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Atlas Hugged posted:I'm seeing a lot of bad information in English on facebook right now and I hope one of the people here who is better informed on Taiwanese politics and the protests in general could explain precisely what is, and is not, happening. I haven't posted in this thread in a long time but I thought I'd pop in and see what people here were saying about this. It seems everyone in this thread is smart enough to see the bull from the bullshit as it were. I'm writing my thesis about the 2016 elections so this is a pretty interesting time and I'm curious to see how it will all play out. I've been down at the protests a couple times, there's usually a couple foreigners down there. The Executive Yuan occupation was a bit more violent in nature so that one got ugly but I'm actually amazed at the resistance shown by police given that people hurt firecrackers at them. I'm American so my french classmate and I were both shocked that everyone wasn't teargassed out on the first night. The early stages were extremely disorganized but it seems like they're getting their act together, the DPP still hasn't done a very good job capitalizing on the efforts of the students but that's kinda par for the course at this point.
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Mar 25, 2014 19:32
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BottledBacon posted:Well i'm currently on 45k or so for a little under 20 hours work. With rent at around 8-10k it's really not that bad. I'm with you. I work 12 hours a week, and am in school here also. Before school I worked the 12 plus another 6 in other schools filling in for single classes. All at 600-650 an hour. It's really not a bad deal and working so little at a single place allows me to avoid the majority of the drama because I'm at the school for 4 hours a day at most. No office work either, I have friends that do the whole 60-80k a month thing but they bust their asses to do it and get extremely stressed out. I'd rather have no money and more time and freedom. There's so much bullshit from parents and bosses that don't know what they're doing here anyway; I can't imagine trying to deal with actually attempting to do a really "professional" job anyway.
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Apr 16, 2014 20:10
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Where do you guys play at?
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Apr 19, 2014 15:21
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How do I REACH these KIDS?
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May 22, 2014 18:09
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The late fee in the country on back taxes is laughable. I've paid mine as late as October.
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May 23, 2014 12:32
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Oz_Bonus posted:My boss won't withhold taxes and reports everybody's salary to be a fraction of reality. Not sure what she gets out of that, but I just learned that it disqualifies me from ever getting an APRC because I'm under the minimum income. I'm in a similar situation with my APRC. Sucks; lived here 6 years and the year I qualify is the year I cut my hours down to go back to school. Whoops.
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May 23, 2014 13:00
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When I worked at Kojen we had about a 50/50 mix of male/female FTs. CTs have been 90% female in my experience. Since my time at Kojen I haven't worked with another female FT, but I've only worked with 1 other FT so...
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Jul 23, 2014 14:47
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Also, as much as the system is corrupt here I highly doubt a judge is going to risk his job to help his buddy extort a foreigner out of a couple thousand NT.
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Jul 31, 2014 10:49
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You can swim in plenty of the rivers here. Some just have a sign that says "No swimming during a typhoon." The place I went swimming a few weeks ago was literally right in front of a police station. The guys in the police station were even nice enough to watch our bags.
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Aug 22, 2014 13:06
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Sun Moon Lake has a yearly "swim across the lake" event. It should be coming up pretty soon, that's the only time you're allowed to swim in the lake. I guess since you can't swim across it normally the only way to train is doing laps in a pool. I recommend everyone go to a public pool at least once here if for no other reason than to see the adorable little kids strapped tight with every floatation device you can possibly imagine. I remember as a kid my first time learning to swim was a lot like Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes: we walked out to the pool in our trunks, the teacher yelled at us to get in the pool and there was some confused looks at the water as if it was a pit of doom, then slowly everyone climbed over the side and remained there clinging to the side of the pool for dear life. Girl I had lunch with the other day told me that everyone here learns to swim in Jr. High school but because most of them are not very good at it, they don't practice and then it becomes similar to the English situation where they don't want to do it even if they know how because they don't want to look bad so they just say they can't speak English or swim. Other people do go practice and become effective swimmers. I'm pretty sure the beach is still just that place where to stand ankle deep in water with your friends when all jump while someone is in the middle of taking a photograph. I guess Liyu Lake near Hualien is also a nice place to go., and Shihmen Reservoir also seems to allow swimming during certain peroids. PaybackJack fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Aug 26, 2014 |
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Aug 26, 2014 01:10
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Backweb posted:I went swimming at a little beach nestled between rocky outcroppings in Kenting National Park last spring. Lots of Russians there. I heard rumor there's a spot where you can actually go surfing? I kinda want to try that out this fall. Tons of guitar places here, they're all over. I have yet to see a store that sells Chinese instruments but dozens that sell violins, saxophones, trumpets, and guitars.
