The funny is, how everything is made cute, even poo, or at least the representation of it is! I'm curious as to why everything has to have a cute element, whether through words, cartoon characters, brightly lit, patterns and so on. Even a elctricity box will be painted, most often with a mountain scene. I'm by no means complaining, just curious and hoping to delve deeper. My first guess is the urban areas can be somewhat harsh so maybe the 'cuteness' is to soften the edges but, as a comparison London does not adorn street furniture or blaze everything with cute puppies or some other character?
So what is different? Down in Kaohsiung they have pump stations, but they don't sell petrol, they sell water, no problem there. The thing is, to the western eye we presume that they must be for petrol. I'm amazed that cultural differences are so small but, yet seem, at times huge. Food is the big and obvious cultural shift. For me I find the food on the whole very good and find it easy to be here in terms of my stomach. I think I will continue to talk about food for a long time. The Taiwanese never stop talking about food and just about everyone has a relationship with food. Everywhere you go food is available, everywhere you go there is a food specially made just in that area and people will travel just to eat it.
The bad/wrong is the traffic. The high dependence on mopeds [they call them scooters but, I'm English!] is out of control and clogging up the streets. I think people forget that the moped is not part of them and just a machine because they drive as they mean to walk or if they want to stop somewhere they will 99% of the time take the most direct route. The low-level pollution is a very big cause for alarm too. I find it hard that the Taiwanese government has not done more to persuade manufacturers to build cleaner engines. These are just my first thoughts and the people of Taiwan are amazing and so many are so friendly, it makes living here a joy.
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