Life Sentence on the Rock

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
41

Wow! So many great posts in this thread. I especially like the one by MachoMan (Damn you, spellchecker!) You should write a book; at least a pamphlet . . .

Mother, I really think you need to think things through very carefully and take this in slow steps.

First, you need to have a good cry. I recommend watching this video on your new home entertainment system . . . forty times oughtta do.

When I say “cry”, I don’t mean “a few tears well up in your eyes”; I mean bawl like a baby, throw your head back and wail, tear out a few patches of hair, beat yourself over the head with your motorcycle helmet (left hand) and wok (right hand) alternating.

Doesn’t that feel better? :neutral:

Now , look over at your Chrissmuss tree, gaze at a picture of your lovely daughter, turn the picture of your wife to the wall (you can omit this step if you still like her), and crank up this video. It’s time to dance! :discodance:

No! Don’t dance like THAT! :noway: You look like you’re drivin a tractor! Go back to the first video and learn a few moves. Heck! You might as well get your surfboard outta the closet and step aboard! Four or five hours of Good Vibrations should put you in the mood.

Next, roll yourself a fat one. Sing along and Enjoy!

Maybe you shouldn’t try to sing so loud if you don’t know the words.

This one has easier lyrics.

Is this the way you remember California? Me too! It’s OK if you want to dance some more or even cry a bit more.

This one’s fun! Open up your window. Smell that ocean air!
See how loud you can sing the OOOOOOOEEEEEEE! OOOOEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOEEEEEEOOOOOOOEEEE!

Get your wife and girl in their bikinis. See if they can gogo like the girls in this one. If the wife and kid are out, point the speakers outside, and look for some willing neighbors.

Put up a few posters in your new “California Room”; beach to the left, waves dead ahead, and a big Woodie to the right.

Close your eyes. You are home.

42

California Dreamin is way better then California livin.

43

Excellent post and great videos. I haven’t heard those songs in years, but we had the Surfin USA album as a kid and it got a flogging.

I’m going to leave Taiwan after being here for many years. I had a friend die here a few years back, I don’t think he minded dying in Taipei but the prospect scared the shit out of me. It’s the weather and the kids. I want my kids to have both worlds. It is a daunting prospect to be packing up a life here, so it is not an easy decision. I have no idea how I’ll make decent money in Australia, but I’ve saved enough to buy a house and car which given Australian property prices should pretty much clean me out.

44

Don’t buy a property in Australia until the property bust occurs. Give it a couple of years at least. Your money will stretch a lot further.

45

I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic lately myself. My plan is still on to leave my career here and try to start a new one in Taiwan. I know that I will lose a lot of income as there is no way I will get the same money as I do in Canada. But too be honest, I really enjoyed my time in Taiwan when I was there for that year, and I miss being there every day.
MT, I really feel that you would most likely move and then regret it like I did (or maybe not) The laid back lifestyle, the warm weather, the great beaches, the beautiful mountainside and coast, etc, are hard to find anywhere else. I look at what we have in Toronto… skyscrapers everywhere, but it takes hours to get out of the concrete jungle into a nice area. And if you consider flat land and forest and trees beautiful, which I don’t.

The part that does scare me is what you mentioned, that being losing all career experience in your home country. But if you really want to make Taiwan home, I’m sure that will all fade to the background. Too be honest, I am young and have a great career now, but I still feel empty because I realized that isn’t my only drive in life to just be successful materially, although others may feel differently. Career is very important, but so is a balanced life which I feel Taiwan provides quite nicely.

But if you really don’t care to stay, I wouldn’t because you may regret it in the future with many what if scenarios running through your mind. Tough call…

Taiwan really is a hotel California. :smiley:

46

I’ve been waiting for the property bubble to pop here in Toronto, but it never does. The fundamentals are there, but people keep spending the money on new homes, so it may go on indefinitely it seems.
Even Taiwan is seriously overpriced with no corrections in sight.

47

Well everything goes in cycles, right now Canada and Australia are at their current peak, you can tell that by the income/affordability ratio. As we all know there is actually no shortage of space in Canada or Australia, not like Taiwan! Plus it is really only Taipei city and environs in Taiwan that has severely overpriced property. You can trace a common theme through all of this…China.

Dan, you have a very interesting view of Taiwan. For me Taiwan is not balanced at all, it’s pretty much all work for many people, Taipei especially, as it is so expensive to live there now compared to incomes. Taichung and down South the pace is much more relaxed, people clock off on time and go home and do other stuff. Then the education system is nuts and literally pressure cooks kids.
Also where I am from really does have great beaches, countryside etc, not like largea areas of Taiwan. I was literally horrified when I first saw the way concrete is used on rivers and the coast here, I had never imagined you could do that in all honesty (Taiwan is not the only country that does this, Japan, Korea, China have concreted vast areas too). I also had never really experience air pollution until living in Taiwan (at least not since the 1980s when the city I grew up in banned burning coal to heat houses, the air literally cleaned up overnight, it taught me a lesson that things CAN improve if the right policies are put in place by the government).
Taiwan does have great mountains though and far more wildlife.

48

i figure I can make it out through those old Japanese tunnels. spending my days whittling chess pieces, my nights…

49

Sometimes the human spirit needs to feel like it can soar while earthbound. To feel like you can parachute to another life is a balm to ones soul when you are having a tough day. Even if you know you are not going to strap on that chute and are not too sure it even works. Its like that high of having that lotto ticket in ones pocket. Before the numbers open, its a dream, an escape hatch, a vent. Its value , unread, is soothing. Just to think that it COULD all be better is in itself sometimes better.

