I've been a bad blogger.

For my friends who actually read this from time to time, my apologies for not keeping it updated more frequently. Since how I make a living is now by writing, typing out my thoughts has gotten easier and faster, but it's really the last thing I want to do when I get home from work. I just feel like vegging and just watching some TV or chatting with friends.

Speaking of work, it's been a quick 7 months, and my resume is already padded with accomplishments that most jobs would require 2 years to accumulate. It's definitely good that I'm getting so much experience, but man does it wear down on me. I now know why my company is profitable. It's because the wages here are so cheap, and they get so much value out of their employees. Most employees show up around 9am, and leave around 9pm. That's a solid 11hr work day, with an hour for lunch, which a lot of people eat from their desk and continue to work. Our lunch and dinner costs are subsidized, but it's a small price for them to pay for all the extra work they get out of their employees. Even though I'm only 31, I'm one of the oldest people in the group not counting the director and my manager. Most people in my group are in their mid to late 20's and have not been there for very long. It seems to be a burn and churn type work environment, with most people staying on for two years to pad the resume, then bounce when they get too burned out. It's a shame they don't offer better benefits to employees to retain them, because training new people up to speed every two years is not very productive or cost efficient. 0 days of vacation the first year, and only 7 days in years 1-3? count me unimpressed. I'd be interested to see the attrition rate data for a company this size.

Enough bitching about work. Since my last post, I've been to Hong Kong, which was fantastic, though I think I gained a few pounds. I also went to Singapore last weekend for my birthday, where I spent time with my brother, sister-in-law. My dad and his g/f tagged along as well, so it was a bit of a family trip. It was good to spend time together as a family, but I don't think I'll be doing any more traveling with my dad. I can handle him in small doses, but not extended sessions longer than 2 days.

I hope to be doing some traveling for work soon, maybe even a trip or two to the states! I'm really hoping to stop by and visit, I miss you all!

It's been a long December...

It will have been 14 years since that song came out from the Counting Crows, yet it still resonates with me. The soulful lyrics bring me back to those lonely December nights where I felt I had no direction in life, and the month just seemed to stretch on forever. The weather being cold, drab and overcast only added to the misery.

This December marks 20 years since my mom passed away so unexpectedly. My family tells me that I changed so much overnight, from a rambunctious 10 year old to one that was very quiet. While my character change was dramatic, her death and subsequent losses the next few years made me the person I am today. Strong willed. Independent. Caring. For that, I am happy in the fact that I know I am the kind of man that would make a mother proud of her son. Yet I feel incomplete. There is still a yearning to explore and enjoy life and all its wonders and mysteries, but also at the same time settle down and raise a family. Who knows what the next year will bring, but like the lyrics say, "maybe this year will be better than the last."

"Congratulations! We've chosen you..."

"...as our host speaker for this year's Global Sales Meeting dinner!"

Me: "Uh, thanks? I didn't realize I had signed up for this....honor?"

"Well, we were looking for someone who is cute, funny, and can speak English decently. So naturally, you are a great choice!"

Me: "Ok....who were the other candidates?"

"No one else, you were first and only choice!"

Me: "Fuuuuuuuun."

So yes, I will be the host along with another girl at my work's annual Global Sales Meeting dinner, where marketing and sales from across the globe converge in Taiwan for...I honestly have no idea. Not only do I get to host, I get to write my own speech too, so yay? At the very least, it will make me very visible since I'll be speaking in front of 300+ people and who knows what I could parlay this into. The dinner is being held at the Grand Regent Formosa Hotel, so it should be pretty good food if nothing else.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Greetings from Taiwan and Happy Thanksgiving! Some of you have asked if I was able to eat any turkey here, and the answer is yes! I enjoyed a full thanksgiving meal at an expat bar with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and yes, even pumpkin pie. It was a bit pricey at $700NT ($23USD) but it was a nice change of pace, and I met a lot of new people, including a couple of Texans! Hopefully they can make it out to the UT/A&M game watching party I organized at another expat bar tomorrow night, so I can finally get the Taiwan Texas Exes network up and running after all these months.

Christmas Creep

No, it's not some fat perv that annoys you during Christmas. For those who don't now what Christmas creep is, it's the progressive creeping of Christmas (or any other holiday) decorations, songs, ads, etc. well before the month of December (or respective month). I thought living in Taiwan, I would be immune to this. Unfortunately, it's just as bad here, if not worse. Exiting the MRT mear my house back in October, I heard some Christmas songs blaring from one of the many shopping malls. Again a soli two months before Christmas, and even a month before Thanksgiving, the Taiwanese were already exposed to the creep. A near majority of the people in Taiwan are raised Buddhist, so the meaning of Christmas is lost to them. So to find such an an abundance of Christmas decorations for sale near where I live was quite surprising, and even a bit nostalgic. Christmas is not officially observed in Taiwan, but up until recently, the day was a holiday, coincidentally because the Taiwanese declaration was signed on that day back in the 1950's. Rest assured, even on Christmas day, it'll probably be warm enough for me to wear a short sleeved shirt and khaki shorts.

