Father and son

Never had I thought that my son, Chi-an, will become a musician or a guitarist one day. But he is now, and is very busy teaching people of various age groups in schools in the daytime, in the Music Education Centre after the school hours, some other students come to our home to learn from him in his studio. This picture shows the place he sets up as his guitar tuition classroom.

Chi-an's involvement in learning guitar had a dramatic story behind it. When he had just turned to eight years old, an age local schoolboy student are entitled to join in a government-funded weekend music education, I enrolled him on that program. All of the new students of that program started learning music with an easy to play instrument called recorder.

Two terms had passed and I found Chi-an was not as passionate in his daily practice at home as he was when he just joined in the program. I asked him why and he showed a boring gesture, not even looked at me, but said "I'm bored with that". "How come?", "you played quite well, don't you?". "Yes, but I have learned all of the musics of that book." He replied. 

How could that be possible? The first book meant to run for four terms. But I was curious to know if his words was true, so I asked him to play every piece of music for me. And as if he really wanted to get out of that program, he confidently and promptly picked up his recorder and played on and on till the last piece of the book. I was amazed, and I thought that I might have to consult Mrs. Rimer, chief executive officer of the music education program.

During the class break, I asked Mrs. Rimer how should I deal with this problem? Mrs. Rimer was concerned of problem that her student lost their interest in learning music. But Chi-an's cause sounded different to her. She told me that if Chi-an really could play the whole book of music, she would allow him to jump to the upper level straightaway.

So, Chi-an was summoned to present before Mrs. Rimer. He confidently played one after another without much mistakes. Mrs. Rimer could not allow him to play every single one because she was very busy, so after Chi-an had played four or five pieces, Mrs. Rimer turned to the last page of the book, and again Chi-an confidently played it to Mrs. Rimer's satisfaction. "Very good! I will inform the teacher of the second year recorder class about my decision to place Chi-an in her class right now."

That was how Chi-an jumped to a higher level of recorder class and finished the recorder class in one year. 

After that basic recorder learning, each of the music education program students was supposed to select their favorite instrument to carry on their learning according to the program. As most of other Asian parents, I tried to persuade him to learn violin or cello. But he did not like either one of these two instruments, and finally agreed to learn clarinet.

In the year that followed, he learned Clarinet quite confidently and easily. But I could not see any of his passion in the learning of this instrument. Then, before the first year of learning clarinet was to finish, he argued to quit from the music education program. His reason was simple -- he was bored of it.
In order not to let him drop out of the music education, I suggested that he could change to learn some other instrument of his favorite. And this time, he chose cello. The reason was that cello was big, and to him "big" meant cool.

So he was placed in the cello class; was given a cello by the music school and was happily carrying that big object around in the school. There were only two students in his class, Chi-an and another student, a lovely Russian girl of Chi-an's age.

Every Saturday afternoon, I drove the cello, Chi-an and grandma to the school for the one-hour lesson. And to make him happy in the learning of the cello, three of us went to KFC for lunch after the class as a reward. Even I had so many encouragement and reward to motivate his learning, yet. I could not see a sign of his passion over that instrument.

Finally, the one year cello lesson was coming to an end. He told me what really interested him was guitar, electric guitar, the guitar that plays rock and roll. Oh, dear me! His real favorite was exactly what I was fear of.

One day, while I was waiting for his class to finish in the school yard, I came across Mrs. Rimer. She smiled and asked me "how is Chenny?" I think I must have a worrying facial expression at that time, instead of greeting back to Mrs. Rimer properly, I murmured "he played cello quite well, but he told me he was really interested in guitar." Then, Mrs. Reamer replied to me in quite a stern voice "guitar is also music, what's wrong with it?". With Mrs. Rimer's challenging remark, I was sort of suddenly enlightened. My mind was more opened to the instrument that Chi-an really liked.

Not even before Chi-an's cello class was finished, he and I were found in Mainline Music buying a guitar and an amplifier. This time, I really saw his passion of the guitar music.

