the child's play chicken for my niece

bought at Sun Mook Lake :-)

across the sun moon lake - Sep 20th 2009

How can i not participate this fabulous activity especially swimming is my favourite one? I had been waiting for this trip since months ago, but just two days before the trip, i had gout that nearly stopped me from going for it. It was dreadfully painful, i know it must have happened due to the food i had on wednesday with Dana and her mom. On the following thursday and friday i had been too busy to remember drinking enough water, and this was the reason that caused high urine acid, and that led to gout.





i couldn't walk at all during the midnight. Even getting to toilet seemed the most difficult thing in the world, why? because my left ankle was so painful to the point that no matter i lifted it, put it down, put it sideway, it hurt and felt like something was staying inside the joint and trying to tear apart my ankle. NOTHING was comparable to this pain.

Fortunately, i tried to drink as much water as i could and the plan worked. Next day, Saturday morning, though it was painful as still, my ankle could move a little bit. I tried hard going to a clinic in Hou-Li for some pills easing pain as well as releasing urine acid. Thank God, the pills were effective and i was able to walk by the evening (sometimes stumble though). Of course my plan of swimming across Sun Moon Lake was able to remain, it was a really really great relief!

Every time i swam, 1,000 meters usually took me 25 minutes, so i supposed the Sun Moon Lake's 3,300 meters would take me about one and a half hour or even longer. But it took me just one hour and ten minutes! Surprise! i don't even know how i made it, all i remember was keep freestyling whenever there were no people ahead, and use breaststroke or "side breaststroke" , which was invented by me, to overtake other swimmers. As there were no guide cables, my swimming pattern was like zigzag, sometimes to the most left, and sometimes to the farthest right, and that made the total distance much farther than 3,300 meters. But anyway it was really a great fun and challenging. Not only was I excited before the trip, but even now same feeling remained still!

this picture was taken around noon time. i got up half past 9am, so one can see that there were just too many people involving in! crazy!

finally not many swimmers left. it was nearly 3 or 4pm.

After lunch me and Jessie scootered around the lake, and on the highest place of the road we spent sometime chatting, enjoying the breezing wind and the spetacular scene. Time frozen, it was so quiet...

What is your philosophy towards work, Eugene?

I would say,"you do not love your job because you do not get yourself involved in it; or you don't get yourself involved in your job and hence you do not love it." Once I was listening to somebody saying this and i think it does make sense. Therefore, my priority is get myself more involved in the projects i am delegated, and that usually makes the projects more interesting.

Do You Consider Yourself Successful?

Yes, i do. In my work when i receive an engineering issue i take an active role to put every responsible members together to discuss a way out, and of course make the discussion as efficient as possible because time is money, everyone has numerous issues in hands and a waste of time is not allowable. For minor issues such as signing off documents, i would phone every key member and give them a reminder "please have a sign on it and pass it to the next one thanks!", rather than just keep waiting. A British friend of mine used to tell me i can try to do things more efficiently. This does have impact on me, i always believe there must be a way to do things more efficiently, no matter how hard the situations are.

Tell Me About Yourself, Eugene

Sure. My name is Eugene. The most special things which make me proud of myself are having been an international conservation volunteer (recently i am also being involved in a training session of becoming an English tour guide of a historical site, which can greatly help foreigners understand part of Taiwan history), and some sports like swimming across Sun Moon Lake during off work time. Besides, I have good knowledge about motorcycle as I have loved to repair and modify my own scooter and motorcycle since long ago. This motivates me to collect regarding information for better knowledge. I love learning and correcting my own problems as these help better myself and make me a better one. As I love learning, mingling with people, taking challenging, i believe i'm more suited to this special position as an design engineer.

turning points

the following year is going to be my turning point

an idea of motorcycling around south america is just coming up and hopefully me and my best friend jin will be able to make this idea come true

Day 5 (8/26) Happy Painting

As soon as I got to New Heaven, I asked Dav the Muslim guy if I could do scuba diving today. He said yes but I had to finish some chapters of a manual book, then do the diving probably tomorrow. I was going to read it, but another lady in our group reckoned that they couldn’t really teach me without getting paid (it cost 9000 Bhat), so….well, just let it go~ uh~ Then I joined teachers in doing some conservation painting: bins, wood board, painted with “Save Ko Tao” and some cute or brilliant pictures. I was gonna paint Shrek holding a flag written “保護Ko Tao島” with a turtle passing by, but the Shrek turned into be an alien actually. Well, what can you say? My painting skill is not that good! But the green alien drew some scuba diverss and tourists’ attention, and they said “it’s good” and then came chatting with me, so it was not bad, haha!A British Chinese lady named Chew came join us today. She’s a real traveler. Two years ago she was out of a stable relationship, and early this year she got laid off, so this was where she started her traveling. Her parents were born in Hong Kong, but she couldn’t speak too much Cantonese because her parents and sisters all spoke English to her, which she thought was stupid. And before travelling in China, she took Chinese course one time a week, and then she spent three months in some provinces in China, she was brave! We had a long chat about each of our lives, and she said she doesn’t believe God, but she believed there is some kind of force putting everything this way. If it were not because of lay-off, if there were no end of relationship, she would probably stay where she was and could never ever manage to explore new things and become a better and braver girl. It was an excellent conversation I’ve ever had, I could see confidence in her eyes, her skin color was a beautiful dark. This is the kind of conversation I’ve loved: sharing life experiences with each other, this is not the one I can get back in Taiwan. I can never treasure it more.




