Some thoughts on new year day of 2012

01/01/2012 Sunday.

This is the first day of the new year. What lays ahead is impossible to predict unless you are someone with super natural power. There are quite a lot of people claiming they have this kind of ability, they are called "fortunetellers".

In Taiwan, I believe it is still the same as was 20 years ago when I just left Taiwan, that people of either older or younger, like to consult with the fortunetellers on the new year day about the possible general outcome they will be facing to, or what direction they should be heading to for following one year.

This is a very natural deed people will do when they are under a strong feeling of uncertainty. I did the same thing myself, too. Once, when I was about 29 years old not sure where should I go forward -- giving up the joint venture of our own printing business and resumming as an employee or remaining as I were. The fortuneteller gave me an answer that could be interpreted into either ways, and I chose to be working for others. I believe in the logic which says that everything you did leads you to a certain outcome. But I also believe in fatalism which says that everything happens according to our destination.

So this is new year day of 2012, to me it is just a an ordinary day.

My 60th birthday - part 1

I am turning to 60 years old when the calendar comes to the 25th of February. It is approaching soon. I should be excitedly looking forward to it; I must have worked out a plan of travelling with Jean in a cruise tour visiting popular destinations in the world. But I know it will just be another ordinary day filling up with routine activities--morning practice, check e-mails, shift dog to do his watch duty on the deck, reading, medication and meditation etc..

But, it is a 60th birthday, as the majority of the 60 year old fellows do, I should be entitled to do something special and joyful to spoil myself and celebrate it. After all, it only comes once in our life...!@#$%%.... What a good and justified excuse!

In my parents' days, a few particular birthdays of the family members' or their close relations' are just can not be omitted. The 6th birthday, the 16th, the 30th, and the 60th, and even the 80th if you live long enough. On these particular birthdays, to some well off family, a feast will be held, and close family friends and relatives will be invited to attend. As to ordinary families, a rather special food such as glutenous cake made in the shape of turtle and dyed in red symbolizing longevity will be offered to the ancestors and Buddha with a simple worship service held in front of the family shrine altar.

So far I did not skip any of the above mentioned peculiar birthdays of mine except the 60th and the 80th ones because they aren't due yet.

I remember my parents undertook a very costly celebration on my 6th birthday--dedicated to the heavenly deities by offering a whole male pig. I still vividly remember I was awaken from sound sleep by my mother before dawn. It was still dark in a cold but clear morning. The twinkling stars were still in the clear sky. Mother took me to the make-shift altar setup by the road side in front of our home. Before me was the corpse of a poor pig, supposed to be male as tradition required. The pig was displayed on a specially constructed wooden frame; its mouth was pulled open and an orange inserted in its mouth; its eyes shut but looked like smiling, the whole body on the frame with head up and tail end down in a 30 degrees elevation.

Mother held my two palms together with a burning incense held in between my palms. She stooped down, holding my hands together with the incense and said the prayer on behalf of me. As I can remember, the prayer went like this, "ah! the heavenly deities and the most revered heavenly emperor, we are so grateful to your constant protecting over Ah-sium (this was how I was called in Taiwanese dialect) that he has turned 6 years old today. Your continuing protecting and blessing him through the rest of his life is sincerely implored." Then, I think, I went straight back to bed after that ritual.

Then my 16th birthday. 1967 was the year, and I was in my first school term of senior high school. A same service was held; a poor male pig was slaughtered for the sake of my 16th birthday. I ever asked my mother why this kind of costly event had to be held? She said, "we do this to thank the heavenly deities." As I grew older, I understood the reasons: a son is important to a family as he is supposed to carry the linage of this family on; I was the only son survived after my two preceding brothers died in their infanthood, my parents were just too scared of the loss of me and therefore seek for blessing through the folk belief such as this; 16th birthday marks the critically important stage of life in terms of reproductivity, a stage of being able to fulfill the mission soon.

Time flied by. I married at age 26. I remember once before I was turning 30, my mother mentioned about who is supposed to be responsible for the celebration of my 30th birthday. She told me that according the customary, a son-in-law's 30th birthday celebration was at the cost of the wife's maiden home. I cannot remember now whether I had mentioned about the 30th birthday celebration to my wife and she passed the words on to her maiden home, or my father-in-law just knew about the etiquette, anyway, we were asked to travel to my wife's maiden home in Tainan on my birthday one day. I was not aware of the arrangement that my father-in-law had planned prior to our arrival.

After we arrived home, settled and were ready to dinner, my father-in-law summoned everyone to be in the living room, and seated me in the center of the couch and presented a short speech. I could not remember the speech he presented, but it was generally like this: "today is your 30th birthday", he continued "mom and dad wish you healthy, happy and lucky throughout the rest of your life. Offered to you is a bowl of wheat flour noodle with egg and a pan of homemade birthday cake that symbolize long life and everlasting descendants. Here you go."

Then I started my devouring of the whole bowl of the food under the surveillance of the whole family and got my 30th birthday celebration done without having to slaughter a pig.

Now, the 60th birthday is coming toward me. Time flies even faster than I imagine. I am here in New Zealand; have become a Buddhist of the Pure Land path.. What the birthday celebration of this important one will be like? I don't know. But I am definitely sure for one thing, that no pig will be sacrificed for the sake of my 60th birthday. Who will be responsible for this important event? I think it will be my wife, and she will make a bowl of wheat flour noodle with boiled egg for me, and presents a short speech which will be "Amituofo!"

An even more important one that follows the 60th one will be of the 80th birthday which I don't think will be held for me on the planet but in the pure land hopefully.

Delivering Happiness

A few days ago, a friend forwarded to me a story titled "the shoe king. "Shoe King"? never heard of that, but I was curious about this very special title, so I read on.

It was a story about a computer genius Tony Hsie, a Taiwanese-American, aged 36, CEO of Zappos, the biggest shoe retailer on the Internet. I read on. His parents were from Taiwan, both graduated from Taiwan University, the top university in Taiwan. He was born in America. He was very smart especially on computer programming that when he was still at the primary school at the age of 9, he was already creating advanced programs.

At age 19, he won the championship in the world programming competition when he just graduated from Howard University, consequently, his outstanding ability attracted Microsoft's attention that the top figures of Microsoft flew to Boston from Seattle trying to invite him to be working for Bill Gates but he declined. He was more interested in building his own business that was full of the culture of his taste.

