This is nothing personel.
Working in semiconductor line means working with a lot of ppls. To be more specific, working in semicon lines meaning working with a lot of Taiwanese and also chinese (Those in China.). why? simple, they are the kind of ppls who can always deliver quality goods with much cheaper cost, any CEO who knows how to count from 1 to 10 would love them much... Therefore.. in this era of globalization, engineers like me usually need to work with a lot of Taiwanese and Chinese.
The tuff part is... regardless of how good they are at what they are doin, the biggest challenge of working with them is -- communication. Base on my informal statiscal research, most of them dun have good english background, you gotta be very very careful when you are communicating with a Taiwan subcon, especially thru email. In order to make sure they understand your message , my suggestion is to make a call to them instead of using email...
Oh, Am i over reacting??
here's an example - you tell me about it..
(one of my taiwanese counterpart on medical leave for 3 days, knowing he has got back from hospital, my colleugue decided to drop him a mail check things out... turns out... )