When I first came to Taiwan to teach English, I thought the place was pretty easy to handle. Why? Because the first place I had gone to to teach English was rural China. At least my apartment in Taipei had running water and electricity.
I always suggest that people go to the worst place first. The culture shock will be bad, but after that other places will seem fine. All the other newbie foreign teachers I met when first in Taiwan complained constantly about the noise, pollution, traffic, bugs, locals, teaching conditions, etc. Some couldn’t handle it and went home. All the other newbie teachers I met in Korea complained about the same things. I thought both places were OK.
Methinks it is her that has lost face. She wrote a very interesting article glorifying her personal shortcomings and failures. :loco:
[quote=“achdizzy1099”]
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Does anybody know what school this is?:
T[/quote]
Joy!
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I have one around the corner …
She writes a great piece which will hopefully circulate through some of the university rags around Canada. Maybe it’ll keep some hum’n’haw’ers from buying a plane ticket and riding out the new 6 month fresh meat visas. Her story doesn’t say much about her boyfriend shaking her off by coming here though. If I was him I would have given two rockstar fist pumps three steps from the departures gate. She obviously didn’t state her excellent research capabilities on her masters application either, “The tiny island is part of the Republic of China…” unless she was talking about Penghu, of course.
That annoyed me too. Also when at the end she quoted some ESL director’s opinion that China and Korea were the hardest places to go teach. He didn’t mean Taiwan when he said China, I’m pretty sure. Of all the places I’ve been, Taiwan was the easiest.
I dont know how much weight this publication carries with the general public. But they are not doing themselves any favors by publishing this essentially individual blog piece. She is much less then she professes to be. And really , Taiwan doesnt smell like a sewer everywhere you go 24/7. Shes entitled to her opinion of course but a noted publication should be more of an authority in what they allow to be published.
IF any good comes of it, it would be that the timid among Canadian recent grads will be discouraged from going to Taiwan. Only those more intrepid and daring and open minded will follow through perhaps. The mommyboys and the mommygirls can stay home in English speaking Canada. And only visit “foreign” locales like Montreal.
p.s. one thing seems to be certain . Taiwan left an indelible imprint in this lady’s simple mind.
My first day in Taiwan I went to the Mcdonald’s on the corner of Linsen and Zhong Xiao and it was empty save for a dumpy looking Canadian with a flag on his bag. He sidled over to me and said,
“Guess you’re not afraid of bombs.” Apparently there was a bomb placed there by an ex-army demo guy extorting money from McD’s. One of them he planted in another branch blew a policeman’s hands off.
The next night a crazy local guy smashed out all the windows of the Taipei hostel where I was staying screaming something about foreigners. That weekend I went to a heavy metal bar called “Mad-dog and Ant” met a hot heavy metal gal then almost had my head beaten in by her jealous ex-boyfriend and his six buddies with motorcycle locks. One of the guys at Taipei hostel was sitting in a piano bar the next week and was hit by a stray bullet fired by a gangster. The piano bar owner paid for his hospital bills and a one way ticket home. I moved from the hostel into a flat with three alcoholic foreigners one of whom was a pathological liar and would tell me about how Taiwan was ready for revolution. I have to tell you after being deported from Vietnam, held at gun point by militia in the PI i found Taiwan pretty tame.
When I first read the article, I was quite outraged that she could paint an entire country with such a broad brush. I was so upset I couldn’t even finish reading the article.
But then I thought back to my first 6 months, where an army of rain beetles came into my open window at night (I had about 1000 or so flying around, and had to use a insect spray to kill them all, then stay in a hotel overnight til they died). The constant fights with internet/cell phone/landline providers, banks, and immigration, and the occasional lonliness of being in an unfamiliar place. But after staying there for a year, everything started to fall into place and started making sense. In addition, I was putting a concerted effort into learning Mandarin and by then had local friends.
My take is that if she stayed the course a little bit longer, she would have enjoyed herself once the culture shock wore off.
So I can see where she is coming from, and in retrospect I can understand the underlying anger, but I am giving her a bit of a break as she was only there a short time and let the negative get to her, simple as that.
[quote=“Bubba 2 Guns”]My first day in Taiwan I went to the Mcdonald’s on the corner of Linsen and Zhong Xiao and it was empty save for a dumpy looking Canadian with a flag on his bag. He sidled over to me and said,
“Guess you’re not afraid of bombs.” Apparently there was a bomb placed there by an ex-army demo guy extorting money from McD’s. One of them he planted in another branch blew a policeman’s hands off.
The next night a crazy local guy smashed out all the windows of the Taipei hostel where I was staying screaming something about foreigners. That weekend I went to a heavy metal bar called “Mad-dog and Ant” met a hot heavy metal gal then almost had my head beaten in by her jealous ex-boyfriend and his six buddies with motorcycle locks. One of the guys at Taipei hostel was sitting in a piano bar the next week and was hit by a stray bullet fired by a gangster. The piano bar owner paid for his hospital bills and a one way ticket home. I moved from the hostel into a flat with three alcoholic foreigners one of whom was a pathological liar and would tell me about how Taiwan was ready for revolution. I have to tell you after being deported from Vietnam, held at gun point by militia in the PI i found Taiwan pretty tame.[/quote]
Thats one hell of an entry into La Isla Formosa !!
