I’ve never really particularly liked to listen to music whilst driving. I think a large part of this comes down my first car being a Mini Moke – a go-kart jeep type thing with a canvas roof and loud as hell engine.

I did at some point have a radio system in there but anything more than 20 minutes of listening invariably resulted in headaches.

After I sold my Moke I bought myself a Mini and whilst that cut out a lot of the road and engine noise, I found myself preferring to listen to the sound of the engine – mostly incase anything went wrong (minis tend to have little nothing in the way of precautionary warning systems).

Once again listening to any sort of music in the car served as a distraction and brought on the headaches.

Having driven both of these cars for the better part of a decade, I guess listening to music and driving never really became ingrained into my behind-the-wheel rituals.

Here in Taiwan it’s more out of fearing for my life then listening to the engine that I still continue to shun any sort of music when I’m on the roads.

Well, that and I ride a scooter here rather than drive a car. [Read the rest of this entry...]

If you’re out and about during Chinese New Year in Taiwan, chances are you’re probably going to notice an unusually greater amount of non-Taiwanese guys out and about trying to keep themselves occupied, but still looking like they’ve got nothing better to do.

For hundreds (thousands?) of Taiwanese girls every Chinese New Year heralds the difficult decision of being split between spending time with their boyfriends and family.

With the Chinese New Year banquets ranking as the most important family time on the Chinese lunar calendar, the decision on how to spend CNY weekend often boils down to

• do I spend it with my family and worry in the back of my mind that my boyfriend might get a bit lonely and have nothing to do… or
• do I spend it with my boyfriend, totally piss off my family and just deal with the repercussions later?


It’s not an easy choice any way you cut it and inherently stems from a culture that largely refuses to acknowledge or just flat out ignore the fact that young Taiwanese females have a social life. [Read the rest of this entry...]

One of the most difficult decisions I knew I had to make before moving Taiwan was what to do with my pets.

With a heavy heart I decided to give my goldfish to the pet store I frequented in the hope they’d find a new home in someone elses aquarium. I don’t know if that eventuated but I’d like to think I gave them as good a chance as any at being rehomed.

My cat Cloud was a much more delicate matter. I’d picked him out as a kitten five years prior and for his entire life I’d been all he’d known. People had come and gone but I was his constant. Both of us knew eachother’s entire behavioural spectrum and both of us had been through whatever the last five years had thrown at us together.

Giving him up was simply not an option.

The possibility of bringing him with me was always there but moving to a strange new country I decided against initially bringing Cloud over because the reality was that I didn’t know entirely what life would be like here, or where I’d initially wind up.

The last thing I wanted was to have to face uncertainty whilst trying to lug a cat around a country I myself was learning to navigate.

In the end I gave myself a six month timetable to settle down into a routine and create a stable enough environment to introduce Cloud into. In the meantime he was to temporarily stay at my mum’s, where the two cats there would hopefully stave off any anxiety he had about me leaving.

At least that was the plan. Two days after I left Australia, Cloud went missing.

What’s worse is that I only found out on Christmas eve. Wholly distracted by the experiences of life in a new country over the first few weeks of being here I hadn’t thought to ask about Cloud since I’d left.

And when I did… that’s when I found out he’d gone missing. My mother had sought to keep this from me for the time being as she figured I’d probably have enough on my plate without worrying about Cloud having gone missing.

That in itself was fair enough, but the weeks turned into months and gradually I came to accept that Cloud was gone.

Having moved on with my life and made peace with Cloud’s disappearance… it was roughly ten months later that I got a phonecall informing me he’d been found.

A woman who had been caring for Cloud had brought him into a vet and upon scanning his microchip, contacted my mother wondering why her name was on the chip of this lady’s cat.

Long story short, I then had to make the call on whether we left Cloud in the care of this woman or, although delayed, fell back on my original plan to eventually bring him to Taiwan.

Somewhat feeling like I’d already let him down, mixed with some of my own selfishness at the thought of other people looking after him, I decided to stick to my original plan and have him brought here.

For anyone else wondering what the rough process is or the costs involved with bringing a pet to Taiwan, having gone through the experience myself, today I thought I’d share my experience. [Read the rest of this entry...]

It’s always interested me how certain color schemes invoke different images in the mind.

