Taiwan's economy has been hit hard

Taiwan's economy is racing downwards, take a look at the graph HERE in the economist.
Reason is, Taiwan basically exports computers and electronic gadgets and that's exactly what people don't buy right now. Even companies discover their 2005 PCs and severs still work. Especially if they keep on using XP for the PCs and Notebooks and use Linux for the servers.

Some predict a great and long depression for Taiwan and not just a recession, see HERE.

So, quickly buy that new Notebook with Vista and 4 GB RAM and a 250 GB HDD, come on, Taiwan needs you!

UPDATE: only kidding.

Crisis hits Taiwan

Now, there was this South Korean blogger somewhere mentioned in the news who had written that the financial crisis / recession will hit South Korea hard and then when it did, they arrested him and said it's all his fault. No joke, he made a prediction or two that didn't came true. Nevertheless I wouldn't say that one blogger caused all this, but I am probably far from understanding the Korean mind, still trying to get behind the mushroom men fertility cult .

So if I repeat now what was written online by EETIMES ASIA about sales drops, this would cause some excitement, the Taiwan economy would falter and yes, it would be my fault.

So forget what I said I am not telling you the rumors going round here as well, instead watch a nice picture...

http://dgphoto.photosharp.com.tw/DGPHOTO/ViewPublish.aspx?PublishId=168285&qid=22&qstr=%E5%94%AF%E5%B8%8C&version=24

You can navigate with the arrows.

So where were we, recession and all that jazz. Who cares actually.

Fire them foreigners! (Update)

Homepage teichert-online.de( ) , Formosablog(X), Techblog( )

Taiwan street dog rescue ( )

Foreign bears are different from other bears and everything is their fault.

Looks like Taiwan has now a "fire them foreigners" law initiative.
http://www.etaiwannews.com/etn/news_content.php?id=820434&lang=eng_news
And they even pay 10 000 Taiwandollars a month for each foreigner being fired if he or she gets replaced by a local. Yeah! Taiwan to the Taiwanese.

Not sure if they only mean foreign laborers (blue collar workers usually from Philippines and other SE Asian countries which are called "wailao" here, whereas we white collar workers from Western countries are called "laowai", the latter meaning something like "boss/chief/respected guy from outside" with a strong funny and ironic sub context. But as laowai are respected, "wailao" turns it upside down, wailao are extremely disrespected in Taiwan.

Companies "should" lay off foreigers first before laying off Taiwanese, the law says.
Hurray! Bratwurst here I come...

[ah ... I guess the colleages feeding me with cookies will tell the management not to do it, sniff...]

BTW, the bears recently appearing are from a Teddy Bear museum in South Korea, Jijo (Jiyeou or other spellings exist as well) island. Photos by Ludigel.
They are dedicated to my occasional reader Luo Yuo :-)

Updates:
"Taiwan should look to HongKong", an article stating why attracting foreign workforce to Taiwan doesn't really work right now [LINK] , fitting to my similar article (focusing more on the quality of life) which can be found HERE . It has to be noted, the situation criticized in the "HongKong" article above has actually worsened recently, see my article on the strange taxation against foreigners (HERE) .

Related stuff from my blog: The adventure of meeting another foreigner on Taiwan's streets: HERE