Face!!!!

Even though I have been living in Taiwan now for nearly 3 years.  Now I have been struggling with the concept of face more so than when I arrived!  

I think this has a lot to do with the fact that Taiwanese people think I should know more about it because i'm not a fresh off the boat newbie!  As I have said, after 3 years they assume this big hairy foreign ape looking white man knows all about face.  So we good!

Losing face is a no no for Taiwanese people

I don't actually mean people's real faces by the way.  Face is Taiwan is kind of like an abstract subject, its all about how other people see you in society.  Also how you act, what you do, who your friends are, what kind of work you do, and what you do when your not at work can all effect your face!    Anything along the lines of arguing, sleeping around, complaining, moaning, and fighting will help you lose face in an instant. 

Losing face is a massive thing, people often talk a lot about saving face, or how they have lost their face and they cannot go to that shop again, or see those people again in the street.  This kind of thing, and these kind of activities are really common back in good ole Newcastle.

What I find funny about Taiwanese people is they really care about face but there are a lot of situations where face is not thought of at all!  For example charging past you to get a seat on the MRT!  Chomping on food and talking at the same time, showing all the contents of your lunch, and mumbling some bizarre concoction of a word!  People walking at the pace of a man with no legs when your in a hurry and not moving out of the way for shit, because that's their goddamn piece of path, and their not letting you past at all.  Even if you say, "bu hao yi si" Excuse me/i'm sorry.  After uttering the magic polite words you get looked at like you have just shot the bastards in the back, or your neighbour braying on your door uttering some sort of chinese gibberish about you shouting "Webb you manc cunt, it was over the line.  She however, bangs the front door so loud every day like that don't matter!!!" as you watch Newcastle get thumped by Man Utd and that cheating fucker helps them!  The great final contradiction is gobbing up all your phlegm and beetle nuts all over the streets like its no ones business, and face don't mean shit to them.  Its all about the contradictions baby.

Magpies first CPL win

Well, well, well.  Boys and girls.  Ladies and gentleman!  The Magpies managed to get their first ever CPL win a few weeks back now vs Shane.  

We actually controlled the game for large parts of the game, but we still struggled in certain areas as we always do.  Junior managed to get his first goal for us and managed to put in a beast of a performance destroying Shane's defence.  

The moment when Junior got the ball, shot and scored will live forever in most Magpies players memory.  The collective GET IN!!!!!  From the team and subs was loud, one of the loudest GET INS!!!!  I have heard!

We were all very happy with our first win as people could imagine, and now we have managed to take 4 points from 6 games.  This is still very good considering we have been a team for less than a year, and how strong the league is.  Our players are still getting used to each other also.  

We have a lot of new guys in our team and our squad is finalised unless someone leaves and we have a gap to replace them or someone is very good.  

May this be the first of many wins, and a big up to Junior for scoring the winning goal.

A funny moment happened after when I offered to buy the whole team drinks, not many came but Junior showed up, he said he would just get a juice.  Looked in the fridge, picked up a small one and actually took a big one.  He could have a goddamn monster sized juice for all I care!!!!

Newcastle Upon Tyne, England. Homestay for Taiwanese students.

Home stay

Overview

Facilities:

wifi, satellite TV, storage space – shelves, chest of drawers, cabinet, wardrobe and a big window with a lot of natural light, evening meals, (weekdays only) access to all family rooms, and use of kitchen and bathroom.  Also included airport pick ups and drop offs. 

Number of rooms: 

7 (2 bedrooms, small room – storage and office, bathroom, kitchen, living, dining room.)

Price: 

Long term stay – 90 pound per week.  (6 - 1 year)

Short term stay – 110 pound per week. (week by week basis)

Contact

Marky.baobei@gmail.com

Description

We are a couple in our 50’s with no children at home.  We are both working professionals that are friendly, outgoing and very easy to get along with.  We are both very helpful and always willing to try and help out as much as possible. 

We have had one student in the past from Taiwan, and he loved his stay here very much, that he often writes to say he would love to come back. 

The house is located in a quiet suburb of Gateshead.  The location of the house is very close to Newcastle.  There is easy access to Newcastle City centre with bus stops close by.  The journey time from our home to Newcastle City centre is around 10 minutes by bus.  One of Europe’s biggest shopping centre’s The Metrocentre is also close by, which takes 5 minutes by bus. 

The room the students will stay in the house has a double bed, TV with satellite and wifi.  The room also has a lot of good storage space with wardrobes, chest of drawers, cabinets and shelves.  The bathroom is the shared family bathroom.

Students will be able to use every room in the house, including the kitchen, dining room, living room.  Students can use the kitchen to help their selves to breakfast.  Evening meals will be provided during the week, if we are at home on the weekends we would cook on weekends too. 

