Welcomes across countries and cultures vary, and one way to say welcome in one country might not fly in others. Indeed, how we welcome people is a matter of personal manners, culture, and, quite frankly, how open one is to outsiders. Well, after getting all that out of the way, most of us can agree […]
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Back in January 2017, I took a holiday to Jiufen of all places (I was still relatively new to Taiwan). We stayed in an old but nicely decorated house beside a graveyard at the top of the town. We realized pretty quickly that Jiufen went dead after 9pm with most places closing as the crowds […]
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Well, after all that time, I’ve come to something of a sensitive conclusion about a small, but generally online vocal group that behave in a misogynistic and an ethno nationalistic manner towards local women and foreign men in Taiwan. Disclaimer – This issue is not a Taiwan only problem and is very prevalent for Asian […]
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Memes are a means of delivering humour and ideas in a format that requires the least amount of effort. The only real effort is the level of creativity you have when matching content with your audience’s expectations. That word “expectations” is vital when it comes to creating memes. Fans expect a certain persona and many […]
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There’s been one analogy to explain the relationship between the world and COVID-19. The world is the Looney Tunes coyote running off a cliff, and only by failing to look down, does the coyote fail to fall. Well, that’s pretty much the state of the world as of October 2020. Spikes of COVID-19 across the […]
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Almost ten years ago, in my secondary school in Ireland, I had a free class. The teacher supervising our free time, Mr. Muffet, asked us to take out a pen and a piece of paper and get started on the following task: Write down three animal names in the following order: Your favorite animal An […]
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Friends, strangers, and taxi drivers often ask me, “why did you come to Taiwan,” and the short answer is simple; I got a scholarship to study my master’s in NCCU. The long answer? I didn’t want to go back to China after experiencing Beijing for a year. I know that can come off as a […]
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As COVID-19, or as it called commonly in Taiwan, Wuhan Pneumonia (武漢肺炎), continues to ravage the world, Taiwan continues to be one of the few countries that held back an almost unstoppable force of nature. As of writing, we are fast approaching nearly 1 million cases of coronavirus worldwide. This number was unfathomable 3 months […]
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I think most foreign nationals in Taiwan have dealt with some level of discrimination when it comes to renting. That’s not to say you won’t find amazing landlords or a solid place to live. You can. However, the pathway to finding a place isn’t always so easy, and I’ve experienced some pretty weird landlords that […]
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I decided to compile a list of things that I’ve either said on Nihao’s It Going? or with friends. Usually, I post these on the Facebook page as statuses and people generally like them. I decided to pull them all together and add new ones here. If y’all enjoy these little Going-isms, I’ll post some […]
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