So I hope through this entry I can share my experience with the Invisalign treatment for those of you who are waging the decision and hopefully inform you things that you may not have come across from other Invisalign blogs or sites.

I am 27 years old as of now and I currently reside in the industrial area of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. My Invisalign provider is Yap & Associates Dental Surgery, located in Bangsar, with Dr. Yap himself handling my case.

As of May 2010, I was officially under Invisalign treatment (it is September, 2010 right now); my Invisalign treatment is on bi-weekly basis, which means I switch to new set of aligner trays every two weeks, for each tray of aligner I progress, my teeth alignment is corrected by a little, by the end of the treatment, my teeth should be very well aligned.

For your information: all 4 of my wisdom teeth are not extracted, according to the X-rays they are slightly pushing against my molar teeth but the dentists said they should not be a problem as long as they are not causing infections, so I never did anything about my wisdom teeth.

First, of course you want to find the right orthodontist – keyword is orthodontist, try not to go for a dentist because an orthodontist and a dentist have different perspectives about going through the treatment. Well, I don’t know what exactly, but orthodontists are specialized in teeth alignment procedures – whether it be traditional braces or Invisalign, I trust that they have better understandings and experiences of teeth alignment and teeth whitening, whereas a dentist is specialized in the overal dental health.

Not everyone is suitable for Invisalign, Invisalign is great for mild cases, but you never know until you really ask right? So, once you found your orthodontist, and after your orthodontist takes a good look at your teeth, and approves AND suggests Invisalign for you, then you will need to do two things:

A. You need to get X-rays done
B. You’ll be doing a clay model of your current teeth alignment.

These two steps cost me about $100 and will only take you no more than 1 day if the orthodontic facility you choose from has an X ray equipment; I did my X ray in a public hospital and took me 1 hour in line and the actual X ray only took 20 minutes to receive.

Your orthodontist will then send your X rays and your teeth model together to the Invisalign HQ in San Jose, California, USA., there the specialists will evaluate and develop your personal, customized aligning process based on the X ray and teeth models they receive.

Upon evaluation, the total number of your Upper and Lower teeth aligners will be determined, usually the aligner is on bi-weekly basis, as I mentioned, it means you will need to change to a new set of aligner (both upper and lower teeth) every two weeks.

The higher the number of aligners you receive, the longer the treatment is going to take.

In my case, the total aligners I received are 22 sets, both upper and lower, which means if everything goes well, my treatment will be finished within 22 x 2 weeks = 44 weeks = 10 1/2 months. NOW THAT IS FREAKING FAST. (note that most Invisalign cases take about 1 year in average, really depends on the actual condition of your current teeth alignment, again, the messier it is, the longer it takes.)

So after about 2 weeks since your X rays and teeth models were submitted to the Invisalign HQ, your orthodontist should be getting ALL of your aligners and handing the first few sets to you, and then your orthodontist should be putting on Attachments for you (which I will talk about later) and there you begin wearing your first set, and the countdown has begun!

1. THE ATTACHMENTS

Depending on your case, your orthodontist will be putting on a number of “Attachments” on your teeth, these “Attachments” are very stirdy, cement-like materials in sizes of a rice that cemented onto the surface of your teeth and they act like locks for the aligner to hold onto your teeth very tightly. They will only be removed by the end of the treatment.

The attachments will be tooth colored to reduce their visabilities but I have a total of 9 attachments, 6 upper and 3 lower, if your attachments are placed on the back teeth then lucky you, but mine happened to be placed on my front teeth, so they are quite visible and uncomfortable. In the beginning, be prepared to cut your lips.

Attachments and the aligner are virtually invisible from pictures, here I have very large chunks of attachments cemented on almost all my front teeth. Can you see?
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Without a doubt, the attachments are one of the major downside of the Invisalign treatment, since they don’t really mention it until after the whole evaluation process is done. BUT, comparing to the shiny, metallic braces that traditional braces offer, the attachments really are not bad at all – they are needed to hold onto your teeth and move, and they will be tooth colored, and even though you cut your lips in the beginning, you really do get used to them after a week or two.

