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TetsuoTW posted:iTunes is a no-go If you're coming from an America (or a place where iTunes is a go) all the Apple stores will continue to work just fine with absolutely no trickery at all. Seriously, Apple gives no fucks at all and doesn't even do any IP geo-checking or anything as long as you have an American account and a way to pay for it. It owns. You can also get pretty much everything else to work with a VPN for about $5/month if you really want to. I use it to stream a bunch of sports stuff from back home, and also it works for Hulu and Netflix.
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Mar 8, 2012 17:46
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Haraksha posted:The position is still open, you just need a 4 year degree, don't bother with a TEFl. Shoot me an email, user name at gmail and I'll see if I can set you up. Man, don't keep posting this, I'm really getting tempted to move to the Sanxia area but I'm trying my bestest to honor my contract and not lose my deposit on my apartment here in Tainan. 
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Apr 17, 2012 15:35
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Haraksha posted:I ran into a friend at the stationary store. He was buying himself a new whiteboard marker on his break. I couldn't believe it. Kinda exactly what duckfarts said, for me it's just personal preference. When I began working at this school, they gave me a brand new set, but they were a lovely brand, and after a year or so of use, especially with letting kids write with them on the board, the points had been worn down to nothing, and I decided to "treat myself" to a brand new set, which I now do yearly or so. gently caress it, they're like, what, 20nt a piece? I'm sure I could raise a stink about it at work and get them to replace them but I never really thought it was a crazy thing to do, and believe me, I'm usually super sensitive about any time my school tries to dick me over.
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Apr 25, 2012 16:01
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There's certainly prepaid options that even have data, whenever someone comes here to visit me, I get a prepaid SIM and toss it in my old iPhone. The ones I get are from Taiwan Mobile, and they have 300NT preloaded on them and last for six months (or longer if you top them up). However, the first time around, just the iPhone doing its usual data thing (checking e-mail, getting alerts from FB, etc) was enough to burn through that 300NT credit in like a week or whatever. After that, I made sure to never actually activate the data plans on the prepaid deal. Things may have changed or there may be other options on other carriers, but yeah. It didn't seem too easy to really use data on a prepaid plan for any length of time.
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Apr 25, 2012 16:56
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If you buy it in Taiwan, it will be factory unlocked anyway, even if it's on contract. In the US it's a somewhat more complicated story. (And of course this is disregarding the whole jailbreak/unlock scene which I admittedly don't follow much of anymore)
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Apr 25, 2012 17:27
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I know I'm woefully uneducated about Chinese and stuff but that "Tamsui" thing really irritates me, especially since I rarely make it up north and like Khysanth it was weird one day to just show up and see all the MRT signs with "Tamsui" printed on them. I mean, for me at least, it seems that the point of romanization is to help aide English-speaking people with knowing the names of places, streets, or whatever. There's no way that changing all the signage to "Tamsui" is helping any foreigner. It seems like after a few years of making progress with attempting to standardized towards Hanyu Pinyin (which yeah, as everyone has mentioned, will probably still never ever be correctly updated on street signs throughout the country despite it being the "official" national romanization), the powers that be are making a bunch of weird decisions with things like "Tamsui" or "New Taipei City." The New Taipei City thing is especially weird, the Taiwan Railway Administration went through and updated pretty much all of the station names to have proper Hanyu Pinyin romanization (except for ones with "acceptable" oddness due to history like Taitung or Kaohsiung), and even purposely changed names with 新 that originally were romanized as "New ____ Station" into "Xin ____ Station", i.e. 新左營 station in Kaohsiung where the HSR ends was formerly romanized as "New Zuoying" but is now "Xinzuoying", which makes a lot more sense if you're a foreigner who speaks no Chinese and needs to speak to a taxi driver or something. I know that's just one part of the government, but it seems they've got the right idea. I know I'm ranting hard about romanization but especially considering the fact that Danshui used to be, y'know, right, and the original name for New Taipei was going to be "Xinbei", it just seem like the government is going out of its way to mess things up. POCKET CHOMP fucked around with this message at 20:32 on May 3, 2012 |
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May 3, 2012 20:30
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thegoat posted:I always wondered why someone would move across the globe and then work as little as possible, saving almost nothing for 10+ years. This doesn't really make sense to me. If I had just wanted to make and save money, I wouldn't have come to Taiwan in the first place. I figure a lot of people wanted the experience of living in another place, or learning Chinese, or whatever. If you came to Taiwan to just buckle down and work as much as possible to make as much as possible, it seems like there almost surely are better options available (at least when talking about cram school teaching jobs), especially considering you need to have a college education to qualify for that job here. By all means, I'm looking for enough work to live comfortably and save a little, sure. And if it was a different profession, I might change my tune, but as far as Teaching English at a buxiban is concerned, I'd take 18 hours a week rather than 30 any day.
