We have two main offices in Taipei. We went to both today, and my boss introduced me to everyone with his heavily Cantonese accented Mandarin. My direct superior is from KL, who doesn't read any Chinese and only speak English and Cantonese (and Malay too of course). His boss, the person who interviewed me, is from HK. So i'm the only one who could communicate in better Mandarin with the Taiwanese, who mostly don't understand English too well.
We are having a tough time implementing the system here. The data migration is seriously behind schedule, and the staff here don't really seem to care. The morale seems to be very low, and the management couldn't push them to complete the tasks on time.
It's actually understandable, as we understood from one of the managers that everyone is over-worked and under-paid. My HK boss said that if things still don't go well and the management here can't do anything to improve the situation, we will just have to report it to UK and scrap the Taiwan project. This means that they will have to live with their out-dated text based system. Now i can't help but wonder if other countries will have similar issues.
I had a taste of the Taiwanese working culture here today. When the management tried to talk to the staff and asked them to work extended hours to complete the tasks, they actually outright rejected the requests. Not only that, they even voiced out their grievances in front of everyone, saying something like, "we didn't sell ourselves to the company and we have our own personal lives too" and "it's really unfair that how some people can dedicate all their time in doing the data migration while we gotta do our own work during office hours and stay back for the implementation."
Well, i've seen in the Taiwanese TV program that how the hosts would just speak their minds without considering if what they said would hurt others. I've always thought that it was for entertainment. Never did i expect that it is their culture to be so direct and outspoken.
Ok, enough about work.
The weather in Taipei is warmer than i've expected. Our Taiwanese colleagues said that we brought sunshine to the city, as it was raining last week and it was a warm day today. The IT guy here brought us out to lunch today. We had the authentic Taiwanese beef noodles in a small eatery. It was supposed to be rather famous, but i found it more of less the same as what i've had before back at home.
We left the office at around 8pm and went to a BBQ restaurant for dinner. There were only my two bosses and me, so i enjoyed being the only lady who didn't have to do any BBQ-ing and had all the food cooked and place into my plate. I also had a glass of beer, something that i've not had since CNY. The good thing about being the only female in the department and in the lowest rank is that i don't have to pay for anything when i'm out with any of them. So far, i've not spent a single Taiwanese dollar.
I've yet to take any photos of the city. Didn't really have a chance since i'm with my bosses all the time. I wonder if i'll get any personal time to go shopping and look around. Anyway, for now, i'll just post up two meaningless pics that i took on the flight yesterday.
