"Would you like some wine?" the waitress graciously asked. "Is it extra?" J replied. "Yes, it is." the waitress corresponded.

A string of characters.

People don't ping each other via emails as much as before. SNS has largely replaced that need.

Among the recent iterations of all the major browsers, Chrome and Firefox seem to have been leading the force, while Safari has been lagging behind in terms of performance and robustness. As for IE, who hasn't forgotten it?

"Did you assay him with entertainment?" J said.

Music video - Go no more a-roving - Joan Baez

Lyrics (Actually it's a poem "We'll go no more a-roving" by Lord Byron):

Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.

George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron. 1788–1824

599. We'll go no more a-roving 

SO, we'll go no more a-roving
  So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
  And the moon be still as bright. 

For the sword outwears its sheath,         5
  And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
  And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
  And the day returns too soon,              10
Yet we'll go no more a-roving
  By the light of the moon.

http://www.bartleby.com/101/599.html

Improving their English levels is a gigantic drain on the myriad young people in the non-English-speaking developing countries.

The songs by Chyi Chin, a famous male Taiwanese singer, are my Proustian pleasure.

Some Westerners don't possess very sophisticated English. So their judgement over that matter isn't impeccable. When an ESL learner speaks or writes, they get his or her drift and then they think his or her English is good, which actually isn't the case.

Sophistication is key.

For a man with ambitions, buying mortgaged real estate in his twenties is a decoy presented as property. It would clog his freedom to pursue his ambitions.

Are teenagers in Canada set to bloom?

美國各色嗎？中國各色嗎？

In the literature of mathematics which is in Chinese and English, the Greek alphabet was introduced into it for the purpose of mathematical notations.

I wonder which symbols stand for those notations in the literature of Math which is in Greek. The English alphabet?

The Canadian government should accede to the proposals that Canada opens its telecom industry to foreign ownership and competition, especially to American ownership and competition, I guess.

I'm telling you, I've been battling with information overload for a long time. I'm not alone. Info. overload is an epidemic of our era.

Everyone of us who's not out of touch has to TOUGH IT OUT, I'm afraid.

Dismissing mercenary thoughts facilitates one's career, doesn't it?

對死去者獻上我們的敬意，並抱持一種社區式的負責的態度。

一地雞毛。一地蒜皮。

Our baby daughter's appetite shifted lately. We've been having headaches because of that.

LA FILLE MAL GARDÉE (Royal Ballet of U.K.) - Clog Dance by William Tuckett

"
William Tuckett dancing the clog dance in "La Fille Mal Gardée"
Choreography: Frederick Ashton
Music: Ferdinand Hérold arranged by John Lanchbery
Royal Ballet 2005
"

When will the commonplace personal debt problem of Canadians bottom out?

"The lank woman was singing," J said.

For my part, my physical weakness in my childhood wreaked me to have missed something.

Vodka's viscosity is a little higher than that of whiskey and rum.

Well, I'm afraid that the high pressures of competition on the young people positioned in the big cities of China are not going to relent during the coming fifteen years at least.

Alcan is running an ad on the Montreal Gazette which writes "99% virtuosity, 1% aluminum" with a large pic of a jazz artist playing his instrument. Isn't that ad excellent?

我的思維空間不夠開闊。

English learning is not always sunshine and breeze. Sometimes, it's a lot of travails.

Many problems recur sooner or later. So you need to face them directly and solve them partially or completely.

On a related note, you must discern and filter out the trivial problems which will be solved automatically by the environment over time.

The PhD degree is no longer a diadem in terms of academic capability. Too many and too many people have it.

You know, the Chinese descendants overseas are quite good at devising excellent names for the food they sell and the restaurants they run.

There's the "fortune cookie", there's the "dim sun". And there's a lackluster Chinese restaurant in Montreal called "Fay Wong". Why isn't the wonton called 'wanton' instead? :-)

Don't take this little joke seriously, please.

Taking risks means taking losses on the chin.

Will the opprobrium of the entire world at the Wall Street be temporary or permanent?

When the breezes arose, I was standing under the short blooming tree, whose dropped white blossoms covered the pavement.

學習分兩種：有交流的學習、沒交流的學習。

Rheum were shed in private spaces and moments.

No one else saw them.

Is it a portent of a more turbulent Africa that China increasingly relies on the resources produced by the continent?