The project of the day for volunteer teachers is conservation painting. In the picture were me, Sophia (up right) and Jo (down right).



"CIG BUTTS -->" said Jo.



Just make it clear, in red colour were its throat and tongue... (in comic book they are painted this way, aren't they?)




"保護Ko Tao島" for "Save Ko Tao Island" (i should have put sea turtle instead of tortoise...)



while we were painting, the other group was making something like a shelter for snappers. in the pic was Chad, he and other team members were ready to put the shelter down in the sea, tight it up with one brick on each base tip. i wanted to join, but this was not the project i did, which was really a shame.



everybody loved this sea turtle. it was brilliant!

"wear your clothes more than once" <--i like this.

mine was not coloured very well..............hahaha!! i have never done painting well~

after the painting we all people grouped together for a very nice dinner at Whitening. Matt and his girlfriend Christine were leaving the island for Manchester tomorrow, which was sad.

Day 4 (8/25) “Like a thousand commanders on a thousand battlefields, I’m waiting for the dawn.”

I got a tattoo! This was not the first thing of the day, but it was the first I wanted to put here to start the article. The tattoo is the phone put on every startfleet member’s left breast. In the series movie “Star Trek” we can see Captain Picard often patted it and said “captain to the bridge”, that’s the one. I just had it to remind myself to keep exploring and accumulating wisdom like Sean-Luc Picard. Folks screamed when they saw my tattoo, said that’s very cool : ) Happy to have their response. The thing of the day was beach cleaning, that was what we guys did. It was pretty surprising to see how dirty the beach was and how much damage human caused while partying, however, when we ourselves were doing it we didn’t even watch the thing we were doing. While we were busy digging out mats and fuel tank buried under sands, two Chinese ladies spotted us and then they just joined us. Soon after we saw some ladies and guys joined too! It was good to see that at least we knew there were still good guys out there. I heard the Chinese ladies talking in the language I’m familiar, so I just went chatting with them. They were from Shen Zhen travelling on Ko Tao for just four days, and today they were going to take ferry back to Bangkok just two hours from when we met. We had good time picking up stuff and chatting, and one of the ladies left me her email address and mobile phone number. Marina the Irish girl told me afterward that she was pretty sure that the Chinese wants me. Haha! Well, I have no idea about this, but we sure did have a good time there. Thanks to God, in the morning before setting off to meet them guys, I was quite depressed by being unable to understand slang conversation. We would discuss before going for the teaching, so I was worried about being unable to catching them up. I prayed to God for wisdom and peace and then set off. Wow, it really worked! I went to Pranee’s Kitchen and grabbed some breakfast there until their coming. They sat down, ordered some toast and porridge, and then said they just wanted to do beach cleaning and then go relaxing, no teaching at all! I was pretty surprised by this, then soon after they said during the teaching well before this week, the kids just kept fighting no matter you shouted or stopped, teachers were just stressed out. Mm, so be it! Then evening we went for lady boy’s show in Saireem Beach, that was a very great show. The dancers were professional, they danced very well, for me they were just as amazing as professional dancers on every TV show. This was my first time seeing a lady boy face to face, You still could see some trace of man on their body, but one of them was very beautiful, just like a 100% girl, it was just amazing. The guys I have been in touch with seem very young. Some of their ages are like 18-25, just one or two of them are 28 or 29. Joe the girl from Manchester is 28. I wished I could be younger, but, what’s the meaning to think about this~ right? Tomorrow probably we will be doing some scuba diving. Chan Tao said people have to take like 4-5 day training before doing real one. So maybe we will be doing it in shallow water. Yahey~!



the beach we were going to clean



everybody was curious about what was in there.



can't remember when and why i photographed this.




they were Sophia, Matt and Jo (left to right)



that was Morine



just unbelievable how many craps were under there

my bag (soon after we even dug out a plastic oil bottle and several mat from under sand...crazy)

it was really good to see many people joined us picking up trash

One of the Chinese girls who joined us.

this photo should have been posted on the first day. the toilet had no lever for flushing. you need to take water from aside and pour it in. quite manual...

pencil with sea turtle

Matt, Morine and Sophia. We went for ladyboy show that night

and me~

they were professional dancer!