Taiwan-feel like you dropped off into a big hole?

Never see anyone famous? I just saw Robert Storey browsing this very BBS five minutes ago!!

Oh god! Please spare us the tired old SRV blues cliches and let’s see some real bluesmen coming to Taipei. Even his brother blows SRV away. That I would GLADLY pay NT$1,000 for a ticket.

SRV is the greatest show you’ve seen? Boy, you HAVE led a sheltered life! :wink:

Anyway, SRV is dead, isn’t he?

I saw him before he was dead. :wink:

When I lived in North Dakota, men all talked about high school sports, fishing and cars. Never heard a conversation about world or US affairs or about work.
The women all talked about babies, children and how lazy their husbands were.

I don’t know who you hang out with, but the people I know here talk about work, the past, the future, the opposite sex and domestic and world affairs.

My pick for show of the year, Wynton Marsalis and The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra peforming the music of Louis Armtrong,The Duke, John Coltrane, and Art Blakey.
10/24 National Concert Hall.

In addition to WM, several other world-class performers will also grace the stage of the NCH during October:

Valery Gergiev & Kirov Orchestra 10/11,12,13.
Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra 10/30,31
Jose Cura 10/16,18,
Kiri Te Kanawa 10/2
Kathleen Battle 11/1

Seems to me there’s lots of entertainment in Taipei! :unamused:

Bugger that! What a yawn…

I’m off to see Joe Satriani and Steve Vai play on Double Ten’s Day… in Taipei!

More soon (gotta find that flyer, and I hope I’m not about to be crucified in case I read the bloody thing incorrectly) :smiling_imp:

Wouldn’t it be possible to have a “culture” forum or thread or something like an open calendar where everybody could insert event information he/she comes across? I miss my “That’s Shanghai” dearly, and I have a hard time keeping track of what’s going on in Taipei. I love to go to exhibitions, go to concerts (classical as well as modern music) and wouldn’t mind getting to know of other cultural events (like the Women’s Film Festival that’s currently running) in advance and not just because my aunt in Singapore sends me an email two days before it is finished or because I stumble over a poster in an MRT station (without being able to figure out where or when the thing takes place).

Reading this post, a lot seems to be going on that I didn’t know about. I’d be glad to share any information I come across, and if some other people do so as well, we should be able to set up quite a comprehensive event calendar.

Is there any way to do that?

Iris

Segue has an events calendar to which anyone can add entries. 8)

You’re also welcome – and encouraged – to post notices and reviews of such events in the Culture and History forum.

Whenever I checked the Oriented/Segue events calender, it seemed to be stuff exclusively connected with Oriented, and mostly somewhere else than Taiwan. But obviously, I got that wrong. I still think it would make more sense to keep an extra calendar for concerts and the like. As to the History and Culture Forum, I assumed this to be more related with Chinese/Taiwan history and culture than with “Western” cultural events happening in Taiwan. Of course, I don’t mind entering info in either of these.

Iris

I was just checking to see if anybody had any interesting stories about meeting some famous character randomly or some interesting anecdotes to tell me…still waiting…it’s not that I’m a celebrityphile or anything but I get a kick out of hearing stuff like that. Some people are so PC on this board sometimes though it’s kind of annoying. Blah blah democratization experiment, I’m not talking about that (even though it’s all interesting to me too).

Of course Richard is right, you can meet and do things here you don’t think you could have done at home but actually I think you’d be underestimating yourselves, including yourself Richard (thanks for all the good work for all foreigners here:P ). I believe people will reach their potential anywhere and in just as many cases Taiwan will limit your career opportunities rather than expand them. You may become a top ‘foreigner lawyer’ or teacher but you may have been just a top lawyer of teacher at home…and you would have more chances to pursue educational advancement. As long as we’re moving ahead somehow we can feel fully justified in our lives here.

.
I’d just like to see some big hip hop or current musical stars play here, that would really rock. I’m not talking about Darren Hayes or Boyzone.
How about EMINEM, Coldplay, Radiohead (maybe they played a long time ago), various hip hop bands that are real popular from the states. At least some of those above coud get a decent crowd. Are they afraid to come here?
And FYI I do MISS stadium rock events, I’ve seen U2 on a few tours and they were some of the best nites EVER and a CD doesn’t cut it.
Winton Marsalis would be pretty cool alright though.
I would die to go to a major sporting event.

Who’s Pat Hetheny? Joe Satriani, he’s going through his 3rd ‘back from the dead’ tour isn’t he?
I’m sure plenty of people famous in Taiwan pass me without me noticing it before anybody jumps on that bandwagon.
Let’s face it though, the ex-prime minister of Singapore visits and the nation’s media goes into a frenzy…people do the best they can here and it makes us all minicelebrities in our own right. Another topic for discussion board would be ‘Why are Western writers and artists much better known in Asia than Asian writers,singers and artists in the West?’

