Last year when we went to World Youth Day, we had a fund raising auction dinner. One of the auction item is the whole group served as slave labour for the winning family. Today we came to fullfill our promise. Our task is to do yard work. It is the most horrible backyard I had ever seen. At the back of the house, we couldn’t see the sky, vines and trees block all sun light, it’s like a jungle. The grass on the ground is at least 2-3 feet long. There is a small hut with junk hiding behind, but no one can in get there until we cut the plants blocking the way. We have to cut down all but two trees, clean up the yard so the owner can rennovate the backyard he inherited from the previous owner. We worked physically labour the whole day, . We even have to use chain saw and slaght hammer to take the down big tree and the hut.
It takes 4 loads of a Ford pickup truck to deliver all the garbage to the garbage dump. We are all exhausted at the end of the day. The owner is really please since it is the first time he saw the fence since he bought the house. I havn’t had that much excerise in a long time. The owner really got his donation worth the money. Afterall, it is nice to together with the WYD group. The yard work is tough but it is quite fun doing it together as a group.

My company just has another layoff today. The headquarter is safe, they only closed the Ottawa site. The CEO held a staff update but his talk is just the same old bullshit. I joked with my co-workers that I know how to say those BS too, maybe I can become a CEO. In the afternoon, the department VP host a Q&A session regarding the layoff. I asked him why don’t we pick Portland site, which is even smaller than Ottawa. He answered there are projects going in that site, so no plan to shut it down, but he hinted they are the next one to go. He also said the company outsourcing the project of Ottawa to India. Then I made a comment that this decision doesn’t make sense. We are taking in the Wipro guys on site, so we are essentially training Wipro’s employee. Why don’t we hire those guys directly and cut out Wipro as the middleman. He said hiring contractors has the flexibility to expand and shrink the work force. This line leads to a decisive blow to the VP from a question asked by Saskatoon. Saskatoon asked how come the expansion is in India and the shrinking is here in N.America? The whole room simpily busted into laughters. I forgot how the VP BS his way out, but it seems no of us is very convinced by his answer.

Later after the meeting, I talked the director. He agrees with my observation, the whole outsourcing to India doesn’t make long term bussiness sense. In a few years, the cost advantage of outsoucing to India will disppear as the salary of the Indian guys are catching up really fast. I can understand we want to hire the talents who happen to be in Indian. However we should hire them and retain them as employees. People and the knowledge inside their brain is the most valuable asset of a high-tech company. Training contractors simpily defeat the whole idea of hiring contractor in the first place. I also talked to the director how the company isn’t following the best management practices outlined “Build to Last” I am reading. He encourage me write an email to the HR VP to voice my concernss. I will do it after I finish reading the whole book. I will make some comments on the management partice backed by sound management theory, send it off to the executives and see what will happen. That sounds kinda fun.

Tonight, I finished my mandarin for cantonese speakers level 1. My mandarin still pretty bad, I can barely communicate with a patient mandarin speaker. I think I had learnt the pronouncations of about 100 new characters in the class. I have to speak manadrin for 3 hours every week, that trained my brain to operate in mandarin mode. I believe to the key to learn a language is to think in that language. Many people have a wrong approach in learning a foreign language. They try to memorize the foreign words as a translation of words in their mother tongue. This will lower your language skill, since you have to translate the words all the time. The right way to learn is memorize the words as pure non-language concepts in the brain. You can associate nouns with the real thing, link verbs with the actual action, and adjectives with the feeling. For words with complex concepts, try to deconstruct them into simplier concepts, don’t just memorize the equally complex word in your mother tongue. I am a male, so my language ability is naturally limited. However, I think my theory of a second language sounds pretty reasonable. Maybe I should do some research on language teaching methods, see is there any philosopher of education agress with me.

Today I have BBQ for lunch and BBQ for dinner. The tenant of our office building has the annual BBQ today at lunch. We are not informed until yesterday, or we would not schedule BBQ party of our project in the same day. The whole team get off work early in the afternoon and head to the Jericho Bleach to have fun. I bought my kites. We were able to get the big areo-dynamic kite up really high, used up a kilometer of ropes. The smaller diamond kite is no luck, we were running back and forth on the beach, but still couldn’t get it to fly. I played frisbee with other team members and some others played beach vollyball. The whole team came to the BBQ party. We didn’t talk about work related issues, we just come to eat, chat and have lots of fun. I can feel sincerity among the team members, we treat each other as friends we would like to hang out with. Unlike the so-call team building exercise in the other department, which try to glue the team together artifically with some team building exercise. The problem of having two BBQ in one day is that now I can feel the “hot gas” in my thoart. I am afraid I will lose my voice tomorrow.

This afternoon I had a good time with Kenny touring toy shops in Richmond. He is one of my friends whom I known in the most weird place. I met him in arcade and somehow became good friends, probably due to our love towards toys and anime. Well, he is more otaku than me. At least I don’t play japanese games nor self learn japanese just for ACG. We collect different toy series. He like super robot, saint saiya and I like military style mecha. Gundam is the common language between us. He is probably the only person I know in real life knows more about Gundam than myself. It is always a pleasant to see him. We can just talk about toys, anime and games for hours. Everytime he will show me Japanese hobbies magainzes. I already read the highlights from online scan, but it is a different kind of joy to read it on paper. We can even talk about each picture in details. I wonder how long we will continue be toy lovers. I guess I will keep collecting toy as a hobby financially permits. Toys defintely make nice display pieces. Unlike old fashion collection items just lay still, toys can be arranged to different poses. Unlike collection items only for decoration, toys have deep sub-culture background.