LOL…7-Eleven rain coat = Canadian burka!..you people crack me up!.. :roflmao:[/quote]
My guess, she wanted to play it save showing people back home how you drive in the rain … without doing water damage to her camera … 
Kind of funny, really: I had a lot of the same disjointed, lonely, alienated feelings when I visited Mississauga last summer. 
She’s done herself a diservice writing this if she aspires to be a correspondent, but whoever allowed it to be published is an even bigger nitwit.
Bubba, when I first arrived in Taipei in '96 there was a dude, american I think, who just sat around drinking cheap rum from a beer stein all day long while everyone else scrambled about finding jobs or apartments or whatever. He’d park himself up on the balcony upstairs and just sit there all day long on the drink. I finally asked him what he was up to and he said that he was waiting for the bombs to come. It was right before the first presidential election and he said he had never been in a war zone and wanted to see what it was like once the mainland invaded. Some interesting characters there for sure. Wonder if it is still going.
Dunno. I know it is harder for some people but I wonder what was happening for her to find such a daily collection of roaches on a 17th floor… I am sure our country’s university is a sister school of McGill’s. I’d like to see her staying there a few months and wrestle some 10 inch cockroaches for a real challenge.
My first reaction was to compare her behavior to people from our noble lands elite’s, who can’t bear life here in Taiwan without a maid. Not all, mind you, most adapt quite well, but I’ve had fellows from our 4th world backwaters almost slap me for offering them something to eat from a roadside stall. It is quite beneath them. And I can live with that. What I can’t stand is when they transplant a feeling of superiority and look down on all things Chinese/Taiwanese/different while sucking up all kinds of benefits just by being foreigners… gimme a break! That pisses me off.
And that is why I don’t like her conclusion: “if I had researched better, I would have knows I was going to this pestilent place”. Thanks, but no thanks.
And please note I have no rose colored glasses on: the stench around the MRT work area is getting beyond awful, and the rats must know something as they are acting up a storm. Never seen so many outside in broad daylight, one was even trying to get into MY house at midday…
She didn’t misrepresent anything. That’s how she saw things. So what? Do we all have to see things the same?
I don’t see what’s the big deal. 
Just that she just published and feeds the stereotype of: “ugh, you live in a disgusting, dirty place, with disgusting dirty ignorant people who eat cats and dogs and bugs and can’t pronounce r’s”. That’s why it bother’s me, at least.
I imagine how would I feel if someone wrote such a piece about my birthcountry.
She wrote about her impressions. She’s biased? Of course. So what? We’re all biased. She ended the article by admitting that she was unprepared to travel to Taiwan. I really don’t see why some people are upset about her perceptions. If her perceptions paint an ugly picture of Taiwan, anyone with a brain can go do their own research and find alternative impressions and descriptions. How does one person’s self-admittedly biased and subjective account libel any place? Really, why all the outrage? I don’t get it??? :eh:
Exactly. The whole piece, to me, is saying: “Look, I was a silly immature putz who should not ever have left home and because of that, I freaked out and had a miserable time.” She makes no bones whatever about her misery being entirely her OWN fault and no-one elses.
And lets not forget, either, that as recently as 2005, TONS of Taichung was (still is) disgusting and dirty. There are bugs. The article says nothing about eating cats and dogs. It mentions seeing a pig snout and yes, they DO eat that here. So do I. Where did she say the people are ignorant and can’t pronounce their r’s? I missed that part, too.
I thought she did a pretty good job, in general, of describing a rube’s culture shock, in fact.
She didn’t, but it takes that “high horse” approach. To me, since I have to listen to that kind of stuff frequently, it is especially worrisome. “Look, it’s on print!”, gives it authority.
Culture shock, my foot. She says she required a year leave to pick up the pieces of her life. You know people from where I come from “sacrifice” to come to Taiwan, and hence use coming here as a plug to demand being sent to a “better” scholarship? Seems to me this woman is painting such an ugly picture to mascarade an uneventful stay and hype it, milking it successfully now for a newspaper article, and who knows what more.
A fluff article criticizing one’s own inability to handle a foreign place/culture has what sort of authority?
Of course it was culture shock! What else would you call it? :s
So? She’s apparently a bit more delicate than some people. Unbelievable?
You don’t know that all people are unique? Some are stronger, some are weaker. That’s a surprise?
I think she described her stay as very eventful, from her perspective.
So?
So, I have no pity for her. She’s playing the victim game for her benefit. Maybe we give too much credit to this being published, maybe it is just a filler. But it stinks, far worse than those sewers. Oh, frail and feeble person, pity her after a stay in Taiwan?! Please, this ain’t hell. I can think of a thousand things harder to do and anotehr thousand places harder to live. 22 is not baby, she doe snot have my pity. Maybe it is not that she did not see another female furriner, maybe they couldn’t stand her winning! If she’s getting a benefit from her war story, I am not taking her story as “mmm, she’s right, there are roaches here”, but rather it is cheap selling of an exaggeration.
EDIT:
Imagine I make up a story to sell it to a newspaper. I make myself the victim of a robbery by a person of a racial minority. Would it be correct to expect sympathy for it?
My voabulary is faltering here at this hour but there is a word in English for that. Like false testimony, but for one’s benefit.