Taiwanese academics is very different than what I’m used to back home. I’m still trying to get around some of the challenges I’m facing while studying in Taiwan. The teaching methods, the homework and class assignments, the interaction - or lack of - between students and professors, the interaction - or lack of - between students and students, are just quick examples. I think almost every English teacher blogger here in Taiwan or the ones I read in China has written at some point or another about the Taiwanese education system, some more critical, some more accepting, but that’s usually from a teacher’s perspective.

In the few weeks that I’ve been here and have been talking to fellow Taiwanese students I’m …

The Taiwanese students are just adorable. Somehow, they make me feel even older than I really am, and that’s old enough when it comes to university students. 
Part of the Taiwanese student life is belonging to a club. My receptionist has invited me and another IMBA student for a "club-night", which I thought might be a Ministry of Sound kind of rave, but turned out to be a display of  NCKU student associations. There’s one for anything you can think …

Nobody has so far been able to explain to me how it was that the Mid-Autumn Festival turned into the national holiday for BBQing, after making a stop at Hotpoting, but there it is - Moon Festival in Taiwan, as well as in other East-Asian countries like China, Korea, Vietnam etc. is usually celebrated with the family and friends doing BBQ. Just like Israel in Independence Day, the whole city gets covered with smoke and exotic BBQ smells. People do BBQs just about everywhere - on the street, next to the 7-11s/McDonalds, in the middle of road interjections, roofs, balconies and by the smell of it in my corridor - also indoors.

The Mid-Autumn Festival (Simplified Chinese: 中秋节; Traditional Chinese: …

Damn, Russel Peters is hilarious. After finding out about Russel Peters, I couldn’t stop watching his show and rolling on the floor listening to his insights about Asians, Chinese folks and Chinese language.
You gotta check Russel Peters out:

What’d you think? good stuff, eh?

Tainan’s hosting the International Chihsi Arts Festival for the Qixi Chinese lovers day:

The "2007 Tainan International Chihsi Arts Festival－The Coming-of-Age16 Celebration" will be hosted by Tainan City Government from 10th of August for 10 days at the Confucius Temple and various surrounding sites in Tainan City. Through this festival, the city government aims at preserving the unique cultural heritage of "Coming of Age 16 Celebration", promoting international cultural exchanges, and enhancing the tourism of the city.

Hanjie’s Blog has done an unbelievable job in translating all the events and putting them down on a Google map for us clueless foreigners to find our way …

Our Chinese teacher, AKA "KTV queen", took our small Chinese class out yesterday to a KTV in the NCKU area.

Karaoke Box is a variant of karaoke that is popular in East Asia. It features a small to medium-sized private room containing karaoke equipment for a group of friends to rent in timed increments. A monitor in the room displays lyrics atop a themed music video. The music videos are often not the official videos, but are videos made especially for karaoke establishments. A typical Karaoke Box establishment contains 10-20 such rooms as well as a main "karaoke bar" area in the front. Karaoke Box centers can scale to hundreds of rooms and can be extremely opulent. Karaoke Box establishments often sell …