50

These are all what’s bad about California, but isn’t Taiwan headed in that general direction, minus the crime and drugs? for now at least.

51

MT can continue contributing to the Taiwan JianBao ka even if overseas and then come back if any major issues, but I doubt they will be so loose on the rules in the next few years.

52

Just move back. I don’t understand all these people trying to talk you out of it. You grew up in the states, you know what California is like and what to expect. Sure the economy is down, buts its down everywhere unless you live in the developing world(China, India, etc), but then again in the developing world the only place to go IS up, if it went down that’d be ridiculous.

As far as health care, I’m going back in March and looked up health care plans and I’ll be doing a plan that’ll run me a little less than $100 a month(I’m buying my own plan cuz I’ll be a student). I’ll pay 20 bux to see a doctor and fill a prescription and 80% of any emergency costs are covered by insurance. Also with the new reforms they can’t deny coverage or claim pre-existing anymore so you’re covered. I’ve never had problems with health care in the states growing up, but I do agree its a shame so many people aren’t covered.

Someone mentioned social security. What kind of retirement plan do you have in Taiwan? As a foreigner…none. And Taiwanese social security? Yah, right…Taiwanese social security is having your children send you home half their paycheck when they start working, unless you were a civil servant or have a private pension, Taiwanese social security will get you something like 10,000NT a month! That won’t even buy me food for a month! Social security in Taiwan is your family!

I read your post and I can tell that you want to do is go home. Isn’t it better to go home and try than not try at all. IF YOUR HEART IS TELLING YOU TO DO SOMETHING, DO IT! You’re 50 years old, you don’t want to wait another 10 years than wonder what if. The states are a beautiful place, particularly California. I’d hate myself if I didn’t get to travel and enjoy all mother nature has to offer there.

53

Yeah , you should go back for awhile if you can. IF that is tugging at your heart. Home is where the heart is.

Like for me , im sure glad im in california (not) :slight_smile:

54

Because to move back without employment would mean wasting tens of thousands of US$ as he settled in and looked for work. Work which is by no means guaranteed to come for a long time. He has no unemployment insurance to draw on in the meantime, nor even medical (which will be pricey for a family of three). Going back he’s be just living off his savings. Really dumb move at this point imho.

55

That bout sums it up. Sometimes the butt just cant go where the heart wants ta.

56

It’s really not a great time now in the US from what I have heard…but it’s such a big country there are always opportunities. I’d recommend trying to take a month or two off work without quitting the job there and then heading back, bring the family if possible and look for a job while they take a vacation. Actually how I got my job last year was something similar, I was about to start a govt job here but gave myself 6 weeks to look for something else before the start date…worked out okay in the end although very stressful at the time (although the govt job does sound enticing sometimes…snoozing my life away).

57

That’s not true – my employer, by law, has to pay me 2 months salary for every year I work at his company prior to my retirement – and at the rate of my salary at the time I retire (which is the highest). After 15 years at that company, it comes to quite a little chunk of change.

In addition to that, the amount that has accumulated in the government fund over 20+ years of working – while not huge – is fairly substantial.

To say nothing of the fact that over the years I have been able to invest a goodly amount of money in a special retirement fund. I have been able to afford to put that money away here (and would not have been able to do it “back there”), because the government here doesn’t take 1/3 of my salary in taxes, like the government back there would. I could also afford to buy and pay for 2 houses for the same reason.

While I am going to have to live somewhat more carefully after I retire than I do now, I will be far better off than if I had worked for all those years “back home” and retired with nothing but a paltry social security check. Between the higher cost of living and the higher taxes, I barely had two dimes to rub together back then.

[I’m not saying this to knock taxes, btw, I feel taxes are necessary for the social welfare. Except the taxes aren’t being used for the social welfare these days – cut spending on social welfare issues and give billions of the tax dollars to the rich so they can give each other bonuses. – But this is the subject of a different thread.]

58

OP, I lived in Oz for 7 years, Laos for 18 months and am a Brit born and bred. Have been back here 15 years now. :astonished:
I get homesick for whatever place I happen to not be living in at the time. Those places you compared Taiwan to - Sweden, Paris, etc. They aren’t special if you live there, any more than California will be to you once you’ve been back for 6 months. We’re coming out to Taiwan next year and will hopefully be there about 6 years before returning to the UK in time to fulfil the 3 year rule for university education (what a joke that is, by the time we come back local students’ fees will be as high as overseas’). Through experience, I know that living in Taiwan will be a great novelty for a while, then I’ll get homesick for one or other of the countries I’ve lived in and Taiwan will feel like nothing special. It’s just a fact of human nature that the grass always seems greener.
It seems to me the two most significant facts you need to weigh up are your parents and your employment prospects. I’ve no doubt the headhunter is right, you don’t stand much prospect of landing a good job unless through a contact. And the US is not the place to be living as you enter into late middle age from a healthcare point of view. Plenty of horror stories there. I take it you’ve asked your parents if they’d like to come out to live in Taiwan, maybe a few months of the year even?
I’ll stop blathering now and get back to work, but I just wanted to say, don’t imagine that California will feel like a better place to live on any long term basis. You’ll miss Taiwan badly soon enough.

59

Any college educated person working in the states who actually made something of themselves would have a 401k, or a gov’t pension for working for the federal gov’t, not a state or local gov’t. What did you do back home anyways?

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Any college educated person working in the states who actually made something of themselves would have a 401k, or a gov’t pension for working for the federal gov’t, not a state or local gov’t. What did you do back home anyways?[/quote]

Um…there are lots of college-educated people in the US who work for small startup companies or are self-employed, and we do not enjoy 401ks and other perks of corporate life.