Lavender Cafe

Monday, January 16, 2006

0094. Narnia

I feel like being away from people. Partially because of work, it is also because the tireness. But I still went to see the first movie of Narnia with friends. I am really familiar with the story of Narnia. I had a whole chinese set fifteen years ago. I read them from time to time. Every time I read, I discovered some new understanding. The movie is not too far away from the book, with amazing computer effects.
I felt better after watching the movie. While walking along home, I had time to think several things.
＊ Edmund went to Narnia, followed by Lucy, but denied Lucy is right. Human's pride often lets us step away from acknowledging we are wrong.
＊ Fox (I don't remember there is such character in the book) looks like more on the evil side. But it is faithful to Aslan. What shows outside is not exactly who we are.
＊ Susan received a horn as a gift, which brings help when blow. In the Prince Caspian, the help is coming after blowing horn but not arriving right away. Just like Daniel prayed, God did listened but the help arrived after days. Therefore, our prayer reach to God in heaven but we have to be patient sometimes.
＊ Edmund's desire almost got himself killed.
＊ Aslan said to Peter, Susan and Lucy let the past be past. This is forgiveness and forget, just like God forgive and forget our transgressions.
＊ In the book, Lucy didn't watch Edmund get fully healed (opposite to the movie). Aslan said to her, "must more sacrificed for Edmund?" I think God asks us to do what we shall do and believe God will take care what we care for.
＊ "Once King or Queen of Narnia, forever King and Queen of Narnia." This is the same as children of God.

Sunday, January 08, 2006

0093. Choir

For a long time, I didn't join any choir. After Christmas celebration, I thought it would be nice to have few people practice together. I love acapella and it would be wonderful to do it well. I don't get people to sing acapella but there are small choir starting practice at church. Even though it is not exactly what I am thinking but at least I get to sing new songs. I surprise myself too. I can sing to the high A.

Saturday, January 07, 2006

0092. Breakfast

There is a breakfast bar near by where I currently live, which sells a pretty good tuna-egg sandwich. It has quite a bit of tuna with some veggies. It only cost about one dollar CDN, including a drink. It's quite enough for one meal.
NB. It's very common to see those breakfast bar in Taiwan. They sells all kinds of sandwiches and some burgers. Sandwiches is made of two pieces of bread (may be toasted), veggies, egg, and your choice of main filling (Ham, cheeze, etc).

Sunday, January 01, 2006

0091. New Year

On the way home after church meeting, people were everywhere from Taipei Main Station to home. I never understand what is the point of celebrating New Year and why everyone is so over-excited. One of my colleagues walked home at three in the morning because she couldn't get a taxi at all. I probably will only be excited about Jesus in my entire life.

Friday, December 30, 2005

0090. Weather

The weather here in Taipei is almost like Summer! We get 20 degrees these few days. I wear more like in the summer since I am so used to colder weather. I joke that I came from North pole because many around me wear like cold winter.

Thursday, December 15, 2005

0089. Faith moments in my life, Part I

[I was asked to wrote something about faith, for ShiLin Zion Church monthly newsletter]
When I look back my life, there are some moments I learned trusting God.

One special moment was my undergraduate study. I decided to leave home for university. I made that decision simply because I never left home for study. Quite honestly, I don't think at that point of my life I understood what I did was a faith walk. Anyways before I left, a friend of mine gave me a verse I treasure dearly:

the LORD will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.
~ Psalm 121: 8

With that blessing, I set out for the new chapter of my life. The first thing I planed to do after arriving dorms was finding a place to worship. I didn't know where I could worship before I arrived except I heard there is one chinese church. Well, I did the church hunting with the telephone directory. I opened up the telephone directory and looked for the churches near by my dorm. I went to four different churches on first four Sundays. I didn't have any feeling at all as I went in and out of three churches. But as soon as I walked into the third church, Bethel church, my tears ran out. It was a deepest feeling - I was home. So I stayed at Bethel during the time I was there. I did go to another church once and thought about changing to that church. But I decided not to do so because I never forget the feeling of being home and believed Bethel was the place for me. During those years, it did prove that Bethel was the church God prepare for me. I had wonderful time there with church pastors and members. I learned quite a lot from them, such as hospitality. One thing that engraved in my heart is how God used Sunday sermons to talk to me. I was in the downside of the hill. Those sermons were like God knocking some sense into my head.

