10 Years On......

Thank you for a great 10 years....

Ten years on and still in Taiwan!

Today 22 December, 2008 at 12:30 pm is ten years to the minute since I first arrived in Taiwan. Well, there was that one year hiatus in China but the memory of coming to Taiwan is as vivid as ever. Many of the intervening years have been a blur, but those first few days and nights are crystal clear, as if they only happened yesterday. Ten years is a long time to be away from anywhere, but the ten years have been amazing and I wouldn't change much. Anyway, some of the highlights are below:

Family: I met Queenie on 9 September, 1999. We got married in court in Hong Kong on 1 March 2002 and in Church in Taiwan on 13 April 2002. Since I have been in Taiwan my family has also grown. Our nephew Tibet was born in Turkey in March 2000. Our niece Rochelle was born in October 2002, shortly after our wedding. Our other niece Charlene was born in December 2006 and our nephew Dominic was born earlier this year. My mom has also visited us here in Taiwan and China four times and my father came for the first time last year. We are still waiting for my sister. We have also spent a lot of time with Queenie's family over the years and although my family is separated by continents, I remain close to all of them.

Friends: Since coming to Taiwan I have met hundreds of top quality people and become great friends with many of them. Sadly, many of our friends have left Taiwan and now live all over the world. Although we miss them we remain close to them and hope we will always remain close. We have also had the good fortune to visit some of them and enjoyed hanging out with them in their home countries. Although we have many wonderful friends in Taiwan, we still miss those who have left.

Career: Yeah well I started out as an English teacher in Kojen language schools, became a Marcomm editor at Pro Team computers in 2002 (who were swallowed up by Pine group). I then went on to being the senior technical writer at Infortrend, director of the Shenzhen Interactive Language Center (SILC) (which now also doesn't exist), supervisor of the technical writing team at IEI Technology and finally a financial analyst at Purple Labs.

Travelling: Since coming to Taiwan we have had the opportunity to travel to many places in and out of Taiwan. Queenie and I have travelled all over Taiwan, with the exception of a few islands. We have also travelled to South Africa three times, Turkey, Vietnam, Thailand, Bali in Indonesia, Singapore, China, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Macau and London among others. Travelling together has always been fun and we plan to do a lot more of it.

Education: Every job has been an education in itself. I have also tried to learn Chinese and I am now in the process of completing an MBA through Manchester University.

Tragedies: One of the biggest tragedies I have ever experienced was the massive earthquake on 21 September, 1999 when thousands of people died in Taiwan. It was a devastating shock to the system and something that lives with us forever.

Things still to do: Have children, improve my Chinese, travel to Korea and Japan and to continue having a blast.

To my beloved Queenie, thank you for the past nine years I have known you and to all of you who have my 10 years in Taiwan an incredible and unbelievable experience, thank you. It would have been a far worse time without you. That's it for now. Hopefully over the next few days, weeks and months I will have the time to share some of our memories with you.

So thats it then, here's looking at the next 10!