Category Archives: Expat Life

Expat Life

Homesickness & COVID 

I am nominally Canadian, but I’ve been working abroad for a long time. I’ve lived overseas longer than in Canada. Since I’ve been gone the country’s changed, and my hometown, Saskatoon, is unrecognizable. I no longer fit in there. It is not my home.

So, imagine my surprise when I started getting homesick. Seriously. I couldn’t even identify the feeling.

I’ve dealt with homesickness before, but it’s been 30-plus years, since I was in Korea, a super shitty experience. It is not surprising that when I lived there I suffered homesickness.

The feeling culminated at Christmas when I began having visions of a former crush. A young woman I’d—unintentionally—tormented with my affections, which were expressed in true dork fashion. I had the suave and sophisticated smoothness of 220 grit sandpaper. Suffice it to say our interactions were fraught with awkwardness [my part] and animus [her part].

When I was in Korea, that “relationship” was long past. I hadn’t thought about her for years, but as Christmas approached, I kept waking in the night to see a vision of her in my bedroom doorway. Every night. Finally, one night I woke up, frustrated, and asked what she wanted. She said she wanted forgiveness, and I gave it, as everything had been my fault anyway. After that I never saw her again.

I chalked it up to Christmas-induced psy-homesickness-chosis. I was living alone—totally alone—in a fishing village. There were few people willing to interact with me outside the student-teacher paradigm. Homesickness was natural.

When I returned to Canada, I learned she’d died around that time. Either I’d seen a ghost, had a premonition, psychotic break, or a spectacularly weird reaction to homesickness. My students love it when I tell it as a ghost story, but I’m pretty it was just overarching homesickness.

Of course that was back when mullets and tramp stamps were cool. Now expats can avail themselves of the Internet and video conferencing. You would think that’d kill homesickness, and for me it did—until COVID.

COVID in Taiwan has brought those feelings of homesickness to the forefront again. I’m not entirely sure why, probably it’s a combination of being unable to travel, interacting with friends and family through video conferencing, which is great, but also underlines the distances. It makes you painfully aware you’re missing out on your loved one’s lives. You can see them changing and you’re not there. I’ve watched my parents age via video. Maintaining relationships with online conferencing creates a feeling of closeness, and paradoxically, a feeling remoteness. I experience changes happening in the live’s of my family as a TV program.

Normally it doesn’t bother me. Pre-COVID I had the ability to travel to see family. The video conferences were just a nice way to maintain contact between trips. I have enjoyed video conferencing Christmas for years. The difference, I think, is I always felt if I really needed to, I could get home. COVID has brought that into doubt. In an emergency, could I get home in time for my presence to be meaningful? I’ve watched a few of my international students not be able to get home in time for the funeral of a parent.

COVID sucks. The feelings of distance and separation it creates are real. For the first time in decades I’m yearning for home.

Expat Life

Vignette #27: Birth Control in Taiwan

I’ve been friends with a Taiwanese surgeon for decades. He once made an interesting statement. He said medical knowledge among Taiwan’s general population lagged behind the West’s by 15 to 20 years because information here needed to first be translated into Chinese, then noticed and disseminated by popular media. Whereas in the West it is pretty common for scientific studies to be featured in general news and magazine articles.

Personally, that disparity has been most keenly felt as regards Taiwanese attitudes towards birth control. Despite torturing dates with subpar jazz and creepy dude cologne every once in awhile even I managed to fall awkwardly into a penis flytrap. If the relationship developed, at some point skin-to-skin contact became desirable, and Taiwanese conceptions of contraception would become a problem.

Local knowledge of the pill seems cribbed from Vietnam War era pamphlets. Dated. The information relates to the original high-dose hippie pill. I could never convince Taiwanese women that if they went to a doctor and got a decent modern medication, side effects would be minimal, and occasionally desirable. They seemed to suspect ulterior motives, but I was just concerned for their menstrual well-being. I’m a caring and sensitive boy.

My humanitarian efforts were inevitably hampered as most who tried the pill, to avoid embarrassment, just bought something over the counter, not a doctor-prescribed modern low-dose pills. The packaging even looked like war surplus. They worked, but as you’d expect, the massive doses of estrogen and progestin had side effects, one of which was the creation of a confirmation bias in each woman’s mind. The pill = bad.

Thus, Taiwan‘s national form of birth control would best be described as spray-&-pray.

Culture Shock, Expat Life

The Pervert in Class Is You

I’m sorry for how long this article took. The Covid shutdown has had its charms; working from home, pantless Friday’s, joining Taiwan’s fine tradition of high-functioning alcoholics, etc. But, Covid fatigue is real. When I finish online teaching I don’t want to do much. Writing has been about as enjoyable as leather pants in a Taiwan summer—just thinking about either gives me a rash and sweaty balls.

However, a friend asked for this follow-up to Talking ’bout Sex. He pointed out—correctly—that after decades of teaching English in Asia, I must have countless stories of foreigner teachers shitting the bed with their obliviously offensive and inappropriate behavior. True dat.

