貌似有這個現象：搖身變成文藝青年的浪潮正在席捲中國各地大中小城市。

中國的很多風氣，不善。

Some people appear to be nonchalant about how they expend their time, which surprises me.

It appears that many Canadian journalists ardently care about politics.

I look out the two horizontal panes of window glass, and I see the dawn has brushed pink stripes in the sky.

Well, it sometimes isn't fit to blindly follow an established education system, but it always is vital to live with it.

It seems that many Montrealers regard the great boom and growth of China is going to continue for a very long time. Can I beg to differ?

The financial services company, The Motley Fool, has got a good name. :-)

When a person is in the market, the pith of his way of treating people cannot be exaggerated.

George W. Bush had been crucified as being a dumb and unintelligent person. Is that depiction true or false?

文藝、藝術，純粹是創造精神世界，可以說是很沒有用處，但是在另外一方面，可以借曹丕的一句話：“蓋文章，經國之大業，不朽之盛事。”

Image - The Nemean lion and Heracles

(Image from http://goo.gl/mXpq1)

The Nemean lion was the first labor of Heracles, in Greek mythology.

Old splendid buildings tend to be cold, wet and slimy, albeit with fantastic architectures.

Old institutions tend to feel like that too, sometimes.

Being pertinent and courteous is consequential when dealing with people.

在网络上，在这个越来越多的人有了 input 的工具与意愿的时代，“小众”的社区等等，几乎成了“质量”的代名词。

不同省份的理工學院之間，腫麼水準相差這麼大哩？麻省理工學院、加州理工學院和 Oregon Institute of Technology、浙江（省）理工大學能比嗎？

主要原因之一是不是人的自由選擇、自由流動、自由競爭？

Watching TV, or viewing entertainment videos on the internet, is not pernicious in itself. But a deep-dyed habit of doing that day after day is.

Sometime, holding off reacting saves some hustle.

The United States of America is full of eager beavers, in all walks of life.

知道遠方的存在。

Corresponding to its pronunciation, the lettering of the word 'crisp' is pretty efficient.

B2C 已經 SNS 化了。C2C 呢，有木有？

華人到了國外，也許是一次重新洗牌的良機或危機。

矮油，問題是，重新洗牌的規則你搞清楚了嗎？

Vintage music video - 张学友 - 相思风雨中

There have been so many well known international figures who were actually born in Canada. Elizabeth Arden was one example.

Beetling cliffs are good settings for films.

Parents' interrogations of their children often stem from their disrespect of the children.

Among the national political leaders in Canada, Jack Layton sounds crisper than Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff do, I think.

Employment, or unemployment, still remains an ongoing concern for many Canadian citizens.

A person's middle age or old age usually awaits him decidedly as a sepulchre of his own dreams of younger ages.

Courteous actions cannot be expected to be appreciated every time, or most of the times.

“七嘴八舌”中的第八舌從哪裡來？

It seems that communication between or among people often goes awry.

And, maybe that's one of the reasons why individuals with excellent communication skills are relatively pivotal.

窮究物理。

Some ardent English learners in China have been busy watching and studying American TV series, e.g. Friends, in order to elevate their English proficiency. Is that popular approach right?

Thoughts without corresponding actions following are going to be inurned.

The functionalities of mobile apps are still primitive compared with those of regular websites.

事實上，很多的社會傳統風氣，具備高度的智慧在其中。我們不明白其中的智慧，只是由於沒有遇上足夠清楚的解釋而已。

智慧命脈的傳承，主要由知識文化人士進行。“知書達禮”之群體，在社會領域中的作用，豈能輕看。

夢想，需要勇氣與智慧作背書。沒有勇氣，若干年後哀嘆夢想的遠離的結局是必然的。

人生的有限性需要用勇氣來擴張。

I for one don't want to sign up for the paid versions of what the news media offer, yet. Not even The Economist.

What value have they been really offering us in recent years beside myriad forbiddingly overlong articles most of which are of relatively little importance?

Well, it seems that some white people tend to, relatively, ridicule or criticize the mainstream culture and media. :-)

Western big car makers have been unveiling concept cars in China. Don't they worry that cheaper replications will spring up in China?

