You take that back!

So we happened to have the "pleasure" of sitting with my two-up manager, and conversation starts out about marriage and sports, and then the 3 managers at the table start talking about... management. My two-up is saying how different people have different ways of dealing with stress, and each person has to figure out their own method.

"For example, Nk and I have a habit of leaving everything until the last minute, creating unnecessary stress on ourself, and..."

Excuse me, but wtf??

What exactly were you expecting when you assigned me work on Friday afternoon and wanted it by Monday? It was already "last minute" when you assigned it. Did it even occur to you that I might have plans for the weekend? Or is my 24-hours-a-day-7-days-a-week completely at your disposal? And for what -- a few lousy dollars of OT pay, a foul mood, and sleep deficit?

Considering that my work schedule is dictated by everyone else's deadlines and by when work is submitted for review, the latter has a slight impact on when I can complete an assignment.

If you assign a task with a Monday deadline, and by Sunday evening, I still haven't received more than half the slides I need to review, then hell yeah, I'm going to have some difficulty completing the task. Even if you notify the persons a week in advance, if they don't submit their work until the last instant, I'm the one who pays for it. Don't fvckin' tell me that I leave it all until the last minute and then am not able to make the deadline.

Stupid slave factory.

Not so bright

I am, by far, not perfect.

I know, I know. I'll give you a minute for the shock to subside.

Here are a few oh-so-bright moments, most deserving a laugh, some deserving a smack upside the head. (I actually wrote most of this over a year ago, but these have all happened during my time in Taiwan.)

1. Locked myself out of my dorm - with a bag of laundry, and three 10NT coins. No wallet, no phone, no scooter keys to get myself anywhere. At 1AM. I had to drag my big bag o' laundry to the convenience store and borrow the clerk's phone card so I could call someone to come save me.
   
   
2. After recovering from a scooter accident (open wound and not-so-happy ankle), I finally healed enough to swim again. Yay! Then two days later I was running home, and as I sprinted to catch the traffic light, I tripped and sprawled head first into the street (no cars around). And scraped my elbow and knee up nicely.
   
   
3. I was meeting up with family friends. Suddenly realising that the train I was about to board was heading south (wrong direction), it then dawned on me that I had actually watched my train leave just 3 mins earlier. So I patiently waited for and boarded the next train on that first platform. Then the next train stop told me that I'd boarded a southbound train! By the time I made it to my destination, I'd been commuting for nearly 3 hours, instead of the anticipated 1.5 hours. But what a deal for 85NT! =D
   
   
4. My coworker sent out an away-on-a-business-trip notice to the entire department. To which I promptly wished him a smooth trip and good kimchi. Only, I replied-all. (I'm only thankful I didn't jokingly tell him not to ogle too many Korean girls.)
   
   Actually, I've replied-all on two other occasions as well.... Oy.
   
   
5. On a particularly wet and rainy day (cats and dogs and hippos), I rode through the night market in search of food. Someone's scooter horn was blaaaaaaaaaring annoyingly. I scanned the vicinity, like others around me, looking for the source. And 5 minutes later, I found it.
   
   Yep, it was my scooter. Apparently it was complaining of a couple of electrical shorts.

More to come....

Evolution

There's something to be said for the evolution of the written language.

I saw a character 雦 the other day, didn't know what it was. So I asked my coworker and we started doing some research (okay, she searched while I sat next to her), we found the following ensemble:

• 隹 (zhuī) - kind of bird
  
• 雔 (chóu) - pair of birds
  
• 雦 (jí/chóu) - to gather; archaic form of 集 (jí)
  
• 雥 (zá) - flock of birds
  
• 雧 (jí) - to gather (birds in a tree); another archaic form of 集

Isn't that neat?? Two birds? Just double the radical! More than that? Add another bird! And then put them all in a tree (木)!

How clever is that! =)

(Okay, maybe only a language buff like myself would fully appreciate this.)

I'm awake.

07:23.

I've barely slept an hour the entire night so far.

Why?

Because of ONE mosquito.

I am so tired....

Wake up and smell the java.

My coworker passed me a news article, about how in Austria, housekeeping and child-rearing are still widely regarded as women's responsibilities.

(The article's in Chinese but you can get a crude translation by running the URL through Babelfish. The general gist of the article is that 75% of Austrian men consider housekeeping and child-rearing a woman's job, compared to only 14% who believe men should share part of the burden.)

I'm not surprised that there are still places like that. I'm really not. But as I glanced at the article content, I suddenly became rather weary about why he had made a point of sending me the link. I mean, obviously it was an article of interest, but in what way?