2. SOME OF YOUR TEETH WILL PROBABLY BE SHAVED

Depending on your case, for mine, my teeth will be shaved off with about 0.5 mm to 1mm to create space for my teeth to move inward. These gaps will eventually close as your teeth move; again, this is something I did not expect, but when I think about it, it makes perfect sense as my teeth had a crowding problem.

A lot of folks out there complain about the pain and discomfort with Invisalign, and I find them to be unrealistic. When you decide to go with this treatment you should have a very clear understanding that your teeth will be moved and your bite will be corrected, it is impossible for the treatment to be entirely painless or not cause any discomfort.

In my case, the first 2 weeks or so while I was wearing the aligners, it wasn’t painful to the point that I couldn’t stand it, it just felt very uncomfortable wearing two pieces of plastic device that’s correcting your teeth at all times, and occasionaly I get minor migraines due to the constant pressure the aligners are giving my teeth and jaw. You can resolve this problem simply by taking some pain killers.

In my case, the migraine was bothering me a bit and caused me to worry and wonder when it’d go away; and I had pretty bad lisps that affect my speech. However, by about the 3rd week or so, these problems were gone almost completely. You simply stop being so self-concious about the aligners in your mouth and move on with life.

2. No colored drinks and No eating while you wear your aligners.

You will be wearing your aligners for about 20 to 22 hours a day and you will only take them out when you are eating. You will need to floss and brush your teeth thoroughly EVERYTIME you finishe eating – that is if you are persistent and care about your oral hygiene.

For me, I get lazy from time to time and only floss when after eating major meals; sometimes for breakfast I just have yogurt so I only brush my teeth afterwards, to each his own but it’s recommended that you floss everytime after you eat.

The only thing you are allowed to drink while wearing the aligners is Water. Any other drinks, especially sugar-added or color drinks like coffee or tea are strongly discouraged because sugar will deposit inside the aligner and may cause tooth decay; while colored drinks may cause discoloration to your aligners.

However, I do cheat by using straws sometimes when I feel the dire need of some iced coffee; as long as I’m sure the beverage does not contain any sugar, I use straws to drink, but still always brush my teeth afterwards.

As for smokers, the Invisalign booklet suggests smokers to avoid smoking while wearing the aligners since the smoke can stain and discolor the aligners. However, I am a smoker, and according to my experience, the smoke really doesn’t cause serious discoloration at all, as long as you clean the aligners everday (I clean my aligner daily  when I shower), the discoloration is minimal and can’t be noticed. I will post some pictures up later for comparison.

The good side about not being able to eat while you are wearing the aligners is that you will cut down a lot of snacking and sugary drinks – which can be a pretty good way to lose some excessive weights; however, some people just don’t care for the hassle to take the aligners off for snacks; while some others tend to eat a whole lot more during regular meals.

3. Money


As expected, Invisalign is developed and currently patented by one single company – Align Technology Inc. based in San Jose, California, USA. Which means this product practically has zero competition in the market and is dominant over the invisible-braces market, as far as removable and invisible orthodontics devices are concerned.

Please expect to pay about 30 to 40% more than traditional braces; if you are outside of USA, then the cost will be even higher because of the distances or currency exchanges or whatnot.

In my case, my 22 aligners + guarantee satisfied final result cost me roughly US$5,000, whereas my orthodontist quoted me roughly $2,500 for traditional braces.

I am not sure if any insurance will apply for this treatment, but in my case I didn’t have anything to use for this treatment so paid in full – of course, the payment terms should and can be negotiated with you and your orthodontists.

4. Risk of Losing or breaking the aligners

Although I will do all that I can to prevent that from happening, it still can happen. When the aligners come, they will only come with one copy of each set, which means if you lose or break any single set, your treatment will be delayed by roughly 2-4 weeks depending on how fast you’ll be able to get a new replacement.

