Great to finally meet you. You said you read my blog?
Really?
Do you have time to read it?
Impressive. This protocol is really interesting…
It’s radical openness.
Nice.
Oh, thanks man.
Are you from UK?
Oh, Australia. Your accent is a little UK-ish.
It’s turning into a group meeting.
That’s cool.
Got it. If I admit to international terrorism.
Hey.
[Japanese]
It’s nice to know this. I just wanted to meet and, just find out what is going on in Taiwan. This is my first time here. I wrote a pretty well-read blog post about Taiwan last year.
Yes.
Yes. I try to give my posts dramatic titles to get attention, when it’s really about…If I titled that post “Americans don’t pay enough attention to Taiwan,” the readership would be much smaller.
I’ve got to dramatize it. It was good. Much of that was, of course, sourced from Taiwanese people I know. Everyone said, “Why don’t you go to Taiwan?” [laughs] The pandemic made it a little difficult, obviously.
Yes, I arrived on October 18th.
I saw that it was opening up, so I decided to come right over.
A couple of my friends got the gold card, and they spent a lot of the pandemic here. Very cool. I’m leaving tomorrow morning.
Great. Did anything surprise me? I was surprised at how chill it is, laid back.
Yeah, it’s not really like Japan. Japan is very friendly, but it’s also incredibly high energy. Everyone’s always extremely obsessed with the details of everything. Taiwan seems much more relaxed.
I just came for a vacation, but I suggested to my Silicon Valley friends that they come. They came, and then some VC people started doing VC deals here. Then my other friend came. He’s doing electronic sourcing. We turned into a group trip.
Just four.
We’ll be back. Let’s see. Taiwan needs to electrify all the scooters.
The scooters are a little noisy and pollute-y.
What’s that company called, Gogoro?
Are they still on the outside of Taiwan as well?
There’s lots of countries where scooters are pretty popular.
I also visited Amsterdam, and there were a lot of scooters there.
Of course, more bicycles, but a lot of scooters. Scooters use the bike paths, not the roads. That’s very odd.
It really is.
Like you’re going to get run down by bicyclists and scooters.
I feel like I’m about to get…
The less solarpunk. It’s a little cyberpunk.
I do feel like I’m going to be run down by scooters here sometimes. They’re very good at avoiding people, but still. Eventually, luck has to run out.
What about e-bikes? I feel like that would be a little less…
Very cool. What did the amendment do exactly?
Just regulations?
Very cool. Any other observations? Let’s see. Very laid back. Many buildings in Taipei are new, but many buildings look extremely old and dilapidated. Why is this? What are these old, extremely…?
Which you read.
Very cool.
Right, because the infrastructure and building materials are so similar to Japan that some time I naturally contrasted it, and then…
Got it. They can retrofit it to…
I see. They don’t redo the outside?
Interesting. People just don’t care?
I did notice that the internal stuff is pretty nice.
Got it. I do feel like Taiwan has extremely good skill at interior arrangement and design and that this should be exported to the world somehow. Any other observations? Not really.
I didn’t go to hot springs, although I want to go. I’ve been to lots of hot springs in Japan, but I think that Taiwan has more natural hot springs.
