End of 2012

I'm not especially in Christmas spirit or celebrating the coming new year this moment. On the contrary, I would say I had seen better days. This year was tough, both in work and in personal life. Anyway we survived and keep on walking. Thanks to my family and all the friends near or far. Have a nice holiday season and wish everyone a better next year.

My Son's Show Night

This evening my son called me when I was still in the office. He asked me to go home earlier because he and his sister has a show to perform. Later on he called again to remind me to drink water and go to the bathroom at 7:30pm because when the show begins at 8pm I will not have time to do so.

I arrived home to discover that it was not just a small event. It was huge. He prepared a theater in the study with seats all lined up, a small stage made by building blocks which he can stand on, and all gadgets he needs in his programs. He even prepared tickets for each one, with hand-writing Chinese characters he probably asked my mom to write for him to look when he drew.


He asked me and my daughter to sit on the seats and began to perform. The show includes lighting, magic, and drawing on a canvas, with many different lighting and tools. He was thoughtful enough to invite audiences to go on stage to assist his performance. In one of the program he asked his sister to stand in a circle, then quickly took her to another room to hide while asking the audience to close their eyes so that when the audience open their eyes a few seconds later the assistant was disappeared. :) It was really a great show. I enjoyed a lot!

I was inspired by his program, so we went to the room to play with the flashlight and camera to draw in the air. This night was the best night ever.

Life is Beautiful

A good friend C is starting a new life in another country. He just finished a grand tour after years of working, and now he's ready to begin a new journey to unknown frontiers. Wish everything goes well and he will find happiness at the end of the road.

This photo is irrelevant, just want to show my beautiful girl. :D

Vegas

Had a biz trip to Vegas last week. No a penny spent on slot machine. Not watched a single show.

First time driving in USA. Driving was not a problem, but without a GPS was. I got too dependent on a GPS so suddenly I can't drive without one. It was especially hard at nights when it's hard to see the signs, and I often drove onto wrong lane so had to turn or could not turn, and thus needed to find another way.

First Dinner on 85th Floor at Taipei 101

(Image from Wikipedia)

It's been a long time since my last post. I've been very busy because I'am also doing community service in the building I live besides work and family. Now my schedule is always full even on weekends.

This Wednesday I had a dinner on the 85th floor of Taipei 101. We had a whole-day meeting with two important Dutch customers and then had the dinner with our chairman. It was the first time I visited the top areas of this building, although I live only 15 minutes away and go there often. The view was magnificent at night, with beautiful lights below and clouds flying by the window. Maybe I will take my son to the observatory someday when he's older.

Day 3

Allie almost fully regained her mobility and spirit. Our little daughter is still in ICU. Her respiratory rate is improved and oxygen level stablized, but today her heart beat often drops to under 100/min when I visited her. Keep observating...

Bad Day

Today I missed a milestone on project beta release and got complained. Then, I fired a colleague. Then, I went out at the time that happened to be a military exercise that no traffic was allowed for half an hour. And then, I got hit by a truck. Fortunately, I'm not harmed.

Taipei Lantern Festival 2009

New Year

Just returned to work from 9-day New Year vacation. Allie and I took one extra day off, so it was ten days for us. We went 300 km south to Kaohsiung for family reunion, a must-do but not always pleasant tradition. My grandfather and grandmother, now in their eighties, are not the kind of people you want to spent your holiday with. Actually, there were two small argues and one big fight when we were there. It may be the last time I follow this tradition to ruin my holidays.

After Kaohsiung, we then went back north to Tamshui and stayed with Allie's family. Yoshi had a good time there because there was more space for him to run, and there were many toys to play while his cousin was away.

When we finally returned to Taipei, Yoshi fell asleep right after dinner time--very very early for him compared to his usual schedule. He became very shy to strangers in the vacation--maybe there were too many new people and new places to him. That summarized the vacation, if not with the surprise that came on Sunday.

One o'clock in Sunday morning, Yoshi got a fever which reached 39 degrees. I was not too worried because he seemed still as energetic as usual. My mom "strongly suggested" that we took him to a nearby clinic on Sunday morning, so we did. On the way home, he began to said that his belly aches. In the evening he had diarrhea. At sunrise time of Monday, the fever raised to 40 degrees and he shivered badly. So, we took him to ER. The resident on duty was an interesting one. He finishes his diagnosis very quickly but spent a lot of time teaching me the reason of fevers and signs should be alerted. I guess he had saw too many cases far worse then Yoshi so in this case there was no need to go to ER. He also knows that such thing will happen again and again as Yoshi grows up, so he tried to prepare me for that.

Yoshi's fever now lasts two to three hours at 40 degrees, and the peak repeats every five to six hours. This is only the second day in the progress, still several days to go before he recovers from this virus infection and develops new immunity for it.

Slander

Definition on Wikipedia:
(n) law, defamation (also called calumny, libel, slander, and vilification) is the communication of a statement that makes a false claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government or nation a negative image. Slander refers to a malicious, false, and defamatory spoken statement or report, while libel refers to any other form of communication such as written words or images.

There are times when people accuse you something unreal, you have no way to clear your name. If that someone is one that is your closest one, you even have no one to talk to. That is how life is like--full of shit. What ever people said, heaven knows and time will tell.

Good and Bad

(picture from Nolita)

Welcome! New Year. There is always new hopes and plans in the beginning of a year, and this year seems really exciting.

First, the good news. My wife Allie is now three-months pregnant. The expected date of delivery is July 25, 2009. Next month we'll know if we are welcoming a male or female Leo. Allie's appetite is complete different this time. Sometimes she gets hungry very soon after a big meal, and sometimes she does not feel like eating anything. Every baby has its own preference.

