The Dating Debacle

Some interesting thoughts on Bamboo Butterfly on Dating in Taiwan (Part I and Part II).

I wrote a piece on dating advice in Taiwan awhile back (edited not long ago), but of course, my thoughts in that area are to be taken with a grain of salt, seeing as I've never actually dated a Taiwanese guy. I was in a relationship with the man who is now my husband within months of first moving here.

I don't entirely agree with Bamboo Butterfly, but it's interesting and true enough that it is definitely worth a read.

Basically, my findings are this:

It's true that your average Taiwanese guy is generally more likely to prefer what you'd say is generally an average Taiwanese girl (note the very heavy use of "generally" and "average" here - I don't wish to stereotype): quieter than your average foreign woman (although not nearly always: I know plenty of very outgoing Taiwanese women and just as many very quiet American women), slender...I'd say "more modest" and "not as showy" but really, c'mon, with all the fake eyelashes and butt-shorts I see in this country I don't really buy that old cliche. It's true that your average Taiwanese guy is probably going to be just as judgmental about qualities he doesn't like in women in both personality and physical characteristics than your average American guy or wherever-guy.

But...you know what? I'm, err, curvy. And by curvy I mean overweight. I'm flamboyant. I'm loud. I have bright red highlights and my favorite color is eye-assaulting aqua or cobalt. I'm talkative. I'm aggressive. I'm tall - taller than many, but not nearly all, guys here. I am everything a "typical" Taiwanese guy is supposed to not like. And yet, I've had plenty of interest shown in me - I've been chatted up (in a totally not creepy way) on the MRT, had students who clearly had crushes on me, was once told it was too bad I had a boyfriend and had compliments on my looks (which aren't much of anything, really) and had guys who initially seemed interested later on show an interest in friendship (which I tend to brush off, it's a bit weird when you're married), indicating that it wasn't just an interest in a fling.

Bonus! Here's me looking like a drowned rat in Fugly Pants and hair plastered to my head while river tracing in Yilan.
So, as you see, I am not slender, I am not girly, and I am not afraid to wear Fugly Pants.
If Taiwanese guys could like me, they can like you. Your pants are probably not as fugly anyway.

All this just proves that for all those guys who like what you'd expect, there are so many who like something else. I do think a lot of Taiwanese guys who like a foreign woman (or foreign women generally) are the ones who don't want what they see as "normal" in Taiwanese women (I have no doubt that plenty of these guys will go on to meet awesome, cool, outgoing, flamboyant Taiwanese women, in addition to foreign women, though). They're the ones who don't mind a little curviness, who don't want the quiet, sweet, highly manicured "presence" that Taiwanese women are encouraged to cultivate - please note, I don't think all Taiwanese women actually are those things, just that the culture here encourages them to be that way more than, say, American culture encourages women to do so. Who think a little bit of loud&crazy is not only fun, not only acceptable, but desireable. If those guys didn't exist, I wouldn't have any Taiwanese male friends, but I do.

I don't agree that men in Taiwan generally aren't into foreign women the way that women in Taiwan are into foreign guys: I've had more than one guy tell me that they'd actually love a foreign girlfriend, but don't know how to go about making it happen, or are too shy and know it. I think this perception that Taiwanese men don't like foreign women is a false assumption based on the fact that they don't show it as much when they do like someone, and they often won't show it at all when they like someone they know they can't have (or are too shy to go after). Not always - I had one student who had a pretty obvious crush on me and, while he said absolutely nothing inappropriate, it was just really obvious. You know what I mean - a lifetime of being outgoing but really a big dork at heart means I'm not the best at figuring these things out and even I could tell. He probably could have hidden it better - so no cultural observation is universally true.

I do think a lot of foreign women don't realize it when a Taiwanese guy does like them, because it is true (and I completely agree with Bamboo Butterfly on this) that he's not likely to be as forthcoming, not as likely to act on it, and not as likely to make the first move, or any move. It's been pretty well documented by my local social network here that what we see as "friendly" stuff that a guy friend might do with a girl-bro is seen as what we'd call "casual dating" in the West. By the time a local girl and guy go out on an actual date in Taiwan, they're far more "official" than we'd consider ourselves to be in Western culture. A few of my foreign female friends have noted this: dating just happens differently, and a Taiwanese guy could be thinking he is making a move by going out for coffee, hiking or whatever one-on-one where a Western girl might think he's just being friendly. He might not be aware that his intentions are not nearly as clear as they would be with a Taiwanese girl, and she may not be aware at all that he likes her.

I've seen it happen more than once! This is an extreme example, but it happened to a friend of mine who went hiking, jogging etc. with a local guy several times and thought of him as a friend. Then one day he started talking about how they'd have to compromise their cultural differences as a couple and she was all "wait, WHAT!?" Not the norm, I think, but it makes a point.

Final thoughts: laydeez, look for the cool, quirky Taiwanese guy who wants what you have to offer. Don't get discouraged thinking that they as a whole are not interested. Chances are, they are. Don't think you have to morph into some stereotype of a quiet sweetling (which doesn't even hold much water in Taiwan: it's a cliche for a reason) - there's probably a guy in Taiwan who likes you for who you are now. Be more alert: what you might think of as basic friend stuff might be, to that guy, more. So don't write him off because he isn't approaching the whole thing the way a Western guy might. Be on the lookout for cultural differences and attitudes: you don't want to end up with a guy who seemed great while you were dating but then ended up having some pretty sexist ideas about what sort of girlfriend (or wife) you should be. Guys who are happy to buck those notions do exist - find one of them instead.

And don't lose hope. There's probably a Taiwanese guy out there with a crush on you right now - you just don't know it because he's not showing it in the way you'd expect.

