Russian Student attacked?

Hey, no problem. My first reaction is always that I must be right but in retrospect I should be careful what I say. Taiwan is a pretty small place. I wouldn’t want anyone to smack me around for repeating …ahem… rumors. As far as logging in, I forgot my password and keep trying to get the system to send me a new one, but it never does. Until it does, I am stuck in the . Somebody said something about SS? I hope you deleted it before he saw it. He’s a sensitive bloke, but woe be it upon anyone who riles him. He be proficient with both pen and sword.

What is this? More press for Scanlan?
give me a break.

i reckon he’s one of the moderators. hey angst, are you really he?

This “SS” guy sounds like a real class act … or NOT.

Anyway, with regards to violence, I think the Chinese concept of “face” increases the likelihood of them resorting to violence when they feel insulted … moreso than with Americans who can sometimes more easily brush off insults … I think the best way to behave yourself in a country such as this is to follow the advice of Teddy Roosevelt and “speak softly but carry a big stick” … I do my best to always be humble and always play up the “face” thing for people … and it goes a long way. However, if some idiot Taiwanese just decided to take out his frustrations on me because I’m white, he would soon find out first-hand how good ten years of martial arts training can do … especially when it’s the real stuff (not the sissy stuff that they teach you back in the States and most of the commercialized stuff they do here either) … I trained one-on-one with an old Chinese dude in the mainland, as well as Qinna from a colonel in the PLA Airforce. Despite that, I think violence should be avoided entirely if possible, especially considering we are “guests” in this country … we can’t avoid psycho xenophobic Taiwanese, but we can avoid being obnoxious and getting sloppy drunk in bars … just use some common sense and politeness.

quote:
you are right. Traffic is the other big danger zone in Taiwan. You didn't deserve what happened to you, but now I bet you won't initiate a conflict with someone in traffic. Calling attention to a wrong is absolutely starting a conflict. Just let it go. Usually, you can control if a conflict happens, but not what happens after it is started.

This is a really difficult one. The way some people drive here drives me crazy. I know where you’re coming from, and after having seen a meter long metal ‘flashlight’ drawn, and had a taxi try to ram me off the road, I never give the finger anymore no matter how close the guy came to killing me.

I’ve given this a bit of thought though and I think one of the reasons people here drive with such a blatant disregard for other people’s lives is that they get away with it. There’s no social control whatsoever. If someone pulls across theree lanes of traffic to make a right-hand turn, without indicating, in front of everyone else, noone even beeps their horns. So I think it’s almost a duty to toot or something to ‘pull people up’ or something. I also think it’s a duty to make a hand signal or something to say sorry if you’ve done something wrong and to say thank you for couteous driving. The only problem is that you migth get crazed taxi drivers trying to kill you if you beep them. So really, I don’t know what to do. They need some real driver education here.

Final note to the guy riding int he rain. 70 is far too fast for rain. Rain is killer. I’ve come off 3 times in the rain. The first time I was doing 70, the seciond time I was aware of the danger, and evn the third time when I was crawling along at 30, I came off and got a broken foot. You just can’t be too careful in the rain on a bike, in this city. There’s far too many idiots out there trying to kill you.

Bri

Back from the zone! I read this thread and the Taiwan fights thread again and they are a real bummer. Just for the record, I think Taiwan is a great place and very safe. It’s so safe that newcomers can sometimes be unaware that there are dangers. The dangers of the traffic are pretty obvious, but sometimes bar and street violence is not. Like I said before, I just wanted to let people be aware of what sometimes occurs as well as my observations about what may contribute to their occurence. I too have slowly lost my patience for the bars that have these problems, but they happen to be close to my house. Maybe I need to make friends with more people like DDE1678 so that I won’t have any more problems like this.
One more thing, I introduced the Taiwan fight thing to talk about a phenomenon that I felt was occurring with increasing frequency. I don’t think it does anyone any good to analyze this thing to death about face, insecurity and blah, blah, blah. (Go to the foreign men and taiwanese women thread for that) You go to places where men drink, and there is bound to be trouble occasionally. I am just trying to be neighborly to fellow alcholics like myself who would like to avoid having their scalps being used for bottle baseball. Also, that stuff about SS, though all true, was just a little inside joke. Sorry if I riled up any SS playa-haters out there.