For example, in my mind the color pink was once squarely delegated to imagery of five year old princesses and Barbie doll paraphernalia. Thanks to Taiwan now anytime I see anything in pink I can’t help but think of helium-voiced, duckface pulling Hello Kitty obsessed freaks.

Red and white will always remind me of the Sydney Swans football scheme, as will black and red Essendon.

Green and gold reminds me of the old MET trains we had in Melbourne.  British racing green will always remind me of mini cars and the list goes on.

Some of these color associations are good, some bad. For instance when it came to purchasing a scooter here, after witnessing some of the horrors on Taiwan’s roads I adamantly refused to purchase any scooter that wasn’t plain as plain can be in solid black.

It’s bad enough the ‘OMG’ looks you get when people see you on a scooter, the last thing I wanted was to draw more unnecessary attention to myself by riding a hideously detailed freak show.

Others don’t seem to mind outlandish color schemes and others still seem to go out of their way to showcase them.

Like this guy: [Read the rest of this entry...]

I stopped talking and looked down. Not used to having the attention of the class diverted away from me I turned towards the source of the distraction.

Standing just outside the door was my TA and what looked to be a new student. After knocking I let a few moments pass before I opened the door.

Smiling, my TA presented the new student to me, ‘This is Titty’.

Looking her straight in the eye and sure that I’d heard her wrong, I waited for some sort of correction but as the seconds passed it became clear that no mistake had been made.

‘Uh hi… Titty was it?’

‘Yes, my name is Titty. Nice to meet you’.

‘Yeah, nice to meet you too. Ok class, this is Titty – she’ll be joining us today’.

As I motioned for Titty to take a seat and began to let the distraction of why a parent would name their child ‘titty’ overwhelm me, my TA suddenly snapped me out of it. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Most people who visit Taoyuan Airport are either rushing to catch a plane or pick someone up.

As you pull up to the entrance of Taoyuan Airport wondering if you’ve forgotten anything and then make your way down to the main airport buildings, even the slightest blink means you’re likely to miss these gardening ambassadors that welcome you to the airport.

At first glance these gardeners don’t look much different to the clumsily put together arm-flapping dummies construction workers in Taiwan use to direct traffic away from road works, but take a closer look and it’s evident some artistic creativity has gone into the construction of these statues. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Most of the electric scooters I’ve seen have appeared to be little more than toys. With skinny tires and looking more like fashion accessories than a contender for an alternative to traditional transportation, by and large most people seem to avoid them.

Although quite happy on my Long Haul Trucker bicycle, the other day I came across an electric scooter that is starting to resemble something that could seriously tackle Taiwan’s roads.

Meet the Giant E-Fu Momentum Scooter: [Read the rest of this entry...]

On my Kymco G5 scooter I’m lucky enough to have an electronic instrument cluster that provides me a nice big illuminated digital clock.

Although I do wear a watch and my mobile phone can usually be found in the little pocket compartment where the ignition is, I do find myself using the scooter clock by default when I’m riding around.

With Taiwan’s shonky and unpredictable road, even a quick flick of the wrist and glance could be a death sentence.

Me? With my onboard digital clock I’m one of the lucky ones… but by and large most scooters on Taiwan roads have oldish analogue type instrument clusters with most failing to have an operational speedo needle, let alone a functional clock (and that’s if they have one at all).

So what do these people do if they need to quickly tell the time on their scooter?

One particular young woman came up with this: [Read the rest of this entry...]

If they’re not patrolling the streets of Ximending looking for underaged schoolgirls who want to buy the latest in Japanese fashion… then it’s probably out the front of this place: [Read the rest of this entry...]

With rain polluted with god knows what trickling down from the storm clouds above, there I was walking along the streets of Taiwan minding my own business when a bicycle stopped me dead in my tracks.

As I habitually do with most bicycles I see out and about I’d glanced over at this one as I walked past. I continued past it but had someone been observing me the slight tilt in my head would have betrayed my afterthought that something wasn’t quite right about this particular bicycle.

Shrugging it off I tried to continue only to stop a few paces from where the thought originally struck.

‘Wait, the saddle…something was wrong with the saddle!’

I turned around and then there infront of me it hit me… this particular bicycle appeared to be using a bar stool as a seat.

‘Now the hell does that even work?’ I thought to myself as I got closer to the bike, wondering how a round bar stool seat could be in any way remotely more comfortable to sit on then even the cheapest of quality traditional bicycle saddles available. [Read the rest of this entry...]