Incoherent recollection of my visit in Auckland

Auckland was so familiar. More familiar than I thought it would be. There were times when I got up, I had the thought that I could pretend it was the same date in June, but in 2005, and just live on like that because I left Auckland around the same date last year.

It was nice meeting my friends in NZ. Although some of the friends don't want to talk about what they are doing. It seems like my friends in NZ think there's nothing much happening and are bored and depressed. Whereas friends in Asia are irritated and angry. OK, I'm being cynical. People are not so miserable in general... I think....

Also it's great to be with my family. Well, it's a family thing, so I don't go on to say much here.

It's a pity the weather was cold and it rainy. I couldn't really go out much to see the meadows and beaches. Except it was sunny last Saturday and I had a short view from Takapuna beach.

Too bad I was staying for such a short time that I didn't manage to meet everybody. There were still some people I'd like to meet. People I met at various stages... CompSci, Engineering, high school...

Myself is partially responsible for the short length of the stay. I might be able to get a few extra days when I applied my leave with my boss if I was firmer on my ground. However, even if I did. That would still be 3 or 4 days only. Our annual leaves are simply short here...

Before I flew to NZ, my NZ friends asked me what I was going to do. I was too busy deal with my work and life in Taiwan and didn't have much time to think about that. In the end, I came up with this list:
Eat, Chat, Hug.

Eat... I ate Korean, Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Turkish(kebab). I missed Malaysian and Indian. Ate mum's food and dessert. I drank L&P on the last night. Some western food and roast meat would be nice.

Chat... with many friends. Got to hear the interesting things they do.
My software master is working at a company that does “auto-sorting”, which is funny because my company's work of “searching” is occasionally related to auto-sorting. However, his company doesn't sort data. It sorts fruits! :P
My master also gave a lot of intriguing thoughts on software development and career development. I bow to you, master.

The gathering with 2 CompSci classmates was just like the gathering we had 1 year ago before I left. They suspected that I've never left NZ because I wore the same clothes and had the same hairstyle like what I did in NZ. Hehehe. Well, they looked the same too.
As for their studies... one keeps busy studying European languages for her new degree. The other keeps playing computer games as usual. :P Oh, congratulations for becoming a PR :)

A friend has started taking computer network courses that interest him. Hm, an interesting and original choice. Wish you the best. Just don't come to Taipei and become a software engineer. As I said, that's unoriginal :P

Another former classmate just quit his job as a system engineer just before I met him. He's likely to do a software development work next. Because it's similar to my situation, it will be interesting for me to see his next career move. Congratulations for quitting!

Yes, I congratulate people for both starting and ending something. Well, most of the time.
Also, people who keep doing what they want to do, should be congratulated too.

Like Tessie. Keep doing what you do. Congratulations for having done what you've done.

Those who are “doing nothing”... Those who are just starting. Take a some time to think about what to do next. Don't rush and jump into whatever the first thing comes to your face. And take some time to do things you've put off when you were too busy working or studying... ... ... No, I don't mean playing PSP non-stop !
Those who have “done nothing” for quite a while... You've had plenty of time to think through things. Still no clear answer, huh? Maybe it's time to try out things and see how you feel about them. Maybe they would inspire some new thoughts.
I feel like putting this quote here: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

(insider jokes follow...)
A friend who got into his master programme on a “first come first serve” basis is expected to be “first in first out”. Congratulations.

A friend who didn't come to meet me... was possibly “waiting for the rainy season to come”, and was unaware that it had been raining a lot in Auckland already.

Hugs... Well, this part, I didn't do well. I wasn't proactive enough to ask everybody to hug. I guess I was still shy and forgetful at times. I forgot to bring my camera on many occasions too.
A highlight though, was that I got a hug from a cute girl. That made my day. ^^
By the way, I didn't hug Hari in Auckland. I missed it again when he's in Taipei... doh~

I didn't play any board game with friends this time. Which I thought I would. Oh well, people were working or studying. It was the exam period.
I just remember another thing I forgot to do while I was in NZ. I didn't watch SpongeBob!

OK, end of writing now... because it has already taken me too long to write. I still have a lot of feelings about this visit, but I'll let them float on my mind for now instead of putting down even more words.

Hugs

I watched the TV programme "文茜的世界周報" a week ago or two. There were some interesting and surprising things. E.g. The economic growth of Singapore is 9%, and they have some interesting developments that will attract tourists.

But a small part of the programme got more of my attention. It's about two Chinese brothers travelling around the world, hugging passer-bys, and organize group hug events.
The news can be found here:
http://tw.news.yahoo.com/060429/43/330cc.html
http://tw.news.yahoo.com/060502/4/339r0.html

It reminds that I haven't been hugged for a long time!
A hugging enthusiast once told me that a person needs 7 hugs every day.
I'm very deprived nowadays. Maybe that's one of the reasons why I've become dumber.

The only hug I've got recently was the BIIIIIIIG HUG online message from the hugging enthusiast. That's far from the real thing, though. sigh.

人生像一本書

在朋友的 blog 上看到了這一段話:
------
德國作家，尚保羅說過很耐人尋味的話：
「人生猶如一本書。愚蠢的人將它草草翻過，聰明的人卻會將它細細閱讀。為什麼呢？因為聰明的人知道，只能讀一次。」
------

我唸了一次，心中有些感觸，卻無法明白說出來，或許這句話的確耐人尋味。
我多唸了幾次，終於，心中的感觸清楚地浮現，那就是：

如果只能讀一遍的話，那就不像一本書啦！難道這個作家想不到更好的比喻了嗎？

End Of Summer Holiday

My mum and sister flew back to New Zealand on Wednesday. It marked the end of the "summer holiday" for me.

So many overseas people have come during the past three months during their summer holiday. It affected me. It was such a busy time. Many people looked for me when I was the busiest, like the week before Chinese New Year. Some people just came and went that I only met them once or even none. When I do meet with them, it's a time for me to know what they're doing and reflect on what I'm doing.

Have got some thoughts. Have realized some things I'm not content with. Now I should seek improvement.


OK, I'm just trying to remember who came and went during the past few months... so the following stuffs should be boring...

It started with Hari and Jack. They came in... late November? Jack had two improptu visits to Taipei and then he escaped to the summer school. How come people who don't like to study keep going back to school?

Hari arranged a dinner with high school classmate Michael Ng. Nice.
Hari arranged a dinner with high school classmate and his uni classmate Brian. Nice. Got to hear how different it is to work in a financial area in a traditional industry.

Get phone calls and missed calls from Hari during my work hours. Had quite a few long phone calls.

Sister came. Starts shopping.

Mary arrived in Taiwan and shoves the task of organizing the New Years Eve to me. She just wants to eat 炸榴槤.

I made many phone calls to people and each want to meet at a different time and place. Some even changed the plan an an hour before meeting time.

Then later many others came before the New Year. I met 4 former computer science classmates on New Year's eve and the day before, including Rae from USA. But why was she so quiet?
Also met other NZ friends Mary and Peter, and the busy high-tech Claire on the New Year's eve. Weird New Year's Eve with friends who rarely meet, in a place that was so crowded.

My phone bill for December skyrocketed.

Sister went on a trip around Taiwan with overseas Taiwanese. Interestingly she went on the one with people mainly from South America. Turned out to be very interesting for her.

Met Ami and Jest on the day Mary left. Yes Mary got 炸榴槤 during her visit.
Those people with jobs stayed for shorter period, Mary, Andy, my mum.

The chance encounter with Jenny when I was going to go to the office on Saturday! What a surprise. I thought she'd be in Sydney or Kaohsiung, and yet I met her near my workplace. That day I went out with Jenny and Anderson and didn't go to work.
Doctor students... They study, and they do want to stay in school.

Sister finished her trip. Resumed shopping. Well, actually she didn't stop outside Taipei.