Aluba Revisited

I just learned about "aluba"...which...well, apparently it seems among schoolboys that shoving your buddy junk first into a tree, pole or windowsill is a sign of friendship, and I am really not sure what to say about it other than "that sounds like fraternity hazing for teenagers". I was reminded of things I heard about in college: guys called up at 3am and told to prepare 1000 jell-o shots in an hour if they wanted into the frat, or to streak across campus successfully (without getting arrested). Girls stuck in the Circle of Fat (sorority sisters sit around a pledge and use Sharpies to draw circles around areas that "need improvement"), among other things.

But oddly, despite the obvious "ball-busting" aspect of aluba, it seemed oddly less cruel, less objectively mean, than any of the above Greek rush horrors.

After doing a bit of asking around, I learned that almost every Taiwanese guy I know has had it done or know someone who has, and it is considered a true rite of friendship (apparently they don't whack your crotch against the tree that hard. Or something. You gotta trust your bros. Or something).

Here's some interesting reading on the topic:  All about aluba in the Taipei Times

Isla Formosa's blog post on it from the naughts

I got interested in it because of something I saw at an annual party earlier this year:

You can't see it, but just beyond that larger fellow exiting stage right is a pole, and they were clearly trying to do this to their coworker, despite none of them being school-age.

Their buddy escaped:

I didn't know what to make of this until someone mentioned "aluba" and described it to me.

And then it all made sense.

So, uh, wow. My asking around, like the writers of the content in the above links, didn't turn up much on the way of its origins - just that it's a thing. And, from the amount of guys who have admitted it's happened to them (most notably with a fire extinguisher, which was then used on the hopeless aluba'd guy), it's still very much in practice.

What else can I say?

Thoughts on Temples

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of temples, temple festivals and temple history in Taiwan, even if I don't believe in the gods themselves. I've heard more than one person - local and foreigner alike - say things along the lines of "yes, they're cool, but they all look the same: if you've seen one you've seen them all". Kinda like a typical strip of chain stores in a commercial area. You know, the one that has a Yoshinoya, an eyeglasses shop, a Starbucks, a Family Mart, a women's clothing boutique, a Body Shop, a Cafe 85 and a Come Buy all in a row.

Except, like that "typical strip of chain stores", they're not all the same. Sure, many of them seem indistinguishable at first, but like that strip of chain stores - which might include such gems as a pharmacy with a talking bird, a wine bar, Big Fat Chen's Fried Chicken, an Everything Store that sells just the dingbat or widget you need, or an independent cafe that has excellent siphon coffee, or an old guy selling carved things or a stamp-maker with a huge signboard with examples of all the stamps he can make for you...you never know when you'll come across a surprise or a bit of interesting architecture.

Some of these are famous: Xingtian Temple's austere architecture, Bao'an's UNESCO-protected heritage status, Tainan's Confucius Temple. Others are not so well-known:

At the (Buddhist) Yuantong Temple in the hills of Zhonghe

The turn-of-the-century baroque architecture of the Japanese colonial period gave rise to this temple on Lion's Head Mountain. Lion's Head also has a temple on the Miaoli side that, while more traditional in its architecture, is worth seeing.

The well-known Zhinan Temple on Maokong - not a great photo but the beauty here really is in the view rather than the temple itself

The well-known temple on the Miaoli side of Lion's Head Mountain

The Shell Temple outside Sanzhi on the northeast coast

Zhaoming lover's temple up by Wellington Heights between Shipai and Beitou

Xingtian Temple - known (aesthetically at least) for being far less ornate than most

Tainan's Dizang Wang temple has murals of the tortures of hell

Tainan's City God Temple is actually not that "special" when it comes to architecture, but it is very old and I just love this photo

Donggang's Donglong Temple is not as well-known as I feel it should be, for this gate alone

Caotun's temple...that looks like a medicine gourd with a hat. I only know one other person who's been there (another blogger)

Keelung's Fairy Cave temple

And so many more - from the "special because it has cats" temple in Houtong (which I haven't been to yet) to the Southeast Asian-style shrines that you occasionally find (I plan to photograph one in Zhonghe this weekend) to the shophouse temple on Chongqing South Road (I still haven't gotten a good photograph of that one), there are a lot of reasons not to write off the temples of Taiwan as "seen one, seen 'em all".

Because you haven't.

The Sun Is In the Sky, Oh Why Oh Why...

...would I wanna be anywhere else?


In the absence of the mental energy needed to do a real blog post, here are a few of my recent photos.

All of these photos except for three were taken in Taipei. You get an A+ if you can pinpoint which three. A++ if you can tell me where in Taiwan those three were taken.

On Break: Sturm und Drang and Joy It Up

You may have noticed that I haven't blogged all week.

I've decided to take a blogging break for a bit - a few weeks maybe - to figure some stuff out. Don't worry, nothing to get worried over, just that between work, my insomnia, dealing with feelings related to this family illness thing, more work, permanent residency paperwork etc. I just need a break.                               

I may pop back in during this time to do some easy blogging - reviews, quick notes on interesting links to articles, photos, nothing that requires any thought beyond "the nachos were tasty". 

In my daily life I don't actually feel so stormcloudy, negative or emotional, I feel basically OK, but clearly I've got to sort some things out. I especially want to spend less time blogging (and a few other things) and spend more time taking care of my insomnia problem, my feelings about this family illness, and definitely more time with good people who raise my spirits (as an extrovert I do find that that really helps). All of this means less time in front of a computer. I want to take care of the sturm und drang while I can still manage it.

One other thing that really lifts my spirits is happy people finding love. One friend of mine, someone who was really there for me when I needed someone to talk to the most, who has struggled with finding contentment, has found love (or rather, it seems he's recognized the love he's had all along) and will get married in the near future, and I am really happy for him and excited for them. 

