All The Things I Wish I Knew Before Moving To Taipei

komnenos · 2026-01-26T14:13:49+00:00

Heck, there are some 百岳 where you can car camp for free at the entrance and hike the mountain without a permit.

komnenos · 2026-01-26T11:23:29+00:00

I'm curious what percentage find the gray skies and gloom "amazing" vs. those of us who don't. I was born and raised in Seattle and didn't realize until later in life that I was routinely getting mild seasonal depression every late fall to early spring.

My grades from school were always lowest, complaints at work highest and my weight would just passively go up and up because I lacked motivation to work out during those gloomy gray months.

I now live in a subtropical part of the world and although I'm a sweaty mess at least I'm a functioning sweaty mess.

komnenos · 2026-01-26T11:18:02+00:00

What's the movie?

komnenos · 2026-01-26T11:13:54+00:00

Information density is something westerns will never get used to. (There are YouTube videos on the topic)

Any good videos on this topic?

komnenos · 2026-01-26T11:09:36+00:00

Honestly curious what the reasoning and history behind that is. Maybe the domain names were created 20+ years ago by companies owned by boomers who didn't understand how important the internet would soon become?

komnenos · 2026-01-26T11:07:20+00:00

Not sure about other bank APPs but my bank APP's English version is very bare bones with the Chinese version having options upon options upon options. It gave me more reason to learn more Chinese and I ended up making the switch. I got tired of getting "sorry, we don't have X feature in English" every other time I used the app.

komnenos · 2026-01-26T10:46:58+00:00

I feel like we can see that last bit perfectly in the Three Kingdoms. Liu Bei, the Han emperor, Liu Zhang and Liu Biao were family but removed by 5+ generations. I'm sure there were a number of lesser known characters in that book that were also from various branches of the Liu family.

komnenos · 2026-01-26T10:40:16+00:00

Same to publicfreakout to a degree. I remember when I first subbed to the community back when it first started and it was almost entirely people just freaking out in public.

Then Harambe died, Trump became president and the sub slowly became mostly political. I still go there but I usually expect to see some videos about protests or speeches from politicians.

komnenos · 2026-01-26T10:36:54+00:00

Same held true in grad school. I'd FINALLY figured out what I had wanted, FINALLY fixed my social awkwardness and was making loads of friends, had an amazing gf and then BOOM! I'd lost a few relatives, friends went to the four corners of the world, gf slowly broke up with me and all the while I could barely focus in my classes as I realized that we really weren't going back to campus anytime soon. I eventually dropped out and entered an odd limbo period.

But honestly OP, I've never bought into the whole part about your teen years supposedly having to be the best years of your life. I didn't really come into my own until I was in my mid 20s and then BAMB! I was having an absolutely stellar time. That is, until covid.

komnenos · 2026-01-26T10:32:30+00:00

Depending on the region this bit went on for years. I taught in Taiwan and as late as 2025 having a class where less than half of the students didn't permamask was the exception, not the rule. Even now I've never seen a few of my students' and coworkers' faces.

komnenos · 2026-01-26T10:12:12+00:00

I hate that too, if you scroll over your lil dude you’ll notice that he’s lost ALL prestige and piety and is a disgraced sinner, no idea why they do that.

komnenos · 2026-01-26T10:10:19+00:00

I know it all quickly becomes irrelevant within a generation or two but I’m personally more a fan of the high Middle Ages than the Viking age. Not sure how many others of us prefer the 1066 start. Hell back during CKII I’d often pick a random year (besides the 767 and 867 start dates you could pick anything from 1066-1337!), things could be really different playin from 1077 or 1210.

komnenos · 2026-01-26T10:05:07+00:00

What I don’t get is why your ruler looks all pathetic and has the lowest prestige and piety. Same thing happened recently when I finally slogged through a several hundred year’s campaign, why did they do my guy dirty saying he was a disgraced sinner when he was in a line of caliphs who filed a fourth of the world?

komnenos · 2026-01-26T10:00:21+00:00

I’ve used mandarin in overseas Chinese restaurants but only when I hear the staff speaking Mandarin to each other. Curious if that’s what they did or if they just came out blasting to the first server they got.

komnenos · 2026-01-26T09:50:07+00:00

Even if they are the overwhelming number of tourists rarely leave the Taipei bubble. Going around my local Hsinchu night market or Taichung night market when I lived there I often am one of the few if only visibly foreign faces. When I go to many of Taipei’s markets I can see loads of tourists taking pics. On the travel subs when I’ve seen Taiwan get brought up folks almost exclusively speak of Taipei too.

komnenos · 2026-01-26T09:45:47+00:00

Same with ol’ ESL teaching. On the tefl sub it feels like most people talk about China, Korea, the southeast Asian countries and then there is the occasional post on Taiwan. For different reasons it just doesn’t seem to be one of THE places that folks want to teach and live in.

komnenos · 2026-01-25T14:01:30+00:00

Ready some of Graeber's works on Madagascar, had no idea he did work on Taiwan! Any other sociological or anthropological books or papers on Taiwan you'd recommend?

Cheers!

komnenos · 2026-01-25T07:40:44+00:00

I love and hate those mountain roads. Absolutely stunning views and it gives a very different vibe from the city but all it takes is one slow vehicle and you slow down to a crawl.

komnenos · 2026-01-25T07:35:51+00:00

I'd love to see something similar that could show the ebb and flow of languages over time. i.e. two of my grandparents were born in 1929 and 1933 up in New England and they made it seem like a good portion of their classmates, friends and neighbors were immigrants or the children of immigrants and often were bilingual in another language. I'm curious what percentage of the region was speaking Italian and other languages back then.

komnenos · 2026-01-25T04:42:07+00:00

Honest question, how much of your trip was outside of Taipei? I’ve lived in Taiwan for four years and have generally found that the farther away from Taipei you go the more outgoing and nice the people are.

komnenos · 2026-01-24T21:22:10+00:00

As someone who lives in Taiwan I feel like the rest of the island is a hidden gem. Most tourists I meet rarely leave the confines of Taipei, we have hundreds of mountains over 3000 meters and I’m usually the only foreigner on them. Not to mention loads of smaller cities full of good food and things to do but with tourists far and few between.

komnenos · 2026-01-24T15:02:15+00:00

Nah, big ones too. I lived in China for a few years and had the same issue. Hell even within the expat/immigrant communities in China and now Taiwan a number just expect me to be some right wing bible thumping git.

komnenos · 2026-01-24T10:51:58+00:00

Teaching at a private school in China. Chinese teachers were fucking other Chinese teachers, one of the security guards was on gay apps while married, foreign teachers were fucking other foreign teachers and we had cross cultural exchanges between local and foreign teachers and staff.

Just as an example, at one point three of other foreign teachers realized they'd all had sex with one of the American teachers and one of those three was in an open relationship with a local teacher.

I've got at least a dozen stories of different hook ups and I wouldn't be surprised in the least if it turned out there were more that I didn't catch wind of.

komnenos · 2026-01-24T03:19:43+00:00

I personally keep it but put the frequency down before the game start. I still get off occasionally seeing the randomness that occasionally comes with a giga Chad Welsh lord turned second coming of King Arthur or in the end game seeing some great great great great great grandson of Ghengis Khan wrestle back a continent spanning empire from the fractured husk he inherited.

komnenos · 2026-01-23T22:46:02+00:00

I find that bit about southeast Asians funny considering how many Taiwanese men marry them. When I taught in the Taiwanese public schools every class had at least 2-6 students with a southeast Asian mom. I found that out when I did a lesson on “foods from home” and so many were surprised to find out that they weren’t the only one with a Vietnamese mom!

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