Ideally, generations of the human kind work in relays in this world.

The fate of Hecuba, the wife of King Priam, was so tragic.

How come all evils and monsters in Hollywood flicks are vanquishable?

Collisions between people in a relationship drain them.

A question: Why is the Christian God "a jealous god"?

As in the Bible:Exodus 20:5, "You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me".

Truth 最有效率。用智慧來探尋 truth，把和 reality 的對接成本最小化。

There's relatively too much bawdry on the Chinese internet media's websites.

The clouds are subtle to sight on this cloudy day.

用你的腦和心來化合 ideas。

Well, I tend to be dismissive of the belief held by many English learners who are Chinese that studying American soap operas such as "Friends" can really elevate one's English proficiency. Doing that just turns them into familiarized consumers of American pop cultural products.

I'm gonna be more thick-skinned.

The "Shield of David", the symbol of the Jewish people and Judaism, is quite interesting.

See the name's origin here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_of_David#Origin_of_the_name .

(Pic "Star of David" by zeevveez / http://www.flickr.com/photos/zeevveez/2667648511/ / Creative Commons)

"Go into the washroom, draw out your drain, and shoot out the liquid," J said.

It's not easy at all to take stock of my information intaking and check the information overload.

"An extra pair of socks?" D said.

The jig is up. Wall Street's embedded interest is against that of the people in the U.S. So its decline is deadly obvious. I don't understand why so many and many young people in China dream or want to flock there.

Quote, It's my business, not your business, unquote.

Another occasion, the same person. Quote, It's your business, not mine, unquote.

Montclair maples.

Vital is the management of your current and future financial obligations. And, no, your mortgaged house is not true property. On the contrary, it is your ongoing obligation, your compulsory commitment, your binding debt.

Journalists do intimate and insinuate.

The awesome blossom of American talents is the envy of the world.

Yielding new and deeper understanding typically makes my day, during some days.

The walking civilians get impeded and clogged by the emperor in the carriage. So they wanted individualism and democracy.

The hush of the death of life in that empty land.

A person's whole life is only a mote, from the perspective of history.

How much feelings of helplessness was present in Chinese leaders' minds when they decided to begin to allow people who wanted to go and study or emigrate abroad to be dismissed?

忙得昏天黑地之後，J 悠悠地在身體裡面嘆出一口氣。

Google Translate now allows phonetic typing.

Vital is the management of the pipelines of insights and inspirations.

Wars of blood and gore have always been present in this world, till this moment. However, the typical life of civilians is far removed from them.

The handsome kitten scavenger is roving the street on the garbage day.

In terms of English learning, I've been trying to be a man of letters, not a wordsmith.

據說，“進士輕薄”是晚唐社會上流行的看法。如今的中國呢，“進士”輕不輕薄？

“你看水里的魚，長得那些奇形怪狀的樣子，是因為它們一天到晚在喝水，水中毒、鹽中毒。”，J 說。

在以前的中國，有一種說法是“人生的關鍵點就那麼幾個，走好了就會順，走不好就會不順”。其實，那是因為那時候的人（直到 1990 年代？）的 making choices 的機會不多。

在現在這個年代，每個中國人的每一年，都有很多的 making choices 的機會，所以上述的“人生的關鍵點就那麼幾個，...”的說法基本上已經不再成立。

在如今的中國、美國、加拿大的社會裡，對一個人的人生來說，比所謂的關鍵點 遠為重要 的是關鍵線。這幾條 縱貫線 很重要：知識、求知欲、道德實踐、taste、洞察力、性格等等。

There are too much tyrannous noises in typical Chinese cities.

(Image 'Noise' by JarleR / http://www.flickr.com/photos/29523289@N06/5544262496/ / CC)

The wannabe king dreams up his future in his moated castle that is unconnected with the world.

The thought of surety banishes possibilities from too many people's minds.

鹽味助鮮。

Well, a job holder wants monetary "respect" from his employer. However, does he respect the potential job seekers who are willing to replace him for his current job and earn the salary, i.e. his competitors with fair play?

In topology, "a sphere is an orientable surface with no boundary".

(See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_bottle    and    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere#Topology .)

Well, the meaning of 'boundary' in topology is so confusing in my untrained eye.

Yes, Virginia, RIM will continue its decline.

When can any Canadian university set about offering world-class undergraduate education in its true sense?