If you lose or break an aligner, you’ll have to pay a certain amount of money, not sure how much, but the pain is that you’ll need to wait for a new one; you’ll need to go back one stage to your previous aligner until the new replacement arrives, which really sucks.

I don’t worry too much about this issue though, because in the back of my mind it’s $5,000 down the drain already and I want the quickest and best result, therefore I try my best to prevent this from happening by always carry my aligners and its protection case with me, whenever I head out.

5. Inconveniences (minor)

Not being able to eat anything or drink anything sugared or colored with the aligner on will mean that it’s a little inconvenient to go around town and enjoy spontaneous foods and drinks; any meals will need to accompany a visit to the restroom to remove the aligners, then go back afterwards once the meal is finished. And you will always need to carry dental floss, toothbrush, and toothpaste.

But again, you get used to it really; the good side is that you will have spectacular oral hygine from now on.

6. Bad breath

If you are very self-concious about your breath, then you may need to take note that since you are wearing the aligner 24-7, a lot of bacteria will deposit within and make your breath smell bad, it’s inevitable.

Typically speaking, one should expect roughly at least 2 years for traditional braces to fully correct your teeth and bite. Before I went committed to Invisalign, I had the mental preparation to go through the entire process for 2 years.

But as it turned out, my entire treatment will last only 10 1/2 months! Of course that’s if nothing goes wrong during the treatment.

So far, I am now on Tray 8 (16 weeks of 44 weeks) and all of my aligners fit greatly.

So, this is definitely one of the greatest advange point I’ve considered versus going traditional braces.

Also, in my case, I did not need to remove any of my teeth piror to the treatment, which is a GREAT bonus for me, because 4 or 5 years back when I was being quoted by another orthodontist, I was told that I needed to remove all 4 of my wisdom teeth to create space. My teeth were shaved off slightly to create space instead, which is painless and fast and did not really affect your overall appearance at all.

2. Appearance

Needless to say, one of the primary reasons why people go for Invisalign is because it’s virtually invisible unless people really pay attention to your teeth – those who had gone through orthodontic treatments will typcially notice it because they naturally pay more attention to people’s teeth.

Depending on the attachments you have, some people may never know you are wearing the aligners at all; in my case, since my attachments are mostly on my front teeth, a lot of people notice them but due to politeness so far nobody had pointed them out to me just yet.

All in all, attachments or not, you will definitely look better than if you were in metallic braces.

3. Minimal pain and discomfort

For Invisalign, the most you get is discomfort, it may hurt a little bit but it’s nothing more than a minor toothache – at least that’s my experience; the first 2 or 3 weeks were most annoying, but I soon not even realize I was wearing the aligners after a while.

However, you do experience the “tightness” every two weeks when you switch to a new aligner, which really cause a little bit of soreness for the first 2 or 3 days.

4. Control

Sometimes wearing the aligners to attend a hot date or romantic dinner can be pretty un-doing, but in all reality, although you need to wear your aligner 20 to 22 hours a day, if you know you will have a romantic dinner or a hot date, you can really wager it and just take the aligner off for the duration of the date, or the entire day (though not recommended).

Sometimes I ask myself what do I do everyday to really push myself towards the place I want to be, well, admittedly I still seem to be living my life on a day-to-day basis; when I really think about it, it’s no wonder why I am still far away from my goals and dreams.

I remember 3 years ago when I made the decision to come to Asia to work with my family, I told myself that I’d need at least 2 to 3 years to learn about this business enough to make sure whether it is something I want to do for the rest of my life.

As it turns out, my family’s business was almost entirely different than I imagined – things really don’t go the way I imagined at all, had I not been here I would never realized just how much sacrafice and hardships my father had gone through to support the family in the States.

