The shoulder pads which football (I don't mean "soccer" here) players wear make them appear very strong and good-looking.

Our toddler daughter governs the rhythm of our life authoritatively. We just hope that the young governor gradually grows wiser. :-)

Some companies had started out with benevolent intent. Then they got listed in the stock market. Then their initial intent got smirched under the high pressure of earnings growth of year by year.

There are two sorts of kisses: the chaste ones, and the sexual ones.

Even 40 years ago, the Mainland Chinese still thought all kisses, between a man and a woman, in the whole world belong to the latter.

It seems that the NYC remains to be a hearth of economic vigor in the U.S despite its high costs.

If you look up the synonyms of "prostitute" in a dictionary, you'll find there are so many. "Hooker", "hustler", "harlot", "courtesan", "whore", and so on.

Well, the above example may not be a very decent one. Anyways, my point is that the great number of synonyms of many words is one of the difficulties we have to overcome when we read material in English from different eras.

Some Montrealers say that Torontonians aren't as courteous as people in Montreal.

I use my old feature cell phone sheerly as a reliable alarm clock. But I do it warily.

I put it into the Airplane Mode each time when I turn it on. A mobile phone in the Airplane Mode is supposed to emit no radiation at all.

The updating of software developers' skills is constant and perennial.

On every single day, from dusk to almost midnight, the time of my wife and me is completely occupied by taking care of our toddler daughter. Yes, having a demanding baby is that tough, if you are reasonably enough careful with her.

When a woman cuckolds her husband before they get divorced, that speaks something about her.

December 27th. The day following the Boxing Day. Still in the Boxing Week.

The downtown part of the St-Catherine street. A great many people are proceeding through the street and the malls on it.

This area delivers a great amount of business value in the Boxing Week period.

Wintry breezes at -2 degrees Celsius

This winter isn't too cold
-2 degrees Celsius is the best winter temperature
It doesn't freeze you a great deal
While it can give you the Northern flair

White snow, dark road, small hours in the night,
The yellow light from a height in the 4th floor apartment,
And the pink and blue drapes covering its windows,
In the high-rise building standing at the intersection of two thoroughfares

I think that arts are the form and container which captures human experience the best.

Maybe from around a decade ago, in terms of career prospect, a higher education had become to be no longer a ticket to good jobs and to be just a way to avoid and escape vile employments, for newly minted university graduates in Canada, whether they recognize that or not.

The counter side of polluted food is not organic food. It is clean food.

Freezing coldness and crushing loneliness are two biggest enemies for some people in Montreal

Just now, around the midnight, I went to a nearby Tim Horton's outlet to grab a coffee. A guy around 19 years old appeared to be drunk and was talking to everyone, one by one, over there, all of whom were strangers to him. He's a student who went to Dawson College, and he'd been from Hungary. "I'm alone. I can only hug trees," he said, "morning after morning".

He's crushed by loneliness. And he burst on Christmas Eve.

Who didn't see trees or plant leaves with one sort of canker or another?

Diseases do exist in nature. Nature isn't all good.

There are always some jerks in retail stores. They can't be liked after they offended you one way or another.

Do the rabbles in the Arab Spring realize that they probably won't see prosperity in their own lifetime?

The procedure of democracy leading to prosperity mostly takes a very long time to complete.

自由給予浮躁之人的，是絕望。

What can the gigantic mat of workers of China achieve in the future?

It's interesting that so many Americans and Canadians worship the late Steve Jobs, who seems to be authoritarian without traces of being democratic in his management of virtually everything.

It seems that there's no much difference at all among the three adjectives -- 'green', 'greeny', and 'greenish'.

It seems that the number of people without long-term vision overbears that of people with it.

You want to strike a fine balance of paid attention between parochial concerns and global ones.

When our toddler daughter will be wearing a painting smock and painting, she'll be happy.

It's said that people who don't exercise and eat healthy food are more likely to become cancerous sooner or later.

Being a family man doesn't equal to being mostly for hearth and home.

The French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been described as "impetuous, disloyal, and un-French".

See http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/impetuous-disloyal-and-unfrench-chirac-attempts-coup-de-grace-on-sarkozy-2294940.html .

Well, that doesn't make the leadership of Sarkozy and Merkel, which is supposed to drag Europe out of the mess it's currently in, look hopeful.

Among the Christmas wreaths on the market, there's one kind which have a Christmas bow attached inside the ring. That's a selling point.

For the time being, I'm chary of having a second child.

Music video - Alexander Borodin - Prince Igor - Polovtsian Dances

About the author (composer) Alexander Borodin:
He's a Russian. His main vocation was a professor of Chemistry at the Academy of Medicine in Russia. "Between 1859 and 1862 Borodin held a postdoctorate in (University of) Heidelberg", which is a world renowned university in Germany. Borodin "suffered poor health, having overcome cholera and several minor heart attacks. He died suddenly during a ball at the Academy, and was interred in Tikhvin Cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, in Saint Petersburg." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Borodin )

The dentist gave me an extra shot for freezing. Then my lips and chin began to go numb and tingling in a brief while.

On another note, usually the dentist smiles quite courteously, which impresses me. I'm not sure if that kind of smile is a Waspy thing.

Will Alberta's oil sand industry be arraigned for its environmental impact by future generations?

I always prefer coffee or anything over tea.

Gee. The name of the movie "Rice Rhapsody" (海南鸡饭) is so subtle and so good.

For the introduction of the flick, see http://movie.douban.com/subject/1309013/ .

'Rhapsodies' normally are big concert music pieces which are developed upon folk music pieces in a certain country, if my take isn't too far from the truth.

And I guess that the word 'rice' refers to 'sticky rice', which means "a homosexual Asian male who is sexually attracted exclusively to other homosexual Asian males". (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sticky%20rice )

In terms of the degree of people's abilities, this world can be so diverse and bipolar.

Some people are so formidably and deeply smart and capable, while some others are so incredibly incompetent on many aspects to the degree which beggars belief.

Well.

People who tend to be browbeaten by economic crises aren't fit to stay in a Capitalist country.

Just now, I've been doing the thing called "Display Color Calibration", which can be accessed from Control Panel --> Display, on my Windows 7 laptop.

And I have slightly disappointedly found out that there's no way to change the "Contrast" setting at all for laptop screens.

A DVD drive is not a fitting to be let go in the computer. Probably we'll need it for some occasions.

Words open a sphere of experiencing

My wife and I have been having more and more interactions with our toddler daughter as her cognitive capacity grows by week. I can see that while interacting, which obviously makes a large portion of human activities, one's words bring another into a sphere of experiencing, imagining, and conveying knowledge.

Cancers are pestilent and fearsome.

Once caught by one of them, one loses life and hope.

The list of monetary dealings is humanity.

It seems that in Canada, more and more young people, both male and female, have been stuck in obsessive and unwholesome passions for social media such as Facebook, and computer gaming.

Some of them have dropped out of school because of spending too much time on Facebooking and so on.

Facebook has been becoming a canker. Alack.

Demanding is to take care of a two-year-old. EXTRA demanding is to take GOOD care of a two-year-old who's having constant nightly teething pains for her last four teeth to grow out.

Maybe for people in this era, to have two or more children and raise them well is superfluously overloading.

Maybe there's always a thread of authoritarianism in the French mentality.

Typically, cheap teacup mats are less shoddier than cheap place mats, I think.

I always want to soup up my Windows computers experience with keyboard shortcuts. Sigh.

D had greenly and selfishly handled his people, most of whom just came and went. So his entrepreneurial initiative deceased helplessly, it appeared.

The index of Particulate Matter 2.5 in Beijing has reached a critical level from time to time. A lot of people have been risking their lungs and health in that modern mega city.

See 网友申请公开PM2.5数据_网易微博.

All in all, this era is an opportune one for information junkies like me.

"Sorrowful" and Jack Ruby

I consider the following piece good writing:

"Mrs. Kennedy walked beside it, her face was sorrowful. She looked steadily at the floor. … Her hand rested lightly on her husband’s coffin as it was taken to a waiting hearse."

http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/nov-22-1963-president-kennedy-is-assassinated/

There's only one adjective in the piece -- "sorrowful".

By the way, Jack Ruby, who killed JFK's assassin, appears mysterious and suspicious.

Dead people's bodies used to be interred into the ground. Nowadys oftentimes it's the ashes of them which get kept.

What will be the form by which human corpses are kept in the future? Stem cells?

The MOST important battle in Canadian history is the Battle of the Plains of Abraham (a.k.a. the Battle of Quebec) which took place in the siege of the Quebec City in 1759, during the Seven Years' War.

As the French commander General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm lay dying due to a bullet which had hit him on the Plains of Abraham, he said (probably with much regret which he should have expected that the British would scale the very steep cliffs on the riverbank outside Quebec via the Anse au Foulon route), "I am glad I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec." On the other hand, the British commander General James Wolfe also lay dying on that battlefield, and he said, "I die happy", after he heard that the French army had just collapsed and been escaping.

What a bitter and tragic battle.

My subtle thoughts only can emerge drizzlingly in quiet settings.

Are there a higher percentage of people who catch some sort of cancer nowadays than before?

