How was it for you?

She sat up in bed and swept her unkempt hair off her face, still glistening and moist with euphoric perspiration. She leant over and languidly lit a cigarette, exhaling a smoky-blue haze of satisfaction. 

“Well, darling, how was it for you?” her eyes falling on his, “Did the earth move?”.

Too right it bloody did. At around 3pm on Saturday 26th March, an earthquake of around 4.7 magnitude struck the coast of Taiwan. Taipei city shook too, especially if you were in one of the rickety old buildings here. Some of the island's new arrivals may have also suffered temporary instability in their bowels.

I, like everyone else in Taiwan, survived unharmed. I was on the bus at the time. Unable to tell the difference between a seismic event and a particularly reckless driver, I rode the quake in blissful ignorance. I found out about it 30 minutes later, my personal tutor student told me as I arrived for our lesson at Taipei 101. She gleefully announced the building's ability to withstand an earthquake of up to 8.5 magnitude. I marked it on my mental map, in case Armageddon hits while I'm here.

My flatmate Jon, however, was back in our house of cards at the time, taking a nap. He unwittingly became part of a remake of The Exorcist bed-shaking scene – and, naturally, almost shit his pants. Never have I been more relieved to be doing battle with Taipei's bus network.

Yet a browse through the wildly popular Earthquake Today blog reports that there was another earthquake in Taiwan less than a week previously – registering 5.5. None of us even knew about this until I just found it on “The ET”.

So it seems, like a lot of things in life, when it comes to noticing earthquakes, it ain't where you're from, it's where you're at.

The joy of theft

Shu Qi, chillin on our balcony

I've always enjoyed a spot of petty theft. Never really felt that guilty about it. As long as I was stealing stuff from big businesses (famous fast-food outlets, supermarket chains, Australian theme pubs) it's always felt like a victimless crime. Whether it be pint glasses from the pub or biscuits from Tesco, I often looked upon my thieving as a pathetic form of anti-capitalist resistance.

As a teenager, I spent so much of my wages in a particular big-name record shop that the odd stolen CD always seemed fair game. I looked upon it as my own personal customer loyalty scheme. After all, they drew first blood with their hip-hop CD pricing structure (£17.99 for GZA's “Liquid Swords”, for goodness sake!).

As I've grown older, my life of crime has tailed off somewhat. Not through a new-found conscience, my amorality remains strong, but just through a lack of time and opportunity. So it has been something of a trip down memory lane to meet my girlfriend Jen – a certified kleptomaniac. It's easy to forget the joys of a good bit of petty theft, and I'm currently re-discovering the adrenaline rush and sheer hilarity of it all.

In the past few weeks we've liberated: a stylish plant and its neo-modern pot, two shiny tumblers from a large bar popular with expats and – the piece de resistance – a life size cardboard cut-out of Taiwanese actress Shu Qi (seen hanging out on our balcony, above). It's been riotous fun, but I've come to realise that there are drawbacks.

As I sit here writing this – having just been startled for the millionth time by an effigy of the pretty Asian woman from The Transporter – it dawns on me that sometimes, just sometimes, I steal stuff without following my own code of honour.

Shu Qi, for example, was sat outside a small off-license. A few years ago, I stole a bushel of plastic fruit and vegetables from a little kebab shop that subsequently went bust (I take no responsibility for their bad financial management). A good proportion of my UK tupperware collection came from the items deposited in my old office kitchen.

These are not victimless crimes. Somewhere, a Taiwanese man mourns the loss of an attractive, two-dimensional woman. A Turkish couple still frantically root through the loft on Sundays, pining for plastic tributes to vegetarianism. And scores of middle-aged ladies scratch their heads in confusion when looking for something suitable to store the leftovers from “that nice casserole”.

So I write this, not to stress that theft is bad, but to emphasise that stealing without an excuse is bad. Whenever you steal stuff, make sure you can somehow justify it to yourself.

The international language of screaming

I'd like to thank Douglas Adams...

For almost a week now, the world has watched the effects of the massive earthquake off the coast of Japan in horror. Nowhere more so than in Taiwan, a country historically and politically close to the Land of the Rising Sun.

Taiwanese reaction to the events has been much the same as that from anyone across the world. Shock, fear, horror - sheer sympathy for the suffering of others. All this exacerbated by the fact that some Taiwanese have friends and family in Japan. Naturally, panic has also been a regular theme.

As an outsider, it's interesting (if not comforting) to see that Taiwanese people are just as susceptible to the joy of a scare story or two. Initial erroneous tsunami warnings prompted my girlfriend's parents to phone her at work and dispense what they thought might be their last pearls of parental wisdom. No doubt Taiwan's own earthquake prone nature played a part in amping up the mania, too.