And I ask myself whether I want to endure through all this hardships that my father went through, till today I still don’t know if I can. My long term goal is to obtain some sort of venue that can generate some sort of passive income for me without me physically being there everyday – things like real estate property or a business. And I just know that it’s very difficult to obtain these if I just worked some jobs in the States with a shitty Cal-state degree.

Well actually, when it comes down in the end, it’s pointless to think about “what if” I quit right now and start all over again in the States, because it’s irresponsible to my family and above all, to myself. I think even though I am getting older, having less time to piss around the bush or “exploring the options”, I should at the very least finish what I started when I first came here. So my decision ultimately is to stay here in a long haul and acheive the goals I set up for myself, other wise I will never feel happy.

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So having released the stress and sadness, life isn’t all bad really, I do have other things that I feel very happy and excited about. The first is that I am now a proud owner of a little property in Taiwan.

Also, one thing I’ve always wanted to do I have finally started as of May 2010; well, I was always unhappy about my crooked teeth, so yep, I spent quite a lot of money and am now under Invsialign treatment – a supposedly invisible orthodontist device that straightens my teeth.

Initially I feel very reluctant to do so because I didn’t want to go through extracting my teeth and the pain and looking even more boyish than I already do with the silly wires on my teeth; but after a little research I found Invisalign to be the solution. Surprisingly, Invisalign is convenient and painless – it’s transparent, no need for teeth extraction, I can take if off when I eat, and I practically don’t feel anything when I wear them, and above all, if all goes according with plan I’ll be done with the treatment by April 2011 – that’s less than 1 year! The downside of course is that it’s about 40% more expensive than conventional braces, but I thought “Fuck it, it’s for a life time.” so yeah, that’s that.

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Well, that about sums up my 2010 so far, I still have a little less than 3 months to accomplish the goals I’ve set up for myself at the beginning of this year, I’m just going to go with the flow and do my best. Then of course Christmas comes and I will once again be in my F.T.W. mode. I miss all my homies back in the States; I miss Shadow so much, she doesn’t remember me I’m sure, I’m happy that she’s in good hands with Jenny; I miss living in Foster City, just chill and worry-free. Well until then, I need to go back to work!

Some people be complaining about how the show qualities of Taiwan are declining, I don’t see how that is possible, because the show business of Taiwan have already morphed media, news, entertainment, and infomercials all together into one entity, the quality no longer matters because the entire network is doing the same thing but only catering to different demographics. In all realness they just want to make money with the little commercials there remains in Taiwan, meanwhile further degenerate the minds of Taiwan so we can keep buying the things we don’t know why we want or need. I don’t blame them for doing what they’re doing, because let’s face it, we still watch it everyday and we love it.

Speaking of Taiwanese commercials, take a look at the following two videos and kindly sympathize for the Taiwanese commercial makers.

Cute right? I felt the same way the first time I saw it, unforturnately it is almost an exact duplication to British singer MIKA’s “Lollipop”. Check it out:

I understand that the Taiwanese car maker’s marketing department bought the rights for such duplications, and that it may have been the marketing department’s budget concern to not be able to hire professionals to create original materials, but at the very same time, I can’t help but feel sad that the entire Taiwan network is simply filled with unoriginal shows, implemented infomercials, and duplicated commercials. ARE WE THAT FUCKED UP!?

Think I’ve strayed away from the topic a little too much. My point is, I think we as humans take the first hand information way too seriously and we feel the need to “classfiy” the good and evil of people base on one or two little details we see about people, and even if we later find out that these information aren’t necessarily representative of such person or entity as a whole, deep down insdie we still base such quality and give inaccurate and unfair judgements about those said issues/persons/entities; I just think that we must learn to not trust the media that much and continue to learn more through experience and become independent and individual enough to evaluate true information and knowledge from bullshit garbages.

Anyways, I’m going to watch INCEPTION and then cop Starcraft 2 today, life is good and I’m happy.

“Before a black swan is spotted by men, all swans were deemed white by default.”