Personally I think the noun 'bow' (pronunciation: /bou/) is a fine word.

An arrow flies from a bow, a violin is sounded by a bow, a gift box wears a bow on its top, and a house door presents a red pretty Christmas bow in this holiday season.

Maybe I'm escaped by the hugger-mugger of how modern countries' economic and financial system works.

As the mess in Europe has been keeping unfolding, I for one has gotten to know the differences of economy and society between the group of Germany and U.K. and that of Greece and Italy.

And I guess I've become wary of the latter.

Simmons and Simons

I used to be ignorant about the difference between the Simons (pronunciation: /'saimons/), which is a Quebec fashion retailor, and the Simmons (pronunciation: /'simons/), which is the American flagship mattress company.

By the way, Simmons was translated to Chinese as "席夢思". What a fine translation!

Not everything new is an opportunity. One shouldn't get muddied over that.

In terms of measurement, a cup is different than a cap.

How much has the phenomenon of information overload been bedeviling average Joes and Janes?

1756 - 1763 年，英、法两大欧洲强权在北美洲这个 new world 为了争夺国土和经济利益，Seven Years' War 打得白热化。

英国从本土动用超过 5 万的陆军、超过 160 艘 warships 的海军，参与这远隔大洋的 Seven Years' War，和法国陆军、海军在北美洲艰苦对决。

同一时段，中国为大清帝乾隆统治，闭关锁国、“禁海、毁船、禁船、迁界”，完全扼杀航海（见 http://www.tianya.cn/publicforum/content/no05/1/161560.shtml ），真的是不知今夕何夕。明、清二朝，没能与时俱进，框定中国几百年的衰弱落后格局。

It seems that every mass migration of an ethnic group which is forced by another government causes tremendous misery and poverty for that group. For instance, the Acadians were forced by arms to leave their homes in Acadia for other British colonies in North America in 1755.

See The Acadian Odyssey. I read the section "A Day of Great Fatigue" in it.

And this poem Evangeline seems to be powerful and gripping.

When we compare two countries' military forces, maybe there's not much difference on the individual level, say, country A's best sharpshooter isn't that different from country B's best sharpshooter, but it's the organization level and technology level which make all the differences.

It's said that Quebec City has always been more pompous and stuffy than Montreal historically.

Typically a man in his thirties and forties feels hemmed in by his work and family obligations.

I'm not sure if our baby daughter has displayed some trace of providence.

After having been cut off from most people's diets, lard has become a delicate which gets really enjoyed on occasions, ironically.

See this online post: 炒芥兰.

It seems that Netflix, which was the one up-and-coming competitor which drove Blockbuster out of business, has been on the cutting edge of some technological fronts, for instance, recommendation system.

However, it seems that particular company has also been quickly losing customers' hearts. It's even been reported that people think Netflix, along with Kodak, RIM and the like, will not be in existence in 2015. It's that bad for the once renowned pioneering Netflix.

When it rains, it pours.

Untitled

That tree did not know
How to love itself
It only cared about sky
Since it was made by the spy

If time could back flow
It would still not know
But now it loves itself
Softly

You want to be kind. Sometime you have to be a doormat.

I don't know anything about the mechanism of the formation of canker sores.

The racing car was tumbling out of control on the computer screen.

Maybe Canada's welfare system is something like a judo mat, which one can fall back on and so doesn't get completely hurt and then can stand up again and continue to strive. However, some people mistake the purpose of it.

Freedom is an authoritative right for individuals in Canada. How to make good use of it?

Fie on our irritable baby daughter. She's too ungentle sometimes.

My wife and I will have to tame her a bit in the future when she can effectively communicate with us.

Deep inside in China

Around a decade ago, having been restricted by many government policies in China, I was chary of really putting all my energy and passion into pursuing a long-term thinking and career. Essentially I didn't trust there's a real guarantee or something that the gains of my efforts wouldn't be lost because the government could and would change its pervasive policies freely at any time which can be either expected or not expected by me. So I came to Canada when the opportunity presented itself.

Nowadays, it seems that many people feel the same way as I did many years ago, despite the fact that many reported individuals among them are rich but I was poor. See this NYT news piece: Harassment and Evictions Bedevil Even China’s Well-Off.

I can say that I always want to expend the time of my life charily and I cherish that time.

Alack, too much work for the first two years of raising a baby.

Hopefully the workload will be reduced a great deal after our baby daughter becomes two or three. That's been assured by some other experienced parents.

When J frizzled the Cantonese sausage slices, he forgot to sprinkle a little Chinese cooking wine near the end into the frying pan.

Google, whose free and excellent services I had largely enjoyed, have pressed two importunities on me in the recent two years or so. One was that they stopped the development of Google Notebook altogether, the other was that they supplanted the nice sharing capabilities in Google Reader with their Google+ functionality.

I for one don't feel good about that. On the other hand, nonetheless I thank Google for the suave services it had provided at zero financial cost to a typical consumer like me.

It seems that the scouring pads attached on the dishwashing sponges, which are sold at dollar stores, have been becoming shoddier and shoddier.

Equipped with the proficiency of both English and Chinese, as well as the internet, I for one can get information from near and far without difficulty.

That's a blessing.

RIM has completely failed. I suppose it'll possibly get acquired by a Chinese or an Indian company eventually in a few years.

See RIM finds new ways to disappoint investors and Surging RIM sales catch retailers off guard.

RIM's been keeping losing market share in North America, while it's gaining more and more users overseas, presumably in Asia, Africa, and South America. There will be no justification that RIM needs to or has to be headquartered or existent in North America.

Talents must have become wary of getting involved with RIM whatsoever.

Bad don't taste the Peek Freans "Lifestyle Selections" Bran Crunch biscuits.

One's got to learn what good wine, good whiskey, and the like is betimes.

And one shouldn't give cheap wine to others as gifts.

Our baby daughter's bedtime is relatively late.

A bachelor pad doesn't necessarily equal to a studio apartment.

One day, E told me how Bill Gates' mother, who sat on IBM's board, helped him become what he became and everything.

I never buy that sort of thinking. Look, there have been many people who sat or are sitting on the board of IBM or whatever big company, but their children didn't establish a Google or an Apple.

The magnitude of Bill Gates' achievements can only be done by himself, not by the help of his mother or whomever.

Linguistic conceits can drive and direct readers' train of thought.

Corn bread, as well as oat bread, tastes good after having been toasted.

I've been spending my time providently. Spending one's time consumptively is uncultivated folly.

Many entrepreneurs regret they have introduced outside investments, especially IPOs, into their companies. So all budding entrepreneurs had better be wary of taking outside investments.

In the early New France, essentially there were four forces in its economic life: the fur traders, the fishermen, the seigneurs, and the habitants.

I don't like the information sources whose authors lard their social media updates with a lot of which music they listen to and so on.

I would say that the cooks at many Chinese restaurants in Montreal are not professional enough at cooking. They aren't decently trained, either by others or by themselves.

Take me to the mat if you want.

Having been a Chinese Canadian, I must have not been close up to China any more in terms of what interests me.

The streets are shrouded in rain mists.

HP makes quite decent consumer products. I suppose it tries its deep best at every price point at which it meets consumers.

That's goodwill.

I like the feel of the overcast weather in this fall which has been appearing often lately and which is slightly bright due to the sun behind the clouds.

有些人，永遠不會說 “對不起” 的。他們的心胸寬廣程度，大概是一輩子永遠不成長的。

希望我的心胸不是那樣地不成長。

I'm not sure if the genre of biz news mags can stand up to the justification of its existence in this era. For instances, Forbes' website appears horrendously cluttered and ugly, Fortune isn't quite deep, and The Economist doesn't feel as sharp as it should.

By contrast, it seems that The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Wall Street Journal can bring better information and news than the above mentioned biz mags. In my current perception, these three news media from New York City are authoritative and interesting.

A lot of things are amiss in life. You've got to right the wrongs or tolerate them.

The soft pads of cat's feet feel pretty likable. :-)

Some Chinese people tend to base their thoughts on conjectures instead of on facts.

I'm against that attitude.

The St. Lawrence river was the transportation highway of the fur traders in the early New France. They strewed their footprint from there.

Many years ago, for multiple months, I had my hair frizzled. And I looked better wearing that hair than wearing my natural hair.

Perhaps I'll get my hair frizzled again and just have a change.

Why do Americans importune women public figures to be relatively good-looking?

It seems that women who aren't as good-looking as Hilary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Meg Whitman and so on don't stand a chance to establish themselves in public arenas.

On the other hand, Angela Merkel, the current Chancellor of Germany, wouldn't be a successful politician if she were an American who wants to pursue politics, I guess.

There lies the difference of attitudes toward women public figures between the U.S. and Germany.

Video - Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1, by Elgar

The companies which make writing pads and the like must be seeing their significant decline coming, thanks to the popularity of tablet computing devices such as iPad.

I increasingly feel that Google botched up the Google Reader thing. Many people must have been seeking a viable and reliable way out like I do.

One tends to form a lot of unshaped ideas during interactions with others. But he can only make them clear in alone moments.

Is every Chinese immigrant in Canada working as a software developer a journeyman developer?

