Office Politics

I feel like the queen of India

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Have read about office politcs in novels and seen that on TV, never had a chance to be set up or back stabbed, it was quite an interesting experience to realise how vulnerable and trusty I have been. Perhaps I have been lucky, on the other hand, perhaps unlucky because I am not at all prepared.

It is interesting to find out that I could have this type of emotion (I always thought I do not care too much), but it is not very pleasant. This is useful, I am thinking more how to protect myself and trust people less.

Another Day with 4 Meals

Intersting cow.
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We had brief and short breakfast in Excelsier, than went to the Tapenyaki place for good Japanese beef lunch. The beef is tendor, but not as good as we had anticipated. After a long walk in the imperial palace garden and Yasukuni shrine, we set out our quest to find the deep fried pork cutlet in Shinjuku. Lucky we were, we found it before Sandy went crazy (she is again hungry). We walked around the town, I was showing Sandy those pretty boys walking on the street (those with pretty faces, long and dyed-golden hair, in suits) are usually those working in the pub, entertaining female guests. Sandy was shocked and we went to Shibuya as part of our condense Tokyo tour.

Until now, we have walked for almost 6 hours and were all exhausted. Uncle Thomas wanted to have really good Japanese beef, so we again went to the Yakiniku place which sells the Yamagata beef. The meat is so rich and juice, we ended our day with the 4th deal of the day.

Traveling with Huen's Family means Nonstop Eating

All tourists in Tokyo's must have. We took pictures before leaving for Nikko. Sandy is such Huen's family's girl. Keen for foods/cooking, can-eat-alot and strong... stomached.
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We set out to Nikko because the weather on Sunday is going to be bad. Food is aways important, and my uncle vowed to spend all Japanese yen he has brought with him. So I took them to the stand-up soba parlour (the place where cute young girls refuse to eat). Each of us devoured a bucket of soba with delicious cold flake fish dressing. We drank it up with the soup from cooking soba, yummy. (Oh, also 2 bows of rice with grilled pork bellies).

We went to Asakusa, getting reading to board the train. However, we visited the department store and bought the most expensive Unagi bento box and a couple additional unagi and grilled salmon jaws to eat in the train.

Thank god that we were not distracted by food when visiting temples and hiking (because there is no food around). However, after 2 hours of walking around, Sandy claimed that she is hungry. (The way she puts it is "um... I can eat something"). We strolled along on the Nikko street, sat down to take a break to eat the grilled rice cake with delicious black sugar coating and green tea, still feeling not satisfied. But it is too early to go back to Tokyo, we ate another couple of onsen menshu made of Chestnut paste in front of the train station, and came to the conclusion that we should eat the famous Yoba tofu cookings in Nikko.

The restaurant I remember doesn't open for dinner so we turned into a little Hiroshima style Okonomiyaki restaurant. We had tepanyaki and a pancake. Sandy and I down 2 bottles of hot sake to get warm (it was really cold in the mountain and we were not well prepared).

After 2 hours of train ride, we were finally back to Tokyo but then Uncle Thomas claimed that he is hungry and demanded me to come up with a choice of snack. Running out of idea of restaurant still opening at 10pm, we went to Tsukiji for the 24 hour sushi shops. We sat down and had a huge sashimi platter, sushi, fishhead stew. We walked out the door and Uncle Thomas cannot believe how cheap the meal is for such a good quality food (compare to Hong Kong), he almost wanted to turn back in again to have another plate of Otoro sashimi. Too tired I was, I stopped him and promised we'll come again tomorrow.

Uncle Thomas and Sandy are in Town

We are studying the menu, it is actually not difficult at all as we can pretty much guess half of the items with the Chinese characters. We later found out that our waitress is Chinese, great! We spoke in Chinese and had very pleasant meal. This is a D.I.Y. deep fry restaurant, you control the timing of your frying.
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After the tempura, we continue walking to the middle age man's hang out, Yarakucho. The street is crowded with people eating grill screwers. We sat down and ate again.

Swim across Sun Moon Lake (4)

My sister Grace. My mom thinks Grace is more real a daughter to her than I to her. One day I went fish shopping with my mom in the traditional market, the stall owner asked "is this your daughter?" "Yes", "Oh, you have many daughters" (Because Christine, Irene, Grace all had been shopping with my mom before). I sometimes wonder whether the stall owner would think that my mom had a lot of different boy friends that's why all her daughters look different.