One of the analogies I favor in this book is about the Beginner’s Luck Phenomenon, which is widely accepted and acknowledged among Casino-goers. The idea behind Beginner’s Luck is that most gamblers tend to have better luck at the games at earlier stages of their gambling career.

The problem in how our mind works is that we like to see sure things and capture the security of solidity – we like to make sense out of things that are happening to us, therefore we unconciously ignore the things that did not happen to us, and sometimes it can lead us to a degree of serious troubles.

To illustrate the problem as told from the book, take Beginnger’s Luck Phenomenon for example, the real reason why Beginner’s Luck is accepted by Casino goers goes by the following:

Consider two groups of people: A and B, each gambling for the first time, let’s suppose that all of group A win for the very first bet, whereas group B loses for the first time. Group A is very likely to continue betting, while group B becomes hesitant, and very likely to stop betting and gambling in the future.

While group A may continue to be lucky with their bets, as we all know Casinos aren’t really in the giving-away-all-their-money business, plus gambling is really a game of chance, so surely subsequent bets placed by group A will be losing hands. BUT, group A, the remaining players will more than likely to remember that at the beginning of their games, their hands were mostly winning and definitely pleasant – while group B is not likely to continue gambling, given their bad experiene for the first time – as a result, Beginner’s Luck becomes accepted among active gamblers, who are probably mostly belong to group A.

This analogy to me was quite an eye opener, because if we apply this problem with how our mind works, we will get to see that NOBODY ever cares about the life and deeds of the failures. We as people like to feel reassured about things that happened, things that are positive and good, and give justifications to it. The things that did not happen are filtered through our cognitive process and really don’t raise questions and doubts.

We will always be interested in reading biographies of Bill Gates or ________(Insert someone famous), never somebody who is living on a $20K salary for the rest of his life, while we pay attention to the traits of the successful people such as pasisonate, hardworking, or daring; but we seldom consider that the the failed may also have had the same exact quality, but failed.

Doctors will want to examine “sure signs” of a symptoms before he can diagnose a possible disease/ailment, if a doctor sees an unusual lump in a person body, it becomes a sign of cancer, in another words, if a doctor DOES NOT see any unusual lump in a person’s body, the person is FREE OF cancer – which in some cases can be a dangerous way to tell the health level of a person.

Well, I find myself to feel a little bit happier having accepted this analogy, for those of you who don’t know, I am that guy who continues betting even though I definitely belong to group B; I never understood the Beginner’s Luck, always thought it was a superstition.

Lately though I’ve noticed significant drops in my Xanga traffic, what can I say? I guess a lot of it has to do with the creation and manifestation of Facebook due to its interactive interface that allows more timely updates of the users, instant messaging services (which I turn off) and all kinds of applications to fun around with.

Speaking of Facebook applications, what is the deal with them? They suck. The only application that I enjoy is Poker, and that’s under the premise that none of those lame, no-skilled, all-in-only, pussy ass players decided to join the table and pisses on everyone else’s game. ALL OTHER APPLICATIONS ARE ANNOYING. I feel particularly annoyed with all those half-assed retarded personality tests, like “What will be the last name of your future spouse?” uh, CHENG, maybe? And who cares really?

And what is the deal with the Farming game? I never played it and will never play it, you know why? Because I’ve got a real farm in my backyard, and I harvest tomatos, bananas, cucumbers, pineapples, Chinese yams, and all the other good stuff all I want. Farming games are like the new Solitaire, get over it and play a real game like Warcraft III.

Alas, Facebook ain’t all bad, I do hop onto it every day to see what’s going with my friends lives, checking out videos and photos. Speaking of friends, I haven’t gotten in touch with my homies, guess everyone is busy with their own thing. Think I should take the initiative to write more often, since my Xanga gets “No Love” like Em and Lil’ Wayne – lol, speaking of “No Love“, Em slayed that joint so freaking hard it’s not even funny, in fact, I typically last about 20 minutes on my treadmill routine with normal hip-hop and rock songs, but lately I blast on Recovery, cannot be stopped track 1 to track 19! (deluxe version has 2 bonus songs that should also make into the track list) The guy just massacred the entire album, ’nuff said.