The household drainage brings great convenience to people's life. But the drain clog that is naturally inevitable to be formed is a small annoyance occasionally.

See, with every solution, even where it's great, comes accompanied problems of its own.

The neighboring parching summer streets are kind of reminiscent of some distant days.

So many people's life, not existence, has vanished in the high-flying world of investment banking.

I savor the tranquility of the early morning prior to the moment of the rising of our baby daughter, which is a moat for my sanity.

The ongoing dismissions of product quality issues will cost Panasonic a lot more down the road.

When there have been more and more descendants of Eastern Asians enrolled in top-notch universities and colleges throughout the U.S. and Canada, they bring with them some entrenched dispositions to those higher education institutes. The heavier and heavier presence of those embedded dispositions and their caused behaviors may be a portentous sign of the shift of the higher education in both countries.

If you REALLY OBJECTIVELY think about that matter, then you may agree that my above sentences have got their point.

Can the skill of the Chinese language, which has been being studied by more and more Westerners, be parlayed into financial gains?

It seems that making Microsoft really invest in protecting its Hotmail and Live email services from hackers' invasions is like squaring a circle. That's virtually impossible. I get fishy emails from obviously compromised email accounts, which are held by my acquaintances, every once a while during the past several years.

古希臘神話中的仇怨真多啊。

The maples shade and the flowing breezes whisper creature comfort.

I've evolved an interest in the historical development of the free market system. At the contemporary stage of human society, free market can do wonders.

惟有兩行雁，知人倚樓月

霜天曉角 

梅
範成大 

晚晴風歇，一夜春威折。 脈脈花疏天淡，雲來去，當選枝雪。 

勝絕，愁亦絕，此情誰共說。 惟有兩行低雁，知人倚畫樓月。

我個人覺得，最後一句去掉兩個字以後，變成 “惟有兩行雁，知人倚樓月” 更好。

Well, have the people who have bought the Blackberry Playbook tablet had miffs?

Well, maybe some Westerners are somewhat clogged by self-imposed over-politeness.

I feel sorry for that man of 30 or thereabouts.

On the door of a Canada Post office, "We want to deliver your mail..., but Canada Post won't let us." is the title of the printed propaganda paper of the unionized workers' strike. And beside the title, "I hate unions!" is penned by someone anonymous.

"Do you have fifty cents or one dollar on you?" the cashier at the T store asked. "Yes, I have a dollar on me," J replied, searching in his shorts pocket.

Images - Priam

Pic "Death of Priam, Roman, about 50 B.C.–A.D.50, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston." by Sebastià Giralt / http://www.flickr.com/photos/sebastiagiralt/3409309733/ / Creative Commons

"Neoptolemos drags King Priam from the altar of the palace at Troy and prepares to kill the old man with a short sword. Hekabe, kneeling on the altar behind Priam, stretches out her arms in horror and in an appeal for mercy."

Neoptolemos, a.k.a. Pyrrhus, is the son of Achilles.

Photo "Priam begs Achilles for the body of Hector, Priam's son" by stevendamron / http://www.flickr.com/photos/sadsnaps/4230517348/ / CC

Pic "Priam and Achilles" by antmoose / http://www.flickr.com/photos/antmoose/61597367/ / Creative Commons

"A stucco by Robert Adam, from the later eighteenth century, in a private house in London."



Keywords:
King Priam
Pyrrhus (a.k.a. Neoptolemos)
Trojan War
Troy (located in the contemporary Turkey)
Hercules (the Roman name of the Greek divine hero Heracles, the greatest among all Greek heroes)

In well known Chinese ancient poems, the poets seem to be almost always missing and lamenting over the loss of blooming springs.

The recent portentous acquisition of Skype by Microsoft indicates that the latter doesn't prioritize on spending money on buying startups which are on the edge of innovation, from a certain point of view.

Well, I would say that the Manila Bulletin's website (http://www.mb.com.ph/ ) is relatively bland, given that it's the largest broadsheet newspaper by circulation in the Philippines, whose population is around 90 million.

Compare its website with that of The Globe and Mail, Canada's flagship broadsheet newspaper, and think about the fact that Canada only has around 30 million people. Now we know why a developing country is called a developing country, and why a developed country is called a developed country. No offense.

