That’s what the Americans tend to say at least. “Oh, I can stand the heat, but the humidity kills me.” I think one has to experience a sub-tropical climate to realize what’s meant by that; every time you leave the air conditioned office here in Taipei it’s like walking into a sauna when you get outside. A thick wall of wet heat meets your face and renders null and void your every hope of appearing calm and relaxed. If only I got to wear my usual black shorts and t-shirt I would have loved the weather. I’m not a shirt-wearing person. I’m an anti-shirt-man. I’m more like The Dude – not The Dude Who Wears White Shirts and Acts as Glue between Customer, Local Branch, Home Office, and Driver Manufacturer. For those who have no idea who The Dude is: watch The Big Lebowski.

Either way, Taiwan is an interesting place. As expected, people work incredibly hard…or rather, they work incredibly long hours. If you walk into a Swedish office you might see cluttered and messy desks, but you rarely see snacks placed on the desks. The Swedes eat their lunch and go to the lava-tree, and head home at 16:45 every day. Here, almost every desk is loaded with small snacks – just lunch simply won’t do when people are spending most of their hours at work. I was afraid that everyone had intensive 14 hour work days filled with naught but productive hours; but I suspect that not even the Taiwanese are superhuman, and thus the days seem to be filled with a mix of productivity and mental relaxation. I’m not so sure I’d like that way of working for an extended time – I like to have my bursts of productivity, and then have spare time to work on my hobby projects. On that note, I think that the concept of a talented amateur is rather uncommon here – I have a hard time imagining that people’d have enough time to spend on a hobby to become proficient hobbyists, considering the hours they put into work.

Before travelling down here I was planning on spending some time investigating a few bars and restaurants – maybe go to a KTV (karaoke) place to sip a nice lager and relax. For two nights now I’ve been too tired to bother with anything of the sort. I hope I can blame the jetlag and change in climate – there’s simply been too much noise outside to feel comfortable after a day at work. Instead I’ve relaxed with a cold one at the hotel, quietly reading the new Harry Potter and enjoying the sounds of a silent and calm hotel. A big Asian (if I can generalize like that) city really is very noisy. All the time. People are everywhere, and if the traffic isn’t thundering, music from various stores is thundering instead. According to Lonely Planet the Taiwanese apparently approve of noise and liveliness; they dislike solitude and calm, and even think that the city is a better place for children to grow up than the countryside. I wonder if this really is true for everyone, though. I spoke with a Taiwanese person who mentioned that people simply prefer to live close to work – a sensible and practical approach rather than one rooted in a radically different cultural upbringing.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 27th, 2007 at 2:02 am and is filed under Travels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.