During this period, I also bumped into former Engineering classmates Brian and Paul on the street. And bumped it Frank and Computer Science classmate Paul at the airport on the day my mum arrived at Taipei.
Brian had worked in Taipei for 2 years and had just returned to New Zealand to study the computer science diploma which I studied after I finished engineering. Reverse order of what I did, interesting.

Spent quite some time with my family when my mum was here. Went to the science museum, the garden in Shilin, Danshui, and a few crowded places here and there, rented quite a few DVD to watch.

The people I missed when they were in Taiwan... Joanna, Andy, and Joseph!
Joanna stuck with Syndey and Kaohsiung. She was in Taiwan for months and I hadn't met her.
Andy rarely comes to Taiwan. He's working now. He went south with Felix to meet Joanna and Ted in Kaohsiung, but didn't meet with me in Taipei @@
Joseph, oh well, Beijing and Miaoli. The brighter side is we're closer in distance. I might see you sometime. Your 5-1 holiday maybe?

Met with Jenny and Anderson again in Shilin before they flew back to Sydney the next day.
Hari had some desperate times and some inspiring times. Met him. He flew out.
My sister and mum flew out, wtih lots of luggage.

End of summer holiday.

NT$280印度咖哩飯與NZ$5.50珍珠奶茶

週五跟同事去師大附近吃午餐，選到了一家店名有「印渡」兩字(店名是用這個「渡」)的一家印度咖哩店。We opened the menu and saw a list of Indian curries around the $280~$300 price range. However, we all chose the business lunch which was $150. That was good damage control.

It was a quite a shock to me because my experience had been that Indian curries are relatively inexpensive. Especially my last year in the university, Indian curries at the university food court was quite cheap.

When the plates were put on the table, it was another surprise. The amount of rice and curry was quite little. Some coworkers said it wasn’t spicy at all. Well, it wasn’t. Some Indian curries are quite mild, though. e.g. Butter Chicken. So this might be one of them. Nonetheless, the taste wasn’t exceptional. It definitely wasn't enough to justify the exceptional price.

By the time we walked out of the restaurant, someone immediately suggested that we go to eat something else. Obviously we weren’t satisfied. Even the petite girl wasn’t.

So the men then went to eat some 湯圓 nearby. I guess we won’t go to that Indian curry restaurant ever again. The only thing I liked about it was they played some Indian pop music MTVs on the television. That was something new and I found that funny.

話說物以稀為貴，印度咖哩在台北貴；在奧克蘭貴的是珍珠奶茶。在華人開的「市民小站」，珍珠奶茶要賣紐幣$5.50。我妹有聽過類似以下的對話。
客人：請問珍珠奶茶多少錢？
店員：四塊五。
客人：一杯珍珠奶茶。
店員：要加珍珠嗎？加珍珠要多加一元。

Huh? 什麼玩意？珍珠奶茶沒有珍珠？加珍珠加一元？

NZ$5.5，以現在匯率是超過台幣120，不管在奧克蘭或台北都比Starbucks還貴一點。

還好我沒對印度咖哩或是珍珠奶茶情有獨鍾。Although they’re nice.

公司裡臥虎藏龍

下班後跟同事去打羽毛球，老 K 一直說這個同事是校隊、那個同事是系隊，連我都是"西湖高中"的校隊。球場上果然大家都很厲害，打起來真是過癮。公司裡真是臥虎藏龍呀！

謝謝老 K 找大家來打球

Excessive thoughts turn to sabotage

I haven't written something here for a while. It's not that I don't have anything I want to say. In fact, I have something that I feel like writing down nearly every day. However, I guess my habit gets me again. I let excessive thoughts sabotage myself. Think too much. Then, eventually feel it's too much trouble and don't do it.

That has had its pros and cons. It avoids doing damaging things on impulse, while letting some opporunities slip away. I think it's time for a different "model". I begin to feel the opportunity cost might be more than I realized. I should believe in myself more and take my chances. I suspect I'll find that some "chances" are actually certainties if I cut my doubts.

Finally, two quotes pops up... not really related to previous words. but just thoughts.

