Back from taiwan: beauty in taiwan mundane

I came back from taiwan 2 days ago, here's my obligatory return afterthoughts blog

Taiwan was fast this year... I was there for 5 weeks, and it passed in the blink of an eye. I think I did a lot on this trip. A lot of things I wouldn't traditionally do, like cafe hopping with a laptop and work on schoolwork/website/server. It was really mundane, but I really tried to enjoy every last bit of it. I wanted to enjoy the mundane little things and simple personality taiwan has. I don't actually like visiting very crowded and popular places like Ximending in Taiwan. My mom and sister actually went to Japan together for 4 days for a vacation while me and my dad stayed in taiwan. My sister is a part of the Jirai Kei subculture so she was happy to go and spend money lol. She's also my biggest influence for fashion since we have similar varying fashion tastes. She bought me some subcul clothing too! 

My sister asked me why I didn't go with them, well the main reason was that I was in class and school, but then something in the back of my head also caught my attention. I don't think I would have gone because the golden route of Tokyo (shinjuku, shibuya, akihabara), Osaka, Kyoto don't really interest me, it won't really feel like Japan. Similar to how Times Square is not NYC, Ximending is not Taiwan, and Paris is not France. 

This ties back into how I expressed feeling more enjoyment in the mundane things; like going to a local breakfast store run by kind elderly taiwanese at 6 am who will serve you the best 蛋餅 (egg pancake), 蔥油餅 (green onion pancake) 蘿蔔糕 (radish cake) and soy milk for great prices. Walking around my local area before the sun rises too high and it gets too hot to walk around. By the way, I personally believe Taiwanese breakfast should start being spread around the world. I love taiwanese breakfast, you have many options and many of them are bread-y with egg, meat, and plenty of good flavors. I like the taiwan that is not trying very hard to be something else. Taiwan has an identity problem: a country that was native, Chinese, Japanese, and then Chinese again. When going to the Financial district, you can see a lot of western influence, while going to Taichung, you see Japanese influence. Sometimes, I feel like Taiwan is trying to hard to be Japan, or trying too hard to be China. Taiwan is far too rude to be Japan, and Taiwan doesn't slap LEDs on our deteriorating buildings and call ourselves Cyberpunk to be china. And that's good, because there is a perfect imperfection in Taiwan. Yes, the ugly buildings and ton of power lines, make taiwan seem very frozen in time. Like it is still the 90s. And that's all great.  

 

 

 

 

A month in taiwan, petty pet peeves

 I've been in taiwan for nearly a month now, which is crazy to think about how fast time went. The classes I'm taking are very easy. For the most part, I spend most my time with my family like it's a normal family getaway. When I was way younger I would return to taiwan and stay there for way longer. This place is a second home to me, it's really different from the city I live in america because I live in a more rural area in Taiwan. But it only takes a 15 minute bus ride and I am in the main bustling city of Taipei! 

Now... some of my pet peeves...

First of all, goodness the heat. I can never get used to it. Since my mom was a teacher we came back during summer break during the american school year, which is the months of June, July, and August. Also known as the hottest months of all time. Taiwan heat is especially awful. Daily temperatures of 90-100 F (33 to 36 C) and 70-90 % humidity. Your sweat will stick to you. Now, I can wear long pants in taiwan, but when I was 5 years old I threw tantrums a lot. Thinking about it now I feel very bad for my mom. Because of the heat and where we live, there are a lot of bugs too. Certain bugs I don't care much about, but roaches I can't stand. Thank god for AC nowadays tho! A lot of places blow strong AC. 

And then, old people can be very rude. This is very common for asian countries, particularly those with any sort of Chinese Confucian influence that old people can be quite the assholes! In my experience, all the old people who just chill at home or going on walks in your local area are super friendly and will say good morning and chat, especially if they recognize you. But the moment you get on public transport and the main city, it's like completely different group of old people. Pushing, shoving, staring. 

Anyways I don't have internet at home (My parent's don't pay for it because they don't need it), so I've been enjoying going to cafes and libraries, getting free wifi and torrenting anime and music in Taipei. I've been torrenting anime to add to my server database, and selfhost a media server using Jellyfin. As I write this, I'm sitting in a Louisa Coffee and coding. By the way, I've been experiencing with Linux a lot. On this laptop, I'm using KDE Plasma on Linux Mint (weird combo, I know.) Linux is great! On my thinkpad T490s, everything runs incredibly, and the terminal, which I used to be really scared of, is now my best friend. The terminal is just super powerful. Anything from converting videos, downloading videos, moving files (moving 30 gb folders in an instant), sorting files, accessing my server from 7000 miles away, even updating my website on neocities, it's just really easy to do on the terminal. And most importantly, the terminal looks really really cool! 

 

Use duckduckgo!

The other day, I was peeking over at my dad's phone when I noticed that when he searched something on safari, he didn't get any "AI overview" like what has become commonplace on google. I noticed he was using Duckduckgo, and I asked him about it. He told me it felt nicer to use so he has been using it. Here are some of the pros and cons for me as I've been using it on my phone and laptop for the past 2 weeks. 

The first main features that I think will make most people very excited is the ability to turn off AI search overview AND filter AI images. Duckduckgo allows you to set how often you want AI overview to pop up. That's the best part, that you get the choice. You're able to completely turn it off or leave it on demand, or just show up naturally. The next part, is the ability to filter AI images. As far as I'm concerned, this feature relies on users reporting images as AI, which is a good reason why I'm writing this blog. It would be great if people read this blog, became users of Duckduckgo, and passively reported images that are AI during their time using it. 

Also, duckduckgo pushes significantly less reddit that google. Something I've noticed after using duckduckgo is just how much google pushes reddit. The first or second result on google is almost always something on reddit. Reddit is no longer the "front page of the internet." It's one of the most polarized platforms of all time, with plenty misinformation, bitter people and mods with superiority complexes on it, and a lot of bots. Not to mention, a lot of AI is trained on reddit (reddit sold tons of user content to OpenAI to train with). When searching something on duckduckgo I usually get an article that would've been the 4th or 5th result on google search. It feels like how old google was, when it worked. 

Duckduckgo also prides themself on privacy. In all honestly, I don't completely trust that any search browser doesn't have some sort of trackers in it. It's just how search engines and SEO works. Despite this, Duckduckgo still feels miles ahead of Google and Bing. The best bet is to use uBlock origin alongside duckduckgo for maximum security. You also get customization options too.  

 

The primary con is people use duckduckgo less. Because of this, search results might not be as polished as google. Google is simply the default for a lot of people now. So google simply has more traffic and can fine tune their searches exceptionally. 

Switching to duckduckgo is really easy too. For my phone, all I needed to do was go to safari settings and switch my primary search engine to duckduckgo. On my laptop, it's even easier. I use firefox, and the option to switch is right there on the search bar. If you're reading this, give duckduckgo a shot for a day or two! You likely wouldn't need to download anything, because most browsers have a setting you can switch to it instantly.