Actually I did talk about politics at home, we would joke about the prime minister and different politicians all the time.
We would make comments about some war or some dictator somewhere. We would talk about our difficult domestic situation and argue about it. That’s the way it always was (debate didn’t ever stop, even immediatedly after a vicious civil war in the last century). Confucianism has a lot to answer for----ancient brainwashing by dictactorial emperors I call it.
As monkbucket also pointed out, when I have mentioned anything about China or anything remotely related to KMT there is just stony silence and little smiles. If you are an English teacher and ask people ‘what is your opinion on any subject related to Taiwanese history’ you could watch the the whole of the latest Van Damme movie on Hollywood before you’d hear any sort of reply. Hello, Chiang Kai Shek won’t whip you and put you in jail for 20 years, he’s dead!
The main reason I’m disappointed is because I find the situation fascinating but I’m always stonewalled when trying to read people’s true opinions. Plainly, it’s boring.
When I ask them the opinion of world events outside Taiwan they look at me with two heads as if I asked ‘what is your opinion of the mating habits of the Taiwan bear below 3000ms in wintertime’. Only example…
I’ve had two or three mainlander people I didn’t know personally tell me that they ‘hate Taiwanese’ without me bringing up the subject but only one-on-one. And they grew up here too! Most of them feel isolated and don’t have much family here I assume…they can offload their feeling on foreigners but only in private.

Ok, now I’m getting that ‘big hole’ feeling.

I saw and met Lisa Loeb there in '98. Does that count? :blush:

And it’s kind of annoying that some people don’t bother to read their own posts. I responded to what you wrote, not to what you seem to think you wrote. :unamused:

If you think your life would be richer and more interesting by hearing tales of how someone ran into Julia Roberts or the like at Starbucks, then I hope someone can oblige you. Or maybe you should seek out copies of People and Next. Whatever makes ya happy.

As for talking with locals about their thoughts and opinions, I do it all the time. Asking a group of co-workers to tell you their political ideas isn’t likely to get anyone much response. But asking people individually is a different story – at least it has been for me.

cranky,
i don’t think anybody is standing up in the middle of the office and shouting, “Hey, what do you guys think about KMT meeting with the CCP behind the DPP’s back?”

i was talking about talking to coworkers during a smoke break in the stairwell, one-on-one style.

dude, i just saw kevin garnett and chancey billups at a club the other night, i will never dream of this in the U.S. …so don’t gimme the crap about not seeing famous peopple here!

Oh yes I remember them. They were the winners of the Interstate Silliest Names Competition 1975.

Hexuan - Why are u awake at 6:30am on Sunday? I just gotta know. :laughing:

Back when I was a TV cameraman here, I had the chance to meet and talked to a few kinda famous people here, several political figures like Lee Teng-hui (really nice guy, like someone’s grand-uncle), Chen Shui-bian (seems distracted), Ma Ying-jeou (nice guy), Lien Chan (slimey feeling in person), Sissy Chen (demands extra makeup and soft focus due to her bad skin), et al.

Also met entertainment people here, such as Emil Chou (fake and vain), Harlem Yu (nice enough), Coco (pretentious bitch), Tsai Ching (ditto), her ex-hubby, my former employer Edward Yang (keeps to himself, especially when directing, looms over everyone), and Zhang Zhen-yue (perfectly normal, cool guy, very down-to-earth). My friend Mindcrime is constantly running into Taiwanese celebrities, it seems.

The thing is, none of these people are really different from the random person you meet on the street. The best thing you can do is treat everyone according to the same standards. Just because someone happens to be famous at the moment doesn’t automatically make them more interesting. Just make more local friends, find out their stories, I’ll bet you’ll find out a bunch of facinating things about this place you call a big hole.

It would be interesting to see how all those people act in person, off camera so to speak. Lee Teng Hui-- what an interesting conundrum that guy is…rising to be the head of the party and destroying it from the top…I like it!
If you worked as a cameraman you must have seen a lot of stuff around the island :slight_smile:
Note: I didn’t call it a big hole (don’t get rubbed up the wrong way) , I just said it feels a bit isolated here compared to places with more international stuff going on with big music festivals and sports competitions like in the UK and Europe or even Japan and South Korea. Well I’m not in Kansas anymore I know. It was especially tough during the World Cup if you really like soccer, so close yet so far. I know they got FormOz and I heard that was pretty good this year actually but unfortunately I didn’t make it.
Also it’s not really on anybody’s travel plans so it tends to be a VERY rare event that any of your buddies will be stopping by. The isolation is compensated by the frenetic pace of life somewhat and I have to say Taipei has plenty of stuff to do to keep a person amused.