. And after almost 6 yrs of being here I have perfected the ‘oooh I think I got a text message’ and ’ oh wow, there is a new mole on my arm’ distraction moves to prevent any eye contact with a foreigner.
Especially when in a small alley!!![/quote]
I thought I was the only one with those moves!
Why do we do that? [/quote]
We do it in part because it’s embarrassing or humiliating to break into a big smile and greet a foreigner who’s a total stranger, only to be met with a stony stare and a thought process behind it that runs something like: “Who the eff are you? I don’t know you, do I? Are you being familiar with me just because we both happen to be foreigners? Good God, piss off will you: I’m comfortably at home in this society, and don’t have any need for expressing solidarity with other random foreigners who are total strangers passing me in the street.”
And perhaps also in part because, from experience, we’ve come to realize that there are an awful lot of extremely undesirable people among Taiwan’s foreign residents, and that it’s best to be cagey about opening up to those we don’t know from Adam, as they could well end up being a burden or even a menace to us, which we really do not have the time or inclination to deal with.
Perhaps, too, because we’ve picked up the Taiwanese people’s automatic suspicion of and reserve towards strangers, regardless of their ethnicity.
Those are just a few of the reasons that spring to mind. I’m sure there ae plenty of others.