As for bad news, Allie and I argue (or fight) very often in the past few weeks. Partly because of her work not going as smooth as she expected -which led to lots of pressure in our lives- and partly because of (I guess) unstable mood in pregnancy. Working in the same office is not easy, because there is inevitable conflict in the roles in our work and personal life.

Merry Christmas to You

My Mac Mini is still broken because I was too lazy to bring it for repairment. So, instead of the lovely designs in Mac, I tried the service of a young Taiwanese company called http://www.elucard.com. Well, yes, I know. I'm busy, and it's free.

Merry Christmas

It's been a very busy month at work and also in personal life. Allie and I went to a potential distributor to do sales training in the morning, then came home and pick up my son to have a late lunch with her ex-colleagues. And there was a Christmas party in our community tonight, so I hurried home to prepare the dish we promised to offer for the party. What made this even challenging was that I didn't sleep last night until 5 AM, and tomorrow I have two important meetings to attend. Wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year despite the global economic challenges.

Life and Death

Just heard a terrible news. The fireman killed in action is the husband of my colleague's sister. They were married less than two years, and have a boy just nine months old. My colleague, the sister, is expecting her first baby next week.

Yoshi Running at Daan Park

We took Yoshi to Daan Park today. He loves running on the big, green field of grass, and was curious to watch squirrels climbing up and down on the trees. We went to the flower market afterwards, but he was too tired and fell asleep.

L'IDIOT

We celebrated mom's birthday at L'Idiot. Food was delicious, service was good, and Yoshi was happy.

Update - Yoshi and Politics

More videos of Yoshi on YouTube.

I was extremely busy in October, and therefore this blog was squeezed out of my calendar. Yoshi turned one and half, and he is now making obvious progress in talking and walking. He is very curious and adventurous, so it's hard to keep him in one place whole day. In the past two weeks, he began to stick to his mother for some reason in stead of hanging with me, so I have more time to read my books. A child at this young age seems still have access to some unknown source of information, so I often get surprised that he knows something he is not supposed to know.

Life is all about choices. We choose our works, our friends, our neighborhoods, and many other factors of life. All these choices are related. Sometimes you have to live with the results of your earlier choices or choices made by people of your earlier choices -- and you can't complain because it's your choice of life.

on politics, I would vote for Obama if I were a US citizen, but I doubt that everyone will live happily thereafter. However, in the past two Presidential campaigns, the candidates all demonstrated the maturity of democracy in USA. Al Gore is a real statesman who I think may be the only one for the century. Obama of course represents a whole new era, but I think McCain also shows his dignity fighting a losing battle yet refusing to call for racism.

Politicians are reflection of the voters, as media is a reflection of the audience. Last week was a week of disorder and violence in Taiwan according to what the media shows us, and Taiwan looks like going to the edge of riot or martial law. But in fact, I tried very hard to catch up with the reports last weekend because I had meetings with Japanese companies and other customers without noticing a bit of chaos in my daily life. There are always people on both ends of extremes in any society, but the media made the 5% looks like 50%. Until the audience knows how to choose, and until the voters knows what to choose, this is what we can get.

Big Fight Out of Shit

Last night Allie and I had a big fight on the way home. She accused me of being unkind to her. I didn't want to talk about such non-stop topic over and over again every other week. When she began to say if she were some other girls I wouldn't have treat her that way, she really stepped on my red-line. I hate to be accused for something I didn't do. The logic was, she accused me because she cared. I didn't respond means I didn't care. If I say something she didn't like, I don't love her anymore. SO BE IT! Now it's WAR!

An Unusual Journey

I had an unusual trip flying home on BR015 from LAX to TPE. The first sign I noticed was that there were three people required wheelchair assistance when boarding. Actually this was the first time I had wheelchair passengers with me on the same flight instead of the more common people with infants. But, l didn't realize that it was only the beginning.

The flight seemed normal. Smooth takeoff, terrible airplane meals, and soon it was time for sleep. When we were in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, I heard someone cried out loud in the back. I thought it was a child who felt boring or uncomfortable during the long flight. Several minutes later, the cabin crew broadcasted and asked for medical professionals - just like in the movies. A male Caucasian two rows in front of me stood up when went back with a flight attendant. After a while, he came back with the flight attendant and the flight attendant was taking notes and asking questions for a long time by the man.

Later - I could not tell for how long because I did not wear my watch - the Captain announced that due to medical situation, we will turn to Haneda Airport (HND) in Tokyo. I suppose all the cabin crew are too young so that they have never heard of this airport before and confused it with Narita (NRT). We landed in Tokyo around four o'clock local time. Emergency crew of Tokyo came on board and performed CPR or other measures necessary for a short while, according to passengers in the same cabin with the ill man. Then, they took him down to a hospital. It seems the man who travels alone had a heart-attack, and perhaps died before any of the doctors examined him -while the cabin crew was calling his name and shaking him for several minutes. I wonder if they will have nightmares when they realized that the time wasted may have killed the man. He left on the plane gifts he bought for his family or friends, who were still in bed and expected to welcome him when they woke up. But, it will never happen.

It took more than two hours in Tokyo to finish paper works and refuel, and another three to fly to Taipei. Life is unpredictable. Attached is a new video of my son. Cease time when you still can, friends.

YouTube Upload Sucks

I tried to upload to YouTube, but somehow it is always very hard for me to successfully upload a video. My video was small (under 20 MB), short (within 2 minutes), and I've tried different codecs (MPEG2, MP4, H264...), but more than often I got an error after a long wait. On the contrary, uploading to metacafe is always quick and successful.