The Origin of... Dollar Sign

When the U.S. government begin issuing its own money in 1794, it used the common world currency - the peso - also called the Spanish dollar.

The first American silver dollars were identical to Spanish pesos in weight and value, so they took the same written abbreviations: Ps.

That evolved into a P with an s written right on top of it, and when people began to omit the circular part of the p, the sign simply became an S with a vertical line through it.

The Origin of... Ampersand

This symbol is stylized et, Latin for "and".

Although it was invented by the Roman scribe Marcus Tullius Tiro in the first century B.C., it didn’t get its strange name until centuries later.

In the early 1800s, schoolchildren learned this symbol as the 27th letter of the alphabet: X, Y, Z, &.

But the symbol had no name. So, they ended their ABCs with "and, per se, and" meaning "&, which means ‘and’".

This phrase was slurred into one garbled word that eventually caught on with everyone: ampersand.

The Origin of... Equal Sign

Invented by English mathematician Robert Recorde in 1557, with this rationale: "I will settle as I doe often in woorke use, a paire of paralleles, or Gmowe [i.e., twin] lines of one length, thus : , bicause noe 2 thynges, can be more equalle."

His equal signs were about five times as long as the current ones, and it took more than a century for his sign to be accepted over its rival: a strange curly symbol invented by Descartes.

The Origin of... Exclamation Point

Like the question mark, the exclamation point was invented by stacking letters.

The mark comes from the Latin word io, meaning "exclamation of joy."

Written vertically, with the i above the o, it forms the exclamation point we use today.

The Origin of... Question Mark

When early scholars wrote in Latin, they would place the word questio - meaning "question" - at the end of a sentence to indicate a query.

To conserve valuable space, writing it was soon shortened to qo, which caused another problem - readers might mistake it for the ending of a word.

So they squashed the letters into a symbol: a lowercased q on top of an o. Over time the o shrank to a dot and the q to a squiggle, giving us our current question mark.

十句话

第一句
如果我们之间
有1000步的距离
你只要跨出第1步
我就会朝你的方向
走其余的999步


第二句
通常愿意留下来跟你争吵的人
才是真正爱你的人


第三句
付出真心　
才会得到真心
却也可能伤得彻底
保持距离　
就能保护自己
却也注定永远寂寞


第四句
有时候　
不是对方不在乎你
而是你把对方看得太重


第五句
朋友
就是把你看透了　
还能喜欢你的人


第六句
就算是believe　
中间也藏了一个lie


第七句
真正的好朋友
并不是在一起
就有聊不完的话题
而是在一起　
就算不说话也不会感到尴尬


第八句
没有一百分的另一半
只有五十分的两个人


第九句
为你的难过而快乐的　
是敌人
为你的快乐而快乐的　
是朋友
为你的难过而难过的
就是那些　
该放进心里的人


第十句
冷漠　
有时候并不是无情
只是一种
避免被伤害的工具



这十句话很有深度，很有意思。认真去思考，你会得到意想不到的收获。

Happy Chinese New Year

Happy belated Chinese New Year everyone!

These cute pair of tigers have been put on my office table one month before Chinese New Year, contantly reminding me that Chinese New Year is just around the corner.

Just to keep myself happy all the time.

My assistant has been absent for the past one week, without informing me or my boss of her whereabout.

The aftermath: files were piling up and work became almost stagnant.

Upon returning to office after my Chinese New Year leave, this is what i get: completing most of the unfinished files in the absence of my assistant.

I was fully recharged after Chinese New Year leave but were exhausted after one week of dog's life.

I am indeed physically and mentally exhausted.

My colleague asked me why don't i give my assistant a call.

I told her that i will not do that.

In fact, my assistant should be the one to call me and inform me and not vice versa.

These are basic office etiquette that need not be taught.

I just do not seem to understand why people can be so irreponsible.

Anyway, life still goes on and happpy belated Chinese New Year 2010.

Updates:-

3 months + thereafter, i have resigned from this company.

I loved my job and there is no second thought about it.

Maybe my boss thought that i can handle all the files alone so there's no need for me to have an assistant.

Or maybe my boss is trying to cut the overhead as business is not that good and need to get more business in (as opposed to staff).

However, as far as i can remember, there is file to be opened everyday for the whole year.

Obviously, my boss's motto is "bite off more than you can chew"!

Personally, i felt i had performed and proved that i was an exemplary employee.

When things do not turn out right, i leave them for better and wider horizons.

At the end of the day, hard working employees with good working attitude are being overlooked or taken advantage of.

Maximizing profit is an employer's sole objective - even if it means exploiting the employees for it.

No wonder more and more employees are losing faith...