Some of the friendliest foreigners I’ve met here in Hsinchu are the South Africans. Just a pity they seem to blabber away in their own language whenever they can. Erm… I guess that doesn’t make them so friendly then, does it? Oh well…
[quote=“Connel”][quote=“Funk500”]I had a similar experience once when a fat waigouren bint was barking “pearl milk tea… pearl milk tea!” at a confused tea shop woman.[/quote]Hehehe… why is it that the common reaction by someone not being understood, is usually to repeat the key words louder and louder until they are understood… like volume will make a difference to the language barrier… makes me chuckle everytime. 
[/quote]I think thats a British thing.
I noticed this repeatedly by the package tour Brits in Malaga, Spain. Memories of Empire and all that, I suppose.
Although must say they were thankful for my interceding translations and I was rewarded with quite a few pints of beer and a few pink gins for my efforts.
That Spanish sun is hellish on the skin of those English roses, hey what? 
HG
Well, in Hsinchu I saw the following foreign people during one year (excluding the ‘round’ filipinos):
- A crazy older white lady living near my home. She always rides her 50 cc scooter without helmet and looks maaaad, especially in rain with her long, uncombed hair.
- A guy from the Ukraine that can’t stand the damn food in the Science Park companys cantine and heads home to eat for lunch just like me.
- Two french that always have lunch outside the Science Park too.
- Some guy on his chopper. I’m sure he’s american. Seen very often.
- Two young, blonde, very good looking ladies that live near my home but never look at me even if I’m super cute.
- A mormon near the train station that always asks me how I’m doing after I finished another Burger King meal. I keep saying no and start running.
- A black guy that always seems to hangout near Nova during the evenings
- A fat guy (I think he’s polish). He always says hello.
Besides those I haven’t met any unnice foreigners.
There are some cool statistics here iff.npa.gov.tw/enfront/accounting.php
If you want to know whats living close to you. But I don’t trust how they do the statistics.
The teacher ‘tarlooze’ vs engineer ‘aka hard working’ ratio goes like this according to those:
Teacher Hsinchu/Taichung/Tapei city: 321/737/1885
Engineer Hsinchu/Taichung/Tapei city: 616/268/903
The lower the ‘teacher’ ratio the better. But thats my personal opinion.
[quote=“engerim”] - Two young, blonde, very good looking ladies that live near my home but never look at me even if I’m super cute.
The teacher ‘tarlooze’ vs engineer ‘aka hard working’ ratio goes like this according to those:
Teacher Hsinchu (Xinzhu)/Taichung/Tapei city: 321/737/1885
Engineer Hsinchu (Xinzhu)/Taichung/Tapei city: 616/268/903
The lower the ‘teacher’ ratio the better. But thats my personal opinion.[/quote]
Hey! I’m one of those blondes. AND, if you WERE cute, I’d give you the time of day . . . 
Help me out with the ratios there, pal. I’m used to a numerator and denominator only, not the configuration you have going there [yes I admit it, I AM math challenged . . . but who needs math when you got looks anyway! JK ].
Bodo
[quote=“Bodo”][quote=“engerim”] - Two young, blonde, very good looking ladies that live near my home but never look at me even if I’m super cute.
The teacher ‘tarlooze’ vs engineer ‘aka hard working’ ratio goes like this according to those:
Teacher Hsinchu (Xinzhu) (Xinzhu)/Taichung/Tapei city: 321/737/1885
Engineer Hsinchu (Xinzhu) (Xinzhu)/Taichung/Tapei city: 616/268/903
The lower the ‘teacher’ ratio the better. But thats my personal opinion.[/quote]
Hey! I’m one of those blondes. AND, if you WERE cute, I’d give you the time of day . . .
Help me out with the ratios there, pal. I’m used to a numerator and denominator only, not the configuration you have going there [yes I admit it, I AM math challenged . . . but who needs math when you got looks anyway! JK ].
Bodo[/quote]
I’m not good in math either so don’t expect to much of those numbers. 321/737/1885 would be the numerator you are looking for (one for each city). 616/268/903 the denominator (again one for each city). So you get the following ratio:
Hsinchu: 0.52
Taichung: 2.75
Taipei: 2.09
So Hsinchu has the most nice foreigners (again just my personal opinion), based on my personal math which is based on bad police statistics.
