TaiwansoapboxRegular readers of OzSoapbox have probably noticed I’ve started making reference to moving overseas. A few months ago I started to feel restless after a relationship breakdown and decided I’d had enough of Melbourne, it was time for a change.

I’ve never really had the travel bug having lived in Melbourne my entire life so I figured that while I had the urge I might as well act on it. I haven’t had many times in my life when (pets aside) I didn’t have any strings attached and I was in a financial position to move myself.

I’ve chosen Taiwan for a number of reasons (earthquakes and tsunamis aside) and plan to move there over the next month or so. So what’s happening to OzSoapbox?

For the most part I don’t expect much to change. I’m going to try and avoid the travel blog route, as interesting as diving into a different culture is going to be I think I’d get bored of solely writing about my experiences overseas. My hearts always going to be in Australian current events.

What I think will realistically happen is I’ll probably wind down some of the other hobby topics I’ve got and focus more on Taiwan on the weekends. For example my goldfish posts will probably become sparse. Having said that goldfish are pretty big in Asia but I won’t have an aquarium setup (at least not initially) to keep me into it so it will drop off a little.

I am taking the Long Haul Trucker to the streets of Taiwan so that should be interesting, if for nothing else then THEY DRIVE ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD! I plan to keep the cycling component of OzSoapbox strong, with technical and cycling experiences in Taiwan articles.

I’m going to be teaching English initially so I’ll write a bit about that too and then I think once I’m over there settle on food and quirky things I come across. Apparently it’s cheaper to eat out all the time and there’s a whole new country of food for me to explore (I love Asian food) so I should have plenty to write about.

I’m pretty easy going but I can’t escape the fact I was brought up here in Australia and there’s most likely going to be some cultural clashes – which I’m sure will be frustratingly hilarious (to everyone except me), so expect a little of that too.

I don’t know if it will be a struggle to keep a balance between Australian current events and Taiwan but I’ll see how it goes. I really want to avoid starting a separate blog as writing for OzSoapbox keeps me quite occupied as it is. I’m more of a one thing type person anyway, one fishtank, one bicycle etc.

Some of you might get a bit bored with the Taiwan stuff which is understandable in which case I’ll thank you in advance for reading thus far. I imagine with the slight focus change I’ll continue to attract new readers too which hopefully balances things out.

One thing I won’t be able to do which I’ll miss is the hyperlocal Melbourne stuff, for example no more free parking at Costco type posts.

Although English seems to be pretty prevalent over in Taiwan the last thing I want is OzSoapbox to turn into a ghost town, at times this might be my only contact with the English speaking world!

At this stage I’m set to leave Australia sometime in November. I’ve wrapped up work, my pets and sorted out my luggage so there’s not much else to do other then to organise a visa and sort out my initial employment over there.

I’d like to thank you all for reading OzSoapbox and hope that I can continue to provide entertaining reading while I enter this next stage of my life. Here’s to change.


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