He started his business of worm farm at the age of 9 when he was still in primary school; did post shopping on stamps trade at age 12, both earned him approximately $6000 per month. During his high school days, he ran campus magazine and the revenue from advertisement earned US$200 per month for him. During his time in Howard, he rented a discarded dormitory and turned it into a Pizza restaurant.

As I read on the quite lengthy article, I extolled his achievements, particularly his spiritual aspects. The article reported that Tony's approach to money was very unusual comparing to the majority of entrepreneurs. Once he was interviewed by a program conductor. At a stage, their conversion came up to business and money issues, the program host threw a few questions related to profit, money and etc.. Tony began to become bored with the interview; he responded to the questions with short sentences and was lacking enthusiastic tone. The interviewer noticed this unique trait of his, rapidly changed the topics to his philosophy applied to his investment in business,

While almost all the businesses in the world pursue profit by reducing company spending, cutting off idling positions, Tony seems to be doing opposite way. He set many policies, such as free freight to the orders; three pairs of shoe were sent for you to choose the most preferred one and return the unwanted; No restriction on his call center staff with the time spent in conversation over the phone. The canteen of his company provides free food and drinks to the employees. He said he believed when a company had its culture that made both his customers and employees happy, then the culture will naturally develop toward prosperity.

He published a book titled "Delivering Happiness" during the end part of last year.I haven't got a chance to read it yet. But from the book reviews posted on the web, I know it covers his almost legendary business activities and what each of them had taught or inspired him.

I also watched the video which he lectured recently. It is a 85 minute long video from which I saw a matured young man. in a casual clothes, crew cut hair, serious facial expression, eloquently presenting his view, his thoughts of business, philosophy. What a decent, superior, humble and successful young man. As he is related to Taiwan-- a small country but has directly or indirectly produced eminent people like Tony, and this makes me proud of being from Taiwan too.

After I have listened Tony's speech the other day. I was impressed by the part about his call center in Zappos. He said that he asked his staff to be the caller's friend and make them happy, thus he did not set limit on time spent on any single case. I was skeptical about this instruction he gave to his call center staff. My personal experience in calling to any customer service of company impresses me that all the customer service teams are asked or are trained to minimize the talking time in their daily work. They try to get rid of you from the line when they think your question is answered; their tones are normally cold or even harsh. But Tony said the longest duration of talking with a customer recorded was over six hours, I could not believe, though I trust him. So I made a call to Zappos on the same day after I watched that video.

"Hi, there, I am calling from New Zealand" I said with mad tremor on my hands. "yes, what can I help you?" I honestly told him that I called for the reason of experiencing the so called Zappos culture by myself. "I heard from your boss that you don't set limit on the talking time with customer and that your longest single talking time was over 6 hours.". He said. "you are right. my longest record is one hour. but our longest record is not just 6 hours, that one is in the history now, and the longest record is over 8 hours."

I didn't talk with that call center over even 5 minutes, because I am not talkative and I don't mean to waste their time.

Tony is so successful in business. His business managing philosophy is so unique. But I believe whoever buys Zappos might go bankrupt soon if they copy whatever Tony does because there must be other factors involve in the overall business operation that is not possible to analyse by the worldly knowledge.

Chan family (詹家)

In the afternoon of 18/09/2010, someone was knocking the door. I slowly moved to unlock the door and found it was Mr. Chan standing at the door step with a warm and kind smile on his face, both of his hands holding two boxes of something. "Some freshly baked moon cake for you" he said to me. Suddenly I realized that the moon festival was around the corner, another year had slipped into the history silently and rapidly. Since Mr. and Mrs. Chan retired in 2006, they had been presenting us with their homemade moon cake prior to the moon festival.

I thanked and received the two boxes from him. I opened the boxes and saw 16 pieces of assorted moon cakes. To me these are not just cakes, they represent solid friendship.

We made acquaintance with Chan family in September of 1992 in a Taiwan countrymen party held in a Taiwanese family somewhere in Northcote of Auckland city. Since then our two families have been in contact now and then and have never lost in touch in the past 18 years of time.

My impression of this family is hard working, intellectual and humble. They raised three sons. And not only that all of them are good boys at home, they all have outstanding performance at school. No wonder in 2010, when their youngest son was granted doctorate degree of Biochemistry, we witnessed their success in creating three doctors for New Zealand in 20 years of time.

Mr. Chan himself led a good example to his three boys. He possessed bachelor degree of Chemistry from Tonghai University in Taiwan. Having immigrated to New Zealand, he worked as a Baker in a supermarket. The work hour of a Baker is normally in the midnight, so Mr. Chan enrolled himself on a further study course in the University, and won himself a master degree of chemical engineering two years later.

Mrs. Chan worked at an electrical supplies company as an assembler. In order to help with her husband supporting their three children, she took extra jobs to be done at home. The children saw their mother worked so hard, they spared their studying time voluntarily to work on the job that mother took home.

Mrs. Chan is famous in the Taiwanese community for her very talented cooking skill. During the first half of the 90s, Asian food was very rare in the market. However we've got a chance to learn from her how to make those Taiwan delicacies at home. There is almost nothing that she doesn't know how to make in terms of cooking. Although she is famous of her talent, she lives quietly in the community. Every day she goes to work in the morning, and rushes back to make dinner for the family in the evening. Unless it is necessary, never have I heard that she drops in someone's home to chat. All her time is for the children and the family, and for their friends who are in need of help.

When I was going through my career crisis in early 2003, she quietly sought for any job vacancy through her personal networking for me. She has a nephew working for a computer company in Auckland. Her nephew is in a position of recruiting new staff to assist him. And one day when I paid a visit to their place, she said to me in a kind tone, "don't have to worry about job, go to see my nephew when your current job is vanished." Though I did not turn to her for help that time because a miracle fell upon me and made me secure a good job, her kind enthusiastic support conveyed through that few words is never erased from my memory.

Having three excellent grown-up sons, their retirement life is very secure of course and they are simply able to enjoy a very wealthy style of life, but they are not. Almost every time I rang them to make an appointment of visiting them at their place, they are always at home to answer my call. Mr. Chan is always working in the garden or on some housework, while Mrs. Chan makes simple but delicious food in the kitchen.

Although their three children secretly discussing which one among them should be living close to where their parents are so as to look after them. But Mr. and Mrs. Chan frankly told the three children that they should not be worrying for them for the time being, and it is okay for them to go to any place in the world to actualize their potentiality. So now all three of their children are in big international research or financial institutions in Europe and Australia. Here, in Auckland live this pair of very happy mum and dad being busy in the kitchen and in the garden respectively.