An year and half after I finished my undergraduate degree, I applied for local graduate school at home. About three months prior to school year started, I got the notice from the school and asked me to confirm to go. I was afraid at that time. The reason is that I wasn't sure studying was what I supposed to do. The next morning, I think, I had my devotion on Daniel 10, about Daniel's vision. God provided his encouragement to me, first half of the verse 19:

"Do not be afraid, O man highly esteemed," he said, "Peace! Be strong now; be strong."

I was loved by God. Not only "do not be afraid", I also got "peace" to go. Studying wasn't easy. There were several times I had doubts - why was I doing there? Computing science wasn't my favorite dream of profession. I might even have thinking give-up the study at one point. However, this verse always jumped out to stop any negative thought I had. The last year and half my study was the reward. I enjoyed so much the time that I even thought of staying at school. I am so glad that I trusted God's promise to me.

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

0088. Work Swirl (14)

Today is division social event. As usual, we went to a restaurant to eat. This restaurant is so expensive, approximately $35-$40 CDN. Food is cooked in front of us on a big iron plate. It's kind of fun to watch chief cooking. There are about 10 peoples on each table. The food is excellent but not much, just enough for filling my stomach.

Saturday, November 26, 2005

0087. No more fees for internet!

I found this place at the intersection of HsinYi and KungFu. It is eCoffee. This eCoffee store is much bigger than most of their other store I know. They even have hot pots! But most of important is that I can use internet without extra charge. Of course, I got to purchase a drink or something. I can use my computer online for about two hours, which save about a hundred dollars. Hey, it's worth it!

0086. Hair style changed part II

I permed my hair in May. Visit my photo album to check out the difference in May and now. They are not very good pictures because I took the pictures myself. So just bear with me.

Sunday, November 06, 2005

0085. Memorizing Bible verses vs. Life

Recently, I just found out days are different with or without memorizing Bible verses. Days without memorizing Bible verses, emotion and work are not that smooth. Now has a better understanding why we need to treasure God's words in our hearts. God's words is an invisible help in our daily lives. We may not understand at beginning. It's easier to understand after we lose those things.

Friday, October 28, 2005

0084. Work Swirl (13)

These days are so busy to a point that I didn't have time to write blogs. In fact, I am writing this blog while I am off office and in a workshop. How ironic is that! Anyways, let's talkb about my work. I am currently assigned TEN topics. Some topics are big and some are small. As a beginner, this is pretty heavy for me. In fact, I just had an emotional break down last night (there are other causes besides work). It's a mixed feeling here. I know I will learn a lot in a short time with workload like this. But it's hard for my body and mind to handle so much information at one time. This coming weekend, I will have to think this all over. Perharps, some of the topic should leave out. I can't get into the details of my work here for confidentiality issue. But I do wish I have a sister in Christ can talk about at work.

Friday, September 09, 2005

0083. Work Swirl (12)

A surpised turn showed up today. All my testers are going to the big testing group. At least some of my colleagues are happy. As for me, just start all the job transferring. There are still few more meetings to come.

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

0082. Who is gonna changed?

Recently, I have heard something about change. Someone applied the 80/20 princeple saying that 80% of people try to change others while 20% of people change themselves. I wholeheartly agree this. We, as human, always wish people change to the ways we like/work. However, changing another person is impossible. A person makes changes only because he or she decides to change, not because of others' words. Therefore, the wise people are those 20% of human beings. As for me, I don't think I among those 20% yet.

Thursday, September 01, 2005

0081. Super Wind

I didn't sleep well last night. I heard strong wind blow several times. The wind was so strong that I started to think the house going to be destroyed. Even though the house is not going to destroyed, walking outside must be very tough. Signs, trees, and electricity lines could be brought down by wind. Staying outside not only has to against the windiness also watches out any thing dropped out of nowhere. There is a hospital near by where I live. This is the first time that I hear quite a few ambulance sounds. So there are quite a bit accidents happened this time. I wonder how bad it is after the typhoon leaves this afternoon.
I heard, over the radio, some expert mentioned that the wind gets stronger when the temperature of ocean gets higher during typhoon developing. Will the fact that the temperature of the earth is getting higher and higher cause typhoon bringing in the stronger wind? Who knows? No one dares to make the conclusion. Is there going to be a wind in the future so strong that can blow away cars??

