My boyfriend might even get more bonkers if we have to see my mom all the time…

Seriously though. At this point I think it’s all to do with where he can get the best job.

Hmm, that’s tough. If I could live anywhere within a one hour radius of Taibei, I’d just live in the city itself. If Danshui’s far enough for your tastes, it would be great since you’d have MRT access. Barring that, I’d say your best bet is Taoyuan city. If you can’t do that, then go near the train station in “downtown” Zhongli. Otherwise… well, your boyfriend just may go bonkers.

Tainan and Taizhong are not an option for me because my mom is in Taipei and it will make her too sad if I move to Taiwan but still can’t be closer to her. Ideally, I would like to be about 40min to an hour away — close enough to be there for her when she needs me and not so close that I would feel obliged to go dinner all the time.

Zhongli (assuming that’s where you mean) city isn’t nearly as bad as Guishan, but it’s not the easiest for new foreigners. I’d recommend either Tainan or Taizhong. There, you can get a big apartment, things are cheap, traffic’s not too bad, but you can still go to movies, gyms, Chinese schools, western restaurants, etc…

And yes. I hate the live preview.

Taipei feels fairly small to me, coming from London. I am constantly ambivalent about the true big city. Always money and energy run out before you can experience everything the city has to offer, and somehow I always feel I’ve failed.

PS The live preview really slows down typing, at least for me.

But I think will be faced with a new problem: how to live decently in those big & expensive cities with 15% less money?

A friend from out of town was actually able to find out where I live by asking people on the street if they knew of a white guy with a goatee.

HAHAAHH! When I first came to Japan, I lived in a school controlled apartment. It wasn’t really a dorm, but an apartment the school rented and then we paid the rent to the school. There where 4 other Americans (3 white guys and 1 Korean girl) living in the same building. Since we came at the same time we hung out quite a bit the first few weeks until we all got ourselves established.

The three other guys all lived in one apartment and I was in the place next door and the girl was another door down, so we pretty much all gathered at the guys’ room from about 5 o’clock in the morning (for some reason when you go to Japan, there is no jet lag, but there is no desire to sleep either). We pretty much ate 3 meals a day at 7-Eleven. One morning I got up and went next door, and no one was home. I went to girls room, and she was gone too. Not knowing what to do, I went to 7-Eleven and asked if they’d seen the ‘gaijin’. After confirming with the other staff, she said no, not since dinner last night.

I didn’t find them until later in the day, they had gone to school for some lame reason. But I always thought it was funny how I could just go to the store and ask for the gaijin, and everyone knew who I was talking about.