Category: Daily life
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How I got clean air in my apartment in Beijing
I just finished a week of trying to find the right air purifying solution for my home, and since it is high time for a new blog post, here is my little guide to breathable air in Beijing: November 2011 was the first time I came to Beijing. In retrospective, that visit was a very…
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Interlude
休息是爲了走更遠的路 Interestingly, I have not found an English equivalent to this. It goes something like “Resting is for being able to walk an even longer journey“. This is where I am right now.. Coming back to Singapore (which is my base) from 8 months in Germany/Switzerland and having some time to rest, both mentally and physically.…
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Everywhere and nowhere
If I had known that I would stay almost 4 months here, I probably would have approached a few things differently. Coming from 3 weeks in Singapore, the expectation for 6 weeks living in Stuttgart was… well, non-existent. It also didn’t help that I could associate Stuttgart with only 2 things: 1 EUR beers from…
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Service culture
Last Monday I flew with Swiss from Singapore to Zurich. After 5 hours I had to stand up and walk around a bit. A flight attendant pushed a cart along the aisle and blocked my way. Oh wait actually it was the other way around, clearly I was blocking its way since the first thing…
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Is Singapore a nice place to live in?
So I moved to Singapore 10 days ago. It’s most certainly too early for a review, but since Germany is waiting here is a quick snapshot of my experience so far. So international! So expensive.. and so cheap! So yummy! So easy but also so hard to understand! So authentic! So artificial! So international! Yes…
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Room for improvement
So after 1.5 years back in Taiwan, it is time to sum up some observations. DISCLAIMER – this turned out to be quite a negative post because 1. it’s always easier to complain, 2. the post got so long I did not have time yet to write the good things, I swear I’ll deliver that…
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The Daily Song of Ice and Fire
It’s not hard to get sick in Taipei during summer. All you have to do is… well, nothing special really. Just follow your daily routine: 1. Wake up at home and have breakfast. 2. Walk to the bus 3. Get on the bus 4. Get off and walk to the MRT station 5. Take the…
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The art of queuing
The average Taiwanese is an intermediate queuer. Be it queuing for a popular food stand in a night market, queuing for the metro or standing in a traffic jam (which is kind of a queue as well). Here is a special example in a department store, where a nice line forms for access to the…
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The client is your boss
A slightly adjusted version of client is king. Here, at the immigration office in Taipei, the client is asked to remind the clerk in case hey forget their smile. The clerk didn’t smile, but I also neglected my duty… bad bad customer..