Students would be allowed to smoke in designated rooms only. 

We will pick up and drop off students at the airport

Pictures of the house

Bedroom

This is 2 pictures of the bedroom.  You can see the bed, and the TV and also the room has a lot of natural light.

The Living room

This is the living room.  Here you can see the comfy sofa, and TV, fire, and small table.

The dining room, Kitchen, Bathroom, and Backyard.

Comments from our previous home stay guest from Taiwan:

Newcastle&Lynda&Stephen 當時在Newcastle的生活，因為和Lynda&Stephen一起生活，像家人般，自在又快樂！他們的熱情已經讓我愛上這個美麗的城市和溫暖的家庭！和Stephen一起從晚上六點聽著他收藏的英國許多經典樂團歌手的CD,一路到十二點！what's a music party night!還有Lynda完美的homemade food! Yummy! I won't forget I have a family in Newcastle ! Only one word to say: MISSING!

Old people on scooters in Taiwan!

The old people who ride around Taiwan on their scooters are some of the most annoying people on the road.  There are many reasons for this, but I will explain a few now.  These are from my own experience, and all my own thoughts.  If anyone gets pissed off, tough shit.

Reason number 1.  They either drive extremely fast, or extremely slow.  Like marmite there is no middle ground when it comes to the old codgers out here!

Reason number 2.  They don't care about anyone's safety including their own.  Now I know they are super old, and they probably don't give a shit if they have another crash.  Some of us still want to live.  There was one moment when I was turning around a corner and some old woman rode her scooter into the side of me at a reasonable speed.  She got met full on with a Jackie Chan kick.  That will teach her to watch the road next time instead of ooogling food shops and stands!

Reason number 3.  Most old people look like they have had their scooter for about 150 years, passing it on through the generations.  They generally have no mirrors, and all sorts of fumes and smoke is tearing its way out of their exhaust and into my nose!  

Reason number 4.  This is linked to reason number 3.  Most of the scooters old people ride around on, look like bits of the scooter will fall off at any given moment.  They can often be seen sporting holes, and all sorts of other battle wounds that they have gathered through their 150 years of existence.

Reason number 5.  Old people seem to like randomly stopping their scooter on the middle of a bridge with no warning.  I have noticed this very crazy habit is often practiced by old people here in Taiwan generally during peak traffic times for adding old people points!

Reason number 6.  Even though they are on a scooter, and doing 15km per hour, they like to sit in the middle of the road so no one else can get passed them.  There was one moment when I was crossing one of the many bridges, when one old woman was stuck right in the middle of the road.  The traffic was completely back logged and going ape shit with her, tooting like mother fuckers!  This old woman was oblivious and didn't give one hell of a shit!  She just rode on like she was either deaf and in need of hearing aids, or an utter bad ass mother fucker, king and queen of the old folks all rolled into one!

This is a disabled scooter which can be seen all over Taiwan.

Magpies promotion poster.

Taipei's Riverside Magpies are always looking for new recruits who can help us out in the duty of battle, and in the watering holes of this fine city Taipei.

If anyone is interested get in touch.

Contact me by email only please.

Plain stupid!

I made a post on a Facebook group about subbing for anyone in the morning and the reply is just completely and utterly stupid!

I made it pretty clear I was only looking for morning work. I will let you all decide, check it out.

Magpies vs Carnegies

We went into this match in high spirits after our performance vs the animals. Our thinking was again if we could keep it tight and try to frustrate carnegies we would have a chance on the break.

As carnegies are another top team in the CPL we were going to have to match the work rate and effort put in against the animals.

We again started with a defensive lineup. It was pretty much the same as against the animals, but victor came in for hamstring victim Tim, attacking midfielder Vincent came in for terry who had to go to Hong Kong and Yas came up front for Wilcent who got sick.

We had a good feeling this would strike a good balance between defence and attack. It was not all out defensive like the week before.

All was going well for about the first 15 minutes until disaster struck. They kicked the ball out because one of our players was injured. Our goalkeeper kicked the ball back to them and mid kicked it! He is adamant he kicked a hole in the floor.

It went straight to one of their most skilled players. The one known as the midget. No matter about his size he really is a very good player and he went forward and scored.

My opinion was this goal was a little unsportsmanlike, although it is clearly not against the rules to do that so we couldn't really complain about it.

What happened after this goal is something I have never seen happen from our team yet. After we conceded the goal a lot of our players heads seemed to drop badly. It was a little disgusting for me but I think it was because of how the goal was conceded everyone was a little annoyed and angry and really lost concentration.

After the heads dropped we conceded another 2 goals pretty much straight after the first one. This meant we were 3-0 down, after this I tried to change to 442 in an attempt to make us more attacking but we were being over ran all over midfield! They caught us on the break two more times.