中國大陸和香港的娛樂圈藝人，總有一定的機率給公眾提供雙重的娛樂：文藝方面的娛樂、醜聞和緋聞方面的娛樂。

為了避免醜聞的發生，內心的強大與清肅對他們來說真的是極其重要。

在中國，曾經有一些時候和地區，盛行不讀大學而讀中專或直接工作的風氣，理由大致是知識過剩。現在，在中國和西方，有一種信息過剩的論調，我有點懷疑篤信那個論調的人的後果會和篤信知識過剩的調子的人的結果一樣。

吹盡狂沙始到金

- 劉禹錫

It seems that the parser which Google Dictionary makes use of is NOT the same as the one which Google Web Search takes advantage of.

清晰的文字溝通，真的是極其重要，尤其是在這個信息超載的時代。

Will the ever deteriorating sandstorms become the cerement for Beijing, China?

(The pic "The massive Kuwait sandstorm on Friday evening" from http://goo.gl/kN1bx)

So many buildings and transportation infrastructures in Montreal are almost beat-up.

Canada actually seems to be a motley nation, to some degree.

When two people make a transaction involving money in a market, the pith of the matter is that they show a certain degree of respect to each other, they respect the fact that the other one's time/life is also limited, and they think the ability level and labor of the other one is valued as such.

矮油，這麼多华人喜欢听 Montreal 的歌手 Leonard Cohen 啊。

木有料到。木有料到。

貌似 Quora.com 比 Hunch.com 的商業模式更靠譜。

The processes of globalization and Americanization have been gradually hearsing the entrenched tradition of rote learning in China.

So far, my infant daughter has canonized a dozen or so of MVs, which she likes to watch and can calm her down, in our home.

Well, she is a picky music listener, right from a very young age, I would say.

My infant daughter likes to nap on my shoulder.

Well, I like what the authentic French words which got transplanted into English make it sound like and feel like.

在中國，騰訊、新浪、網易、搜狐、豆瓣等各大網站在微博這條產品線上競爭到白熱化。大致上來說，從傳統網絡新聞媒體網站轉化為用戶自媒體網站，是大勢所趨。

Some people treat the issue of their news intake nonchalantly. I can't do that.

I still don't exactly understand why people originally decided to dress children like goblins in the tradition of Halloween. To remind the human kind of the perpetual presence of evil or something?

(Image from http://goo.gl/y0wFZ)

A waterway tends to breed slime. A way in which substantial money flows tends to have the same problem.

To give and take is an art. On a different note, choosing is an art.

On a combined note, it is an art to choose what, when, to whom to give and what, when, from whom to take.

BAs are not at the coalface. But they are one way to customers' hearts.

I like having a countertop in the kitchen.

Interrogating a person with several questions in a row looks impolite and intrusive.

Vox pop counts

I like to read the readers' comments on the NYT's website when I go there. Vox pop counts.

In this world, there are many achievements or prizes which are up for grabs, if you are willing to take the corresponding risks, some of which are not really significant.

The financial power and clout of some people and organizations are often boasted. But what really needs to be boasted is the edge of wise husbandry wielded by certain people and organizations, which is at the core of capitalism systems.

Personally I don't think the RCMP's livery looks groovy.

(Pic from http://goo.gl/j2LoY)

In China, something is terribly awry with the horrifying inflation of stuff and that of workers' pay.

And that's unfair to the people who have worked the better parts of their work life or retired.

Will it happen that big corporations cease to be honeypot for job seekers?

'Rye', 'barley', 'buckwheat', 'wheat', 'malt', and 'corn' are dear words to the human beings in the Western hemisphere.

The marrow of most technological devices and equipment has been gradually moving towards software or firmware.

未被理解的文藝或者藝術，常常被指為“裝逼”。（文藝，並非特指高水準的文藝，也並非特指低水準的文藝。）

縱有千百情思......

縱然沉默......

Commercial successes usually are not replicable, where commercial failures usually are.