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Aug 26, 2014 21:05
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I talked to a guy who was a contractor for that line, he said every lunch time his workers would disappear and come back late to the job, he talked to his foreman and found out that where they were working was really close to a red light district for "fresh off the boat" Asian girls, so during lunch they'd all go whore it up. His response: "Next time invite me, assholes!"
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Aug 31, 2014 17:01
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Backweb posted:I leave for the airport in about 12 hours. Anything I should do to not stick out like a sore thumb when I arrive in Taiwan--aside from not being tall, white, and carrying three pieces of luggage, that is? I use Taishin bank. They have branches all over the city, their debit card can be used online and they don't have any ridiculous fees like you might get at Citibank. I was able to use their card in ATMS in America when I went back, but not at ones in Singapore, so that might be an issue; I didn't really explore the matter and after getting my card cloned last year I told them to put every security measure they had under the sun on it so they might have done something like "auto decline this card anywhere other than Taiwan or the USA". That said when my card was stolen they emailed me and reversing the fake charges were no hassle other than having to go to their main office in Neihu and confirm with someone there which charges weren't mine. I think I had all my funds back within a month of so. Also all the employers who used direct deposit that I've had accepted Taishin bank, with the exception of Kojen but now that I've been here a while I'm guessing they probably have some under the table deal with whatever bank that was they made me use; where the bank would kick them back some cash whenever they signed up a foreigner to the bank. PaybackJack fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Sep 3, 2014 |
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Sep 3, 2014 16:35
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Oh. My. Zeus. posted:Does anyone know of anywhere in Taipei that serves apple cider? It's October and I'm craving it. A shop near me sells Somersby but that doesn't hit the spot. Couple of the bars around Taipei serve Green Goblin which I think is the best cider in the city. Beer and Cheese went through quite a few and everyone said GG was the best.
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Oct 1, 2014 20:22
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THE LUMMOX posted:Im in Taipei as a tourist next weekend. What is closed for the Oct 10 holiday? Will things like museums etc be closed? Restaurants? A lot of the local foreigner bars have good imported beer. Little London, Beer and Cheese, DV8, quite a few others I can't think of off the top of my head. Not much will close due to the holiday, only things like banks and post offices. Restaurants definitely not as this is a time when people will be out in large numbers; same goes for museums.
