Maybe bear’s identity was somehow jumbled with Cow and Jesus.
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What kind of slums do you people live in… 
I’m not rising to your bait man.
tando it will be just me moving. Not worried about my current care (sales analyst), that’s why I’m okay making this huge move into a different career.
Sorry I’ve been quiet all - I’ve read everything here that was said, some really good advice here and I really appreciate it 
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Actually if they changed it to “Taibei” it’d be annoying as all get out.
I think the snark comes from my new stomach meds, they’re messing with my head in a big way, feel like everything is happened in fast forward. 
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That’s quite a bold statement. I can assure you, it’s not the case.
It’s just a matter of what you make of it. I bet if you lived in NYC and preferred warm weather and cruise around in a convertible. One does not simply do that year round in NYC.
Need an Asian city comparison? How about living in downtown Shanghai, Hong Kong or Tokyo, but you prefer peace, quiet and the outdoors. Mind you, it’s not impossible to take a bus or travel a bit outside of the city centers to get to nature, but you wouldn’t move into the center of the city if peace and quiet is a major requirements of your life, right?
What I’m trying to get at is…maybe Taipei doesn’t offer what you want or need, but I wouldn’t go as far as saying it’s dull and has nothing going on. If it is dull, not sure how my calendar is practically full every week with activities after work and on the weekends.
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I love Taiwan and want to live there long term, but there are a few downsides (many of which have already been mentioned). My biggest problem was that, although I found it relatively easy to meet people, and even to go on dates, compared to at home in London, I found it very difficult to meet people I really clicked with. I’m very political, and (at the risk of sounding pretentious) I like discussing subjects like literature and philosophy. In London, I think it’s pretty easy to meet like-minded people, but in Taiwan I usually just don’t know what to talk about with people, and it started knocking my confidence (“I guess I’m just a really boring person.”). I’m really bad at small talk and endlessly discussing food and sleeping (the biggest hobbies on the island, apparently).
I also found the same problem with popular culture. For instance, I listen to older music, particularly rock & roll, blues, jazz, etc. Whenever I go to Japan, I find it easy to meet people who share my interests, but I’ve found it really rare in Taiwan.
That said, every now and then I do meet Taiwanese people who aren’t superficial, who care about what’s going on in the world on a deep level, and have somehow broken free of the dogmatic conformity that’s expected of you in their society, and those people are usually awesome. From my own experiences, I’ve found those kinds of people tend to be women and I’ve found it particularly difficult to make friends with local men. But my friendship situation is definitely a case of “quality over quantity” in Taiwan, so I can’t complain.
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I feel very much the same as you do. Tough to meet and make friends that have exactly the same list of interests and hobbies as you do. I like to ride bikes, drink beer and play video games. I do not have a shortage of local friends who like to ride bikes, but the majority of them would not drink a drop of alcohol. Most of them play video games, but we tend to play different kinds of games. So, I have different groups of friends for different activities here in Taiwan.
I think it’s the cultural upbringing. I bet if you met someone girl or guy (in Taiwan), that spent a fair amount of time in London and went through the school system there, they would have similar interests and would be able to hold a conversation that didn’t revolve around sleeping and eating.
I can very much relate to this. I love going for a drink, but most Taiwanese people I know don’t and many of them even look down on it. I feel like there isn’t much of a drinking culture there, unlike in nearby Japan and Korea.
I can also relate to your experience with video games. I’m a massive gamer and games are really huge in Taiwan, so I should be happy. However, being a “gamer” in Taiwan seems to mean playing generic mobile games and Three Kingdoms-influenced MMORPGs that don’t appeal to me at all. Again, the situation is so different in Japan. I love Taiwan, but I must admit that I often feel like I picked the wrong country!
It sounds like you picked the wrong country alright, stay in London or move to Japan. Seriously.
Well, this is a thread about “downsides” to moving to Taiwan. Trust me, I could write essays on why I love living in Taiwan so much. Not being able to go drinking or game with locals (which says nothing of my foreign friends here) is a very small price to pay compared to everything I love about Taiwan that I can’t get elsewhere. 
