And somehow, despite living at the time in the town where that happened, I didn’t become aware of it until a few days later via international news.
Let’s see … I’ve been here just long enough that, every other quake, so far (touch wood!) has left me thinking “Phew, not as bad as 9/21.”
Long enough to be remember being mildly surprised that the KMT actually let the DPP win a presidential election.
Long enough that I didn’t actually have the internet at home and instead had to go to an internet cafe or my office at work. Or was that just a sign of my cheapness?
Long enough that, when visiting Taipei from Tainan, I then had to go halfway across the city to one of the few branches of Starbucks to stock up on coffee beans for a bunch of friends.
Long enough that all the movie theaters (in Tainan anyway) had really cool painted signs for the different movies, rather than official posters. Mind you, we also knew NOT to wear sandals to those cinemas because something, who knows what, was going to crawl over your feet, and best not have skin exposed.
Long enough that I probably still have the muscle memory for typing out messages on cellphone number pads - didn’t most North Americans never really develop those skills, since messages at the time were too expensive there?
Long enough that a university student this year looks quite a bit like a girl I used to fancy, and then I realized “Holy shit, she actually could be her daughter.”
Long enough that I was quite sure I’d seen this topic pop up before on forumosa, but the closest I could find was this thread: