It's Good to Have a Hobby

Now that I live in Taiwan, have a job, and actually have some disposable income, my interest in video gaming has a hobby has flourished. In Japan they have lots of 'retro' video game shops where you can buy all your old favourite games from days gone by. From popular old Nintendo games to obscure titles for systems everyone's forgotten about (remember the WonderSwan? Neither do I!), they have it. But in Japan I was always too poor to think about picking up any of these old treasures.



Here in Taiwan, retro shops aren't quite as plentiful but they still have a few good ones. So every Saturday I've been going down to just browse and do a bit of shopping. I've also set up a YouTube channel, where typically I feature one old game from the past and talk about it. You can see the channel here: www.youtube.com/expgamerinasiaretro



Right now I'm just getting the hang of recording and editing, but I hope that eventually I can use the channel to give a more Asian perspective, which would help distinguish my channel from many similar channels out there.

Car Crash

About a month ago, I was in a fairly serious car crash involving a few friends. Thankfully none of us were seriously injured. It was 100% the other driver's fault (not my friend's fault). He was pulling a U-turn too quickly and slammed into my friend's vehicle. Of course I found all this out after the fact.


I had just spent a great day out with my Chinese teacher's friends at a park northeast of Taipei. Her friend Mark has this cottage out there and he's a chef by profession. So he hosted this huge all-you-can-eat-and-drink barbecue out at the park, and it was really, really fun. Everyone was very friendly and although I can't speak Chinese well, there were quite a few English and Japanese speakers there, so that combined with my feeble Chinese skills enabled me to have some pretty good conversations. The food was fantastic, and I had more than my fair share of Taiwan beer.

On the way home, we went up and down a mountain which involved the car twisting and turning this way and that way which to be honest wasn't very good for my stomach. But I managed to fall asleep eventually. Then suddenly BANG!!!


I awoke and right away I knew my head had hit something. I couldn't see well - everything looked like it had a smoky blue filter over it. I've been hit by a car before so I know what it feels like to be in shock, and I knew that's what was happening at that moment - I was in shock. I turned and saw my friend Jack was passed out and had some blood trickling down his forehead. I thought, that's not good! I thought I needed to get him some help. I also thought, you know because I'm in shock, I have no idea if anything is broken or not. Last time I got hit by a car, I didn't realize until quite a while after the crash that my collarbone was broken. So I decided I should leave the car a) to get help for Jack and b) to make sure my legs, arms etc. are still working.

When I got out of the car, everything on my body seemed to be OK - I could walk, move my arms around, etc. I could see several people outside so I thought OK, someone should be able to help Jack. But to my relief, he had come to and left the car on his own.

After what seemed like an eternity of waiting, talking to police, etc. We all went to the hospital to get checked out. By this time my vision had come back 100%. I got x-rayed and CT scanned, and they said there was no obvious damage but they were still a bit concerned about my brain. By this time it was after midnight so I cabbed it home.



The next week I was so sore! The day after it even hurt to eat and talk because it hurt to move my jaw. I was limping around slowly and had no energy to teach my classes. Even as late as three weeks after the accident, I had back pain when sleeping and thus couldn't sleep for more than a few hours at a time.

But now I seem to be 100% better. Tomorrow my friends and I are supposed to talk to the offending driver's insurance company to negotiate with them. Apparently in Taiwan NT$1K-$2K per day of pain/suffering is the norm, so we'll see what they have to say.

Learning To Blog Better

Well, I may be a little bit slow to learn about these things, but if you're reading this, it means I've finally learned how to blog directly from my iPhone by just e-mailing it in.

I recently downloaded the new iOS 4 for my iPhone, which supports Bluetooth (wireless) keyboards. And I bought an Apple wireless keyboard for my phone.

So what does this all mean? It means blogging should be easier for me and that will hopefully mean more updates!

Sent from my iPhone

The Other Side of the Tunnel

OK so I haven't updated my blog in ages. Why is that? Well, my work got incredibly busy there for a while, to the point that some of the senior managers were legitimately concerned about my health.

Then things got better, but you know the longer you wait before you update one of these things, the more difficult it seems to do. But I enjoy this blog and I enjoy speaking frankly about my life here in Taiwan, so I am forcing myself to continue with it.

Recently my life here improved greatly. There are several reasons for this. First, I recently acquired two beautiful cats from two coworkers who were going back to USA. Their names are Chou Chou 臭臭 and Mei Mei 美美. Both of them were rescued kittens that were abandoned. Chou is ten months old now, and Mei Mei is nine weeks. When I first got Mei Mei, she was only three weeks old, so I had to feed her kitten formula and help her go to the litter box. She seemed so fragile and helpless back then, but she grew up quickly! At three weeks she weighed only 375g, but now she weighs 1.1 kilos!

Anyway, I can’t describe how much more ‘full’ my life feels simply with the addition of these two cats. They love to sit on me, talk to me, get cuddled by me, and play with me. They also love to play with each other which I find endlessly entertaining. But there have been other changes in my life as well.

My workload at work has gone down dramatically. I still teach the same number of hours, but the amount of work I need to do outside of just teaching is not nearly as much as it used to be just a month or so ago. They made some minor changes to the way things are at work that drastically cut down on the amount of time I need to spend working on extra things outside of class time. Fortunately my pay has stayed the same, so I get the best of both worlds.

There’s also been a bit of a changing of the guard at work, as previous teachers have returned to America and new teachers have been hired. Before there was a lot of friction between myself and the other English teachers, and I think part of that was because they knew me as ‘one of the guys’ before my promotion, so they found it difficult to accept me as a manager. But these new teachers haven’t known me as anything but a manager, so I tend to get along much better with them. In fact, several of them came back to my place on Saturday to drink beer/eat pizza/play video games, which was fun.

I’m also making new friends outside of work, including some Japanese friends. This is great, because not only does it give me a chance to practice my Japanese, but also it keeps me in touch with my ‘Japanese’ personality. I don’t know if I can explain it well, but I find that when I speak Japanese, my whole personality and mannerisms change slightly. I feel more entertaining, more engaging, and more charismatic when I speak Japanese. And people seem far more interested in what I have to say when I speak Japanese as well, so it’s great to have these new friends.

I’ll try and update the blog more often from this point onward, but for now I’ll leave it here, and just let everyone know that life is good!

Welcome to 2010

It's hard to believe a new year has come again, let alone a new decade. But at this time of the year I like to take a look back at the year that just past, then think about my current situation, as well as my life moving forward.

I started 2010 on shaky ground. Facing the fact that, at that time at least, if was unlikely for me to stay in Japan long-term, I was carefully weighing in on my other options. Although I knew success in Japan was far from a sure thing, I bet heavily on it. Now I was running out of time and money. So I had devised a plan to get my TESL certificate in Canada, then go to Taiwan (where I knew I could get a work visa), and try my luck there. This was pretty much an “all-in” bet.

And I can say, with all honesty, that it was the best decision I could have made at that time. I've had many lucky breaks since arriving in Taiwan. Within one week of arriving, I had found a job at an American school that met my criteria (inside Taipei County, full-time day shift hours, no weekends). After 1 month of living in Shi Da, I found a great apartment in downtown Sanxia, just a 20 minute walk from my school, for only $NT5,000 per month.

After about five months of working there and trying to understand how to do my job effectively (they gave me a week of training but even that plus my TESL couldn't exactly prepare me for the stress and challenge of running a classroom. I think it has to be really experienced to be fully understood), I was offered (and I took) a newly-created position of Head Foreign Teacher (which has since been renamed to Coordinator of Academic Dept.)