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I forgot to mention the scary journey of sending Akiko to the airport the day after we finished the swim. We had happy DimSum with my whole family including the Golden Pig. When we realised it is about time to leave, it was already 30 minutes overdue. Grace drove us to the bus terminal nearby, but we rarely took the bus to the airport since driving is the most convenient way (and it is always possible to find some free hand to drive). The bus terminal has changed since the last time I took the bus 15 years ago. We were almost near the end of the bus terminal drive way but still cannot find the ticket booth.

Grace stopped in front of the gas station, I jumped out and asked people around. The time is really running short, if it takes 1 hour to get to the airport, Akiko would be there only one hour ahead of her departure time. As I was panicking looking around, there is an airport bus leaving. The driver saw me being disappointing and nervous, he stopped the bus in the middle of the road and opened the door!

I ran back to Grace's car and pulled Akiko out. Pushed her into the bus and threw her lugguages while the cars behind us honking like crazy. My heart was ponding after we both drove off and waited in front of the red light. Grace turned to me "Are you sure this bus going to the airport?" Holy Shit! I ran off to the bus, knocked open the window on thd driver side, shouted at the driver (because it was raining and noisy) "Are you going to the airprot?" He knodded. "How long would that take" "75 minutes".

My heart sank, but there is nothing we can do. Chances are Akiko is going to miss her flight. I went back to our car and Grace threw me another question "Does Akiko know which terminal to go to?" Shit! I ran to the bus driver again (Thank God the red light wait is long enough) "The Japanese lady is going to Terminal 2, please help her" He knodded again.

Grace and I then went to pick up my mom and Golden Pig, on our way to shopping, I was still worried and kept checking my phone if Akiko might call. Smart Grace suggested maybe Akiko's flight is not exactly 4 o'clock sharp, after consulting our travel agent, the departure time is 4:30. What a relief.

Thesis not yet Finished?

There are small mountains stacked by slacks of stones everywhere in this mountain. I was helping out.
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I had a terrible dream this morning, I was on the way to California visiting a friend. Getting on the bus then I realised that I had not finished my thesis, and didn't talk to my supervisor about my trip. Everything seemed undone and unfinished, how am I going to get my degree and start to make money? I was anxious, nervous, upset and tired. Yet I didn't know the way out.

Chopping it off

My boss in London is really an ecentric character. He told me he would cut off the hair if it is sticking out in the morning. I am generally very happy with my haircut but for some reason, the hair on my right side seemed to have the perfect opportunity to be rebelious. That might have something to do with my strange hair current. But the unruly hair really drove me mad. I chopped them off as my boss in London did.

Swim across Sun Moon Lake (3)

The Swimming 3
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It took us 2 and half hours to cross the lake. I was a bit in a hurry (oh well, I want to check whether my dad is OK, and also, I am a very impatient person). However, I'm also worried about Akiko, what if she diappears in the lake? I didn't abandon her the whole trip. However, there is no rush, really, the slower the better since you are not able to enjoy this water and this scenary if getting on the shore. I was too bored waiting, so I invented a number of way to sit, sleep, hold our floating device. I almost like sun bathing in the lake (the result is not very good, my back has a big X from my bathing suit).

When reaching the shore, I held no anticipation to find my dad in the gathering point, but to my surprise, he came up to us in the finishing line. What a relief, I thought there is going to be some work to find him in the crowd.

Just like last year, I polished the whole lunch box (what a waste not to finish the food in your plate, it is not environmental friendly, either). Feeling all good, we took the boad ride back to where we started. I recovered Akiko's bag with all our clothes miraculously from the side of the street (I really had no choice but leaving it in the side of the road).

Finishing the swimming without any glitches. But I found that I have bigger balls than most of the guys attending this swimming acticivty in our group. Some of them is worried about swimming in the place that you cannot touch the floor (hey, this is a lake, what do you expect?) Some of them whinning about the coldness, some of them wondering where to put the eye glasses. Oh my god, be a man, purse your lips and try out the adventure yourself. There sure would be unexpected, but that shouldn't be anything unhandlable for a 40 something old.

Swim across Sun Moon Lake (2)

Not really worrying too much about my father, because I was a bit angry. He wasn't really listening to the briefing last night, yet he appeared to be very into the game and the plan. He even raised questions and had conversation with the captain, how could he not understand everything? I have told him to practice swim like 6 months ago, how can he drop out midway through? Unprofessional and lazy butt, I was angry because he is just using his age as an execuse, not to be strong and train himself. He thought that's the way to get attention? Ha ha, sorry, I do not like weak people. Sorry, you get no sympathy from me. Go rest in the shore, see you later.