也許對世上的某些人物來說，華麗的過往是營造出的、亮麗的 resume 是造作過的。人，不如抱殘守缺，虔肅示真。

Just a small piece of my writing about a trivial event in life

J parked the baby cart with his baby in it on the pavement between D's door and the public pavement. Then he rushed to the basement window of D's house to get the baby's shoes which D was holding out through the window. D's telling J about the cart, "it's rolling. It's rolling." J ran back with a few steps, with the shoes in his hands.

In the "Arial" font, it's virtually impossible to distinguish the capital "I" (as in "Ink") from the lower-case "l" (as in "letter").

Tokens of goodwill and friendship tend to be always cherished.

J made slight mouths when the dentist was working at his teeth and gum.

I was a rank beginner in cooking about eight months ago. Now I create delicious Chinese dishes.

As a consumer, I tend to be chary of signing contracts, forms, and so on without first having perused them. Oh, the fine print just gets me. I give up in the face of it, like everyone else, and just trust the perusal to the government's regulations which are supposed to protect consumers.

You've got to be capable of discerning and appreciating people's scruples.

The winter's first snow. In the white, easy winds blow.

I'm not sure if the "Robinhood" Quick Oats are actually a type of oatmeal. By the way, the taste of them is not bad at all if you add a little honey into your bowl after the heating.

Update: No, they are not the same thing, although very closely related. The oats are the raw food packed in the bag, while the oatmeal is the food you get after having boiled the oats in milk or water and you eat it hot.

Most people buy residential houses by the means of mortgage of twenty years or so. Is it provident? Maybe not.

The Boston Marathon is the oldest annual marathon in the world, also one of the best known ones. It's said it's the hardest one too.

Well, doesn't Boston host the two hardest universities too? Harvard and MIT; especially MIT.

Z cravenly or selfishly refused her husband's request to ask her to tell her relatives that they would not visit them because her husband felt tired.

It seems that too many teachers/staff at 7-dollar daycare facilities in Montreal are too authoritarian towards kids. The don't respect the children enough.

Apple has swept the world with its iPod, iPhone, and iPad, back to back.

Now, outside Apple, there are iRobot, iCoffee, iCar, and so on. Will there be iMat, iBed, iMattress, and iWall?

Gee. I just want to live in the world. I don't want to live in an iWorld.

Samuel de Champlain is called the "Father of New France", which means father of the French Canada.

For now, two aspects, or events, in his life intrigue me. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_de_Champlain#Murder_of_the_King
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_de_Champlain#Marriage .

I don't know if the depiction of "cosmopolitan Germans and mostly avaricious, bestial Czechs" is somewhat true as cited in the below NYT movie review.

See To the Victors, Vengeance.

Entrepreneurship exacts risk tolerance and patience.

Did the ancestors of black people get their hair frizzled under the African sun thousands of years ago? Maybe.

Sometime I'm driven crazy by our baby daughter's importunate whining and crying.

I can only hope she grows up quickly.

Much of the software technology is about the portage of information.

Some people can remember what happened when they were three years old. Compared with them, I just have oblivion.

All the cordless home phones sold at Jean Cotu are made in China. Even Siemens phones.

I've been making friends with Chinese cooking. Man, what a delicious world if you can do it properly.

Personally I think that the nouns/adjectives with an "ese" at the end feel pretty if we only consider their sounds. For instances, "Viennese", "Vietnamese", "Chinese", and "Lebanese".

Abraham Lincoln lives posthumously in people's minds.

People say he's a great man.

I'm currently reading the poem O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman, which was published in his Leaves of Grass.

When one's stressful, he sometimes has one or more abscesses on his gum or the skin area a trifle above his lip.

Apple's biggest enemy probably is its very own authoritarianism over outside software developers.

It's not quite good that the West garrison Iraq, Afghanistan, Lybia and so on, which are crucial oil countries on the Earth.

But it's not quite bad that the West eventually withdraw their military and establish the so-called "free trade" with those countries.

My wife and I have fatted our baby daughter. How much striving, coping, and devising it has taken.

I feel more simpatico with open software systems.

As a consumer, I don't feel that I'm on top of Google's services any more, no matter whether they're free or not. Google can change the ways they are however it likes.

I think that in terms of the amount of care our baby daughter needs, 5, 15, and 20 months of age mark the turning points. After each of those points, the amount of care she demands decreases significantly than before.

Now she's about 21 months old, and she still commands lots of being taken care of. Now you know the first 5 months following her birth were hell for my wife and me. But I've never regretted it.

Libraries in Montreal need to be repurposed.

People read far less physical books now.

Some young men panhandle unapologetically in public places. Are they mentally ill or something?

European manor houses look really historical.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manor_house .

I feel Facebook is a little too authoritative. I mean it's a little overbearing.

Rank seems to be the percentage of Canadians who live pay cheque by pay cheque.

The "O" glyph of the Opera browser feels quite sleek.

Maybe melancholy is too depressive. Maybe only love can make one overcome it.

As more and more private, both domestic and foreigner-owned, factories move from coastal China to the main of China, finally, market economy begins to develop in the latter.

我走在陽光楓樹微風秋意裡。

深秋的聲音光色一路輕輕響亮著。

I attended G's Spring Convocation of Concordia University in 2004. An old Hong Kong businessman, who presumably sponsored the university, burst into tears when he spoke about how he even hadn't been able to complete his elementary school because of the invasion of the Japanese military during the WWII.

It's Okay for him to burst into tears in front of thousands of people. But it's not very fine for him not to restrain his private emotions at all. Nonetheless, it's sorry for us to know he had lost his childhood and formal education to the war.

The notions of 'general Providence' and 'special Providence', as in Christianity and Judaism, are too profound to be ignored.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_providence .

Eventually, I'll return to Asia if opportunities present themselves, I think.

I don't know what's the magic with the direction of west.

You know, the old Europe went west and found the American continent, Japan and Asia have sought to learn from the West, and in the modern history of the U.S. and Canada, going west seems to always look appealing.

It's apparent that the Conservative government of Canada purposes to establish Canadian power in the northern territory.

How will the U.S. behave in that vast area?

For aught I know, almost all progresses in one's competence are done in his own private thinking and practicing.

Personally I'm fond of the atmosphere of the Starbucks and Second Cup rendezvous.

Video - The Thatcher years

I came across this excellent video piece.




On the other hand, some of her naysayers called Mrs. Margaret Thatcher "the scourge of the (19)80s". (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcU5E3Ym7og .)

I don't know much about British politics. But Thatcher intrigues me.

Personally I think the writing by The New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell looks authoritative.

Does every standing tree have at least one cicatrix?

Does every standing man have at least one scar?

It seems that a free society like Canada sanctions many advantages in life, along the way, for individuals with critical thinking and sound judgement. On the other hand, it gives those without them only mediocre rewards.

Grizzly bears, most of which reside in Alaska and Canada, are such gigantic dangerous beasts.

'Most adult female grizzlies weigh 130–200 kilograms (290–440 lb), while adult males weigh on average 180–360 kilograms (400–790 lb). The average total length in this subspecies is 198 centimetres (6.50 ft)'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grizzly_bear#Description

And grizzly bears would be named 'grisly bears', if a historical mistake didn't happen. And that name would be an excellently descriptive one. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grizzly_bear#Name .

The move proposed in the below NYT op-ed will be a provident one for the U.S., if it gets adopted by the country's politicians.

See To Save Our Economy, Ditch Taiwan.

Babies are less intelligent, so they are more importunate.

It seems that in ancient Western mythologies, cherubs never grow up and they stay to be children forever, if there is a time dimension at all in the mythical world.

I feel that the normal usage, which is normally imprudent, of Facebook, Twitter, and the like encroaches on our time.

We should be abnormal in how much time we spend on them.

I'm afraid that however high the turnout of the Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Toronto, Occupy Vancouver, and Occupy Wherever is, there won't be much change in the way in which the economies of Anglo-Saxon countries is run and in the way in which the finance industry controls the economy in these countries.

The importance of finance is very deep-rooted in Anglo-Saxon societies.

I've been quite amused to find out that Shania Twain, a contemporary Canadian country singer, has got a step brother named 'Mark Twain'.

I'm not sure if the fat cats' life has been inspected and tried to elevate, by themselves.

Canadian hockey stars have got a long-standing image of bruisers. That's right. Northern bruisers.

An inconvenient contraption is any website which doesn't automatically put the cursor in the input box for you as soon as your browser opens it, I think.

Zucchini tastes mild.

The darkness of night is already descended at 5:15pm on this late fall day.

Those yellow luminous street lamps make you feel freshly warm.

When the British parliament is convoked, man, all those voices and noises.

Is being provident an indicator of being wiser?

Johnson & Johnson had been quite politic in the marketing of its products to people. But no more will many consumers trust it.

See 'Make safer baby shampoo,' groups tell J&J.

And, by the way, Johnson & Johnson and SC Johnson & Son seem to be two unrelated companies. The former is a public company, and the latter is a private one and much smaller.

Looking back at my life path, I came to Canada opportunely, without wasting my time in China.

I have no regret over that decision.

