I really enjoyed this post by Jade on Wai-Taiwan: “Someone Else’s Stew.” It’s a nice piece about the cultural appropriation that all visitors take part in and how it can go wrong. An excerpt: Occasionally, it felt like they were speaking as “experts” about the country that they had (briefly) lived in and were outsiders [...]
In part one of this series, I gave some background about web design in Taiwan. In this part, I will expound on why I believe Taiwanese web sites always strive to have a very busy homepage with as many colors, animated widgets, and images as you can cram. This stands in stark contrast with Western [...]
This series of posts are going to focus on how I rationalize what I consider to be poor design choices in Taiwanese websites. Before I begin with the first topic, I’ll set up the series with some background observations that I gained during my time as a developer in a small web design studio here. [...]
The “Things I Hate About Taiwan” posts (#1, #2) have generated quite a lot of vitriol in the comments section, so I’m going to balance some of it out with a positive post about Taiwan. After living in Taiwan for more than seven years, it has become apparent to me that one of the main [...]
Working in a Taiwanese company has provided me with great insight into how things work here. I get to witness and participate in group decisions on a daily basis. On one hand it can be particularly frustrating because people are not forthcoming with their thoughts, or when they do say something, they try to say [...]
If I was to pick one thing that really hurts the image that Taiwan projects to foreign visitors, the one thing that sticks out above the lack of standardized romanization of Chinese, the relative lack of English and the general lack of organization and consistency, it would be the airport. In particular, the customs line [...]
Being here for a few years, I’ve just attended what has to be at least my tenth wedding here in Taipei. Though each wedding has its nuances, just about every wedding I’ve attended save one has followed a simple formula. I’m writing this guide as a record for myself and also as a tip sheet [...]
While in Kending during the last weekend of the Lunar New Year, I witnessed the boldest manifestation yet of that crudest and most-desperate species of the Taiwanese cock-block family: the Brokeback Attack.
I don’t know what it is about senior citizens here, but they simply refuse to oil their bikes. I’m guessing that they have to leave their bikes outside and they rust up. I ride frequently around Taipei and at least once every time, an oldie will come screeching to the corner I’m at, raising the [...]
I participated in the Olympic Day 8K run this morning behind Da-Jia Elementary School, just by the riverside. There were a lot of people there, many groups and societies. The most amusing bit had to be the warm-up sequence, led by a woman who had to be an aerobics instructor. The music started out with [...]