Privacy, please?

No one ever really wants to use a public bathroom, let alone go number 2 in one. But when you do use one, and inevitably, we all have to, you would expect to get some semblance of privacy. Well, that's the US way of thinking. You get almost none in Taiwan in the public restrooms, with cleaning ladies cleaning the urinal next to you when you're doing your business or mopping the floor and getting some splash on you. I figured that was just in public, but oh no, it's the same at companies as well. Regardless of what's going on, those cleaning ladies barge in and start cleaning away. It's like the US Postal service slogan, "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" but for cleaning ladies. I half expected them to knock on the bathroom door to offer me an industrial roll of toilet paper. They do it to the girls room as well, but at least they are the same sex. Although I'm pretty sure that a male cleaner would get hit or slapped if he went in to the women's room to try and clean it if a girl was in there.

ACCESS DENIED

I had my first taste of dealing with the ASUS corporate structure today, and let me tell ya, it's all about CYA over here. I happened to have two separate issues at around the same time which set me back about two hours of doing work. The first issue I had was with my work badge, which was a temporary "Overseas Visitor" badge. These badges not only get you onto the campus, but what floors you have access to (ASUS HQ is 16 floors). Also on the card is an allowance for lunch and if you work OT, dinner. With an OV badge, I got 200ntd a day, which is about 50% more than what the locals get,but all dumped into the card's balance at once. My coworker likes starbucks a lot, so in addition to the breakfast/lunch/dinner meals, he would get some coffee from Starbucks, which start at about 100ntd. This put him over his monthly allowance a bit early, and we had to go through HR to add more money to it from my department's budget. But they figured since it happened to him, it would happen to me soon, and I should go ahead and top off my card. This is where the fun begins. Apparently, I'm classified as a contractor/freelancer, which means I don't need to be in the office and can technically do the job from wherever I have an Internet connection. Because of this, they change my badge access from OV to visitor, which means my floor access is restricted to 4 floors. Oh yeah, I can't use the super convenient rear entrance for employees, and have to go all the way around to the main entrance for visitors, an extra 5 minute walk. HR was so adamant on this because of my status and was unwilling to change, even though I've already been here a month and I'm doing the same job as my coworker, but he was a transfer from Singapore. Another coworker had been helping me out translating all the stuff I didn't understand, and he was annoyed as well. Apparently, after we got back to our floor, the HR department contacted our director and lodged a formal complaint at us and the "attitude" we showed towards them. The HR department, and to an extent, the entire corporate structure here, is so ass backwards where it takes a mountain of paperwork to get the smallest thing like adding a pittance of an amount to a card. Companies should enact a "common sense" rule besides the rule, "is this good for the company?".

That was run in number one. Number two deals with the MIS department, or better known in the states as the IT department. There's an entire floor dedicated to just IT, and it's crazy the amount of people they have to support, since there's about 3000 employees at HQ. Not long after lunch, all of my inter/intranet access was shut down. Not knowing what was going on, I checked with my coworker, and his access was still up, so I moved on to my translator friend for some assistance. I checked my Ethernet port at my cube, since I'm quite familiar in dealing with various levels of IT. he called them up, told them what was going on, then finally gave them my port number. They talked for a bit, hung up, then told me that my access was shut down to "unusual activity" with a google account. As it turns out, there were over 4600 requests to a google site that they were not familiar with, way more than any other person in the entire building, so they shut it down as a preventative measure. Turns out that 4600+ requests were from my google voice extension I was using in Chrome. I use it to communicate with a few friends here and there, but even when I'm not using it, it still autochecks every few minutes. I went up to the IT floor, they asked what I was using, and I showed them, and they just asked me to disable the extensions, which I was fine to do. After that, I was on my way and back up and working. Since they don't have gvoice phone numbers here in Taiwan, they saw no need to shut down access to those ports. I sure showed them :) I don't have the extension running anymore, but the access is still there, so feel free to send me a text if you're bored ;)

I had posted another version of this story from my iPhone, but for some reason I can't find this post, and another I wrote, so I'm re-publishing it. Most of it is was written that day, but the last little bit was finished just now, as I was mid thought when the MRT got to my stop. Maybe it'll show up again, who knows.