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slightly disagree. i think there are plenty of locals who do go drinking. its just a different type of drinking. re chao / izakaya / ktv drinking. plenty of people are doin this every weekend. i dig the first two but don’t care for ktv.
to your other post i feel i must fit in slightly, i love talking about food, i guess its an easy way to get along with the locals.
Izakaya is them little yak shacks, yeah?
They friggin rule
Keep looking. They’re out there. Although I have the same complaint about finding locals who like to drink, the guys I do sports with don’t fall under this category. The Xiwan Bike Club often goes for a meal after their long rides and I always see Taiwan Beer on their table (I don’t join them on their long rides). The two guys I went to Taitung with for a triathlon recently drank me under the table. The night before the race they were drinking. And then on the night of (after the race), I heard they were up until 2 am drinking scotch (I bailed out at around 10 pm). So they’re out there definitely!
Edit: If you set up a ride followed by drinks I’ll go. I can probably find others to go too (like my friend who insisted on 7-11 beers at 10 am after our ride- still have that picture)! I guess just take cabs home? I’m free after my 5/13 triathlon. How about Ed’s Diner not far from the bike path after a mountain ride? Anyway, set it up and I’ll go.
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Yeah agreed. In my experience the older generation can drink a lot. I’ve a few drinking partners who are in their 40s and lemme tell you - those old dudes can keep up with me! Bottles of whiskey get polished off like it’s nothing.
However, the Taiwanese in their 20s that I’ve met either don’t drink or can’t. I once saw a dude get wasted on a 5% can of Taiwan beer. Just one. That stuff is like water so I’m still amazed that was even possible.
Also, here is a little different drinking culture. Back home people will go to bars to drink and socialize but from my experience it’s a lot more common here to go to a restaurant or eatery with a few friends and everyone brings a bottle. My advice is to mingle with the older generation. They’re more interesting. I’m quite young but they have a lot of interesting insight into Taiwan that the younger generation don’t have. They’ll be no boring topics of sleep as a hobby with older dudes. They’re from a go getter generation
This stuff kept my school shoes looking sharp!
I have no doubts that they are out there. I do have ONE friend that I ride bikes with and we’re at the somewhat same skill level and he would not say no to a drink. Nonetheless, being buzzed or even drunk in the middle of the day after a ride results in my weekend not being productive. So we tend to do the drinking in the evening.
I’ll take note of when you’re free! We haven’t ridden in awhile!
Hell yeah those guys in their 40s can drink you to the ground. I’ve been here for awhile and I still can’t drink a drop of gao liang for my life. They drink that like it’s water.
As for the 20 somethings, in my experience, it’s half and half. Hard to find an in between. Half of them don’t drink to be social, they drink to get stupid drunk and end up on the ground. Whereas the other half are willing to drink, but not too much. Personally, I don’t judge, but just hard to find someone on the same page as you. Someone that’s willing to down 2-4 beers on a work night and just talk about everything aside from sleeping and eating.
Honestly, no hate on the 20 somethings. I 100% blame the system. By the time they can actually be social, they are 17-18 and have zero clues how to act around people other than their classmates, teachers and relatives.
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To join in with the generalisations, IME Taiwanese guys remind me of the Northern Irish side of my family. They’re either teetotal or seriously hard drinkers. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground.
I remember when I first taught an adult class and one of the guys asked me out for a drink afterwards. He finished more than half a bottle of whisky before I’d finished my pint. It was mind-blowing. After he’d finished the whisky he ordered one of those half bottles of gaoliang. He didn’t seem to get pissed, either, just sweated a lot and went a bit red.
Another story about him. He had a health check from work and not surprisingly his liver function wasn’t too healthy. So, in order to cut down he quit the gaoliang and whisky and instead started drinking neat gin in small cups. He didn’t consider this in any way odd.
Maybe because alcohol is poison