But all of sudden I remember that I have a blog and I have this urge to drop a story here.
In the past months I had been working in a small software house which unfortunately has no good environment at all, except for some senior workers whom I got many life lessons from. After resigning on July, I came to Taiwan for the first time in my life in the end of August. I flew here with my friend from my previous uni and we're now also get into the same uni, department, but different lab.
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| Me, Rania, Nanda, Tommy, Dandut, and some footage at Singapore (transit time). |
Long story short, we came at Taipei international airport in the early morning and went to our uni using MRT and bus which only took about 30 minutes. My first impression was like Taiwan is not much different than Indonesia, probably because of my uni's location which is at the downtown of Taoyuan City, I thought. As I expected, it was kinda tough just to eat halal food, but since we have Indonesian student association (PPI) and Moslem community, I got to eat my very first meal pleasantly. About where I live, I got a room in international dormitory and got a super-nice angel-like roommate from Aceh. Overall, everything was (and still is) okay.
I spent a lot of money in my first 3 days here since I have to buy mattress and bedding (it was not provided as dorm facility), basic household needs, etc. There are many convenience stores here which obviously made us convenience, but in order to get cheaper price for the same product I like to go to bigger mart outside the uni. Once again, I'm so glad that we have PPI, they help, led and accompanied us, new students, to wherever it is necessary. Some of seniors from PPI that graduated around the time my arrival even gave us many stuffs free such as blankets, winter jackets, bags, clothes, and any other things. So that at least, I managed to press my expense down.
Taiwan's people spoke in broken English, even some of them can't speak in English at all. Sometimes google translate doesn't help, because there are some words that differ between Taiwan's mandarin and Mainland's mandarin. However, that has not been a big problem all this time. Around 2 weeks before my arrival in Taiwan, I got an email which was from current student, who is Mandarin native speaker that proficient speaker of English, and he was called as buddy. My buddy told me about anything that I should do prior and subsequent to my arrival, reminded me for every new student's compulsory schedule, and help me with any administrative things. Moreover, whenever I got troubles of receiving email in Chinese characters or having to talk with someone in Chinese, I could just reach my buddy and he will help me to be the mediator.
That's what I want to tell for now. Ciao!
