Without Basketball, I'm nothing!

When I was a kid, I was crazy about baseball. However, there was once when I was still in elementary school, like usual, I played baseball with a bunch of friends of mine at a sports park. There was a guy, who just walked pass by, got hit directly on his nose by the home run that was hit by me.(At that time, I really didn't know I should be glad or scared!) His nose was bleeding like a hell, and got knocked down like a dead man immediately! Since then, I was forbidden to play baseball anymore. It was ridiculous, I know. (When I talked about this past with my mom after grown up, she was also confused why she would make that call) That's a sports park! I'd done nothing wrong, but anyway I couldn't play baseball anymore. Thanks for this stupid story, I had chance to get to know basketball!

I played school team in high school. My school didn't care about promoting sports that much, thus we didn't get much attention and supports as a result. However, we were still so passionate about basketball, and participated in all kinds of tournaments although throughout my high school life, we didn't win any single title. After getting into college, I joined the department basketball team. The main tournament for us was NBAC, National Business Administration Cup, which was a tournament, held once a year for the Business Administration department from every university in Taiwan. My bachelor degree was in Business Administration, which I could say is the most popular department in undergraduate level in Taiwan; therefore the competition was extremely intense since almost every school has B.A. department and every B.A. department has a team. Fortunately and unexpectedly, in my second year in this team, we got the national championship of NBAC, and I was so proud to be one of the starting five as a sophomore. Afterward, we also got a couple of different titles from several tournaments. Actually, I was never a really professional basketball player; however, playing basketball gave me a lot more than I could imagine of. It gave me confidence, friends, and much more in mental and physical. Although I am not playing that much like before now, basketball still plays a very important role inside my soul!

NBA...before I came to U.S., I never knew that there's one day I could watch the game in the stadium. Watching a NBA game in the stadium was always my dream as a life-long basketball fan! However, after I got here last year, Boston Celtics' performance just couldn't be any worse. I was so disappointed with being in a city having a team like that at that time. Who knows...this season, Celtics turned out to be the most possible team to achieve the title due to the recruit of Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen. After Red Sox's Champion in 2007 and Patriot's for sure 19-0 two days later, I hope Celtics could be the third professional team in Boston acquiring the Championship!! What an achievement it could be! Now, I'm so proud and feeling so lucky to be a part of this city!!

My Second Families from Starbucks!

Since Starbucks first landed Taiwan when I was still in high school, I had been dreaming about working there! At that time, there was no any cooler job than working part-time at Starbucks as a student. Once I went to my university and reached the legal age to work, I tried my best to apply for every store of Starbucks that I knew. At that time, there were not so many Starbucks stores in Taipei, where I lived, but a lot of young people like me would like to work for them. Finally, I had to start from another bigger chain coffee shop...no, not at Starbucks! A year later, through my friend's introduction, finally I got a chance to talk to a store manager to show my passion of working for Starbucks. Fortunately, I got accepted. That was a store located at the heart of business district and surrounded by a bunch of department stores. (It's one block away from Taipei101, which is still the highest building in the whole world, for now, but won't last long!) Later, I realized that the store that I got accepted was the busiest store in Taiwan, which had the highest number of transaction, sales, and profitability. That was not only a Starbucks store; other than that, it was the role model of Starbucks in Taiwan! Because of the endless rush hours and huge amount of work load, there was a formation of being together, fighting together, and love each other because they are what you only have on the field. We were like a band of brothers. This emotion was well developed and every partner was like a member of this big family! What we were proud of ourselves was not how skillful we were or how fast we could finish one Latte, it was the aligning established among each member of this store. Besides daily operation, we also actively participated in every event that held by our headquarter to reinforce our relationship throughout the process. Every single time was another sweet memory of ours, and holding each other even closer. All the way through the expansion of Taiwan Starbucks, our partners got transferred out to a lot of different locations. However, people were still coming back to the original place, our store, to be together with us. That's why I devoted all my time working there since sophomore year until three days before I joined the military. In those three years at Starbucks, I'd learned not only how to be a good leader, but also how to love people. They are my second family, always!

Army Honor Guard

After completing my bachelor degree, I joined the military for one and half years. Since military service in Taiwan is mandatory and I don't think there would be any war during my service period or even in the next 10 years, I would not like to spend this one and half years for nothing; thus, I choose Honor Guard which is one of the toughest troops in Taiwan army. The main duty of Army Honor Guard are providing escort for heads of state on departure and arrival, performing on national events, guarding major military installations, and etc...One of the most important performances is the National Day performance, such as the Independence Day in U.S. Here are the videos on YouTube: 2006 NATIONAL DAY PERFORMANCE PART1 NATIONAL DAY PERFORMANCE PART2 It's the performance of the Honor Guard assembled of Army, Navy and Airforce, which required a huge amount of collaboration because basically these three troops are totally independent and located separately. Usually, the training time can last for almost three months trying to make this 270 man performance near perfection.


These two photos were taken when we finished our fundamental training. Normally, it takes rookies 3~4 months to go through the basic training, such as basic physical training(one of them is 200 push up every day), how to stand still and straight for 2 hours without any movement (sounds easy, but not easy to do), practice to force yourself not to blink as long as you could (when on duty, no blink is allowed when there's anyone looking at you), and of course how to play M1 grand rifle, which is used by U.S. troops during WWII and weight around 7 kg with full equipped. During the training, it was extremely torturing and exhausting physically and mentally, which I believe it well built me up and in some kind of way to help me deal with the challenges ahead of me in the future. Nevertheless, at the end of our military service, we all had a consensus that neither one of us would like to go through this again nor gave up this experience for anything!


After all the brothers in our echelon had passed final test, we had a special performance for our families and friends only in order to show the results of the rigorous training. It was not only for your families and friends to know what sort of life you had been going through as an Army Honor Guard, but also a kind of moment to make them be proud of you and being showing off a bit! I could never forget the feeling that we had once the performance was done. While performing, I was so concentrated that although all my families and friends were shouting out my name, I couldn't hear a thing; however, you can clearly feel all their eyes are on you because they are here for you. All my best friends were there for me, however after almost three years, now I realized that the thing I should be grateful the most was my grand mom was still healthy enough to be there to see his grandson executing the performance like a trained soldier, like a real man! I am so glad that I chose to join Army Honor Guard impulsively at that time. It is a life-time treasure for me without a doubt! Btw, here is another cool video of our small team special performance! I was not in there, but that was what we did!
Check it out...