As an information technology expert, Tom Fifield helped Taiwan’s government set up their Taiwan Gold Card website.
Australian cloud computing expert Tom Fifield’s connection with Taiwan started with his involvement in a global high energy physics project, which required him to attend regular meetings at the Academia Sinica. Having fallen in love with Taiwan, which he regards as his “base,” not only has he become a Taiwanese citizen, he has even brought the woman in his life back to her native island after many years spent overseas.
In 2008 Tom Fifield, who was then still a senior at the University of Melbourne, came to Taiwan for the first time, to attend a conference on the Large Hadron Collider at the Academia Sinica.
“At that time I was spending 130 days a year flying from country to country for meetings, but when I first arrived in Taiwan I sensed that there was something different about this place. For the first time I had the feeling ‘I could live here.’” The bearded 35-year-old Fifield recalls: “I took a bus from Taoyuan International Airport to the Zhongxiao Fuxing Metro station, took the Metro to Kunyang, and from there took a bus to the Academia Sinica. I got the feeling that Taiwan has quite good transportation.”
“In my hometown, the Mornington Peninsula, there was only one bus on Sundays, and it took an hour and a half to drive to the nearest major city, Melbourne. But in Taiwan, you just have to stand at the side of the road with a slightly lost expression on your face, without saying a word, and people will come and offer help, striving earnestly to give you directions in English. I’ve never had this kind of experience in any other country.” Thus did Fifield’s personal connection with Taiwan begin.
An IT genius in love with Taiwan
Fifield, who jumped directly from third to fifth grade in primary school and was admitted to the University of Melbourne after scoring full marks in information systems, was brought into a Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project by one of his professors when he was a junior. His role was to assist in handling the information and data exchanged by teams in 75 countries working cooperatively in the area of high-energy physics, and this work led to his being made an honorary fellow of the School of Physics at the University of Melbourne.
Fifield next took part in the data processing for the Belle particle physics experiment in Japan and helped to design the Belle II system. Because the Academia Sinica has a high-energy physics laboratory and is a Tier-1 center for processing LHC data, during the six years from 2008 through 2013 Fifield came to Taiwan several times each year to carry out LHC and Belle work. At the same time, with his skills in distributed system computing, Fifield assisted the Australian government in building the NeCTAR Research Cloud. On his frequent trips to Taiwan, he made many friends and grew to like the country more with each visit.
As a cloud computing expert, Fifield is also one of the leading OpenStack code contributors. In 2013 he took a position as community manager at the OpenStack Foundation (now the Open Infrastructure Foundation), where he had to coordinate and resolve disputes between developers in various countries. Fifield, who at that time lived in Australia and had already travelled to 61 countries, thought that Taiwan was the most centrally located place on the globe, and he decided to move here.
Fans of Taiwan
It took Fifield only one month to reach this decision in 2013, and he even brought his girlfriend—Joanna Huang, a Taiwanese software engineer who had been about to get her permanent residency visa in Australia—back to her native country.
Soon after they relocated to Taiwan, Fifield took Huang to the Gongguan area of Taipei to eat spicy duck blood. “That was just him showing how well he knows Taipei.” Although born and raised in Miaoli County’s Tongxiao Township, with her deep-set features Huang is often mistaken in Taiwan for a Southeast-Asian immigrant. She says: “I only began to really love Taiwan after coming back here with him.”
The couple married in June of 2019. Because there were guests coming to the wedding from 15 countries, Tom and Joanna, with their advanced computer skills, set up a website called “We’re Getting Married!” introducing things like how to exchange currency in Taiwan and information on accommodations. A friend declared that it “looks just like an information website of Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” On the day of the wedding, they arranged preliminary activities, including paper cutting and a tea party, at Zhishan Garden in the grounds of the National Palace Museum, with the goal of introducing Taiwanese culture to their guests. They held their wedding banquet in a restaurant in a historic building in the Shilin Night Market so that guests could browse through the night market after eating. This series of activities was designed to give their friends and families an opportunity to experience the best of Taiwan.
Even Fifield’s parents are big fans of Taiwan. His mom, Denise, who was a ballet dancer, has visited countries all over the world, but refers to Taiwan as her “second home.”
Fifield trains for trail races by running a 20-kilometer mountain path along a ridge from Dingpu to Nanshijiao in New Taipei City. It takes him three hours.
The Taiwan Gold Card website
Foreigners who want to live in Taiwan must meet the relevant residency requirements. In 2018 the National Development Council adopted the new “Employment Gold Card” policy, and Fifield was one of the first professionals to get an NDC-approved Employment Gold Card. Moreover, he and a Frenchman, Eric Kuhn, created a non-governmental “Taiwan Gold Card” website to share information about their experiences and the application process. Fifield, knowledgeable as he is about the policy and regulations, even acted as an advisor to the NDC’s Taiwan Employment Gold Card Office in creating their official Taiwan Gold Card website. Pointing to the upper right-hand side of the webpage, he says: “The home page is in English, and, like Taiwan Panorama, it’s bilingual.”
Fifield not only acquired an Employment Gold Card, but last year he also became a citizen of Taiwan. “I’m so excited! I have faith in Taiwan, faith in Taiwan’s economy, faith in Taiwan’s people, and faith that the future is very bright. I’m really looking forward to the referendum this August, because I can vote in it!”
Competitive running and military service
One day back in 2015, Fifield was feeling bored and none of his nearby friends was free, so he went online and casually signed up for the 12-kilometer “Explore Your Backyard” trail race in the mountains of the Neihu District of Taipei City.
Fifield had no previous experience, and he completed his first race only with difficulty. But he also experienced the joy of running across complex terrain with tree roots, rocks, rivers to cross, and steep mountain paths to climb. Since then, he has dedicated himself to cross-country running. He has gotten especially good at races run in slippery conditions on rainy days. In 2018, he took second place in the 21-kilometer category of the ULTRA Maokong trail race.
In Taiwan, the only thing that frustrates him is having to go to the bank. He had not been to a bank for over ten years back in Australia, but in Taiwan he has to go every month to arrange overseas remittances. “These are good opportunities for improving my Chinese and learning patience,” says Fifield. If he could complete these banking operations online, it would save him a lot of waiting time and trouble.
Now that he is a Taiwanese citizen, because Fifield is not yet 36 years old he must do a year of alternative military service. He has even temporarily given up working to wait to be enlisted. His wife is visibly worried.
However, Fifield says (with perfect retroflex pronunciation): “Taiwan is my base. I’m very happy to have a year in which I can help Taiwan.”
