Life 生活

Christmas atmosphere gets stronger after Thanksgiving. That is what I feel in my heart. Most people in Taiwan do not celebrate Christmas. Neither do I. But I have very strong feeling toward that holiday. It’s like a burning candle that warms my heart in the chilly winter. On the Christmas Eve of 2004, I went to the Cologne Cathedral with my classmates while I studied in the Netherlands. It’s an unforgettable trip to me. The night was full of music and joys, but the air was so silent. My heart was not there after all.Read More »Christmas is coming

My three bosses: team manager, chief actuary, and CFO, joined the company after me in October, July, and August, respectively. I joined the company in last April. Yes, we are all new employees in this company. This early month the chief actuary did the appraisal of performance for my team since the team manager just joined. He had to choose one out of eight in our department to be the ‘worst”. That is the policy from HR. Since he is new to the company, he doesn’t know who he should pick up. So, lucky me, I was the one. He explained that it’s not really about my performance. He thinks that my salary is higher than other team members and I took study leave of 20 days which might help me to pass the exam, so it doesn’t matter for me to get the worst performance ranking (better performance ranking results in salary increment next year). I told him I don’t care, but I still think the reason is funny. Do staff with high salary not have the right to be encouraged or promoted? What is the appraisal about? The boss doesn’t dare to make a right judgement which can keep the good ones and weed the bad ones. He doesn’t think I’m the bad one, but now I feel I am the bad one.Read More »Appraisal of salary or performance

For most people, it may be the easiest to choose not to do or say anything against the power. Keeping silence is what exactly the… Read More »The violence of silence

After senior high school, I have not spent more than two years in one place or institute. Two years in the first university, one year in another to prepare for transfer exam, two years in the one from which I graduated, and one year in Canada as an exchange student during my last year in the university. Then I spent one year and eight months in military service, followed by one year for my first full-time job, one year for a part-time job, less than one and half years in the Netherlands, 5 months for my second full-time job, two years in Boston, and nine months in a consulting firm. Now it has been three months since my current job started.Read More »Changes

My father is soon to be 82 years old. He is still working everyday, from day to night. He runs his own store for more than 50 years. It is fair to say that he has spent all his life in his store. Now all his children can make their own money, but he still insists to work everyday. My mother wants him to retire, so she doesn’t need to worry about his health or his business. I can’t understand why my father enjoys working so much. Does he love money much more than his family?Read More »Father

Due to some reason, I’ve not been allowed to celebrate my birthday since high school. So birthday doesn’t mean much to me, and celebration is not interesting to me either. Sometimes my friends would still have dinner with me on my birthday or send me wishes. One friend sends me birthday presents every year. Perhaps that is the meaning of celebration of birthday: reminding you of the love you have from your friends and family.Read More »Another birthday alone

This is the first article of my brand new blog. I’ve had several blogs in various websites, but now I decide to have one on my own website. I’ve also tried many blog modules, but they seem too complicated to me. After I got an iMac in May, I think it is good enough to use iWeb to create web pages and maintain the website. We will see how it goes.Read More »The beginning