Starting a habit, and notes
Work has been overwhelming and overtime hour is just barely under the legal limit.
I think I have been trying and working too hard.
I don't feel healthy mentally and physically, so I think I really need to make some changes.
Maybe I will write more often; to review myself for improvement and perhaps find inspiration somewhere in the process.
Daily goal to exercise more and study Japanese. For health and for long term goals.
I have been thinking about writing. Maybe I will write something, even just drafts. Gotta start somewhere.
Work on daily, weekly, monthly and annual goals. Gotta have some aims.
Animation as screen saver for my phone?
Reminder to care less about work. Care just enough and don't overwork.
Career-wise, I think it will be tough. I barely know the right people. And my Japanese isn't quite good enough yet.
I will continue to work on myself until I am too big for this water for now. (Yes, I am the hoarding troops kind of RTS player.)
There's also an issue with my manager. He is a nice person and a good teammate, but is lacking in leadership and management skills quite a bit.
///////Below is a message to my manager.
Yes, if you are reading my website somehow, you should know that I really need more reassurance and guidance on career path from you as my manager. I have been trying to ask for advice but I only got the generic answers so far.
I am not afraid to just say this to you directly. I just have not felt the necessity to push you yet. So I have hold off for a couple months. Unless… we will see if things actually affects my salary and compensation in the upcoming annual report.
Work responsibility wise, I know what I am doing and what to work on. But as a full-time employee, I don't know how to advance in my career. And I would really prefer to get some of the important corporate news from you instead of getting directly reminded by higher ups, HR or hear from other teams' managers. There are also things missed because I didn't know about it.
I don't know if any important things are missed. I don't how to ask because I don't know what I don't know.
I am a bit old fashioned in a sense that I won't really say things out of my place… but if you do see this somehow… The team needs better structure to work more effectively and efficiently too; starting with tasks/projects and shifts management… Let's talk.
Reload
I started out wanting to write an update on life, but as I gather my thoughts, I also want to share/note down/reorganize my thoughts on life and choices.
I started my new job in October. It’s a great job: good salary, stable, long-term, and I am great at what I do, I honestly think it’s the best and the most fitting job I can find.
But from time to time, I can’t help but wonder what else I can be doing.
…
Honestly, what I really want to do right now is to make films and video games - to tell stories in different ways, and hopefully to inspire. I could keep chasing dreams and grind at it. But when my family wasn’t doing well and there was nothing I could do to help, I really felt like I needed to change… It really comes down to just money.
I came to the realization that chasing dreams is a luxury that I don’t have. Bills come sooner than my dreams could succeed and possibly profit.
I think I grew up in a strange time. Up till graduating college with my first degree, I was working towards the expectations that I thought my parents had for me. Having reconciled that with my parents some years later, I then became a dream chaser in my 20s…
…
I wanted to make a difference and do something good and impactful to the world. With the limited resources, knowledge, and skills I had, I went into a field that a very passionate professor got me into - Bioinformatics. More specifically, I wanted to help develop a platform that collects, sort, and analyze genetic data for disease research.
I thought to myself, “Maybe I am not smart or talented enough to do something great, but I could make a platform where people who are smart enough can change the world.”
It was not a smooth road. It started out with someone, who joined that project after all the basics were done, just took the whole thing and applied for Google funds as if it was her own. So whatever I do after, I have to create myself since she did not leave it open source.
I still remember her. I am a bit upset just thinking about it, but I don’t hate her. I just hope that it wasn’t about the money. And if she had the passion to go through all that, she just might have enough passion to bring it to a higher level.
At the same time, I got accepted into BU with almost full scholarship. I thought I would be able to work on the project with more resources. I thought I was accepted into the school because of “what great goal I had”. But in reality, grad school is a lot different from what I thought it was. Gotta go through the system first with years worth of assigned/required curriculums that had little to do with what I brought with me.
Memories of the experience are fuzzy. Combined with being broken up with and loneliness in my social life, the expensive Boston life making me worry about money all the time, and the lack of hope for my goals and dreams, I fell into severe depression halfway through. I became drug dependent to even be able to function and live.
The one thing I remember most clearly from my time in Boston was… my advisor, with his old soon-to-retire wizard-like face, told me that no one in Boston or even the whole America would want to fund my research. Somewhere in the world, maybe. If I somehow get the attention of Rakuten CEO, I might get funded in Japan. So right now, I just have to work my way through the system - required courses, get into well-funded research team/lab, and then network my way there.
I couldn’t go on after - too expensive and too hopeless.
But this is always in the back of my mind, maybe one day…
… I sometimes wonder if it would have turned out differently if I had a more responsible advisor there… such is life.
…
When I think about my hopes and dreams, this is it:
A cloud-based web platform where genetic data can be submitted/gathered, sorted, translated, and analyzed for research.
A trilogy of spy/cult action films
A trilogy of open-world adventure games that is both sci-fi and fantasy.
A mythology-based fictional action drama series involving all religions and gods.
A small community-center-like cafe/restaurant where I can retire and cook whatever I want without having to worry about profit and help the community.
Maybe one day…
…
Back to reality, I think it’s good and important to remind ourselves of both sides from time to time - things we want to do and things we need to do.
My job is not what I want to do, but it’s what I need to do. And I will probably do it till I retire.
What I want to do doesn’t have to wait, but it will take more commitment and effort going forward. And I need to remind myself about it before I am lost.
This is where I am.
Storytime and thoughts
—-Sharing and organizing my thoughts a bit…
It’s been almost a year since I lost my job.
I was working as a finance production support specialist at Nomura Securities. I worked there for about 2 years since July 2020. I definitely learned and matured a lot. To me, it was a really good job. And I can confidently say that I was good at it. I worked well with the team. I worked well with my direct managers. If nothing happened, I would probably still be there.
