taking charge
This year i plan to take charge of my own life a bit more.
One of the things that my not-really-a-resolution-but-i-did-it-anyway stint of getting back in touch with family and friends crystallized for me is that i am not very happy with my life right now.
To be clear: i am far from unhappy with my life right now. It's fine. It's comfortable. It's predictably convenient. In fact, a big reason why i looked for work in Taiwan in the first place was because i knew life would be easy. The lifestyle in East Asian cities suits the way i want to live. But. As long as i am held hostage by my employer, it's not sustainable. Every little work frustration chips away at my mental health a little more, and i can never build it back up because i don't have enough annual leave to recover.
One of the worst things about being a migrant worker is that your legal status in a country is invariably tied to a single employer. If you lose your job, you're done. In China you can stick around unofficially if your former employer doesn't file the cancellation papers, but if they do then you have 10 days to get out of the country, period. And all previous visas to China are canceled too, which is why i cannot even visit there on holiday any more. Taiwan is more lenient. It seems like you can get 6 months after losing your job to remain in the country as a job seeker. This is the thread i am gripping to keep me sane, that if i just want to say "fuck it all", at least i will have a few months to breathe while i figure things out.
It's not that i actually want to quit my job right now. But it's that i want to know that i could. Living with a sword of Damocles hanging over your head fucking sucks, and that's the life every immigrant experiences every day - to varying degrees - until they get citizenship.
Enter the Taiwan gold card. This is a special work permit offered to foreign professionals, designed to entice upper middle class foreigners into moving to Taiwan, at least for a couple years, to spend their money, stimulate local business and maybe even find a girl, settle down and help fight demographic collapse. For anybody who works a decent job in the G7 or EU, qualifying is eminently feasible. You need to prove you have earned around us$5000 per month for at least one full tax year in the previous three. And then you get a 3 year open work permit for Taiwan.
Because the requirements are fairly lax, the gold card is notorious for being something that well-to-do grifters, hustlers and sabbatical-takers wangle and then keep in their back pocket just in case. Some gold card holders never come to Taiwan at all. Other ones bum around for months on holiday, legally staying much longer than they would be able to on a tourist visa. Probably most of them are digital nomads who enjoy the freedom of having one country that they can legally use as their Asian base while they jet around other places without needing to stress about the legality of doing "visa runs" every 90 days. And then there is the group of people that really do want to come work in Taiwan, get a place in Taiwan, pay taxes in Taiwan, make it their home... at least for a while. That group would be me... if i qualified.
Leaving China left me in a bind, because China and Taiwan do not recognize one another's documentation unless it is certified by bureaucratic government departments who put everything through the "is this person really a spy" check. Which is especially difficult for a foreign migrant because China makes it stupidly difficult for you to go back in again - even just to deal with outstanding paperwork - after you lose your job. And literally impossible during COVID times. So i had no acceptable proof of my employment in China. After leaving i worked part-time as a contractor for a while. Then i traveled around for a year. So 18 months ago the gold card was not an option for me.
But now it might be. My salary in Taiwan is exactly on the balancing point of just under the threshold for gold card, but if you add the monthly "meal allowance" component, it's technically just over the threshold. This is either HR being utter cunts and deliberately paying me just under the threshold to prevent me from gaining my freedom, or it is HR being slightly less utter cunts and deliberately paying me the bare minimum for some foreign professional tax reason. Needless to say, i have not had a raise, or a bonus, or any pay adjustment since i started ~16 months ago. Which is fine. I don't give a shit about money. I earn more money than i know what to do with. It's a shameful amount of money. But it turns out that this number on the paycheck might actually be useful for something after all, in a way i hadn't fully considered.
So this week i decided to be mercenary about it and try for the gold card. If i apply and get it, then i have gained freedom from my employer, and indeed the freedom to take even a year off without losing my residence status in Taiwan. If i apply and don't get it, then i have a stronger motivation to quit anyway, because clearly my employer has done me dirty.
I don't want to get my hopes up. But if i do get the gold card, this opens up the possibility for me to spend up to two of the next three years not working my ass off full-time while still living legally in this part of the world. Then in that final year i have to go back to full-time work at the salary requirement threshold in order to qualify for the next step - fast-track permanent residence. Yes, the gold card gives you permanent residence after 3 years instead of 5, if you used it the way it was intended to be used.
Again, it's not that i necessarily want permanent residence in Taiwan. There are a lot of things i don't like about living here, as well as things i do like, but i'll write about that another time. The point is that i want the option. I want to have the freedom to feel like i could stay, if i decide to. This is exactly the freedom that Brexit took away from me. Before Brexit, i had the freedom to imagine all the different places i could go, places with different cultures, different languages, different cuisines, and i could live in any of those places. Even if i never did, just knowing that i could made my life better, it made me happier.
I know. I live my life with one foot out the door. It's how i was raised, it's how i feel at peace. Nothing stresses me out more than feeling trapped, feeling tied to a place, feeling like i cannot escape. It's why i will never buy a house. I find the whole concept of property ownership loathsome. I don't want kids. I don't want a partner. I don't want anything that will imprison me. Even if i make the choice to just bum around in the same place for the rest of my life, i want to know that it was my own choice to do so, and not feel like i was ensnared. Having that freedom means everything to me. I need to know that i can change my situation at any moment, in order for me to be able to draw comfort from a decision to not change it, for now.
And i think that is one of the things making me feel most stressed right now. Not my job, per se, but the fact that i am tied to it. So i am going to try to change that. Let's see how it works out...