Jean paid a visit to her mother in hospital in Taiwan

Chenny and I got up at 5:45 AM in order to drive to airport during the busy traffic hours of the motorway and arrived there in time to meet with his mother. From my observation, Chenny is nice to his mother although very often he is impatient with her.

Jean's mother, aged 90, had a fall at home and then lost consciousness during the daytime one day in late June of 2010, and was thus rushed to the hospital. On July 5, Chenny and I sent Jean to airport early in the morning to get on board of the earliest flight of Korean airline for Taiwan to pay a visit to her mother in hospital. Time flies by very quickly, Jean's scheduled returning date is up, and here we are going on the way in the raining dark early morning toward Auckland airport to meet her.

The traffic was not as bad as we expected, so by the time of 6:45 AM, we were already sitting in the waiting room of the arrival exit, while well ahead of the 7:30 AM arriving time of the flight. I estimated Jean would not be able to get through the customs and everything within one and a half hour, so we both dozed off in the waiting zone. Suddenly Jean appeared at the exit with a cart loaded with three luggage on it. Chenny briskly stood up and walked forward to greet his mom with an affectionate hug and a sheepish smile. I found these 2 to 3 seconds Chenny's greeting to his mother was very moving and beautiful, and I regretted I was not able to capture that few seconds in the camera.

After having settled everything at home, Jean told me that once her mother was in a very dangerous state, "mother's face showed great pain, nervousness, horror; hands and legs pushing and kicking as if being horrified or annoyed by something, and everyone of the family was expecting the very worst and showed extreme anxiety." she continued, "Suddenly an idea flashed through my mind that I should go to the pure land Buddhist group nearby to make pray for a peaceful pass away for mother and/or do a repentance service on behalf of mother."

So she told her siblings about what she thought and wanted to do for the rest of the day, and she immediately left for that pure land Buddhist center.

At the receptionist's desk, a female Buddhist told her that they were undergoing a 21 day service called "the three-time reminder (三時繫念法會)" which were exactly suitable to her mother's case. So she enrolled on straightaway and took part in the ritual wholeheartedly through the rest of that day.

Having returned to the hospital, she told her siblings what she had done that day, and then they began to notice that their mothers facial expression radiated peacefulness, and the doctor discharged her from the ICU that night, and every one of the family were greatly relieved and unanimously attributed this dramatic change to what Jean had done in the Temple.

Jean has told me many stories about what she experienced, saw, heard in this trip to Taiwan. To get the cheapest airfare, she flew with Korean airline, and thus had to stop by Seoul airport on both ways to change airplane. On her flying to Taiwan, they were supposed to stay overnight in Seoul and change airplane the next morning. That was her first time in life she had to travel on a journey through which she must use her limited English to solve any problem that could possibly arise, so although she still smiled all the time when she was telling me the story, I believe she must be pretty nervous when the aircraft was descending to land and that would be the beginning of using her English in making inquiries relating to accommodation, meals, and etc..

She said that she could feel all the single female passengers who needed to spend one night in Seoul to change airplane in the next morning were anxiously looking for someone of same-sex to join as a group. And soon there came two ladies toward her, one Asian and one European. They friendly and politely asked if Jean was going to change airplane in the next morning? And so three of them naturally became a group, and they went to the transition desk, to the bus stop, to the hotel, to the check-in desk, to the restaurant for dinner, and etc. together. and Jean's innate enthusiasm naturally made her become the leader of the three member group. The Asian lady was heading for Qingdao, and she had no English almost. The old Europeans lady was to fly to London to see her granddaughter. She was living in Tauranga. Jean's limited English turned out to be helpful to the two nervous ladies during the trip.

In the next early morning after Jean's arrival, I found this e-mail in the inbox when I turned on the computer after I finished my morning practice. The message indicates that mom's condition is still improving. Amituofo!

姐夫與真姐您好！

真姐安全抵達，我們也放心了。

今(8/2)早進病房，媽張著眼睛看我，跟媽講話她會點頭；把手套拿掉，跟她作手部運動，幫她作合十動作說"謝謝妳啊！"，之後她說"謝謝妳啊!"媽就自己拱手了。

今天這些進步都讓我與敢非常驚喜，但媽手上的傷口發炎紅腫，倒是令人耽心。皮膚乾癢讓媽常想抓癢，幫媽剪了指甲，擦了E油，情況緩解。

陪伴中，敢早晚都幫媽作腿部伸曲運動各50次，避免僵硬。

下午2：00遷移到安養中心，照顧雖不如醫院周到但也不錯了，敢晚上可以回家好好休息了，他也夠辛苦了。

你們多保重！

阿健

When My Wife Is Away

My wife left for Taiwan yesterday to pay a visit to her mother, aged 90, who was sent to hospital urgently a few days ago.

In the past three years since her last visit to her mother in Taiwan in 2007, we had never parted from each other. We saw each other in the day and in the night; we had meals together every day; we talked on children and on life now and then; we helped each other and actually I relied on her more because of my Parkinson's disease. I thought all of these would be just repeated on and on till the last day of hers or mine, but we knew that sooner or later she would have to fly to Taiwan for her mother's sake.

Of course we had many occasions of parting from each other for a few days or even a few weeks in the past 33 years of marriage life, but the longing to see her again was never be so strong as this time. I don't know what's wrong with me.

She is scheduled to come back on August 2, and the countdown process has been activated yesterday at the time when she passed through the departure gate.

The scary machine gun

Machine gun is a very powerful, very dreadful, very scary weapon in battlefield. Yet, when I am invited to chat online, the first sentence I send back in the conversation is usually "a second please, let me get my machine gun..." and my friend on the other side knows what it is; and I can imagine he is warming up himself in front of the computer rubbing his two hands vigorously, staring into the monitor at the chat dialogue box, awaiting to confront with the challenge from my machine gun.

It is my dictation software -- a computer program which turns your speech into text when you speak into a microphone. Once you have trained this program well, it will recognize your voice, take your dictation and type the text out accurately. It is very helpful to people with difficulty in typing. because its speed is three times faster than the average typist, so I nicknamed it "the scary machine gun".

To tell you the story of the machine gun, its background should start from my early teens period .

