Hidden Jewel

Aside from writing creative compositions.
I like searching for Jobs.

Today I want to introduce a hidden gem of Montreal.


This company was 

• Awarded #1 Best Employer in Quebec for year 2012.
• Listed in the Top 50 Best Small and Medium Employers in Canada for year 2012.
• Listed in the Montreal's Top 20 Employers for 2012
• and the list continues.

This is Vigilant Global.

Vigilant's awesomeness is NOT ONLY in that they offer the following:

• Fully catered breakfast and lunch daily
• Health and wellness services
• RRSP group plan with matching company contributions
• Gym membership
• Blackberry
• Daycare subsidy
• Transportation allowance (train, bus/metro, BIXI or parking)
• 3 weeks vacation at start with subsequent increases based on years of service
• Maternity/Paternity/Parental leave top-ups

OR that it is fashionably placed on the 14th floor of a tall building in Mid-Downtown.

 (See if you recognize the place:)

OR that It also adorns itself with a lovely reception area (with sweets, mind you) and a 'games room'!

BUT in that Vigilant strives to make the community (Montreal) a better place for everyone especially youths.

For example, their employees and founders alike spend many hours in commitment to volunteer work in areas such as 

First Robotics Competition: where they were 'extensively' involved with the whole process of helping out a high school start a robotics program to sponsoring the whole competition itself! (mind you it is a very big competition featuring participants from all across North America and some parts of South America)

In September last year (2011),  "Vigilantes donned bright orange t-shirts to solicit spare change from Montrealers for a good cause: National Raise-a-Reader day.
On the 10^th anniversary of Raise-a-Reader, the organization raised upwards of $1.75 million for Canadian organizations devoted to providing family literacy programs. All the funds raised in the community stay in the community.

Well, the total is in and Vigilant Futures helped raise $23, 000 in Montreal alone."

These are only examples of their good deed. (For more, you can check out their blog which is linked on their website)


I had the delightful honor of working with them (or rather seeing them do these good deeds close up)

Trust me. The people called "Vigilantes" at this company sometimes confuse themselves for social workers. That is how much devotion they show to "advance youth".


If you are like me, and you don't like to work for money. You want to work for something you can value in your heart. This is an awesome place to be.

AND

They are currently hiring:

http://www.vigilantglobal.com/
http://lcchsroboticssonichowl.tumblr.com/
https://twitter.com/#!/VigilantGlobal

I sell my daughter for 100 won (Defected North Korean Poet)

 

'North Korea' is not bad. 

It's the leaders that drive the people to starve or freeze to death, fear public execution at every uttered word, and be stripped of every single right as a human being that's bad.

I am of South Korean heritage. My father's father's father knew of a nation that was one. 

Though many people say I am lucky to be from South. My heart aches because I was born only on half of my nation. 

Many Koreans still suffer from separation of family.Where-ever you were at the time of separation is where you had to stay, unable to cross borders, unable to contact each other. 

Not by our will, but because at the time of end of 2nd World War: To disarm Japanese forces, Russians had come down to the Northern part of Korea and Americans had occupied South Korea.

Some North Koreans risk their lives to cross the border. 

The following is a poem written by Jang Jin Sung, a North Korean who escaped.

 

 내 딸을 백 원에 팝니다 (장진성 탈북 시인)

Exhausted, in the midst of the market she stood
"For 100 won, my daughter I sell"
Heavy medallion of sorrow
A cardboard around her neck she had hung
Next to her young daughter
Exhausted, in the midst of the market she stood

A deaf-mute the mother
She gazed down at the ground, just ignoring
The curses the people all threw
As they glared
At the mother who sold
Her motherhood, her own flesh and blood

Her tears dried up
Though her daughter, upon learning
Her mother would perish of a deadly disease
Had buried her face in the mother’s long skirt
And bellowed, and cried
But the mother stood still
And her lips only quivered

Unable she was to give thanks to the soldier
Who slipped a hundred won into her hand
As he uttered
"It is your motherhood,
And not the daughter I'm buying
She took the money, and ran

A mother she was,
And the 100 won she had taken
She spent on a loaf of wheat bread
Toward her daughter she ran
As fast as she could
And pressed the bread on the child's lips
"Forgive me, my child"
In the midst of the market she stood
And she wailed.

When Sun Hits

It feels like I've been holding my breath for the longest time..
then finally inhaled!

So Carefree.
Gentle breeze.

It feels like nothing in the world could ruin this day
when Summer finally arrived.

Crowded restaurants
Party atmosphere all around

Sitting in the back of the classroom,
daydreaming of what to wear tomorrow!

When Sun hits,
When Summer embraces you in bright lights,

Even though parts of my lawn still adornes itself with small icebergs
We all know, 'that's so yesterday'

Even the boney dark branches of the campus trees
have caught the glimpse of the summer sky in their arms

Sun's Calling me!
Gotta go~

IRON RING

(I borrowed this picture from another blog, if you want to see the original post: Click here)



Five long years.
Just to hold my pinky up as I sip my wine at the Wine & Cheese.

Congratulations to "My Equals and My Betters in My Calling."




The poem that was recited at the ceremony explains all:

IF

by Rudyard Kipling



IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - You will find a place for yourself!