Saturday, September 29, 2012

To Union or not.

I have never belonged to a Union in all my employment years. If you asked me 5 years ago if I would want to be in a Union, I would have said no. I would have thought that belonging to a Union is just one more expense I can do without. But after seeing some unfair employer practices, I am now pro union. Here in Illinois where it is an "at will employment", an employee can be terminated anytime for whatever reason the employer has. It could be any stupid and insignificant reason the employer has. And without an employment contract or the protection of a Union, the employee has no legal recourse. And I have seen some very unfair and unreasonable employer practices that made me reconsider my position on Unions. The collective bargaining and protection a Union offers can be a good thing for an employee treated unfairly. Now I just need to sign up to one if given the option.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Can't parallel park.

Today while walking my dog, I saw this woman doing a parallel park of her dark SUV. I chuckled as she gets out of her SUV cause she parked that vehicle so horrendously. The vehicle was practically 2 feet from where is should be. It protrudes out on the street. Makes me think she is from the suburbs. Really, there was plenty of space for her to park that vehicle properly. I guess she does not care. Typical.

Friday, September 21, 2012

I need to proof read my post more.

I just edited 4 older post that contained several errors.   The majority of the mistake came from the post I did late at night when my brain was not functioning at optimum.  Common mistakes were transference of one word for another.  Instead of if, I wrote is.  Instead of treat, I wrote threat.  Instead of everytime, I wrote everything.  There were also some grammatical errors that I corrected.  Writing a plural verb for a singular subject or vice versa.  Another common mistake was not using punctuation marks properly.
As I said, I need to proof read my post several times before finalizing the post.  If I do not, I will totally loose credibility at criticizing some of the improper English that I hear.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Read too much into it,

There are people who read too much into a statement or question and become offended or defensive.  Usually it is because of their own insecurities and negative thoughts that made them react to a simple question or statement.

I met this middle aged guy at a bar many years ago when I still in my late 20s.  We got to start talking and our conversation led to asking about each other's age.  He told me he was 45 yo but he actually looked good for 45.  I thought he was in his late 30s.  So I said that he looked well preserved for his age which was a compliment that he looks younger than 45.  But he got defensive about it and got pissed that I thought he is an old guy that needs to be preserved.  Jeez!  Talk about being insecure with his age that he can not even take a compliment point blank without reading too much into it.

I got this patient at work who is a 50 yo female with an amputation of her leg.  It is always difficult to engage this woman to work with me.  I often wish our session would be finish earlier.  A thought came to me that if this patient got speech therapy, our Physical therapy sessions would not have to be that long.  So I absent mindedly asked her if she gets any speech therapy.  Instead of just saying no.  She got all defensive and asked angrily if she looks like she needed speech therapy.  Granted that she is right about not needing speech therapy, but every simple conversation with her is always turned into a confrontation.  Every simple statement or question is always answered with a hint of hostility. She reads too much into things based on her own negative life experience.  She may not need speech therapy but she obviously need counseling from a psychologist.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

死了was not an acceptable word at 大同中學.

I finished my secondary education at 大同中學 (TTHS) in the Philippines.  TTHS was a school founded by the Chinese immigrants of the Philippines as a school that will teach their children Chinese education.  So Chinese was taught to us from Kindergarten to Senior year.

In my Practical Arts class when I was a Freshman, one of the lesson was silk screen printing of clothing/fabric with whatever design we have created.  In one of the project for the class, I decided to print the phonetic equivalent of the name SHEILA on the shirt I got from my cousin Sheila.  The name Sheila was already on the right chest area of the T-shirt so I decided to print the Chinese characters 死了 under it.  Now understand the characters 死了sounds like Sheila but the literal meaning of the words is "dead already".   Also understand that I could have used a different chinese character that could phonetically sound like Sheila but I did not.   I thought 死了was more controversial and it was totally acceptable since I was just phonetically translating "Sheila".  Of course this project did not sit well with some of the Chinese language arts teachers when they saw it.  They made a big bruhaha over that fact that I wrote "dead already" in a shirt.   It was not even a bad word or curse word but still it was an issue.  Of course I was scolded for it.

