I have since reinstalled WordPress but the picture links have disappeared. I’m working on fixing these. In the mean time, please excuse the little X’s on the screen.

In any case, this brought me to think about a very recent incident I had with my neighbour. Just a little background story, I co-own a small martial arts school that used to operate out of a local community centre. We kept the prices low so it’s affordable for families. In addition we also offer the occasional classes to the Coast Mental Health to help kids learn essential life skills in self-defense.  Due to space and cost constraints, we recently had to vacate the community centre and move into a un-used yoga studio space inside my own condo unit.

All of a suddent, without any warning I learnt that one of the residence in the building had complained about the classes. Keep in mind:

• the class sizes are very small (approx 5 students per class)
• the class only happen twice a week
• all students have Sport BC insurance for up to 2 Million
• all students are supervised at all times for access to the building
• the space is otherwise unused (but we still have to pay for through the Strata maintenace fee).
• classes are held on a designated excercise studio floor where there are no residences below us to complain about the noise

At no point in time did this person who complained attempted to speak with either myself nor the instructor, to avoid confrontation I can only imagine.

So, people now-a-days have zero accountability for their actions. And without the confrontation to teach them of the consequence otherwise, people in my generation never learn accountability. This is clearly demonstrated in the 2011 Vancouver Riot. Our martial arts school teaches students invaluable life and survival skills so they can better understand their own strength and weaknesses; skills that may one day save their lives, or the life of a loved one. Yet, for reasons I now will never know because the person did not have the human decency to speak with me in person, we are unable to provide that knowledge to these students.

To the person who complained, I do hope you read this and ask yourself if you truely did a good thing for your community. Or did you just deprive people of knowledge and skills because you felt that you were slightly inhibited. If you have children or loved ones, I hope they will never one day need the skills that we teach.

It’s after 6 consecutive calls from the same person asking the same question today that I decided to write this post. Clearly, some people are miss using and abusing the power of the Question.

What is “Question”?

ques·tion

/ˈkwɛstʃən/ Show Spelled[kwes-chuhn] 

noun

1.

a sentence in an interrogative form, addressed to someone in order to get information in reply.

There are other definitions but for the purpose of this post, we will focus on the form that is mostly concerned with by the Jeopardy crew.

In school, one of my professors had wisely said “In university, we don’t teach you anything except how to learn.” and what better way to learn than to ask well phrased questions?

1. Think “is this really a question I’m asking?”
   A lot of the times, you are not really asking a question. Meaning, if you were provided the actual answer to your question you would not have received your desired results.

   i.e.
   Q: Can you reset my password?
   A: Yes.
   Q: … *pause* Can you actually reset my password?
   A: Yes.
   … etc etc.

   Meanwhile, you’re both sitting there and no password has been reset.

   When you’re requesting a service, as polite as it might be (and we generally get what you’re saying) you shouldn’t phrase it in the form of a question.

   Instead, say: “Please reset my password.”. It is polite and you get what you want.

2. Know who to ask
   The silliest thing about asking questions is directing the question at a random target and hoping you’ll get the right answers. That’s like asking your car mechanic what your mother’s birthday is, or worse, asking your cat what the 15th decimal of Pi is.

   Knowing who to ask your questions to is half of the battle. In the age of technology, the best “person” to ask almost any question would be Google. If you need a how-to, currenty conversion, general trivia, Google is your tool. If you don’t use Google first, you’ll likely end up sounding like a tool. So, use Google.

3. Know what to ask
   Now that you’ve figured out your brother or dad might know your mother’s birthday better than your car mechanic, you should now ask the question properly. Questions like “What is mom’s date-ma-bob?” is not usually helpful and only delays you from getting what you really want.

   Take my recent experience for example:
   Caller: I’m missing the address thingy when I send a new email.
   Me: What address thingy? The address bar?
   Caller: No.
   Me: The “To” field where you would normally input the recipient’s address?
   Caller: No.
   Me: What address thingy are you missing?
   Caller: You know when you try to send a new email, your name and address shows up?
   Me: You mean your signature?
   Caller: Sure. I don’t know what YOU call it.
   Me: OK. It’s called the Signature and I’ll show you how to reset it.
   Caller: OK I don’t care what it is called.

   …. hmm.. lets step back and ponder this for a second:
   
   Senario:
   You were baby sitting your cousin twice removed when he goes missing. Calling 911 you try to file a missing persons report.

   Caller: I’m missing a human thingy
   Police: What human thingy? A body part? Are you hurt?
   Caller: No.
   Police: Are you missing a human?
   Caller: Sure.
   Police: What’s the person’s name?
   Caller: I don’t know what YOU would call it.

