Reality TV…. Taiwan takes the cake. What do they say? Reality is stranger than fiction?
You can’t make up stuff like this: 
Are we the Qing or the Ming? I’m confused!
You can spew blood and still live to tell. Watch it:
Er, isn’t that a blood pool over there?!
Where’s Blade when you need him?
This is a beauty.
I think the guy got the worst of it in this one.
Taiwan, the ultimate in reality TV.
In a lot of ways, it’s apropos.
I’m doing some technical writing for the Taiwan High Speed Rail project. The project management is a complete SNAFU and FUBAR. No one is responsible or accountable and there’s no money :-s. So lots of people may be hung out to dry here as the Taiwan gov’t is trying to cobble up some money together to pay for it all but it’s supposed to “go live” this October. How? Magic. Taiwanese have this thing against planning anything. They say “My goal is this” and by some magical transmorfiguration they think the goal will happen. I believe in the power of words, but let’s be realistic here.
Meanwhile, I’m busy chugging along building up my business consulting and advisory services company here. Trying to find that niche for the foreigners and expats here who are caught between the netherworld, a rock and a hard place. Taiwan despite its efforts is a unfriendly foreign city, not particularly international, even Taipei. So having now hung my own shingle, I find myself oddly drawn back into the murky world of (drum-roll) practicing law. {Collective gasp} ? What’s that you say? What is the practice of law? I consider the practice of law a career in which one solves people’s problems. That’s the basic essence of practicing law.
Given that, I’ve got a client who is a young British English buxiban teacher here who was taken advantage of by her previous employer. Now that she’s trying to file her own taxes this year, she found out she’s deficient. So she came to me to fix her tax filing problem and go after the big bad buxiban owner who was a twit with us. Fine, play hard-ball, we’ll sic the tax authorities on you. How stupid can you be??? Don’t bluff unless you’re holding the Aces. I’ve another client a woman from Uzbekistan (yes, I had to look that one up) who looks very Korean-ish. Doesn’t speak a word of Chinese but beautifully accented Russian-ish English. Brought me back to NYC where I had a couple of Russian chess player friends in Washington Sq. Park. This client somehow found my company’s website from another referral place and somehow clicked on the forum link to find me. Then, found out that she lives down the street from my office near the McDonald’s. How funny. Anyways, she had some immigration issues which is what we do after all but then from there, it went to asking about how does one do foreign business incorporating. Eh, don’t they have lawyers for that? They do, charge a good deal of money ~ $3500 USD. Anyways business for me… who am I to turn that down?
The main reason for my being here, business consulting, business management, project management etc still going slow. Trying to get business training going and my courses set up. Almost there, the translation part is the most difficult part. Meanwhile, the window dressing continues. I’ve hooked up with a cool kid, a miltownkid who’s really into the whole tech thing. Self taught. Got a few websites going (other miltownkids), blogs, WordPress, phpBB forms and a hosting reseller plus all sorts of other neat things. Learning some website templating and CMS, playing around with open source stuff. Helping him out with that and learning along the way. It’s been fun. From the miltownkid, I got my own website going, learning about website templates, CSS, banners and just playing around with stuff. It helps because his hosting provides a whole bunch of neato tools from the cPanel website control panel to manage your own hosting account. Now with freehosting out there, almost no reason to ever stay with geocities and that sort of thing anymore. Anyways, the possibilities are unlimited because there’s provisions for just about anything you can think of for your website — blogs, content management, banner rotation, shopping cart, databases, forums, lots of emails addresses, email lists and just so much more.
The more you plan, sometimes the more things just don’t happen the way you intend. Now, I’m just happy being with B-, having a roof over my head, gainful livelihood, good friends, and helping people out wherever that may be. It’s also helped quite a bit along the way to come to terms with my faith, relationship with God with B-‘s help and friends. Time flies, my year, the chicken year seems to be clucking along just fine.
Cheers,
=YC
Taiwanese breakfast: Taiwanese style doughnuts sandwiched in flat sesame bread, soy milk , green onion rolls, shanghai shao long bao, some sort of breakfast burrito made with scrambled eggs encased in sweet rice.
National Museum: Wonderful collections from Imperial China, including the emperor’s seals. New found appreciation for Sung dynaster Chinese painter Ma Yuan, whose painting “Tai at Ma River” was captioned by the emperor: “I don’t know if he’s coming or going”. Had lovely Wenshan tea at the coffee shop.
Chiang Kai Shek Memorial: watched the changing of the guard — wonderful.
Hakka Cultural Society: saw some great exhibits. Hakka is an official language in Taiwan — it can be heard in the automatic subway announcements.
Night Market: ate chao tofu, wonton mein, kelbassa style lop chern sausage on a stick, passion fruit flavored ping shaved ice.
Dinner at AS’s house: massive steaks, potatoes and tomatoes, chocolate cake, creme brulee, various wines and liquors.
Flying back to Tokyo today. Will work on the missing Kyoto entries.
P and I came in to Taipei in the afternoon. Spent a lot of time in mall shops with AS. Sightseeing tomorrow with YC.
Well, looking forward to the FC & P- express train from Brooklyn here in Taipei. Sorry, but the gloomy rainy weather has returned this week with a vengeance. Pouring rain and wind making it really yucko!
This is a busy week socially as another friend from California arrived this past Sunday. He’ll be attending the SecuTech 2005 Expoin Taipei this Thursday. Some interesting stuff.
Meanwhile, I’m busy with my own baby, ML McLean & Associates Co. Ltd. in Taipei. I built the website using all open-source technologies recently and relatively painlessly. People ask me, what does ML stand for and why McLean? Well, it’s very unscientific but an educated guess in that Asia companies really like American sounding names. McLean is really anglo-saxon and ML doesn’t stand for anything. So what does it do? It’s a business and technology advisory and consulting firm, a mouthful. Essentially, we do consulting and training for companies that are looking to be more competitive. Our range of services is aimed at the locals looking internationally and the expats and foreigners looking to survive and expand their presence in Asia. We’re the classic Asia-West bridge company.
