My $0 Paycheck

Today I received the above paycheck. That’s right, $0! It was a long story, but I would make it short.

When filling out my 401(k) form, I checked the box to have 100% of the maximum allowed amount or something like that deducted from my paycheck. Since the legal amount was $15,500 per year, 100% meant $15,500 / 24 = $650. Having $650 deducted from each paycheck, I figured, was bearable.

Well, at least that was how it worked at all the companies I had worked for in the past.

After I turned in my 401(k) form, I got several urgent emails from the HR department questioning my decision, “Because you have elected to have 100% of your salary to be deducted for 401(k) [...], I need you to confirm that this is exactly your intentions.“

I continued being oblivious and reading it the way I wanted and replied them with a firm “Yes”. Meanwhile, I was wondering which part of “Yes” the HR department didn’t understand.

Until I got the above paycheck, then everything was illuminated.

So they didn’t mean “100% of the maximum allowed amount per paycheck”, but “100% of the paycheck”!

And I had thought that McDonald’s paid nothing!

“Ah my Maya”

My co-worker Fran found out about David’s Long Bean Tofu Dish and forwarded it to our Chinese lunch crowd with the following comment:

“哎呀我的妈呀，他家的那只还真了不得呢。”

It could be roughly translated as, “Oh-là-là-là-là! Her dude is incredible!“

I forwarded David her email, and of course he immediately brought up his trusty Google Language Tools to translate it. And this was what he got:

“Ah my Maya, his family’s briefcase had not really?.“

!?

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我的北京同事李凡, 讀了石頭的四季豆豆腐菜之後, 非常佩服, 轉寄以下的評語給其他的中國同事們:

“哎呀我的妈呀，他家的那只还真了不得呢。” (“哎呀我的媽呀，他家的那隻還真了不得呢。”)

我轉寄給他, 他看不懂中文, 所以向Google求救. 結果翻成了什麼東東來著?

“啊我的瑪雅，他家的公事包真有假有?”

哎, 這什麼跟什麼嘛?

Power Pole

Why a power pole photo? No particular reason. I just like the composition and the color contrast. And, OK, OK, I need to fill the empty spaces on my blog. It’s getting tougher and tougher to keep up with my blog; by the time I come back from work, I just feel too exhausted to do anything else. :Q Yeah, my body still hasn’t fully adjusted to the working life…

Jennifer’s Art Gallery

I always thought that one’s blog was a very personal thing, a place for the author to share their life with their friends (and, really, the whole world). I never thought that it could be an interactive community site. But my best friend in Taiwan, Jennifer (高淑鑾), has turned hers into exactly that, which I found highly amusing.

When I showed her how to use WordPress.com this February, she liked it but wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. She was intimidated about publishing her artwork and didn’t think that her life was all that interesting to share with the world. When she finally had the guts to announce her blog to her friends, she was surprised to find that the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Her friends were amazed with her blog and would like to do the same, but they did not know how.

“Just send me photos and I’ll take care of the rest,” she told her friends.

Ever since she volunteered to publish their artwork/photos/puzzles/fun videos/etc on her blog, she had no shortage of interesting material. On top of that, she has been slowly building a local community, a place that her friends like to visit and share their thoughts with one another (mostly in the real world instead of the cyber world though).

From a technical point of view, a blog is not the best place to build an interactive community. However, due to the relatively small circles and some intimidation of technologies, somehow it seems to work. Her online art gallery provides a great service for the otherwise stressful life in Taiwan.

The best thing is: I believe that through this cute project, she was finally able to get un-stuck, stop her 2+ year suffering, and see the world from a different point of view. She set out to help others, but it turned out that she was the biggest beneficiary at the end.

Good job, Jennifer!

Summer In Our Yard

Guess what? I slept until 8am this morning! I finally felt that I got enough sleep!

This week was much better than last one: I had a little bit of energy left after coming home and didn’t fall asleep while watching TV. But still, I felt lack of sleep all week. Ever since I started working, it has been impossible to observe the changes in our garden during weekdays. It was a sense of loss that I found the hardest to cope. (Good thing that there was no shortage of green from our office windows, or I would go nuts for sure.) So you could imagine what I did today — gardening! We spent a couple of hours weeding and trimming our plants. It was a lot of work and we were only half way done before the green bin got all filled up, but it was satisfying to see the result.

All our fortnight lilies were blooming like crazy, as you could see from the photo. Our plums were still growing bigger and bigger (while our apricots seemed to stop growing or coloring any further) and a few of them started turning pink. And we had no idea what this strange flower was called. Every year it would bloom at the corner, oblivious to the pine tree above and the crouching flowering maples.

The New New Setup

OK, this is it, I’m done with my cube decoration and I’ll show no more its photos (unless there is any major changes). Bummer that my Totoro pencil holder got blocked by my tea cup…

BTW, today was the longest day of the year, almost 15 hours of daylight! And what does that mean? That means from now on, the days will get shorter and shorter until Dec. 21…

The New Setup

Originally I had asked for a Shoji screen for my cube, but after seeing how much my stuff toys liked the bookshelves, I changed my mind. Yesterday I sent my boss email saying that I no longer needed a screen. And her reply?

“Too late, you have been redecorated “

And this was what I saw when I came to my cube this morning! It even came with an iron pot holder (although it was holding my little panda instead)! Wow! Very nice!