Forumosans are a breed of people

Hey Everyone,

I just wanted to say that forumosans in general are an adventurous breed. You may not think so but I think that anyone that moves to another country immerses themselves in another culture are a breed of their own. I think it takes bravery and open mindedness to do that; more than most people will ever know. I think there is an interconnectedness within forumosans. That you share a commonality that may be hard to perceive . Forumosans are a breed unto their own. Adventurer’s, culture seeker’s, money seekers, whatever you may be I applaud you. (As people in my country know; I am leaving my country, they look at me as another being) Someone who is willing to take risks blah de ddeee blah blah…

I think most of you are living the life; you are willing to take risks, to look at life in the eye and say I want more. I am writing this just to make sure that everyone knows that you are special and you are not “normal” and I love it and you. I can’t wait to meet some of you or all of you.

What do you think? Are you a different breed?

I think you should change that “in my country” to “in my city”. The US is far to large to be generalized by one person’s experiences. The people in my area were encouraging and were adamant about me keeping my blog regularly updated so they could keep track of my experiences here.

djkonstable,
Thanks for your kind words. The truth is that the world really has shrunk a lot in the last couple of decades. Living overseas, Taiwan included, is pretty damn easy. There’s no real hardship in coming to Taiwan. You can get by with English, watch American shows on cable TV, buy western food, and of course the Internet keeps you connected to your home country and hometown. Telephone rates are very cheap so calling home once a week is no problem at all. And so on. Many of the locals speak excellent English, and they have travelled or lived overseas.

djkonstable, that’s a very nice sentiment and I thank you for it, but really, almas john’s quite right, IMO. We’re nothing special. We just live overseas in a place that’s actually not difficult to adapt to. Now, if we were living in Bhutan or someplace, then yeah, that would be pretty individualistic I suppose, but Taiwan – well, Taipei? Nah. We’re just small fish in a small pond, really.

I searched the smilie-farm, but the best I could come up with was this one: :secret:

Most of us here live in a bubble, to some degree or other. The only one who is truly immersed in the local culture is Almas John. He spends most of his time doing Taiji or drinking tea in quaint little teahouses in the mountains, discussin the dao with old men whose beards reach their knees. Everyone else just works for a living and hangs out with other foreigners most of the time. Don’t tell anyone, or it’ll burst their bubble.

I’ve heard tell he’s also very big into flower arranging.

Thank goodness he’s out of that Kabuki phase.

That white face paint was freakin’ me out.

oh wait…thats Nipponese…never mind!

I searched the smilie-farm, but the best I could come up with was this one: :secret:

Most of us here live in a bubble, to some degree or other. The only one who is truly immersed in the local culture is Almas John. He spends most of his time doing Taiji or drinking tea in quaint little teahouses in the mountains, discussin the dao with old men whose beards reach their knees. Everyone else just works for a living and hangs out with other foreigners most of the time. Don’t tell anyone, or it’ll burst their bubble.[/quote]

Yep, that’s been my story on and off for four years, also. But now, I find all my close friends have buggered off back home. As a result, I’m left with the wife and find myself…immersed.

For some reason she doesn’t speak English to me. Even when I speak to her in English, she still answers in Chinese… :s

I’m a mutt.

djkonstable

An interesting post.

I think many of the replies to your post have been overly modest, or the posters have simply forgotten what they themselves have achieved. Personally, I can think of very few people back home that would a) want to, or b) have the ability to uproot and absorb themselves into a completely different society. Those that do succeed are (in your own words) brave and open minded at key times. When did the last successful expatriate deny the environment they found themselves living in, or give up when the going got tough?

Almos John wrote: There’s no real hardship in coming to Taiwan…

That sentence sums it all up for me. Only someone with an expatriate mindset would be able to look at it with such simplicity. To most folk there are literally hundreds of hardships and anxieties associated with moving somewhere, especially somewhere as ‘different’ as Taiwan.

Damn, right. It’s only just this year that semi-affordable all-peanuts peanut butter has come to this windswept land.

What your saying could be true. I mean I literally lived in a tent in the Yukon for the five months before coming to Taiwan, so my defintion of the soft-life is a little skewed. Flush toilets? Hot showers? My cup runneth over.

[quote=“almas john”]djkonstable,
There’s no real hardship in coming to Taiwan. You can get by with English, watch American shows on cable TV, buy western food, and of course the Internet keeps you connected to your home country and hometown. Telephone rates are very cheap so calling home once a week is no problem at all. And so on. Many of the locals speak excellent English, and they have travelled or lived overseas.[/quote]

It wasn’t when I first came here, which really wasn’t that long ago. Young people today have it so easy.:cookie: They didn’t always have calling cards here, you know, and of course, you know the golden rule–there is never an English speaker around when you really need one.

[quote=“BlackAdder”]Almos John wrote: There’s no real hardship in coming to Taiwan…

That sentence sums it all up for me. Only someone with an expatriate mindset would be able to look at it with such simplicity. To most folk there are literally hundreds of hardships and anxieties associated with moving somewhere, especially somewhere as ‘different’ as Taiwan.[/quote]

Not ‘only’ people with an expatriate mindset; anyone with a good degree of common sense can make the transition from living in one’s home country to living in Taiwan or pretty much anywhere else. The hardships mentioned above are hardly hardships that cannot be dealt with by anyone with the will to complete the undertaking. The issues associated with living abroad are pretty much the same as the ones at home it’s just that they might occur in an unfamilar order in an unfamiliar tongue. Often setting up is made easier by local people wishing to show you the good side of their country in which you have chosen to live.