So, I made them this card.  It gave me joy to make it, and will - I assume anyway - give them joy to receive it (with a fat red envelope inside, ha ha) - and I hope it gives you all joy to see it.

So, joy it up:

And another card, made for friends who have already gotten married:

And, uh, what? I'll catch you on the flip side? See you on the other side? Dunno. I'll be back, and I'll be (basically) fine. As fine as I can be.

                                                                                        

Here are some hot guys for you

I figure since we're back on Computer Xiaojies (or "booth babes"), that if we can't have a fair world in which women
never fear the fine line of admiration vs. objectification, then I'll give a little somethin' to the other team. I'd prefer that we objectify nobody, but as long as the playing field is not fair, I don't see why I would need to play fair.

My friend Steven and I are fighting over bottom row, second guy from the right. I guess it depends on which side of the Strait he's on.

Har har. See what I did there?

From here - no, I don't subscribe. Blame Steven.

In the spirit of my continued interest (and hopefully yours) on the topic of women in tech, here are two more things worth reading:

Klaus on "Booth Babes" (thanks for the quote shout-out, Klaus - glad someone cares about this issue and is approaching it honestly without calling women who are concerned about it bitter harridans or whatever)

And Slate talking to Genevieve Bell on women in tech.

Success and Having Children in Taiwan

Go read this now.

Why Women Still Can't Have It All

This is really a USA-based article, but still worth a read, very thorough and very articulate. A lot of it holds for Taiwan, too, but then I also think a lot of women in Taiwan choosing not to have children are doing so not for work related reasons (most jobs, let's face it, are not really worth the sacrifice, and those include a lot of low-to-mid-level Office Lady positions - although I fully recognize that a job that may not be "worth it" to me might well be very much worth it to another woman, so take my words with a Himalayan salt lamp-sized grain of salt).

I touched on this a bit the last time I wrote about the low birth rate in Taiwan - on how the main reasons are a feeling that they can't afford to have children, that they want to enjoy now-possible freedoms and comforts their parents didn't have, and gender-based expectations of who is going to take on more work raising kids is still a huge issue. It's huge in the USA, too, but, err, huger here. If that's a word. I also mentioned that the working world, if you work for a larger or international company, is actually friendlier to women, with guaranteed maternity leave and a culture where grandparents are more likely to provide free childcare (the same does not hold for smaller companies, where women are routinely kept back because of a fear they'll have kids and stop being useful to the company).

I didn't touch on what this article covers - women at the absolute top and their decisions on choosing to have kids...or not to.

In the course of my daily work I'm exposed to a lot of women at the top of their careers. CFOs, heads of departments, Taiwan CEOs, legal counsel, physicians and researchers, general managers. While I'd say it's 50-50 regarding whether those women have children, it's also far more likely that you'll find unmarried women and married women without children in those positions.

I'd say that of these - speaking only from my experience - about half don't have children, and of those about a quarter are unmarried. The unmarried women at the top that I know of seem to have no desire to tie the knot (good for them - marriage is not the be-all and end-all of a woman's life or the most important of her accomplishments): I can't come up with any examples of very successful Taiwanese women who are unmarried but have a desire to be. Far more common is marrying and not having children. One woman, who was at the top but has recently resigned from a very high-level job in finance (it even made the United Daily News), is unmarried with a child. Not notable in and of itself, but worth noting in a reflection on high-ranking women in Taiwan and the family decisions they make, especially as her departure was big enough to be reported on (I've met her - she is a very decisive woman).

The striking thing is that you'd expect, if you were so minded, to hear these women say "I would have liked to have had children, but I put my career first", or "I had always intended to have children, but then when I was finally ready it was too late" (something you do hear in the USA - at least in online comments: women who had always thought they'd have kids and then woke up one day and realized they'd never actually done so and it was either too late or almost to that point).

But they don't - most of them will very matter-of-factly tell you, if they are so inclined to tell you anything, that they had never really wanted children, or had decided early on not to have them.

I can't speak for the husbands of these high-powered women I know who do have children; I don't know them. I've been told that they're not that different from the sort of (stereo)typical "allows gendered expectations of child-rearing to continue" man you'd expect, but I don't have that on first-hand knowledge.

That's something - and seems to me to be a strong difference in attitude. A lot less ambivalence, and a lot more decisiveness. I guess if you live in a society where it's more expected that you'll have children (and a son at that! Gah!), you are more likely to be more decisive if you decide not to have them. This may have influenced a decisiveness in my own tone regarding not having children - had I stayed in the USA I might have continued to be a bit more ambivalent, because I would have had the social room to do so.

This leads me to believe that women in Taiwan who reach the top of their fields who don't have children are choosing not to not because being at the top of your field requires so much sacrifice that they forgo this kind of family life, but because they're the sorts of women who wouldn't have wanted children regardless. It's just who they are. I can relate to that - I don't want children, but it's not because of my career. I could realistically have both. It's just who I am (I might write more about that in a future post, or not).

In that way, they may be more like Peggy on Mad Men (bear with me - I've barely seen the show - please do correct me if I'm wrong and Peggy's wanted children all along) than the all-too-common-on-Internet-comment-threads American women who wanted children but wanted a career more, or who had intended to had children but ran out of time while chasing a career. My experience has shown that Taiwanese office culture is not nearly as much like America in the '60s (ie, Mad Men) as a lot of people assume it is, but still, this says something. It says something about the pressures and expectations women face in Taiwan and, as a result, who gets to the top and who doesn't.

