The Journey of Solitude

Since I came back from Hawaii trip last December, my boss had complained about me taking too many study leaves until I showed him the department website which I created a couple of weeks ago. His management indeed disappoints me a lot. I hardly feel his support on either work or exams. In fact, the first time I showed him the website was six months ago. He has no idea about why I created the website and he can’t see how powerful such tool can be. I was asked to present my work of model improvement at the department meeting last month, so I decided to present my work by web pages, using basic HTML with Notepad. It turned out to be a success. Everyone was surprised at the website. My boss was very delighted. He told me to show my work to the big bosses, so I’m going to present the website and the framework to them next Wednesday in order to obtain one or two more head counts for our team.Read More »Working Life

It seems that most managers don’t know how to ask for more for his team, especially actuaries. They are always asked to produce the required… Read More »Learn how to ask for more

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