Just now, I glanced at the computer timer, and it showed '2:14 AM', which was the time after the Daylight Saving Time end adjustment had automatically taken place on my computer moments before.

I realized I gained one hour, then interestingly, a slight shiver of excitement ran through my body.

Information overload is a scourge. Information abundance is a bless.

I felt poignant when I opened my Google Reader just now.

I suspect that the mobile multitude loves iPhone and iPad because those two products bring them even sleeker entertainment. Entertainment, unfortunately, is eating up people's precious spare time.

I for one have been jaded by the importunity of the ongoing back-to-back economic crises.

Well, maybe I shouldn't expect peace of mind to be the norm of economic life. Instead, I must expect chaos and disasters to be it.

Where potatoes are sold loose, the price of each is much higher than their counterparts in bags.

Does the same thing apply to the labor market? No, it doesn't add up.

How much has China been defined and shaped by the grisly 'Cultural Revolution' between the 1960s and 1970s in the country?

I believe the good social fabrics had been largely broken and then wild Capitalist social fabrics and values sprung up and filled the places left by those broken ones.

Some people say that Germany helps Greece and the like with their sovereign debt problems because it just wants to be a Good Samaritan. Does that saying add up?

Are dentists knavish?

Hummer, the discontinued luxury SUV, probably will have some value for collection.

Here goes an interesting kind of copyright infringement which runs deep in Chinese tradition.

See Yes, He Sold Fakes. They Are Supposed to Be Fake.

One probable replication by the consumers to Google's imposing change that the Google Reader won't support the 'Share' and 'Share with note' functionality any more is to flee to other service providers and not to trust the new products which Google will roll out in the future very much.

In the Chrome browser, for my most often used web apps, I prefer them to be bookmarklets than to be Chrome extensions or Chrome apps.

Many people tend to think theories are irrelevant to the real world and never the twain shall meet. Should I beg to differ?

Importune seems to be the fear of not being in the know in this era of information overload.

The pith of Harvard U. seems to be the Harvard Yard.

But maybe it's not. The pith of it is lonely strenuous academic life.

Sometime I see women with bruises on their faces walking out of a car or in a shopping center or whatever, I naturally suspect they're in the situations of domestic violence.

In today's world, getting an academic degree is more and more like a CYA, not like real education.

In terms of providence, maybe people who majored in arts in university have less of it than people who majored in science and engineering. I meant after graduation.

It can be unnatural for an atheist Chinese to completely understand the concept of 'divine jealousy' in Christianity and Judaism.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jealousy_in_religion .

Moreover, I'm also intrigued by the Christian perspective on human jealousy.

Our baby daughter was annoying during last night's dinner. But I shouldn't have lashed at the table.

I signed up Facebook years ago. Then I've stayed out of circulation in that sphere since. Facebook is just not my cup of tea yet.

I used to haunt coffee shops.

It's been bruited about that the eventual actual procurement cost for F-35 jet fighters, which are a seemingly important sort of 5th-generation jet fighter made by Lockheed Martin, has soared to an estimated US$156 million each, from the earliest projection of US$50.2 million each.

See the 3rd paragraph of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-35_Lightning_II
and
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/03/12/lockheed-fighter-idUSN1123180820100312 .

I guess Canada will beef up its mettle and buy those F-35 air fighters anyway, largely due to its escalating concerns over the northern territory.

It looks probable that there will be a sea change in worldwide attitudes towards studying in a university in the U.S, whose cost has been soaring and soaring in the past decade or so and can hardly be justified for its intrinsic value in terms of education.

For one thing, see this: Should College Grads Get a Break on Their Loans? - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com .

Marriage is a work. I've worked hand in glove with my wife for the development of our life and family.

I'm happy that the internet technologies have broken the monopoly of the dissemination of knowledge by universities and publishing companies.

Unlike some others, Y offered me opportune help. So I respect him relatively deeply.

Until now, our baby daughter seems to be a bit brainish.

Personally I wouldn't like to see the Occupy Wall Street to fizzle out.

I grew up in a small town by the Yangtze river in China.

Maybe, it would be even better to grow up by sea, which constantly makes heave.

The consumerist values are so dominant in the mainstream Canadian society. I'm not sure if I completely agree with that particular inclination.

Across the world, will China see the ever growing influences of consumerism in its society?

Is there a slight possibility that the claim of Gaddafi's death is a knavery set up by him?

RBC importunes their customers to set up a line of credit with them or buy their so-called 'Talk & Save' long distance plan. Who needs those two products?

Sometimes it's boring to watch government finance officials prate about economic prospects, in their typically dull and measured words.

I am going to become old. My hair will grizzle, my motion will slow down, and my body will be feeble.

Will my lived life feel like vapor at that time?

There's a fine line to differentiate among service providers.

One group is those providers who reasonably fairly offer services with the reasonable expectation to gain income; the other is those who are somewhat schematically after people's money and should be hoist with their own petard or somehow punished, ideally.

The azure gets bruised by the weather and presents a darkish grey cloudy sky.

The editors at The New York Times love to opine. That's fine. But, shouldn't they strive to be more objective, comprehensive, or inclined towards being value-free in their editorials?

See this NYT editorial: It’s What They Asked For.

People from a certain region in China are sort of like adders to friendship.

Yahoo! has been fizzling out. What time can do to any big company.

'A table for twain,' J uttered to the waitress.

Apple, Microsoft, Google, Motorola, Samsung, HTC et al. have been in the court suing each other and claiming other companies have infringed on their own patents in mobile computing. What a messy war.

Maybe IP litigators will become increasingly busy in the coming decades.

The last four teeth are beginning to grow out on our toddler daughter.

That last round of teething presents both wholesome growth and pains for her, problems for us.

Do you think 'keyboard navigation' is a better term than 'keyboard shortcuts'? I think so.

Until now, all the commonplace beers in Canada are cleft into two tiers in my mind: Heineiken and Stella Artois, and the rest.

I owned an LG cell phone. It'd got a really elegant design.

And my appetite for LG's industrial design, its product quality aside, was whetted by that phone since.

在 iPhone 和 iPad 市場份額節節高的這個時代，我估計還是有不少人是希望 Android 翻盤的。

An entrepreneur's ignorance and meanness bruises his business and his staff. Eventually, it's himself who gets nothing after years of efforts.

Ignorance and meanness doesn't go far in this world.

Maybe unction is too prevalent in North America.

I remember the drizzly streets with grasses and fallen leaves in my hometown.

Word of this grisly fresh incident in China has been bruited about across the world.

'A Chinese toddler who was ignored by at least 18 passers-by as she lay bleeding and unconscious in the street, has died, the hospital treating her said Friday, in an incident that has shocked the nation. ...' See Chinese toddler Yue Yue dies in hospital after shocking hit and run.

Gee. Do people want to live in that sort of society? I'm telling you, some Chinese people are like those 18 passers-by in the news story. Are we going to see more and more trespasses like that?

When I see a dog gambol, then I know it's really happy.

On the other hand, I've never seen a cat being really happy.

For a washing machine, a 'quick wash' doesn't often mean quick and dirty.

Sometimes it's hard for me to have a quiet cup of coffee during the day.

I'm not sure how my Chinese and English proficiency will conjoin in the future. But it looks probable.

The male protagonist in the movie 'Twilight' wears a ghastly white face. That sort of images are not my cup of tea.

My door is open to the balcony. The night wind is fizzling.

How sweet quietness is.

There's nearly no glitch in Windows 7 now. I guess Windows 8 will be crucial and a tipping point for Microsoft which will determine its fate in its competition with Apple.

The glare of hot summer sun is long gone. My life has grown older by another season.

I wonder how a mayfly feels.

The diaper leaked on our toddler daughter. That made a bit of inconvenience for me.

How many little and large bits of inconvenience parents have to go through to bring up a child.

One thing I've held against Google is that I'd been using the Google Notebook for years, and then poof, the maintenance of it got discontinued by Google.

And then I scrambled to find alternatives by other service providers, whose integration with other Google services always is not as good as that of my parted Google Notebook.

It looks that Obama's hair has turned grizzly from a state of being all dark. The guy has been doing a job which is tough on him.

Normally untreated excrement pollutes water and makes it undrinkable. Then how could ancient people drink water directly from rivers and so on?

The incorporeal time is both my friend and my enemy.

Presumption of innocence in the metro/subway

If you are a man, probably you've had this commonplace little experience in life. When you take the metro/subway and you're waiting for the train on a passenger platform, you absentmindedly or unawarely move a little too close to a woman and stand there. The woman subtly adjusts the position of her handbag on her shoulder and makes sure that it's safe from your possible fetching or something.

See, the woman can have Reasonable Doubt that you would possibly steal her purse or something, yet you have the presumed innocence as stated in the legal principle of Presumption of Innocence. So the train finally arrives, and you two step onto it and then you move away from the woman which possessed a pinch of Reasonable Doubt about your behavior a moment ago. And this episode of Presumption of Innocence finishes.

You see, this whole notion of Presumption of Innocence intrigues me. There's a catch though. If "the burden of proof rests on who asserts, not on who denies" (see the first paragraph of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence ), why do some defendants in some legal cases have to provide alibis to the courts which they are judged in?

The fall is drizzling and raining away.