In the end, this is true for women in Taiwan, the USA and elsewhere:

We currently live in a world where men make more money for equal work. This means that it's all too common that the parent who stays home or takes a hit to their career is the wife - because, hey, you've gotta earn a good wage for the family.

We also live in a world where, in order to get to the top (at least in the corporate world), you have to basically sacrifice yourself to your company. This is true everywhere. In Taiwan, I feel that many people have to do that anyway, even if they don't get to the top - in the USA you have more of a choice to work reasonable hours (but if you want to be "successful" in the typically expected sense, you'd better make the sacrifice). This means that the parent or parents who take that path will be giving up something - you can't have a real commitment to family and work those hours.

The difference? Women might be more likely to cut back as a result. It's not true that the working men of yore could have a career and a family - he could, but unless he was truly 9-to-5, he probably didn't get to spend as much time with that family as he would have liked. They couldn't have it then, and they certainly can't have it now, with working hours what they are.

So "making it" in the traditional sense, where you have to give up time with your family, isn't going to work if we want a truly equal world.

And we can't change things until we admit that and create a working culture where you can succeed and still have enough control over your schedule to spend real time with your family, and get rid of gender-based expectations of who will do the brunt of the child-rearing and who will take the hit to their career to make that happen.

Then, we need to create a world where a woman who wants children can discuss how it will work with her husband without the lingering expectation that she'll make the sacrifices. She'll be able to enter that discussion knowing that they'll work something out together and he's just as likely to take the hit as she is, and that the hit, importantly, won't be that bad, or that career-damaging.

Then, and only then, will we have equality, or something like it.

A Rocketship Through The Glass Ceiling? Methinks not.

I'm over the moon (pun intended!) that China is sending its first female astronaut into space - although not over the moon that China, a country I do not believe should be the world's leading power seeing as it can't even do basic human rights, is leading the way in space exploration now that NASA has been more or less taken out of the picture.

That said, I'm not sure I'm ready to shout, as Jezebel did, that China is sending a "rocket ship through the glass ceiling".

Liu Yang's trip is clearly a great step forward for Chinese women being more visible in varied career paths, and does provide another strong role model for not just girls in China, or Asia, but around the world, but saying that China has now shattered the glass ceiling is like saying that electing Obama "cured racism" in America.

Because, nuh-uh, no it didn't.

This worries me because if the comments I occasionally get on this blog (some of which I publish, some of which I don't, depending on how coherent and worthy of a response they are) and see on other sites is any indication, people brainwashed by CCP propaganda are now going to go around saying things like "there's no sexism in China! We have a female astronaut!" in the same tone that the racism-deniers use in their "Obama" defense above. I mean, they already say things like "that hurts the feelings of the Chinese people", "Tiananmen never happened" and "most Taiwanese people know that they are Chinese and want to re-join their brothers on the Mainland, it's the evil DPP that keeps them away" and "everyone in China speaks Chinese*" and "Foreigners caused SARS" and "there aren't any gay people in China**".

It's a great, visible step forward, but that doesn't mean the subtle and not-so-subtle sexism women in China (and elsewhere, but we're focusing in China here) have to wade through in their lives is now magically gone.

Women are still going to face job discrimination, discrimination by parents, traditional gender expectations in life, in work and in marriage, second-class treatment and the usual melange of earning less for the same work, snarky comments, incorrect beliefs and assumptions, and admonitions to kow-tow to the all-powerful men's sense of face. (Actual quote from someone I knew in China: "a woman can't be smarter than her boyfriend or husband, because if a woman is smarter than a man, it makes the man lose face, so a woman should marry a man more clever than she is". GAAAAHHHHHHH).

Of course, there are exceptions - I just have to say that before anyone gets all "that's not always true" - you're right, it's not always true, but it's true often enough that it's worth saying out out.

The person who said the above probably isn't going to change his mind because now there's a Chinese woman going to space. The judge who was going to give my boss's son to her abusive ex-husband until she threatened to kill herself in the courtroom is probably not going to be less of an asshole because there's a Chinese woman going into space. The guy who asked me "did your father approve of your trip to China?"*** is probably not going to be less of a douche. The entire town of people who shunned my coworker's now-ex wife because she divorced a man who beat and threatened to kill her probably aren't going to have a change of heart.

So...yay, it's great, but not totally yay. Not yet. Show me real, ground-level change in China and then I'll say "yay" for real.

While I applaud Liu Yang and want very much to see more women like her, just like racism in the US, sexism in China - and racism in China and sexism in the US, because we live in a pretty screwed-up world - is not going away anytime soon and this certainly did not erase it.



*Most (not all) people in China do speak Chinese, but the implication in this statement is that it is the native language of all Chinese citizens (I'm not even going to get into the "they call Cantonese and Mandarin dialects" part of this). If you ignore, say, the Tibetans, the Uighurs and several other ethnic minorities, then that is correct. But, hey, you can't ignore them. Except people do.

**These last two things were statements people actually made to my face in China.

***My answer was "I don't know. I never asked him."

Yet Another Update: Indian Food in Taipei

From this post, which I keep updating.

First and foremost, Calcutta Indian Food in Ximen has moved. Go to the old place at #126 Kunming Street (follow Chengdu Rd. from MRT Ximen and turn right on Kunming),  then keep going to the first light. Turn right and across the street from Holiday KTV there is a building called "U2". The new location is in the basement food court, towards the back. The food is still the same great stuff. They have Kingfisher!

Secondly, we tried Mayur Indian and it's great, but dosa is no longer on the menu (not enough demand).

Finally, I found a new place -  south side of Ren'ai Road, beween Jianguo and Fuxing (near Howard Hotel). Haven't tried it yet - but will go soon and report back. I'm currently doing "research" by eating at every Mexican/Tex-Mex place I know of in Taipei to do a post on it, but I can sacrifice one evening out to get more Indian, ha ha.

