Carnival Double 11 — Happy Birthday to Me

This year, on 11/11, not only are major e-commerce platforms running their Double 11 sales, but today also happens to be my 23rd birthday. So, I thought I’d take some time to reflect on what I’ve been doing over the past few years. This article is quite lengthy and filled with various details, almost entirely pieced together from my notes and diary entries.

A large part of this article serves as a reminder to myself.

Who Am I?

Sometimes, the older I get, the more I feel like I’m gradually losing my sense of self. Each time I think I’ve found a decent goal, I dig deeper and discover a myriad of other issues to address. Even now, I’m probably still unable to articulate what I truly want to do. But perhaps that’s just how life is—filled with confusion. Therefore, the most important thing now is that once I decide on a path, I shouldn’t backtrack lightly; otherwise, I’d be wasting my life.

Labor Issues

This is a project I worked on for Labor Day, which I started planning and gathering information for in mid-April, leading up to the implementation. Because I also had school and work to manage, I didn’t have much time to dedicate to it. In fact, the last two days were spent burning the midnight oil to finish it.

Part of the reason it became so extensive was that halfway through, I realized there was even more information I wanted to collect, and before I knew it, it had ballooned into a massive project.

I thought I had allocated enough time for myself, but there were still too many topics left uncovered, such as pension systems, workplace accident statistics, and so on.

Why I Wanted to Do This Project

During middle and high school, perhaps due to my vocational background, I rarely engaged with social issues beyond casually catching news stories on TV or in the newspapers.

With a mix of remorse and curiosity, I started collecting information about Taiwan’s past labor movements and related data. For instance, salary increases, average working hours, and birth rates. It was only when I saw the data that I realized the gravity of the situation: our work hours are among the highest globally, salary increases have stagnated for nearly a decade, we rank last in birth rates, and we are on the brink of becoming a super-aged society.

If there’s anything this insignificant version of me can do, it’s probably to participate in Labor Day parades and listen to the voices of workers. After all, as a soon-to-be worker myself, I will likely face similar circumstances soon.

Moreover, the current situation is already so dire even before I enter the workforce.

Taiwan’s labor environment still has many areas needing improvement, and the benefits that future generations enjoy are not guaranteed.

These predecessors fought for better labor conditions with their sweat, lives, and sometimes even at the cost of their lives.

As an engineer, there isn’t much I can do, as there are many issues in society that technology cannot touch. However, I can at least spark awareness with "Ah! So this is happening," and that’s enough.

While researching, I came across many heart-wrenching stories.

For example, when factory workers lay on the tracks, the crowd shouted for them to be run over; or seeing a monument at Taipower’s headquarters with no names, hidden in the bushes; or learning that the 101 Tower has a national memorial monument, but it took me a long time to understand its significance.

Our society takes too much for granted. The smooth operation of the MRT, the safe travel of the high-speed rail from Kaohsiung to Taipei, the stable presence of 101 in Taipei, the garbage bins being emptied, the toilets being cleaned, and the 24-hour convenience stores—all these lead us to often forget how many people’s sweat (or blood) went into making them possible. This is especially true for workers who previously had no labor protection laws.

Learning Japanese

Studying Japanese

I still vaguely remember the early days of learning Japanese, where I would spend hours in a café after ordering a latte, studying diligently from noon until evening. My methods were pretty rudimentary: I would read the textbook passages several times, practice the exercises, and jot down vocabulary and concepts in my notebook. I kept this up for about a year, and my notebook was soon filled to the brim.

During this time, I often felt lonely and cold because there was no one to practice with. Before reaching a certain level, others would only mock me with words like "fat nerd." At that time, the best resource for me was lang-8.

Sometimes, I would unintentionally fall into the trap of thinking in programming terms, choosing my actions based on whether they were "related to programming." This was a good indicator for me back then, but it clearly shouldn’t be an excuse to avoid learning new things.

A few years ago, I wrote an article titled "Novels: My Favorite Drug," which shows my immature writing style and naive thoughts from that time. However, I’m grateful that I had various ways to document my life back then. Beyond my blog, I’ve written four diaries since middle school.

Although I can’t help but chuckle at my past foolishness and naivety from today’s perspective, it has indeed shaped who I am now. I don’t want to become someone whose eyes lack sparkle and who can only code without passion for anything else in the world.

A few months ago, I started preparing an online course. It was a unique experience for me, as I had no prior teaching experience in Japanese, but I hoped to take this opportunity to practice my teaching planning and consolidate my notes and experiences.

The planning phase took me 2-3 weeks, where I considered the difficulties a beginner in Japanese would face when first learning the language, gradually progressing through nouns, adjectives, verbs, and honorifics. When I submitted it for review, I was so nervous, fearing I wouldn’t pass. I secretly thought, if I didn’t pass, at least I wouldn’t have to prepare, right? XD

After passing, I fell into a three-month busy period, where I recorded lectures and wrote handouts every day after work. Luckily, having planned the entire course structure in advance made it easier to launch the course.

This experience made me deeply understand the challenges of online teaching. While it saves you from the repetitiveness and venue restrictions of in-person teaching, each video edit would take me about 3-4 hours to create and refine, not to mention the subtitles, especially when switching between languages for language instruction.

However, the course was successfully launched, which felt incredibly rewarding for me. Seeing people sign up and ask questions made it all worthwhile.

