Visa Trouble

As some of you may know, when I was in Japan and applying for my Taiwanese work visa, I ran into some trouble. The Taiwanese government requires foreign workers to get a health check to certify that they don't have any contagious diseases like AIDS, syphilis, or Communism. Then, since the test was to be performed in Japan and not Taiwan, I was then required to go to the Taipei Economic Office and get the test officially verified. Easy, right? Well, the test part was fine. Noriko went with me and basically convinced the doctors to poke and prod me a little bit and then give me a full bill of good health. She's an amazing woman. Then the hard part came. The nearest Taipei office was in Osaka - about 2 hours by bullet train from Hiroshima. So, I played hooky from work and made a day trip to a non-descript office building in central Osaka. It was a very costly trip for what it was, but my mission was accomplished.
Before I left Japan, I asked my new boss in Taiwan, Sister Catharina, whether I would need a one or two month visa for starters. She assured me that a one-month landing visa was all that was required. Since US citizens can get a one-month landing visa just by showing up in Taipei, I figured it would be no problem. So I came to Taiwan and got my visa.
Later, the school received approval of my work visa. Then, the sister needed to go to Kaohsiung to get my resident visa approved. The office in Kaohsiung refused to issue the residency visa. The reason was that at that point, on my passport, I didn't technically have a "visa" just a one-month "visa-except" stay in the country. So the office in Kaohsiung said there was no possibility of a transfer to a residency visa because I didn't have an existing visa to transfer from. This means that although I was approved to work in the country, I was not approved to live here. A true case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. If any of this confuses you, trust me, not as much as it confuses me.
So, I was forced to take a three day trip to Hong Kong and visit the consular office there. Only a consular office outside of the country can approve a residency visa, apparently. I took a few days off work and flew to Hong Kong. More on that next time.