Unfortunately for U. Q., the chickens will come home to roost.

Vintage music videos - Scorpions - Wind of Change

The lyrics are here:
http://www.lyrics007.com/Scorpions%20Lyrics/Wind%20of%20Change%20Lyrics.html

There appears to be so many food produces in China with improper additives in them that I for one become more and more reluctant to consume foods imported from China.

We have two swivel chairs - one is so-called manager chair, and the other task chair.

And the current condition of the flooring under the task chair is much worse than that under the manager chair.

I don't understand why.

Good now, French foodstuff really tastes superior.

Many a time, one's extreme sanguinity exposes his ignorance.

Sometimes I would want to smite the English language, if such a thing existed physically.

There are so many new words whose meanings have to be learned, and worse than that, there are so many new words I encounter every month!

Anyways, eventually I'm gonna kick ass. Release the kraken.

Is the notion just a visceral myth that China will become the No. 1 or 2 power in the world in several decades, which various people often claim?

We must keep in mind that things, as well as history, always don't develop linearly.

Music video - 春天里 - 汪峰

词：汪峰  曲：汪峰

The Labatt Bleue Dry beer isn't bad.

The competitive landscape of the computing devices sector, be they traditional or mobile, has been shifting tectonically, in quite complex manners.

The major players have been Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Samsung.

Effectively, the traditional Taiwanese PC and phone makers are in great trouble, especially the possibly moribund Acer, I guess, although it appears to be marketing its computers aggressively in Canada.

In fact, it's been reported quarters ago that Acer had to sell some of its significant real estates in Taipei to offset some of its losses on its P&L statement. That doesn't bode well for Acer.

"Blub" is solely a British English word, while "blob" exists in both American English and British one.

And their forms are so simplistic and easy to be confused with each other.

A well written sentence

Billy dozed off first, and roosters were crowing somewhere in the distance when Saxon's eyes closed.

-Chapter II, The Valley of the Moon by Jack London

Naturally, seeing and being close to sunshine makes me feel sanguine.

About the flick Exiled

Intriguingly, the Jonnie To movie Exiled has only a Hong Kong box-office gross of HK$687,434 and merely a U.S. box-office gross of US$49,413.(See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exiled#Box_office.) By contrast, the film won quite a few awards, including Hong Kong ones and international ones. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exiled#Accolades.) Plus, the particular Wikipedia web page has got a PageRank of 4, which indicates the web page, hence the movie itself, is important.

Anyways, I watched the flick months ago. And I must say it's not my cup of tea. It's largely only appreciated by experts, critics, and real buffs of movies, I'm afraid.

Time goes by quickly in the noises of the news about this and that social networking website coming up from nowhere.

About the novel A Christmas Carol

From Ten things you never knew about Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, we know:
1. The Dickens novel has been really popular.
2. Pirating others' work did exist in England. For instance, Parley’s Illuminated Library, an ephemeral magazine, pirated that novel of Dickens. It's only the laws and their enforcement which can prevent pirating.

Short video - North Korean military march

What a martial stalk by North Korean military women in the first half of the video piece.

Many stagnant businesses dream of turnarounds.

But it's always very tough to make turnarounds happen, unless you only want to split and sell business units, so to speak.

A crossing guard may be paid or a volunteer.

The Linux kernel rules the roost.

However, when people purchase Windows computers, they are NOT buying the Windows NT kernel, but they are buying the convenient access to all the useful applications available in the Windows ecosystem. For instances, OCR software programs, and audio and video editing programs.

The word "jump" has an obsolete meaning - "exactly", as an adverb.

I frown at information overload.

But what can I do?

I must keep relevant.

It's said that Bill Clinton is a power broker and kingmaker in American politics.

Why, and how?

It seems that McGill University's head is called "Principal", while Queen's U's head "Rector".

Confusing.

Only now I've known that Maritimes and Atlantic Canada are almost synonyms.

I for one don't like to see bad blood between teachers and the government over labor disputes.