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May 25, 2012 05:35
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Yeah, it kind of sucks that Skype doesn't offer a SkypeIn number for Taiwan, but I always figured it was because Taiwan has such strict laws on who can get a phone number, and how they keep a record of which number belongs to who. That's why even to get a prepaid SIM here you need to submit two forms of government approved ID. With no way to verify some random internet user is really who he says, I doubt they are too keen on letting Skype dole out numbers. Not to say there isn't a way to do it, but I would think most of the legit consumer-facing ways would be hampered by this fact, anyway.
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Jun 1, 2012 03:06
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Well, I'm pretty sure that if you're just coming for a short visit, there are companies at the airport and stuff that will rent you a pre-paid SIM or whatever. I never looked at the rates but I figured you had to pay some sort of markup for that service.
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Jun 2, 2012 03:09
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Yeah, I just pretty much go Kindle for everything. Also Amazon's not too bad about shipping stuff to Taiwan, usually. A few weeks ago I got a textbook (heavy!) shipped here for US$7. It was the lowest class of shipping and their estimate literally said around 30-40 business days, in fact, their estimated delivery date from the email they sent when it shipped still won't come to pass for two more weeks. Despite that, it actually showed up about a week and a half after they mailed it. ...Although there was that time I wanted to buy a turntable from them and they forced me to use DHL 2nd Day Air. Yeah, that was...uhh, pricey. Still better than what the local DJ shops were selling them for, but yeah.
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Jun 6, 2012 11:08
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Seriously, I would love it if someone at my school was on the ball enough to call me, even at 8:30. Especially because our boss typically has us come in for some stupid reason unless the conditions outside are likely to be like, fatal, or something. I don't get it because half the kids usually don't show up which just seems like it causes a ton of havoc as far as scheduling make-up classes and stuff are concerned. But lately he's been a bit more generous as far as "typhoon day--sure, take the day off!" is concerned so I really don't know what I should bother doing. edit: and as if the gods wanted to prove me wrong, literally as soon as the post submitted I got a call telling me it's a day off. Guess they waited exactly until noon. Cool, less pay!! 
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Jun 12, 2012 04:59
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Yeah they told me it was due to heavy rains, not a typhoon. I guess the only other times I've been in this situation it's always been a typhoon so I'm just used to calling it a typhoon day.
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Jun 12, 2012 05:31
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Bike lane? I thought the little dude riding a bicycle was just some kind of bizarre Taiwanese symbol that indicated it was okay to park there 
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Jun 13, 2012 11:18
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I dunno, maybe it's different for foreigners visiting temporarily on a scholarship or something, but I've known plenty of Taiwanese college students who have lived in dorms that were pretty normal to me. Some of them were 4-people rooms, most of them were 2-people rooms though, the same I'd expect as far as college dorms back in the states were concerned. There weren't curfews, but yeah, you did have to show ID and there was boys/girls only floors, but I dunno, we had that in my university too in America so it didn't strike me as odd  I mean, you always should fully investigate the conditions you'll be living in, in any scenario, especially in another country, but I don't think the Taiwanese have a very different concept of dorms from what you'd expect in the west.
