Ready to document, ready to share

This has been long overdue.

I'm Pieter Borremans, and I've lived in Taiwan for almost a decade now, long enough to collect a stack of embarrassing moments I've never once put into public words.

For ages I've been telling myself I should document what it's actually like to live here as a foreigner, and for just as long I've found reasons to put it off.

The push finally came after I started keeping a separate blog to document my building-in-public progress, a different project with a different purpose.

Somewhere in that process it became obvious that my life in Taiwan deserved its own space, separate from everything else I'm working on.

This blog is for expats and for anyone who recognizes the particular flavor of struggle that comes with relocating somewhere unfamiliar, whether you're already committed to the move to Taiwan or Asia more broadly, or you're still circling the decision, unsure what you're even supposed to be looking for.

A lot has happened in these years. I've taken notes along the way, scattered and half-formed, and it's finally time to turn them into something resembling real writing.

Expect posts about the experiences that shaped me here, good and bad. The version of daily life I'm living now and the places that have become part of it.

The slow, uneven way my perception of this place has shifted since I arrived; the specific frustrations of being a foreigner that don't always translate into a clean story; and the comparisons I can't help making between Taiwan and everywhere else I've lived.

Because I have lived elsewhere. I left Brussels in 2006 and spent years moving between countries before landing, eventually, in London and then Taiwan.

I know there are plenty of blogs out there built for tourists or digital nomads looking for something more prescriptive, clearer answers, tighter guides.

This isn't that. Everything here is just my experience, filtered through however I happened to see it at the time. If you read something and disagree, that's fine. Everyone's version of this is different.

I'm ready to finally document it, backtrack through what I've missed, and catch up to where I actually am.

Are you?