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Oct 5, 2014 17:45
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quadrophrenic posted:If you want an actual bottle shop, Bottle Shop Taiwan is one of the only places I can think of that actually sells decent craft for off-premises. The Mayan also sells bottles, but they have a bit of markup for off-premises. If you just wanna drink, Beer And Cheese is good but Something Ales is better (because cheaper) and there's a billion little bistros in Gongguan/Shida area that have a decent selection of Belgians. I quite like Cafe Odeon. And nowadays every cool kid bar worth its salt at least has 台PA, whichbodes well for the future of craft in Taiwan. The Bottle Shop is owned by the same guys that own Beer and Cheese and is not really a bar, there's only a few seats, its more just a storefront for the beer they sell at Beer and Cheese. The prices are better because they don't have the overhead or staff that B&C has. That is probably the cheapest place to buy craft beer, particularly in larger quantities. Not sure what the other guy has against the owners of Beer and Cheese. I'm not great friends with them but they're a lot more on the level than some of the owners of other bars. Also their Beer and Cheese prices are intentional to try and avoid the typical foreigner riff raff that wants to drink as much as possible for as cheaply as possible. They also want to try to target that group of young Taiwanese socialites that aren't doing the traditional making a family thing and are instead out absorbing culture by spending money on things from different ones. I think its a decent business model actually, and I was just in there on Saturday night and there was mostly locals with only a few scattered foreigners. Odeon used to be a lot better. Now they're trying to sell it more like a restaurant and the food was always the worst part of that place. Thankfully they still have the couches but they used to have a nice long table in the middle of the room and now they have a circular counter there and they serve teas and coffees. I guess they weren't making enough as a standard bar so they started catering to the local TaiDa crowd and making it more like a "proper" cafe. Sad times last time I went there, whole vibr just feels different in a bad way. PaybackJack fucked around with this message at 06:46 on Oct 6, 2014 |
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Oct 6, 2014 06:38
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Horatius Bonar posted:Yeah, it's exactly that attitude I don't like. I don't mind that they want to keep rif-raff out, the problem is the pretentious attitude they hold because they do that. If it was the only bar like that in Taipei, I'd suck it up and go there, but not when there are better options. Unfortunately that seems to be the only way to cater to that local audience. If you aren't pretentious; the pretentious locals who are "cultured" because they're fortunate enough to have disposable income(basically any Taiwanese person that lives in Tianmu) don't tend to give you the time of day. If you've ever been to Somallier or the American Club, you get a pretty good impression of that crowd. The B&C guys are trying to grow a brand/chain sort of like Cafe Bastille except with craft IPAs instead of Belgian Beer. I'm not a fan of Redpoint but this market has definitely exploded in the last year and there are more and more options all the time. Even Taiwan Beer seems to be responding to the shift, albeit a few years late, with that wheat beer they introduced last year.
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Oct 6, 2014 08:43
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I don't actually recommend going to Guanghua, the prices in the streets there are competitive with newegg, but if you check yahoo auctions you can generally find a store out in Sanchong, Banqiao or Yonghe that sells the same things for cheaper. As an example my classmate was looking for a power mac charger, sold new in the ipad store was around $2000nt, the stores in and around Guanghua were selling it for around $1500nt, but checking yahoo auctions we found one just over the bridge in Yonghe from Gongguan for $700nt. Basically you can find a lot of things cheaper than Guanghua but you gotta be willing to look, and maybe take a trip out of the center of the city.
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Oct 6, 2014 13:51
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TetsuoTW posted:If you're not too worried about money, I've heard good things about Ounce for going full mixed-drink nerd. I haven't been yet because poo poo's retarded expensive, but I've heard good things. It's not that bad. I think the bar in the W Hotel, WooBar is worse because their bartenders aren't really skilled they're just trained to make the drinks on the menu if that makes sense. Ounce flew in their bartender from NY and have a rep for actually having bartenders that know their poo poo as opposed to most places that just teach people how to make the standard fare of drink because most people here aren't really educated enough to tell the difference. Obviously people have different ideas on how much a drink should cost though. I compare prices to L.A. when it comes to places like that so I find them to be quite a bit less expensive. Earlier someone mentioned Beer and Cheese as being expensive because it's 200-300 average for a beer. Sure if you compare to places where you can pay 100nt for a Corona/San Miguel then yeah that's expensive. Cocktails at most places will run you about the same $200-$300, nicer places like Ounce or Woobar will charge double that. It depends if you want to pay for atmosphere and quality; which isn't to say that you can't get a solid drink for cheap in a nice place but you have to sort of ferret those places out between the poles of high and low end establishments.
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Nov 2, 2014 14:16
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Most of the places I've lived at had a washing machine available. My current place I popped for a dryer because I like soft, warm, clothes during the winter and hate waiting for stuff to dry on hangers. These are not very expensive though I paid $2000nt for a used dryer and then had it traded out for $1000nt when it broke and I wanted one that was a bit bigger. A washer dryer combo from a used place will set you back maybe $3500-$5000nt. Well worth the price of having to find a laundromat and hauling your clothes there which was what I did for the first 6 months I was here.
