Schedium

Yesterday I had once again a conversation about the alleged habit of Westerners to take a shower in the morning. I was surprised when, a few years ago, a Chinese friend asked me for the first time the question: " Do Western people really take a shower in the morning ?" I had never thought about this before. But apparently, a lot of Chinese/ Taiwanese notice (and disapprove of) this habit. When you live with a Chinese family (which could for example be your girlfriend's/boyfriend's family) you might have noticed that they are not very happy with your going to bed without taking a shower or bath first. It seems as though they considered it disgusting, and they wish you had brought your own bed sheets.  First of all, I don't think every Westerner takes a shower in the morning. I guess it depends on the person and the mood. I, for example, usually take a shower in the morning, but when it's hot outside, I prefer to take a shower immediately after coming back...

Chinese New Year can be a pretty boring time for a foreigner. All of my friends were celebrating with their families, and since I have no family here, nor have I a girlfriend whose family I could join, I had nothing special to do. Shops and cafes were closed - apart from big chains like McDonald's or Starbucks, which were overcrowded anyway. So I had a lot of time to think. On Saturday evening I went out to buy my dinner. While I was walking around, I heard the voices of the people inside their homes, the sounds of their New Year celebrations. Then I suddenly asked myself: "What on earth are you doing here? Why are you still in Taiwan?"  Before I came to Taiwan, some Taiwanese friends of mine had recommended me their country, highly prasing it and going so far as to say that Taiwan is a "paradise for foreigners" (bear in mind that when I say foreigners I mean 'Westerners').  "It's easy for foreigners to find a job," t...

A few days ago The New York Times reported that Chinese hackers attacked their computer systems and stole the passwords of some of their staff members. According to The New York Times , the timing of the attacks suggests that the purpose of such attacks was related to the investigation by the newspaper of Chinese premier Wen Jiabao's and his family's wealth. The Wall Street Journal also reported that it fell victim to cyber-attacks originating from China. The evidence gathered by the newspaper allegedly shows that the China-coverage was the target of the infiltration. However, as CNN reports , the security experts hired by the newspaper could not find proves that files concerning Wen and his family were accessed. On February 1st, Twitter announced in a blog post that an attack on its system was detected and that " the attackers may have had access to limited user information – usernames, email addresses, session tokens and encrypted/salted versions of passw...

Thanks to the economic growth of East Asia and China's opening up in the Deng Xiaoping era, from the 1980's onward the relationship between the Western world and East Asia has fundamentally changed. As a consequence, the contact between Western and Asian people has been steadily intensifying. Business people, students, professionals, tourists are among the protagonists of this new era of exchange, which is more and more 'democratic', in the sense that while in the past the movement was mostly from East to West, now the opposite case is not a rarity any more . The 2008 financial crisis even prompted a new wave of expatriation of Westerners towards Asia, in search for jobs that the troubled Western economies seem unable to offer to their young population.  Traditionally, economic power has attracted the interest of Westerners more than culture. When Japan was growing at a pace the West had never dreamt of, media were obsessed with Japan. When the Japanese economy c...