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Jun 15, 2012 04:12
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dlink posted:sup guys i'm going to taiwan in early July. I think it'll be pretty difficult to get out to Taroko and back in a day, but it might be possible. I was coming from Tainan, and actually did a whole loop of the island on the train. We left pretty drat early in the morning, headed south, around the bottom, up through Taitung, and got into Hualien around noon, if I recall correctly. We ate lunch in Hualien and then got a taxi to drive us around the gorge for the day, we did that until after nightfall, got back to Hualien around 7:30 PM or so, met up for dinner with some friends. Our train leaving was at around 2 AM, so we had a bunch of time to kill, just goofed off although it was a Thursday or something so there wasn't exactly a whole lot going on. The train ride back...even though it was an overnight train, it still made a decent amount of stops, the lights were on, etc. Basically, I didn't get any goddamn sleep at all. We rolled back in to Tainan at like 11-something, so in all the trip took a bit more than 24-hours, and we were trashed as gently caress afterwards, but it was a lot of fun. Something similar might be doable if you really are strapped for time but want to make sure you did it. We didn't have a ton of time in the gorge itself but our taxi driver was good and got us to hit pretty much all of the major spots, anyway. It helped that it wasn't insanely busy since it wasn't peak travel time, so we were kinda able to zoom around from place to place, I hear the tour buses and stuff can get really bad at certain times. edit: Also, I think with your username/title and the recent job opening he posted, you most definitely should hang out with Duckfarts
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Jun 16, 2012 03:24
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In Tainan, honestly, aside from eating, as duckfarts suggested, most of the touristy stuff to do here is just like, historical stuff. It's interesting if you're into it, but if you're not it could easily just seem like a bunch of old buildings that are kind of a waste of time. Plus, even if you're into it, you could probably hit all the "big" sites in a day, anyway. It's not a very big city. There's more to do if you head down to Kaohsiung, if you're only there for 3 days you probably won't be too bored. The taxi ride for the day around Taroko was NT$1600, which seemed like a steal to me. The dude drove us around wherever we wanted, pointed out a lot of cool poo poo, and even bought us some bananas. I mean, for 7 hours of someone's time, including just the actual distance traveled in the car, it was a pretty good deal. We probably could have gotten him for longer if we had shown up earlier in the day. However, for a cross-island taxi trip, no idea how much that would run you!
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Jun 16, 2012 05:51
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Asia, dude, that's not really that weird. Or, I mean, it's pretty weird but it's not really surprising. No work for us tomorrow here in Tainan. Two weather days in two weeks. They've got sandbags out in front of my building. Should be, uhh...interesting.
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Jun 19, 2012 15:41
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I think it's raining worse in Tainan now that the typhoon has passed. The time when it was floating on by was actually the chillest part of the day. Still, it's nowhere like typhoon-level rain. Just normal rain-rain. Think I'm gonna go take my dog out for a walk in it in a little while.
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Jun 20, 2012 12:35
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Seriously I just wanted to quote that and say "gently caress you" but I was too stuck to my desk chair to do so. My bedroom A/C killed itself on Sunday, too. Thinking of sleeping in the guest room (with working A/C) until I bother to get someone out here to fix it. And yeah, Tetsuo, I'm exactly the same as you. Saturday was mind-bogglingly beautiful outside, but after spending like 30 minutes just driving around and doing various errands I decided to spend all day indoors. It's a shame but seriously gently caress the heat.
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Jul 3, 2012 16:02
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Also the one near me now has "Lady Liberty" brand knockoff Doritos in Cool Ranch flavor. Which came first, Ranch or Cool Ranch? (I ate the whole bag in one sitting)
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Jul 6, 2012 17:52
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I'm pretty sure the fear against tap water is all just cultural superstitions and a concerted effort by Taiwanese bottled water companies, but whatever, why take a risk when it's all pretty drat cheap/easy to make the water "safe" anyway? The latest building I've moved to has one of those little water dispensing stations on the first floor, 1L of water is 1NT (or if you want it to "add minerals for extra health!" it's 1L for 2NT), and at least then you can be pretty sure it's gone through the correct purification channels. I've just got a bunch of empty 5L jugs, just refill them whenever. Now let's all discuss whether or not it's okay to flush toilet paper.
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Jul 13, 2012 05:38
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I dropped a spoon in my toilet once in my first apartment here that didn't have a kitchen, so I had to do all my dishes in the bathroom sink. I was able to recover (and trash) it, though.