Starting from late 1960s, children of my generation found that they began to have some pocket money from their parents due that Taiwan economy was taking off. Gradually we were able to expand our after school activities, from just doing extra school study in the classroom or playing basketball in the sport field which are of money saving in nature, to the money spending ones such as having a yummy snack at the canteen or going to the theater to watch a movie which is the most popular option among the school children.

I was a movie lover too during my second and third years in the junior high school. The admission was as little as two bucks, about ten cents of New Zealand dollar today. Most of the movies were from America, so we had learned quite a lot of American cultures through watching movies. Besides all those cowboy stories, the ones that I had the most profound memories were "sayonara", "travelling the world in 80 days". And I don't know why, every time when the movies played the part of which an office clerk was typing really fast following the dictation from his boss, I naturally endow him with lots of admiration. I think that was how I was later motivated to learn typing skill and became the fastest typist in my class in the college.

I believe that I would rather be that wealthy boss giving the dictation, than being that secretary typing his tail off, when I was absorbed in the episode of the movie. However, after I had grown up and entered the work force, I was neither a boss nor a secretary but only a guy pretty capable of typing with high competence in both speed and accuracy in the company.

Whether it is pre-destined or just from my own choice, that in my 15 working years in Taiwan before 1991, all the jobs I were in, required me to be working with typewriter to more or less a degree. I hope you don't say it was just a coincidence. After all I was just a young guy living in a non-English speaking country, am not I?

In 1992, I immigrated to New Zealand. After two years of acclimation in the new land, I could not but yielded my aspiration of starting a business to the harsh reality and chose to work for a stationery wholesaler. My main role there was "office assistant", and here the coincidence fell upon me again, I was required by the job to type various kind of document almost everyday more or less.

Perhaps because of the vivid memory about the episode of people sitting by the typewriter in the office typing mindfully and rapidly like a hen pecking grains from the ground, every time when I type, that mind picture always flashed through my mind, and made my typing more enjoyable to me, and feeling like I was the smart and confident typist in the movie. So I have been enjoying typing since I had acquired the skill at the age of 20.

In year 2005, I was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. The main symptoms of this disease are rigidity, tremor and the slowness in movement. Gradually many tasks that normal people can do easily are becoming more and more difficult for me, and typing is one of them. By early 2010, the symptoms were worsening to this stage where I needed assistance from tools, for instance, brushing teeth, I needed an electric brush to do the business. My typing ability was crippled even under medication, and was generally very slow. Sometimes during the tail part of the medication period, especially early in the morning, the hands were just like being frozen and suspended above the keyboard trembling and could not do a single thing.

In an e-mail sent to Robbie in January 2010, I mentioned about why I was writing him far less e-mails then before, and what had caused the problem -- my Parkinson's disease.

He immediately sent me an e-mail briefly asking me to Google "naturally speaking" for more details about the dictation software he would recommend me to adopt to tackle my typing difficulties.

Naturally speaking? I've never heard of this before. And from the Google search, I realized that "Dragon naturally speaking" was what Robbie meant to say, and was the brand name of a widely used dictation software. With this program installed in the computer, the user speaks into a microphone and the computer turns the signals from the wave into text on the screen. That was indeed something I needed and was affordable to me, only $179 for the standard version.

After a few days contemplation in making up my mind, I decided to buy through Trademe hoping the price offered there would be more affordable. It turned out to be true, you could start your bid from $99, or got it straight away by paying a "buy now" price of $129. I chose the latter.

It was February 12 of 2010, I was half way in my morning practice when the parcel was delivered to my doorstep. Without any delay I unpacked it, read the installation instructions, and began the process of installation followed by some training which required me to read aloud some text document about 15 minutes long into the microphone to make the software recogniz the way I speak. Within about one hour, all these were done.

it was time to actually try it out. I was excited and nervous, just like a small boy was nervously practicing riding his new bike, not sure what might turn up.

I started with the most used phrases -- "how are you?"... "haven't seen you for long time." How amazing it was, my words were turned into text on the screen almost instantly after I finished the phrases. I extolled the the inventor smart; I thanked Robbie's shrewd recommendation; I said to myself that I had got a loyal typing assistant virtually.

When I began to try on some phrases of higher level, the nightmare started to emerge. For example, I said "I built a storage shelf", it cranked out "I be you Ward and storage shelf". Then I gave command "correct 'be you ward'", then it popped out a list of choices, but none of them was "built". And to my deepest frustration, when I tried to repeat the command, it erased all the right words of the whole paragraph and made me start over again from nothing.

The frustration grew up to a point which nearly made me pick up the phone to ask them for a refund and totally give up the hope of reaping the benefit from this software.

It began to show its cooperation by typing out more accurate words on the fourth day of its arrival, and that higher accuracy grew steadily every day but very slowly and was still far from my satisfaction. I had been very patient in dealing with this semi-auto machine gun until two months after its purchase when Nuance released an update for this software.

I did not put any hope on this update because I almost had enough with its semi-auto nature. However I just underwent the download and installation of that update. After the process was done; and after I had injected about 30 minutes of training into the freshly updated version, I tried it by writing an e-mail. Alas! The improvement was dramatic -- the accuracy soared to a level totally beyond my expectation. And since then, I happily nicknamed it "the machine gun".

With this weapon at hand, I replied almost every single e-mail, even those only carrying a forwarding and without a message, with not just a couple of sentences, but with three or four paragraphs of message. At the beginning, all the forwarding senders politely replied saying that they welcomed my e-mails generated by the dictation software. By and by, I found that some of the forwarding senders shunned away. apparently my sudden change into being a talkative e-mail writer had scared many of them away. So I re-nicknamed my dictation software as "the scary machine gun".

That's the story of how the originally brand named as "Dragon naturally speaking" was nicknamed as "the scary machine gun" by me.

Will the world be better off by 2020?

One of the papers that Chenny chooses to study this year is business ethics. Not long after the term commenced in March, we had a spontaneous chat during the dinner time. Very seldom had we had long, formal and academic talks, but this one was. The chat gradually drifted to his further study on Business Management, then he raised a big question "Will the world be better off by 2020?" and invited my input of thoughts about this topic.

I read quite a lot of news reports relating to this topic in recent couple of years. Most of them predict a worse one, and so does mine. I had a compulsion of writing an essay type document on this subject at the moment when Chenny raised that question. The next day I worked out a 750 word report to at least prove the logical part of my brain is still functional although it lacked supporting statistical figures..

