Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Things I've seen lately...

So today, I saw some humorous things in Taiwan.

Item #1:
Living in Texas, I've grown up seeing my fair share of my mullets. Living in Austin, with a high gay/lesbian community, I've seen Fe-mullets as well. With the population density of Taipei, I was bound to see an Asian mullet, which is of no real surprise. Now, I've seen it all: an Asian Fe-mullet. Her front said she was butch, but her back said I'm a princess! The bonus is, I'm pretty sure she wasn't a lesbian, it was just really bad Taiwan fashion.

Item#2:
I saw someone wearing a t-shirt today that said "I "recycle" Boys" using the "recycle" symbol instead of the actual word. Pretty neat shirt I thought, girls wearing it would be pretty funny. Except it was a guy wearing it. It would be funny, even if it was a gay guy wearing it, but I'm almost positive that this is just another case of bad Taiwan fashion, or people not knowing what the things they wear actually say. It reminds me of this old video (Language NSFW):



If I could have captured a sneak picture on my iPhone, I would have submitted it to http://poorlydressed.com, where I found this lovely gem:



There's a lot more bad fashion I've seen over the last few months, but these are fresh in my memory, and I've been wanting to blog more anyways. Time to ride the MRT during rush hour again and see if there's any new observations I can make.

Friday, July 2, 2010

Currently in Singapore

Greetings friends! I'm keeping up with my once a month blog posts, this time from Singapore. I'm here to visit my brother and sister in law for a few days, as they moved here back in May from San Francisco, but also having the added benefit of the trip being a visa run, which needed to be done anyways.

I got in fairly late last night, and had to wait about 15 minutes extra because Jetstar forced me to check my carry-on bag at the gate as it was a sold out flight and they needed the extra overhead space. I'm not sure i want to fly either Jetstar or AirAsia again, as I felt like a sardine in a can while on both flights. The prices are super competitive, offering some of the cheapest options by as much as $200USD, but it comes at a cost for those who are more familiar with US based carriers. The distance between each seat is about 2-3 inches shorter than the shortest seats on Southwest, which is about the only comparable low cost carrier in the states. This is fine for the majority of Asian travelers, as they are usually smaller/shorter than their white counterparts, but for someone who is considered "average" sized in the States, my knees were almost touching the seat pocket in front of me.

I was finally able to sleep in today, as I've been going to Mandarin classes at the lovely time of 8am every weekday. Another reason I'm here is to get my Taiwanese passport. Since I entered taiwan on a US passport, my visa stay is only good for 60 days each time I enter, which means lots of international trips. I'm also worried about the required military service for all males under 35 who were born in Taiwan, regardless of citizenship. Now, since I moved to Texas when I was but a wee tyke, and never spent more than half the year in Taiwan whenever I went to visit, I didn't need to worry about being drafted into the military. Since I've moved here indefinitely, that becomes a little more of a problem. However, I have multiple sources telling me if i get an "Overseas Taiwanese" passport, I only need to leave every four months, and I'm exempt from the 180 day rule. So I've been all over Taipei prepping any documents i might need for the passport, such as my Taiwan national ID number, a health exam, and the actual passport application (which is all in Chinese, so needed translating).

Getting my national ID number was interesting, since apparently someone else has been using it for the last, oh 30 years or so. As it turns out, there was a double booking of that number over 30 years ago, when data was still being entered in manually. The guy is 2 days older than i am, but since my parents registered me first, the number is more legitimately mine than his. But since he's never left Taiwan and uses that number for everything, it was just easier to obtain a new one for me, which is needed for the Taiwan passport application. As it turns out, I didn't end up needing the health exam, so that was a waste of about $50USD. At least I know for sure I still don't have any STD's!

So back to the passport application. I went to the Taiwanese consulate/embassy/whatever here in Singapore with my sister in law, and the lady processing the application at first was a bit rude and seemed annoyed with us. She was confused as to why I had the incorrect ID number written down and also why some fields were left blank. Once I explained what happened with the ID, she recalled the conversation she had with my brother and dad when they called earlier this week regarding my situation. After this, she became more helpful and even partially filled out a new form for me, since mine were now scoured with corrections. One last minor snag was my photo. I take my own passport photos with a digital camera, as it's much cheaper to just print out a single sheet of six 2x2 photos (standard 4x6 photo sheet). There's no special gimmick for passport photos, they just have to be the right size and can't obstruct any part of your face. Well atleast those are the US rules. Taiwan's requirements call for smaller pictures, which the lady could have just cut off for us. She even took out a ruler to measure and was getting set to, when she notices I'm smiling in the picture. Apparently, no teeth are allowed to be shown on your Taiwanese passport photo. She gave us the name of a place that would do passport photos, and off we went, meeting up with my brother to grab some lunch and the passport photos before heading back to the consulate/embassy. For 8 passport photos, it cost a total of $15SGD, which equates to a little under $11USD. For a simple photo on a white background, taken with a digital camera, that they then slap into a pre existing size format that they already have on their computer. Such a big rip off. If I can part one word of advice of this post, it's not to buy passport photos from the Post office, travel place, etc. Do it yourself on the cheap! And with that, I will now head to sleep. It's been a long day, and the weekend's just getting started.