   At this point in time.. the police probably isn’t very willing to assist you.

   Basically, how can you ask for help on something when you don’t know what you need help with?

So, those are my 3 tips on asking questions. Let me know if you have any further tips/tricks or stories you’d like to share in the comments.

Recently I finally got to watch The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emporer and here are a list of things that were just wrong:

• The General that’s helping raise the emporer is Cantonese?
  What in the world? Nevermind the fact that even Canton people don’t believe they’re apart of China.
• The immortal version of the Emporer can no longer shoot fireballs through his hands
  While in his terracotta version, the emporer could literally beam balls of lava fire at you.. yet, when he gets more power, this awesome ability disappears and he’s left with sword fighting and Kirin/Dragon forms only?
• The ancient Chinese incantation to raise the souls of the damned is in modern English?
  As Michelle Yeoh stands beneath the Great Wall to raise the fallen soldiers, she speaks in English. And not those old Shakespearen English either.
• They raise the fallen soldiers that were once defeated by the Emporer (back when he was a mortal) to help defeat the Emporer now that he is immortal.
  Right…. that’s a fight just waiting to fail.

It’s that time of the year again for our annual Benefits Enrolment and I thought I’d explore deeper into the Vision Care portion of my personal benefits.

I am a techie, so I sit and stare at a computer screen > 10 hour a day. Not all of that is from work but still, most of us use our eyes all of our waking hours and could not function without them. So, given our eyes are the most important tools we have, how good is the Visions benefit?

Blue Cross covers me $275 for every 24 months. So that works out to $137.50 annually.

Heading over to one of the most popular site for contacts and glasses, I see that the list price for Air Optix Night & Day for $64.89/Box. I wear this brand because I couldn’t be bothered to take my contacts out and cleaning/storing them every night only to wake up blind as a bat. Air Optix Night & Day is designed to be worn continuously for 30 days. At 4 boxes, I get a volume discount for $59.99/box. Each box contains 6 lenses which can be worn for 30 days each. I have two separate prescription for each of my eyes so for 2 boxes, I get 6 months worth of contacts. At 4 boxes, that is one year worth.

$59.99 x 4 = $239.96
$239.96 + 12% tax = $268.75
$268.75 + shipping/handling = …

So, for the price of 1 year worth of contacts, I have already blown my 2 year budget. I am then left with the option of:

• Glasses
• Be blind for a year
• Wear each pair for 2 months instead of 1 month

Clearly, glasses is the best option above just for health and safety reasons. But, personally, I hate glasses. There’s always a film on the lenses; it smudges easy; it sits on my nose and creates pressure on my sinus that makes me dizzy. And, I have a very light frame. So instead, I’ve picked the worst option of wearing each pair for as long as I can to conserve. It’s probably terrible for my eyes and I’m likely to go blind much sooner.  Mean while… I have $300 in acupuncture credits that I never use but can never transfer to anything else I actually need. Note: $275/2 years is the highest possible level I can go for Vision care.

So, how good are your benefits? Do they cover what you need? Do have any praises or beefs with your benefits provider? Let me know in the comments.

*Note* This post uses actual figures, however, it’s for illustrative purposes only. There are other parts to my benefits that are actually quite fantastic. I’ve used the Vision portion as an example only.

Today as I walked past a large office building, a young lady was asking the front desk if she could borrow the phone quickly as her cell has just died. The person at the front desk quickly redirected her to the pay phone down the street rather than having her make a call from the 3 phones that are just sitting there.

Which, prompted me to think of how many times I’ve seen the signs “washrooms are for paying customers only”, “no change” or “no public washroom”. If you are a business owner with a store front, would you:

• have one of those signs?
• deny the requests as they come up but do not have a sign?
• not have a sign and grant those requests?

I wasn’t the young lady affected in the above story and it was a building I frequently visit because I like their product/service. However, all of a sudden I felt really negative towards them. Why couldn’t they have let the girl make a call? I’m sure there are always justified reasons such as:

• impeding normal business practice
• preventing fraud (in very select cases)
• eliminating straggling foot traffic from the lobby

… but do those reasons / benefits outweigh the downside?

That’s my thought for today. Let me know in the comments what you think.

Just recently I had experienced two incidents that made me question Time Keeping practices in a corporate environment.

Incident 1).

