Monday, December 31, 2007

"Karoshi" (death by overwork)

Doesn't this sound so familiar?

wee hours of the morning...everything's eerie outside..... chiong work due tomorrow... cups and cups and cups of coffe... fight to open your eyes... force your tired fingers to keep typing and your brain to keep cranking... your head starts to feel like it's floating around in the clouds after a while but you contiinue... knowing you are ggxxed if u give up...then at 5.30am... YES finally finish... pack your bag, go into your room, collapse on the bed for a minute and get up... into the toilet.. into the car.. and back in school...


"Jobs for life: Japanese are working themselves to death" - The Economist 19/12

HARA-KIRI is a uniquely Japanese form of suicide. Its corporate equivalent is karoshi, “death by overwork”. Since this was legally recognised as a cause of death in the 1980s, the number of cases submitted to the government for the designation has soared; so has the number of court cases that result when the government refuses an application. In 1988 only about 4% of applications were successful. By 2005 that share had risen to 40%. If a death is judged karoshi, surviving family members may receive compensation of around $20,000 a year from the government and sometimes up to $1m from the company in damages. For deaths not designated karoshi the family gets next to nothing.

Now a recent court ruling has put companies under pressure to change their ways. On November 30th the Nagoya District Court accepted Hiroko Uchino's claim that her husband, Kenichi, a third-generation Toyota employee, was a victim of karoshi when he died in 2002 at the age of 30. He collapsed at 4am at work, having put in more than 80 hours of overtime each month for six months before his death. “The moment when I am happiest is when I can sleep,” Mr Uchino told his wife the week of his death. He left two children, aged one and three.

As a manager of quality control, Mr Uchino was constantly training workers, attending meetings and writing reports when not on the production line. Toyota treated almost all that time as voluntary and unpaid. So did the Toyota Labour Standards Inspection Office, part of the labour ministry. But the court ruled that the long hours were an integral part of his job. On December 14th the government decided not to appeal against the verdict.

The ruling is important because it may increase the pressure on companies to treat “free overtime” (work that an employee is obliged to perform but not paid for) as paid work. That would send shockwaves through corporate Japan, where long, long hours are the norm.

Official figures say that the Japanese work about 1,780 hours a year, slightly less than Americans (1,800 hours a year), though more than Germans (1,440). But the statistics are misleading because they do not count “free overtime”. Other tallies show that one in three men aged 30 to 40 works over 60 hours a week. Half say they get no overtime. Factory workers arrive early and stay late, without pay. Training at weekends may be uncompensated.

During the past 20 years of economic doldrums, many companies have replaced full-time workers with part-time ones. Regular staff who remain benefit from lifetime employment but feel obliged to work extra hours lest their positions be made temporary. Cultural factors reinforce these trends. Hard work is respected as the cornerstone of Japan's post-war economic miracle. The value of self-sacrifice puts the benefit of the group above that of the individual.

Toyota, which is challenging GM as the world's largest carmaker, is often praised for the efficiency and flexibility of its workforce. Ms Uchino has a different view. “It is because so many people work free overtime that Toyota reaps profits,” she says. “I hope some of those profits can be brought back to help the employees and their families. That would make Toyota a true global leader.” The company is promising to prevent karoshi in future.

Sunday, December 30, 2007

VJ final video

This house believes that Asean should intervene in Myanmar.

RI (prop) vs HCI (opp)
RI 5 - HCI 2.

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Have a blessed xmas :-)



As little children
We would dream of Christmas morn
Of all the gifts and toys
We knew we'd find

But we never realized
A baby born one blessed night
Gave us the greatest gift of our lives

*We were the reason
That He gave His life
We were the reason
That He suffered and died
To a world that was lost
He gave all He could give
To show us the reason to live

As the years went by
We learned more about gifts
The giving of ourselves
And what that means
On a dark and cloudy day
A man hung crying in the rain
All because of love, all because of love (*)

I've finally found the reason for living
It's in giving every part of my heart to Him
In all that I do every word that I say
I'll be giving my all just for Him, for Him (*)

He is my reason to live


He still came

No palace, no jewels,
no kingdom to rule,
no crown of majesty.
No throne and no robe,
no silver, no gold,
no courts of royalty.

Yet the King of kings left heaven to become a lowly man.
He left all heaven's glory to fulfill His Father's plan.
No family, no friends to help at the end, no out, no substitute.
Much pain and much hurt to give love and worth, He bore our sins and grief.
Yet the hope of what He offered so out weighed what must be done.
He chose to be my victor and assured my pardon won.