What To Expect When You're Expecting...in China

Fuck you, China.

You all know I'm pretty staunchly pro-choice. This, however, isn't choice.

Seriously, fuck you, China.

It truly amazes me what the Chinese government claims the moral authority to do, when they're clearly a bunch of deranged, power-drunk psychopaths.

Link-tacular Wednesday (updated)

Here, enjoy a few links. I intend to write a few posts exploring some of these issues further, but have had a very busy work week - and, as I mentioned in my last post, haven't been feeling on top of things mentally.

But, if you are interested at all in women's issues - especially my current strongest areas of interest: pay inequality, reproductive rights, women in technology and motherhood vs. working, you will find these links all interesting reads.

Motherhood Still A Cause of Pay Inequality - from the New York Times

On Choosing Not To Have Children - from Slate (reader contribution)

Dogs Rain Supreme for Childless Japanese - on Japanese women and couples choosing not to have children (from Jezebel)

Mothers Running Tech Startups - also from Jezebel (based on this NYT article)

BoingBoing's Awesomepants Xeni Jardin Takes on the Idea That Men Invented The Internet - from BoingBoing

Women facing online misogyny - it's  not exceptional, it's frighteningly normal - from Slate (also with links to Jezebel and the original story here from Kotaku)

Female doctor-scientists being paid less than male counterparts (from Jezebel - this story contradicts the one above: it shows a pay disparity even when  accounting for children and time off for family)
Enjoy!

A comprehensive list of ways in which fathers are treated - unfairly - differently from mothers and the assumptions behind it all. For instance -  try finding a changing table in a men's room.  

People keep saying that Roe v. Wade won't be overturned, so there's nothing to fear. Those people are wrong. Even if Roe v. Wade is kept in place, there's a lot to fear.            

A Chacun Son Paradis

 Je suis au septieme ciel

Ma tour est plus belle que celle de Babel
Je vais à l'école buissonnière.
Je gère. Et dans la ville j'erre

You didn't know I spoke French, did you? Hah. That's because I only sort of speak it. I used to be pretty good, though. This song brings me back to the late '90s and early naughts, when I was something more akin to fluent in French, and also has a few lines that add, I dunno, chiaroscuro to how I've been feeling these days.

So I was sitting on the MRT this morning, coming back from my morning class, and WHAM!

It occurred to me that, as much as I might seem alright, and as much as I might have convinced myself that I'm alright, that these days I'm really not. I don't mean I'm depressed - I'm not - or even unhappy. Just that, after five plus years of life in Taiwan, I've convinced myself that I'm totally fine, I basically get it (as much as any foreigner in any country can really "get it"), no problem, and pessimism is for the weak, unless it's something really worth critiquing.

Except I was wrong, and I've been wrong for awhile, stuck up in a tower somewhere.

The truth is, I've succumbed in the time since I've returned from Istanbul to an insidious form of culture shock, where you feel like you've assimilated fairly well and gotten things on track, without realizing that there's still a lot that shocks you, a lot that angers you, a lot that you don't understand and a lot that you're not sure you want to understand lest it upset you further.

Instead of acknowledging that consciously, I've been clinging to the things I think are right, and snarking too much on the things I think are wrong, without stopping to think that maybe, sometimes, what I think is wrong.

It's come out in a weird two-barrels-blazing shoot-em-up where half the time I'm Suzy Sunshine, Queen of Optimism About Expat Life, and the other half I'm totally judgmental and close-minded, when really I should know better. At points it's been situational: when you talk to a bunch of sketchy foreign guys in one week, those skankbags make it all to easy to get a little too judgey about foreign guys in Taiwan generally. When Computex is going on and you're teaching classes of mostly male tech guys (who are great guys, mind you) and reading articles about booth babes (I call them Computer Xiaojies), it can make you uneasy about the entire tech industry and sexism in the country where you live - - which isn't going away soon. But then it's not going away in my own country, either.

At other points it's a generalized, simmering anxiety. For example - watching my students work themselves to death and having very little other than my own opinion when asked for - and sometimes when not - to fight back against this systematized and seemingly intrinsic exploitation. While working yourself to the point of exhaustion is a personal choice on the surface, it stops becoming a choice when almost every office job in Asia requires you to do so. In the USA plenty of people give themselves over to work and suffer the consequences of their own volition - but you have the choice not to. Here, you don't. Or rather you do, but it's much, much harder to come by and not possible for everyone. I don't know what to do about that, and have my own work frustrations (love what I do, hate the office), and it does set me on edge more than it should.

I've realized that, half the time, I have no idea what a lot of my local friends think. (I wrote out a bunch of examples here and then deleted them - I have local friends who read this blog and I don't want to be too specific). The only one whose mood and thoughts I feel I can confidently intuit is the very outspoken one who will always tell you what's on her mind.

Add to that a feeling like no opinion I express can be truly "right", and a feeling that, as disgusted as I am with the USA right now, at least it's my culture and country of citizenship so there are more ways for me to get involved. In Taiwan I have opinions, but not always the full story, and very few ways to get involved (and surprisingly little standing to do so). I don't feel detached totally - I feel a strong connection to my friends, my neighborhood, my students and my familiarity with the city - but it does create a feeling of hanging about like some old bit of cloth that has no real use but still hangs around the house anyway because nobody thinks to throw it away.

I don't know where it came from, when exactly it started and definitely not why. My first thought was that Istanbul, in a way that no other city I've visited recently has managed to accomplish, won my heart in a way. I'm not planning to up and move to Turkey, but it's created a weird duality where I'm happy in Taipei and want to stay, but also, oh, to go back to Istanbul. Can't I live in both? In Istanbul I dreamed of riding my bike down the riverside trail and eating wontons in fiery red chili oil. In Taipei, I'd give my left foot for some Turkish fig pudding and good baklava. Also, yoghurt, olives, Turkish coffee and pekmez that don't cost a fortune.

