Pseudo-Random Bit Stream

About the Book

Book Title: Pseudo-Random Bit Stream

Events in one’s life might seem random, with series of good lucks and misfortunes. If these events are tagged with binary bits of “1” or “0”, patterns can always be found, just like the bit streams that are used in testing communication hardware. This pattern is pre-determined by one’s temperament. And just like the Pseudo-Random Bit Stream, in which the quantities of the “1s” and “0s” eventually balance out, it is worthwhile keeping this in mind not to grab all the “1s” when you are ahead. It won’t hurt to leave some for those who are stuck at lots of “0s” to save for the rainy days. By the same token, don’t be despaired if you are down, as your time will come. Or, you might just be paying back for the extra “1” that were not rightfully yours.

Theme: This book has four parts: Pre-Silicon Taiwan; Corporate Citizen; Start-Up Entrepreneur and In Closing.

In a peculiar political and social environment during which banana, instead of silicon, was representative of Taiwan, the author and his family´s life experienced enormous misfortune and tragedy. The author later found out that it was caused by the difficulty his melancholy father had to confront in keeping up to his principle during that period of time. Inheriting the same temperament, the author found great resonance of his traits with the humanity value in American society. After surviving relentless structural changes in American’s high-tech industries, the author jumped on the start-up bandwagon by founding a fiber-optics start-up with fellow Taiwan compatriots in the Silicon Valley at the tail end of the Internet and fiber optics bubble. Surprising to the author was the realization that his traits and good corporate citizenship were actually the cause of his misery and frustration in the start-up due to the crash of his melancholy temperament with the choleric he was associated with.
This book tells stories about how the author and his family trudged along and survived in that period of Taiwan. In addition, the author also tells the stories about how he, as an average employee, coped with relentless corporate merger/acquisition, out-sourcing and down-sizing in this great nation of America. Also shared here are people, culture, history, religion, geopolitics in different countries that the author has visited, side-by-side with the description of the fiber-optics technologies along the theme of the temperaments which shape the story line of this book.

Pre-Silicon Taiwan is a collection of stories on the events in agricultural Taiwan when banana was the major export. They are based upon the author´s personal experience living through the agony in which his father, as well as the banana exporting company that he was an executive of, was victimized in a political power struggle in Chiang Kai-Shek’s royal court. Their agony was prolonged from the betrayal in a family enterprise by his own folks for whom the author´s father started business, which eventually cost the life of the author´s brother at the age of 27 while his father was imprisoned. This section weaves into the theme the people, folklores, culture, history, politics, religion of Taiwan dated back through Japanese-occupation period into the WWII. Interpersonal relationship is extensively depicted illustrating a sad consequence of the exploitation of melancholy by the pack of choleric, as well as the seldom known friendship between the Japanese settlers and local Taiwan folks. Also manifested is how the life in Taiwan was influenced by American culture during the time when US was militarily supporting Taiwan.

Corporate Citizen shares with the readers the author´s twenty-year experience as an employee catching the tail-end of the Ma Bell monopoly, living through AT&T’s divestiture and “tri-vestiure”, witnessing Lucent’s rise and fa

About the Author