Below is my writing.

The world will be worse generally by 2020. So I believe.

My conclusion that the world will be generally worse by 2020 is based on the following arguments. 1) dysfunctional consumerism, 2) worldwide moral backward 3) technology over dependence.

Consumerism has a bad image nowadays. People seem to have realized consumerism is the cause of destruction in many ways, such as the threat to ecological balance; overuse of natural resources; encourage unnecessary consumption. These are a few examples of the nature of consumerism.

Almost no exception, when any country experiences an economical downturn, its government always turn to the remedy of consumption stimulation. During the worldwide financial crisis in 2008, in order to slow down the recession, Taiwan government issued agreed amount of consumer voucher. Taiwan Pres. appeared in the TV, using the voucher to buy food and goods to stimulate consumption in an attempt to alleviate the impact on small businesses. Other countries in the world also adopted similar ways, though differently, to seek for a solution from consumerism.

Apparently most of the free countries in the world adopt consumerism as an instant remedy of economy stimulation. As a result, this approach to economy stimulation causes a lot of waste on their national resources, and perhaps still see the recession worsening.

Because so far in the world all the capitalised countries have no other solutions than the consumerism approach, and we know what it will lead to. That's why I believe it will not be better off by 2020.

The second point that supports me to believe the world will not be better off by 2020 is the fact that the worldwide moral standard is going backward.

Overall moral standard has a great impact on the country in terms of social cost. If corruption is commonly found in the government, this country will see no future. A nation's social security will be fragile if the moral standard among the people is too low. Read in the news you will see what the overall moral standards is like in a country. Police was attacked; infants were killed; shops were robbed, and etc.

Although it is impossible to erase all crime or corruption from a society, what we are looking at is the tendency of its increase and its severity. And the statistic reveals the worry is not wrong.

And the consumerism will make the issue of moral standard a lot worse. We all can tell this by common sense.

The third point that makes me believe 2020 will not be better off is our over dependence on technology, especially the IT technology. We know that today everything we do is depending on computer and Internet connection. When there is any accident occurred, chaos follows immediately. We all experience traffic jam due to the failure of traffic signals; the long queue in supermarkets check out point; top secrete information hacked, all these result in social cost rocketing.

My arguments sound pessimistic, but I'm only reflecting the truth and facts. The solutions I can think of are on the following.

Setup a ministry of moral education. Teach people to live simple lifestyle.

Largely increase the spending on fine cultural promotion and cultural related tourism development.

The Sight of My Father's Back

Father appeared in my dream recently. As usual, just like when he was alive, he was quiet and only smiled slightly in the dream. After that dream, I recalled bits and pieces about him. The first mind picture I had was Dounan Railway Station. That was one sunny afternoon in 1974. I stood by my father waiting for his North-bound train to return home. I was then serving my obligatory military service at Huwei Air Force Cadet Training Centre, and father himself rode one early South-bound train to where I was stationed to see me.

Out of missing me and concerning of my winter clothing, he spontaneously decided to bring some home-made food and some warm jackets to come to Huwei to see me. His appearance at the visitor's reception quarter that afternoon was beyond my expectation, so when I was paged for a meeting at the reception quarter of the camp entrance gate, I was puzzled.

When I rode my bike to rush to the camp gate from my office, I saw a medium height, solid built body with crew cut hair figure from a distance. I recognized it was father, both hands carrying bags of stuff. My mind was deeply touched upon seeing father, especially by his bothering to travel whole day in order to hand me some comfort.

He was not talkative. Apart from basic questioning about my living details in the camp, silence filled up most of the time of our being together. I briefly guided him through the barrack, and before long, it was about time to leave for catching his return train to Taipei.

I gave my father a lift with my bumping bike to Dounan Station 5 km away. While waiting for train on the platform, he became more talkative, and it was all about how I should be looking after myself well while being away from home. Soon, the train slowly rumbled in and put an halt by the platform. I saw from his back, noticed a slight bent over it. At that moment, the sight of his back made me recalled his being the most pampered only natural son of Chen family during his childhood and youthhood. And now, he was 59. Man did age after all. He entered the carriage, waved his hand signalling me to return to camp safely. My eyes welled up with tears at this moment till the train moved out of my sight.

The reminiscence of that episode about seeing my father off on the platform of Doulan Railway Station connected my thought to the short story titled "The sight of father's back (背影)“ written by Zhu Ziqing, a prominent literature scholar (1898-1948). Every Junior high school student in Taiwan read this article in their year two Chinese textbook. In the story, Zhu mentioned about how their originally well-off family became a shabby one and how his father, facing the worsening family setback, reacted to peoples and matters. Zhu Ziqing filled the story with great deal of emotions both his father's and his own. I was so moved when I reread the story that I intended to write some of the stories about my father.

Father was born to a wealthy family in 1915. My grandfather, being a well-known carpenter and furniture trader, had earned a big fortune for Chen family and owned many farming lands. Apprently my grandmother had had infertility problem since her marriage, as she bore her only son, my father at age 36. My uncle was adopted a few years before my grandmother got pregnancy. People in those days believed adopting a child, especially a boy, would increase high chance of a boy born to this family. (people in picture, from left: my aunt, my mother, my grandmother, my grand father, my father, my uncle)

So my father, being the only natural son of Chen family, was deeply pampered. He at a stage of his childhood, loved raising pets such as rabbit, bird. My mother was the one to tidy up the droppings. At another stage in his early youthhood, his interest changed to radio. When he heard that a new radio product was available in the market, one of my grandfather's apprentices would be assigned to escort him by riding a bicycle to Taichung City about 25 km away to buy one.

Life began to challenge my father from around the time when a 7.1 Richter scale earthquake hit the middle part of Taiwan and flattened our dwelling in 1935. Followed by my grandfather's death at age 59 in 1938, and the eruption of World War II in 1939. Consequently the timber supply for our furniture trade was cut off. Father was lacking of trade skill but he had to pick up the responsibility of Chen family's livelihood after my grandfather's demise.

To a young man in his mid 20's of age, being raised up in a fully protected circumstance, and lacking of trade skill, making a living to support a family of 7 in that tough situation was really difficult. So year after year, the whole family could only live on the reserve saved during grandfather's day.