I swam slowly with Akiko, it is not like last year, where a large quality of people ran into the water, it was much better controled this year. I remember last year, I had to kick and being kicked in order to get forward. My goggles were wacked a couple of time, it is like playing Rugby in water. The water is cool and nice, we can see the green mountain hidding in the fog. However, Akiko cannot swim long distance, we needed to stop every 100 or 200 meters.

At the 1100 mark, I got Akiko to get on the floating platform where we can have chocolate and water. It is all very interesting scene, because getting on the platform required some energy. Many swimmers just hopped around the platform to rest, and the life guard broke the chocolate into pieces and fed the swimmers in water one by one.

While we were resting, Akiko waved and shout "Liao Pa" to the boat driving pass us. Oh my god, that's my dad on the boad, who is also waving like mania to us. Oh great, at least he was ferried to the other end, I should be able to find him there.

My Conversation with Mom

禤妙云 says:
女兒，睡了否？
Joey says:
還沒啊
Joey says:
吃了嗎
禤妙云 says:
吃飽}
Joey says:
暑假放完了,還是要 果汁給廖小文喝
禤妙云 says:
我現做二十四孝的娘
Joey says:
那是廖小文的福氣
禤妙云 says:
今天開始弄果汁
禤妙云 says:
對你好像有虧欠，你會吃味否！
Joey says:
不會啦,我是女超人啊
Joey says:
女超人不用人家疼哦
Joey says:
還要拯救地球
Joey says:
很忙的
禤妙云 says:
我在心疼你的
Joey says:
挨游
Joey says:
以後要你幫忙的地方多的哩
禤妙云 says:
但能盡我所能來疼你，
Joey says:
已經很好了啦,我覺得很滿意,你好好的,開開心心,廖小文,廖老爺少氣你一點就好了
禤妙云 says:
但我會先照顧好自已來疼惜你
Joey says:
你肉麻的話講完了沒有,手有沒有酸
Joey says:
去玩麻將啦
Joey says:
聽得我都不好意思了
禤妙云 says:
很好
禤妙云 says:
拜拜

Swim across Sun Moon Lake (1)

I went back to Taiwan for the annual lake crossing swim in Sun Moon Lake. I decided to get my dad to join because I think we have been ignoring him, it is not fair to take mom out traveling all the time (oh well, mom is a much more pleasant companion and she cooks). Taking my dad has another plus, that is, I can fulfill my dream of driving a broken car, with a dog sitting in the backseat and blasting Beatles or Beach Boy's music in summer time. I don't have a dog, but my dad has.

We set out our adventures on Saturday afternoon, of course, dad's nagging about life accompanying us the 3 hour trip to the lake. That's OK, I had Beatles and the dog (though Ilang is not very friendly to anyone but my father).

Dad and Akiko were not paying attention to the instruction, we had a bit of fuss about where to put their clothes and wallets. In the briefing the evening before, we were clearly instructed not to bring anything to the meeting point. I had to put everything into Akiko's bag and then begged strangers to allow me leave the bag with them. I know why my dad refused to go with only swimming wear, he wants his cigerattes with him ALL THE TIME.

We jumped into the cool lake after an hour of queueing and waiting. I was responsible for Akiko and my dad, however, no pressure at all, they all have insurance. Dad dropped out 2 minutes into the water. We climbed up to the floating platform, I was eyeing Akiko in the water, saying to my dad "Ok, get your clothes, keep warm, I will come back to look for you". I then jumped into the clear lake and swam off with Akiko.

Summer Vacation

Our family memebers are all into this veggie drink fashion recently. Grace, Kevin, my mom, my brother and I are drinking fresh made fruit and veggie juice in the morning religiously. It does work very nicely for me, my terrible eczma on my face went away. My mom goes to my brother's house to take over my nephew, Golden Pig, from my sister in law by 6 am. Then she makes the fruit juice for my brother (making him drink up the juice while he is still half sleeping, he then drops back to the bed). My brother's eczma comes all over his body in a very severe form. Little blisters filled with blood, and he often scratches until they break. It is so hard to see some good piece of skin part from his face and it is so hard to imagine the condition is remedied by daily fruit juice.

While I was in Taiwan, chatting with my mom, she said that my brother's eczma attack came back again. "Why?" I asked "If the fruit juice not working anymore?". My mom said "Oh, because I am on summer vacation, no one is making him fruit juice every morning".

