上班族必備軟實力

*Richard has lived in Taiwan for more than 15 years and now never goes anywhere without his Easy Card.

The Youyou card (pronounced like yoyo) has the official English name of “Easy Card”. It is used to pay for public transportation, buying stuff at convenience stores, and paying for parking. There is also a discount when using the card to ride the subway. You also get a discount when you transfer from the subway onto a bus or vice versa.

You can buy the card at any convenience store or at one of the dispensing machines at the MRT stations. The cost includes a small deposit that you can get back when you turn the card in. It makes riding the MRT so much easier, because you don’t have to know exactly which stop you will get off at. You only need to keep enough of a balance on it to cover the cost. Machines for adding money to your card balance are at all the stations and are easy to use.

A well-used Youyou card.

I used to keep it in my pocket, but lately have put it in my wallet. It keeps the card safe and is more convenient just to sweep your wallet across the sensor. If there are any other magnetic card in your wallet, it could interfere with the signal and you will have to take your card out to swipe it. Some ladies keep it in their handbag and just hoist their huge bag across the sensor to gain admittance to the MRT.

Some parking places let you swipe your card to gain access to the lot. This is convenient because you don’t have to worry about paying for parking in one of those automatic payment machines. All you have to do is make sure you have enough of a balance on your card to cover the parking fees.

The YouBike program (this time it’s pronounced like ‘U-bike’) is a new bike rental service that is convenient. Just by swiping my card I can rent a bike at one YouBike station and ride it to another station and drop it off. I had to register my card over the Internet, but it was easy and they had it in English which really helped a lot. The cost for the first 30 minutes of your bike ride is being covered by the environmental protection agency.

Easy Card is a fitting name for it, but Youyou Card is more fun to say. It is a good thing, and may be the start of a truly cashless society without everyone being broke. Think about it, and thank you for reading.

【作者介紹】

Richard 是一位台灣女婿，在台灣生活15年，喜愛台灣文化，以風趣幽默的文筆，細膩獨特的觀點，介紹在台灣生活的趣事，一起跟著Richard探訪外國人的台灣世界吧！