The score ended magpies 0 - Carnegies 5

This has been our worst result and performance so far, but the team we are we won't let that keep us down and we have already been discussing what went wrong and how to fix it.

We have a new plan for the eagles game.

If anyone is interested in playing casual football with us in Taipei in our kick abouts or wants to join our team please:

Email me at. Marky.baobei@gmail.com

Facebook group. Sunday football and beers.

Cheers. Keep on keeping on!

A good start to the season and glasses gate!

We started off the season with a very good performance against Japanese football club(JFC), who have been a club here in taiwan for a very long time.

I had to follow this game by bloody Facebook status updates because I was still in England visiting family, maybe the cpl should use something like bbc live updates! Anyway this is no way to try and find out how the team you created are doing in their first game as a league team in the cpl.

As I was lying on the bed playing football manager I got an update, we were 1-0 up in 4 minutes. Good old Fred slotting away a penalty. After this I could not sleep as everything I seen for the next 40 odd minutes was that we were still winning 1-0. Then all of a sudden the end result came in on people's Facebook status updates, and we drew 1-1. I was still chuffed because no one has given us a hope in hell of getting any results.

On to our second game against those soft shites the animals. Everyone kept telling me all week that the animals are one of the best teams in Taiwan, however I really disagree. They are an awful team to play against because every time you try to tackle them they fall down like a complete sack of shit. You would think they had been poles axed by some giant thug in the mould of Joey Barton not some small asian lad half the size of them. They are essentially a counter attacking team and were starting to get angry and arguing with each other because we were also playing counter attacking football.

As we were getting to half time goalless something sad happened they scored a goal about 3 yards offside. Confirming what we have been learning about quickly the officials in Taiwan are utter SHIT!

All the gamesmanship, play acting, moaning, asking the ref to dish out yellow cards, and surrounding Gareth for about 5 mins was disgusting!

There was plenty of times when Wilcent (our fast small striker) had them skinned alive and would of left them for dead if they didn't pull him, kick him, elbow him and generally drag him all over! Most of this went unpunished by the shit referee!

Ironically the guy who got sent off and give away the penalty should of been sent off for a clear foul when Wilcent would of been 1 on 1 with the keeper. This was only a yellow and a free kick, the funny thing is the one he gave the same guy another yellow for was never a foul he was just bigger and stronger than Wilcent.

I have never seen that much diving, crying, moaning, complaining, cheating and play acting at any level of amateur football and the sad thing is they don't even need to do it because they have a decent team. If I was in a team like that mind you I would be DISGUSTED with them all and tell them that I thought they are all soft shites.

In the end we done very well under the circumstances with very little protection from the referee and a team of complaining moaning pussies!

We lost the game 3-0.

In another unprecedented level of shitness the referee wouldn't allow one of our very good players to play all because he wears glasses and in the words of that cunt Ferguson someone could be killed with those glasses!

There has since been a vote on wearing glasses and other people are that bloody soft and worried about life threatening injuries from the killer glasses that they don't want them to play against their teams!

I have never heard of any kind of bulkshit like this before maybe we would strike fear into the opposition if we all showed up with killer glasses! That would show them we mean business and as the other teams are shitting their pants with utter utter fear in the eyes, the magpies and our glasses runaway with the cpl title in our first season! Resulting in mass celebrations and our hero 'life threatening glasses' being honoured into Riverside Magpies history forever!

Interview for the CPL, plus our CPL squad list.

Hey guys I did an interview with Polish Rob about our team joining the CPL.  If anyone is interested in reading it check it out here:

http://www.taipeifootball.com.tw/

It is mainly about how we formed, our expectations, feelings about Kaohsuing and why we wanted to join the CPL.

Also we have pretty much selected our squad list for the coming season.  If you want to have a chance of playing with us please contact me @ marky.baobei@gmail.com or go to this facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/473195546032842/