Phantom in Our Brains

I am reading "Phantom in the Brain" by doctor Ramachandran. It is really amazing, we think we know it all? We know nothing, completely nothing about our brains. The chapter about the zombie in our brains is very interesting. The case study is about a girl who was in coma for a while because of CO poisoning. The portion of her brain to receive image into her brain was damaged. She is literally blind. When asking her to put a letter into a letter box, she unconciously tiled the envelope horizontally and slided it into the slot without difficulty. The portion of "what" is damaged, however, the portion of "how" is not. Her brain coordinated the image with action perfectly. The Zombie in our brains might be the key for any sport, do not let your seeing decieves you, what you feel is often more true than what you feel is right.

Our brains also does a lot of tricks to "fill in the blank". With all the information we receive from hearing and seeing, nevertheless, we are not the almighty who can understand everything. Our brains extends the available situations and creates a reasonable explanation so we can make sense of the world. Of course, the ultimate goal is to survive, the guessed answers are meant to help us to make decisions at the moment in order to avoid danger.

Silent Beach

There was actually no sun at all, I put on my hat only to keep my hair in one place.
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We went to the beach in the north east of Tokyo, 2 hour drive north. Though the weather is not sunny, we didn't cancel the trip. The wind was strong. The wave seem grayish because it was cloudy. I took a stroll along the shore, one side of the beach, standing the cliff and a couple of caves underneath. No one is around but seabirds. The water was cold but clear, the scenary was beautiful.

We quickly changed into the bathing suit, thinking there is no way to back out (hey, we work very hard to get ourselves here), we dived into the cold wave. Life guards switched on the silent speakers, broadcasting the water temperature and be careful that sort of stuff.

It is all very interesting experience to swim in the cold, light gray green and quiet sea. There is no human sounds can be heard but the waves. I swam to my heart's content in silence.

Value Added Service

During our trip in the mountain, we were again discussing how Japanese family lives. With Irene in tow, we can have a great inside of everything. Again, breakfast topic was brought to table. Since most Japanese mothers wake up at 5am, cook the rice, nicely cut and arrange the veggies as salad and grill fish. The beautiful and ornated breakfast was presented in the table by 6:30am. Wow was their reaction, both my mom and Grace were sleep-in moms. Breakfast was usually a piece of cookies.

Kevin's thought about it was that Japanese mothers complicate simple matters so to show their value in the family. How typical MBA graduate answer.

Conformity is the Mother of Stability (3)

Of course, we are very curious why the education and culture mold people this way. Kids are super well behaved and girls are so proper (according to Irene, this is most of the case).

When Mai came to our house for dinner (yes, we manage to fit in 5 adults and 1 jumpy kid in my small living/dining room, though 2 of us had to sit on the couch), we started to grill Mai about what we saw. Mai's answer is that most Japanese are taught not to be different from others since childhood. Restrained, endurance and control are highly praised.

This is the way of stability. If everything and everyone is predictable, others would easily find the way to corporate, interact with each other. If you think it from this point of view, it is not surprising that Japanese is the langauge with a lot of classes. The same idea needs to be expressed differently according to your gender, age and social status. This is largely accepted as manner, but I would rather think it is a rule which helps people to work and communicate with each other.

Getting a peace of mind has a higest piority in Japanese society.

Conformity is the Mother of Stability (2)

In our Kamikochi trip, we lodged in a small hotel in the woods. The hotel is run by a couple, they also teach how to dry and preserve flowers. Very cute little wooden ryokan with western style decor. When having dinner, Irene, my mom and I sat in one side of the table and Grace, XiaoHo, Kevin the other side. XiaoHo as usual was making a fuss of intaking any food into his mouth (he just does like to eat). But my mom's attention was drawn to 2 young ladies sitting in the table behind Grace, XiaoHo and Kevin. Irene and I particlpate in observing them.

The young girl's back was straight as log when sitting down. She didn't move or leg or change their posture. They moved elegantly, gracefully using the knives and forks to send the foods into their beautifully opened mounths. Talked in low voice, everything is so proper to the extend that ordinary Taiwanese would find impossible and entertaining (at least my mom was very entertained). Looking at our table, XiaoHo is putting his toy dinasours into the rice, insisted they need the rice more than he does. I was using my hand to pick up the unwanted Tomato from Irene's plate and asking for another glass of wine.

