[quote=“QuietMountain”]
Why does this city have such an appalling lack of public trashcans? I hate having to walk blocks just to throw out my trash. It drives me crazy… :fume: :help:
Ok… I feel better now, thanks for your attention.[/quote]
I noticed the same thing in Taipei. I almost decided to consider the lack of trash cans as license to litter! However, I found that I could always find a trash can in front of a 7-11, and those are ubiquitous.
Peeves so far for '04:The security guard at your building who looks at you funny just cuz you bring home a different girl every weekend
Those KMT flag wavers near CKS Memorial… it’s over. Go home. Stop yelling “Chen Shui Bian is liar” in bad English every time a Westerner goes by.
The fact that Taipei has the tallest building in the world, which isn’t even very attractive, and will be 1/2 vacant because it’s a totally unnecessary amount of office space.
Witholding 1/6 of your annual salary and returning it to you before Chinese New Year, calling it a ‘Year End Bonus’.
I agree about the security guard.
Only it’s not the fact that I come home with a different girl each weekend. It’s the pure fact that I exist in his building.
He is never there when a package arrives, so I must go to Xin Yi Rd Sec. 4 or 5 from Yung He. Or when the gas company man arrives to check for the whole building, he tells the guy to ring our buzzer, knowing our chinese doesn’t cover gas meters. I can hear him in the background. And on and on. We even take our own garbage out sometimes, unlike everyone else in the building.
And I PAY him monthly. I hate this man. :fume:
Thanks Maoman, I feel so much better now! New thread is good! 
Receipts!
You keep them thinking you might win something in the receipt lottery. They clutter up your apartment. They find their way into everything you have. They fall on the ground every time you grab something from your pocket. They end up in the laundry. Then when the winning numbers are announced, you forget (or don’t bother) to see if you won anything.
QuietMountain - this display of tightness (which means public rubbish bins in Taipei would be full to overflowing with household rubbish) extends in all buildings I have lived in to the turning off of stairwell lights.
Okay, well done chaps, what a wonderful virtue you have in turning off lights and stumbling around in the dark. There are six floors and six forty Watt bulbs. Every hour they use 240 Watts, taking 4.167 hours to generate a kilowatt hour of electricity cost. That’s 5.76 kWh a day, and 2100 a year. A whopping NT$5600 a year. NT$940 each. A year. And that’s if they were left on 24 hours a day.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr !
So, instead of public trash cans (i.e., rubbish bins, for our non-American friends 
) overflowing with household trash, we have streets, bike-baskets, and other open spaces littered with trash? I mean, I remember seeing the base of a lamp post, which was missing a medal cover, filled to capacity with the detrius of Taipei. Any convenient place, I guess… just not public trash cans. To hell with what the city looks like! 
Perhaps if they didn’t make people wait on the side of the road for the music truck to roll by and pick up the trash, people wouldn’t be stuffing the trash into public trash cans to avoid the wait. And, then, gasp they might actually be able to put them back on the street. Is this a common thing in Asia or is this just Taipei?
It seems to me that in other cities I’ve been in, not just in America, there are dumpsters or some sort of curbside pickup. You either put your trash in the dumpster for your building or once a week you leave your trash on the curb. Either way, a truck comes along and picks it up. People don’t have that much trouble following it – i.e., they aren’t leaving it out there early – and the city is able to have a sufficient amount of public trash cans around.
Anyway… cest la vie… as they say!! Just another of Taipei’s charms 
Thank you for letting me say this:
I hate the garbage truck…I hate the music, I hate nagging my other half to go put out the trash at 10:03, or helping him do it because it is so bloody inconvenient that itall piled up over two weeks.
The 1 lone palm tree in JINGMEI whose base has been stuffed to the rafters with more crap then a service latrine after thanksgiving dinner.
Special garbage bags that are outrageously priced.
Run on sentences-(see number 1 
)
A friend of mine pointed out to me there is a huge business opportunity in taking people’s rubbish out for them and throwing it in the back of the bin lorry. It’s a wonder the enterprising Taiwanese haven’t latched onto this. I would certainly pay to have my rubbish disposed of and not have to stand out waiting for the poo truck. Think of all the shitty bog roll (never mind all the other muck and oomska) going in the back of those trucks. Not somewhere I want to be after a hard day’s pretending to work.
Hexuan, live in a decent building. I did in Taipei, and they took care of the rubbish for me. Down here on the hill, they have well-encapsulated dumpsters for household trash, which are emptied daily.
