I found that sentiment deeply off-putting, and I say that as an American in Taipei right now (which seems thematically similar).
The author says 99% of things written are unavailable to him -- and I'm sure it's even more of the spoken word around him. If you subtract out 99% of communication, and all the deep relationships and casual understandings that make a community, yeah, I guess every place starts looking the same.
But boy howdy, that stuff is really valuable to some people, and not just people with nothing else going on in their lives.
How did you end up in Taipei, and how are things there on the tech front?
Tech here seems more hardware oriented than I normally am, but beyond that, I don't know much yet. Taipei helps me study Chinese which is useful because 我的中文不好，但我每天学，住在这里让我沉浸其中。
You study simplified Chinese in Taipei?
My studies go back years, my residence here only weeks. I'm fixing the gaps in my education, but slowly.
Re:Tokyo and Hong Kong in 2018
by shanghaiaway on Friday April 20, 2018 @07:15PM
(#16889072)
He meant that he's surprised that you're learning the language using the simplified type system instead of the traditional one which is used in Taiwan.
Serious culture shock doesn't happen fast, it happens slowly. Often the person experiencing it doesn't understand what is happening - even for years. As an Irish-Israeli-Yemeni-UK-educated-Jewish-Catholic I am fairly much a citizen of the world...but Nationality and Home are radically different things. Years of digital nomadism sounds attractive on one level but will likely leave the OP with a profound feeling of something dark which they may never be able to name...
OP has clearly not noticed much of the politics and election results around Europe...
OP seems to be a young European urbanite, and given the average age of the active European voter base (pretty old), I wouldn't say that recent political/electoral trends are demonstrative of the younger generations' (read: the future of Europe) values and beliefs.
Above comment is correct. Moreover I'm fairly convinced that we're witnessing the dead cat bounce of nation states[0].
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/05/demise-of-the-n...
"Nationality is a fading illusion, nobody cares where they were born unless they have nothing else to cling to. We are citizens of the globe. Home is basically where a good bed, a supportive environment and fast Internet is. The former you can get from IKEA pretty much anywhere. For the latter, we'll just travel and spend most of our time where things are easier, cooler and better"