Comparing with their British counterparts, the Americans are so good at the business model of free stuff plus advertisements.

Discipline is like orange pith. We know it's good for us, but we want to get rid of it immediately when possible. And we tend to think people who eat it are sort of a little boring.

貌似豆瓣上還有不少長文控。

Perhaps some people's swinish pursuits of money reflect their insatiable hunger for power.

(Image from http://goo.gl/Uth3e)

In China, the unassailability of the Peking University and Tsinghua University may have begun to fall apart, I suspect.

No matter how small a business is, it always has got a brand, which exists in the conception of its past, current, and potential customers.

However, the owner may not be very clearly aware of that.

The Chrome browser rocks in many ways, and in its own way.

隨著我年歲的增長，我越來越覺得一個人的語文能力(非特指外語能力)極其重要。

看起來思辯能力與語文能力正相關，但是相關係數每個人是不同的。

一個人對自己的真知灼見的淬煉，與別人的真知灼見對他的淬煉，是兩個相輔相成的進程，也是兩個非常個人化的進程。

另外，'真知灼見'這個詞好像蠻有意思的。其中‘灼’是‘明亮’的意思。

The abrogation of responsibilities of a government or state to its employees can happen. So I don't know how many civil servants or state employees actually worry about whether their skills are marketable or not.

Under the pressure and watch of opposition parties, the media, and voters, the government in a democracy has to execute husbandry on resources such as the money collected from taxpayers.

Google Dictionary doesn't support wildcard, till now.

We should expect the real world to be awry most of the time, perhaps.

Maybe rebels revel in rebelling. And maybe they don't revel in building.

(Pic from http://goo.gl/OrZSA)

How much private businesses remunerate its executives, as well as staff, must be their own business.

But their customers may care about or pay attention to that. The fair trade coffee is one example of that.

ORIGINAL ideas actually are ideas DERIVED from other ideas. However, they are emitted from ORIGINAL minds.

I guess that in Christianity, it's subtle to discern what's in an individual's power and what's not, albeit everything is ultimately in the god's power.

So, in the face of hardship, does an individual only passively pray, or does he both pray and get up and do something about it?

The above is my primitive thoughts.

另外一面，佛教極其講究“因果律”，貌似一切操之在我，也貌似根本無必要向佛祈禱。與上面的基督教的看法極不同。

Well, I've been seeing replicates of the Twitter interface everywhere on Chinese websites.

A life spent on making money for its own sake is only a surrogate life. It's not a true life.

Transparency makes traducing less effective, perhaps.

The staunchness of the money worship among the Chinese people, both domestic and overseas, has always seemed to be very hard to beat.

To importune for help is not wise. To give and take is.

The British poet Simon Armitage said, "the heartbeat is essentially an iambic rhythm, and you could say the same about footsteps."

(Excerpted from http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/mar/11/radio-review-ramblings-simon-armitage )

Everyone should bethink himself that life is short, or very short.

(Pic from http://goo.gl/AoQAO)

Soldiers walk unassailably. Countries move considerately.

The real estate of a former Couche-Tard convenience store, which went out of business and is close to my place, is still unsold, after at least 10 months. The real estate agent's ad. sign is still hanging right above the door of the property.

The Android browser needs more functionalities and a better favicon.

Maybe there is no such thing as a thoroughly trustworthy bank.

I don't know. Some big entrenched businesses may seek bankruptcy and then reorganization as a vehicle to abrogate workers union contracts, as a last resort.

GM, and Blockbuster, might be two examples of that practice.

One's daily life with a child or children to care is very time-tight. He must husband his time, as a resource, quite well.

The wonderful relationship between the number of sides and that of angles in a polygon...

When a person's beliefs, values, or way of life is challenged or shaken, he tends to feel "now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say?" (The Bible : John 12:27)

A society's fabrics have many layers and threads, which can be invisibly very powerful and subtle. Implanting a foreign layer or thread of societal fabric into the system can be quite dangerous.

For instance, replicating Western democracy in China would, possibly, be quite harmful to people's life over there.