There naturally exists a bubble of conceit for everyone.

It seems that only through interactions with the outside world, accompanied by introspection, one can shed that bubble of conceit.

It seems that in the English-speaking world, The Economist is the most laudable news magazine, be it in the U.K. or U.S.A.

Music video - Andre Rieu - La vie est belle

Whatever the criticism has been for André Rieu, a popular Dutch violinist (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Rieu#Reception), it must be lauded that he performs his music with class.

When one begins to have one or even more children, his willingness to take risks in life normally decreases, more or less.

Now I have a toddler. However, my willingness to take risks may have not been blunted at all. One important reason is that I'm somewhat well prepared. For one thing, with a somewhat remote background of being a linguistically disadvantaged immigrant in Canada from China, I had already invested an enormous amount of time and effort into elevating my English proficiency, in order to preempt the case in which an insufficient English level would hamper my competing in the market, before my baby was born.

I like the crispy fizzling sounds once I put green vegetables into the heated oil in the frying pan.

I don't know much about the Western laws at all. But it seems that there are two sorts of trespasses, one is criminal trespasses, and the other normal ones.

It seems that some divorced women don't respect their ex-husband's visitation rights.

Life must be overly complex and unsatisfactory for those ex-husbands.

It seems that Samsung hasn't done anything significant yet to whet Western media's interest in its budding Bada mobile OS.

When you come short, it's a perfect time for you to stop and think.

All things wax and wane. Wall Street is no exception. Wall Street is obviously waning.

People in finance will be floored, probably.

It takes more than a decade to make it as a really good software developer.

I don't know. Some of the words by Yang Li (李阳) are odd nowadays.

For instance, see this article: http://news.xinhuanet.com/ent/2011-09/27/c_122092575.htm .

I think he deserves to be chided.

The drizzle was falling onto the street space. Last night set today's pace.

The figurative cutpurse Oliver Twist is perpetuated in mankind's memory by Charles Dickens. Astray children deserve attention, thanks to Dickens.

The Montreal Gazette is a news enclosure which is generally not deep enough.

Software development is usually composed with too many layers of imperfect abstractions.

The other day, I watched a video clip in which a medical researcher cut across a whole brain matter which had been taken out of a dead person and boxed and then delivered to the Brain Bank at Boston University.

Ah, that's ghastly. I skipped the scientific scene.

The U.S., Russia, Japan, China, India, et al. have all begun to develop the 5th-generation jet fighters long ago.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_jet_fighter#Aircraft .

Will that set a precedent for future arm races among the militarily powerful countries? After all, this world has become no less unstable.

One thing I've noticed in the above web link is that no country in South America has joined the race to develop 5th-gen jet fighters. That intrigues me.

It's nearly apparent that cut-rate retailers will embrace prosperity in the forthcoming years.

'Cost' must have become a more charged word among consumers.

Pics - Retro

(By arghon / http://www.flickr.com/photos/arghon/257400665/ / CC)

Retro...

(By theodevil / http://www.flickr.com/photos/theodevil/6041239310/ / CC)

Retro!

"Hover between abstraction and representation"

Here goes a well-written sentence from NYT:
"The artists chosen by Ross Bleckner, a painter known for canvases that hover between abstraction and representation, display an ethereal quality similar to his own, except in photographs rather than paint."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/nyregion/artists-choose-artists-at-the-parrish-art-museum-review.html

Some Chinese peasants used to build outside toilet rooms and sties side by side. I wonder if that still is the omnipresent case nowadays and if the sanitation has improved.

On a different note, as more and more Chinese peasants have been bought out of 'their' lands and put into apartment-like buildings in more concentrated areas due to the frenzy real estate construction boom, will those areas soaked with ex-peasants become rundown slums further down the road, given that many ex-peasants and their children don't have sufficient education under their belts to prosper away from land?

It seems that more and more influential figures in the U.S. publicly hold opinions that Wall Street deserves being inveighed against and being occupied.

Wall Street is not a synonym of 'glamour' any more.

The tincts of failures reside deeply in my memory. They serve as beacons, as life lessons.

I became better after they had happened.

And on a related note, I think it's a pity for one if he goes through his life unchallenged or not challenged often enough.

D is a tall black woman who came to Canada from the Caribbeans when she was young. Now she lives in Montreal with her husband.

The other day, when I saw her grizzled hair roots, which outgrew the dyed dark look of her hair, something that time produces touched me somehow.

(Picture 'Grizzled' by bogdog Dan / http://www.flickr.com/photos/25689440@N06/2455312427/ / CC)

(Pic 'grace lutheran church' by lynnmanhart / http://www.flickr.com/photos/your_friend_flicka/2293276303/ / CC)

In life, we want to avoid certain things. Poverty is an example.

But one thing which many people overlook is that we should largely eschew the flicks and other 'cultural' products which manipulatively pander to our basest innate desires and emotions.

Entrepreneurs have to be cross-silo.

I've seen technical and non-technical people without mindsets of sales, HR, etc. And the biz which they started look to be doomed.

Our baby daughter does't like to take any milk at all during the day.

So I try to dunk pieces of bread in milk and feed them to her, with the hope that she'll gradually begin to accept milk. An inherited Chinese stomach is hard to be shifted.

The North American finance industry looks more and more like a Gordian knot.

A wild Alexandrian solution would be to turn it into a largely state-owned system.

Every youth can't escape the romantic ardor inside. That's one of the troubles of being young.

Then why do people miss their green years? Do they miss all the troubles during those years?

Social media such as Facebook and Twitter have been encroaching on people's time because they're somewhat addictive by nature. In some sense, perhaps fighting addiction to social media is sort of like obese people fighting addiction to foods.

This seems to be an innate illness of capitalism finance.

The problem with Wall Street and other financial firms is that they want to be paid princely to provide the liquidity of financial capital, which is very essential to capitalism, but they want to wash their hands of keeping that liquidity going all the time, that means, in bad times. But that liquidity must be kept going ALL THE TIME.

Apparently, European cities possess more embellishments than their North American counterparts. A long history matters.

Let's hope Wall Street will eventually be invaded and occupied by regulations and laws which are better than the current ones.

Also see Confronting the Malefactors by Dr. Paul Krugman.

It seems kind middle-aged matrons possess some shared distinct flairs, be they Chinese or Canadian.

In a tablet market in which iPads have dominated and Android, as well as Windows Phone 7, devices have been slowly climbing in market shares, the rebellious Kindle Fire by Amazon, which is of 7" form factor, will possibly quickly rise up.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindle_Fire .

Interestingly, the preposition 'like' sometimes serves in similes, sometimes not.

'He runs like the wind' is a simile. And 'he looks like his mom' is just a resemblance.

Freedom is a deep concept. Creative freedom too.

I've just heard of Dr. Samantha Nutt, who is actually still young. I highly respect her efforts.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Nutt .

Canada is usually kinetically engaged in the NATO-related military operations overseas.

It seems that this country's military forces are constantly trained in the field, proportional to the modesty of the nation's power.

It's impossible not to get laughed at. But what distinguishes people around you is who laughs at you and who helps you.

The houses and streets are static. You can't get many ideas by looking at them with your naked eye.

In contrast, the life in those houses and streets is dynamic. You can get lots of ideas by peering at it with your mind's eye, with the help of words and formulas.

In that afternoon, I moped about the Sherbrooke street.

The Great Mogul empire (a.k.a. Mughal Empire), which was Muslim, ruled much of India from the 16th to the 19th century.

I guess many of the descendants of its people are in Pakistan now.

(The famous Taj Mahal in India built by a Mogul emperor / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Taj1.jpg / Public domain)

When a guy uses 'email missive' instead of 'email message' in a software book he writes, you know he's kind of showing off he's a learned man.

It may take more than a decade for the mind of a typical amateur English learner who is also rooted in mainland China, after his or her graduation from university, to traverse almost the entire set of commonly used English words, which every native speaker with some higher education is familiar with.

Is there a higher percentage of cancer cases among the human population nowadays than in past decades?

I've encountered personally, heard of, or read about more and more people who got invaded by various cancers.

What a bunch of cozeners Russian political leaders are! Especially Mr. Putin.

See http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/world/europe/putins-diving-exploit-was-a-setup-aide-says.html .

I feel that badges and coats of arms in the West are exquisite in general.

西方文化的線索，不容易釐清。

Many people are in thrall to routine life trajectories which eventually lead to more confinement of their liberty down the road, I've observed. Routine life paths lead to routine life achievements, reasonably.

Those people are sort of afraid of thinking out of the box and then acting in accordance with that thinking.

I often see men with retro hippie looks on streets and screens in Canada. What do they think really?

I'm curious about that, against the backdrop of the current era.

I don't know. It seems that many Canadian biz tycoons are not on a par with their American counterparts.

For instance, the two Co-CEOs of RIM, which has been claimed throughout this country as the brightest tech company in Canada after the collapse of Nortel.

On the other hand, in sharp contrast, many Canadian political moguls are on a par with their American counterparts, for example, the late Jack Layton, and Stephen Harper, they shine with the grace of modesty and sound judgement in many occasions.

Just my current personal impressions.