My mom's feeling is the 2 young ladies' restrained and controlled motions (and emotion, maybe) are very uncomfortable. They cannot even let off their guard when sharing a meal with siblings (we later found out they are sisters, Irene heard them calling each other. Because we cannot imagine why people would want to be so polite in front of your own family members). We even observed the plates after they have done their food and left. Wow, the fruit scrapes are set at the 9 o'clock position and the used knife and fork were pointing at 10 o'clock. The finished plates looks identical. Wow, we again gave our admiration. But if we are going to do the same? No way, our table is so messy after we are done, ha ha ha. We are so Taiwanese.

However, this 2 girls gave us a lot of fun. The next day, I kept my mom company in the yard when she played her Taichi, then we sat down chatting around 6:30, with my back facing the entrace. My mom suddenly said to me "The 2 freaks comes back.". It took me a while to realise who she was talking about. Kevin was not seeing those 2 girls during the dinner time, he was so curious that my mom exchange seats with him for breakfast. Again, the way they eat the unruly salad amazed Kevin (they used the fork to comb clean the shreded cabbages, until they are stable enough to be sent to the mouth).

During our trips, various questions were raised. Such as when we were eating ice cream cone, question like "would those 2 ladies lick the ice cream in public?", or "Would whose 2 ladies use the flushing sound to cover their peeing sound".

Conformity is the Mother of Stability (1)

It is definitely not easy to go around Tokyo with an uncontrollable 4 year old kid. Tokyo people are not very forgiving with kids, some restaurants even post a sign saying kids under 6 are not welcome. Everywhere we went, XiaoHo's behavior was under strict scrunity of Japanese eyes. You rarely see kids in Tokyo, even if seeing one, he/she is usually well behave. Otherwise, the eyesights shooting from other people are strong enough to pierce your heart.

I was quite annoyed at a point of time. Because, in fact, I am a very displined person, I tried my best to live healthily and respect the environment. I never sleep in, do not over eat (sometimes over drink a bit), religiously participate in recycling, exercise as much as I can, avoid taking public transportation as much as I can. Watching adults spoiling XiaoHo's requests makes me furious. How is it possible for them to raise a real man that way? I respect strong people and kids are really so weak and needy, yuck!

I was a bit angry and had been very cold to XiaoHo for a few days. We made peace with each other at the end because of our love to insects. We watched life in the undergrowth together, and I found out, XiaoHo is quiet if I keep telling stories. So I spent 2 hours tell him the insect stories I learnt from Dave Attenbourogh while Grace and my mom went shopping.

One Mountain cannot Acommondate Two Tigers

Old Chinese saying, meaning 2 strongheads cannot work together in one place.
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I always suspect that my mom sabatages my cookings whenever given a chance. It is very hard to explain, I am not a bad cook and I do understand what is good food. Many thanks to my mom, she trained me well (used to cook for my dad's factory workers during my summer vacation, my food was not too impressive because I remember people sneaking out of the table without comments). That's another story.

Ever since I started to develop my culinary talent and have lived in a couple different cities, naturally my foodie horizon has grown broader. Everytime I tried to bring the new spices/cookware/new tastes into my mom's kitchen, catastrophic events followed without fail. I start to wonder whether my mom destroy my dishes on purpose yet she looked so innocent.

One time I was trying to cook Aloo Gobhi (Indian Vegetarian Curry). I meant to use only one half of the onion, but my mom insisted she has no use of the rest half and I should chop it up and throw them into the dish. The curry turned watery and overly sweet. No one ate it but myself in order to be responsible.

The other time I wanted to make the Thai cucumber salad. I would like to seed the cucumber and thin julian cut them. But my mom came to the kitchen, seeing me clumsily slicing the cucumber. She took over the task and said "silly, it is faster to cut cucumber this way". She quickly finishing the cutting by diagonally slicing them then julian cut. However, the soft and watery cucumber seeds got into the dish, which diluted the flavor. When I wanted to use fresh lime juice, she gave me the bottle of artificial lemon juice (you know those kind bottled in bright light yellow lemon shape plastic). My dish was ruined again.

This time when we ate in my small apartment in Tokyo, I would like to make the cold spinach with grounded seasame sauce. Since I had guests to entertain, after I finishing preparing the sauce (grinding seasame is so fun to do), she confidently said that she will handle the rest. The dish came out with boiling hot spinach, the water was not drained completely and my sauce was floating on top of yellowish green leaves.

Path to the Eternal Truth

A well respected monk once said the path to enternal truth is to eat when eating, and shit and shitting. Easily said but hard to do well. Most people think about work when eating, think about lovers when sleeping with wives, think about moral issues when sleeping with lovers.