Making Friends in Taiwan

Making friends in Taiwan. For the first year that I lived in Taiwan, I didn't have friends outside of work. So on the weekends I usually went to then it was Warner Village to hang out and watch movies or go to Ximen to get a massage. The good kind of massage, not the naughty kind.

The life I lived in Banciao in Taiwan was Home, Work, Home and Sleep. I ate in between those times, but it was usually get home at around 8 or 9 and then in bed by 11 or 12. It literally felt like I was living Groundhogs day.  The change came toward the end of my first year in Taiwan where I met a friend and she introduced me to Tina Khoe, the then president of CAPT. Tina and CAPT members saved me from a life of boredom and introduced me into a world of events, friends and connections and eventually meeting my wife.


I actually met my wife's friends through Oriented. Through her friends, my wife and I actually met at a friends house party, but that's a story for another day. Through CAPT and Oriented, i started making connections and making more and more friends.  By the end of my second year in Taiwan, I was on the in crowd of the events circuit in Taipei. I would go to wine tastings and trips to different parts of Taiwan that I wouldn't normally go to. It was pretty fun. There are other groups in the Taipei Organization sphere, but in my mind, CAPT and Oriented are the constants in events per month.

 I believe that CAPT and Oriented has enough of a difference that you could have friends from different groups. Everyone is different, and you'll have to play the organization field to make friends and keep them. Good Luck!

My dog talked

I'm on my way to my current time in Taiwan. I'm just letting you know that I'm not this character that came to Taiwan from Ohio. Actually I'm not even from Ohio, but I'm off subject, so let's go on to my talking dog.

Gizmo was part of the family.

My dog passed away earlier this year in 2011, He was a shih tsu that we adopted in 2001, he enriched our lives and actually made our family more interesting.  He had a special relationship with my mom, my dad was his walker, my sister was his keeper and I was the person that he annoyed.  We adopted him from a pet store in Delaware, Ohio for US$100.  Very cheap for a pure bred Shih Tsu who was 5 years old at the time of adoption. He followed my sister out of the store, and to the car as we took him home. That's how he walked into our lives.

The first week that we had him, he didn't bark, he didn't growl, he didn't make a noise. He was testing us out. But when my friends came over while my family went to Chicago for the weekend, he let loose some barks! A bark that came in bursts of threes. It was always a bark in bursts of three. As we observed over the 10 years that we owned him, he had special ways of doing things and it always had to be the same, sometimes and to this day, we think he had OCD.

Neighbors cat eating Gizmo's Food. Gizmo got no respect
from neighborhood cats. 

He also had a penchant for trying to be friends with cats. We believed that his previous owner had cats and he was friends with his previous owners cat. The problem that arose for him is that the cats in our neighborhood didn't like him. They would hit his head, paw at his head and usually a neighbors cat would follow us home from walks and go into our house. Once again, Gizmo would try to be nice but the cats wanted nothing to do with him.  I'm guessing he just wanted to be friends with them, but not every animal liked him.

When we went on walks, people knew who he was. When i came home from College on the weekends, Gizmo would want us to take him for walks. It came down to me since my family volunteered me to take him for walks. My family would say, "Oh, Gizmo knows where to go for walks, just follow him."  I trusted my family and I let Gizmo take me for a walk. On our way I would pass people who would say, "Hey Gizmo" or "Hello Gizmo!" to which i would ask my dog when they were out of ear shot, "how do they know  you?" He would look back at me and have a kind of smirk on his face and kept walking. My dog was famous! 

Gizmo Leading the way for walks

And finally this is what makes Gizmo unique and the title of this article.  You have probably heard of dogs saying "I love you" and "mamma" and other cute sayings dogs say. Well, my dog learned how to growl my name.  He probably heard my mom and dad call me Howard and learned how to growl my name over time. I would ignore Gizmo when I was playing my PS2 NHL hockey and Madden Football games. It got to the point that he would wait for me to finish the games so we would go to sleep. He'd sit on the couch behind as I was playing my games and he'd growl "HOWAR" until I turned around and looked at him. A few times I would ignore him completely and he'd growl "HOWAR, HOWAR, HOWAR" three times until I acknowledged that he was there. He was definitely a fun dog and though he's gone now, I still have the memory of him calling me "HOWAR, HOWAR, HOWAR." Told you, he had OCD. 

This dog learned to say my name.

knowing my family

Knowing my family on my mom's side is a lesson in Math.  Seven aunts and uncles is a tough thing to memorize when you're a kid. I'm in my 30's now and I'm still reviewing when I have a mini family reunion. Something my parents instilled in me when I was younger.  The thing is, there's so many of them that each aunt or uncle has a number associated with them. Well, the middle few has numbers, the rest are associated with big or small and a few we referred to their English names. To a little kid, remembering names and people was a bit confusing. I'd review their names if you like, but I'm sure you don't want to be confused.

Mini extended family reunion.

I always had problem with remembering my aunts or uncles position in the family.  My parents would be reviewing in the car with me on who would be at the family get together and to call their names when I saw them. It was a big deal because we saw them at least once or twice a year. The problem was that when I got out of the car, I quickly forgot each aunt and uncles names.  As soon as we entered the door of their houses, I went and did a quick mumble of some rather suspicious name calling and went off to play with the other kids. As I got older, I succeeded in calling my aunts and uncles by their correct names, but I still had to think about it.

Then there are my cousins. They are probably the easiest names to remember. As we got older, we haven't stayed as close as we were when we were younger. Most of us are now married or live in different parts of the US or like me living in Taiwan. We still keep up with the occasional family birthday email each month or sometimes chat on Facebook. But I definitely would like to catch up with each cousin as they had a part in shaping my childhood.

The Kids