They say providing the liquid transferring, or liquidity, of financial capital is a crucial thing.

I think that particular service of providing, which is what the banking firms do day in and day out, should be made easier for more identities, both organizations and individuals, to take part in.

But maybe I'm wrong.

Any business has to earn a spread in every single deal, in order to survive. It's as simple as that. But not all prospects, especially those driven by sheer greed, understand that.

Some syntactic sugar wastes developers' time.

最怕就是 無感。

Personally I think that the phrase 'J-school', which stands for Journalism school, sounds cool.

The relevance of Microsoft to consumers is well before its end.

It's been reported that the Windows Phone 7 is lauded by some outside designer(s) as a possession of great design, and moreover, we can reasonably expect that the Windows 8 will be unveiled next year. Let's see if Microsoft can create its new heyday in the mobile sphere.

Personally I think maybe I'll wait on the mobile version of the Windows 8.

J's dream hovers in the sky.

In the wake of the infamous case of Russell Williams, now one of Russell's rape victims nearby Tweed, Ontario has sued him, his wife and the Ontario Police.

One of the madam's claims is that the Police should have informed the residents nearby that some cases of breaking and entering and sexual assaults, by Russell Williams, had happened before the same fate descended on her.

I'm not sure if civilians have the right to be timely informed by the Police about all the sexual offence and murder cases in their neighborhoods. It looks to be unlikely. But if the right really exists, then the Ontario Police did infringe on the victim's rights by having failed to make her know. Otherwise, the Police just have an encroachment case at the very most.

Do you think that money managers batten on their investors, if the degree of competition in that industry is not enough?

Yorkshire, England, U.K. appears to be a significant and pretty county.

"In recent times, North Yorkshire has displaced Kent to take the title Garden of England according to The Guardian." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yorkshire#Natural_areas )

The beauty of the moors in Yorkshire particularly struck me, thanks to the picture displayed at http://www.bugbog.com/gallery/england_pictures/yorkshire-uk.html .

Pic - Mercury

Mercury, a Roman god of commerce, trade and so on, is also a messenger of Jupiter.

(By Clio20 / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:P1030419_-_Copie_(2).JPG / CC)

To be frank, globalization has blasted the life of average Joes and Janes in the U.S. and Canada.

Due to the competition from the labor in developing countries, their (mean?) real individual income has allegedly stayed the same since the 1980s, and their job security has become elusive. And the continuously climbing gas and house prices have been tormenting their minds.

Will African countries import the fishy and illaudable Chinese High Speed Railway technologies?

In terms of Economics, perhaps the only plausible main explanation for the flat incomes gotten by the majority of American and Canadian workers is the steep rise of the competition of some populous emerging economies such as India and China, given the current models of capitalism in which capital flows freely to where it can make the most gains.

It appears that poetic thoughts mostly emerge in leisure times, and they submerge in the times when I'm busy burying myself in the mundaneness of life.

A little sunny. A little windy. The maples are turning colorful, in this season of fall.

It seems that what we eat and commonly refer to as 'corns' are 'corn ears' in agricultural terms.

The encroaching prices of foods and gasoline have been making people somewhat on their nerves. And, I guess people's consumption pattern will shift relatively drastically in the coming years.

There must be less and less people who play Cupid nowadays in China.

We tend to see lots of internecine and transparent arguments in the U.S. and Canada.

But maybe that's why average people in both countries are smarter than their counterparts in many other countries, including China. And maybe that's why both countries have more good policies.

In Roman mythology, the life of Larunda was a tragedy. And what a ruler Jupiter, the king of gods, was.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larunda .

There are so many rich figures of speech in Buddhist writings.

Very often, when people laugh, our baby daughter mistakes it for that people are laughing at her and then she cries.

Pic - Mars

Mars is the Roman god of war. And he is second in importance only to Jupiter. The month of March, which actually was the first month of every year in the earliest Roman calendar, is named for him.

(By Andrea Puggioni / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mars_Pyrrhus_cropped.jpg / CC)

The Blogger platform, which is owned by Google, has begun to offer some so-called 'dynamic view' template, which looks quite like Tumblr. That a boy.

A Chinese guy whom I met at a daycare centre told me that his toddler son's first name is 'Alec' and it's a Greek name which roughly means 'brightness'.

But he's wrong. 'Alec' is generally considered to be a Scottish name and it means 'defender of mankind'. It's just a variant of 'Alex'.

Google's fine. Google's efficient. Google's unintrusive. Google's likable.

I was determined to advance my own English proficiency to a certain level, come hell or high water. I've done it.

In Roman mythology, Jupiter, the king of the gods, is also known as Jove. It appears that his beard is characteristic.

(By thisisbossi / http://www.flickr.com/photos/thisisbossi/3055427302/ / CC)

Telemarketers badger people to buy their long-distance phone call plans. No way. Most people know better to use free internet video or voice calls, perhaps.

The retirements of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates should be made ceremonial. And the two enemies should receive standing ovations for what they've done in their careers. Their efforts and competition have made our world more fantastic.

Now China is in the groove. But there are still lots of inefficiencies in China's economic and social life and fabrics. Can those inefficiencies be squeezed out gradually?

I don't understand how Intel only provides open office spaces for its employees, including its CEO, and can reach stellar results at the same time. How can the Intel workers be in the zone in their open office spaces?

貌似佛家認為，無論貴賤賢愚，每個人在自己的人生中都被 苦 所折磨。所以佛法之鵠的在於 滅苦 。

Many seasoned people get somewhat disgusted, so to speak, by counterfeit facades some people wear all the time.

Even at age one, our baby daughter typically got delighted by the presentment of blooms. Girls and boys are born to be different.

Sometime a "retrograde reader" is an intentional cultural "snob". How amusing is that people devise cultural classes and fit themselves in those.

See http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/e-books-vs-real-books/ .

When Obama inaugurated, he's fairly seasoned in enchanting voters with his inspiring speeches, in organizing communities, and in politics; but he's a total noob in managing a gigantic economy.

(Image "The Scale of the American Economy" by asecondhandconjecture / http://www.flickr.com/photos/22994175@N03/2205172655/ / CC)

There's a "great-great-great-grandson" of an American president who lives in a hovel and delivers pizza for a living.

See http://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/03/nyregion/our-towns-impeachment-as-legacy-for-pizza-guy.html?ref=andrewjohnson .

That guy's presidential ancestor is Andrew Johnson, who "was the first U.S. President to undergo an impeachment trial" and "is commonly ranked by historians as being among the worst U.S. presidents". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Johnson )

How come more and more Mainland Chinese feel tristful? Because they want more respect and love but they can't get it.

Immigrating to Canada from Mainland China offsets at least 3 years of efforts for a Chinese.

I just woke from a slumber in action on my chair moments ago. How sweet sleep is to a brain deprived of it.

'Such a deed' and 'sweet religion'

'O, such a deed
As from the body of contraction plucks
The very soul, and sweet religion makes
A rhapsody of words.'
--Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 4

It seems that Oracle bought Java and MySQL, and intended to create some vendor lock-in chains around those technologies, without surprise.

Well, perhaps what Oracle did is just to pluck both technologies from the open source sphere and make people who are used to them lose their way and then tell them, "well, pay me and I'll show you the way".

Personally I think that those intellectuals and others who claim that China will become the No. 1 country, GDP-wise, in the world have their heads in the clouds.

Things probably won't develop linearly in their current fashion in China before it reaches there.

Will China make a market for more sophisticated and reliable products and services than the currently prevailing ones?

Perhaps the iPhones and the like over there are going to drive up the tastes of Chinese consumers.

German quality is laudable. The quality of SAP products must be superior than that of Oracle products.

When an egg is fried in oil, it first blisters and then shrinks.

I kind of wanna study that process a bit.

Personally I like the Shakespearean simile "as flush as May".

Audiences at classic music concerts always give out indistinct applause. But still, it must be a good thing.

The window is blurred by age and rain.

Well, how nonintrusive the Quebec government has been in beginning to repair the dilapidating bridges, overpasses, and the like in Montreal. And how people love having one more thing to keep their fingers crossed for.

I'm staring at the screen of my VIM text editor program, which typically is white fonts against simple black backdrop. And the words 'wag' and 'wagon' on the screen sort of remind me some winged dragons with sharp ears from some remote fantasy films.

How does human brain work in a visual environment?

According to Shakespeare, the "blush of modesty" is graceful.

Gee, the honey badger is named as "the most fearless animal in the world". It can attack and eat bees, poisonous snakes, and even more fearful predators. Gee.

Maybe some investment analysts wag their tongues without deep knowledge about and grasp of what's really going on in the financial world which actually has been churning out complex products at breakneck speeds every year.

Apparently, many Western countries have been setting up bulwark against Islamicism.

Bravura is Apple's swift rise to dominance in recent years. But how can that single company resist the rest of the industries it's positioned in?

I guess Apple's predominance will decline gradually, eventually.

An ongoing concern, sort of, for me has been drawing analogies between the Québécois mentality and the French one.

In the production of organic foods, pesticides are allowed as long as they are not synthetic.

Personally I think that Microsoft's been unobtrusively beefing up the UI part of its Windows OS.