Another interesting symptom of the hysteria was a hoax text message, sent in reaction to the radiation leaks at Fukushima nuclear power plant. It name-checked the BBC, warning people as far away as Singapore to stay in their homes and shut all doors and windows. This little nugget of bullshit rattled round Asia at quite a lick, so much so that Auntie was forced to put a story on her website, exploding the myth of a continent-wide death-cloud.

Stranger still was how popular the text was in Taipei - a city where English language comprehension is incredibly high. It seemed to escape some people to simply check the BBC website - something I had to do several times on Monday to allay Jen's fears that we were minutes away from growing extra heads. Still, what's the fun in a dose of calm rationality when there's all sorts of fear-filled hi-jinks to be had?

On the buses

The past week, I've set myself the challenge of getting round Taipei by bus rather than MRT. The bus network, unlike the MRT, is mostly in Chinese. For this relative newcomer, the possibility of getting hopelessly lost has returned.

Getting the bus does have plenty of upsides, however. Although the swathes of beautiful girls remain on the MRT, the oddballs and nutters of this fair city flock to the buses in their droves. Chugging their way through the gridlock, they offer an infinite opportunity for mayhem to ensue.

Some of it happens before you even get on the damn things. An early-morning commute to work with my Taiwanese girlfriend, Jen, began with a long wait at my bus stop on Keelung Rd – a six lane highway. She took great pleasure in informing me that the scooter pile-up I witnessed that morn happened “because they were staring at you”. No Taiwanese were hurt in the making of this anecdote.

Last weekend, a surprisingly tardy Sunday service had me waiting for over 30 minutes at the bus stop. Around the time I'd abandoned all hope, someone pulled over and offered me a lift. Ignoring all that good advice about refusing lifts from strangers, I took a ride from a hinge-and-bracket Asian lesbian double act who informed me that my destination was completely out of their way but they just loved chauffeuring white people around in their spare time.

And it ain't over once you're on board. A late-night ride home with Jen saw the bus completely empty out as we approached the end of our journey. “Just the three of us, on here?”, shouted the driver. “Well, let's have some music, then!”, before piping Avril Lavigne's 'Girlfriend' through the tinny bus speaker system.

“It's a party night!!”, he shouted at us as we hurtled off at our stop, fleeing for the safety of a good music collection. Yep, the buses are alright...

2011 and all that

Taipei Municipal Arena

Chatting to an American guy last week, I was once again informed of the lack of interest in "soccer" in Taiwan. "Yeah, it's right up there with fucking your dog in the sporting popularity stakes". Rather a disappointing revelation as, although I'm quite unaccustomed to canine copulation, I shouldn't imagine it being something to shout about.

Last night, Taiwan's U23 Olympic team played the 2nd leg of a pre-qualifier against the mighty Kingdom of Jordan. Sometimes a lack of popularity has advantages. I joined a bumper crowd of 1500, (yes, one thousand, five hundred) in rattling around a shiny new stadium with a capacity of 20,000 or so. Tickets were free and the lack of revenue meant there was no security. The crowd wandered in with their own booze from the 7Eleven and whatever food they wanted.

Unfortunately for the Taiwanese players, this lack of revenue also means no money for them. They have to pay their own way, including shelling out for their badly-dyed footballer's haircuts, by the looks of things.

The match itself is difficult to describe without being patronising or prejudiced. And, since there are countless professional hacks working for big red newspapers who wouldn't be troubled by any such concerns, I'll join them in doing the easy thing.

The Jordanians were big fellas, in comparison to our diminuitive Taiwanese team. And the lack of any kind of "big number 9" for Taiwan meant they just couldn't make the ball stick for any period of time. Jordan, on the other hand, had two quick, strong units up front and won countless fouls on the counter attack.

Jordan's gameplan was tracksuit manager #101 stuff, really. Win free kicks, load the opposition penalty area with their big athletes, dolly the ball up on the edge of the area and watch the mayhem ensue. Needless to say, it worked a treat. Taiwan finished on the wrong end of a 2-0 defeat and looked pretty dejected by the end.

There was, however, a refreshing lack of booing from the home fans, and a paucity of glum faces - a welcome change to the aftermath of a home defeat at White Hart Lane.

A final highlight upon filing out, 10 Jordanian lads chanting "Jordan, Jordan, Jordan" caused first bewilderment in the Taiwanese fans, followed by a couple of wise-guys shouting back "yeah, Michael Jordan! Slam dunk! Chicago Bulls!".

Met with such a gloriously irreverent response, the visiting fans' swagger was taken out of their step rather. After all, it's difficult to be too exultant when you've just fucked your dog - no matter how well you did it.