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Jul 13, 2012 13:08
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I dunno I literally clicked the link in your post and I ended up at google.com with no redirects or anything like that. It does have an option in the far right bottom corner to go to Google.com.tw but other than that I'd wager it's exactly the same as if I were visiting from an American IP. Check your interent or something, man. I used to get really pissed off when Google's mobile sites/apps would always default to Chinese and did not always have an option to revert to English somewhere. Amazing UI experience, as always, Google.
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Jul 17, 2012 03:35
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Is there any reason you keep calling them Taiwan Dageda (Mobile) rather than just calling them, y'know, their English name, Taiwan Mobile? For some reason that really stuck out to me in your last two posts, haha.
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Jul 17, 2012 17:32
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Don't you need to have a Chinese name to get an ARC and stuff? That's what my boss told me when I first got here, so I just had to pick something. Actually, I share a name with one of the first whities who visited China, so my girlfriend at the time just copied his name, which is just a...what do you call the opposite of romanization?...version of my name in Chinese. Of course, since it dates back hundreds of years ago, it's kind of a lovely translation from English to Chinese, but whatever, it's a good conversation starter, mostly because people think it's a really weird name.
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Jul 19, 2012 15:55
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Weird. I dunno, all that stuff for me has both the English and the Chinese. Actually my bank account at the post office also has both. The only thing I can think of that has Chinese-only is my Health Insurance card. But yeah come to think of it I guess when filling out the tax forms or something I never had to write down any Chinese name so I guess it makes sense that it's not required. No idea why my first boss told me it was.
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Jul 19, 2012 16:46
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Ravendas posted:My first job made up my Chinese name for me, and it's been on my ARC and Health ID since I came here. Ah, cool. That's good to know, I guess what I have isn't set in stone then, not that I think I would have anything to change it to.
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Jul 20, 2012 07:08
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I bought the first volume from Amazon after the first time Haraksha suggested it in this thread, and I'm really enjoying it so far, even though I'm only about halfway through. I studied Japanese for 4 years and somehow had never heard of the original Kanji version, but man... if nothing else, those books really just give you an awesome system for breaking down characters. Even though there are still a lot of elements/radicals I don't really know, when I look at a really complicated character it doesn't really look like just a jumbled mess, I can see all the little bits and pieces. As a plus, stroke order also makes a lot more sense. Is there any suggested way to start learning the pronunciations of each one? I'm thinking of finishing the book first and then going back and creating a new deck of flashcards with the pinyin on one side and the character on the other, and working through it again. It's kind of frustrating to know the meaning of a character but not necessarily be able to say it, especially if you want to point something out to someone. I've had it come up a few times already. Anyway the point is, A+++ totally recommend Remembering the Traditional Hanzi and thanks to Haraksha for the suggestion in the first place.
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Jul 20, 2012 15:05
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Pretty weird that we've got it off in Tainan despite it just being really windy and really light rain. I know anything can happen but the storm track doesn't even look like it will get nearer to the south than it already has. I wonder if my boss is going to honor it or not. I'd actually be bummed about losing out on hours but whatever, I'd just like to know one way or the other before noon tomorrow when the office opens. 
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Aug 1, 2012 16:00
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That's because Chinese Taipei is the name Taiwan uses in the Olympics. It's just another example of the bullshit charades the world has to play to pretend like Taiwan isn't a separate country from China. You can read more about it on Wikipedia. I saw some people on FB passing around a "Taiwan pride" picture of the opening ceremony with "Taiwan" photoshopped in place of "Chinese Taipei" text and the actual ROC flag rather than the Chinese Taipei Olympic flag with the caption being something like "Someday..." edit: Actually, after reading that Wikipedia article again for the first time in a long time, it seems like they were originally offered the chance to use Taiwan and rejected it. Although that was back in the late 70s and obviously the political situation in Taiwan was much different back then. POCKET CHOMP fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Aug 6, 2012 |
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Aug 6, 2012 15:35
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I'm not a Taipei resident (yet), but when I'm up north I've been to The Diner a few times, seemed pretty good. No idea if there are better places, but yeah. edit: beaten by a minute!
