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!