It’s been a serious forever since I started talking about all the little things we had to take care of before quitting our jobs, packing our bags and taking off. Now that we’re finally in our destination (so far 😉 ), let’s take a quick look at how these micro projects have turned out. As it happens, quite a few of them never seemed to get finished…

1. Getting medical and dental check ups. Done and done. However, now it is time to find good practitioners here in Taipei, in case one of us needs any medical help. We’ve already figured out the emergency number for ambulance (119) so there’s that.

   

2. This blog and all the social media accounts. As an ongoing process, I am and will continue to update all of our social media. Must confess, though, nothing much interesting seems to be happening right now (visiting IKEA is maybe not the most exciting news, is it now?). It really seems as if after just two weeks here in Taipei most of our daily encounters have become quite normal for us. Also, I am currently doing absolutely nothing, just looking for things to do later and ways to stay here forever and waiting for my school to start in March.
3. Job hunting, finding a way to make a living. Well, things are happening with the enginerd, there’s that. We are no longer looking for a location independent life, on the contrary, we’d love to stay here in Taipei. (Thus IKEA. Need to decorate our new, beautiful tiny apartment in Da’an, pictures will follow soon, as we get to move in.)

4. Our old home in Finland has naturally been emptied. Now we’re concentrating on making a new home here. We’re moving in in a bit over a week, and just yesterday I had to take the very reluctant (we both hate shopping) enginerd to go to IKEA with me so I wouldn’t spend all our much needed money on hand towels and tiny baskets. Next task is to go to a second hand home appliance store for a nuking machine.

5. Planning the schedule has become more challenging, since I have decided to apply for… things, and it turns out there’s a whole bunch of things they want you to do and figure out and obtain  and collect before you can apply. Also, we’re going to Vietnam soon (♥♥♥), so we’re planning that, too. (Yay, one more country off of my bucket list.) Tia, we’ll see you soon 😉
6. Saving money has turned into do-not-spend-on-that-thing-you-reckless-little-thing sort of challenge. Things cost money here (who would’ve guessed…) and it is becoming more and more difficult to justify buying things, especially with no current incomes. Right now we’re losing a huge chunk of money on my tuition fee, a deposit for our new flat (did I mention I love it, yet?) and overseas bank transaction fees. Luckily I do now have a bank account here, so we’re pretty much done with withdrawing cash with our credit cards. It’s way cheaper to transfer money online to my Taiwanese bank account, and the money seems to change homes in just two or three days. We’re moving into a furnished apartment, too, so we won’t have to buy any of that, either. Eating out is super cheap here, and the place is packed with vegetarian restaurants, so we are slowly but surely switching from our daily routine of cooking to just getting something from a vegetarian buffet.
7. Getting fit. As an ongoing process, we’re hitting the gym and running here pretty much on daily basis now. TBH (mom, it means To Be Honest), we did slip more into the beer-y side of life the past month, but things are very much under control now, and our travel clothes (I wish I had the money to buy new ones, been wearing the same clothes for over a month now…) are fitting us okay again 😀 All the yoga in India and just walking a ton every day have kept us in an acceptable shape this entire time, too.   As the gym costs only 50 New Taiwan Dollars per hour, it’s very affordable.

   

The bonus project: Studying Chinese: Well, here we are, and the studying happens 24/7, as even buying dinner or asking for directions requires using Chinese. I am also practicing with mock TOCFL tests and Pleco flashcards, and have made myself promise I’ll talk to a random person every day, and cashiers don’t count unless you ask about membership or such. Just yesterday I cornered a dude flying his drone in a park and asked him about how much it costs and had he made it himself. Not my best vocabulary at use there, but we did manage a conversation 🙂

This is it. This is where our micro projects were supposed to take us. Or is it, and how much further will we get? You’ll see 😉

PS: Check out previous posts on preparing here and here!

PPS: Here’s some answers to questions we’re still getting asked quite often. I guess I’ll have to soon write another one on that, since there are some new ones and some answers might have changed.