Monday, February 25, 2008

2008 Lantern Festival

The 2008 Lantern Festival is held in Tainan County (Solar City, Southern Taiwan Science Park) from Feb. 21 to Mar. 2. To accommodate the enormous daily flood of visitors from all over Taiwan, the Taiwan Railways Administration even built a temporary station (NanKe station, located between the Shanhua and the SinShih stations) next to the venue. Passengers can buy tickets for any non-express trains to Shanhua (South bound) or Sinshih (North bound) and get out of the trains at the next stop.

The theme lantern of this year is "Good Fortune in the Year of the Mouse" and the secondary themes are Heavenly Descent of the Kylin, Striving Towards a Distant Goal, Nine Carps Forming a Dragon, and One Hundred Birds Attending the Phoenix. For more information, click on the following link: http://taiwan.net.tw/2008TaiwanLantern/abouten.html

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Chi Wei Mountain

On sunny days, the white pavillion sitting at the very top of Chi Wei Mountain lures me every time I drive by, being the only man made structure on the mountain chain surrounding this valley, it sits like a crowning jewel, attrating all eyes to it, despite that, I've never had the courage to climb the mountain alone.

The pavillion looks like a miniature of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, A.K.A. the National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall, standing on top of the mountain overlooking the stretching mountains and towns of Chi-Shan and Meinong. On cloudy days, parts of the pavillion are veiled in mist of ever changing perspectives.

The first day of the 2008 lunar new year, I made my pilgrimage to the mountain from the west side entrance which takes about 40min to reach the pavillion. The track starts with an easy winding road that is paved with concrete. A gate that was installed to keep goats from messing up the mountain separates the concrete road designed for warming up for the challenge--941 steep steps that leads to the pavillion. Big gaps between the steps, tilted and crumbled, and a stiff wind coming from nowhere made the last 1/3 of the track the hardest part of the trek. Views from the pavillion were stupendous: a skyline of stretching mountains from the northeast; Meinong valley from the southeast and Chi Shan township from the northwest, provides a 360 degree panorama. Even the mighty wind couldn't be a match for the fortification and softened into a light breeze. That was the perfect start for the very first day of the 2008 lunar new year.


Chi Wei Mountain belongs to the Yushan mountain group. From a distance, the shape of the mountain looks like an ancient flag flying in the wind, so it was named “Flag Tip Mountain.”

Starting from either the east or the west side entrance, a visitor can walk up for about 40 minutes and reach the pavilion at the west end of the mountain. From there, one can embrace views of the Central Mountains all around you, and if the weather is good, the Taiwan Strait and an 85-floor skyscraper in Kaoshiung City may also be visible.

Two new entrances have been opened recently; they also lead to the pavilion and continue further to Lei Yin Temple. It takes about 3 hours to finish the trip.



http://www.maolin-nsa.gov.tw/maolin/content.php?L2_CODE=0009691&lang=en


Friday, January 11, 2008

Office Jungle

Based on the studies of animal behaviour, an article published in the New Scientist Carriers Guide, It's a jungle out there..., has concluded that the office and the jungle are suprisingly similar in certain ways: both are ruled by stringent hierarchies; they are grounded in the need for cooperation; and complicated by the drive to compete. Add in the risk of hostile takeovers, a marketplace of favours and favorites, branzen social opportunism and a long-held tradition of brown-nosing; the office is a brutal battlefield and in order to survive, one should adapt 6 rules from the wild.

Teamwork Pays
Altruistic behaviour can be used as an investment- It's a business strategy. However, there is a dilemma: you do want to be at the top of your corporation, but it has competitors. If you don't get your act together within the company, it's going to go under.

Be nice, and show it!
Being seen to be good at cooperation appears to be just as important as the act itself. So buying a round of drinks for your colleagues might be more important than you think: it shows you are willing to pitch in for the group. Still, you will be judged for your cooperation skills on the job though.

Sucking up can pay
Brown-nosing in the corperate world might seem despicable, but keeping yourself in good grace with the executive set can be useful -they are part of the team too.

Be a good boss
Never knowing when or why your boss is going to explode is a strong incentive to always stay in line. But though this behaviour might bring you supreme power, excessive boorishness carries its own problems. Being a good boss is a careful balancing act of control, leadership and motivation. Keep briefcase throwing to a minimun. Because unlike monkeys, workers can quit.

Kiss and make up
Conflict resolution is more likely to occur in close relationships, between highly cooperative relatives or members of coalitions. It is vital to repair critical working relationships. Studies on primates show reconciliation reduces stress and decresses the chances of subsequent flare-ups.

Play fair
Don't take undue credit for jobs done collectively, or people will likely stop wanting to work with you.

Despite the fact that the 6 rules mentioned in the article are cliche, the idea of learning from the jungle is quite interesting and maybe it's the first/only article that confers scientific basis on these rules. In reality, however, the office rule 101: Boss is always right, should be followed and practiced upon any other rules in most scenarios. An open letter from a boss to his employees published in a very famous business magazine in Taiwan mentioned that the boss isn't always right, and it's the employees' obligation to remind their boss before projects have been implemented and there're no turning back. It's a very straight forward idea yet it takes a CEO from the top 5 businesses in Taiwan to preach to his employees and got published in the business magazine. The truth is not every boss can stand correction and the risk is not something every employee is willing to take. It's a jungle out there, feast or be the feast.