Should all schools be privatized and all parents get monetary vouchers and then get to choose their children's schools freely? i.e. let the free market mechanism, instead of unions and the government, decide which teachers get paid more and which ones less?

It appears that many pundits have sanguinely predicted that we'll PROBABLY see an economic boom by the end of the current presidential term of Obama.

Facebook wants to parlay its success in desktop sphere into another one in mobile sphere.

Let's watch. Anyhow, I've always felt Facebook is a little stale. Maybe it's just me.

Having seen Canadian hi-tech firms smitten, or bought up, by competition doesn't leave Canadians sanguinity about the country's tech sector.

Nortel, ATI, RIM, ...

I had lost a certain prospect with a cost-driven project.

I never felt loss for that.

The parley between Israel and Palestine has been on the focus of world media, again and again and again.

See Israel and Palestine: Barriers to peace | The Economist.

风漫天，雪舞银蛇。

在这个雪夜，想起了姜夔的“夜雪初积”（《暗香》）。

The topics and discussion about iPhones and iPads have been taking a whopping chunk of web sphere.

However, Steve Jobs, who reputedly had single-handedly created the Apple legend and the cult around its products, ALREADY passed away. Are there sufficient reasons to support that Apple will go on dominating the world and the stock market capitalization?

Randall is a good name.

A kernel in any relationship is, trust or distrust.

If one is stuck in enjoying creature comfort, then he's hopeless.

I guess that's why some aristocrats are apt to somewhat despise nouveaux riches.

Busted has been the avouchment that essential oils used in aromatherapy are good for people's health.

"... aromatherapy oils are volatile oraganic compounds (VOCs), which are considered indoor air pollutants that can irritate the eyes, throat, and lungs."

"... spas that offer massage therapy using fragrant essential oils may have elevated levels of potentially harmful indoor air pollutants such as VOCs and ultrafine particles, according to an article in the journal Environmental Engineering Science." 

http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/health/2012/12/03/aromatherapy-soothes-stress-but-don-breathe-too-many-vapors-study/KlItTjOzvxFSHjhNGGLSQI/story.html

In this era of people earnestly combating environmental pollution on this Earth, why at the same time do some of them pollute indoor air that they themselves breathe in?

One has low monetary consumption doesn't necessarily mean he has low income.

A few ex-employees of Budget Rent A Car's certain Vancouver outlets have publicly avouched that there's been a fleecing scheme going on.

See Budget Rent a Car fraud claims probed by RCMP.

Ouch.

有的时候，英文比中文更有诗意，更美。

比如说，sundew (a.k.a. drosera) 要比其中文名称“毛毡（氈）苔”有意境得多。

Microsoft has been putting its weight behind pushing its disruptively unconventional Windows 8 operating system, as well as MS Surface tablets.

It's a very, very sensible strategy, IMHO. The Redmond giant almost desperately needs to pinpoint and grab new growth markets, even as its financial performance has been excellent.

It seems that while in my teens and twenties, I had felt melancholy generally.

By contrast, I've been feeling sanguine in my thirties.

Looking back, brilliant has been the usurpation of the market dominance of Nokia and RIM by Apple's iPhone and iPad, as well as Google's Android devices.

The management, as well as the shareholders, of Nokia and RIM must have lived with bitter regrets these years.

See what Mr. Michael Walkley said lately about RIM's stock rally at Canaccord Genuity says RIM shares are overpriced and puts a 'sell' on its stock.

And see how RIM's stock price has been miserably hovering around its sum-of-parts analysis value throughout this year of 2012 at https://www.google.ca/finance?client=ob&q=TSE:RIM .