That said, I felt similarly about Cairo - though I like Istanbul more because it's somewhat less polluted, among other reasons -  and got over it more quickly.

So, while that could be it, I also wondered if maybe it's not my mother's health that's causing this. Her diagnosis is the first incident since moving to Taipei that caused me to seriously consider moving home, and mapping out how that would feel and what it might accomplish. It's the first incident that has really shaken me, reminding me that I will eventually have to move home, even though my life is here (or, if not here, then somewhere outside the USA). It's caused me to re-evaluate my life in Taiwan in a different light: as in, Taipei compared to home, not simply Taipei for Taipei's sake.

I don't know how to get over it - all I can say is that I'm going to try. It'll probably be OK in the end. I love Taiwan enough (perhaps my glasses are too rose-colored?), despite its faults (which perhaps I judge overly harshly or incorrectly?) that I am applying for permanent residency. I've figured it out before - how to be happy in Washington, DC when DC had a vibe that absolutely does not work for me - and getting over far more core-shaking culture shock in India. I can do this too.

Anyway, j'ai plein de tours de magie
Pour faire de l'enfer un paradis.

Chaos!

This isn't really Taiwan-related, but it is women and feminism related, so I figure I'll post it anyway.

I absolutely love this article, for it's super fun BS as well as how uncannily accurate that BS is. It sounds like something my Stoner Friend(tm) would come up with. And seem like she might be right about.

I'm going to go ahead and add to the BS - please don't take anything I write in this post too seriously.

Basically, the idea is that we're all derived from muppet archetypes - some of us are Chaos Muppets (think Animal, Grover, The Cookie Monster) and some are Order Muppets (think Kermit, Bert). Some of us go around sowing disorder, and some keep the show running smoothly. Some dole out cookies, others organize for greatest efficiency. In any workplace, you need just the right ratio of Chaos Muppets and Order Muppets in the organization - and in relationships, two of the same kind shouldn't be together: Chaos ought to marry Order, and Order, Chaos.

I think it's pretty clear that I'm a Chaos Muppet. In fact, those of you who have met me might be a bit freaked out by how accurately this parodies not only my cooking style, but also my entire life. I'm pretty much a living, breathing Swedish Chef - I'd probably try this if firearms were legal in Taiwan. I once had a friend remark that she loved my chocolate truffle cake, but how on Earth did I get chocolate on the ceiling?

Also, I am growing some of this, just because. If you run your hands through the leaves and touch the peppers a bit, and then touch your face, it'll make your skin tingle. Cool, huh? Soon I'm going to try to cook with it.

I also go around humming things like "doo-dee-doo-dee-doo bork bork bork" on a fairly regular basis. That's not a joke.

Brendan is, without a doubt, a Order Muppet. Not Ernie, but Bert. He's not a compulsive organizer, but he freaks out if he's going to be anything less than 15 minutes early to anything, catches the earlier bus or train rather than the one that will get him there just in time, and actually plans classes the day before he teaches them (I only do that if I absolutely must). He's great at spontaneous travel - it's when there's a plan in place that this comes out.

Bert and The Swedish Chef. Someday, our love will be legal in every state in America!

I note this because I've noticed a social trend - not just in Taiwan but around the world - where, despite generations of people expecting that men should run the world while women stay home - where wives are expected to be the Order Muppets and husbands, Chaos Muppets. You know, like this. From "men can't be expected to remember to write thank-you notes" to "if I don't do it, it never gets done *sigh*" to "he just doesn't notice the mess, so he doesn't think to clean it", a lot of women end up stuck maintaining order while men are seen, at least at home, of creating chaos (and considering what the global economy and international politics is looking like, there's a lot of chaos out in the world, too).

Which makes things difficult if you are a woman and an unabashed Chaos Muppet. Your best bet is to hook up with a Order Muppet - bonus points if he's super sweet and handsome like my Order Muppet - who is open to and accepting of a very different household paradigm from the one society expects. Also he'll remember to vacuum and pay the bills. But it's not all bad for the Order Muppet: he gets chocolate truffle cake and Chaos Muppets tend to be more creative decorators and fun travel planners. Be good to your Order Muppet: if you see him vacuuming because he thought to do so (and you, uh, didn't, or you waited until you had 5 minutes before you had to go...not that I'd know anything about that *ahem*), grab a dustcloth or start putting things away, too.

I know, there's another, parallel trope to this one: the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (think various media starring Jennifer Aniston and Zooey Deschanel), but I get the distinct impression that this trope is meant to be fantasy, whereas Doofy Husbands and women as Order Muppets, the expected reality. I do feel as a staunch "bring down the old order" feminist, that women with that chaotic streak in them are chastised by others, and society as whole, more than men, who, well, "that's how men are". Unless you're cute - then you're a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Otherwise, you're just immature.

Most societies seem to praise Order Muppetry as the ideal set of traits and values in a good citizen: the USA does (at least that's the distinct impression I got from my schooling), every country in Asia that I have had experience in does (although India is an interesting case: a culture that birthed a Sanskrit grammar manual so detailed and prescriptive that it filled 8 volumes, but also a country rife with chaos and people who joke about it in a way that betrays the idea that it's not all bad), Europe does (although you could make a case that southern Europe is different).

