After arriving in Taiwan around mid July (details of the trip are in an older post) I began to settle in. After a few weeks I cam to realize that for foreigners, finding work can be a bit of a hassle. In general there are 3 really only 3 ways foreigners come to Taiwan to work (legally). Teach English, translate, be sent by your company that has offices here. Yes, there are many other options, but I would argue that these are the top 3, "foreign professionals." The majority if foreign "white collar workers" in Taiwan are teachers, and the majority of teachers hold Canadian passports.
More are my job hunt in the next post.
My first few weeks here, I casually went to a friends scooter shop to learn how to fix scooters and prevent myself from being bored while I searched for jobs. The scooter shop owner is a climbing friend and mentor. Then I began going with him and a group of friends to Xinzhu to help a friend who runs a river tracing guide service. After a few weeks I was pretty much full-time on call as a river tracing guide working about 3 days a week and earning 15,000NT/month...Not bad for only working 3 days a week.
Things were good, but as the days grew colder, the river tracing work dropped. I was unemployed by October. I was thinking about what to do next when a fellow river tracing guide, told me about a friend of his who had tried to open a coffee shop on a mountain (Jinshan inside Yangmingshan National Park). Long story short I tried to open a coffee shop there, but cold and mold deterred me and I ended up back in Kaohsiung 1 month later pretty much broke and broken.
So here I stand 2 months after my failed coffee shop misadventure. Basically most days I spend searching the Internet for ways to stay in Taiwan. I stand on my balcony, drink tea and coffee, and watch my herbs (mint, thyme, rosemary, sage, and perilla) grow. I still no job, still not great outlook on the future, but I recently found out that I still have access to my universities VPN, so I would like to welcome Pandora and Netflix to Taiwan :) It's all about the little things.
In the immediate future I plan to sell banana bread and bagels, and look into going back to school for a MA in "food culture," and learn to cook and try to get a gig in a restaurant.
I expect that my next post will be about searching for jobs in Taiwan.
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