In the long journey in supporting his pursuit of learning his favorite instrument, I had never thought that one day he would make guitar tuition his career. About eight years from the day he got his first guitar, he was employed by the Music Education Centre as a guitar teacher during his second year in the University on a part-time basis.

As of the time I'm writing this blog about his career, he has been teaching guitar full time just over one whole year. From the stories of his interactivity with the students and his steady growth of popularity reflected from his the enrollment and retention figures, I know he is on the right path of his career.

I'm now really relieved in seeing both my children are being active and passionate on their jobs. All I need to do now is to be their spiritual support and to concentrate more In the Amituofo chanting.

Pass over the slack months (度小月)

Well before I was in courtship with my wife in 1975, I had already heard of the story about "Du Xiao Yue” 度小月, meaning "pass over the slack months".

Du Xiao Yue is a small restaurant serving very delicious and traditional Taiwan delicacy located on the corner of two streets in Tainan city. Since Tainan is my wife's maiden home town, so when I paid my first visit to her family, she naturally took me to this restaurant and told me the story of the founder, Mr. Hung, a ferry boat operator in mid 1800's.

"In order to feed a big family, Mr. Hung worked very hard. But there were always a few months in a year during which he could not earn a living for the family due that the demand for ferry transportation was very low." Jean continued, "people called the months when they were put in the idling state as Xiao Yue, small months. We can appreciate how anxious Mr. Hung were during those small months. He saw that his time was wasted in waiting for passengers, he brainstormed for ideas of using of the slack months for other ways of income."

"He withdrew from the ferry boat gang during the small months and ran a mobile food stand selling fast food. His food featured with a unique recipe of the spoonful of very aromatic stir-fried pork mince put on top of the noodle with soup cooked out of the big bone. Very few people could resist the temptation of that aroma drifted over in the air when they passed by where his stand was located, and by and by he gradually built up a solid base of loyal customers, thus his story became a popular legend and has been used as an inspirational example to encourage people to face to the challenge when their business gets stuck."

The story Jean had told me 35 years ago vividly flashed through my mind. When my thought came out of the story, it immediately associated the story with my son’s current issue -- job-hunting.

Through the unimaginable cause-and-factor process, my son landed in a job serving as guitar tutor since 2007 when he was in the second year of university. To a student, this is a good job for earning some pocket money while on school study. However, the nature of this job is being unstable with income because the wage he earns is based on the actual hours he teaches. For example, during the school holidays, there will be many students asking for leaves so as to go on holiday with their families; students may quit at any time for any possible reason. Therefore, in some months he may earn a lot more, and in some other months he has to eat into his reserve. So my son has been concerned about the disadvantage of his current job now that he has graduated he is desperate for a full-time job.

It is fine to change to other path of career if the circumstance cooperates, but I know he loves music and being passionate with one’s job is very important, so I have been trying to make him understand about this point and stay in where he is and try to develop his guitar tuition business into full-time scale, or even follow the example of “Du Xiao Yue” by doing some sideline casual jobs. This kind of father and son interaction has been found pretty active in my home recently.

In a chat with my wife this morning, the topic was unintentionally switched to Taiwan delicacy, and it naturally went into our mutual memory of that morning in Tainan 35 years ago when we were in that reminiscent small restaurant called Du Xiao Yue devouring that very yummy Dan Zi Mian. And the conversation swerved to the story of Mr. Hung, the founder of Du Xiao Yue.

I found Du Xiao Yue story is very inspirational. It’s a story about how a father identified his problem; figured out the cause of his problem; worked out a practical plan and took action to achieve it. The part I extolled the most is his spirit of not wasting his energy and time in self-pity or complaining about his miserable destination. Instead, he did what he could or should do step-by-step toward his goal. His descendants seem to have discovered that the secret of Mr. Hung’s success is in his strategy of earning extra income by using of the slack months that they later in some time branded the fast food stand Mr. Hung has passed down to be “Du Xiao Yue”. A brand name that fully reflects the founder’s spirit.