He still came, just for me He still came.
Knowing all He would endure, He still came.
Disregarding ev'ry cost, from the manger to the cross.
He still came just for me, He still came.

Friday, December 14, 2007

IJSO 2007

Yay gold =). Country 2nd, total medal tally 4 gold 2 silver + 2nd team for prac (barry, vincent, daryl). Full results available here

A big thank you to...

1. All teachers & trainers who have taken time off during the most busy periods of the year to train us (especially an overworked mr wee who coordinated the trainings, and conducted all the physics trainings (since he is both the science club & RA teacher for physics)

2. Ms Lim and Ms Wong from MOE (together with other NUS high and RGS teachers) who helped to arrange external trainings, briefings etc,

3. Everyone (including Mrs Lai and Mr Yuen) who encouraged us

4. All our friends for being so supportive,especially daniel lim, jian yang, and jie liang (i hope i haven't missed out anyone...) who received us at the airport on 11dec.

5.Mrs Yap and the library for making lots of resources available.


A great trip

Actually it was quite slack on the whole. 1 day test, 1 day tour... could sleep early and soak in the bath for 30min every day, and yet still manage to study, play cards and mahjong. Huiyao's blog has a relatively comprehensive account, but I shall be lazy and just mention the most juicy snippets.

Taiwan side was really quite serious about organising it (to quote someone, probably because they get to publicize themselves as "taiwan" instead of "taiwan R.O.C." haha). Whatever the motivation, i must say that it's impressive.

We were given some of the better rooms in the grand hotel (one of the best there). I got a huge room (2 double beds and lots of space to spare!) with a huge balcony and great views of the whole taipei city. Frills included: japanese style toilets (the UK people flooded their toilet because they switch on the wash function and didn't know how to stop it), leather room slippers, plasma tv etc. They also made specially-printed MRT cards, and during peak hour the police even helped us to clear traffic.

From a geographic perspective (ahaha geog is a disease that becomes an inseparable part of you once you are infected)... taiwan suffers from huge sprawl, largely due to laissez-faire central planning (if any). Looking down from taipei 101, it is interesting how the city has evolved to fill every valley of flat land in somewhat mountainous terrain. This is ugly in more than 1 way: firstly the horrendous 6-story high multi-tier elevated highways (bringing noise and darkness to the streets and buildings beside it) that alleviate the inevitable congestion, and secondly in the decaying buildings and dirty sidewalks - sometimes right next to shiny office blocks - that clutter the city.

And yet beauty lies therein. One is a sense of charm that is hidden in the crudeness of some areas of the city, and can only exist when the urban scape is built up in a purely spontaneous way and is not sanitized. Such a cityscape, coupled with textural details of culture (in the forms of symbols and often loads of good food), often embedded with many stories, dreams, and hopes that reveal themselves if only you look hard enough, provides a distinct and unmistakable sense of place. Some of the places i enjoyed the best, including Danshui, Shilin, and Taipei main station reflected this.

Yeliu and Yangmingshan are also wonderful. Yeliu is actually an headland outcrop between two bays, being eroded in from both sides. Mushroom rocks, shore platforms, arches, caves and other textbook examples abound - there is even clear evidence for sea level change (isostatic or eustatic?). As for yangmingshan, haha i collected some volcanic rocks from boiling pools of water near sulphur vents =). Not everyone is orange enough to experience an earthquake from the top of taipei 101 though...

It is after all Taiwan, so some politics is to be expected. Chen shui bian came to give a speech (with 20 bodyguards! and probably doctors on standby in case he gets "grazed" by another rogue bullet), and i seem to have heard soft hisses of "ah bian xia tai" (or maybe it's just my imagination). Protests went on while we were there (as they always do... it's taiwan), but we conveniently happened not to pass by. As i predicted there were people giving out political leaflets around taipei main station, and huge posters ranging from "China communists stop persecuting Falun Gong!" to "Taiwan for UN - Peace forever" (sense the irony... how will taiwan's attempt to join UN under its own name create peace forever? it won't even build peace in the present moment!)

And not to forget the people! Haha nice memories, especially our friendly student guide, and Mr Yeah, and that of playing mahjong. Talked to teams from other countries too and someone almost traded a red blazer for 5 pounds haha.

Leaving for thailand at 4am tomorrow... pictures of all 3 trips another time! Oh yah haven't said much about perth... another lovely trip, except for The Flies, especially when they get trapped because the Door is closed. Really, great company can change so much! Ok ok i shall let the pictures do the talking