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Nov 2, 2014 19:12
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hitension posted:Does anyone here have any opinions on the bar "Carnegie's"? This utter sleazeball of a French guy is pushing our classmates to hold an event there (we usually go to regular restaurants or all you can eats etc) and I am... hesitant. Not bad if you do something for brunch there. If you hit up a ladies night you'll need to be aware that some of them are prostitutes(like actual working girls), most nights it's scummier than Brass Monkey and it sounds like your sleazeball friend would fit right in.
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Nov 11, 2014 03:50
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I will pay you 5000nt to go on that show and instead of answering just say something about how "Taiwanese girls are easy". I'd pay you more but if you do a convincing enough job you should get a half dozen more bookings of people wanting you to say the same crap on their equally offensive talk show.
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Nov 12, 2014 09:09
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TetsuoTW posted:"Pretty girl does thing, is pretty" is basically the squirrel on waterskis of Taiwanese news media. That reminds me of the other volleyball chick that around 1% of the white people I knew, thought was attractive. While all the Asian guys I knew were spamming her link all over Facebook. Ahh well it works out best for everyone involved...well actually only the Asian guys who are rich enough to date Russian girls.
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Nov 12, 2014 10:56
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You can always try https://www.facebook.com/groups/Taiwanapartmentsandroommates/
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Nov 16, 2014 11:52
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YF19pilot posted:Finally decided to pay the $800 to have 30 days of internet by tethering my computer through my phone. Feels good. How did you do this? My contract is coming up and my ex of 4 years ago was the one who got me on that plan; not sure I'm going to be here for another year, let alone two for a contract. If there is a month by month service that would be great.
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Nov 16, 2014 14:46
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rolecks posted:So from this link it looks like I'm ok to stay for 90 days on a US passport. You don't actually need a "ticket", you can just print off the flight confirmation page and that will be enough. Maybe they're more strict about it now, but I doubt it.
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Nov 17, 2014 09:28
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Slowpoke! posted:West of Guting is all furniture stores and used appliances. Regardless of what you pick, I wouldn't live that way. That was where I lived when I first got here. Had a 1 bathroom studio for 9000nt, it was ok. Living on the same street as all those furinture stores made hauling my giant leather chair back to my place a lot easier. It's not bad though, you're about 15 minutes from the ShiDa night market which still has a lot of places to eat and is a convenient detour on the way home.
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Nov 24, 2014 13:07
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Pandemonium posted:Good luck with that. Pretty sure the disparity between buying and renting property in Taipei is astronomical, like up there with the big boys on the international scene like Hong Kong, Tokyo, and New York. Yeah, someone mentioned to me that it would take the average family 70-something years of rent to be able to afford what it would cost to buy a place.
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Nov 25, 2014 18:05
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duckfarts posted:Looks like we're looking for tech writers again: http://www.forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.php?f=147&t=142248 What's the pay and hours?
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Jan 27, 2015 08:19
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TetsuoTW posted:The only thing I've ever heard about any of them is that the food's mediocre as hell and they really just get by on the view. I've been to a Hsin Ye or however they loving spell it before and it was OK. Above average. Go to Spice Market on top of the Eslite building. Its a Thai buffet and pretty good. Runs like 800nt/person for a dinner.
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Jan 27, 2015 08:25
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If I was going to ask her to marry me, I'd take her to J.W. Teres. It's a Bulgarian place, runs around 2k for food per person, 3k for a bottle of wine. It's easily one of the best restaurants I've been to in the world. Owner is a really cool guy, makes his money selling expensive and old alcohols, was formerly an investment banker and decided to open his own restaurant. His place is usually empty because he has a select clientele that frequents and he doesn't need to pack the place. Not to sound like a loving elitist but it's really not for everyone and if you don't have a really discriminating palate for food, you're probably wasting your time going there unless you want to drop another 5k on 40 year old whiskeys. I went to La Festa which was the first Italian restaurant opened in Taiwan by a Michelin rated chef and it was completely bland by comparison. I went to J.W. for my birthday a year ago and dropped 14k, I'll probably do the same thing again in 15 days for my next birthday. If you just want a nice place to have dinner and not spend over 2k for 2 people. I'd go with A Plus, which is a neo Japanese restaurant just north of Renai on Anhe. It's a sake bar which is cool if you're into that. They have really good sashimi, excellent rolls(go with the fried cheese one) and some excellent grilled stuff(the ribs with tomato sauce will melt in your mouth).