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

0080. What shall we do at the days of Typhoon

Typhoon is here again. Usually, we would know if the day is off in the morning. This time is different, 'cause it is really windy and rainy before Typhoon steps onto the island. The wind is big enough to break my big umbrella. :'( My big umbrella is a good one, its bones not too bad. Actually, all typhoons this year brings in strong wind as well as the huge rain. I often heard people still go around the cities during those typhoon days. I pity them because they have no clue what could do on typhoon days. Today, from my colleague's typhoon-day activity, I realize that some people really ..., never mind, I don't know how to describe these. My colleague got off the work early and guess where she went? KTV!!! (NB. for those you don't know, KTV is a place to sing.) I can't believe this! Sing on those days. I am totally speechless. As for me, house chores, writing, reading, crafting, lots of things to do. I don't need to KTVing to pass time!

0079. Work Swirl (11)

A big surprise waited for us when we arrived at the office, especially for several male colleagues.
The head of this department, vice president, wrote an e-mail inform the entire department changes of human resources. This change was ordered on August 18th by the president. Basically, he re-organized the company into four divison: manufacture, customer relation (CPM), research and development (RD), and quality assurance (QA). RD contains two sets of hardware RD, Wireless RD, and application software RD.
Therefore, there is huge move of people and works between departments. Even though all QA suppose to merge to the large division, but managers in our department wish to keep a few for internal quality controls. However, the job description for staying in the department is not clear. From the time we knew this, we all thought we have the rights to decide whether to go or stay.
Besides my boss, I am the first to know where to go. Originally, I sent an e-mail letter to vice president and wish have a chat about my future development. Praise the Lord, I never thought that this is also happened to the time of change and therefore, I have new direction of work. One of the change is that third party applications and licensing are now combined with application software development. Those third party stuff require several people to handle communication, survey, and verifications. I don't want to be a QA for rest of my life. This new job has similar skills of planners. Therefore I decided to take the new job. The new job title is Feature PM (FPM). During the whole time, I have peace. Believe God will help and lead me at the new work.
As for my rest of colleagues, well, the e-mail we received in the morning decided their futures. For those having hard time to make decisions, they are happy that someone made the decisions for them. But it is a surprise to those three being ordered to stay, especially the one who wished to go to testing division. He didn't expect to stay and was in a crappie mood. I was surprised that top management didn't speak to those three colleagues before they announced the change. I don't agree the way they did. We all thought we have the right to make decisions but never thought the fate is arrived before decisions are made. Then why don't they assign at the beginning? Now I am more curious how top managers are going to comfort them.

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

0078. Skype v.s. Google Talk

Skype is really poplular these days. It is so convenient to talk over interent without paying large sum of long distance phone bill. PChome Online, an internet service in Taiwan, also made Skype popular by incorporated Traditional Chinese display. When I first tried Skype, it has the ability to call a fixed line. Now, Skype also provides voice mail services and virtual numbers that others can call in. My division at work even officially requested us to use Skype for internal quiet communications.

Last week, Google announced Google Talk. The UI of Google Talk is a bit like iChat I am using on my iBook. In fact, I can log in with iChat. So far, only people who owe a Gmail account can log in to use. But, if I invite a person who has no Gmail account, Google will send out an invitation to that person. However, if someone's Gamil account has no invitation, then Google only sends out notification without a link to registar a Gmail account. This Talk application does not have many features as Skype - talk and text chat.

Skype is used widely these days. Therefore, Google Talk now has better voice quality (less trafic). It's hard to tell which one will win the battle. Skype functions widely while Google Talk still in beta version. It will be interesting to watch those "talk" battles.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

0077. Work Swirl (10)

Several weeks ago, I changed my attitude while chatting with another colleague about my current status. Not long after our chat, we are reading two books related to work attitudes in our group study. I also read a similar sentence in the book "Investing yourself". The point is the attitude we use to face the situation. The situation may not be the best. However, our attitudes affect our working methods and feelings. Therefore, I decided to talk to my boss, not just work quietly. When I started thinking from a different angle, I felt different.
There are discussions in these days, about the structure changes within the company. We, as QA, are either going to another bigger QA department, or stay at current department with a different title. I may change my job. I will go to the details once everything settled.

Monday, July 25, 2005

0076. Work Swirl (9)

Well, I am not sure wether this is good or bad: This morning, our manager showed us the new organization chart. My title becomes "Project scheduler and MMI Contact". I think this new title just gives me the proper title, because I have been doing those jobs for last half of the years!

Thursday, July 21, 2005

0075. Plan

Others may have life completely plan out. But even though I have a direction I would like to head for, I don't know where or what is next. However, my God knows. That's good enough for me.

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