Father's life challenges were not just from the three big incidents. There were many other heart breaking events arose before 1948. They lost three children. The first kid they lost was a boy killed in the 1935 Taichung Earthquake. The second was a girl whom my mother described as the most beautiful girl, named 'Hilei', she had ever seen, died from flu epidemic. The third was a boy died, again from flu epidemic, in his infancy in 1948. So if all of them survived, there should be 9 children all together in our family. (picture shows Chen's extended family in 1954, front row from left: 2nd cousin, my aunt, my mother holding my sister, my father, 1st sister, 4th sister; back row from left: 2nd sister, 3rd cousin, 3rd sister. Uncle was in Japan, 1st and 3rd cousin were visiting their father in Japan, so they were not in this photo.)

Since the government had enacted the Land Reform program in 1950, Chen family began to lose its status as a landlord. My memory that I had seen a rice paddy owned by our family was in 1955 or 1956. I think after 1960, all my father owned was a very old dwelling with a grocery shop in the Ching Shui township and a household of 8 members to feed. Anyone who has to went through these long term challenges will definitely develop anxiety and/or depression. My father did not show this symptom, but his short tempered personality must have something to do with it.

Father was a serious, strong willed, inflexible, easy to be offended type of person. This type of personality made him quite unpopular in the community.

We ran a grocery shop before 1967. Most of the time, the shop was managed by my mother and 3rd sister. My father took over the shift between 8pm to 2am. Now and then, he looked after the shop during the daytime when 3rd sister rode bike to the neighboring town, Salu, to pick up our orders of cigarette and wine for resale, and mother left for a while to cook lunch and dinner. Quite a few times, when father was in charge, I witnessed a few times during my childhood how he either upset the customer or being upset by the customer, anyway that resulted in unpleasant serious quarrels in our shop. So a close friend of our family advised my father to avoid showing up in the shop as it only discouraged customers to walk in. Therefore my father quit the involvement in running the shop eventually, and left for the neighboring town to work as a band saw technician for a timber mill.

It is understandable why had father developed into an unwelcoming person. That was all to do with his being overly pampered and protected when he was young. However, father was basically a righteous, sympathizing, trustworthy, courageous person. He never had problem getting along with decent people.

Having been in their 56 year long marriage life, my mother's comment about father must be the fairest one, "your dad does not know how to express his feeling and emotion", mum once said when she was alive.

Indeed father was very bad at expressing his inside world. All I can recall from my childhood memory, he never had kissed, hugged me; never had played any game with me; never had told me any story, however, I believed his love to me was profound. He had been trying to show his intimacy to us children, but just did not how to do it right.

One evening, when I was about 12 years old, he, out of nowhere, had this idea of giving me a treat, watching a live singing and dancing show. It was very weird, as we all knew father never had watched a movie or show before. And I never knew what was in his mind that evening when he asked me if I'd like to watch the show with him.

I remembered I was very excited from this surprising treat. I still remembered vividly that show was presented by a girls' group named Yu Xia girls singing and dancing troupe (玉霞女子歌舞團). But I had no idea what their show was all about.

We bought the tickets from the box office window, entered the theater and seated. Soon the program started. The brass band of this troupe played a very rocking exciting overture, then, a row of about 12 girls, danced out from both sides of the stage following the rhythm of the music kicking their legs up and down. And, gee..., every single one was in bikini. At age of 12, I was sort of aware of sexuality, but being in a conservative society in early 60's, I felt terribly awkward at that instant moment watching bikini girls with constantly serious dad next to me.

Father's usually serious facial expression made him not so popular in the community. However, his caring mind toward people in hardship was warm, and that was manifested in his action in silence.

He quietly gave money to beggars without even mentioned to mum for her praising on his kind deed. Mum told me that once she saw dad did this without his being aware of her watching from distance. She concluded father was soft minded but stink faced.

The feature of his personality traits made him a mighty defender for his married daughters and nieces. Before 1970's in Taiwan, domestic violence was more or less seen in most households. This was not an exception to many of my sisters and cousins who had married. It must be a horrified experience to my sisters when they were attacked by their spouse in over-heated quarrels that they cried home to report to my mother for solace.

This was what had been kept in my memory about one of the daughter defending episodes occurred when I was about 11 years old. Once in an afternoon I saw sister cried in mum's arms, and mum was sort of condemning and cursing her son-in-law's misconduct. Father was watching all this quietly. Then, suddenly we noticed father was disappeared. Mum's intuition told her father was rushing to sister's home to give her husband a lesson. Mum became worried about what might be happening between father and the son-in-law under that furious atmosphere.

Before father returned, sister took the evening bus home. After all, she was married, and to Chinese tradition, particularly before 1960's, there was no return to the maiden home for a married daughter.

Apparently father's sudden appearance at my brother's home with his innate 'stink' face had given the son-in-law an effective warning of "no more violence!"

Similar incidents happened to my other sisters and cousins, too. Every time father's silent but mad face successfully suppressed his son-in-laws' rude behaviors. So all my sisters commented that father was the bravest one in the world, while the brother-in-laws who'd ever made trouble all claimed "you'd better behave yourself if you want to see a smiley dad appearing before you."

To my sisters, father was a hero, a brave man. He seemed to be an unbeatable figure. Unexpectedly in September 1988, he was rushed to hospital and was diagnosed brain stroke. Followed by many complications and went through a major operation in his stomach. Throughout his life, I never heard him sighed or groaned once even in great discomfort when he was hospitalized. According to mother, he never had shed tears. "Being a brave man is the core objective of Japanese education", mum said. Dad had accepted 9 years of Japanese education during its ruling in Taiwan. (picture shows dad in a tour to a pearl company during his visit to uncle in Japan in 1963.)

During the four month time in hospital, father's only older brother flew back from Japan to see him. They might had met each other for about five times only in their lives since uncle migrated to Japan in early 1940's.

I was standing by father's bed side in the hospital when uncle walked into the ward. Uncle bent over to talk some comfort words to dad. Father's eyes showed great surprise upon recognizing his dear brother. Though he had lost speech ability, he could hear voice. He shed tears for the first time in his life after having heard his brother's words.

After about four months of many attempts of getting his series of complications fixed in the hospital, all failed, on 23/02/1989, father left this world. To my sisters, his strong will and unbeatable courage is always with them. As to me, it is always his meeting me at the Dounan Railway Station platform and the sight of his back.

A Baby Boomer's Memory

Born in 1951, I am a baby boomer. Recently when I get a chance to be meeting with friends of my age group, the chatting topics are more or less related to the planning of retirement. Indeed, the baby boom generation has entered their retiring stage of life.