Kit No. Player Name Position Nationality
2 Gareth Taylor Defender Wales
3 Michael Ling Defender Taiwan
4 Terry Sze Midfielder Hong Kong
5 Emre Gundogdu Midfielder Turkey
6 Andre Yu Midfielder Taiwan
7 Luke Nolan Striker Ireland
8 Nathan Lee Midfielder Korea
9 Nicolas Ja Midfielder France
10 Antonio Yu Striker Taiwan
11 Alban Sice Midfielder France
12 Ryan Adrian Striker Indonesia
13 Ardi Prinata Defender Indonesia
14 Vincent Sulistyo Midfielder Indonesia
15 William Christopher Defender Indonesia
16 Frederic Boissieras Midfielder France
17 Dechen Rapgyal Midfielder India
18 Charles Leung Midfielder Hong Kong
19 Wilcent Sulistyo Striker Indonesia
20 Kristantama Johan Midfielder Indonesia
21 Jose Ramos Midfielder Panama
22 Matteo Ternelli Keeper Italy
23 Mark Henderson Striker England
24 Yas Akimoto Striker Japan
25 Jarand Baker Defender St. Vincent & the Grenadines
26 Stefan Weiss Defender Switzerland
27 David Li Midfielder France
28 Satit Liuwattanachotinan Defender Thailand
29 Tomás Figueroa Striker El Salvador
30 Eisner Salamanca Midfielder Nicaragua
31 Jeffy Gomez Midfielder Belize
33 Juan Carlos Moncada Striker Honduras
35 James Jhang Midfielder Taiwan
36 Bilal Rehman-Chohan Midfielder England
37 Pablo Perdomo Defender Guatemala
77 Charlie Jeon Midfielder Korea
38 Lennin Zeledon Striker Nicaragua
39 Victor Shyu Defender USA
40 Koshoibek Moydunov Midfielder Kyrgyzstan
41 Mark Yang Defender Germany
42 Hugo de la Rosa Striker Belize
47 Brandon Pollak Striker USA
TEAM:
Riverside Magpies F.C.
CAPTAINS:
Mark Henderson
Gareth Taylor
Luke Nolan
Andre Yu
Emre Gundogdu
CPL SEASON 2013

Trains in Taiwan. (slow, normal, express, fast, high speed!!!!)

There are that many different type of trains you can take in Taiwan.  I want to tell you all a story from my own personal experience that will help you all understand how difficult it is to get the right train when you need to, especially when you are quite new to Taiwan. 

The crystal maze that is Taipei Main Station....a maze to new people here.

One day, in the not to distant past my girlfriend asked me to meet her on the fast train so we could go to Taoyuan to check out her friends new restaurant.  I said this was fine, and I would be happy to meet her on the train. 

So on the morning I was supposed to meet my girlfriend I rocked up to the high speed rail counter to buy my fast train ticket.  The journey is less than 1 hour on normal train, and around 10 minutes or so on the high speed train so its not really that important to take the high speed train really.

High Speed Rail.

I got on the high speed rail, and then my girlfriend called me asking why she could not find me on the train, and where the hell was I?  I told her I was on the high speed rail.  She was not happy and asked why the hell did I take the high speed rail.  I told her this is because you told me to get the fast train, and this is very fast.  When I got off the train she kept telling me to meet her in the bus station at Taoyuan station, but I kept saying I cannot see no bus station.  Then I realised what had happened and started to panic a little bit!  

Taoyuan Station, where I was supposed to be waiting.

In the end it actually took me longer to get to Taoyuan because the high speed rail stations are not that close to the city centers.  My girlfriend was a bit pissed off that I got the wrong train, and that we were now running completely late for what we had intended to do. 

So the morale of the story boys and girls is to make sure you get the right train in Taiwan.  Obviously the faster the train is, the more expensive it is. 

Here is a run down of the different trains.

Slow train - Stops at every station between your start and end destination.

Normal train - Stops at a lot of stations between your start and end destination but not all, make sure it goes where you want it to before you get on. 

Express Train -  This is the train Taiwanese people will call the fast train, this is what confused me a little bit because in English we would say fast for the high speed rail I think.

High Speed Rail - This is the train that is shaped a bit like a bullet, and goes super fast, like the trains people are more used to seeing in Japan. 

How are you doing in.........China?

People back home often ask me all the time one of these questions:

"Hey Mark how are you doing?  And how are things going for you over there in China?"

"Hey Mark, what's it like living in Thailand?  I have always wanted to go there!!"

This bugs me a lot, as I don't know how many times I have tried to tell them I am not currently in China or Thailand and I am in Taiwan.  Taiwan is a country, yes it is small but it does not belong to any other country.

Most people around the world clearly know that they are all different.  Just because China likes to claim Taiwan is theirs but it really is not.  Also I know Taiwan and Thailand have the same sound at the start of the countries name, but they are very clearly two different countries, with very different histories and traditions.  

It is really disappointing for me that so many people back home seem like they don't really know a lot.  Either that or they are very ignorant about things in the world.  Surely someone involved in education back home should be trying to fix this situation. 

So for every one back home.  Please note this bloody information about where I am.  

This is Taiwan!

This is where it is in the world.  Look in the little red circle!

As you can all see, this is neither China, or Thailand.  I wish people would stop asking me the same questions.  Again, and again, and again...

This is China.  It is quite a bit bigger than Taiwan

This is Thailand.  A country in South East Asia, it is not even East Asia.

So now I have cleared that up.  Please stop making a mistake about where I am!  Thank you, it is much appreciated