Mother Theresa (a.k.a. 德兰修女, 特蕾莎修女 in Chinese), her personality, her deeds, and mostly her spiritual journey, has begun to intrigue me.

Music video - Jason Mraz - Bella Luna

This particular song appeared in Jason Mraz' 2005 album, "Mr. A-Z".

Lyrics:


"Bella Luna"

Mystery the moon
A hole in the sky
A supernatural nightlight
So full but often right
A pair of eyes, a closin' one,
A chosen child of golden sun
A marble dog that chases cars
To farthest reaches of the beach and far beyond into the swimming sea of stars

A cosmic fish they love to kiss
They're giving birth to constellation
No riffs and oh, no reservation.
If they should fall you get a wish or dedication
May I suggest you get the best
For nothing less than you and I
Let's take a chance as this romance is rising over before we lose the lighting
Oh bella bella please
Bella you beautiful luna
Oh bella do what you do
Do do do do do

You are an illuminating anchor
Of leagues to infinite number
Crashing waves and breaking thunder
Tiding the ebb and flows of hunger
You're dancing naked there for me
You expose all memory
You make the most of boundary
You're the ghost of royalty imposing love
You are the queen and king combining everything
Intertwining like a ring around the finger of a girl
I'm just a singer, you're the world
All I can bring ya
Is the language of a lover
Bella luna, my beautiful, beautiful moon
How you swoon me like no other

May I suggest you get the best
Of your wish may I insist
That no contest for little you or smaller I
A larger chance happened, all them they lie
On the rise, on the brink of our lives
Bella please
Bella you beautiful luna
Oh bella do what you do
Bella luna, my beautiful, beautiful moon
How you swoon me like no other, oh oh oh


- Copied from http://goo.gl/hSazP

Many American and British families are staunchly Christian.

Whenever the market is in a panic or crisis, liquidity beyond cash is nonsense.

As a person's age grows, he's wary of more and more matters.

(Image via http://goo.gl/VqPEn)

For an individual, the mundaneness of the daily life needs to be countered and that needs time or even energy.

Among the ways to counter that mundaneness are entertainment, love, poetry, or elevation.

People call that countering "recreation".

Very powerful entities and organizations which look unassailable today may disintegrate in a matter of years.

In this era of information overload, most forms of writing should be succinct, terse, and clear.

Pablo Picasso once said or wrote, "Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art."

Is the chastity mentioned in his above quote different than purity?

The fluidity of mind is driven by imagination and reasoning. The former cannot get certificated, but the latter often get certificated by one or more diplomas, generally speaking.

Competition is permanent. Don't get galled by it.

The "follow" relationship on microblog websites, such as Twitter, is UNIDIRECTIONAL, while that on SNS websites, such as Facebook, is BIDIRECTIONAL.

有營養的軟文都是很微妙滴。

The displaying of information, including text, charts and images, is consequential. Not to mention the presentation of information.

Fine and delicate balancing act for Quebec

In order to keep the identity of their own French cultural root, the Quebec people need to enforce some sort of language preservation measures. On the other hand, in order to achieve or enhance the fluidity of movements of Quebec's economy, capital, talents and workers, the Quebec people need to continuously enhance their English proficiency and their presence in and engagement with the world at large whose lingua facto has increasingly focused on the English language.

It is a fine and delicate balancing act for the Quebec government and the Quebec people to take up in the years to come.

Unchecked and unexamined selfishness is a canker.

(Image of a canker worm from http://goo.gl/5eQn3)

Reality drives the evolution of one's dreams in life.

識人，實為一要務。

I think it's very consequential for an individual to acquire or possess a vision that can fathom the circumscription which he will have to face and deal with in his later life stages.

Now there's a term "Facebook depression", which is used to depict a current phenomenon among North American teenagers.

Canadians receive too many importunities in letters week after week, I think. This way of life isn't attractive.

The five major components of English learning are Reading, Writing, Listening, Speaking, and Vocabulary. I'm gonna call them the pentameter of English acquirement.

Many procurers are quite chary.

Usually, people need to watch out the sons of high ranking officials.