How many liters of beer has the guy drained during his years, who's working the swimming pool water while pouching a relatively enormous beer gut?

Ruggedness is auspicious in the face of difficulties, isn't it? But not everyone is equipped with that character naturally.

The meaning of the word 'janitor' is actually slightly better than that of 'concierge', one of its synonyms, I suppose.

People like wacky comedians.

From a historical perspective, do momentary economic recessions do good to the U.S. by driving and scaring off loads of foreign opportunists?

"It's supposed to be that you sign the form after all the information is provided on it," J said.

Even in the Western Europe, the undercurrent of Anti-Americanism shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. On a related note, should the U.S. know better that great responsibilities come with great power naturally?

Well, free access to information is banned in China, and it was also banned in the West a few hundred years ago. Objectively speaking, why shouldn't China be allowed to do something that the West used to do hundreds of years ago and then evolve spontaneously? My little mind is a bit confused.

和對手對客戶進行競爭。和對手對渠道也進行競爭。

Is a high-speed railway between Montreal and New York City a prescription for prosperity?

It appears that an across-the-board adoption of microblogging has been happening in China.

Politics in the West definitely is not for the thin-skinned.

Is there a remote possibility that Canada will merge with the U.S. in the future?

I make savory Chinese dishes and I don't understand why Canadians don't do so.

Music video - "L'Aigle Noir" - Patricia Kaas

The pretty sounds of French are voiced in this well known old chanson.

"Burden of proof" is such a good phrase.

Why do some aboriginal people become fixated or vagrant beggars in Montreal? Why? Don't their own cultures value education and skills building?

The memory of past years is molted into deeper memory to be invoked incidentally later on in life.

A mistake that never happens again

He drinks rum and whiskey simultaneously
and delights in them spontaneously
His mind and body don't act consentaneously
so he drops drunken instantaneously

The Android OS should improve its battery power management and extends the battery life.

Is there real mojo with the Chrome OS, which gets embedded in the quickly forthcoming Chromebook mobile computers?

On a related note, one thing noteworthy about the Chromebook thing is that "Google claims that a multi-layer security architecture eliminates the need for anti-virus software."

A researcher's calling should be to promote human beings' understanding of the nature and of themselves.

It takes a sophisticated eye to appreciate the modesty and cunning simultaneously showcased in many matters in this world.

One day vanishes after another.

Actions speak louder than words.

Maybe big money is no longer a moat for big biz.

Pious hope should be redirected to taking actions by oneself.

To my eye, many writings by Chinese, both domestic and overseas, are not very clear.

One of the functionalities of education is to somehow familiarize, to some degree, a person with the great minds.

Well, after hundreds of years, the notion of democracy is finally vanquishing all hearts and minds all over the world.

Speaking English has become to delight me.

Stratford, Ontario has an Avon River. The small town, which holds the annual Stratford Shakespeare Festival, is the Stratford-upon-Avon of Canada.

(Image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Stratford15.jpg)

Passing far is actually the cultural and ideological distance between China and the West.

The actual reasons of the dismissal of the former MP Helena Guergis by Stephen Harper are still a little foggy, aren't they?

Heat rash rushes to the skin these days.

Let the beer flow, under the summer sun.

As had been my wont, I was a night owl and didn't wake up early typically. But after my child was born, man, I get up earlier than roosters.

Knowledge of genome sequences facilitates the further understanding of biological processes. Don't you think that is wonderful?

比起由倦意引起的漫無目的的瀏覽，思考我自己感興趣的問題，會帶來充實、實在的感覺。

難怪有哲人說“我思故我在”。:-)

In computing devices and programs on them, mostly, the current screen shows the state, where the menu shows the next transitions, in terms of theory of automata and computability.

CDN & CAD

Canadian
C     D  N


Canadian dollar
CA          D


Content Distribution Network
C          D               N

Like any other OS, Google's Android is a mysterious automaton.

It talks to other software programs smoothly.

What does the newish mushrooming of condo construction in downtown Montreal and its vicinities signify?

By buying a cup of coffee at Starbucks and staying to drink it, you get listening to baddest music gratis. Think about that.

'Good choice,' T made a gesture towards the beer box held in N's hands.

There are usually two types of customers in a franchised coffeehouse, who amusingly are kind of on the two extreme ends of the scale of their duration of stays.