It soon became apparent.

"In comparison," he remarked, "Taiwanese men are pitiable (可憐). They have to help clean, do laundry, take care of children... and they're not allowed to complain."

Come again?? Alright, alright, don't jump to conclusions. It's just a statement, and probably not his personal opinion. I cautiously asked if he thought these chores were the woman's responsibility, even using the ^o) emoticon as a subtle hint that he should answer with care.

"在台灣，只能認命吧。" ("In Taiwan, you can only submit to Life." / "C'est la vie.")

I was livid. And when I reprehended him, his counter?

"In Asia, Taiwan is already pretty good [in terms of male and female equality in society]." He actually did not find anything wrong with how the Austrian men thought, even envied the culture. I wanted to kick the sh!t out of him.

I told him to move to Austria.

I was so pissed off that I stopped MSN'ing him for the rest of the night. Before leaving work, however, I forced myself to be the bigger person and MSN'ed him saying that he was entitled to his archaic opinion and all the power to him if he found a partner who shared it. (He then blankly asked what I considered more "modern". I chose to ignore his cluelessness and closed the conversation window.)

I know that people are entitled to their own opinions, and we should all be open to different perspectives instead of chastising someone because they don't share your views. But honestly, some people's beliefs make you want to disassociate yourself from them.

Shut in

Shortly after posting that last tip, I received intel on an impending new policy at our workplace.

Starting next month, MSN and all IM programs will be banned at work. Those requiring MSN for work can apply for it (on a yearly basis). MSN usage and content will be monitored and submitted to your manager each month.

How's that for shutting off any connection to the outside world....

Now I realise that this measure is taken in the interest of productivity, but seriously if there were any way to make your employees feel imprisoned at work, this would be near the top of the list.

I also hear that some floors have already started adhering to another impending policy: no meals taken at your desk. Well, that just sounds absurd. Many employees eat meals at their desk so they can work or nap, or maybe they bring lunch from home. Unless this is only about preventing food spills on $$$$ equipment (sounds more like a high school policy), I don't see their purpose for this one....

What's next, timed bathroom trips? (I do know of one company that restricts employees to 48 minutes per day. Not kidding.)

Just break out the orange jumpsuits....

E-moting

After last month's viral attack, I recovered my laptop computer and painstakingly went through all the installations and uninstallations to restore Toshy to his former glory.

As I logged into the newly upgraded Windows Live Messenger, however, it dawned on me how much I relied on my accumulated collection of dancing moo cows and twirling penguins and the like. The clean emoticon slate left me feeling inarticulate and unexpressive.

This was unacceptable. I would have to rebuild my gallery of expressions.

I nearly drove my coworker nuts as I bugged her to send me emoticons from work and from home, so I could add them again, one by one. I finally decided this was ridiculous, and turned to the wonderful WWW. Sure enough,I found this helpful tidbit:

The custom emoticons are stored in:
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\MSN Messenger\<account#>\CustomEmoticons\

I just copied the entire CustomEmoticons folder and then plopped it into the corresponding directory at home, and - presto! - all my lovely emoticons were once again at my fingertips! Yay!

I read that this only works for copying emoticons from an account to the same account on another computer. I haven't tried otherwise, so I can't verify this.

Apparently you can also do the same for display pictures; they're stored in the UserTile folder.

Complete bust

Well. I don't know what to say. My weekend was a complete bust. I had a full weekend all planned out - fun filled up to the brim. And not one of those plans panned out.

Friday night I went wall-climbing, and then had a night snack with the gang. I was going to go on a mini nocturnal adventure (just out wandering at night) but couldn't get a hold of my friends. I was a bit bummed out, so my coworker and I grabbed a drink from the 7-Eleven, chatted at the local basketball court until it started to rain at 03:30. When I got home I replied to a sad e-mail, almost fell asleep. My night adventure friend logged on, and we MSNed. Of course it was 06:00 by the time I really couldn't stay awake, and of course, my plans for the following day started at 06:50.

Saturday was a day in Lugang (鹿港). My coworker (different one) was going with a photography club to take pictures, and since I'd never been, I'd asked to tag along for the day.