Now, as we move into 2010, although I have to work very hard (in addition to my managerial duties, I still teach 25 hours a week, which is considered a full-time schedule), I also enjoy a higher standard of living, and can save more money per month than I could in Toronto. Plus the experience I'm earning will give me the option of obtaining a work visa in Japan, come spring 2012. That may seem far away, but honestly the last 10 months since I arrived here in Taiwan have just gone by in a blur.

While there are many good things in my life right now, there are many things I'd like to improve. As I predicted would happen earlier in this blog, my managerial position has resulted in some distance between myself and the other foreign teachers at work. Perhaps I'll talk more about this in a future blog, but suffice to say that I rarely hang out with any of them anymore outside work. I used to be invited to go out with them to various places to do different things, but now those invitations have stopped. In fact, I often hear them making plans with each other while I'm at the school, but they don't extend the offer to me. But this is to be expected – they don't see me as one of their group anymore. They are young. They see the workplace as an “us vs. them” situation. When I was in my 20's, I felt the same way.

I've also gained weight. Taiwan life has been good to me, and in Taiwan cooking food at home is not very cost-effective since restaurants are so inexpensive. Also, although I do a lot of standing and walking around when teaching classes, other than that I don't get much in the way of exercise. It's disheartening because (as noted here) in Japan I had lost a significant amount of weight due to the small Japanese portions, as well my traveling around from one station to another to meet my students. My belly has swelled up and my shirt is tight around the middle. Although I haven't weighed myself, I think I'm heavier now than I've been in my entire life.

My Chinese language acquisition has stalled. I had been making excellent progress with my teacher, but after getting promoted, I simply wasn't able to make it to her classes due to my work schedule. Instead of doing one textbook chapter every two weeks like before, I was still on the same chapter after two months!

I've also much in the line of romantic success since arriving in Taiwan. In Toronto, and also Tokyo, I found it very easy to meet women and there were often beautiful women walking in and out of my life, some on a romantic level and some on a platonic level. But so far in Taiwan it hasn't been nearly the same in this regard, especially since being promoted.

Another thing that has bothered me more and more as I live out in Sanxia, is the lack of a truly urban atmosphere. Although I live right out in the downtown Sanxia area, it still feels very rural to me and I miss the excitement and atmosphere of a big city.

But nothing ever stays the same, and there are some things I plan to do, as well as things I've already started doing, to improve my situation. The single most important thing, I believe, is to get out more. Working long hours during the week, I often feel tired and out of energy come the weekend. But staying at home and watching TV or playing video games isn't going to help anything. So, I've made a commitment to myself that, assuming I have no other plans, I'll come into Taipei at least once on Saturday or Sunday. In fact, I've been writing this blog at various locations in Ximending (which is in downtown Taipei).

Going out more means more exercise, more opportunity to meet new people, more city excitement and more opportunity to practice Chinese. I've also found a great new Chinese teacher that I meet here in Ximending every Monday and Tuesday evening. And when I'm out here on the weekend, I study Chinese at restaurants and coffee shops.

I've also tried to curb the portion sizes of the food I eat. Here in Taiwan the portions are generally quite a bit larger than in Japan, but there are also many 'serve yourself' kind of restaurants and I think it is at these places where I have a tendency to overeat the most. The food just tastes so good I don't want to stop ^_^ But over the last month or so I've been eating about half of what I normally would at the same restaurant. I think for my next phase I will try (once again) to limit the calories I drink. For several years, my main beverages were (black) coffee, tea, and water. I hope to get back to that and stay away from the Coke and sugared coffee. I've also started exercising - 20 minutes of brisk walking to raise my heart rate, and then stair climbing afterwards to build muscle. Right now I'm only going up about 3-4 flights, but I hope to increase that to all 17 floors of my building.

I'm still not sure exactly what I will decide in 2012. Will I move back to Tokyo? Or stay here in Taipei? A lot of it will depend on how I feel about Taipei at that time. But I don't want to dwell on the future, my life is happening right now. And right now, life is good.