Cultural Differences: Raw meat, cooked vegetables

This is one of my favorite petty squabbles: you can eat raw meat but not vegetables. I had it with numerous girlfriends and co-workers over the years, but my wife gave the best answer.

"Hey, don’t eat that?” she shouted because i picked up a piece of the carrot she was chopping into my mouth. “Why you keep putting raw food in your mouth? I tell you many times.”

The argument was something to do with the belief too many pesticides were used so the vegetable had to be cooked.

“When I stick it up my ass then you need to worry,” I replied. "So why is it ok to eat raw beef and fish but not vegetables? These vegetables were freshly picked, slaughtered and served.”

“Raw fish tastes good, stupid,”she replied.

Expat Culture in Taiwan: Moaning the Taiwanese are unprofessional I

Other cultures do things differently; they have their own unique hypocricies. Stupid foreigner syndrome happens when you believe a foreign country is inherently more dishonest or stupid than another.

Another pet expat moan is that the Taiwanese are unprofessional.

After several years in Taiwan you begin to get over your alienation and spot the bullshit. It is then that you start to worry about striking up new conversations in the bar.

This particular new guy had seen the guys in the motorbike repair shops watching the stock channel - and had flipped through the cable and worked out there were about thirty channels with stock advice.

“Man it is crazy here, absolutely anyone is allowed to give stock information. Back home you have to have the training and the education, and people only trust the big banks, reputable companies,” he said on hearing Chris was a broker for a large western financial institution.

Chris was great. He was young but had a healthy cynicism to his occupation: “Man, that is bullshit, we are all con-artist in suits whose greatest achievement was to convince the people that there was some skill to what we are doing. We are mostly wrong; we talk up stocks when we shouldn’t; we ignore all the financial basics in favor of hype - Look at the dot.com bubble...Look at the employment situation: we get fired for performing badly all the time, but rehired by other firms.”

Said new guy stared at Chris lost for words because his 'you have been here too long' defence wasn't going to work: Chris had only been here a couple of years.

Chris disproved our theory that all new foreigners were stupid; gave us confidence to speak to new people. He excelled himself that evening:v“What is it you always say John? – Ah, yes...Now fuck off!”

Taiwan culture: Western music for bars; Chinese for KTV

In Taiwan there is a crisis of confidence in using their Taiwanese music in bars and discos.

There is a huge music industry in Taiwan with plenty of home grown stars who are idolized. People want to watch their videos on MTV, hear them sing on TV shows; they buy their CDs and listen to them at home, they go to their concerts, they collect their posters and bags and cups; and, they belt out their songs at KTV as if they know nothing else, but to dance to or play as background in your hip bar, not one even makes it into the DJs collection.

And, we are not just talking about the one or two bars where the foreigners go, but also the clubs and bars where you won't find one foreigner inside.

And it is not the case that Asian pop is inferior across the board: from the vast resources of Korean, Japanese, Hong Kong and Taiwanese music it is easy to find ten, fifteen tracks at any one time that stand favourably with their western equivalents, but not one will make it onto the decks.

Been in Taiwan too long: Can't tell western girls' ages

Taiwan girls look alot younger and so after a while you can't tell western girls' ages.

I was sat at home watching the movie '13' on DVD. I had rented it because it was supposed to be controversial story about 'Jailbait' girls.

I watched it just not able to see what the fuss was all about, before finally shouting: "I don't get it, every 18 year old bangs all the time."

"They are 13," replied my girlfriend.

"Oh, yeah. Shit, i am never going to be able to go back to the west."

Funny Taiwan Adverts: The cleanest pigs in the world

This was a very funny non-PC Taiwan advert.

There had been a scare about slaughterhouses selling on the pork from diseased or dead pigs. The media had gone crazy and everyone was afraid to buy pork.

One pork retailer reacted with the following advert to promote his pigs:

First scene: lily-white, smiling pigs are exercising on treadmills, being showered and scrubbed down by attendants in a hotel room before being checked and given the thumbs up by doctors.

Next scene: the pigs are lining up patiently, while the same attendants, now dressed to deal with nuclear waste, are slaughtering the pigs, chopping them into parts on operating room tables, and turning them into nice joints.

Funny Taiwan news stories: 1

This Taiwan news story is not an urban legend.

Ever read Viz and their take on the hamster - replaced by rottweiller - story?

An improvised sex game went wrong, when, a young couple - embarrassed to go to a sex shop and buy a vibrator - tested the jiggling power of a Nokia mobile phone. Unfortunately, they failed to consider how they were going to remove it from said girl's back passage.

It is particularly funny, when you experience how often Asian are on their mobile phones.

While she waited in emergency, her arse was just a ringing, vibrating place of frustrated relatives and friends.

Cute language usages: I didn't know i was a chicken

Certain word are a lot of fun when literally translated from Chinese to English. For a long time I thought the Taiwanese were just getting certain words wrong. Then, when my Chinese got better, I found out they were translating the Chinese word directly in English.

"I love your eggs," I would hear.

Then i would lift my head and peer in a direction just past my stomach. "Balls, love...I am not a chicken."

After a while i learnt not to be churlish.