What a shame, time has to pass by so swiftly that all of a sudden I am turning 60. Now recalling my childhood memories in 1950's, it feels like just a short moment ago. From time to time, I fall into the dream-like past. I think I should pass these bits and pieces of my childhood memories onto my children.

Taiwan of 1950's was still in its agricultural economy. Being an agriculture island, the living style in those days was simple and hard. A rice farmer worked so hard whole year round in the paddy with his water buffalo could only expect to feed his family without much surplus for saving in the bank. If there was a typhoon hit unfortunately, then the whole family got to cut their food in order to make end meet. Sometimes, the loss was too big to fix, selling child was not unusual. My mother was actually an example of this misfortune. Her story is accessible in this link.

We owned some farming land in my grandfather's day. During 1950's, KMT government launched Land Reform program aiming to improve farmers' living and divert the landlords' asset to investing in other industrial projects. This program, as I had heard vaguely from my father when I was young, made a lot of farmers cheerful and many resentful landlords at the same time. I could sense what my father felt about the Land Reform from his admonishing to me a few times that I should never get involved in politics.

Before all our lands were transferred to the farmers, we managed a small piece of land by our selves. That was my last impression of our family's farm land. One day, I think it was an autumn afternoon, I was brought along to that land.

It was the harvesting day of our rice paddy. We hired a couple of farmers to do the job as none of our family members was able to do such tough task. To local customary, the employer was supposed to provide daily the three meals plus two refreshments for the breaks in between the meals.

I was not yet at the school age, but I have retained a vivid memory of that day's field visit till now, so I should be around four or five years old then.

Three of my elder sisters hand carried the lunch to the harvesting site for the farm workers at the mid day. The sun was scorching hot. When we arrived, sister ran to ask the farmers to stop for a lunch break. I saw them walked out of the rice paddy with a broad rimmed cone top bamboo leave hat on their heads and a thin shorts only on their body. Their skin was almost dark brown. They smiled, and their eyes beamed at the food placed on the ground attentively as if they had been starved for a long time.

We waited nearby under the tree shade for the farmers to finish their lunch. While waiting, I felt the pleasure radiated from the farmers. The surrounding was very quiet only now and then saw some wild ducks flew high in the sky chirping back and forth. I was fascinated by the birds' singing. I listened so tentatively that my 3rd sister also joined me in watching the flying birds in the sky and mimicking their sound. Their tone sounded like huu-huu-gei-gei....huu-huu-gei-gei...repeatedly. I asked my sister what was the bird saying? Sister said, "they are saying 'look, look, I am getting married, I am getting married'." At that moment I thought sister was very smart that she understood bird's language.

Another bit memory recorded during this paddy visit was rather embarrassing to mention, but it reflected the hygiene level of that era. I suddenly had a strong urge to toilet when I was playing. I told 3rd sister my need. She looked around the surrounding to make sure no one was coming toward us and then she asked me to poo right at that spot. She proceeded to pull my shorts down. Feeling embarrassed for being exposed to others' eyeshot, I held my shorts tightly. Sister said to me, "I cover you from their viewing and you be quick!" Her tone was rather anxious.

So I pulled down the shorts myself and squatted down and did a quick poo. Then, another problem came up, no toilet paper. In 1950's Taiwan, the toilet paper was as abrasive as the packaging tray of eggs. It looked like they were made of rice stalk because of its yellowish color and the stem chips were visible. But it was reasonable for the lowest grade of paper being used to wipe the bum clean. The problem was sister did not bring toilet paper along on that day.

She searched with her eyeshot on the ground and picked up a stone as big as a golf ball with the smoothest surface to give to me. I think I was pretty smart then as I got what she meant with that stone. I grabbed it and gently scratched my ass hole, threw that stone away, and pulled up my shorts. Felt relieved.

As a post World-War II baby boomer, we have witnessed and experienced the dramatic changes and improvement of living standard.

I am most impressed by the evolution of toilet happened during our generation. Until mid 1960's, almost all of the toilets, my home's, schools', bus station's, were of the type as shown in the sketch. On the center of the raised platform is a ditch with a slop leading to a big cavity in the ground outside of the house, and you know that's where all the shit and urine go to through that sliding slop. When you use the toilet, you firstly step up the two stairs and enter the cubicle, turn around, step one foot across the ditch, squat down and then you are ready to go. Oh yes, remember to close the door. Outside at the back of the cubicle is a wooden lid that covers up the waste storing cavity to prevent people from stepping into the hole.

Naturally it is always very stinky even though the toilet cubicle is usually built with maximum ventilation openings on the top. So it is normally located seprately from the house. Summer in Taiwan is hot and this makes the smell in the cubicle terrible.

Who empties the waste for you? Expensive?

Well, no fee charged for the removal of the waste, nonetheless, now and then, we even saw a bunch of vegetable was left by the lid of the waste storing cavity for us. The kind farmer who fetched the waste to use as fertilizer for his farm land did this as a return for using the free fertilizer.

So because of the nature of this kind of toilet facility, the stinky smell makes every user only occupies it as short a time as they can. In contrary to modern toilet which some users bring their books or newspaper in to read while the major task is being done. So I suppose that was why constipation was rarely heard of in the olden day, because everyone can not wait to run away from it as soon as the feat is done.

Once, when I was about 10 years old, I used the toilet early one winter morning. I heard some noise from outside of the cubicle when I was only half way through my bowl movement, suddenly a good blow of wind carrying the most vintage odor of the waste hit my buttock and my smell sensor. I realized that was that kind farmer doing his respectful deed. I held my breath, skillfully stopped at where I was, rapidly wiped the butt clean and rushed out of the cubicle, almost suffocated.

Then in 1963, we moved to live in a new house which had two toilets both were of the flux type of modern standard. What a big leap of toilet evolution.

I also saw a calculator as heavy as some 10 kgs. I used it myself actually, when I was in my military service at the Cadet Training Center in 1974, for summing up cadets competence assessments. Within just 4 years, in 1979, I was shown by my colleague his pocket calculator powered by one AAA battery, doing faster calculation than the one I used earlier.

Then the baby boomer saw many other things changed in rapid modification process: mobile phone, computer, television, data storage device, recorder, video camera, and such and such, the list goes on. All are appealing to make our life easier and happier. But are people's life easier and happier now compared to 1950's?