For one thing, the Windows Flip 3D, since the Windows Vista, is a lot handier than its counterparts of the past. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_Vista#Windows_Flip_and_Flip_3D .

How's it going with China's regulation of downright trademark offences? Will more and more cases emerge following those of the brazen knockoff Apple and Ikea stores? It's nearly certain they will.

The delimitation of financial speculations must be being overhauled to be more subtle, sophisticated, and effective across the world. If it still isn't actually occurring, then it should do, I guess.

Tobin tax provides valuable trains of thought for that issue. Quote:

Keynes writes: 

Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the situation is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. (,[8] p. 104) 

The introduction of a substantial government transfer tax on all transactions might prove the most serviceable reform available, with a view to mitigating the predominance of speculation over enterprise in the United States. (,[8] p. 105) 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobin_tax#Tobin.27s_concept

I didn't take enough care of my baby daughter the other day. And she caught a little cold. I had some guilty feelings that wrung my heart a bit.

I think there is a higher percentage of oval faces in China than in Canada.

Pinups are so retro.

See http://goo.gl/jJNiF .

What reasons essentially make the different approaches exist, which are that people should follow the orders of their betters in military while people don't in a democratic political system?

"A heart unfortified"

Your mind knows the importance of science
Yet your heart from time to time sighs
The feelings you as a human being feel
Cannot be denied and be not real

Our baby daughter, who's a little peevish sometime, clings to her mother in weekends. She seems to know that mom's available in weekends.

Maybe many British don't like rashness. On the other hand, maybe many Americans don't like conservativeness.

Music video - 李香蘭 - 張學友

The market share of a company is just a DERIVED thing. It's NOT DEEP, just superficial. The REAL DEEP THING is the competitive/uncompetitive edge of the company's product(s) and/or service(s), compared against its competitors.

Just see how swift RIM's market share, as well as its stock price, has been declining in the recent two years. Such a good case it's made.

It seems that many people in the investment field think that Carol Bartz had delivered maladroit management at the sickening Yahoo! . So she got sacked from her CEO role lately, just over the phone.

What a mess the whole thing has been. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Bartz#CEO_of_Yahoo.21 .

"He broke into her conversation" is such a good metaphor. So is "he was dressed rather vulgarly in a loud checked suit", too.

A Chinese ESL learner often feels that his or her English level wouldn't budge. That's because to acquire advanced English proficiency is a very long term enterprise.

在這個 知識爆炸 的時代裡，對知識、新知的 “弱水三千，取一瓢飲” 是非常必要的。

然而，這 “取一瓢飲” 的取法應該是有講究的吧。

[No Name] + - VIM

There are analogies between objects in OOP and those in real life. But where do those analogies end?

Twitter is about messaging. Twitter is flush.

The Japanese design has been appreciated and lauded across the world. But the core of it still looks mystic to me.

I can never escape the relish of Asian meals.

Twitter and Facebook can aggregate and channel people's emotions and actions.

See what their roles have been in the ongoing 'Arab Spring', which is a tectonic shift in the Arab world.

Whatever people have accused Microsoft for, it deserves a round of applause for what it has done for the successful democratization of modern computing.

'A tempest in a tea pot' is one of my favorite figures of speech. It's an excellent metaphor for not grasping the big picture hence making a fuss about something.

It's hard to escape pat generalizations.

In the eyes of Canadians, have the unions become more and more like a farce?

It's said that about 30% of Canadians are union members. That number reaches beyond my past imagination.

Well, I'm not sure if The New Yorker is a magazine with a human face, however sleek its design is.

Anyways, it's not really my cup of tea for now.

(By swanksalot / http://www.flickr.com/photos/swanksalot/516896919/in/photostream/ / CC)

I don't know. Usually I value depth over speed. So if a website or web app is deeply good, I can tolerate it if the loading speed is a little slow.

However, it seems that many, if not most, people, value snappy websites and web apps the most.

Perhaps the economy will be more efficient when the law can't be bought out by financiers.

It's said that for Nova Scotia, Canada, rum has served its turn well for quite a long time, since the province' people's involvement with rum-running in early 20th century.

Video - Two well-known figures wrangle with one another - Barney Frank tells CNBC's Mark Haines"This Interview is Over"

In the video clip, was the late Mr. Mark Haines reasonable enough?

美國的國品實在是有很高尚的一面。

It seems that many Westerners think that China was never a Communist country.

I made a mushroom-stuffed meatloaf last night. It seems that bread crumbs make a meatloaf less likely to crumble. And thyme, combined with parsley, can eliminate the odor of ground beef.

Next time around I'm gonna cover the baking pan with an aluminum sheet which is similar with a casserole in effect, in order to make the surface of the meatloaf tenderer.

K's son has got an ovate hairless head. :-)

One's knowledge is twofold. One part is public, the other private.

Maybe there are two sorts of schools for children.

One is those which really provide enlightenment and inspiration for kids. The other is those which just make youngsters kind of occupied and forestall problems which would occur if they were out of school.

Personally I think that 'Atwood' and 'Atwater' are two beautiful family names.

The pest of noises is hard to stand for thinkers.

What one spends time on badges what sort of person he's going to become.

I haven't seen yet a piece of information which can fully account for the stellar rise and valuation of Facebook.

For a man, the life debts he incurred in his wasted times can sneak up on him and wreak him into a regretful state.

So, it's advisable for a man to establish himself by the age of 45 or so.

I don't understand why the systems of law and accounting, well, especially that of law, are designed to be so esoteric and complicated.

Do those systems do more harm than good? Have they actually increased the business costs a lot than the case in which much simpler systems would be in place?

People nowadays are bound to educate themselves for lifelong term. But what will they learn over that long period?

I'm afraid that the predominant phenomenon of information overload strangles our thinking time.

What're the Canadian interests in Libya? Oil? Anything else?

Music video - Lady Gaga - Paparazzi

The late Michael Jackson, King of Pop, also had a song called "Paparazzi" around one decade ago, if I remember its name correctly. Michael Jackson and Lady Gaga both are quarry in the eyes of entertainment media. How sad.

Well, I think that maybe popular movies and TV series can really drive the labor market trends, whether temporary or not. It's been said that many students have applied to performing arts schools because of the American TV series "Glee".

Once a baby is born, and you take care of her or him by yourself, you'll be fettered and extremely occupied for at least two years.

I've never heard of a book that accounts the saga of the development of the web and its associated technologies.

Sometimes I feel that our modern life is so illaudably complex that people are extremely busy.

Take a look at this sentence on an advertisement flyer which RBC sent to me lately: "Finding the time to manage your household bills can be challenging and sometimes payments get missed." That sentence has struck a chord with me. It's so true. I believe that many Canadians feel the same way.

How to get our modern life simpler so that we don't have to juggle things all the time?

Should sovereignty states allow foreign capital, especially the speculative capital among it, to range on their lands?

If so, why? If not, do the states in the Second and Third World have capabilities to check the ranging foreign capital?

We are seeing the beginning of the end of the era in which the great sagacity of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs has pioneered.

American politicians often make plausible promises during elections, then fail to deliver afterwards.

Many people think that they've found out Obama belongs to the group mentioned above.

How many hypocrites are out there in this world?

I cast a wistful look over the past, and think time passed too fast.

The auspice of Samsung's continuous rise reveals South Koreans' capabilities and work ethic.

Pic - Nero

(By John William Waterhouse (1849-1917) / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RemorsodeNero.jpg / United States public domain tag: PD-US)

Nero was an ancient Roman Emperor from 54 to 68. His notable wars included the British Revolt of 60–61 and the First Roman–Jewish War.

On another note, doesn't the once popular "Nero burning ROM" software, an optical disc burning program, have a fantastic yet provocative name? (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero_Burning_ROM#Name .)

It seems that in Judaism, a human being is sinful, but he can expiate via some means.

What about in Christianity?

RIM and its critics use different extrapolations.

What the two Co-CEOs of RIM have been insisting is basically this: "look, we invented and dominated the smart phone market. We'll continue to lead the segment despite the current temporary slide in our competitive position."

On the other hand, its critics basically say, "see, RIM's market share has been sliding very rapidly since roughly two years ago. It'll continue this decline and disappear into oblivion."

You see, choosing which angle to extrapolate from is an art.

The contagion of Twitter, Facebook, and the like speeds up the transmission of information. It can speed up the dissemination of sagacity and knowledge, depending upon whether an information receiver uses his brain or not.

It may be the case that the smart gets smarter and the dumb gets dumber, in this era of social media, I suspect.

Perhaps the big Japanese electronics companies, such as Sony and Panasonic, will retreat from the TV sets market by and by.

What are they gonna focus on next? Software?

Seeking and vetting opportunities takes lots of time. But that's the price which people should pay in this world driven by competition.

If Sarah Palin ever became a president of the U.S., would she be out of her depth and the U.S. be a total mess?

There are so many wrangles in the American, Canadian, and Taiwanese parliaments. Debate, debate, debate.

It appears that democracy and wrangles go hand in hand.

I sounded several popular installed media player software programs. Among them are iTunes, Windows Media Player, and Real Player. And I still think Real Player provides the best sound quality, comparatively.