We can expect great things from you. Could be terrible, but great.
(a modified quote from Harry Potter 1)

With great power comes great responsibility
(from Spider Man 2)

Technical seminars I've been to in recent months

hm, I feel that I didn't write down some of the things I want to note down. So, I feel like writing some stuffs that are not so recent. Well, it's a bit odd. But I guess I can write it anyway I like.
Anyway, I'm thinking of the few seminars I was sent to by my company.
The most recent one is one about developing software for 64-bit processor. Somehow, it was a seminar that lacked attraction.
The seminar was presented by 3 speakers from an HP branch in India. The Indian accent sounds so familiar. The first speaker's voice was 90% similar to by my former project supervisor in engineering school. That makes it hard for me to concentrate on he said, because my brain is used to ignore this voice :P
Perhaps because the seminar took 2 and half days, it was too long for many people. There were few people that stayed for the whole duration fo the seminar. I didn't attend the first day, I joined in the second day. The only person that stayed for the duration of the two and half day was the girl from my company. Because of that, the HP people gave her a "full attendance award". The award was a small shelf for a cellphone. It has HP's logo on it. However, it isn't useful at all. So the prize is abandoned on a desk in the office.
The speakers were enthusiastic and eager to interact with the participants. But the students are so quiet. Nearly everytime the speaker asked the audience a question. There was... silence. My colleague and I were the most enthusiastic audience in the room. So they probably kind of appreciate us for giving responses. I don't know why the audience were so quiet. Because they were shy? Or maybe because of the language difference? But there was a translator in the seminar that does instant translation so it shouldn't be too much an issue.
Another thing was this seminar required the participants to bring their source code to try to port to 64-bit platform. It would be a trouble for people to that. People have to try to edit, compile and run using an unfamiliar environment. I guess some people just don't bother to that. So that could be a factor to the lack of interest.
When we did the porting in the seminar, the speakers were enthusiastic to help us. They were friendly people. Their accent was a bit hard for my colleague, though. It was such a familar thing for me.. hehe :)



Another seminar I went to earlier was Microsoft TechEd 2005. That was a big event with many participants. It was a 3-day event with many simultaneous about various topics in different classrooms. I went to the second day of the event. Some seminars were interesting. However, our company use few of the technology it talked about. Personally I found the seminar about C# 2.0 most interesting. Well, probably because I used Java and C# during my year in computer science, and I'm quite interested in those languages. Also it was interesting to see the languages have developed similar features like generics, for-each loops, anonymous classes, iterators etc.
One feature of this event was the TechEd Girls. You can find their terrible photos here on the event web site. http://teched.ithome.com.tw/teched2005/techedgirls_show.asp
Some how the girl in my work team pays a lot of attention to the TechEd Girls. She thought the photos on the event web site turns people off. People would have no interest in going to the event.
Actually the TechEd Girls looked better on the day of the event with the clothes and makeups. See the photo.

OK, by now I'm too lazy to type. Anyway, I went an Intel multi-core processor presentation in the first month of my work. The topic was kind of interesting and related what I learned during my training period in the company. The food was nice. :P

Hm, by this point I don't know why I typed all these in the first place... hm..

這次生日吃同事買的漂亮蛋糕

謝謝大家啦~

最近幾年生日我都沒有特別想慶祝，不過都還是有吃蛋糕，唱首生日歌。

之前連吃了兩年隆媽媽做的草莓蛋糕(因為草莓當季便宜)，去年終於換成巧克力蛋糕。
誰能連吃三年媽媽做的蛋糕呢？我是個幸福的人。

今年在紐西蘭的蛋糕吃不到了，吃到的是公司同事買的蛋糕。
還是以福委會開會的名義叫我去會議室，我開了門大家就開始唱生日快樂歌。雖然類似的戲碼常在公司出現，就這樣吧，是幸福的。
蛋糕實在很漂亮，像藝術品一樣。不過可能太漂亮了，所以切開以後覺得走樣得特別多，不是切得不好，只是完整的才特別好看。我想，林志玲落馬如果摔成好幾段，可能也美觀不了吧。