The baby boomer say: nope! Pursuing only the material pleasure is not the answer for happiness, there got to be some other stuff we have overlooked.

A Cross-generation Friendship

This young fella is known as Robbie. He has been my colleague, English teacher, playmate, or in the modern term, my buddy since that day when he introduced himself to me in 2003. As his age is the same of my own kid, I take this friendship with him as a cross-generation one.

The stories started from 21st October 2003, the first day of the three day training program which our company, Ora Limited, sent us to for our learning of moderation skills. Ora is a private training establishment providing a distant learning programme titled Kiwi Ora to deliver knowledge about the basics of New Zealand to new immigrants who enrolled.

It was a clear spring morning. The training was undergoing in Wesley Community Centre in Auckland. Peter, the trainer, had just finished his first class of the day and announced a 20 minute tea break. So we walked out of the classroom for a good breath of air and mingling with colleagues we had not seen before.

As I was leaning on the veranda rail outside of the classroom, gazing afar, recollecting what had been taught in the first class, a young man with a backpack walked briskly up the flight of stairs, sort of in haste, toward me.

"Hi!" he said to me, panted a bit. "Hi!" I greeted back, "my name is Morris. Are you coming for the training?". "Yes," he said, "My name is Robbie. I am a newly recruited advisor. The second head in the office just informed me of the training this morning. It is my commencing day today, so I came from office to join in the class. I must have missed the first period..."

The conversation went on. I knew he was from Taiwan at age 6 with his parents. He had just graduated from Auckland University, was major in Education, worked for Federal Express in the last six months, and bits and pieces of other topics till the trainer swinged the bell to call us in.

The second class was game related to the training. The trainees were divided into 3 groups to be in the game. Robbie was naturally invited to join our group. His English proficiency, nimble movement required by the game made the elder and ESL (English second language) members of our group less stressful.

Robbie and I became close friend during the three days. Soon the three day training was over and we went back to work routine from own home office relying on telephone and internet to contact the Kiwi Ora students and the outside world.

Computer skills is an important part of our everyday job as a Kiwi Ora advisor. We were supposed to be able to use the Office softwares and general office equipments well. We had to deal with trouble-shooting in case of paper jam on printer or fax machine, computer system crash, internet disruption, virus issues and etc. Under this circumstance, someone like Robbie who was recognised as computer expert among advisors became very important, and often called out to the rescue of other advisors'.

I was quite good at keeping the office equipments run smoothly, however, from time to time the Windows system, virus or internet could go wrong inevitably and these problems were beyond my computer knowledge.

Once, my internet connection was lost. Robbie came to check all the possible problems but found none. The last option would be running a system restoration which was very time consuming. Without a frown, Robbie moved my notebook to his home and spent one whole night to get it up and running.

Another time of Robbie's big help given to my computer was when I shifted to another place in October 2004. The internet connection was lost again. He just worked on it for me with enthusiasm.

His regular contact with me via e-mail and text message through mobile phone means I have a private tutor teaching me English. At the begining stage of my involvement in Kiwi Ora, it took me at least 15 minutes to finish writing a short e-mail. Through constant practice in writing messages to him, I am now able to write a lengthy article like this post in English with ease of mind. Thanks to him.

With so much assistances he had given me, what had I repaid him? I could not think of any, however, he insisted he had learned a lot through talking with me. What a profound compliment he has made!

Being young, that meant his reactions toward unfair or offensive remarks from his students or other colleagues tended to be following the impulse instead of the brain. Fortunately he managed to hold the hurtful feelings and turned to seek for counselling from me.

I usually gave him my caring ears, showed my empathy to him, reflected what he was feeling, and lastly asked him what would he do toward the problem. I followed the counselling principles which I had learned from my 10 year engagement in the voluntary role as Auckland Lifeline telephone counsellor. Although I was not sure how much help my caring ears and the fundamental counselling skills may have brought in defusing his anger, I did act to him like a patient and caring parent to his own kids. Well, he usually commented at the end of our counselling-like conversation, "ah! sensei (sir in Japanese), you are wise man. Thank you very much.", leaving me dumbfounded.

In June 2005, I was diagnosed having Parkinson Disease. Quite depressed I was from hearing doctor's announcement. This time, Robbie played his role as my counsellor. His prescription was: inviting me to join his letter-drop cruise* whenever he scheduled one; and proposal of taking my annual leave for a holiday in Australia. I accepted his suggestion and he also arranged his holiday to be in the same time window. So on 15th August 2005 we flew together to Sydney. I stayed at my 4th sister's place and he stayed at the Holiday Inn enjoying a real holiday.
As my disease deteriorated due to its progressive nature, I was gradually losing ability of driving for duration over 10 minutes. He was always pleased to give me a ride to places such as company functions, conference, student meeting venues, or anywhere over the other side of the harbour bridge.

By April 2006, my disease became more unbearable. I considered quit from this job. It was a tough decision to make as although my daughter had gained her bachelor degree and a permanent job, my son was just in his first year in the university then. It was Robbie who came to my home office on 3rd May 2006 to help me make up my mind.

I had drafted my resignation e-mail the previous day but was finding no enough courage to send it to the head office. Robbie said to me, "Chenny is in university now and is able to support himself, why do you have to struggle with work now that the disease is troubling you?" That's right, how can I hide the fact of being sick forever? So at that moment I hit the SEND button of the Outlook to get that resignation letter e-mailed to the manager with Robbie standing beside me watching.

About two month after my resignation, Robbie followed me. He got an even better job at an education institute. His new employer sent him to Boston, USA to attend the world annual e-learning conference.

Though our colleagueship had come to an end in 2006, however, this cross-generation friendship carries on till no end.
Things are in constant flux. I was informed by Robbie the other day of his very tough decision in life: shift to Adelaide, Australia where he was just offered a job as e-learning advisor. Considering New Zealand is where he spent his days of childhood and youthhood; is where all his friends live; is where his parents reside. It is a difficult decision to make, yet the quest for the deeper taste of life can only be attained if one is resolved to transcend the boundary of comfort zone. No matter what is to be his final choice, by the moment prior to his very likely departure, I post this article as my best wish to his new life in Australia.

* letter-drop cruise: Some of Kiwi Ora learners are slow in doing their assessments. When their due-date is up, then the advisor has to use all sorts of method to motivate them. Dropping a notice of late assessment by hand-delivery in the student's letter box make them feel the advisor is close to them and thus they give more effort on the assessment.