I’m not surprised Taichung is on top. Guess its the best place to live (leaving other foreigners aside) 
[quote=“TainanCowboy”][quote=“Connel”][quote=“Funk500”]I had a similar experience once when a fat waigouren bint was barking “pearl milk tea… pearl milk tea!” at a confused tea shop woman.[/quote]Hehehe… why is it that the common reaction by someone not being understood, is usually to repeat the key words louder and louder until they are understood… like volume will make a difference to the language barrier… makes me chuckle everytime. [/quote]I think thats a British thing.
I noticed this repeatedly by the package tour Brits in Malaga, Spain. Memories of Empire and all that, I suppose.
Although must say they were thankful for my interceding translations and I was rewarded with quite a few pints of beer and a few pink gins for my efforts.[/quote]
Well…I hate it when they do that to ME…like I’ve gone native and lost the ability to speak or understand English.
I don’t know why this happens as I’m usually dressed like the Gov. of the Bank of England.
[quote=“TainanCowboy”][quote=“Connel”][quote=“Funk500”]I had a similar experience once when a fat waigouren bint was barking “pearl milk tea… pearl milk tea!” at a confused tea shop woman.[/quote]Hehehe… why is it that the common reaction by someone not being understood, is usually to repeat the key words louder and louder until they are understood… like volume will make a difference to the language barrier… makes me chuckle everytime. [/quote]I think thats a British thing.
I noticed this repeatedly by the package tour Brits in Malaga, Spain. Memories of Empire and all that, I suppose.[/quote]It is a well known fact that those foreign Johnnies wil understand the Queen’s English perfectly well if one simply speaks slowly and loudly enough!
[quote=“engerim”]
- A mormon near the train station that always asks me how I’m doing after I finished another Burger King meal. I keep saying no and start running.
- A black guy that always seems to hangout near Nova during the evenings
- A fat guy (I think he’s polish). He always says hello.
Besides those I haven’t met any unnice foreigners.
[/quote] Yeah, people who always say hello and ask how you’re doing are generally unnice.
Random tinkering…
Using those MOFA statistics on http://iff.npa.gov.tw/enfront/accounting.php, it looks like the island has 429,703 legal foreign residents… we’re only 1.8% of the population.
29% of resident foreigners are from Vietnam (125,344 total). 115,058 are Vietnamese women (wow! I had no idea there were soooo many).
There are 3 times as many Americans as Canadians (10,486 Americans to 3,259 Canadians). This comes as a big surprise to me… those numbers seem backwards to me, based on my personal experience.
There are 28252 foreigners from non-Asian countries (including those listed as “others”) or 6.5% of the foreign population.
Kinda interesting.
Edit: How in the world did my bio line turn into “38 Posts? I’m a bimbo, baby!”… haha… I hope that changes soon…
[quote]There are 3 times as many Americans as Canadians (10,486 Americans to 3,259 Canadians). This comes as a big surprise to me… those numbers seem backwards to me, based on my personal experience[/quote].
I think if you broke the statistics down further as to the number of Canadian/American English Teachers vs. other occupations the amount of Canadian English Teachers would be much more than Americans, whereas Americans here in business would dwarf Canadians.
[quote=“On The Brink”][quote]There are 3 times as many Americans as Canadians (10,486 Americans to 3,259 Canadians). This comes as a big surprise to me… those numbers seem backwards to me, based on my personal experience[/quote].
I think if you broke the statistics down further as to the number of Canadian/American English Teachers vs. other occupations the amount of Canadian English Teachers would be much more than Americans, whereas Americans here in business would dwarf Canadians.[/quote]
only 3000 plus canadians? jeez those guys must be on 24/7 rotation cos you cant throw a mantou without hitting one in taipei…guess they just like going out a lot, fair play to 'em…
I had a boring night at home and came up with this, based on the same website:
So out of the 10486 Americans in Taiwan, 1822 are teachers (17.37%)
3259 canadians total in Taiwan and 1897 are teachers (58.2%)
and 3,727 american kids under 15 (35.54% of all Americans)
This means there are more American kids than Canadians total
158 canadians are students in Taiwan (4.84% of Canadians)
1404 americans are students (13.39% of Americans)
566 koreans are students (3.5 times as many South Koreans study in Taiwan compared to Canadians).
7561 American men (72.1%)
2925 American women (27.8%) (no wonder I say “white girls” to myself when I see them on the street)…
2221 Canadian men (68.1%)
1038 Canadian women (31.8%)
And 50,652 Vietnamese “homemakers”. Haha.
For some reason, our South African friends aren’t broken out.