One type is those who only come in for a transient session of coffee drinking and possibly a brief chat, and the other is those who are glued to their seats for hours after hours together with their mobile computers.

Epiphanies bring happiness to the mind.

Lately there was some unrest in Inner Mongolia, an ethnic province in China.

Is it an important portent of more political troubles to emerge within the Celestial Empire?

I lost my mirth once, or twice, in my youth. That was hard on developing a taste for life.

"It's a lot of writing for you," J said, mentioning the form to be filled out.

"Peter Bloom" is such a good name. And 'Bloomberg' is not bad, either.

Is there a relationship between jazz and ambiance music?

(Image: Wanderlinse / http://www.flickr.com/photos/wanderlinse/4828698073/ / Creative Commons)

In one's life, much of his academic learning experience is an experience which is in and of itself, which essentially is a relatively transcendent thing and a good thing.

"Faye Wong" is an excellent name. 'Faye' means 'fay', or 'fairy'.

People say leaders are readers. But I also want to say leaders are considerers.

Oh, the sweaty early summer of Montreal.

A coffeehouse is different than a coffee shop. Starbucks wants to be a gigantic chain of the former instead of one of the latter.

He holds the blossom, from the nature, to his bosom, and waves aside the cheap jewelry, which is from his tribe and society.

1. 採用一定的抽象程度的（語言）表達，可以節省受眾的時間。

2. 撇開深入的思考力的其它好處不說，它也可以在判斷、取捨信息的時候給人節省時間。

It's such a pity that myriad of Chinese are left on their own to retrofit many soul elements after they leave China's education system.

The crony system of the Commonwealth is interesting.

There must be deep reasons why some countries, which there are powerful national governments present in, don't banish so-called terrorists and terrorist organizations.

What makes many young entertainment stars all over the world, from the U.S. to Romania, dress and dance like strumpets in music videos and the like?

In brief, Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, allegedly is not very pleasant to deal with in some occasions.

Check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ballmer#On_competition .

People actually sue for slander. Gee. That is sort of eye-opening for a person like me who came from China originally.

The media and the public in China appear to dismiss many matters that Western media and the public in the West deeply care about. For instance, the space exploration.

In some corner in the heart of everyone, there prints some attractive domestic tableau.

There's no such thing as vanquishing an enemy. Everything is only temporary.

The green maples are fluttering and rustling their leaves amid the sunlight under the azure sky.

Some shoddily designed baby carts make babies in their seats stoop.

People like to read gnomic remarks by famous figures.

有些從國內來加、然後從加拿大大學的本科或碩士畢業的人，即使在畢業後，在知識面、思考力、邏輯思維能力、溝通能力、英文水平等等方面，實在是不夠很好。

The recent weather in Montreal has been so atypically humid.

Having done my share of English reading and writing, I've developed my own taste in and eye for English.

Baby canteens look so lovely in general. Gee.

Who doesn't like to be inspired by the beautified immensely modern look of Shanghai?

聽說蔡康永說過真正的好電影沒人看，何嘗不是肺腑之言？

一些未仔細梳理的片段

1. “三月裡的小雨，淅淅瀝瀝下個不停”是台灣歌曲嗎？

2. 台灣屬於哪個氣候帶？

3. 中國陸地跨越亞熱帶、暖溫帶等等多個氣候帶。
http://www.hudong.com/wiki/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD#5

4. "April showers bring May flowers" 是英國還是美國的 idiom？

5. 中國農曆的三月大致上對應於公曆的四月。

一些未仔細梳理的片段

1. 在豆瓣上，居然搜索不到關於“胡椒粉”的烹調書。
2. 白胡椒粉居然屬於辣味作料。

This thought has come to my mind and stricken me -- many, if not most, journalistic articles are just ephemeral, even those published on NYT.

The rendering of characters in input boxes in Firefox is better than that in Chrome.

加拿大媒體報導，日本大災後，有很多的 amazing acts of kindness。這是事實。豆瓣上有人說日本人完全不互相幫助、很冷漠。持這種說法的人沒有事實依據，只是浪費大家的時間。

In fine, life is short, but the journey is long.

Music plays in our bosom.

How Chinese women are fond of fair skins.

話說都已經 n 年沒看日系動畫片了。n 年了。我想看新番。

六一兒童節快樂。:-)

有時候從好文章看世界，有時候從世界看好文章。

“止觀雙運”。