One of the things that my not-really-a-resolution-but-i-did-it-anyway stint of getting back in touch with family and friends crystallized for me is that i am not very happy with my life right now.
To be clear: i am far from unhappy with my life right now. It's fine. It's comfortable. It's predictably convenient. In fact, a big reason why i looked for work in Taiwan in the first place was because i knew life would be easy. The lifestyle in East Asian cities suits the way i want to live. But. As long as i am held hostage by my employer, it's not sustainable. Every little work frustration chips away at my mental health a little more, and i can never build it back up because i don't have enough annual leave to recover.
One of the worst things about being a migrant worker is that your legal status in a country is invariably tied to a single employer. If you lose your job, you're done. In China you can stick around unofficially if your former employer doesn't file the cancellation papers, but if they do then you have 10 days to get out of the country, period. And all previous visas to China are canceled too, which is why i cannot even visit there on holiday any more. Taiwan is more lenient. It seems like you can get 6 months after losing your job to remain in the country as a job seeker. This is the thread i am gripping to keep me sane, that if i just want to say "fuck it all", at least i will have a few months to breathe while i figure things out.
It's not that i actually want to quit my job right now. But it's that i want to know that i could. Living with a sword of Damocles hanging over your head fucking sucks, and that's the life every immigrant experiences every day - to varying degrees - until they get citizenship.
Enter the Taiwan gold card. This is a special work permit offered to foreign professionals, designed to entice upper middle class foreigners into moving to Taiwan, at least for a couple years, to spend their money, stimulate local business and maybe even find a girl, settle down and help fight demographic collapse. For anybody who works a decent job in the G7 or EU, qualifying is eminently feasible. You need to prove you have earned around us$5000 per month for at least one full tax year in the previous three. And then you get a 3 year open work permit for Taiwan.
Because the requirements are fairly lax, the gold card is notorious for being something that well-to-do grifters, hustlers and sabbatical-takers wangle and then keep in their back pocket just in case. Some gold card holders never come to Taiwan at all. Other ones bum around for months on holiday, legally staying much longer than they would be able to on a tourist visa. Probably most of them are digital nomads who enjoy the freedom of having one country that they can legally use as their Asian base while they jet around other places without needing to stress about the legality of doing "visa runs" every 90 days. And then there is the group of people that really do want to come work in Taiwan, get a place in Taiwan, pay taxes in Taiwan, make it their home... at least for a while. That group would be me... if i qualified.
Leaving China left me in a bind, because China and Taiwan do not recognize one another's documentation unless it is certified by bureaucratic government departments who put everything through the "is this person really a spy" check. Which is especially difficult for a foreign migrant because China makes it stupidly difficult for you to go back in again - even just to deal with outstanding paperwork - after you lose your job. And literally impossible during COVID times. So i had no acceptable proof of my employment in China. After leaving i worked part-time as a contractor for a while. Then i traveled around for a year. So 18 months ago the gold card was not an option for me.
But now it might be. My salary in Taiwan is exactly on the balancing point of just under the threshold for gold card, but if you add the monthly "meal allowance" component, it's technically just over the threshold. This is either HR being utter cunts and deliberately paying me just under the threshold to prevent me from gaining my freedom, or it is HR being slightly less utter cunts and deliberately paying me the bare minimum for some foreign professional tax reason. Needless to say, i have not had a raise, or a bonus, or any pay adjustment since i started ~16 months ago. Which is fine. I don't give a shit about money. I earn more money than i know what to do with. It's a shameful amount of money. But it turns out that this number on the paycheck might actually be useful for something after all, in a way i hadn't fully considered.
So this week i decided to be mercenary about it and try for the gold card. If i apply and get it, then i have gained freedom from my employer, and indeed the freedom to take even a year off without losing my residence status in Taiwan. If i apply and don't get it, then i have a stronger motivation to quit anyway, because clearly my employer has done me dirty.
I don't want to get my hopes up. But if i do get the gold card, this opens up the possibility for me to spend up to two of the next three years not working my ass off full-time while still living legally in this part of the world. Then in that final year i have to go back to full-time work at the salary requirement threshold in order to qualify for the next step - fast-track permanent residence. Yes, the gold card gives you permanent residence after 3 years instead of 5, if you used it the way it was intended to be used.
Again, it's not that i necessarily want permanent residence in Taiwan. There are a lot of things i don't like about living here, as well as things i do like, but i'll write about that another time. The point is that i want the option. I want to have the freedom to feel like i could stay, if i decide to. This is exactly the freedom that Brexit took away from me. Before Brexit, i had the freedom to imagine all the different places i could go, places with different cultures, different languages, different cuisines, and i could live in any of those places. Even if i never did, just knowing that i could made my life better, it made me happier.
I know. I live my life with one foot out the door. It's how i was raised, it's how i feel at peace. Nothing stresses me out more than feeling trapped, feeling tied to a place, feeling like i cannot escape. It's why i will never buy a house. I find the whole concept of property ownership loathsome. I don't want kids. I don't want a partner. I don't want anything that will imprison me. Even if i make the choice to just bum around in the same place for the rest of my life, i want to know that it was my own choice to do so, and not feel like i was ensnared. Having that freedom means everything to me. I need to know that i can change my situation at any moment, in order for me to be able to draw comfort from a decision to not change it, for now.
And i think that is one of the things making me feel most stressed right now. Not my job, per se, but the fact that i am tied to it. So i am going to try to change that. Let's see how it works out...