Two Summers

As a teacher, I am privileged to have two months of summer break per year. When I was teaching in a Chinese school, I opted not to teach the summer program and ended up being a translator in a Japanese owned multinational company.

I was an interpreter, making the rounds every morning helping out the workers understand what the Taiwanese engineers asked them to do. I also interpreted for the company's president during meets between management and production staff. It was fun, spending an hour every morning and an hour in the afternoon for meetings.

When I wasn't doing any translation, I walked around looking for misbehaviour amongst the production staff or immersed myself in doing some of the technical work such as mounting filaments or operating small machines.

I learned two things when I was there. I learned to be fair to everyone and be considerate of others' feelings thus changing some minor details during translations so as not to hurt sensitive feelings. I also learned how to deal with people, lots of them, and looked not into their differences from a high profiled owner, the middle management and the factory workers. Everyone is the same as long as they treat each other right. For me, it was a great experience.

My protective gloves, recently resurrected, were reminders of my "hands-on-learning experiences".