The USA has gotten better at valuing its Chaos Muppets - there was that guy on The Daily Show yesterday who said that "Steve Jobs wouldn't have been able to do what he did in Europe or Japan" - I don't necessarily agree with him - I think a lot of our best innovation has come because Chaos Muppets from other countries have come to the USA and helped us lead innovation, and anyway, I see a lot of cool things coming out of design, science and technology in Asia and a lot of places where the US is stodgy, saggy and getting left behind like the regular trains that the Shinkansen sweeps past. I do, think, however, that he's right in that we're doing a better job creating an environment in which our weirdos can be weird and do great things (as long as they can afford health insurance - argh).

The original article mentions that the Supreme Court is all screwed up because it's been overrun with Order Muppets - I'd say that America's biggest problem right now is that the Order Muppets and Chaos Muppets can't see the value in the other's worldview, and can't figure out how to make the two synthesize into an efficient whole. Also, the Order Muppets seem to be obsessed with legislating my hoo-hah and telling us all what religion we should be, and they really ought to knock it out. At least in Taiwan, as divisive as politics can be, the majority of people I've met can respect the views of the other side (KMT are the Order Muppets and DPP the Chaos Muppets, in case that wasn't clear) even if they don't agree.

I see Taiwan heading this way, as well - from a similarly growing value placed on creativity, handmade items, cool design and innovative R&D (I spend more time around R&D types than I do around designers, and feel they deserve a mention) all the way down to the two girls I have English Fun Time with on Saturday afternoons, whose parents encourage them to talk, play, create and build, even if they build things out of cardboard that are total failures (ie the ferris wheel we attempted that fell apart). Sometimes, they build something pretty cool:

I see this model of encouraging a bit of Chaos gaining currency against the old Confucian style model of Listen to Your Elders and Teachers and DO WHAT YOU'RE TOLD, and that just delights me. We need a little more Lao Tzu, and a little less Confucius (although he has his role, too).

I'd like to see more of this - and less regimented, buxiban-propped-up schooling - in Taiwan, and I take heart that I am seeing it grow.

Aight, I'm gonna get back to my hot peppers. Too bad my Stoner Friend(tm) is in another country. Have a good weekend, and remember to sow some Chaos.

Big Pharma

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net


Back in the USA I hated Big Pharma.

Now I work (in part) for them.

My reasons back home were due to, well, events like those discussed in this article - affording drugs is a problem around the world, and a two-pronged issue. On one side you've got areas so poor that even low-priced drugs cost too much, and on the other you've got the USA, where people generally have more money, yet drugs are so astronomically expensive that many still can't afford them despite their exponentially better overall standard of living.

From people I know in Big Pharma back home, I can say that the argument does ring true: drugs are sold in the USA at exorbitant prices, and at far lower prices elsewhere, because companies both want to recoup clinical testing costs and make a tidy profit (a little too tidy if you ask me), and feel that the USA is the market to milk, because we can apparently "afford it". Except we can't.

It also bothers me that they throw so much money behind lobbying the government in their own interests, which mostly counter the interests of the American people, but pretty much all industries do that.

Working at a lot of pharmaceutical companies in Taiwan, though, makes me dislike the whole industry a lot less. I wouldn't go so far as to say "like" or "trust", so I'll stick with "dislike less".

I think it has a lot to do with regulation. I know the health system in Taiwan is imperfect, but it's about ten kachillion times better than the travesty of a "system" in the USA. Don't even bother arguing with me on this, I have a mother who is facing cancer that is not going to go away, and the possibility of losing her company-backed health insurance and very few options after that, so seriously, do not even start. I will tear you to shreds.

Here, we have our imperfect-but-wonderful national health insurance, and a heavy hand in regulating drug prices. I don't agree with some of the laws: the idea that doctors are forced to give certain medications first and others can only be tried later, and that some can't be tried until certain symptoms or issues occur or criteria are met, ties doctors' hands unfairly: it takes away from them what should be their expert judgment regarding what would be best for the patient and puts it in the hands of people who can't necessarily make that call: either because they're bureaucrats, not doctors, or because even if they are doctors, they're not there with that individual patient assessing that patient's needs.

The price regulations, however, I support completely. A dearth of price regulation in the USA has brought unconscionable drug prices for things people need - seriously, it's not like you have a choice sometimes, so supply and demand doesn't apply - prices people can't afford and insurance companies don't want to pay. Regulations in Taiwan have kept most prices for the same drugs at reasonable levels.

You can argue this hurts the company, and many who work in pharmaceuticals in Taiwan would agree, but the fact is that those companies are still in Taiwan, still making a profit and still see being in the Taiwanese market as something worth doing. The price controls haven't scared them away. If it were truly unbearable, companies would pull their products and shutter their offices and Taiwan would be SOL. That hasn't happened.

Those same people in the industry, while they might tell you that the price controls are an issue, would generally not argue that there shouldn't be any regulation or any cost control. In my experience (and I have a lot of experience talking to people in many different firms), while they'd like more freedom, they'd agree that keeping drugs affordable is important, and that wouldn't be lip service: they mean it. They wouldn't say it the way a PR schlub for Big Pharma back home would rattle it off a press release and then look the other way as "reasonable prices" became "$1000+ for what should be a $30 compound".

Even if they would - business is business & all - the regulations are there, and it keeps things reasonable. Not perfect, but reasonable. People get their medicine, companies make a profit, and it becomes an industry that does not inspire so much hatred and animosity. Everybody wins.

So what is all this anti-regulation hullaballoo back home? Phooey.

Computer Xiaojie CTRL+ALT+DELETE

Worth reading not just for general interest, but for the super classy tweet from ASUS at Computex 2012.


As Jezebel says...stay classy, ASUS.


So for every Cher Wang (HTC's chairperson, although it's not like she built an empire from nothing) we have some of these wankers.


