They say you shouldn't stick your chopsticks in rice, because it's likened to incense in an incense burner used for praying. Well, if that's the case, should I not pencils and pens in my brush pot/pencil holder?

How much money do you have to put away per year to live comfortably? Comfort is in the eye of the beholder, but how much money is enough to not need to worry too much financially?

This is something I've been struggling with because my master plan in Taiwan hasn't panned out the way I had hoped. So, what's "good enough"? After short-term expenses (i.e. excluding mortgage, car payments, etc.), is $10K cad/year sufficient? $20K? $30K? $40K? Of course, more is better, but what's enough to live the lifestyle you'd want to live longterm? Does saving, say $25K a year put you in good condition? $25K seems like very little.

I believe in living comfortably and spending money where it should be spent. I think shrewd spending is a good rule to follow in general, and that opens up the floor to larger expenses (travel, vehicle purchases, etc) without having to worry about the money. But in short, I don't enough money. Period. If I had a $80K salary, would I still think the same? I get the sense that I will become one of those "it's never enough" kind of people, and it scares me because I realize that I may not ever enjoy life.

How much of my happiness is dependent on money? I just don't know.

For Transformer purists, turn away.

But for the rest of you brave souls, it appears that director Michael Bay has Transformers movie slated for 2007 aimed towards a newer generation of (overweight) kids.

In keeping with the times, Hollywood-style, Bay's given our beloved childhood heros a face-lift. And I mean major face-lift. For example, let's look at Optimus Prime: before and after (altho now his "before" seems rather unflattering in his red jumberlack button-up shirt and jeans). And then there's Megatron: before and after and more after. Megatron, by the way, is no longer a laser-blasting gun, but a "alien jet". And since it wasn't cool enough to be a VW Beetle (what, even Turbonium?), Bumblebee's now a Camero.

Of course, these are speculations floating around the rumor mill. I couldn't say for sure if Michael Bay really plans to put these atrocities into an actual film. But nevertheless, for nostalgia's sake, it's fun to revolt.

Well ain't that something. This year marks the 200th Anniversary of Webster's dictionary. Yes, that is something.

Ah ha! I guess I shouldn't need to feel so bad after all.

If half of the Chinese can't speak Chinese, why should I feel so pressured?

I see some parallelisms between my department at work and the Vancouver Canucks. Last year wasn't great for either team, performing below expectations. As such, changes were made. In the case of the Canucks, their management made the changes. In our case, the workers made their own decisions. In February, we had a team of 11 in Taiwan. Since February, we've had 3 people leave our company, one person transfer to another group, and our department head transfer to a different role. Meanwhile to fill the vacant spots, we have a new energetic department head, we transfered one person in from another group, and loaned a manager from another group for 6 months. We recently had 3 new hires (in the last 3 weeks), and we will have a fourth in a couple more weeks.

So, lots of changes, but I think we've got a pretty happy team. Morale is as good as it's ever been (still, could be better), and we're enjoying ourselves through group activities much more than in previous years.

Let's hope the Canucks have a good year too!

I stubbed my pinky toe and it hurt a lot.

Why are pinky toes so darned wimpy? They are the wimpiest toes and certainly the most susceptible to injury. It doesn't matter what you hit, it hurts. You could clip your toe off the corner of an empty cardboard shoebox and be cursing ridiculous words that would land the most devoted faithful in Hell.

Fortunately, the pain usually goes away quickly (unless you break your toe) - and is soon forgotten.

Today's a glorious day. The weather's good, I have a chance at winning the B circle for our table tennis competition, and best of all it's the last day "Geoff" will be working at our company. In one sense, I guess you can say that tomorrow will be a glorious day as the first one post-Geoff. In case you don't remember Geoff, I first mentioned him here, here, and again in the last post.

Over the last few days, our team lead and I spent some time transitioning all the work that Geoff did. Through detailed discussions, I think these meetings solidified the fact that Geoff did an absolutely lousy job during his time here.

Meanwhile, back at the Bat Cave, we've got some new hires on-board to take over his duties, as well as my testing duties (finally). We've got a 25 year old and a 23 year old female. One joined this week, and one will be in next week. A third hire will be coming in on Sept 18th, who we'll train to be an Application Engineer. So it's seems like we're filling our headcount while dropping some dead weight in the process.

Let's say you were a manager.

Under what circumstances would you fire an employee? If an employee royally screws up an expensive project, or crosses the line and sexually harasses a coworker, then it my be a no-brainer. But what if the employee doesn't do anything terribly wrong, but doesn't do anything very right either: just an employee who constantly under-performs. Does a worker who needs continuous baby-sitting and micro-managing because there isn't any trust or faith in the work s/he does deserve to be fired?

We've had someone in our group for the last year and change who continually shows his inabilities in every facet of his job. I've mentioned this guy before in my blog. He's a coworker that can't think on his own, can't follow instructions properly, and can't remember the details of his work (or of our product, for that matter). As our dedicated QA engineer, the majority of his testcases don't test to completeness and aren't written well. His organization skills are atrocious, and documentation and presentation skills are equally poor.

Yet, in spite of his obvious cons, we've kept him around for over 1 year. The fact of the matter is, we haven't been able to hire anyone else to do QA for our product in his place or with him. Resources are tight, and perhaps even having someone on board to do a half-assed job is better than having no one at all. I had my concerns during his 3-month probation, but the decision to keep him or drop him wasn't mine to make.

If you had this kind of a employee on your team, how would you handle it/him/her?

Here's a first. Today at work, when my 23 year old female coworker heard that I was born in 1978, she said:

"Really?? I thought you looked young, but were much much older." (like, above 30, she said)

Hmmm... that's a new one.