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Jan 27, 2015 12:32
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url posted:I think your posting is awesome, amongst the beat in the world, in fact. This man here also makes some fine foods, catering service not yet available but stay tuned. Could be the next Baba Kevin or Mr.Sausage.
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Jan 28, 2015 02:43
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bringmyfishback posted:I'm Mrs. Us English, heyyy. I have a few questions too: 1. Yes. I order most of my stuff off Amazon and Ebay. Shipping can be pretty brutal though so you'll probably want to do large orders. 2. Public School will be guaranteed hours and pay, buxiban hours may depend on classes and students which varies from school to school. Pubic School hours will probably be as long as you have now. Buxiban hours rarely go over 24 or so. Most of the time you will be required to prep and make everything yourself. Personally I like the Buxiban a lot more as the hours are fewer, and my school doesn't force me to do any office hours or otherwise unpaid work. 3. Not legal because nobody pays taxes on them and also there's no way you'd get a work permit for them. It's all under the table type stuff and it works out better for all involved. I've never heard of anyone being busted for this kind of work and I doubt anyone ever will unless you run afoul of some people who are out for legal blood. 4. I have never had any employer withhold my pay, even the school that I parted on bad terms with. More likely scenarios are things like: you saw you're leaving in 3 months and they find someone to replace you next week and cut your hours for those remaining months. I've also never been charged for things excessively. My current school only charges me for copies and that's if I make more than 100 a week, and I rarely make copies so it's not a big deal. 5. I've never heard of anyone getting a higher rate of pay for having X certifications or X number of years already worked. Employers here want to pay you as little as they can but enough to remain competitive. Almost nobody gets raises that I know of, unless their employer really likes them and they pull in a lot of business; and even in those cases I've heard schools that would rather replace the teacher and see 4 students leave than pay them an extra 10nt an hour. Pretty much the deal is that schools pay what they pay and most of the time they aren't looking for the best, just a white person to speak English in front of a class. Some places might say they want X,Y,Z but chances are they still aren't going to pay you that much more than any other place. Public Schools are a different beast, but the point here is that even if you had a Masters in Education, a CELTA, a TESOL, a TEFL, and any other thing you can think of, you aren't going to get paid more than anyone else because most of the time you're a cog in a machine. 6. The majority of schools prefer American to English. However there are a few schools that "specialize" in the British vocal style and teachings. You'll know those when you see them. Otherwise just use your American passport for everything unless you find one of the British ones and then speak like you lived at Downton Abbey when you go there.
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Feb 26, 2015 15:35
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TetsuoTW posted:In addition to all that, if you really want to save money, don't come to Taipei. It's great up here, but it's also significantly more expensive than literally everywhere else on the island rent-wise. I word this as: rent is not cheaper outside Taipei but you can get more for your money outside Taipei. For a place living major city you can get a really nice little 1 bedroom, kitchen, living room place for around 15000nt a month, which I'd say is pretty expensive given the location. If you dip out of the main city, you can find places in "Taipei County" which you could get something like a 2 bedroom, 1 bath, kitchen/laundry for the same amount. Outside Taipei in other counties you could probably live in a decent house for that amount. If you don't mind a roommate the two of you could live with 1 other person and rent a nice place in town for $24000 and split the bills three ways. Also if you work in the north of Taipei you can pay out $23k a month or so and live in one of the really nice looking apartment in Danshui, which would give you a pool/gym/nice new place/guard/etc. But you're also 40 minutes into the city at this point, however those places are really drat nice. If you live outside Taipei you can get some really nice places for extremely cheap compared to Taipei, but Taipei is itself fairly cheap for being a major city; unless you're trying to buy a place; in which case you're hosed. Rent wise though you can find some great deals, just don't look for anything new because anything new is going to be crazy expensive. I'm pretty sure the plan as of a few years ago was that President Ma would open up the door for Chinese businessmen to move here into a bunch of these crazy expensive apartments that locals could never hope to afford.