He thought Talking ’bout Sex was building to some of those tales. I just didn’t think it that important. I haven’t filed those experiences in my mental Rolodex very carefully as other. The foreign teacher with both feet stuck in his mouth is ubiquitous and unmemorable. Still there’ve been a few standouts.

From my blog you might assume I’ve had problems with this. Not really. I get in more trouble with foreigners, when sometimes my words are halfway to Kaohsiung on High Speed Rail before my brain hops out of the taxi at Taipei Main Station. In class my words are more deliberate. Of course I’ve stepped on my own crank a few times. That’s how you learn. Generally it’s been infrequent and minor, but I have seen somethings….

Buxiban teachers are the worst.  Most FOB teachers are quickly put in front of a class with little training and no cultural understanding. They teach English the way they want to learn Chinese. Back in the day, the foreigner community was more dude-o-centric, and many wanted their language courses to resemble Get Laid in Chinese 101. A goal inevitably frustrated by uncooperative female Chinese instructors. But with their own classes, they were free to teach as they wished they were taught.

Examples are plentiful, but I’ll tell you two of my favorites. The first was an absolutely charming American guy. In a Western way, he was saucy, insouciant, and witty. I loved chatting with him, but his charms were completely lost on the students. He was constantly in trouble for something said in class. He eventually got shitcanned when he walked into an 8am adult, all female, class and said, first thing, “So, I was eating out my girlfriend this morning, really diving in there, and it got me to thinking about fish and chips….” He then proceeded to deliver a funny—if career-ending—soliloquy on sex and British cooking.

Usually it’s more of a problem for male teachers, but not to be outdone, there was a female version of him teaching at the same school. She didn’t have quite the same verve, but God she was graphic. I walked by her class once as she was talking about how “fucking” itchy her “cunt” got after “nailing” multiple guys, and she proceeded to colorfully conjecture, in detail, why that might be. She got complaints, but never really got in as much trouble as the guy. Her students seemed too flabbergasted and confused about cross-cultural gender roles to be offended. Good on her, I say. She rode that edge with stunning deftness.

Admittedly those are the worst examples I can think of, from three decades of ESL teaching. Most teachers find themselves afoul of Taiwanese morality at times. There’s a tremendous pressure for buxiban teachers to be entertaining. If you’re not engaging, you lose students; if you lose students, you lose classes; if you lose classes, you lose hours; which means less pay. Lose enough classes and you lose your job. Most teachers have a pretty strong desire to be amusing. Many think risqué badinage puts asses in seats and keeps them there. It doesn’t seem to be true.

My perception is that these things happen less now. Taiwan’s foreigner community has become more sexually mixed, guys have lost their frontier spirit, and are more domesticated. Also, teachers coming to Taiwan now are more professional. [See: Where Have All the Idiots Gone]. Still these situations arise occasionally as a reminder of what happens when low-context teaching meets a high-context class.

Expat Life, Food & Drink

Convenience Stores in Taiwan and What They Say About You

There are many things about Taiwan that might stick out in a new arrivals mind. One of the most mundane, and therefore most interesting to me, is the surfeit of convenience stores throughout the nation. In Taipei there seems to be at least one, usually more, convenience store on most blocks. Though these convenience stores may share the same name as their Western counterparts they are different. Most convenience stores in Taiwan are part restaurant, coffee shop, grocery store, snack bar, pub, bank, ticket vendor, pharmacy and post office—not just places to get pepperoni sticks and a gallon of gas.

There are four main convenience store chains in Taiwan; 7-Eleven, Family Mart, OK-Mart, and Hi-Life. There’s a correlation between convenience store choice and the expat’s level of integration into Taiwan. This is all very scientific, using only the most up-to-date social research methodology [natch], as you’d expect from TheSaltyEgg’s  journalistic endeavors.

7-Eleven is the granddaddy of convenience chain stores. It’s run by Uni-President, and is ubiquitous throughout the island. For many foreigners they just seem “to have what you need while the others don’t”. Logical considering it’s a giant multinational administered by one of Taiwan’s biggest food companies. Their supply chain connects to America in a way that outstrips the others. 7-Eleven is the most likely to have the Western snack you desire, including—for one glorious and still remarked upon summer—salt and vinegar chips. FOB and not yet comfortable with salted duck egg flavored goodies? This is the place for you. I lived out of a 7-Eleven my first two years. It’s great when you just want cheezies and a tampon without having a “cultural experience”.

Family Mart is the next largest chain in Taiwan. It is a Japanese based company and more likely to have products from around Asia. Family Mart appeals more to the longer in the tooth expat who’s developed a taste for Asian snacks. They have a wide range of Japanese snacks like dried wasabi green peas, Hokkaido ice cream, and Japanese salty mixed rice crackers. They also have items from around Asia. This is where you go to assuage that 2:17 am craving for Singaporean fish skin crisps [actually pretty awesome] or Korean roasted seaweed snacks.