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.

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.

Part Time Job

One Sunday morning in 2000, I was surprised to see Tessie, my daughter, bravely walked into Daikoku Restaurant to the interview for her application of a part time job as waitress. She looked somewhat nervous but she deliberately tilted her chin up, radiated as much confidence as possible through her face and posture, smiled a bit and walked to the reception counter. Outside of the restaurant, waiting for her in the car, I and my wife observed all about that short moment of Tessie's pre-interview nervousness, extolled, "what a brave girl."

About half an hour later, she walked lightly out with natural brilliant smile. "I am employed!", she yelled.

This life experience of hers occurred when she had just returned from her one year stay in Kansai of Japan through AFS student exchange scheme, and was going to enter the university. She had worked a couple of other part time jobs during her school days so she had earned her own.

Seems that year 12 is the period when most of New Zealand children starts their first part time job. Again, when Chenny, my son, reached his year 12 in school, I heard from my wife one day after work that Chenny was out with some other classmates in the business areas of Takapuna and Milford hunting for part time jobs door by door.

Both I and my wife had been concerned that Chenny might not be as independent and brave as his sister, but the news of Chenny's attempt of seeking a paid job indeed astounded me deeply. I was so grateful to the education of New Zealand which helped my two children cultivate the spirit of independence.Though his first attempt was a failure, he didn't let it affect his mood. A few months after that try, through one of his close friends' recommendation, he got a part time job with New World Super Market Milford, worked as produce assistant stocking the shelves of its vegetable section. (Chenny is second from left.)


Since then, he, was just like his sister, had made his own spending money to accommodate his social and hobby needs through their own effort. Of course he changed a couple of employers since then. By the time this blog post is being written, he is working as guitar tutor at Glenfield Music Education Centre in North Shore.

What about their dad in terms of part time job during his school days? Nothing until the end of his first year in Journalism College.

I was in my first year in the college in 1970. In Taiwan, the school year normally starts from September. The first semester ends at early February followed by three week term break. The second semester starts from early March and ends at the tail part of June followed by two months of summer vacation.

In the Western world of 60's, The Beatles were getting popular, and hippy style living was spreading like wild fire, and these cultures began to cast their influences over the students in Taiwan at the ending part of 60's, In most high schools, the male students were supposed to be bald and this was part of the school uniform code. The school which I was in was less strict on the hair ban. They allowed us grow hair on the top part of the head up to 2cm maximum, and yet many more rebellious boys still tested the authority by growing hair beyond the limit. So from time to time, there were serious arguments between the offenders and the disciplinary officers occurred in the school yard.So as soon as we entered university, we were free from the hair restrictions. In the campus, we saw quite a few students grew hair style of The Beatles, and most of us grew hair following the society's norm. Mine was of the average length and of the standard model in 1970 (photo taken in a school gala).

Now back to the part time jobs I involved in the three years from 1970 to 1973.

When the first school year was coming to end in June 1971, I registered myself as job seeker at the student center in the school. I knew the number of job seekers outnumbered the jobs available, however, I hoped that I was lucky enough to be given one of any jobs because I really felt I should not ask for any pocket money from my parents after high school.

And I was really lucky that I was assigned to the Central Currency Production Plant to work as assistant of its administration office. That was a 9 to 5 job, but because it was for me during the summer vacation to work in only, so I called it part time job, the first paid job in my life. I used some of the money I earned from that job to buy a transistor radio.

Then in 1972, I was offered an on call job in a film subtitle print* workshop. It was owned by my friend's big brother. My friend was there helping his brother doing the marking on the footage of the corresponding subtitle, but since he was leaving for military service, he recommended me to his brother.

When I went to the interview with the boss, he showed me what to do and told me the wage of $100 (at that time, a simple lunch costs about $4) would be paid upon completion of each movie. Averagely each movie took me 8 hours to finish on my part. I was over joyed with this offer.