Music videos - 后来 - 刘若英

後來
詞：施人誠 曲：玉城千春（日本） 編曲：王繼康

後來　我總算學會了 如何去愛　
可惜你 早已遠去　消失在人海
後來　終於在眼淚中明白　
有些人　一旦錯過就不再

梔子花 白花瓣　落在我藍色百褶裙上
愛你　你輕聲說　我低下頭聞見一陣芬芳
那個永恆的夜晚　十七歲仲夏　你吻我的那個夜晚
讓我往後的時光　每當有感嘆　總想起當天的星光

那時候的愛情　為什麼就能那樣簡單
而又是為什麼　人年少時　一定要讓深愛的人受傷
在這相似的深夜裡　你是否一樣　也在靜靜追悔感傷
如果當時我們能　不那麼倔強　現在也不那麼遺憾

你都如何回憶我　帶著笑或是很沉默
這些年來　有沒有人能讓你不寂寞

永遠不會再重來　有一個男孩　愛著那個女孩

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0igPuDjYUE

Work and life are two quite different kettles of fish.

貌似中国社会越来越直接了，多少真实的人间故事就走着 屌丝 和 黑木耳 的套路。

I was harrowed by what I saw in the portrait and description of the life of aging parents with developmentally disabled child.

Plastic dog kennels look better than wooden ones.

Restaurants in China should begin to adopt the Western notion and practice of customers giving gratuities to waiters and waitresses.

Or some similar form of profit-sharing such as that they get a percentage of the profits.

Alberta, Canada is alleged by some media to possess a proven oil reserve which is 7 times bigger than that of Saudi Arabia.

Someone in Canada must be happily thinking, "release the kraken!"

Although the world is changing increasingly faster and it has created information overload for nearly everyone, you still want to spend time to mark the trends.

Canada's vast energy reserve has been unleashed.

Will this country of 30 million people be blindfolded by that and then only focus on the energy sector? I don't think so.

't is, 'tis, and 'a

It's relatively easy to guess that 't is  and 'tis mean it is, while it's not so to guess that 'a means he.

The most common phenomenon during funerals is the family members break off in their public speaking.

It's moving, especially at soldiers' funerals.

Now I've become a safe pair of hands in the family kitchen.

But I'm confined in Chinese cooking.

Nearly everyone endorses innovation.

But not nearly everyone has the courage to make it.

Peace. Eventually green energies will illume the energetic sky of the human kind.

Since the beginning of the Great Recession, I for one don't like to hear yet some new troubling financial news assailing from yet another country.

Yet it happened almost every quarter.

And, oftentimes, there are other kettles of fish which are worrisome, such as the continuous rise of the obesity rate among North Americans.

Do American politicians especially like to play chicken?

Fracking oil domestically will set the U.S. free from foreign oil dependence.

That prospect is just too alluring for the country.

Is duel and competition among opposing political parties really necessary for democracy?

The winds have unkennelled winter.

A quote

"Tush, child, tush," said the old Frog, "that was only Farmer White's Ox.
-Fables by Aesop

To develop a deep sense of gratitude requires intelligence and wisdom, I think.

Do most rice kernels look very good? No.

Do they taste good with Chinese dishes? Definitely.

A man has to entreat at some point(s) in his life.

I'm not sure if the basmati rice from India we've been eating these weeks is authentic or not.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basmati#Adulteration for the commonplace adulteration of basmati rice.

Roe vs. caviar

The other day, I saw a picture of one sort of Scandinavian "Salmon roe" dish in a posh Globe and Mail style guide. And later that day I saw a written promotional note with a "caviar" dish on it, on a wall of one small and inexpensive Chinese restaurant.

Documentary videos - Witness : To the Last Drop

After having watched the below two videos, I was awestruck by the vastness of Alberta, Canada's oil reserve, as well as the horrible pollution it will potentially unkennel, especially for the lengthy Athabasca River, which is about 1,200km.

Witness : To the Last Drop - Part 1

Witness : To the Last Drop - Part 2

It seems that some native Chinese inhabitants are sick at heart.

A liege is not a liegeman.

The former is a superior of the latter.

There are many things in life which are into the ground, if one wants to really achieve something.

He's a ground.

Scientists say brisk walking can extend one's life by 2 years.

Houses and apartments have been becoming increasingly dual-purpose, as more and more people work from home.