Things begin getting a little more Taiwanesey with OK Mart. It is part of the Canadian-based Circle K group of stores, still OK Mart has less international selection. For salty snacks you have the omnipresent Cheetos and Kyushu Seaweed Lay’s potato chips, or other Asian flavors. If you’re craving dried instant noodle snacks, they have a wide selection of this Taiwanese answer to the potato chip. If OK Mart is your bodega of choice, you’re on the road to acclimatization, next stop…

Hi-Life, a Taiwanese-run convenience store chain, with less international feel than the others. My local Hi-Life doesn’t even stock Coke products, but they have a pretty solid selection of grass jelly teas, red bean and taro ice cream bars, and 乖乖 (a tasteless puffed corn treat, like Cheez Doodles without the cheez). If Hi-Life can assuage your cravings—congratulations you’re Taiwanese.

However, the journey is not complete until you find yourself shuffling down the alley to the local mom-and-pop corner store in your betel nut stained wife-beater, nylon shorts, and blue rubber flip-flops, carrying an armload of empty 米酒 (Taiwanese rice cooking wine) bottles to exchange for a fresh bottle and some Longlife cigarettes. Then, and only then, will you be a 台客 (Taiwanese good ol’ boy), my son.

Expat Life

Diversity in Expat Culture

One annoyance of expat life is its tendency to create shallow friendships. Everyone is transitory, and friendships are fleeting. [See: Expat Friendships]. The upside is expat life offers diversity of friendship. It’s charming how expat life throws together people from all the world’s corners, each bringing their unique backgrounds. Despite a certain American cultural hegemony, traditions from the world over jostle and blend delightfully in the expat community.

On big holidays you’re quite likely to get invites for a special meal or party. If you’re alone on the holidays someone is likely to be looking out for you, and invite you to something. If not, it’s easy to band together with other lonely expats and create some drunken holiday cheer. At these parties, the expectedness of different traditions doesn’t diminish their beguiling nature. I’ve been at expat Christmas potlucks that have included the requisite turkey and fixings, but also the host culture’s interpretation of Christmas, and dishes associated with Christmas’s around the world; Beijing Duck (Taiwan), Kentucky Fried Chicken (Japan) [still makes me giggle, but it’s a Japanese thing], pickled herring and snus (Sweden), oysters and foie gras (France), mincemeat (England), kutya and nalysnyky (Ukraine), topped off with malva pudding (South Africa). It sounds like a pot-pourri of horrors. However—like people—each regional dish blended smoothly to create a harmonious meal, with just a soupçon of cacophonous flavors, adding tang without being too jarring.

Cross-cultural togetherness is somewhat expected during big holidays: we’re all here without much family. I’m more enchanted with the countless small examples of cultural sharing that happen serendipitously. For me, these have included being invited by a group of Americans to a pub to watch The Super Bowl live. I don’t care about football, and even less American football, but I don’t want to meet the person that can’t enjoy hot wings and binge drinking at 5:30 am. Being unexpectedly slipped a container of pierogis from a Ukrainian coworker. Attending a funeral and afterwards finding the Irish attendees had created a spontaneous wake, reciting Irish funeral toasts and getting slowly swizzled. It was touching. Perhaps one of my favorite incidences was stumbling upon a French-Canadian teaching assorted Anglos some Québécoise curses. (Not to be confused with cursing in France. The Québécois curse like they’re taking inventory of a cathedral). Mon tabarnak—it was funny.

Another area of expat diversity is across socio-economic lines. Admittedly class distinction influences inter-expat relations and inhibits friendships, still the shared experience of being foreigners in a foreign land does create some odd-bedfellows. And, definitely in interactions with the host culture, it is easy for a poorer person to have friendships with rich Taiwanese. I suppose the social indicators of class are a little confusing across cultural lines.

Another charming aspect of expat life is the way it throws together people of different ages. Expats often interact across age groups without much prejudice. If I were still in Canada I wouldn’t expect to have many cross-generational friendships outside of work. Here my friends range from twenty-five to seventy-five. Admittedly sometimes it creates slightly awkward situations. I get invited to clubs, music festivals, and raves by (much) younger friends. I love being included, but it sucks to have to spend a night listening to some DJ (why are they considered performers?) delivering EDM; Techno, House, Trance, etc. True my generation had similar music, but most thought of it as syntho-shit—admittedly it’s still shit—but it’s nice to be included. It’s healthy to be around other age groups. It keeps your mind youthful and expanding. At these outings I’ve learned important life lessons, for example middle-age white men can’t twerk.

Likewise the host culture and their openness to intercultural friendships prevent expats from becoming homogenously foreign outsiders. The Taiwanese also play an important role in diversifying the expat experience. Many are happy to include a foreigner in their circle.

The expat experience makes me think of first-generation immigrants to New York in the early twentieth century. Diverse cultures—a medley of backgrounds and experiences—rubbing together. Heterogeneity is the spice of expat life.