It was unfortunate that I was not a permanent employee there. Instead, I was a dispatch/contracted consultant through a Chinese company. And the funny thing was I wasn’t directly contracted with that Chinese company either. For me it was: me -> dispatch company one -> dispatch company two -> Nomura. I wasn’t the only one, and from my understanding, there were quite a few of us in similar situation or worse. One of my colleagues had 3 “middlemen” and got paid even less.
The salary was okay, but definitely not enough with some questionable ethics in payroll. For those of us who were contracted through the Chinese company, our salary ranged from 200k to 350k yen a month. I was on the higher end of it at around 300k a month. But no overtime~ I had a small grudge against this. I had over 400 hours of overtime in 2021. Hey, that’s like working a couple of extra months for free.
(I found out from a friend that our salary was actually way less than it’s supposed to be… And from one of the job applications later, I found out that through an American dispatch company working the same position actually pays more than double.
So in short, Chinese dispatch companies take about 60-80% commission and American dispatch companies take about 20%.)
Back to the story: I think it was around March 2022. China-Japan relation was becoming tense. Nomura also had a new higher management and some restructuring. And the higher management decided that Chinese companies shouldn’t be touching the production data anymore. So all production support from Chinese-affiliated companies was getting laid off or moved to development. (Everyone in the industry knows how stupid it was. But you know, corporate.)
I was in shock and had to start looking into the next step. First, I looked into becoming a permanent employee. But it turns out the Chinese company had a no-compete clause in the contract with Nomura, so I couldn’t be hired directly within 6 months. I found out that it was actually illegal in Japan to do that, but eventually, HR didn’t want to risk it… Regardless, I am thankful that my managers really fought for me on that.
My next choice was to continue working through the Chinese company at Nomura, but in dev elsewhere. It took me quite a while, but I decided that I didn’t want to be affiliated with that company anymore. Yes, it would have been a somewhat stable income. And yes, I would be diving into the unknown for turning it down (two opportunities, actually).
But outside of my little grudge on the high commission and no overtime pay, what eventually got me to my decision was the feeling of hopelessness at a dead-end job. There’s no way of raise, promotion, or even personal growth. We were exploited and we couldn’t do anything about it. I looked at one of my dispatched coworkers who has been there for about a decade and is still at the exact same place. I didn’t want to be like that.
Also, it was honestly really demotivating when I found out how much more my coworkers were getting paid, even though I was doing most of the work. (it was a 5+ million yen difference) And I had to train the replacement team (who definitely lied and some barely know computers!?).
So then, I was on my own.
I started looking for jobs in fintech and some entry-level developer positions in different industries. From May 2022 to now - May 2023, I applied for around 60-80 jobs. I think if I had better luck or just gave in on standard a bit, I might be working now.
This happened three times: a big company took its time processing my application. Everything looked promising even with promising words from the hiring managers. A small company gave me an offer to start immediately. I decided to wait for the big company and turned down the small company… Somehow, big companies didn’t work out. (the first time, a regional manager decided to bring in someone from overseas; the second and third times, the company had a budget issue and closed/canceled the position.)
… then time was gone. We are here now.
To be honest, after all that, I am mentally exhausted, I am a bit lost, and I am not sure what I am doing.
I didn’t waste all my time away. I studied Japanese, some programming languages, and AWS. My Japanese isn’t quite good enough yet but has definitely gotten better. I got AWS Cloud Practitioner certified. I got familiar with some newer front-end languages.
Right now, I am still waiting on one big company, but I’ve also applied to a bunch of random jobs. Have a few interviews lined up…
“What am I doing though?” I wonder to myself every other day lately.
…
A few things I learned in the past year:
Sometimes, it really is just luck. It’s not a fair world where people start on the same line or where the same amount of work has the same output. No matter how much effort and hard work I put in, whether things work out or not might just be luck.
Work is just work. Business is just business. At the end of the day, there are more important things in life.
Since my 20s, I’ve struggled with balancing between idealistic dreams and realistic work. I followed my passion to different places and various different jobs. But realistically, most people on this earth will not be able to achieve their dreams.
Motivational speakers or people who’ve made it like to say “follow your passion” or “if you work hard enough, you will make it.” But the reality is people don’t hear from the ones who gave it their all and failed. The reality is sometimes there are things in life that pull us away from chasing our dreams and passion.
I think for a lot of us. Having to worry about food on the table is enough to drag us away from chasing our passion. And caring for loved ones can take quite a bit too.
It’s a privilege to be able to chase dreams.I’ve heard this since I was little: You can’t buy everything with money, but you can’t do anything without it. I think I am feeling it so much more now.
…
What do I want to do? What’s stopping me? What can I do?
After so many years, I am not quite sure exactly where my passion is anymore. But there is something that I want to do - tell stories. Whether through books, videos, games or other media, there are several stories I want to tell.
What’s stopping me is the reality of money. What I want to do can’t put food on the table. While being in Japan on a work visa and without native-level Japanese, I have few choices in ways to make money. I sometimes think about going back to Taiwan, so I can work whatever job and find time to work on my own passion. But I also want to have enough money to provide and bring my parents on trips they never get to go on because they’ve sacrificed so much.
What can I do? I have to find a job first. Money saved up. Then maybe I can find time to work on whatever I want to work on.
I just hope I won’t be too old before I get to work on anything.
…
I don’t have the time and energy to work on any big projects right now. But I have a couple of small projects in mind…
Hope I can get to them…
Good luck.
Quick Updates
It’s been a while since I put updates on here. A few things since Halloween 2022:
More job applications and rejections… more on that in a separate note.
Made something for Chinese New Years - year of the rabbit.
See instagram and tiktok for full content.
Acquired AWS Cloud Practitioner License
And continued job hunting..