But Saturday morning, I woke to a mobile phone displaying 07:10. I hurried out the door, but the bus was nowhere in sight, and that one person I knew going on this photography outing wasn't answering his mobile phone. I gave up at nearly 08:00 and went home, slept until 14:00. And when I woke up, in an equally blah mood... I went to work. But the not-rainy-as-anticipated weather and the nice walk to the office helped my mood immensely. I decided to help the trend by going for teppanyaki for dinner. =)

My coworker wanted to go climbing, so I went to belay for him. The climbing gang was going KTVing (or karaokeing) at midnight and then 4 of us were going to head straight to Longdong (龍洞) for some outdoor climbing. I chose to miss the first half of KTVing to pack my gear and get some work done, but when I eventually got there, I was told that there'd been a little incident and my friend (one of the 4 going to Longdong) had drowned himself in a bottle of vodka. When I left the KTV over an hour later, he was still sleeping it off.... In fact, he was in the washroom the entire time I was there; I didn't even see him. =(

And so here I am, blogging at 05:40 on Sunday morning, after the last of my highly anticipated plans got cancelled. Rightly cancelled, but still, I'd be lying if I didn't say I wasn't a little disappointed.

I think I'll sleep in until noon and then go to work. Work rarely disappoints.

[Editor's note: We'd been praying all week that the rain wouldn't wash away our Longdong plans. Right now, 11:51, the weather is gorgeous.... *sigh*]

Here's a short one....

Oh boy. Looks like my blog posts are getting a little long.

It's great to have stuff to talk about. =)

Or maybe I'm just too wordy. Verbal diarrhea, as my elementary school classmate once said. =P

Now THAT's a good day of fun.

I signed up for another riversourcing activity. Riversourcing is when you follow a river or creek upstream, crossing it or climbing to get to the source. It's also a term I coined, because I honestly don't know the actual name of the activity. If anyone knows, do tell me.

Anyhow, the organisation hosting the activity was iClimb, the wall-climbing centre I kind of frequent. I already knew and liked the instructors, so, short of a disaster, the day was guaranteed to be fun-filled. I had pulled two coworkers along, and one brought his girlfriend and 3 of her friends, too. The two on-line registrants had cancelled (probably figuring it'd be too cold), so it turned out to be a private outing. =D

We set out at 08:40. Last week's typhoon had engorged the rivers and washed out some of the roads, let loose a few rock slides, so getting to creek was a heart-stopping event in itself. For non-off-roading vehicles, the typhoon water runoff trickling over sloped roads made some segments challenging, quite reminiscent of driving in snow back home. A few undercarriage scraps and heart attacks later, we unloaded equipment and trekked down to the waterside.

This creek was a little less "exciting" than the one I was at in mid-September. The terrain had more climbing, a bit less river-crossing. The increased water flow made it more dangerous to cross, too, though. But still it was fun, and as anticipated, there was lots of egging on and horsing around. I was the target of plenty of it, but it was all in good fun.

I was also the crazy one, the only one to play in the cold water at our lunch stop. The 10m waterfall, normally only 2m wide, had widened to 5 or 6m, and the pool at the bottom had overflowed. I jumped in (with life-jacket) and swam in a relative calm area of the pool, but as I got a little nearer the waterfall, I realised that I wasn't moving forward. I was swimming on the spot. I was being sucked in by the waterfall. I like a bit of excitement, but I'm no fool. I yelped. And someone threw me a towline and reeled me in.

Of course that didn't stop me. I continued to frolic happily (and alone) in the water with my umbilical lifeline. They (the instructors) "made" me swim out and be carried away by the current. I climbed a little segment of rock (a couple of meters high, just a mini rock-climbing challenge), and they "made" me jump off.

Anyway, it was fun. Fun fun fun. And yet, while I yawned on the ride back, I wasn't that tired. So when we arrived back at the climbing centre around 19:00... I climbed. Except for a dinner break, I climbed and belayed until 22:30.

Then I got a shoulder massage. One of the instructors there had taken a class in sport massage therapy, so I plunked down in front of him and he proceeded to tell me how stiff all my shoulder and neck muscles were while he rubbed out a lot of knots. I must've yelped more than I had all day - it hurt - and yet those 15 minutes felt great. Or maybe it was the end of the 15 minutes that felt great, ha. I asked him for his work shift schedule so I could show up whenever he was there. XD (Yes, I was kidding.)

That did it, though. A day of riversourcing, extra hours of climbing and a shoulder massage. Guaranteed recipe for fun. I got home, took a hot shower, and I was out like a light. My shoulders are still sore today, but a good sore.

And best of all, I really want to get back into climbing. =)

Photos:
- 10/13: Pinjing Creek (小錦屏溪)
- 09/15: Taigang Creek (泰崗溪)

[Editor's note: my coworker informs me it's called river trekking. Wikipedia also offers "river tracing".]