Alright, have a pleasant end of June!

Anyways, I ain’t no model human or a saint, but I have seen my share of irresponsible jerkoffs in my time. And I wonder how these jerkoffs manage to raise children on their own. For example, one of my coworker who just quit today is dead broke; he’s come to work for 1 month for the salary, he asked for an advance salary the second week he was in; I lended him some money in private instead, and what does he do with the money? He smokes a pack of cigarette a day, eats outside everyday and even go out and take coffee breaks – all expenses he could cut down to support his daughters. Essentially he borrowed the money for these luxirious things he could enjoy for himself.

Personally, I am NOT a kid lover, quite frankly I hate kids in general, but I do feel unjust for the kids that are raised under very limited resources. Why do some people get married and have children when they know the money is tight and they probably won’t be able to afford the child support? Why do some people insist on having lifestyles like they are free of responsibilities of their children when in fact they have 3 kids sitting at home being babysitted by their parents?

I see all these guys in their mid-30s bragging about how much they miss the times being 20-something, that their lives are ruined because everything they do now is for the kids, how they have no future, blah blah blah – as if it was their own children’s fault that got their shit ruined. What did the kids do? You made them, and you should give up your freedom and time to the lives you brought into this world. And everytime the question of why having children in the first place is raised, they all give you the same answers: “Family pressure” “I’m the only son” “I am getting old”… I find it extremely puzzling that these guys feel obligated to have children because “everyone else is doing it”, or the family is giving them the pressure.

To me, this is a very dangerous cycle. Irresponsible parents give brith to their chilren, but they don’t want to give up their fancy lifestyles, hey, gotta party right? gotta go to the movies right? gotta make some more money right? So they leave their kids to their parents. And if things go well, the kids are eventaully taken back and raised by themselves, happy ending; but if things don’t go out as planned, chances are another under-loved, under-parented, under-educated human being is raised, and without precautions, chances are they will give birth to some more children that they can’t afford to raise, and chances are they leave the kids to their equally incompetent parents, and the cycle goes on.

I am not saying that all parents should be super rich before they ever think about having children, I am just puzzled by particularly lazy, ignorant, and irresponsible people who never thought twice about the meaning of having children. I see some only-sons who are utterly incompetent, lazy, selfish…spoiled…and…just trashy in general, and it bothers me how his parents fail to see that they’ve raised a failure? Worst yet, his parents are giving him pressure to marry and have kids so they can have grandchildren and the family name carries on, but it’s truly tragic to know that the family name is only more likely to be trashed by irresponsible parenting, and while the newborn kids stay oblivious to the fact that they are raised by a bunch of fuck-ups, they continue to degenerate the bloodline by producing more babies that they can not afford or incapable to raise.

Come to think about it, the reason why I hate kids must be because they have shitty parents. Shitty parents can’t raise kids, so the kids don’t have any manners. When kids don’t have manners they are no longer cute, just pure annoyances running, giggling, and dancing around messing things up. During my tuotring job when I was in college, I was teaching this 7-year old girl Chinese. One day during the session, her 4 year-old brother was shouting and yelling like an annoying kid usually would, she actually went up and schooled her kid brother to be quiet and polite while Mr. Jacky is in the house – and that was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever witnessed – THAT is what I would want my children to be like.

Anyways, what’s my point? My point is that nobody is ever ready for children, but we must be at least as prepared as we possibly can before we can think about bringing lives into this world. If you honestly doubt your preparation and devotion to having children, then DON’T HAVE NO KIDS. And if you accidentally knocked up your girl and decided against abortion, SUCK IT UP AND PAY YOUR DUES, YOUR LIFE IS OVER, THERE IS NO “I” ANYMORE, IT’S “WE” FROM NOW ON, SHUT THE FUCK UP, GET OVER IT AND GET TO WORK!