Dogs need to be kenneled and humans need to be sheltered.

Dog rights and human rights.

Canada's energy sector has been bidding foreign investors come and invest. What a phenomenon.

Overlooked should not be the supreme importance of curiosity, which adds zest to life.

While life unfolds for an individual, he understands it more.

And he understands how many headaches there are in life.

Sometime you think the service provided by a waiter or waitress doesn't deserve gratuities, but you still offer them to him anyways.

However, the restaurant probably won't see you again.

Are you fair to the waiter or waitress? Are you fair to the cook who might have cooked you an excellent meal?

In that sense, the waiter or waitress is sort of a salesperson, and he shouldn't have an entirely fixed pay for his work by the restaurant.

Currently I live dual life. One resides in the day, and the other in the night.

In both of them, I stare into the computer screen in front of me.

Will Canada oppose its Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, and denounce the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (Canada-China FIPA) eventually?

See Stephen Harper defends investment deal with China.

Movie snippet - 警棍實戰棍法（甄子丹 vs 吳京）

What a bout of martial fighting. It's violent and bloody, though.

I don't know why "a plate of soup, a dish of meat, fruit, cheese, and half a bottle of wine" can be considered to be only a "frugal" dinner.

Is it according to French standard? :-)

See Chapter 41 of Maugham's Of Human Bondage at http://maugham.thefreelibrary.com/Of-Human-Bondage/41-1 .

I'm made cringe by the notorious caloric intake of Americans and Canadians, even in a medium-sized cookie which appears to be no big deal, which is in fact 450.

And to my surprise, a typical portion of dressed salad contains more calories than its commonplace sidekick, a typical hamburger. Gee.

Since around 3 or 4 months ago, I've been pretty sure that RIM would inevitably decline greatly.

But I'm almost always curious over how things are going for it. So almost every week, I briefly check online news about it.

That behavior of mine shows that curiosity and cues from an individual's surroundings leads to finer granularity of knowledge.

Shun sycophants.

For consumers, the choice of mobile computing devices used to be a duel between Apple's i-products and Google's Android. It's no longer the case.

We've been seeing so many powerful contenders very quickly assemble onto the scene. Microsoft is the one with the most potential, I think. However, I'm not sure how many consumers will be capable to appreciate the alleged excellent values of Windows 8 and Windows Phone operating systems, and perhaps more critically, how many developers will be willing to follow the leading of Microsoft platforms. And that's the most difficult problem for MS, as well as the factor of how well Google will perform with its formidable arrays of deep products and services. Besides, Apple's fanboys will always be there and be highly influential.

Gratitude is one of the characteristics which distinguish between good people and those who're not good enough, I think.

"White space" has become such a widespread biz jargon.

But what're the differences between it and the well known and well worn "Blue ocean" jive?

What's the moat around your business?

You want to be thrifty, but you don't want to be frugal.

Compared with Google the formidable innovator, Microsoft has been releasing key new products at a glacial pace.

Sigh.

They both are long-time friends for me as a consumer. But the latter is always apt to be greatly more trusty than the former, IMHO.

For the past a few days and nights, my wife, toddler daughter, and myself have been plagued by gastroenteritis.

I used to keep forgetting the right spelling and pronunciation of the word "granularity".

Ontario's Premier, Dalton McGuinty, prorogued Ontario's parliament.

And that has caused even more criticism against him.

Gigantic is the industry of making and selling knits and wovens.

Do nearly all the "he" (high efficiency) detergents suds less than regular ones?

The Trudeau family name carries so much cachet in Montreal and Canada.

Does living in the country in Canada infer frugality?

Almost, I think.

Many youngsters in Montreal are not thrifty.

That life habit will cost them handsomely down the road.

Well, I didn't know that the English word "cereal" can roughly equal to "grain".

Rice, wheat, barley, and rye all belong to the category of cereals. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cereal .

And granola is normally considered to be one type of breakfast cereal.

If one wants to understand the reasons behind the great concerns of the U.S. over Iran and the Somalian pirates, he must understand the strategically important choke points of Strait of Hormuz, Persian Gulf, Gulf of Aden, and Red Sea.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Hormuz
and
http://maps.google.ca/maps?sugexp=chrome,mod%3D0&qscrl=1&q=the+Strait+of+Hormuz&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x3ef7184c25840e51:0x3d7b86ccdd367e5a,Strait+of+Hormuz&gl=ca&sa=X&ei=vPWFUP0Zk7_RAf6IgKAC&ved=0CJ8BELYD .

I saw a U.S. Air Force jacket, which is of the sort that bikers often wear, last night.

The style of that jacket looks good, with Chinese words on the back.

Montreal's mafia mogul, Vito Rizzuto, had been arrested for racketeering, loan sharking, and murder some six years ago, and then was released from a U.S. prison lately.

He had been considered to be the most powerful mafia boss in Canada. And he's returned to Canada.

It has profound consequences on Quebec's society, considering the ongoing police investigation into the close links among Quebec's construction industry, mafia, and some Quebec politicians.

Facebook isn't very satisfying. Which social networking website is gonna whup it?

Who can mollify the Americans who've seen their prosperity dim?

A president who can create decent-paying jobs.

Kaboom. I've stumbled on the PowerShell on my Win7 machine.

Well, natural rubber latex is, natural.

But hospitals and people have been running to escape from it to hypoallergenic latex-free alternatives.

See http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/reporter/index.html?ID=4148 .

If I followed the instructions on the detergent bottles and only added a cap of the detergent, the washing water in my portable washing machine would never be sudsy enough to convince me that it would give a proper laundering.

Many Chinese have lived through abject poverty.

What an era of have-nots.

It seems that thrift is the one thing which is hard to get by the people born with a silver spoon in their mouths.

Conscious people know to avoid fawning, towards others and towards herself.

I know a widower whose condo got burned down.

How life's misfortunes can hit again and again, especially when one's old.

Poncho is different than raincoat.

The local Unibroue beers aren't bad at all. Nice.

Heck, a Release the Kraken underwear.

See http://www.jinx.com/p/release_the_kraken_boxer_briefs.html .

What a fantastic adoption of the great meme.

It seems that in many Hong Kong movies I've watched over the years, rooftops appear in them often.

Are those scenes a beacon that Hong Kong people crave for hard-to-get space?

Are most cheap things inevitably shoddy? At the end of the day, you get what you paid for.

Watching stand-up comedies is a good way to amuse oneself.

碎波秋水，青葱节气已过。

If to demand bribes is customary in a country, then what sorts of people and businesses want to conduct business in that country?

And do the business clients and average consumers lose in that country? And what do they lose?

Music video - Gangnam style - PSY

With the ascendance of the formidable Samsung, South Korea seems to have soared beyond its peers among the Four Asian Dragons, business-wise, pop-fashion-wise, and pop-culture wise.

Here comes a recent spectacularly popular MV - 江南區 style:



And here's the English translation of its lyrics:
http://www.kpoplyrics.net/psy-gangnam-style-lyrics-english-romanized.html

Thrift is one good characteristic that Chinese descendants are apt to have.

Let's hope the ongoing sweep of spending on credit cards in China won't change that thrift much.

When RIM began to lose the U.S. market, they handed their company to fatalism. It's that straightforward.

No offence, a Blackberry sold in Indonesia does't mean the same thing as a Blackberry sold in the U.S. Not at all.

See http://beforeitsnews.com/science-and-technology/2012/09/dismal-rim-sales-in-us-as-meaningful-number-of-stores-sell-zero-blackberrys-2468960.html .

Once I heard a British to mimic the affectation of some sort of British posh accent.

It intrigued me.

Many Montrealers choose to amuse themselves with reading books or e-books for some time day in, day out.

That's good. That's much better than the alleged situation in China.

RIM has only been giving its naysayers more and more fodder during the recent 6 months.

Cooking has become one of my habitual activities.

Maybe opprobrium on GE is surfacing, because it's probable that the once splendid giant company's biz will grow no further.

U.S. Election 2012 has been red hot.

At work is a gigantic democratically political machine. At issue is how much responsibilities belong to the government and how much to the individuals.

The bonanza of mobile computing is so fast and furious.

Bouts of cyber espionage, allegedly from China, get Western countries to be very concerned.

Canada's intelligence agency, CSIS, has come out and warned the government and the public for several times already.

Country-level politics seems to be very complicated. Much much more complicated than the province-level politics.

The titan-silver color is silver-gray.

By the way, I think titanium camping mugs look cool.

Time is always short. But is life long?

Quiche is a sort of custard pie.

And it's usually considered to be a sub-type of tart.

Delicious. The French have so much culinary know-how.

Barack Obama is a deft politician, isn't he?

And his opponent, Mitt Romney, is a very rich guy who was also born in a rich family, isn't he? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitt_Romney#Heritage_and_youth .

And see the consequences of the notorious "47 percent" words by Mitt Romney here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/brutal-new-obama-ad-features-mitt-romney-and-the-47-percenters/2012/09/27/8fc96b6c-08b0-11e2-a10c-fa5a255a9258_blog.html?tid=pm_opinions_pop .

Who do you think the middle class people with good sense would vote for? And who do you think the lower middle class Americans would vote for?

Romney has already lost.

Grant's Law in British Columbia seems to be working for preempting gas-and-dashes.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_station#Canada .

Are China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong always apt to be strongholds of tribalism, comparatively?

Young high school students who feign that they have done the required readings may be wasting their own time and opportunity to really strive and get immersed in the marvelous worlds created by those chapters and words listed in the required readings.

On the other hand, do the prestigious high schools have to assign so much readings to their students?

Life is short and time, even for young people, is invaluable, I understand.

It appears that the Italian cuisine has got a very strong presence in Canada.

Gourmet coffee, pasta, panini, ..., you name it. They are almost everywhere.

And I love the way Panini taste.

Divinity (i.e. 上帝) is different than Karma (i.e. 因果报应).

For that matter, Christianity is different from Buddhism.

Still there is a lot of mojo for working in the famous Google dojo.

There are some jerks who do some unexpected things which enrage you. Sigh. This is life.

Mr. Z's eyes were sizing J up grimly, during the initial moments of their first meeting.

Pringles potato chips were developed by P&G. And Dr. Fred Baur designed the packaging can of them.

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

Gee. All those inventions that have gone into the American food industry which produces so many sorts of unhealthy food.

Melon Sangria has roused my interest in punches.

Obliviousness to the future is the one thing many people have.

Along that dimension, there are two sorts of people: the haves and the have-nots. I for one wanna be a have-not. :-)

Not to intend to exert much agony on individuals does NOT mean that the Western law system is merciful.

My wonted systematicness must have helped me a lot.

The snafu of the sharp fall of Facebook's stock price may have revealed there's a better biz model for SNS.

What is signified by the grim grip of Triad scenes in many Hong Kong movies?

Will there be no further opportunities for Sony?

"What a familiar name Bear Sterns once had been. What will I feel about the familiar name "Morgan Stanley" in the future?" I thought.

The fates of financial firms seem to be intrinsically fickle.

The society is apt to be the best dojo (i.e. "道場" in Japanese), but only if you have got a doshin (i.e. "道心" in Japanese), so to speak.

As for the meaning of "doshin", see page 109 of the PDF file at https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:4s6_vIx9H_cJ:nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/publications/jjrs/pdf/246.pdf+&hl=en&gl=ca&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESh98hOoVdZLbMcm1ZKzRK6HI5nOr4HXZP0L0zm-6hO0Do8RbzGbZupIIqWo_PLv8Xr8aRKMqVMASx27cBE9ohS96UMf39wavFJgqWvFB_JWZU_hEfaULDquHRQqY23uLzN_9F9B&sig=AHIEtbSLrjP6luGSt3fhFL39ud5gNOr1sA&pli=1.

One of my tics is to make unrelated hand gestures while conversing with other people, I guess.

Overwhelming is the grimness of some gun fighting movies produced in Hong Kong.

The obviousness of the decline of Taiwanese computer companies such as Acer makes me wonder why they didn't invest in mobile computing several years ago.

They tried it but haven't succeeded in it?

Some technical people often myopically say Apple's platforms are lagging in terms of technologies.

They simply have ignored how remarkably Apple improves its technologies all the time, coupled with reputed staggeringly marvelous user experience.

I always wanna pare the number of emails received from websites such as Twitter and LinkedIn.

The future of RIM is grim.

See BlackBerry sinks to zero sales in 'a meaningful number' of stores.

It's been said that Facebook is considering to build up its own search engine.

We're watching a nascent public company, however reluctantly it went public though, at work with enormous financial resources.

My wonted choice of computer brand name used to be HP.

No more. Because it has got quality problems nowadays. I think I'll switch to Toshiba.

Music in movies usually provides sensational additive entertainment to viewers.

I like it.

Our toddler daughter has got some minor skin problem at the place close to her wrists, on both of her arms.

We've been applying some excellent medicinal cream to those problematic areas.

If she hadn't been picking at those areas, they would have healed long time ago.

It seems among the grocery stores in Montreal, IGA offers the nearly freshest and sweetest corn.

Yummy.

貌似儒家的态度是“不知生，焉知死”，而佛教的态度是 不知死，焉知生，描述种种地狱的种种惨状。

而日本武士道的态度貌似是 武士“向死而生”。

I suspect that since the 21st century, for any, or at least almost any, young generation in North America and East Asia, the future always looks grim.

Maybe it's ultimately because the power within the society does not belong to them but always belongs to the middle-aged population, relatively?

Without exception, the 20 somethings in Canada and China feel quite blue.

What a scene.

Today I passed by the Holiday Inn at the China Town. Almost all over its wall, are small colorful posts reading "CSN lock-outs" and "Scabs".

Do Canadian tech companies know how to keep the ball rolling?

Android has been eating its competitors' lunch.

What exactly is Google's grand plan behind the particular mobile OS platform?

It seems that many Chinese Canadians who are university graduates are oblivious of some universal concepts and ideals which shape and drive the human society, while their European counterparts are not.

I don't understand why styling putty is categorized into hair wax.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hairstyling_product#Hair_wax.

Shortened URLs have one particular drawback, which is unlike original URLs, they are incomprehensible for humans to just look at.

I don't know why shoe makers line shoes with polyester.

They are not comfortable.

K. L.'s habit, or wont, of taking advantage of others does and will impede him.

Dell has been scrambling and buying up assets and companies in the fields of VOIP, cloud computing, and so on.

Anyways, its traditional PC business has been declining horribly in recent quarters.

Currently it's conventional Windows computer makers such as Dell and Acer whose graves are being dug. Now is their moment of truth.

I heard from an acquaintance that a full-time real estate agent in Montreal, who's been several years in the trade, has not closed a single deal this year, which is a generally booming year for the housing market in Montreal. It's already the beginning of September right now.

Think about how much pressure he feels when he gets up everyday and drives around and goes about his work of selling houses.

Being a real estate agent is a high-cost and high-maintenance occupation.

Let's hate those mosquitoes which carry the West Nile and other viruses.

You beautify your hair by yourself with expensive or primitive hair styling products and go about your daily life.

You use your own sophisticated or rudimentary computing devices to deal with the world day in and day out.

Nonetheless, we can realize how empowered a modern individual is.

American public companies' moves generally are not fresh, but they look new in the eyes of the public, including myself.

Because the power of those companies is so significant that they provide fresher and comparatively reliable alternatives.

Just now, I tried out listening to songs by a few singers, such as Of Montreal, Mobile, Joey Cape, and Bahamas.