There’s hope here in Asia-Pac, particularly because of China and its black-hole affect. Compare that to the US where the real-estate market bubble, basically foreigners buying up everything is causing everyone in the US to go poor. One has to be really rich to live in the US and I fear that the longer I stay out here, the less likely I would be able to return to the US and live the life that my parents did. I think already, people have trouble doing that without racking up obscene amounts of debt. I don’t know. Seems like the proverbial, there’s no thing such as a free lunch is only half-true :-|?
=YC
Greetings and salutations from Taipei. My first real Chinese New Year celebration and it was good that it happened in Taipei. Got the full deal here. Friends took us around Taipei to see the sights. We ended up going to DiHua Jie (DiHua Street) to gawk and sample all the traditional Chinese New Year foodstuffs Taiwan style.
I also had the chance to prepare the hong baos and the bags of gifts you give to relatives and close friends for the new year. Usually, it would include some fruit, sweets, and beef or pork jerky along with other nice gifts like mushrooms and/or other delicacies that are given during the New Year. I had a traditional CNY dinner at my cousins home in Taoyuan which included a good dosage of Kaoliang Chiew (sorghum liquor) which is very similar to Korean Soju. The Kaoliang Chiew I had came from Mazu Island, not the typical Jinmen Island one that most people associate this with. It’s a toss up as to which place makes the best but generally speaking, Jinmen is the best known for it’s Kaoliang Chiew Liquor.
So day 1, we got invited to the home of some new friends we met through church here. Young Canadian couple who started up a home group that we belong to. Nice people have helped B- and I tremendously in adjusting to the new environment. Loneliness is a big killer and finding good people are always hard.
I tend to continue being busy. Although this week is an official week off, I’ve work to do and it’s been a bit of a damper on the festivities. B-‘s been a trooper and I’m grateful for all she’s done and support for me and adjusting here. Tomorrow night we’ll be having day 2 dinner with a Singaporean couple. Gives B- a chance to speak Cantonese and make new friends as well.
Hope you guys are keeping healthy and safe there.
=YC
Virtual worlds wind up in real world’s courts
So this would be a great legal journal topic.
1. Is “digital property” (real) property?
2. What is intellectual property in a virtual reality/world?
3. Should virtual worlds be regulated at all?
Bring a bottle of aspirin. The head turns.
Now this is pretty scary although not surprising given the obesity obsession recently in the US and elsewhere.
Quintessential NYC eats: Paying a Price for Doughnuts, Burgers and Pizza. So will all the food, you’ll die younger anyways! What a cruel and ironic twist. Not enough food, die of starvation. Too much food, die of obesity related illnesses – diabetes, heart disease etc. You can’t win.
I figure being Chinese and living in Taipei, you eat everything like gizzards, livers, butt, nose, ears, intestines, stomach, heart, feet, tendons bones, blood…. Nothing is wasted here, typical Chinese cooking. I say, if you’ve eaten everything, what’s to fear?
I miss the food in NYC. *sigh*
=YC
I suppose when the New York Times deigns to publish an article about a topic, it’s pretty newsworthy and important to know about. So, to my surprise to get an article forward from a fellow BLS alum where, it declared
“A Young Taipei Finds its Groove”
EH?
Unfortunately, it reads like a fluff piece, banalities abound. Rather disappointing. It makes some factual errors such as referring to Civil Boulevard when it’s always been known here as Civic Boulevard. On the other hand, it just could be that the Taipei city government has gotten the translation wrong (often does). It talks about the lounges and malls, Taipei 101 (the observation floor has officially opened this month and I believe it’s located on the 86th floor), and states that Taipei’s new “emerging culture catering to young people, [it] is becoming a cool place to visit.”
I suppose it is. It seems like it’s getting more internationalized, but it’s a case of one step forward, two steps back. English is still something that the city and the whole island has been trying to come to grips with for years now but often fails to. Except for a few government ministries and bureaus, Taipei and Taiwan is still a Chinese country (oops, I show my biases). It’s hard to argue that Taipei is becoming internationalized when foreigners can’t communicate with/to Taipei citizens. If you’re an international city, you’re going to have to be able to make foreigners feel welcome and have English documents, signage, people who can speak it. They don’t have it.
Despite all the glitz that’s showing, scratch a little deeper and you’ll find that it is as many people feel, a peasant city with tall buildings. Places like Shanghai, in just a few short years have leapfrogged Taipei as an international city where all the beautiful people go to see and be seen. Taipei can’t compare to Kuala Lumpur as an international city. Bangkok is catching up fast and if things continue, it will likely surpass Taipei and come of its own within the next few years.
Taipei, keep trying.
=YC
I think this post on Forumosa by plasmatron eloquently puts what it is like to live in Taiwan from a Western perspective. He is spot on.
I think one of the main underlying reasons for Taiwan’s multitude of social and cultural shortcomings is that Taiwanese are almost all “temporally challenged” that is they only have the ability to act, plan, think and reason in the immediate present, and notions such as consequence, cause and effect and the possibility that one’s actions can both directly and indirectly effect others are all incomprehensible to the Taiwanese… the meaning of the phrases “long term” and “future repercussions” are as unintelligible and ethereal to your average Taiwanese as the color of Buddha’s underpants…
it seems that in almost any other area of Taiwan outside Taipei, and to some extent within Taipei too, the peasant mentality reigns supreme, and god help any law enforcement office that tries to enforce any laws… the notion that as a citizen you are responsible for you actions and should be held accountable should you break the law is utterly unimaginable…