It’s been a minute since my last update; well I’ve been busy preparing for a sudden audit for my Taiwan factory from one of our clients from Malaysia. Since I was the only one capable of speaking minimal English, I flew back to Taiwan for the audit.

A little insider information on the honey market (if uh, anyone is interested), most of the honey sold today at the Southeast Asian market are very likely to be of China origin. The general public have a fundamental belief that Chinese food products are inferior. While it is true that the Chinese food industry is notourious for adulterations and contaminations, with enough researches and closer examinations, it isn’t very difficult to find quality food products with surprisingly low prices.

Well I’m not here to sell Chinese Honey, in fact Chinese honey is kind of driving a lot of folks like my company out of business. And the fact that most Chinese honey are indeed contaminated with antibiotics, the US and European Union two of the world’s largest honey consumers, are fed up with contaminated honey, therefore prohibiting all Chinese honey to be imported.

It isn’t too difficult for the Chinese honey producers/exporters to remedy the situations by simply exporting Chinese honey to nearby countries: Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan, Australia, Thailand, Vietnam…etc. and repack the honey, then export the repacked honey out as a different country of origin, which is an illegal practice that a lot of exporters are willing to risk because of the huge volumes and potential tax deductions.

So, bigger importers today have learned their lessons to avoid being cheated intobuying transhipped Chinese honey – hence the audit to our Taiwan factory.

~ Commercial Break, a little background about my company ~

Yi Wang group of companies is a family based, 75+ year old honey and honeybee product producer, we specialize in the manufacturing, processing, and pacakging of honeybee products, particularly in Honey, Royal Jelly, Bee Pollen, and Propolis.

All of our products are of Taiwan origin with the exception of Propolis which is produced and processed in our Joint Venture factory in Minas Geras, Brazil.

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So, this short, 3 day audit oddessy consisted of checking out our factory locaiton and facilities, apiaries, as well as some educational materials in the Taiwanese honey industry and what not. I haven’t had a chance to really host such a trip and the ancient wisdom of Chinese old saying says it well “The plan never catches on to changes”!!!

A couple of things that I wasn’t too prepared with (and thus need to be more aware of the next time around):

1. Expensive hotels and shitty customer services:

I realized that in Taoyuan there were absolutely zero higher end hotels, at US$100 per night, all we could have were some very lame 3-Star rooms! Worst yet, the rooms come with only one key, and the key is actually literally…a key! With a big ol’ plastic keychain! Maybe it’s me but doesn’t that seem so 90′s?

The next best hotel was a 4 Star which would cost upwards to US$180 a night, and I’m not talking about Sheraton or the Orientals, just an average looking hotel! But upon further review – WHO COMES TO TAOYUAN FOR TRAVEL? It’s an industrial area with minimal attractions, with that in mind, I can sort of understand the lame hotels.

So lesson learned: it really was all we could do!

2. Taiwan isn’t really a cuntry of great eats when it comes to Islamic tourists

Most of the auditers were of Islamic religion and requires foods to be HALAL certified (which means that the food is prepared and served in accordance to the Islamic law), it was quite a hassle for us to find suitable restaurants, and unlike most Taiwanese people perceived – HALAL foods aren’t just foods with no pork and alcohol – it’s more than that! HALAL Chicken and Cows must go through a degree of “enlightenment” by prayers (not sure exactly) before slaughtered in order to be HALAL certified.

Needless to say, we did NOT know that!! Now that even beef and chicken aren’t HALAL, you leave out most of the protein intakes, no chicken, no pork, and no beef. So you can picture lots of dishes sitting there with just me and my fellow local Taiwanese co-workers savoring while our highly honored guests waiting for Seafoods and Veggies!