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Aug 7, 2012 15:36
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Seems like the typhoon really has stalled though. The 24 hour projection now is almost exactly where it was this morning--with the eye of the storm still well off the east coast. Of course, obviously the projection can be wrong if they were predicting two different things this morning and this evening, but public officials go off those projections when making the call. That being said, weather was quite lovely earlier today in Tainan and I thought the typhoon had already begun, but it hasn't rained since around 6 PM or so. Maybe it'll stay that way? Please? The only real advantage about living in the south is the less rainy weather but we've definitely gotten our fair share of it already this summer.
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Aug 22, 2012 18:44
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I'm pretty sure it's just trying to slow down so that it can ruin the weekend as much as possible. Thanks, weather lords.
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Aug 23, 2012 04:37
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Tainan City is the only blue blip out of everywhere in the south. I don't really care and whatever they declare I still have to wait for my work to call me and tell me one way or the other, but it's funny that they're being such holdouts this time.
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Aug 23, 2012 15:56
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Yeah, that makes total sense, and it's almost like I am waiting for them to make up their mind so that I can rely on the weather being the opposite of whatever they say it'll be. Still, this is honestly the first time since moving to Taiwan I've seen it say "尚未宣布消息。" Is the mayor of Tainan incapacitated or something?
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Aug 23, 2012 17:46
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Sweet. I'll be eligible for an APRC in another year or so (hopefully, if my new school doesn't muck up my ARC this year, fingers crossed), I always heard the background check thing was a total pain because it needed to be translated and notarized and stuff. Also, the less stool samples I am required to submit in my life, the better. Hopefully they'll be approved by the cabinet by next year, then.
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Oct 12, 2012 12:50
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Well I know you haven't had to do a stool sample for a standard ARC for a while, but I was told that the APRC health check was a much more stringent one than the regular one. Good to know, though
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Oct 12, 2012 13:14
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Especially since tethering works out of the box here with no need for extra carrier approval on iOS, at least in my case.
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Nov 20, 2012 14:04
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Really weird, cause I came to ask about if anyone knew about renewing licenses. I got my license last November, right after I got my new ARC, and they set the expiration date on the license to match my ARC's expiration date. Well, I intended to renew it before it expired and after I got my new ARC, but there ended up being a delay with my ARC processing and now I won't actually get my new ARC in hand until after my old one was set to expire. Am I going to be hosed when I try to renew my license after I get my new ARC, since the license will be expired? It was kind of out of my hands, I mean, I could retake the test and pass it with no problems, I'm sure, but I'd much rather not. It's only going to be about a week's difference in time, and I imagine Taiwanese people must forget to renew their licenses and don't immediately need to retest if they've expired by a week, right? Also, I moved across the country for my new job, I wouldn't suppose anyone would know if I'll have any problems handling this all at the new local DMV thingy, wherever that may be. Just wondering if I have to go back to the place it was issued or what. It's super cool to not know where everything is after moving, it's like being in Taiwan for the first time again!
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Nov 25, 2012 16:11
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Good to know I shouldn't have too many problems, thanks guys! I've moved up north to Yingge, which is in New Taipei City by Sanxia and Shulin. Sad to say that I'm now one less in the small group of southern Taiwan goons. It's pretty much 100% E/N, but after my relationship with my girlfriend of 4 years ended back in February, it seemed like a move might be prudent. She was the reason I was in the south in the first place, and I felt like I kind of needed a change of environment anyway. I didn't really have a big social network there since I spent most of my time with her, and it seemed like I wasn't doing too well on expanding that network after I was out on my own, haha. I had some friends in Taichung and around Taipei, and I found myself just leaving town every weekend, so in the end when a job offer came up here I just decided to take it. Figured I at least know a few people here that I enjoy hanging out with, so I'm not in a complete bubble, and the law of bigger numbers as far as people to meet around Taipei along with the change in scenery may mean I can kinda kick myself out of the funk I was in. ...or I just spent a lot of time, effort, and money in a futile attempt to run away from my problems, who knows? I kinda have really mixed feelings on leaving Tainan because there was nothing about the location or the city itself that I didn't like. It was my first home in Taiwan and really my first home in my adult life being on my own, and it's a pretty special place. I guess if I end up hating it here I can always go back, haha. Okay, that's enough E/N rambling, sorry about that.
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Nov 26, 2012 02:54
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