Good advertisements sort of play on people's feelings. That's a must.

Linkedin.com tends to pester users with emails about more available information which essentially are meant to remind people to use more of their services and stay longer on their website.

But hey, it'd better to stop badgering users, otherwise, they'll jump ship as soon as competitor companies emerge.

How to break the things and habits which throttle my creativity? Break through them.

I had been somewhat unmannerly in some situations in the past. Civilization comes from enlightenment and civil education, not schooling.

Some people who are in their fifties or older habitually ignore the quarry of the internet, to their own detriment.

(By Alfred Weidinger / http://www.flickr.com/photos/a-weidinger/6100934944/ / CC)

Personally I've never used Facebook much. And Facebook has never passed for some profound innovation in my mind.

Maybe I've been too numb in that arena. On the other hand, maybe I've been right in my consideration about it.

精益

精英都有
“精益求精”的

精神。

Modern life is so complex that people can't help with getting hit by stray bullets from all sorts of misfunctions of the societal and economic systems.

The stock markets tumble. Pensioners' funds lost. Whoops.
The Greeks cannot pay back their debts. Jobs creation in Canada slapped. Whoops.
On and on and on.

Complex systems, such as the societies which we live in as modern human beings, are prone to producing rounds after rounds of stray bullets. Stay out of trouble if we can. But how on earth can we?

Google+ has been brought to the fore and gaining popularity. Facebook must be a little nervous about that.

I've never grown into a fan of Facebook.

The howls of the Montreal winter blasts aren't far away.

People's feelings are seasoned.

Does the free flow of information really facilitate the free flow of intelligence?

Anyways, when the former gets strangled for some political reasons, the latter suffers.

Musty are some old residential buildings in Montreal.

In my childhood, there was a tall wooden one-bar main door in the house which my peasant grandparents on my mother's side used to live in.

The word 'wench' must be rarely used nowadays.

I'm not sure if China's REAL GDP growth rates are that gleeful, on the magnitude of 9% or so.

Shouldn't China hire an auditing firm to audit its GDP data?

The saga of the overthrowing of Gaddafi's reign in Libya by rebels has only taken about half a year to reach nearly the end.

Without the support and supply by the U.S., U.K., U.A.E. and the like, anti-Gaddafi forces such as the National Liberation Army (Libya) wouldn't be capable of mobilizing and organizing so quickly and effectively, we can guess.

Well, the global consumers' confidence in Chinese products' quality may have been gradually built up. Just don't let it be dismantled.

I don't know why the opposite of "explicit knowledge" is called "tacit knowledge" instead of "implicit knowledge".

Discern the people who voluntarily or involuntarily convey the distortion of facts.

It appears that nuclear plants reign in the energy development plan of China. Given that China's engineering and technology prowess isn't that impeccable, that may be a prescription for terrible disasters.

I'm not deeply trained in Physics at all. But Einstein's theory about Brownian motion kind of moves me.

"
If ρ(x,t) is the density of Brownian particles at point x at time t, then ρ satisfies the diffusion equation: 

 

where D is the mass diffusivity.
" 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_motion#Einstein.27s_Theory

How will the climate change affect the situation of vegetable pests? Is there gonna be more of them or less of them?

Will EU be dismantled?

The queen, princes, and princesses of the U.K. travel the world to other Common Wealth countries every once in a while.

We can guess that the loosely connected realm provides a complementary mechanism to NATO, in terms of international defence systems.

The integers 0, 1, and 2 are sort of intuitive devices for human beings to understand and explore the nature.

The following is sort of typical in Canada, a country in which individuals' independence is stressed. Without a proper values system established in place, one becomes awry in life.

The past several years have been especially auspicious for Apple. Let's see how it will fare in its further and further pushes into overseas markets.

J drank a little whiskey to take the edge off his tiredness.

It appears that Saudi Arabia is a crucial country. It's got oil, it's rich, and it's got Mecca, the holiest city in the Islam world.

Does the trust between Damon and Pythias represent the highest level of trust between human beings?

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damon_(mythology) for the two famous figures in ancient Greek mythology.

Canada's Jack Layton died immediately after his NDP party had risen to its peak of prominence. And Apple's Steve Jobs resigned from his CEO role just after Apple's market capitalization had been in full cry.

Life's transitoriness.

Pic - Hecate

The triple-bodied Hecate is a Graeco-Roman goddess associated with magic, sorcery, and crossroads. And it appears that she always holds one or more torches in her hand or hands.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AN00969955_001_l.jpg / Public domain picture)

My baby daughter has never gotten used to soothers.

In the word "cyber-war", the part "cyber" which qualifies "war" also increases the dimensions of the potential losses wreaked by "war".

Somerset Maugham wrote or spoke wryly, "If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts."

Well, that remark must have done tremendous good to the tourism of England, I'm positive.

Well, does Wall Street care about its black eye? How come I'm even doubtful about that?

The stooge media in a certain country dumb down its people.

So many scars and inferiority complexes had been seared into the national memory of China.

The finance industry has constantly badgered the rest of the economy into yielding to its wills. What would happen if less and less people borrowed money from the finance industry? What if the economy pattern changed away from the current model based upon credit?

Will fortune turn Turk with the white collar workers in China? Possibly.

Men typically thrash out wisdom over their life. On the other hand, what do women typically thrash out over their life? Families? Wisdom?

Having snubbed truth in the past appears to be the biggest fault of the plaintiff in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case of the alleged sexual assault.

Life's short. You can explore. But you can't stray.

It's inadvisable to party a lot.

This seems to be a women's rights statement: "Whatever we wear, wherever we go, yes means yes, no means no." What a bon mot.

It's been reported that the case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been dismissed by a judge.

The veracity of the plaintiff has been cast into doubts for good measure.

Well, in some Hollywood action flicks, the brave actor hangs onto a winch which is attached to a helicopter or something and swaying in the high winds.

What is that for? For impressing the audiences. But not deeply, I suppose.

High finance runs away with the world.

Should that change?

The European economy has gradually maneuvered into dire straits.

Across the Atlantic, beside the U.S.' problems, there are more and more very rich Chinese immigrants fleeing China for Canada. Are there deep troubles in store?

Enjoyment is different than glee. Enjoying my life is different from living my life gleefully.

The interests in ancient Greek and Roman cultures remain extant among some mainland Chinese people. Mostly they access the information about those cultures via texts in Chinese.

I'm not sure if the translation supposedly from English to Chinese takes some edge off the tastes of those cultures.

Since when has the finance industry taken the mantle of ruling the whole world? Perhaps since four or so decades ago.

I guess that the universities in Israel are very auspicious.

A contradiction of marriage vow and divorcing act

The customary Roman Catholic marriage vow reads like this in English:

"Do you, ____, take , ____, to be your (husband/wife), to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part. I, ____, take you, ____, to be my (husband/wife). I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life." 

(See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_vows#Traditional_Roman_Catholic_vows .)

But it's a fact that some Roman Catholics do get divorced, at least in Canada. I wonder if that tends to turn them astray from their Catholic religion. After all, they broke their serious Catholic marriage vow.

We can see a lot of usage of the word "extortion" in political articles circulating the U.S. Why?

Because in biz deals, you, as an individual, can simply walk away from the deals you don't like to accept; but in political deals and arrangements you CANNOT walk away and you will be affected by them in all sorts of ways.

Under the auspices of Google, the strategically crucial Android will have its place in the world, however weak the patents which it holds now are. The question is only whether it will be among the top three mobile OSes or not.

On a related note, Samsung's fledgling Bada mobile OS will be interesting to watch.

Some people write plain English with an edge of literariness. Some don't.

(By A_minor / http://www.flickr.com/photos/fotogiraffee/375202438/ / CC)

(By Thoth, God of Knowledge / http://www.flickr.com/photos/thoth-god/4179063773/ / CC)

I saw steely glints in O's eyes from time to time.

The severe dilapidation of trust in the society of China is a prescription for further and further troubles. Maybe huge troubles.

Can SNS decelerate people's information overload?

The relative transparency of the U.S. has gotten it castigated more yet gotten it out of more troubles.

Some people, especially in the past, beguile their tedious days with TV watching in the evenings. That's why it's important for one to establish better pleasure patterns, such as studying, in his teens and twenties.

Life's short. Distance's long.

What elements have prevented the disintermediation of the big credit cards such as VISA and MasterCard, by payment solutions such as Interac?

J tucks in chili sauces.

Along with the surging sales of iPhones and iPads in China, it's reasonable to expect a surge of iPhone and iPad apps warez activities.

I've been confused by the difference between a kindergarten and a preschool. Well, I've just figured it out.

A preschool is "a school for children between the ages of about two and five", while a kindergarten is "a school to prepare children aged five for school".

You are keen, Apple, you are keen.

It's reported that the hot sale of iPads and iPhones also boosts more users to turn to Macs from Windows computers. The adoption of iOS facilitates that of Mac OS.

There are many sound bites in English that ESL learners don't know.

The U.S. is the leader of the impious world. And it seems to be one of the leaders of the pious world too. Think about that.

Apple's Mac OS is a steady eddy. Compared with it, other UNIX siblings, such as Ubuntu, aren't as user-friendly.