The Irony of Adulthood

When I was a little boy I crave nothing more then just food sold in the street cart or a simple ice cream cone from the local store. Food seemed to taste much better in those days. I guess it had a lot to do with lack of pocket money. A simple night market visit was considered as more of a treat then norm.

In my late teens, I used to envy those who could afford to eat in a restaurant, drive a car, and own a color TV. I was denied all of those amenities in life because I was living alone in United Kingdom with very limited budget. The scholarship money, although paid for all tuitions, catered to only the modest needs of my daily living.

As an adult, I have acquired almost everything that I longed for in the past and yet I no longer have the time to enjoy what I have acquired. My healthy appetite for food is tinted with fear of gaining weight. I ate at restaurant because I didn’t have time to cook meals at home. I have a big screen TV but I rarely find entertainment channels amusing. I drive a car but it is merely a vehicle taking me from A to B. My desire to rid the world of corruptions and evil is replaced with endless responsibilities at work.

Isn’t ironic that when you had all the time and energy as a young adult you didn’t have the wealth or the maturity to take the advantage of them but when you’ve acquired the wealth and wisdom you become encumbered with responsibilities and old age.

Toastmasters Hsinchu: from ashes to phoenix part I

When I arrive in Taiwan back in 1999, the first thing I did was to check whether there is Toastmaster club in Hsinchu. To my delight, there was a club in the Science Park. The club was lead by Mr. Chang, an engineer from Windbond. The club had about 24 members; mostly engineers from the Science Park.

As I became more and more familiar with the club I realized that Hsinchu members, with the exception of the president, have never participated in any Area, Division, or District events. The Distinguished Club program was largely ignored. One of the members quoted: "We are happy as we are, we couldn't be bothered with other clubs in our Area, let along the Division or the District". As far as the District was concerned Hsinchu club was just a name; a number in the District roster.

As President Chang’s term came to an end, I was asked to assume the role of president for the term from July 2000 to June 2001, largely because of my experience as the past president of Sensational Salesman club in Tustin, CA. On the day of my inauguration, 11 members decided to quit. I was left without a complete officer team and dwindling attendance. Looking in retrospect, my term of presidency coincided with the biggest Hi-tech down turn and our members (largely engineers) simply were not in the position or the mood to participate in the Toastmasters activities.

Lack of memberships meant no revenue for the club. Fortunately, we were able to get the venue for free at First Conference Room in the Science Park Administration building. The venue was in a really bad shape. Chairs were stained and hinges needed repair. Sound system did not work, and worst of all, the entire room were filled with mosquitoes and other critters I care not to mention.

For a while an attendance of 10 was considered good, 7 was the norm. Guest of 1 or 2 every other meeting was a blessing. The major complaints I had from our guests were bad traffic and the notorious Science Park Street signs; they simply do not have street number on the buildings.

To make matter worse, VP of education got relocated to Linkou and had to quit. VP of membership got laid off, he had to quit. Sergeant at Arm, well his story was a positive one, he got promoted to the deputy Director of the Science Park, he had to quit also. Suddenly I found myself taking the responsibility of all the officers. I was all alone and the job of the president turned into a nightmare.

The worst finally came, our memberships got so low that it had fallen below the minimum required by the Headquarters. The provisional District 67 wanted to send a “specialist” to fix the Hsinchu club (which I flat out refused). It looked like the club was on its way to an inevitable death and I was to go down in history as the president who killed it.

Chinese colloquial problem: Time reference

One of the problem I see in the Chinese style English is the tendency to set a time reference at the begining of the sentence like, now, today, yesterday, two hours ago, etc. The simplist solution is to move the time reference to the back of the sentence or delete it altogether.

What the Chinese failed to realize is that time reference is part of the tenses structure in the English language. Since the Chinese language is without tenses therefore there is a need to define time at begining of the paragraph.

For example:

Yesterday I had dinner with my mother.
I had dinner with my mother yesterday.

Now, it is time for us to look into the experiment result.

This line is a direct translation from Chinese. Please comments on what you would have done to make it more English like.

6000 Chinese charactors vs. 174,000 English words

Chinese has 4000 commonly used words and 2000 ancient or less common words. The English language has 174,000 or more words and this creates problem when it comes to translation.

The Chinese has to use a combination of words to express an equivlant single English word, for example:

Computer is translated as Electricity brain (Chinese dosen't have adjective ending with -ic either, a noun is used instead), a 2-word group.

Merchant is tranlated as "person who trades" which is made up of 3 Chinese words that literally translates as Bear Idea Person. The wisdom of our Chinese ancestor says that a person who bears new idea would like to trade the idea for money. You cannot get more poetic than that!