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Feb 26, 2015 23:47
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Atlas Hugged posted:You can renew your license and pay traffic tickets as well! Or even use it as your personal delivery service. I just saw on my taxi tv that now Family Mart has a service for dry cleaning. You can drop your clothes on there and they'll get cleaned and ironed and sent back to you.
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Mar 2, 2015 05:32
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Blizzard poo poo is not universal. I found this out when I bought Diablo 3 online. Diablo 3 was like $10usd cheaper here for some reason because my account was tied to Taiwan. Turns out, that there was a region locked edition of D3 that kept Koreans and Taiwanese on the same servers and was less expensive because it didn't include the ability to change regions or English language, nor could you ever download the English language for it. So I ended up having to create an account on battle.net that was listed as U.S., buy another copy of Diablo 3 then merged the two accounts, after I had gotten a refund on my Taiwanese edition of the game. Lesson here is make sure you buy the English edition that is regionalized to America, and then manually set your region to Taiwan from in the game if you want to play with Taiwanese people.
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Mar 18, 2015 14:17
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caberham posted:Eeek, all this stuff is just second nature for me like switching power converters and plugs in different countries, sorry It was only really an issue because logging into Battle.Net the system the system checked my region and without thinking I just put in Taiwan. So when I bought a key it was all in English, only when I put in my key did I start the download in the TW settings did I realize "whoops just downloaded the Zh-edition", I figured I made an error, went back and there was no English option. Went back, made a new account, thinking "Ok, I'll just download the English language one from the US and then use my key, but nope, my key was region locked". Kind of strange but I can understand them wanting to shift the price around for different markets and not wanting people to exploit that, but I never considered language actually being something that you would charge people more for, like I could understand if you had to pay more for access to U.S. servers but it's strange to me that you'd segregate your customers based on their language preferences. I guess Blizzard is poor and really needs to make sure that people in the U.S. aren't saving $10 by buying it on Taiwanese or Korean accounts.
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Mar 18, 2015 19:16
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The unfortunate thing about the DQs in Taipei is that they only serve ice cream which is like the thing I want from a DQ least. Get me some of those chicken strips and gravy, and those delicious seasoned fries, and the bacon double cheesburger...oh I guess they changed their menu. Man I miss DQ from like 10 years ago. Speaking of fast food, every time I go to Singapore now I have to hit Wendy's. drat, I miss Wendy's too.
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Mar 30, 2015 19:08
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You can overstay but only if you don't end up getting the stamp in your passport, I think that's the important thing. If you're late in filing your ARC renenwal I think you're ok, but it you have to leave the country, get a new visa and come back, you're hosed. I think as long as you have the same ARC number linked to the same visa you'll be fine even if you overstayed and filed a renewal late. Who knows though, because I kind of just assume they'll look for any reason they can to deny you permanent residency.
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Jun 5, 2015 12:36
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Moon Slayer posted:HESS really makes moving to Taiwan easy. They interview you while you are still overseas, help you with paperwork, pick you up at the airport and put you in a hotel for training, arrange transport to whatever branch you wind up at and assist you with getting housing. There are disadvantages (comparatively low pay, plenty of corporate BS on top of the usual buxiban stuff) but if you are like me and wouldn't be comfortable just flying into a strange country without knowing anybody or the language and hitting the streets looking for work they make things pretty easy. I doubt I'd be in Taiwan without them. Kojen does all that stuff as well. Or they did 7 years ago when I first came here.
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Jul 29, 2015 11:18
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