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The Real Taiwan
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A window on Taiwan. Be entertained by the many photo's, stories, films, and music on the site. Stop by for a betelnut.
Recent Posts Tagged With 'life'
Taiwan culture shock: It is hard being the superior sex
As foreigners in Taiwan we had the opportunity to play above our league. It may seem straightforward, but Taiwanese girls are different (see Culture Shock: Women) and there is alot of adjusting to do. It is difficult for all of us but for Eric partic...
Taiwan culture shock: Don’t expect PC
At the time i really committed to learning Chinese. I was going to two classes a day. This was the afternoon one. “Good afternoon everyone,” the teacher would say in English every class and i would start to grit my teeth. “She is quite hot! May...
Little League Baseball World Series 2009: Chula Vista (USA) beats Chinese Taipei (Taiwan)
In their first trip back to the little league world series since 1996, Taiwan, battling under their international alias of Chinese Taipei, lost after putting the US team on the ropes in the third inning with a set of back to back home runs. The US t...
Taiwan culture shock: Wishing you weren’t a foreigner
You know when you are an vacation or business you have to press palms and talk about yourself. You happily do it for the first few months in Taiwan, but then you remember you are not in Taiwan for two weeks, and sooner or later the non-PC unsubtly an...
Avoiding False Date Rape Charges In Taiwan
I decided to skip my order of business and go to a really important issue for foreign guys in Taiwan. The following is not meant to be a replacement for legal council. A friend of mine down south got into some big shit that almost cost him his freed...
Wang Qian Ming: What Now?
Wang Qian Ming, also known as Jimmy Wang or Chin Ming Wang (the radio and television announcers in the US seem to have a preference for calling him Chin MIng) has shut it down for the 2009 Major League Baseball (MBL) season and will have arthroscopic...
Culture: Daytime Soap Plot
Who says soaps don’t give you an insight into local culture. Of course, there were soaps aimed at different demographics, but your afternoon or early evening ones aimed at the housewife/mother-in-law market always had the same plot: Bossy mother-in...
Culture Shock: Women
My friends would ask me what it is like dating a girl from Taiwan, and I would say, “You have watched Pulp Fiction of course. Well…Remember Bruce Willis’ character’s girlfriend. The one who lies on the bed talking about whether she has a bell...
Culture: AIDs or a condom? - I’ll risk the AIDs
Condoms were a no-no for some older women because it suggested you were planning to have sex, and you did it often. This is one of John’s stories. He had had a particularly bad class and started drinking beer from the 7/11 and hanging around on...
D. Aaron Petrie is so Insufferably Hip he Needs a New One
Here is some info from a friend of mine that is going to have a fundraiser for his hip replacement surgery. Make sure to go to the Red Wolf tavern and drink your asses off and help raise some money for him. Consider it charity work. Fundraiser pa...
My-Cool-SMS and WaaKao Launch Free SMS Event Notification Service in Taiwan
Taipei, June 12th 2009 My-Cool-SMS, cutting-edge web based SMS messaging gateway and enterprise service provider, has announced a partnership with WaaKao, an interactive information portal dedicated to the promotion of art and culture, political comm...
Gardening Therapy
Tainan is very crowded, very urban, and almost totally paved over. There are trees and parks, but few people work with the soil other than in flower pots. A few years ago Tainan Theological College gave several people from the neighborhood the...
Biking in Taiwan: East Coast
here is a video by the Travel and Living channel about biking the East side of Taiwan. Biking is becoming more and more popular in Taiwan so if you should come here, bring a bike or buy one here so you can get some exercise and see the beautiful les...
Flashbacks to 2003 SARS and the Current Flu
As we look at pictures in newspapers and on television about how people and countries are coping with the threat and reality of the H1N1 flu, we think back to 2003 when the disease SARS came to Taiwan. All the reminders of washing hands (we had a si...
Eddie
I was in the living room with a book one recent Sunday afternoon and Char was out front with the cat when Eddie came up the walk. He’s a Taiwanese man I met in 1977 when I lived in Pingtung City. I was teaching English as an intern miss...
Going to Church
A regular churchgoer in my home country, I planned to continue my habit upon arrival in Taiwan. It didn’t matter that I could not understand Taiwanese or Mandarin, my bottom would be in a pew on Sunday morning. I figured it would be enough to hum a...
Are We at War?
When I was a child in California a National Guard unit about 10 miles from my home often flew large silver cargo planes with orange on the tails and wing tips over the neighborhood on training flights. It being the height of the cold war, military st...
Corporal Punishment: Taiwanese Student
Another video shot by a Taiwanese student getting roughed up by their teacher taken by their classmate via cellphone. Hitting in school is still commonplace on the ROC(K), and I imagine sometimes a teacher will just break down when kids don’t ...
Getting Permission
In 1998 I was the pastor of a storefront church in Kaohsiung. A student singing group from an out-of-town Bible college offered to do a neighborhood outreach program on a weekday afternoon. I laboriously wrote a letter in Chinese requesting use of a ...
Where are you Going?
The Taiwanese language has no word or phrase that simply means “hello.” Traditional greetings include the questions “have you eaten?” and “where are you going?” The second of these is more often used out of doors.. The first time I was th...
How to score with Taiwanese women
How to Catch Taiwanese Women Without Getting Your Balls Busted (I’ve been really busy, but i thought it was better to put this out for you guys than to wait till it’s perfect. What follows is just a list of tips to get you going. I̵...
The President’s Red Envelopes
It’s 6:50 AM. I am standing in front of a classroom door at an elementary school. Inside the room, there’s a flurry of activity as clerks sit in tiny classroom chairs counting endless stacks of colorful paper. I was early enough to be the firs...
Invitation to the first Taiwan Rainbow Gathering
From the Taiwan Rainbow Gathering: We, who are brothers and sisters, children of Earth, friends of nature animals, and all life, calling ourselves Rainbow Family, humbly invite all people with love, to join us in the first Taiwan Rainbow Gathering, f...
Crossing the Street
I arrived in Taiwan fresh from California in July of 1976. In my homeland the law stated that a pedestrian in a crosswalk had the right of way. Motorized traffic was supposed to stop. Whether the rule was honored or not “depended.” Life ...
Crazy Joe Is Leaving Taiwan
Well, I’m moving back to Canada after 10 years in and out of Taiwan. Ten years of meeting people here, there, and everywhere disappear back to where ever they came from and ten years of people saying farewell to Taiwan forever only to hear of t...