I guess that less and less people care about the blow-by-blow accounts of news events, which have tended to be omnipresent in the traditional media, nowadays.

There's a town named "Ajax" in Ontario, Canada. Gee.

Perhaps the popularity of Taylor Swift has something to do with the implicit hint of chasteness in her music and own person, in the seemingly sexy world of American teenagers.

It seems that many Chinese people, both domestic and overseas, are very natural hoarders.

D.O.D., a.k.a. the Pentagon, has spawned and sponsored so many seeds of modern technologies.

Without sufficient critical thinking skills and background knowledge, an individual tends to be prone to calumnious influences.

(Image from http://goo.gl/TG3Ij)

Deal-of-the-day websites, which mostly are copycats of Groupon.com , are mushrooming everywhere across the world.

Nifty wordsmiths tend to fare particularly well on Douban.com .

When companies leverage too much, a.k.a. are in too much debt, they put themselves into very assailable positions.

Employees usually want to emancipate themselves from their managers, especially those micromanaging ones.

As an information consumer, among all the information streams which I subscribe to, for some, I receive all the information in those streams, and for others, I just take snapshots.

While the number of Christians has been in decline among native Westerners, more and more staunch Christians have emerged among the first-generation Chinese immigrants in the U.S. and Canada.

(Pic from http://goo.gl/9G8k0)

Many internet companies send importunate emails to the users of their services.

Well, users have to pay that price for the free services they take advantage of.

Maybe, just maybe, black people are naturally not very fit for ballet dancing, due to the way the back of their hips is built and that cannot be tucked very well.

Well, different races have different strengths.

For any sovereignty, the circumscription of the fields which foreign capital can enter into is of vital consequences but also is a delicate art.

Sometime Lady Gaga makes herself look like a sorceress. Well, her artistry appears challenging.

Some Westerners don't think Chinese people emote.

Floating and Absolute Positioning are two major CSS layout tools. And they are tedious.

The studying in North American universities of the native speakers of Chinese is GREATLY impeded by their highly probable insufficient English proficiency. My friends and I were among them.

Can you really trust Western banks? I don't think so. Not any one of them.

The existence of raunchy inner cities has its economic reasons.

"Picasa" is the name of Google's online image organizer and photo sharing program. And that name has something to do with Picasso.

""Picasa" is a blend of the name of famed Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, the phrase mi casa for "my house", and "pic" for pictures (personalized art)."
--Excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picasa

The offices and buildings of the federal government in Canada tend to look chaste.

I love FM radio stations. Douban.FM is a good example.

How to properly interpret the words and teaching in the Bible seems to very difficult, subtle, and ambiguous.

For one thing, in the New Testament, Jesus told people to love their enemies, and 'turn the other cheek' to their assailants (St Luke, Chapter 6). Obviously, the U.S. government didn't follow that specific piece of teaching in its handling of the 911 attack. What would it do if the U.S. were ruled by a Christian government instead of by a secular one, against the backdrop that the U.S. has always been a deeply Christian nation?

Read in English, and read fast.

The hefty Nokia is depending on Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 platform, at least in the short term. I still can't believe it. Gee.

What information material of the media's websites is mirrored in SNS sites must be of great interest for the media.

(Image from http://goo.gl/rzEZy)

On a related note, in a sense, individual SNS users are sort of like mini news stands which disseminate media material pieces, independent of the media companies.

I guess that a sense of wonder is vital for an individual when he first encounters a branch or unit of knowledge.

That being said, it seems that many university professors, in both China and Canada, are not good at conveying that sense of wonder.

It seems that technology firms are nifty competitors to all sectors' established players.

The Berkshire Hathaway companies are advertising sort of aggressively now. Well, the shrewd Warren Buffet.

It looks like that Huawei, a giant Chinese telecom tech company, has begun to globalize and Westernize really seriously.

I suspect that many Western countries are beginning or will begin to breed a more coherent national identity among its citizens of various cultural backgrounds.

Life must be miserable from time to time for the web developers in China. The very backward IE6 browser is still in horrifyingly wide use over there.

Perhaps I'll take up an Android tablet at the end of this year.