Self-Studying Japanese: Articles Compilation

• Four Years Self-Studying: Passing JLPT N3 and N2 Insights
• As Long as You Live, There Will Be Pain – A Silent Voice
• A Beginner's Guide to Self-Studying Japanese
• Comprehensive Japanese Learning Resources
• JLPT N3 and N2 Grammar Compilation - Part 1
• Japanese Service Industry Terms
• My Path to Learning Japanese
• Japanese House of Representatives Election
• The Textbook's Hatta Yoichi
• Japanese Thematic Vocabulary - Haircuts
• Various Uses of "気"

Language Proficiency

In this day and age, language proficiency is considered a basic requirement. Moreover, in Taiwan, there are countless people who are more proficient than I am. Almost every university and technical college has English and Japanese as standard for their foreign language programs. Even being fluent in these two languages only represents a small fraction of the statistical sample.

Organizing Experiences

Did everyone write correction books when they were young? If we could document the problems we encounter and the solutions we found at the time, we could resolve similar issues much faster in the future.

While developing, I jot down problems I encounter or concepts that arise during the process, and at the end of the month, I review everything and compile my relatively complete notes into an article for publication.

The only thing that can change you is your own actions.

Your Future Is Not Just About Being a Screw Worker

Modern Times is one of Chaplin's famous silent films, illustrating how workers are exploited by capitalists due to industrialization and the Great Depression, resulting in millions of unemployed. It is a highly ironic film.

In this era of surplus capital, survival is no longer a significant issue.

However, if you don’t think about life, then you are just like the workers in that film, spending all day in a factory tightening screws.

Rather than dominating, I want to help others - Chaplin

Don’t Do Work You Don’t Enjoy

Having passion for something can be a tremendous asset. For instance, I used to work at Burger King in the mornings to earn money, which meant I could only self-study programming at night. Once I entered my internship, I realized the intensity was on a whole different level compared to before. Everything gets magnified under the pressure of work, and the effects can be quite daunting. After my internship, I encountered many topics that weren’t covered in the online courses, yet the industry had already begun to adopt them.

Others spend ten hours a day doing what they love, while I only squeeze out a few minutes of my spare time to engage in programming. Setting aside the talent gap, the difference in time alone is already significant.

Don’t Compare Credit Hours with Others

In the current university education system, the graduation threshold usually hovers around 120 to 140 credits. Excluding professional electives and required courses, there are still nearly 30 credits of general education courses.

To be honest, are the general education courses truly enriching your knowledge, or are they merely filler credits? In my freshman year, I also maxed out my credits, scouring for appealing courses. While I ended up with a seemingly packed schedule, the real substance of knowledge came from only a few classes. Not to mention, choosing general education courses at NTUST is practically a joke.

Instead of pushing for XXX education, finding out what you genuinely want to do is what truly matters. In vocational schools, the academic pressure may not be as intense, but the current national education system resembles a workplace, cramming eight-hour days with after-school lessons, leaving no time to reflect on life or care about the world around you, which simply makes people compliant.

For an average person with decent intellect and financial means, smoothly progressing to university is a common phenomenon. But curiously, this group of people often finds themselves in dead-end jobs after graduation. They believe they’ve worked hard.

However, the term "hard work" is rather ironic, especially in this era; "effort" has basically become a basic requirement, no longer a trait to boast about. In college, cramming credits and enrolling in obscure courses, they might apply small favors to subjects they cannot excel in through effort, and find ways to just scrape by.

In the end, four years pass, and it proves utterly useless when job hunting. Throughout our lives, we’ve failed to reflect on what we truly want, resulting in the gradual loss of our ability to think independently after finishing college, turning into passive islanders.

Don’t get too caught up; just work hard; changing the law? That’s impossible; salary cuts? Even if you’re unhappy, life must go on. Thus, a group of people emerges, living aimlessly and complaining daily.

They not only look down on those in higher positions, but if someone attempts to speak out for society, and they perceive that person as not suffering as much as they do, they’ll conspire to stop that individual, leading to weak infighting within their class. They fear that someone else might inadvertently attain a better life than theirs.

This group works hard, but if they are subjected to improper education and mental laziness, it may lead to such outcomes.

Consequently, the most important thing is how to think; this goal is a lifelong challenge. "Life has limits, while knowledge is limitless," is often followed by a phrase that is omitted, "To pursue the limitless with the limited is perilous. To be a knower is fraught with peril." Using our finite lives to chase infinite knowledge (not limited to just information) is a dangerous endeavor. If you think you’re clever for doing so, it’s even more perilous.

A lack of knowledge can be compensated for by thinking, but failing to think while being only half-informed leads to poor outcomes in every endeavor, and that is the most frightening thing. Unfortunately, today’s Taiwanese university students seem to be heading in this direction.

As for how to practice thinking, perhaps starting with reading could be a good idea.

2018 Goals

Before I knew it, four to five years have passed, and I’ve taken many wrong turns. Each time my birthday rolls around, I feel a sense of anxiety about the passing of time, wondering if I’m on the right path. Reflecting on what has happened before, I can’t help but feel that I’ve wasted a significant portion of my time. Nevertheless, despite that, it has been a part of me.

There are still many things I want to do, but if I had to articulate a more comprehensive goal, it would probably be, "I want to be a useful person."