Every day after school, I was asked to call my boss to see if there was any task awaiting me. If so, then I was given a start date for that job, and I went to work on it as instructed. Sometimes if the job was urgent, I had to work till midnight or even through out the night till it was done. But it was not too bad.

When I got paid a lump sum at the end of the first working month, I used part of that money to enroll myself on a Japanese course with a private institute. In another blog post, I will tell you some dramas that occurred during that period of time.

I was on that part time job till I graduated in June 1973.

I like to tell my children that it is not for the money we go for a part time job, it is for the spirit of independence and for gaining life experience we go for it during our school days.

Amituofo

* How the subtitle was done at where I worked in 1972? Nowadays the subtitle of a film of other language is done by various modern technologies. But the process of the subtitle making which I involved in 1972 was quite primitive compared to modern day's.

The process began with recording of the dialogues of the whole film in a small lab. The translator presented to watch the movie while I recorded the sound onto the tape recorder. Then I gave the recorder together with the tape to the translator after the movie. The translator listened to the tape and typed all the dialogues in sentences of proper length on the paper both the original language, normally English, and the translation. Each sentence was coded with a number.

Then this bunch of papers of the translated sentences was passed to a writer whose calligraphy was perfect. He wrote each sentence within the specified space for plate making.

Then the calligrapher's originals were made into copper letterpress through photo graphic technique with corresponding number on its back side.

While the dialogues were being made into letterpress plates, I ran the reels through a photo electrical device. This device beamed through the sound track of the reel and brought the sound out through a speaker, enabled me to trace the beginning and the end of each dialogue on the reel so I could mark on the film with the code corresponding with both of the translation's and the letterpress plate's.

Lastly my boss would run the reel through a stamp machine which applied heat on the letterpress plate that has a code corresponding to the code I marked on the film frame. After the plate had stamped each of the picture frames, the subtitle of that peculiar dialogue was then done.

A Miracle

Throughout our life, we might encounter something which we found hard to explain how it could be happening to us, and if it benefits us, then we tend to call it 'a miracle'. In my 17 years of living in New Zealand, I had this 'something' happened to me 6 years ago, and because it came to me when I was desperately in need of it, so I called it 'A Miracle'.

To tell the story, it has to be started from mid 2002.

June 2002, my mother left this world. Not long after the 49 days of mourning period was over, in August, the owner of the company where I had worked for 9 years, decided to put and end to his business. So no new stock would be coming in for sale, and two other staff would have to leave immediately. I and another colleague were to be kept till the remaining stock was sold up or till the end of August 2003, whichever came about first.

I was greatly shocked upon hearing the owner's announcement. The reason unemployment was so dreadful to me was that my two children were at their teens' stage in schools, and I was then already 51 years old with no outstanding specific skill. Although I would be still get paid to do my job after the announcement of shutting down in one year time, I knew it was very short. So I had numerous nightmares since then.

A couple of interested businessmen approached my boss to assess the possibility of buying our business. I put a great deal of hope on the prospective new owner but they discontinued the talk after a few meetings. My mood during that stage was like riding roller coaster. I had been a voluntary telephone counselor for Chinese Lifeline since 1994, and now I became their client.

I sent out my curriculum vitae to about 10 different companies to apply for jobs such as call center staff, accounting staff, receptionist, store person and etc. None of them was returned with an interview confirmation. But that was not surprising me.

In March 2003, I came across a recruitment flier of Stagecoach Bus saying they had a program which helped to put the interested applicant on the bus driving seat. I was confident with my driving skill, I could do it. "Why hadn't I thought of becoming a bus driver before?", I thought to myself.

So after having talked on the prospect of becoming a bus driver with my wife, I launched on Stagecoach website and registered my application right away. A few days later, I received a phone call from Stagecoach telling me where to go to undertake an assessment on literacy and numerical skill. I went to the specified place as told, passed the assessment and was told that the depot manager would call me to set the time and place of the interview.

On 7th April 2003, I received a call from the manager of North Shore depot telling me the interview was set on the next morning.

