A can of beer and a sleeve of crackers

[crispy47]

My apartment building has this special characteristic: During the winter, it expels all heat; during the summer, it traps all heat. In all cases, it is a giant concrete humidifier, which perhaps accounts for these other characteristics. It's hard to tell. I can't think very critically in my current humidifiedly sweltered condition. Of course, in

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[crispy47]

Don't worry about floundering. Everyone has to do that at some point.

First visas. Get your NTU letter. Get a health check certificate thing get tested for HIV, because as far as I know HIV+ foreigners aren't allowed to go to school here, or at least the need to go through some special procedure. Which is wack. Anyway, then you need a bank statement showing you have at least US$X,000. It's all on a website somewhere, or your local Taiwan Economic and Cultural Office or whatever it's called will have a list of stuff you need. Actually getting the visa is pretty automatic.

Apartment-wise, it's easy if you do it right. You can't live in campus, and Taipei isn't really a hostel town, so unless you know something I don't you're going to be hoteling it for a few days. The good news is that finding apartments is easy. For one, you can go to the bulletin board on the first floor of the language center, and there are almost always ads, especially if you find out when the NTU semester starts (for Taiwanese students, not language-center students) and get there a couple weeks earlier. Barring that route, you can find someone who is proficient in Mandarin and just wander around the area you want to live looking for "For Rent" signs in windows. You can almost always find a decent place in one day.

Depending on when you get here, I might be able to help you to one degree or another. At the very least I can show you where to look for ads.

[stars_go_boom]

Re: visas, what kind of visa should I get? This question has been asked to death on Forumosa, but slogging through all the various conflicting answers makes me sort of want to shoot myself in the face.

I want to study Mandarin AND I want to work at least part-time at a cram school (aka a "buxiban" or does that mean kindergarten). I'm probably only staying for 9 months to a year.

From what I can gather, I should apply for a 60-day extendable visa for the purpose of "studying" and keep on extending it. Is this also known as the "student visa"? Does getting one prevent you from also legally working? I keep reading that getting a student visa means that you cannot legally work, ever, and cannot even change your visa to a work visa. I've also read that you CAN work, but only after studying at a school for 6 months. Then you can apply for a work permit through your school, but only if your school is not a private language center (or something... I don't even know what NTU's non-ICLP program counts as). Is the work permit also referred to as the "ARC"? If not, what's the ARC, and is the procedure to apply for and get the work permit first, then apply for the ARC? If it's true that the work permit and/or the ARC takes ~2 months to process, and that you need a job lined up to get the permit, then how do you keep said job AND abide by the law & wait for the ARC before beginning work?

And does this mean that I cannot legally start working part-time until approx 9 months into my stay in Taipei, at which point I will probably be leaving???

In short, I have no idea what kind of visa to get if I want to both study and find work ASAP in Taipei. I'm also considering doing an internship in addition to working (ie - only work ~10 hrs/wk). Can't even begin to guess what kind of hoops I'd have to jump through to do that.

I know that a lot of people teach English illegally, but it seems pretty risky even to do private tutoring on the side and be self-employed... is this impression wrong? I definitely don't want to get deported, since I want to work long-term in Taiwan eventually.

Since you've worked for a cram school and are also studying at NTU, I thought you might know a thing or 2 about this. Thus the neverending questions....

Thanks.

[crispy47]

These are all really excellent questions. And yeah, Forumosa sucks for questions like these, and there's aren't any really good clear guides.

I'm going to say you should forget about ARCs and resident visas and all that. It takes too long, and you need an employer before you get to Taiwan, which is hard to find. Just get a regular visitor visa.

Technically, there is no such thing as a student visa. Being a student is a justification for getting and extending a visitor visa. There are some other ways to get one as well. Working is not one of those ways. For work, you get a different kind of visa. But don't worry about that, because it's a pain in the ass.

Visitor visas (usually) work like this: from the date you get your visa, have six months to enter the country. Once you enter, you can stay for six months. You have to extend your visa every two months (in other words, twice during your six-month stay), but it is the least-big deal in the world. You get a form from your school, you take it to this particular police station, you hand it to someone at some counter along with your passport, you watch the Discovery Channel on the TV in the office, and fifteen minutes later you pick up your renewed visa.

If you want to stay longer than six months, you have two routes to take. One is, after studying for three or four months (I forget which), you can get an alien-residetn card (ARC). I recommend against this option if you are only staying for a year. Like I mentioned before, it's a big pain in the ass, and it's expensive, although afterward you can work for 10 or 15 hours a week and you can apply for national health insurance, which pretty much rocks if you plan to get sick or get hit by a bus or something.

The other option is more fun. Your six-month limit starts when you last enter the country. So if you get a six-month visa (some people get longer ones somehow) on August 1, your last entry into the country must be before February 1. If you show up in mid-August, you can stay until late January by renewing your visa every two months. Then, when your six months is up, you can leave, go check out Macao or HK, then come back (I once came back on the same day, without even leaving the airport), and get another six months. Your visa doesn't actually expire on Feb. 1-that's just your last entry date. Of course, that means that after Feb. 1, you can't leave the country without losing your visa.

But considering a flight to Hong Kong costs about as much as getting an ARC, I think it's a better option.

If you get here and find a job, you can switch to a work visa, but that means paying taxes and going through all the horrible bureaucracy. Also, taxes for foreigners are really high, although you can get most of it back at tax time. But you won't be here long enough to file taxes. On the other hand, it's very easy to work under the table at a buxiban (cram school, not kindergarten, although they have kindergarten buxibans too) or privately. I know a jillion people who've done it. It's pretty impossible to get caught, especially if you're doing private tutoring.

Damn, I wrote a lot. You owe me lunch or something when you get here. Unless you're one of those axe-murdering child-molesting internet psychopaths, in which case leave me the hell alone you sick fuck.

[stars_go_boom]

Yea, you did write a lot. You are amazing. This was awesome. I can now only speak in simple declarative sentences because all of that helpful information blew my mind.

I definitely owe you lunch. Will you be around August 28 - ie enrollment day?

(You should know that I was axe-murdering, but not child-molesting, and am now reformed. these days it takes a lot for me to lose my shit and hack people to death. but it's not impossible.)