In the good old days, people could leave their rubbish at pre-designated places, where the dump trucks would pick it up, but they were only supposed to do that say once every other day or so.
It did non work, as people threw their rubbish there at all times. It stank, and the stray dogs had a very good source of food. They multiplied partly as a result of this.
I would therefore prefer the music of the dump trucks to rubbish everywhere as in the old days.
Rude and inconsiderate people will sum up pretty much all my pet peeves
Yes, I’m a tad irritated today.
A Taiwanese friend of mine just told me tonight the reason that so many people would put household trash in public trash cans, causing their removal, was because the city government instituted this “You-can-only-use-our-outrageously-expensive-blue-bags” policy. Instead of buying the bags, most people would stuff the trash in public trash cans.
My apartment building, luckily, collects the trash for us. So, we do not have to wait for the music truck. However, we still have to use those bags, and get scolded if we don’t.
Since garbage is the topic…at my friends’ building the occupants leave their garbage in front of the elevators (every day!). Someone comes and picks it up for them. Now that’s gross! The garbage is there every time I drop by.
At our place there are big bins in the stairwell. So, we don’t have to go chasing after the truck.
Yeah it’s just tightness and general lack of interest in the law. Notice the increase in the numbers of people riding bicycles ? Funny how that coincided with the new traffic fine regime, isn’t it ?
So now we’ve got no public litter bins, and cyclists who ride over the top of you, through red lights, across three lanes of traffic… not at all, in fact, like “Mainland China”.
Typical Taiwan government. Introduce a “law” and then fail to think about enforcing it. Hey guys ! You can have public trash receptacles and charge for refuse collection !
:fume: my newest pet peeve :fume:
Changing the access system to our compound from a perfectly alright lock to be opened with keys to a microchip reader system on a friday afternoon and then not being available all weekend for us poor buggers none of which was able to open the f*cking door from outside.
What’s worse: there is no back-up system for that stupid magnetic lock. This means that probably a) during a blackout, there is no way to either open the door or keeping it locked and b) worse, in case of emergency, there is no fcking way to open the fcking door from inside without a chip. Does anybody know an authority to complain about that? There must be laws surely?
:fume: :fume: :fume: :fume:
when you go past a store and there is (usually)a male with a hose pipe hosing the road in front of his store. But the action seems pointless. Then you go back about 10 mins later and they are still doing it…
Not a peeve - Sprinklers used in the rain.
Saw that at lotus hill a few times…
I have to admit, I am thoroughly irritated at these internet cafes now. Their systems are loaded with viruses and Bill alone knows what else. The one I’m at right now, the first computer they put me on kept locking its internet connection every five minutes. The second one wouldn’t boot. This third one has a virus that keeps opening an advertising window in the corner of the screen, and another virus that keeps trying to redirect IE to a PayPal website every single time I open a new window.
I was trying to send out resumes from one last Friday, and it had something on it which destroyed the floppy disk that I’d saved my resume on. The owner (who speaks perfect English, and who is a nice guy) wouldn’t admit that there was anything wrong with the machine – he kept insisting the disk must be defective, even though it worked fine on two other boxes earlier in the day.
I just don’t understand these places. Why not use something that can’t be infected by viruses? Why not clean up their machines once a month or so? If they have to use Windows, why not install firewalls and block the pinheads from installing Kazaa?
Moles with really long hairs growing out of them, especially when the rest of the face is clean-shaven. Hey, you missed a spot!!
Moles in odd places, like on the end of the nose or the middle of the forehead. Don’t they know that a brief, inexpensive visit to the dermatologist could improve their looks by 1000%?
“An-ne an-ne an-ne hit-e hit-e hit-e…”. Just say what you want to say.
Scooters with car alarms.
The Taipei City Government’s puritanical bent (no betelnut girls; no video games; etc.)
No right turn on red. Enforced.
Chris I agree with the mole thing. It’s worse when they are serving your neo roh mien.
No public bins.
People using firworks on beaches and leaving those sharp little sticks in the sand for me to stand on. :fume:
People who work in teashops and can’t/won’t try to understand when I say ‘half sugar’ (I know my pronunciation is bloody awful but what the fuck else could I be trying to say at a teashop?) :fume:
The fixation with shopping and watching tv as leisure activities.
the new announcement on the MRT system about penalities for eating etc…the most obnoxious american-chinese whine you can imagine, the bitch pluralises gum to gums, the absurdity of warning foreigners about eating betelnut on the MRT…i could go on; suffice to say i block my ears when it comes on (about three times from tamsui to main station) :fume: