The biggest quake to affect Kaohsiung since I've been here was the Hengchun quake of 2006. There were actually two 7.0 quakes occurring within an hour or two of each other. This is the event that knocked out some communications lines to parts of E. Asia, including Hong Kong. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Hengchun_Earthquake.

After that quake, there was a lot of activity in that area. Here's a map of activity for January 07, the month following the Hengchen quake.

It looks like what I thought was a quake in Tainan that happened in the early 1900's was actually the 1906 Meishan quake. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1906_Meishan_earthquake. That was just north of Tainan, I believe.

I guess the reason I'm expecting more activity is because the first decade or so that I lived in Taiwan, mostly in Kaohsiung, there was virtually no major activity in southern Taiwan. But since 2006, it has been more active. And it seems that the E. Asian and SE Asian regions in general have been more active in recent years.

But ultimately, I'm just on my toes for quakes, having experienced some big ones. You can see a storm coming, but you can't see an earthquake coming. It just happens. In that respect, it's a little bit like running into a snake. You know you're going to see another one, but you can't know when, although predicting an encounter with a snake is arguably much easier than predicting an earthquake.