Now thinking back over that incident just makes me laugh.  It affirms my belief that my high school was fairly a strict and conservative school.  We did not talk back to teachers and we pretty much followed what was told of us.  So unlike the High school scenarios I see in American movies/TV.  And I feel that that strict boarding school atmosphere is better because many present day kids and teens have no fear and respect for their elders.  I feel a lot of these juvenile crimes could be curved if only they fear and respect their elders more.  Just my take.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

2 Polish witches

Don't get me wrong. I do not hate Polish people.  I just happen to have had the misfortune of working with two older Polish witches.  And I hope this bad experience will not taint my opinion of the Polish people in general.

Ella is one of the witch.  She is nice and friendly enough in person but a back stabber.  She did not get along with the other therapist she has worked with  before and she did not get along with me as well.  She does not get along with the boss either.  She always thinks that she is getting the loosing end of the deal.  She only thinks of herself and when she does not get what she wants, she complain to management.  Conniving and sneaky.  And she stammers when she speaks English.  I could barely understand her.  You ask her one simple question, she somehow does not manage to answer the question but says something that she was thinking of.

Bonnie is the second witch and far worse than Ella.  She is stupid and incompetent.  We shifted to a new operating system at work and it took her forever to get it right.  She makes mistake left and right that needs to be corrected.  And then when you try to correct her, she gets defensive.  She is also crazy and had this idiotic belief that the EU is storing neuks.  An annoying know it all attitude that is not backed up by her quality of work.  Nobody (save the other polish witch perhaps) likes her at work.  And the worse thing about her, she appears stupid but in fact is very crafty and has enough sense in her to really do damage to you.

I really wish they would both get run over by a bus and suffer a long painful death.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Paddy O'Brian

Paddy O'Brian is one fucking handsome guy.  And yes he is Irish and he sounds very Irish too.  He is an adult entertainer in the gay porn industry.  Nice!

Sunday, September 09, 2012

Serena wins, racists make comments.

I was too nervous to watch the 3rd set of the match with Vika ahead at 5-3.  So I shut the TV and did some errands.  Later when I checked the website, the final score of the 3rd set was 5-7 with Serena winning the match.  Serena managed to dig deep and win the next 3 games.  Good job and congratulations for the 15th Grand Slam title.

I am obviously a Serena Williams fan and I admire her tenacity and athletic abilities in tennis.  She is not the prettiest in the tour but she is the best.  In fact she has a lot of muscle but not completely mannish cause she also has a lot of curves.  Like any public figure, there are fans and there are people who hates her.   What I find repulsive is how some people criticize her for her looks rather than for her playing flaws or unbecoming behaviors.  And I think that is just super shallow of these people that hides behind the anonymity of the cyber space.  Here are some example of comments on the Yahoo article of Serena's latest US Open win.  A lot of the comments I copied and paste here are just plain ignorant and racist.  These people would not dare make comments like that in person where people can see their face and scorn at them for their redneck ignorant comments.  They want to keep their racism to themselves but not in the cyber world where they can be anonymous.  Cowards!

i think she has a tree trunk under that skirt
SHE IS A MAN. She should be banned. She might have small #$%$
The african male silverback gorilla wielding a racket beats the #1 female player in the world. Roids, XY chromosomes & testosterone always give an unfair advantage over an XX-chromosomed female. Sir eena got lucky this time; he should be required to play in the men's tour.....
- Typical monkey pose. Mouth open ready to feed.
- Wonder when they are ging to get the chimps back in their pens? Zoo parade goes on.

Tuesday, September 04, 2012

How Uncle Patricio was saved.

Mama told me this story as she remembered it when she was a child growing up during the Japanese occupation of the Philippine Islands.

The Japanese soldiers were rounding up older boys in the town where my mom's family lived. Evidently the soldiers would torture these boys by having them bath under the hot sun for hours as an intimidation factor. So that fear is instilled and these boys will not grow up to be resistance fighters. Mom's two older brothers (Patricio and Ramon) were amongst the boys rounded up by the soldiers. My grandparents were not there to witness the event so they were oblivious of what was happening. Mom happen to witness it so she run home to her parents to tell them that Uncle Patricio and Uncle Ramon were taken. My grandmother immediately dropped what she was doing and chased the truck with the captured boys in it. This she did despite of the fact that she had the traditional bound feet many affluent chinese girls had growing up. This made her feet very small and it made her running extremely difficult. Just a small example of how much a mother would do to save her children. Somehow she prevailed and caught up with the truck and she miraculously was able to plead for her children. My two uncles did not have to go through the torture. This in fact may just have saved the life of Uncle Patricio cause he was sickly / asthmatic and the torture would have killed him.

Just a little piece of family history I am documenting.