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.