by Jonny | Sep 10, 2012 | Updates
I’m quite impressed how I have managed to increase the traffic on my political site I now have up and running. I’ve been running this blog for a couple years now. However, this new site has only been running since July of this year. (2012)
The site I’m taking about is a little hard to maintain as I’m personally writing all the new articles. Before, the site was using an autoblogging script, which sucked ass. So I disabled it and then started writing my own articles as I’m quite interested in US politics.
I managed to get it un-banned from the search engines, most notably Google and now there are SERP results for particular keywords coming in. I also created the logo, which I’m pretty happy about. 🙂
by Jonny | Jun 20, 2012 | Updates
Taichung City Government has issued a typhoon warning, and they have said the following:
“It is hereby announced that offices and classes are closed on June 20, 2012 due to the latest tropical storm.”
Essentially, this means that I have no work today as my office is closed.
I’m not complaining, but I’ve been outside and there doesn’t appear to be a typhoon of any kind. Last night however there was a typhoon, as it was raining quite heavily, though I’m no typhoon or weather expert, so perhaps there will be typhoon later in the day that I am supposed to avoid.
Good news, after yesterday.
Update:
Around 4 hours ago it started raining quite heavily, and it is still raining right now. When I mean heavy rain, I mean the heaviest rain I have seen so far in Taiwan.
by Jonny | Apr 14, 2012 | Updates
It appears I’ve now dedicated this blog to solely being about my job and my experiences working in an office environment.
I must say, when I finished work I became the happiest person in Taichung at the time. Â I felt the freedom of not having work the next day, of not having to go to bed early, just so I wouldn’t be too tired to wake up at 6 or either at 7 in the morning.
The weekend days are likely the most joyous days I could have after working full-time in the weekdays. I just feel freedom, as I have no worries, however as always I still feel the sense of pressure considering I still have work on Monday, and really the weekends are not long enough. – It’s back to work soon enough and the process repeats itself every time.
I just want to relax today. I’ve had too much stress and pressure placed on me at work, to understand translations (Which aren’t too accurate) from Mandarin to English. Plus, I have to write out daily reports and then I have to attend a meeting saying what I’ve been doing in the week. However with this type of job it is really hard to explain what you’ve been doing, when you quite frankly can’t explain in your own head what you are doing. I can’t wait to quit. I just need to save enough money to see my sweetheart Julie, who’s in Seoul, South Korea. – Oh, do I miss her.
by Jonny | Jan 23, 2012 | Updates
Life is literally confusing for me right now, as I thought I’d be going to do military service this month, in fact, I thought I’d be going tomorrow.
It seems that the Taiwanese government aren’t interested in actually drafting any more people into the military. My mother has told me that the Taiwanese military have drafted too many people into the military and aren’t drafting anymore people.
So, that kind of ruined my plans, as I could have continued studying Mandarin at Feng-Chia, however as I have missed the semester I can’t sign up for another and need to wait for this current semester to end. Otherwise, I’ll be behind if I sign up now as I haven’t really studied to be honest. Although, I will say that my  speaking has somewhat improved, however my writing has deteriorated somewhat as I haven’t been practicing.
Seeing as I’m not studying, what am I doing?
I now I have a job. Or, not at the moment! But will soon!
Job title: Assistant Engineer
It is funny, as I don’t know jack about engineering. However I’m looking at this job moreover like an internship; except I’m getting paid. It is for a company which manufactures diagnostic tools for vehicles.
My mum knows the actual person’s wife, whose husband owns the company. So that is how I have sneaked into this job without actually having the qualifications for it. I’m hoping that they can actually find me a job that I can do and that I’ll enjoy.
One issue is the working time, apparently it is from Mon-Fri from 9 am – 6 pm. Those are some long hours and I just hope I’m actually doing something useful for this company, as opposed to doing nothing. – That would be totally unfair on the favor they’ve given me to actually have the job in the first place.
I just hope for the hours that I’ll be doing, the pay will be somewhat decent, especially under the job title of “Assistant Engineer”, which to me sounds like an impressive title. Combined with the long hours and the fact I’ll be working every weekday, I’ll probably raking in a bit of money. First thing I’ll do is save the money. I want to go to Korea to see my girlfriend and just to have a nice time there and perhaps buy her a ticket to come to Taiwan and whatnot. 🙂
Whatever the case, I hope this job turns out good for me!
by Jonny | Sep 10, 2011 | Travel
Today I went with my cousin and her boyfriend to a pretty nice BBQ! It was pretty nice. I guess I learned more Chinese, since everyone at the BBQ couldn’t speak a word of English. Although there was an old man there who had a electronic dictionary. Which translates English to Chinese and vice versa. I was in fact teaching them how to say words since their pronunciation was wrong. They also helped me with some Chinese words and helped me with my pronunciation.
I feel that living with my cousin and her boyfriend (Gary) will excel my speaking ability. I still need to practice the writing, which I consider to be the easier task, since I can do that all on my own, considering you purely just have to copy characters and memorize them. Although I am still a little confused with the grammar, but it doesn’t look at that hard. I believe English grammar is much more complicated, so once I gather more of an understanding of the language I will understand the grammar side of things.
Gym/health update
Haven’t talked to anyone but a gym instructor and the two people I am living with; my cousin and her boyfriend. I worked hard today in gym. I pushed myself on the weight lifting equipment. Hopefully I will be able to see a few more results from my working at the gym.
However I have put on 1 kg. I believe that is like 1 kg of muscle, since I have been working out a lot. Or if it is fat, then I haven’t seen anywhere on my body where there has been added fat. All I have seen is growth in my arm muscles and the toning of my breasts; they are both becoming rather large and more muscular.
I still I haven’t got the 6 pack that I am aiming to get. But in due time, I believe I can easily get there. I just need to do more muscle building exercises. I also still do need to lose a bit more weight. I am thinking in the region of around 3 or 4 kg and my body will look great. Though I am focusing on muscle building first, since I have heard if you try to lose weight, but also gain muscle, there are technical problems with that. I have already lost in around 3 and a-half months of training 10 kg. I think that is quite a significant amount of weight to lose.
Tomorrow I will go to the gym and do more weight training and also running. I’ve read that running helps loosen up your muscles, so when you do weight train, you won’t stretch any muscles or hurt yourself. I really want to go swimming, it seems more logical considering everyday the weather is around 30ºC. – Though I just don’t like the look of my body right now or don’t have the guts to show it publicly to people. I mean I don’t mind others in the shower room looking at my body, but in the open in public, it just seems more challenging.
Whatever the case, my exercise regime is going well. I don’t go everyday, like I used to, but I have definitely seen the effects of my weight loss. – I like much better and have had comments such as “have you lost weight?” these types of comments are very encouraging. However I’d rather people saying, “You look a lot stronger than before!” though I understand why someone wouldn’t say that, where the weight loss remark is sort of a general remark!
Since moving in with my cousin, I feel a sense of more freedom and being on my own in this world now. I always have them as back up, if things go wrong, so I am pretty content with the way things are at the moment. Though I always hate thinking about the future. I will eventually need to find a job and finding a job in Taiwan that doesn’t involve English teaching will be hard. I would like to do something more enjoyable and something more permanent.
