Mainland versus Taiwan

One of the biggest adjustments I've had to make living and studying here in Taiwan is in terminology. While Mandarin is the official language in both China and Taiwan, there are just enough differences in everyday terms to throw a student like me off.

The one that got me in trouble right off the bat was "taxi:"
China:　出租汽车 (chu zu qi che)
Taiwan: 计程车 (ji cheng che)
People here understand the Chinese term, but it sounds really weird to them, and instantly labeled me as a mainlander/someone who'd studied in the mainland when I arrived.

"Bicycle" is also one that I had trouble with:
China: 自行车 (zi xing che, literally: self-moving car)
Taiwan:　脚踏车 (jiao ta che)
Again, people here understand the Chinese term, but it immediately puts you in the category of mainlander

"Potato" is one to watch out for, though I haven't had a problem with it yet:
China: 土豆 (tu dou, literally: earth bean)
Taiwan: 马铃薯 (ma ling shu)
This one has the potential to be bad, since "tu dou" in Taiwan means "peanut" and not "potato."

Pronunciations also differ. For instance, in China, you say "等一会儿" (deng yi huir), which means "wait a minute," and the 'huir' is a falling tone. In Taiwan, however, the 'huir' is pronounced as a third, dipping tone.

And of course there's the whole issue of traditional characters instead of simplified characters. It's a real mind trip, trying to switch back to traditional characters, because so often simplified characters are a sort of shell of the traditional characters, so I know the basic skeleton of the traditional, but I don't know what goes on the inside. And also, with traditional characters, you get a lot of characters that look very similar to each other, and just the addition or subtraction of one line changes the sound, the meaning, or both. Of course, that happens with simplified characters as well, but with simplified characters there are less lines to get confused over. Sometimes looking at traditional characters just gives me a headache. For instance:

鬱

I wish I could make that character even bigger, because it is the most insane thing I've ever seen. It's the character for "tulip" and I don't remember why it even came up in class, but it did, and then all of a sudden my teacher is writing it on the board and I'm thinking "Oh god, I hope I never, ever have to write an essay about tulips."