So lesson learned, next time, bring Muslim guests to Seafood buffets OR Vegetarian restaurants!!

3. The Taiwan traffic meets Monsoon.

Some of us are aware of the nasty Taiwan traffic, but it just so happens that May is the monsoon season! So the traiffc got even worse – point A to B of anywhere in Taiwan became potential risk factors to blood clots and strokes caused by poor blood circulations with excessive sitting.

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Well there should be more but is all I could think of for now, onto some snaps!

A little on-the-spot teaching about the bee society by the boss himself.

There you go! Another busy-bee happy chapter of Jacky Cheng’s life!

And for the longest time I failed to implement this idea into my thoughts and actions. Often times all I feel is resentment and frustration. On the surface I take the blame, but in my mind I’d make up millions of reasons and excuses to justify my failure.

It doesn’t make me feel any better at all, failure is failure, a result of series of events and actions (or inactions) I take overtime. There may be some thing that I’ve done right, but it’s like Basketball, making the basket is a score, a miss is a miss. Whether the ball was really, really close or a complete airball, in the score board it says the same thing: “Zero.”

At work, I handle a wide variety of clients and company partners, and through my observation, the successful ones never seem to bitch about anything. The incompetent ones make nothing but excuses – there are always critical factors affecting their performance at work that no one else could have foreseen.

These factors can be small from: Traffic, Weather, to say, the Economy (don’t we all love to use this one?), the Market, bad luck, bad timing… to down right “If you would’ve told me before hand!”

Truth is, I’m disgusted by it. Nothing frustrates me more than when a problem occurs, people who were responsible (or even just partially responsible) for the situation give you nothing but these factors. They are even infuriated when you dare to raise doubts towards them – “What!? I’ve done my part, I’ve done all that I can! What do you want from me!?”

What is it with these ego? It’s the lamest thing. Maybe I’ve tamed all these people too damn much – by being a little Mr. Nice Guy all the time, hollering about brainless bullshit that is on the bottom list of the things I give a shit, so what? So people will like me more? So that I can feel better about myself? Or because I want people to be nice to me also?

I’m tired of these bullshits that people give me when some shit happens and when we try to fix the problem, everyone who is involved trys their best redirect the fault to someone or something else – and worst of all, I am acting just like one of them – always feeling wronged by others, always feeling the need to justify and explain the results. Who really cares?  In the end, I’m just one of the millions of these dead beats who ain’t never gonna make it. Until the day I do, it’s all but an idea of who I wished I was.

Well, tough shit man, I am not going to stop there with a big phat L on my forehead. So I am dedicating this post to my father – the one and only man who critisizes me 24 – 7 for every-single-God-Damned-thing that I do. No one else could better tell me how much better a man I could become. Even though sometimes you yell at me like a little baby because of your moodswings or just for the heck of it, I still appreciate it. I take back all the cursings I secrely muttered while you were yelling at me. I will either prove that you had been seriously wrong, or I will embrace your criticisms and take these shit to the next level.

“Be the change we wish to see in the world.” - Ghandi

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expect different results.” – Albert Eistein

“Life is a process. We are a process. The Universe is a process.” – Unknown

“There are two primary choices in life: To accept the situation as it is, or accpet the responsibility to change it.” - Unknown

Happy Mediocre Day!

Haven’t drawn for a long time, think the last time I drew was a year ago when I did a Fan Art for Blade of the Immortal, I should do one for Hunter X Hunter some time since the current storyline just kicks insane amount of ass, plus Togashi actually didn’t go on another 3,000 year hiatus so props to the man!

Naruto has just gone to shit (from crap), it’s still enjoyable but I guess I’m only following it because I’ve been following it for the past few years and couldn’t just leave it, sometimes I slap myself after reading it and wondered why I did it again.

I purposely stopped reading Blade of the Immortal because the series is on monthly basis and I really can’t bear the wait, so I’ll just wait for the tankoubon and finish it all at once.