之前生日也沒想過要許願，今年不同，慶祝時要說兩個願望，最後一個自己保留。
第一個願望我說希望在 Openfind 的時間都高興，都 enjoy. 我這麼希望是因為覺得這是一個生活的重心，在這裡不快樂的話就太慘了，乾脆去竹科當硬體工程師算了 :P
第二個願望我說希望台北的空氣能變乾淨(包括辦公室)。嗯，因為覺得自己滿滿足自己有的一切了，所以第二個願望不想得到什麼，想消滅自己討厭的東西。除了髒空氣，其它考慮的選項有蟑螂絕種、取消兵役等，不過當時覺得髒空氣是我比較討厭，又比較有機會改善的吧。
後來覺得，也可以許說有多一些休假，這樣才比較有時間回紐西蘭探親。
第三個願望不說，總之，是期許自己的話。

again, 謝謝大家啦~

pretty girls as MSN messenger photos

Some of my friends like to use pretty girls as their photos on MSN messenger.

Stupid personality test

OK Hari, I've taken that stupid test... Here are my results
------------------------------------------------------------

You are a Mastermind!

(Submissive Introverted Abstract Thinker)

You are a MASTERMIND (SIAT). You can be silent and withdrawn, but behind your reserved exterior lies an active mind that allows you to analyze situations and come up with creative, unexpected solutions. Normal people call this scheming.

Anyway, your sense of style and originality are your strengths, and people will respect your judgment once they get to know you. If you learn to be a little more personable, you could be a great leader— you've definitely got the vision thing down. Just make sure all the plotting you do behind those eyes of yours is healthy.

Famous masterminds in television: Dr. Claw, The Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Montgomery Burns.

Compared to 14,796,678 other test takers...

23% are more Submissive than you.		57% are more Dominant than you.
20% are just as Submissive as you.
3% are more Introverted than you.		92% are more Extroverted than you.
5% are just as Introverted as you.
33% are more Abstract than you.		45% are more Concrete than you.
22% are just as Abstract as you.
5% are more Thinking than you.		91% are more Feeling than you.
4% are just as Thinking as you.

------------------------------------------------------------

As you see, my results are very close to Jeffrey's. Sigh, as I said before, we're probably not a good team in business because we think too alike.

I noticed something odd in the test, though. On the 2nd or 3rd page, it asks a few questions about the music you listen to, and whether if you want to buy an iPod. I wonder if this is a market research wrapped in a personality test??

Well, never mind the test. I'm still me.

Expose my ignorance, foolishness and prejudice

I've avoided getting a blog until now.
Why didn't I want it? Because I think it might bring a lot of trouble. Do you know there are people who get fired for writing stuffs about their work on their personal blog? I know I wouldn't do that so that's OK. However, I know I can't stop my mouth (keyboard, rather) once I've started a blog. Inevitably, I'm going to say something stupid, someday. I might offend some people. The worst thing is, if I put it on my blog, it's public, and it's permanent. Nowadays, when you put something online, expect that someone or somewhere will keep copies of it. For how long? Indefinitely.
Recently, I've wasted some time reading blogs and forums online. I found a lot of comments that are not based on facts or reasoning. A lot of words were plainly biased and offensive. Some showed a lot of hatred. I felt quite sad when I read some of those things.
On the other hand, I read some interesting things written by friends on their blogs. OK, they're not actually that interesting. However, the sense of sharing makes it interesting. That's what eventually tempted me to get this blog and try it out.
What about the stupid things that I'll say? I know that, like everybody else, I've got limited knowledge, reasoning, and I've got my likes, dislikes. Still, I'm giving it a try. Even though it will expose my ignorance, foolishness, and prejudice.

OK, some of you must be thinking: "It's just a blog." Can't I just write something "light"?
Well, I know that. But I also know that having such a convenient tool to say things, I'll be emotional at times and say some things that might offend some people.
I guess I just want to declare that I'm not above everybody else. I'm just as stupid as anybody. I'm not "the" voice. I just have a voice. I represent nobody but LC. Yes, only silly me.

So, here we go. This is my blog.