Struggling, Taiwan managed to be one of the little 4 dragons in East Asia. We also created lots of spoiled bosses in the process. A common phenomenon in Taiwan is that most people can't(or won't) take all of his/her given vacation. An unspoken consensus in the office in Taiwan is that only dispensable people can leave their works for over a few weeks and are never short of supply as replacements. The idea has become rooted in the minds of both bosses and employees making vacation requests an art form.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Guess your number--Brain Teaser

I got an email from Eric Patterson in Canada to a link that led to a website hosting a flash based game called Guess your number. No matter how many times I tried it, they always put my number behind the right door. How does this work? Well, here is the answer:

First, the program narrows the numbers to guess down to 5 by the infomation of the color you provided. Let's say you pick the number 7 and after you follow the instruction:" Say the number out loud two times" like a fool, you click on the black color which gives the program the inference that the numbers to guess are 7, 8, 11,19 and 24. The next step is to pick a color from a 3x3 square box which serves no purpose in the guessing process.


Step 3 is to choose the house that has your number in it and this is the step that gives away your answer. Pay attention to the numbers left to guess (number 7, 8, 11,19 and 24) are now separated into 5 houses respectively. By clicking on the house E, the answer is unveiled. The next crystal ball step, like the color picking in step two, serves nothing but increases the mysterious atmosphere. Finally, the basic flash programing echos the answer behind the first door you pick.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Money Crazy

One of my colleagues who just returned from Vietnam told me that she saw one of my pictures of Vietnam published in a travel magazine. I did sign a contract last year with Red Images which is a stock photo agency specializing in Asian photographs but I didn't recall the series of Vietnam photos were included.

By far, I haven't got much reward from my photoshooting habit. I signed Red Images as my photos licensor for a few photos taken in Chinese Lantern Festival in 2005, but I still haven't gotten any royalties. I guess the company hasn't found any buyers for me yet. I got a digital camera for participating in the 2004 chinese global photo contest and won the honorable mention with the picture taken in Cambodia(above). I sold the camera at half of the market price in about 2 weeks after I got it because I had to use 6 dry batteries to take about 16 pictures. I was excited by the news, some travel magazine plagerized my picture and earned lots of money by selling it. It's time to teach them a lesson and get my compensation.

The news spread much faster than I expected in my institutes. One secretary told me that a photographer was paid NT$ 800,000 in compensation for being plagerized for one of his pictures; another secretary told me that she could arrange a meeting for me to talk to the lawyer of the institutes. I was all excited and dreamed about how to spend my NT$ 800,000! Maybe spend 200,000 for a Nikon D3 camera? Another 200,000 for a nice trip to the north pole...?

So I asked my colleague to find that magazine for me and it turned out that the magazine was published in 2004...a year before I had been there. My dreams of money, holidays, cameras and payback all dissappeared in a flash.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Mekong Delta

The Lab technicians asked me where I would like to spend the weekend? I told them I had seen most of the tourist arractions in the HCMC and this time I might join a local tour for a 2 days with one night of a deeper tour in Mekong Delta. Friday, they told me the trip to the Mekong delta had been arranged and they would pick me up at my hotel at 5:30 leaving me no room to object.

I was expecting a tour with everybody in the Lab in an ambulance, like the last time we went to Vung Tau beach until I saw a minibus, a driver and a tour guide waiting in front of the hospital. The guide explained the itinerary in Vietnamese and translated in English through one of the technicials but I had a hard time to pick up anything from her Vietnamese accent which soon became my lullaby. I woke up and found myself next to the Mekong river bank in My Tho after a two hour drive. After breakfast, another tour guide joined us and reviewed the itinerary for me in English which is summarized as follows:

Visit Vinh Trang Pagoda in My Tho. Take a boat trip to Thoi Son Island, visit a coconut candy workshop. Continue to visit fruit orchards and enjoy honey tea and fresh fruit with a traditional music performance. Take a boat and paddle through the canal in Thoi Son Island to Mekong river then switch to a bigger boat to Phoenix Island. Lunch at a local restaurant in Ben Tre and back to My Tho. Visit the snake farm in Dong Tam, then the journey home. (Routes on Google map below)

A combination of Chinese and India architectural styles, Vinh Trang Pagoda consists of five buildings and two ornamental yards. Inside the pagoda, Chinese calligraphy engraved pillars, statues of Chinese deities, in the style of Chinese temples dominate worshippers' eyes. Some bricks on the roof were replaced by transparent plastic for natural lighting; rays of light reflecting on the wafting smoke from joss sticks create a sacred ambience.

The rest of the trip I found insipid. To me, visiting coconut candy workshops and tasting honey tea and seasonal fruits was a way of stalling for time and selling products to tourists. One of the most puzzling destinations was the Phoenix Island. The island looked like a kindergarten from the boat: 9 dragon pillars scaterred over a square; a globe hanging to steel frames on top of it a space ship, apollo, flying into space; two towers rise from a Vietnam map which represent the two major cities in Vietnam, Hanoi and Saigon; a concrete cave extends toward to the towers creating an arch between the two where the coconut monk's floating pagoda is situated. The highlight of the weirdness on this island is that you can pay 2000VND to fish for crocodiles. Biography of Coconut monk is exhibited in the lobby of a hotel that I don't think is still open for accommodation. Pavilions were built on the other side of the hotel for dining.




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