It's been a long time since the last time I've updated this blog, I'm sorry about that, but a cross-strait moving it's not a quick and easy operation! As I mentioned earlier, the 18/09 I definitely left Hong Kong for Taiwan and moved in a new nice and quite big (25? or 83m2) apartment in Wenshan District, only 15 minutes far (by scooter) from Taipei 101, 東區 or Gongguan. Therefore, I spent the last two weeks by deep cleaning it (it's a new apartment, but it's empty since months) and buy stuff such as a big desk, futon, kitchen stuff and a cat!

Beside that I started to work with Steve Follmer in a new venture called "Chillr" (no website for now, WIP) which is a startup mainly aimed to develop original applications and games for mobile devices such as iPhone and Android. We spent the first days to set up our working tools (computers, to-do lists, tasks management, communication means), some short brainstorms about possible products to develop and of course we looked for an office.

This is where the funny part comes, in Taiwan, the housing surface is not measured in square meters like in Europe or square feet like in Hong Kong, but in "Ping" ("坪"), equal to 3.3m2 and this is standard (not likeJapanese's Tatami). But what should be included in the surface measurement depends on everyone appreciation! As a result we visited a 22坪 office in Gongguan andanother nearby Shida measuring 21坪 and it turned out that the 21坪 was almost twice as big as the 22坪 in Gongguan.

Why that? It's simple, as I said any landlord is free to include what he wants into the measurement that is the lobbies, the hallways, the elevators, the balcony (even though it's outside the apartment and occupied by aircons...) or a too high ceiling. If you plan to rent/buy a house in Taiwan, you won't get so much differencesas we had, but I strongly suggest you to not trust too much what the classified says and always remove two to five 坪 for an apartment and five to ten for a house (with garden...etc).