I had returned to my desk from my lunch break 15 minutes early. Upon returning, I was advised that there’s currently a meeting going on and that I should join in. I simply said I’m still on my lunch break and left it at that. I was later advised that the fact I pointed out I’m still on lunch was “rude” and I should have participated in the meeting even if I was on lunch. However, if I wasn’t in the building at the time, then I didn’t have to participate. The simple fact that I was around means I should have attended.

Incident 2). 

I had scheduled a quick meeting with my co-worker regarding a non-work related event during my 15-minute break. Unfortunately, the discussion went way over the 15-minutes I had initially allotted for. Upon my return I discovered  3 emails that literally counted the amount of time I was gone to the minute. (Granted, I was over my 15 minutes by quite a bit.) In the same emails I was advised although I don’t take my breaks, what I did was a huge no no. Again, I agree, I was gone for way too long.

Looking back on these two incidents really made me wonder:

Should I have come back from my break early? Or should I have come back from my break late?

It seems like either way I did it, it was wrong. Perhaps I should just stand outside the office building with an atomic timer watch to make sure I’m back at my desk at the exact second. Is this good management behaviour?

A bit of a precursor before you make judgement or comments:

• I don’t usually take my 15 minute breaks. They’re really short and are ineffective. So I prefer just sit there and do the work. An extra 30 minutes a day doesn’t usually kill me.
• I don’t bill the company the extra 30 minutes a day when I don’t take my break and I don’t leave early.
• I volunteer for Over Time shifts whenever I can help out.
• Based on my calculation, over the last year I have racked up over 23 days of break time. That’s 4.6 weeks of vacation time! Which is a lot more than the regular 3 weeks vacation time I’m given.
• The same day Incident 2 occurred I had stayed 30 minutes Over Time.

Born and raised in China, I currently live in Vancouver, Canada. I am an electrial engineer grad from UBC and currently work at Vancity.

In my spare time I run my own consulting company – Flux Integrated Solutions and make create music with the help of my boyfriend. I also blog at Yaletown.ca, watching the local decor and lifestyle trend.

I have lots of hobbies and interests. This site serves as a central location for my interests, activities and day to day ramblings.

1). iPod/Music App gesture control
In iOS 5, you can swipe left or right on the album art to skip to the next track or rewind to the previous track. Very handy if you listen to your iPod while driving. No 3rd party App required.

2). Pinch to close
To minimize an app to the background, instead of clicking the home button, you can pinch the screen with 4 or more fingers.

3). Camera button on Lock Screen
This is a well advertised feature of iOS 5. You can now quickly access your iPhone camera from lock screen. This is still buggy in beta but should prove extremely useful.

4). iCloud Sync
You can now enable iCloud Sync for all your photos and more. As you take pictures on your iPhone it syncs automatically to your other iDevices such as your iPad. Keeping your albums nicely identical.

5). Tabbed Browsing in Safari
For anyone who had many pages on the go, switching between them was always a pain since everytime you switch the page reloads. In iOS 5, tabbed browsing allows you to quickly jump between windows without reloading the page. Reader and Twitter integration is also a bonus.

Such “businesses” seldom involve sales of real products or services to which a monetary value might be easily attached. However, sometimes the “payment” itself may be a non-cash valuable. To enhance credibility, most such scams are well equipped with fake referrals, testimonials, and information. The flaw is that there is no end benefit. The money simply travels up the chain. Only the originator (sometimes called the “pharaoh”) and a very few at the top levels of the pyramid make significant amounts of money. The amounts dwindle steeply down the pyramid slopes. Individuals at the bottom of the pyramid (those who subscribed to the plan, but were not able to recruit any followers themselves) end up with a deficit.

At this point you might be thinking no way! I work for a credible business, a credible corporation, we’re rated the top 100 employers of 20##!  etc. etc.

Stop. Think about your work place, does it have the following features?

• A CEO / Chief whatever at the top making all the decisions
• A select group of VPs under the CEO
• A slightly bigger group of directors and senior managers
• A vastly larger group of lower level managers
• A ginormous amount of “enablers”/admin/”worker bee” type employees

So, if you answered yes to most of those questions, you’ll see that the pyramid is already starting to take shape. Lets examine further. Does your workplace also have the below features?

• The CEO likely makes the most money
• The CEO gets the biggest portion of annual bonuses
• The CEO somehow still received a positive earning in the 6 figures despite unemployment rate, market failures and bankruptcies
• Income rate decrease as you move down from CEO to VP to Manager to General employees
• When the business starts failing the bottom layer gets cut first  as a “cost saving measure”

Are you still thinking your workplace doesn’t look like a pyramid scheme?

We’ll be back with part 2. Until then, I’d like to hear what you think.