Good Bye to our from desk receptionist

Our front desk receptionist, Xio(Little) Pan Pan (in Brown), is leaving at the end of this month. She has been the receptionist here for three years, and finally deceided to get a new job somewhere else. The new receptionist Su, will start working on 1,1,2006. Good luck to Xio Pan Pan, good luck at the new place. We will all miss you, and feel free to come back and visit thirty xio didi (little brother) or da gege (big brother).

So the day goes on....

It has been a while since I wrote anything on my blog. Yes, I have been slacking off. Sorry!! My work has been kind of up to down lately. Sometimes I just feel like running away from this boring place. I found it was hard to manage a group of people, also hard to deal with unreasonable people. What is rule? What is law? What is bs? I want to ask them. I finally let it all out last night and went head to head with my dorm manager last night. I didn't care if he was going to report me, or even punish me. I just can't stand someone that talks about rules and doesn't obey them. I was like a monster, coming out of cage, biting him so hard that he couldn't even stand up again. (I didn't really bite him, more like yelling) Maybe I over did it a little, but I just couldn't help it. He smokes in his room, which is totally not allowed. I asked what if your room start on fire, who is responsible? I never got an answer. There were few more things that we argued about, but pretty much he tried to explain himself to avoid admitting the faults. After my opening fire, my buddies started to questioning him more. Over all, many of our problems got solved. It's just that people was surprised I, The Nice Sean Lai, stood up and started to yell at the dorm manager. My blood pressure was high, my head was dizzy, my hair was probably smoking, and my eyes was probably fiery red. At the end, it was a peaceful ending. He admitted some of this fault, and we took some of our rights back. We won, but I don't know if this is just the beginning of our nightmare, or if this is the happy ending.
There are still more unreasonable managements in this department, and many of us are trying to reason with the big boss, who has been working here for the past 12 years. For 12 years, he never got promoted. Why? I wonder... I feel pity for him, I feel sorry for him. I think he needs to go to a psychologist. He actually wrote "disloyal, not righteous, unkind" on someone's official department transferring letter. He thinks people who try to get promoted and leave this place is trying to betray him. He is old, he can stay here and get paid until he retired if he want, BUT he shouldn't stop someone, who is not even 30 and has the ability to get higher achievement than he can ever reached, from leaving this shit hole.
I don't know how long I can stand him...
to be continued...

Christmas~ Alone in Taipei but! Best Christmas Gift ever!

This Christmas was lonely for me, it didn't quite go the way I want it to be. I went to a movie, The Promise, and had dinner with few friends. It wasn't really fun at all, probably 'cause everything cost too much. The movie ticket was 10 dollar, and it was reduced to military special already. Don't even want to mentioned the meal I had. I didn't really enjoy it too much. The weekend before Christmas, I went out and snapped some pictures. Lately I have been walking around the city with a camera on my hand. Trying to capture Taipei, trying to understand Taipei.

I called Taryn's parents on Christmas eve while it's already Christmas here. It was nice to hear from everyone again, knowing that everyone is well and safe. Good to know that those two little kids are growing up and still remember me.

Also I received the best Christmas gift, well, I wouldn't be able to get it until March. Taryn decided to come visit!! Yeah!! I was so happy that I want to jump on the bed.. But I didn't, cause the bed here is too shitty. I really miss her!! Thanks Taryn. Love U.

Taiwanese English School Christmas Show

Last week I went to this junior high school's English department for their Christmas Show. My high school friend happened to teach there. They had Christmas song singing, and also ginger bread housing decoration. It wasn't really “ginger bread“, it was more like cracker house. And the singing wasn’t very nice either; it was more like screaming Halloween edition silent night. Overall it was cute to see tons of two-graders dancing around and trying to sing Si”r”ent Night, Ho”r”y night. I was amazing by the ginger bread house; to me they are more like the candy house in the kid’s storybook. It was nice to be at this event anyway.

The End

My grandpa's funeral was hosted on November 31st. It was probably one of my saddest days of my life. All the family members gathered, at least 300 hundreds people came to the ceremonies. It was decorated with hundreds of lilies and many different kinds of flowers. Never in my life I saw my uncles, aunts, and my dad cried so bad. My dad looked so tired because he has been watching over my grandpa for the past three years. After my grandpa had passed away, he was busy running around trying to take care of the funeral. I feel happy for him that he doesn’t have to drive to the hospital everyday now, at the same time I feel happy for my grandpa. He finally rested in peace. No more pain, no more tubes in his throat, no more medication. Just lying there peacefully.
Many weird things happened too during the month of funeral. In Chinese culture, Buddhism believes that on the 7th day for 49 days straight, the soul will come back to the family house and visit everyone. So on each 7th day we have to have a ceremonies for my grandpa. During the ceremony, they Buddha Priest (don’t know how I should call them.) anyway, they asked the “spirit” question by tossing two coins. One head and one tail means “yes”, two heads means “happy”, two tails means “no”. And to get a confirmed “yes” you need to get three of it in a row. Personally I am a statistics major, and even I don’t believe statistics can explain the outcome for all the tossing. For example, the last ceremonies on the 49th day, the Buddha nun was trying to ask my grandpa if he is ready to go to the “Eastern World ~ Heaven”, she just kept getting “no”. She then started to “talk” to my grandpa in weird language. Well, she didn’t really talk. She just kept getting hack ups. After talking to him, she then asked if he didn’t finish saying something important. We got “happy”. At the ended, after many many “no”s, she asked a question “Do you want your wife here in front of you so I can pass the message on to her?“. For some reason, we got three “yes” in a row. After my grandma came over and the nun passed her the message, we never got any "no" in the later ceremony. There are many similar situations, it was just a odd experience. Science or spiritual?
Also, I used to hear people said that when someone in the family passed away. Black cats will come over everyday, and it really came. It came every 7th day when we are having the ceremony, and even the day of the funeral. People also believe that it’s bad luck for the black cat to jump over the body, so the day before the funeral, we had many people guarding my grandpa body. Try not to let the cat getting close. Old saying says the body “might” starts to walk…. Yeah, like becoming alive. What a great news for me… I happened to be one of the guards that night. Cats did try to come over few times, but we managed to scare them away. It was just a scary night for me.
Well, I am happy for me grandpa. The nun passed on the message saying that he is happy and living well. I really hope he is!! I feel bad I didn’t spend enough time at the end of his life. All these years I was in the state, trying to finish my degree. I really hope he get to see my graduated picture, but he never really got a chance to.