BroonAdjusted

Lolita… um I mean Loretta wrote [quote] The only one who is truly immersed in the local culture is Almas John. He spends most of his time doing Taiji or drinking tea in quaint little teahouses in the mountains,…[/quote]

Well, I must admit, I have certainly immersed myself into the local tea culture. :slight_smile:

BlackAdder wrote:

I said that there’s no “real hardship” - in other words, extreme privation and suffering - but of course there is a fair amount of stress moving to a new country and starting a new job. I went through a period of cultural adjustment; in fact, it took me a couple of years, three actually, to get a taste for the local tea.

From my personal point of view, Taiwan has been my tamest “adventure”. I mildly despise myself for staying here and enjoying a cushy lifestyle.

In fact, our “cushy” lifestyles can be snatched away on a moment’s notice. Even the JFRV and PARC holders can have their lives come crumbling around them at the whim of some over-aggressive police officer (just ask the two guys that were sitting in the wrong park at the wrong time), or a dickhead boss (plently of those around) or a jilted spouse.

Like Mucha Man, I lived in my van, down by the river, for the entire winter of 97/98. Sure, I was in North America’s #1 ski resort and the river was called The River of Golden Dreams. I was a slapshot away from the local rink and played hockey every morning for my hot shower. As tough as it may sound, I cherish the memory of that winter as being the best one on record.

After 5 years in Taiwan, I’ve built myself an incredibly comfy lifestyle. I want for very little. Yet, my mind is constantly plagued by the fact that I am not competely in control of my destiny. I soldier on, as all of us do. But the song remains the same. My boss could have a bad day, take it out on me and lo and behold, I have to leave in 7 days. Depending on just how bad a day he (figuratively) might be having, he could bar me from getting another work permit as well.

The typical things one might expect to encounter living in a foreign land are inconsequential compared to this malaise, this uncertainty of fate.

Now were should I deposit this 2 NT?

Yes. I recently had a friend and his whole family relocate on a moment’s notice. Sucks for him. He owned a business here. Now he is starting all over back in the US.

Yikes. Can you tell us any more?

Yikes. Can you tell us any more?[/quote]

Please tell us more. That sounds terrible. What in the world happened?

[quote=“almas john”]djkonstable,
Thanks for your kind words. The truth is that the world really has shrunk a lot in the last couple of decades. Living overseas, Taiwan included, is pretty damn easy. There’s no real hardship in coming to Taiwan. You can get by with English, watch American shows on cable TV, buy western food, and of course the Internet keeps you connected to your home country and hometown. Telephone rates are very cheap so calling home once a week is no problem at all. And so on. Many of the locals speak excellent English, and they have travelled or lived overseas.[/quote]

The above is true now that we’re all living here, settled in, learned how to ride the buses and MRT, figured out how to get an apartment and a job, grown accustomed to the heat, humidity, pollution and irritating habits of local people, learned where to find and how to order the foods we like, and so forth, for some of us without having the ability to say more than a few words in Chinese. But if one turns back the clock, way way back to the beginning, when each of us first obtained a passport and flew overseas for the first time, it WAS a big deal.

For Europeans and Australians it may not be such a big deal traveling to foreign countries, but most Americans speak only English, do not have a passport and have never traveled outside of the country. Although I traveled extensively in the US during my childhood and lived in many places, I remember what a huge adventure it was when I first flew to Asia (to Bangkok on an open-ended adventure that would take me through many countries over a year). I remember being bowled over at first by the new sights, sounds, smells and tastes. Sure, Taipei’s not all that exotic, but for people who never left their western country, the thought of getting on a plane and flying to Thailand. . . er, Taiwan, whatever, what’s the difference. . . is like flying to the moon.

When I returned to the US after my first long adventure in SE Asia, I went to visit my best old friend, told him stories, showed him photos of hiking in the Himalayas, riding elephants in Thailand, and sitting by the river in Laos. He was enthralled by it all and said he’d love to join me on my next trip. But he never did, because he was getting good at his golf game and didn’t want to take time away from it (that and he was having trouble saving money as he spent it all on beer). So, it turns out he was a weenie – too timid and domestic to even get on the plane.

And then there are all the people who have the courage to get on the plane, who make it over here and start their new job at Hess, which they lined up at home before leaving, but after a month or two, when they first discover the boss is a liar, the job wasn’t what they had in mind, the city’s too noisy, they miss their family, and they pack it up and head home in a matter of months.

So, I agree completely with the OP. I do think we’re an adventurous bunch and that is something that most forumosans share. True, Taipei’s not the Heart of Darkness. Perhaps we’d be more adventurous if we worked in a small village in Cambodia or in the closed off kingdom of Bhutan. But if we did that soon enough we would feel that was perfectly routine as well. Probably those who have lived in space stations no longer feel that’s a big deal because, heck, dozens of people have lived there before.

I must admit that there are times when I find it really tough here. Mrs. T is a kiwi like myself, so I have found myself in a fairly unique situation compared with my peers here on forumosa.

On one hand, there are many things I have to deal with because we are both foreigners…such as, not being able to deal very well with mail, phone calls, building security, finding out info, getting around etc etc.
Sometimes it’s the grind of getting ANOTHER thing to deal with and needing to enlist the help of a work colleague just to find out the WTF is going on just gets really tedious after a while. It’s pretty easy to let one small thing pile onto of another and another until the stress level is just bubbling under the surface, no doing anyone any good.

On the other hand, I absolutely love the fact that we have the same sense of humor, similar mindsets, family in the same place, and we both call the same place ‘home’. When it comes time to leave Taiwan (and it will come) I take a great deal of comfort knowing that no matter where we end up, we will be in it together. That is one of the things I think about when this place gets me down.