Wei Huang-chui is a 38-year-old man whose friends call him “A Chui.” Twenty years ago he went out for a meal that he and his classmates arranged for their teachers. On the way home he was caught up in a traffic accident and suffered a serious injury to his brain that set his mental age back to eight years old. In the last couple of years his father has suffered a stroke and his mother has sunk into depression. Although his elder brother and sister help look after him, A Chui does not want to be a burden on his family, so he looked around for work but ran up against various problems. At the start of this year, with help from Hung Tsui-tzu, a supported employment specialist with the Eden Social Welfare Foundation’s Chiayi and Yunlin regional branch, A Chui got a job as a dried fruit packer, which he has now been doing for three months. When he got his first salary payment, he demonstrated his filial piety by putting money in a red envelope and giving it to his mother, and he asked his parents not to worry about him anymore.
Hung says that A Chui’s parents used to grow fruit for a living. They spent a huge amount of money on medical expenses to treat their mentally handicapped son, but with limited results. A Chui only has a short-term memory, and it takes him one or two hours to do jobs like cleaning that most people could finish in 10 minutes. He has worked as a kitchen waste handler and a cleaner and also had a tiling job. His longest period of employment lasted over a year, but his employer could not keep him on any longer and even did not pay his salary.
Hung says A Chui knows full well that his parents bear a heavy burden, and that they are getting on in years and suffer from illness and pain, so he hopes to have a steady job and earn money to support himself. Even when he was unemployed, he was not idle, maintaining his strength and improving his physique by running. By chance, in January a store selling local specialties on the road to Alishan was willing to offer a work vacancy, even adjusting the work so that A Chui could work full time packing dried fruit.
Photo: Wang Shan-yan, Liberty Times, courtesy of the Eden Social Welfare Foundation
照片:自由時報記者王善嬿翻攝
At first A Chui could not even tell the difference between mangoes and grapes, but Hung taught him by repeatedly showing him photographs and picture cards. She even accompanied him on the way to work to help him get used to the traffic conditions and work procedure, and after two weeks he was finally able to work on his own. A Chui is very grateful for Hung’s coaching and for all the efforts she has made.(Liberty Times, translated by Julian Clegg)
三十八歲的「阿垂」魏煌垂二十年前參加高中謝師宴,返家途中遭遇車禍,腦部重傷,智力退化成八歲,他的父親近年中風,母親陷入憂鬱。兄姊雖協助撫養,但阿垂不想成為家人的負擔,四處求職卻頻頻碰壁,今年初經伊甸基金會嘉雲區支持性就業服務員洪翠梓幫忙,阿垂當上果乾包裝員,目前已滿三個月,領到第一份薪資就包紅包孝順父母,並請爸媽「不要替我擔心了」。
洪翠梓說,阿垂的雙親原本種水果維生,為醫治智能障礙的愛子花了龐大醫藥費,效果卻有限,阿垂只有短期記憶,清潔等一般人十分鐘可做好的工作,他要花一、兩小時,當過廚餘工、清潔人員、也貼過磁磚,最長一年多,雇主就無法再聘用他,甚至不發薪資。
洪翠梓說,阿垂深知父母負擔沉重,年邁又有病痛,於是希望能有穩定工作自給自足。他就算失業也沒閒著,靠跑步維持體力及復健。正巧元月間,嘉義縣阿里山公路旁有家名產店願意提供職缺,還調整工作內容,讓阿垂專職包裝果乾。
阿垂起初連芒果、葡萄都不會分辨。洪翠梓運用照片、圖卡反覆教導,還陪他上班熟悉路況、工作流程,半個月後終於可以獨自運作,阿垂非常感激洪翠梓的輔導與付出。
(自由時報記者王善嬿)
A: Artificial intelligence technology has been causing controversy lately: a student was caught cheating with AI to win the grand prize in an art contest. B: That’s so absurd. Does this mean that AI paints better than humans? A: Maybe. Luckily, the student was later disqualified. B: And more absurdly, it’s becoming more and more popular to use AI technology to “resurrect” people. A: Yeah, some netizens even posted videos featuring the late singer CoCo Lee, who was “resurrected” by them with AI software. A: 人工智慧的爭議不斷,有學生違規使用AI參加美術展,甚至贏得首獎。 B: 真誇張,這是不是代表AI比人類還強大? A: 或許吧,幸好得獎資格被取消。 B: 還有更誇張的︰讓死者重現的「AI復活」技術越來越熱門。 A: 對啊,還有網友製作已故歌后李玟「復活」的影片呢! (By Eddy Chang, Taipei Times/台北時報張聖恩)
It’s no secret that Japanese people have a deep affection for noodles. Like in the rest of East Asia, noodles are an important staple food, second only to rice. Japanese people have enjoyed noodles for over 1,000 years. The first noodles came from China and were introduced around 800 CE. As time passed, noodles in Japan not only became widespread but also developed some unique Japanese characteristics. The three most popular types of noodles in Japan are ramen, soba, and udon. Ramen, typically made from wheat flour, is usually thin and firm. The dough is kneaded and left to
Rice is an essential ingredient in Taiwanese cuisine. Many foods are made of rice, adding more variety to our cooking, such as rice cake, or “gui.” Wagui is made by steaming rice flour batter in a bowl. The term “gui” refers to a type of food made from rice, while “wa” refers to a bowl. The pronunciation of “gui” in Taiwanese Hokkien is similar to the word for “nobility” in Chinese, so it is common for people to prepare various types of gui, including wagui, as offerings to the gods or ancestors,. 米是台灣重要的主食,用米製成的食品十分多元,豐富我們的飲食,如米做成的「粿」。粿的意思是米做成的糕點,碗粿是將在來米漿倒入碗中蒸熟,因而得名。粿因為音同「貴」,因此碗粿等粿食常用作供品祭拜神明和祖先。 nobility (n.) 高貴,高尚;貴族 offering (n.) 供品 While Taiwan may not be
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