Considering Coming Here Too...?

My friend Rob sent me an e-mail the other day and it made me laugh because it sounded a lot like the first one that I wrote to my cousin Nichole before coming here, LOL!

As is the situation with most of my school mates, I believe, employment prospects in Canada are pretty dreadful right now, so Rob is considering following my lead and coming to Taiwan for a stint. I told him "Believe me: there is work here for you!"

To illustrate this, I related a story to him:

Nichole's boyfriend Cory is coming to visit her for a few weeks and as soon as my boss found out that he was coming to visit, she asked Nicole if he could work!

How crazy is that? So, Cory has agreed to work for Emily's sister for two weeks! He arrives here tomorrow (Friday for us) and starts work in TAINAN on Monday ...Tainan is another city 40 minutes away!... Emily (our boss) has agreed to pay his train fare to and from Tainan everyday because he is here to visit Nicole, NOT to work in Tainan! So how desperate do YOU think they are for foreigners who's first language is English?!?

Since Rob was asking about the lifestyle and salary here, I put my thoughts on paper, as it were. I thought I would take this opportunity to reiterate what I told him.

Since I am living and working overseas, I need to take both the Canadian dollar and the Taiwanese dollar into consideration when I discuss the value of things here. To give you an idea of the money here right now, $100 Taiwan Dollars was roughly equal to $5 Canadian... at least that's the way Nichole and I calculate it.

It is actually closer to 4.50... but $5 is easier to work with, and makes the exchange pretty easy to remember! The actual exchange rate right now is about 22%. This means that if you divide your Taiwan dollars by 22, you will get their value in Canadian money (for example: $100 NT ÷ 22 = $4.54 CAD).

My salary (in Taiwanese dollars) is $53,000.00 every month. That works out to about $2,400 Canadian every month... Yes, it is less than the average monthly salary in Canada, but it works out to more take-home pay in the long run because most of the everyday things are cheaper!

Speaking strictly in Canadian dollars, my rent here is only about $250.00 Canadian every month. I add to that the utilities (another $150.00 MAYBE) and spending money of $100.00 a week (which is actually a lot if you think about it!)... and that means that if I spend about $800.00 every month, I am still earning $500.00 that I am NOT spending! ..and I can just buy a money order and mail it home to my bank in Montreal to deposit!! Also, since my bank card works at the bank machines here, if I end up getting stuck at some point, I can get money from my Canadian account.

:-)

This salary is for a 26 to 34 hour work week... and I can also do private tutoring if I want to. Private tutoring is usually frowned upon by many schools, but my boss encourages it, and will even find private students for me if I want them. These private lessons are under the table (no tax!!) and I can get between $600NT (New Taiwan dollars) and $1000NT an hour (about $30 to $50 CND) per student!

Because I am a foreigner, I have to pay a lot of tax for the first half of the fiscal year. My salary is taxed at 20% for the first half of the year, after which it drops to the standard 6% (Can you imagine 6% income tax in Canada??). The 20% sounds like a bit of a bum deal, but once you get past the 160 day mark, you are officially considered a resident foreigner for tax purposes. This means that when I file my income tax at the end of the year, I will get back all but 6% of the tax money I've paid so far.

I know... it's confusing... but there is a good book that you can buy that explains the way things work in Taiwan pretty well (except they are wrong about a lot of local customs, LOL!). The book is called "The Lonely Planet". There is an edition of the lonely planet for almost every country in the world. Both Nicole and I bought the one for Taiwan, and have really enjoyed it!

I guess since I have been here a little while, I can offer some advice to people thinking of coming over, as I did for Rob.

It took me a month to get ready and go. The most difficult thing for me was the vaccinations! I just didn't have enough time to get all the ones they recommend. The only one I was unable to get was the Hepatitis vaccine.

If you are starting to consider coming over here to work, I would suggest that you go and get your hepatitis vaccine because it takes more than a month... and it is handy to have even if you don't end up coming. I wasn't able to get that one in Canada, and it would have been a relief to me to have gotten all my shots done before coming over here.

[ED NOTE (2007): none of the recommended vaccinations were actually necessary, except the Hepatitis shot, though they did make me feel more secure about coming to a strange country.]

In Canadian dollars, the flight here cost me about $1300.00, and one night's hotel stay in Taipei, together with the taxi to the airport cost another $200.00 before I was even ready to fly out to Chiayi. Be aware of this!

Your startup costs when you arrive would be the purchase of a moped and some incidentals (things you forgot to bring or didn't realize you would need) which, in my case, ran for about $700 CND.

The school advanced me the money, thank goodness! From what I have heard, this is a common courtesy here with new arrivals.

YIf you come, you will want another 200 to 300 for pocket money during your first week or so... if only because you aren't used to the conversion rate between Canadian and Taiwanese money! I went through about that much because I hadn't figured out that $150 Taiwan dollars for a cup of coffee at my hotel was actually $7.00 Canadian!! YIKES!!!

Coffee is one of the few REALLY expensive things here!

As I told Rob: so far, coming here has been a fantastic experience! Besides... even if it all goes horribly pear shaped: I've been to China! :D