I think I must have performed very well in the interview because they told me right after the interview that before they hired me they had to have a yes report from their designated doctor.

On 9th April, I went to see their doctor. On 10th April, the human resources officer notified me the success of my employment and that 18th April was the day I became an employee of Stagecoach. So I submitted my formal resignation to my boss, my heart felt totally relieved.

The training took off well. I drove the bus on the vast training field for the first two days. But from the third day I noticed my feces was very dark, and it was even darker the next day. I thought this could be the result of my long term stress and the dramatic change of my career style. The fifth day still saw the worsened symptom and felt a withering mental energy. On the sixth day I was sent to sit road test for passenger endorsement and I failed. But that was OK, that would not necessarily terminate my employment, however, I seemed to have a nervous breakdown triggered by the test result that after a sleepless night, I decided to quit my dream of becoming a bus driver. The next morning, I saw the feces turned to the normal color of light brown.

I went to see doctor, and was prescribed with antidepressant pills.

I was then a real unemployed dad. The feeling was acutely painful. My previous boss was kindly taking me back but I knew there were only two months away from the shut-down date of 31st August.

I think this was when the miracle began to cut in. On 18th July, when I was preparing to leave the office, my friend called me asking if I would be interested in teaching new immigrants the basics of everything about New Zealand. She told me she was already involved in that job, and she knew the company was still taking in more program advisers to meet the rapid growing enrollments. "OF COURSE I AM INTERESTED!" I yelled into the phone. So she gave me the contact phone and e-mail address of the head of education of that company.

After I came back home, I went straight to the computer instead of having tea first after work. I brought up a blank e-mail compose page on the screen and started typing a proper message stating how I got his e-mail address, what I intended for, what I could do, and why I should be granted an interview. Also attached my CV. Checked spelling and then clicked SEND. I felt totally relieved when I came to the dinning table for dinner, and also could not believe that I had asked for an interview in an aggressive way in the e-mail.

It was Friday night when I sent that e-mail, so I did not expect a reply during the weekend, actually I anticipated it would just be ignored. I had a pessimistic thought then.

After work on Monday, 21st July, the first thing I did was opening the computer and checking e-mail. Out of my expectation, among several mails was one with the name of that manger whom I asked for an interview.

I hesitated a moment thinking what would his reply be like; "yes, we need you immediately!" or "regret to advise you that we are now fully staffed."?

Click! The mail popped open. "....you seem to be lacking of teaching experience....we would consider if you could elaborate more on your educational qualification."

I was somewhat disappointed upon reading the message at first. But the second thought that arose was that I got to fight harder for the sake of my family.

I suddenly remembered I used to be serving as a political trainer for one and half years in the air force cadet training center when I was in Taiwan. So I edited my CV by adding this bit of qualification. Wrote a mail and sent them over with fingers crossed.

The next day, Tuesday, I came back home from work in the evening. Went straight to computer and saw his name listed with other mails in the inbox.

"....would this Thursday be convenient to you for an interview? We are at ....", the e-mail read. I could not believe what I read. I thought I had misunderstood the message. I read it at least three times before I was pretty sure I was given an interview. I came to dinner and felt the meal was particularly yummy.

On the appointed time of Thursday, 24th July, I walked to the reception counter to report my arrival. A moment later, I was in the interview room with the head of education. I later knew from other staff that normally if you are chosen, you will be interviewed by the managing director on another arranged date for the final decision to be made. But for some reason the head of education asked me to wait for a moment in the room while he went to get the MD to interview me. Then I was sent home to wait for the result.

Around four o'clock in the afternoon of 30th July 2003 when I was doing my office chores, the phone rang, and I quickly recognized it was the head of education who interviewed me the other day. In the phone he told me that I was employed as Program Adviser and the commencing date was 18th August 2003.

The new job came in time, 13 days prior to the shut-down date of my old one.

In retrospection of this episode of my life, I label it "A Miracle".