The link to the original tweet no longer works - the tweet, as best I can determine, was removed. Still, the underlying thought process that led someone to believe it was an acceptable thing to say publicly makes me sad, and proves how sexist the industry really is. Most industries, in fact.


I mean, I do have the occasional uncomfortable laugh at the whole "Computer Xiaojie" thing that goes on at Computex and similar expos, but deep down I do wish it would stop. Not that I think it's going to - it's widely gossiped that Computex's revenues are pushed up a fair amount by all the attendees who come to gawk at the Computer Xiaojies and might only incidentally actually buy something, and it's notoriously hard to get rid of this kind of objectification. If you even say you'd like it to end, you get labeled a screaming sexless harridan when really, you'd like to see a world where women were worth more than their bodies, and women were seen as potential engineers, not potential sex objects that can push the goods (their own or whatever they're modeling for). Oh, perish the thought!


I'd like to see a world where it's more attractive to a woman to sign up for programming class than a stunt as a Computer Xiaojie (because, yes, these women do sign up for the gig and nobody's forcing them), because she values her brain more than her sexuality - because she lives in a society that does the same. Even if she is gorgeous.


There's an interesting comment-and-response about this on the article linked to above:

I know this is a woman's blog, but are you really complaining about booth babes? It's not like they were forced to do it. Haven't we always sexualized the opposite gender to sell things? It's not like the entertainment and clothing industry never does that with men.

promoted by ad infinitum

And the response:

A) Men's bodies are not, nor have they ever been, commodified anywhere the same degree women's are. That's a ridiculous assertion that doesn't pass the sniff test.

B) The use of booth babes is sexist and othering to women in tech (emphasis mine), which is the kind of thing Jezebel talks about. I realize that since that has no effect on you, it's very hard for you to see how it could matter to anyone, but that's actually why blogs like Jezebel are important--there aren't a lot of places, online or off, where problems that primarily or purely affect women are taken seriously. In most places, they're just mocked and discounted exactly as you did here. If you'd prefer to see women's issues mocked and discounted, you have almost the entire internet for that. Bitching because you choose to hang out at one of the few sites where that doesn't automatically happen is some seriously childish bullshit.

One of my students as at Computex right now, staffing his company's exhibition booth. I wanted to Facebook back "haha, hope you're enjoying the xiaojies" before thinking "wait, no, it seems innocent and all in good fun but actually that's totally buying into the patriarchy, oh noes". So I said nothing.


And that's just it - I'm not anti-enjoyment of looks. I'm not against men admiring beautiful women. Heck, I admire attractive men. It's more that this sort of commodification of cute sends a message to the men in the industry: that women are objects, that their main asset is looks, and therefore that they aren't to be taken seriously as colleagues and innovators. Then, less women get hired because women aren't encouraged to be the innovators, and the men spend less time around successful women (while still spending time around the Computer Xiaojies), and that's the view of women that they get, and the cycle repeats.

I have the same issue with entertaining for business by going out to special service KTV, hostess bars or places where women wear skimpy clothes (or no clothes) or are "for hire" - it creates an environment where that's how the men there see all women, and therefore it's harder to take female colleagues seriously - and harder for female colleagues to get ahead because they can't entertain clients in the same way.


That's what I have a problem with - not with the admiration of good looks or women using them to some degree. If I had good looks I'd use 'em too. I don't - I have brains, so I use those - but even if I were gorgeous I wouldn't be a Computer Xiaojie.


Working in the science park as often as I do, I can attest to the huge gender imbalance in the tech industry here - there are women who work in the park, but they tend to be office girls and HR, not techies (although those do exist). In the many classes I've taught at major companies there and in the Hukou Industrial Park, as well as Wugu, Huaya, Tainan (don't recall the official name of that one) and Tucheng parks, I can say that most of them are 100% male, and the few that have women have one woman out of 4, 6, 10, 12 or 16 students. In just one class do I notably have two women. That's remarkable enough that I took notice.


The upside is that the women I've taught, as few as they are, have all been engineers of some stripe. The downside is not only that there are so few of them, but that when I do take on these classes, the HR reps and office workers I deal with in the initial stages are usually women, working long hours for less pay (with far less technical expertise, though). Those women aren't 'worth' the salaries that the engineers earn, which one could argue is fair (what's not fair is pushing women into these lower-value careers - and by "lower value" I mean "not as valued by society"). They don't generally get to take English classes; it's not seen as a priority (or they're expected to already speak English well, but it's clearly not seen as important enough a skill to pay them better for it).


So, what would I like to see? A world that values women in tech as more than HR support and Computer Xiaojies, and women who value themselves enough to both shoot for the moon and demand credit, and a world where my classes full of engineers have a roughly equal ratio of men and women, because the women don't feel "othered" by the whole industry. Both in the USA and here in Taiwan.


Or maybe this issue is just really close to my heart right now because I have a meeting later to day about how I'm not getting as many of the "best" seminars (the 16-hour presentation ones) as I really should, as a senior instructor and - not to brag, but it's true - one of the best instructors. I have noticed that I helped train some of the men who do get these seminars, and that there are no women doing them. I intend to say that I can't help but wonder why this is happening when they know perfectly well I am capable - and in some respects better - than the men who are getting these gigs (not going straight for the "it's sexism" jugular, heavily implying is enough), that women who take these seminars are being shortchanged by never seeing female role models in presenting, and that with permanent residency coming up soon, they can do what they want and stay on course if they like, but I have noticed, I'm not stupid, and this will be one of the major factors that will influence my decision on where my best opportunities lie. Again, I don't need to say "stop the bullshit or your most senior instructor who consistently gets the best feedback and the highest renewal volume is going to quit". It merely needs to be implied.


So, anyway, that's my dirty lens. Down with the patriarchy.