Still, among them, Norah Jones is the only one in whose music I drown myself and did so quite easily.

Many people remember the glamour of the great start-ups such as Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, but they forget the millions of others which fell into oblivion.

Not only I wanna see the obvious, but also I wanna see the oblivious.

Many Americans and Canadians advocate that education is the key to solve the structural unemployment problem.

If they are mentioning college level career education such as welding, then I don't know much about it and can't say anything really.

But, if they are talking about post-secondary academic education, then they are ignoring the problem that university academic education probably is increasingly irrelevant both to the real world and to the truths so that it is actually scuttling the labor market instead of helping it.

“自能窥宋玉，何必恨王昌”

赠邻女
鱼玄机

羞日遮罗袖，愁春懒起妆。
易求无价宝，难得有心郎。
枕上潜垂泪，花间暗断肠。
自能窥宋玉，何必恨王昌。

Some people think they can scheme and take advantage of others.

Really? Are other people really fools or pushovers as they think those to be?

Patience is business etiquette.

To Extort is very different than to Exchange.

A lot of women like to be soccer moms, I think.

It's not a good wont to maximize profits in friendship.

Sadly, some people do that.

With mobile computing such as iPhone and iPad driving forth unabatedly, more and more developers have been diving into mobile development.

Everything is so vague in China.

How come local governments in China can terminate, at will, factories' leasehold of lands and force them to move and pay even higher rents?

Gee. That definitely can turn businesses on.

It should be exhorted that Canadian businesses get to be more aggressive and less complacent.

Who doesn't like a restaurant with an attractive courtyard and marvelous sangria?

I always forget one of the meanings of the word "foil", which is a fencing sword.

Still, I need to beef up my English reading persistently in the decades to come.

If one is completely satisfied with his current career situation, there is no chance that the world is his oyster.

"Where did you shower my daughter?" J asked.

"There's a utility sink in the daycare. I took her there and gave her a mini shower," D answered.

Bev Oda's aptness of indulging herself in luxurious spending, on taxpayers' money, had been divulged and consequently, she resigned from her post of Minister of International Cooperation of the Canadian government.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bev_Oda#Controversies_and_scandals.

If she really likes living high life, she would be better suited if she chose a profiteering career path, such as investment banking, rather than the public service one.

I am not sure how technologically sophisticated the mining and processing of oil sand is, which is momentous for Canada.

I had lunch at the Frite Alors on St-Denis the other day.

The young waiters and waitresses over there attend on customers quite friendly and professionally. And their poutine isn't bad. I recommend the place.

Sadly, the truth is that some Chinese Canadians have less etiquette than their European counterparts, especially when lining up.

In almost every movie or TV series, there are some reproachable characters.

Drinking coffee or tea is my wont.

And they do good.

Some people don't have the gumption to try entrepreneurship because they focus too much on monetary gains.

A quote

"He whom the flame of jealousy encompasseth, turneth at last, like the scorpion, the poisoned sting against himself."
-"Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book For All And None", by Nietzsche

一杯午夜一点钟的咖啡，一曲汪峰的《春天里》，几片好吃的 crackers。

最近我被汪峰的这首歌秒杀，被他的才力秒杀。

Remarkably, NASA's Mars exploration has been 50 years in the making.

The Curiosity land rover looks fantastic in action.

There are certainly some grim aspects of life.

Then everyone must learn by himself how to place his conscience in the face of those grim aspects.

I think Douban.com is a swanky way of doing social media.

Radical technological innovations. Embrace them or lose in competition.

As so many investors in the U.S. show scorn for banks, it's unwise for an individual to seek a career in the banking industry, I suppose.

The playfulness of Google's seemingly unrelated product lines makes many people wonder.

Some people speculate that the reputedly rock-solid real-time QNX OS which RIM bought up several years ago will facilitate RIM's possible encore.

I don't agree with it. RIM not only has a huge product problem, it but also has a HUGE marketing problem, because it's been forced to be enveloped in the consumer market, which is very different than the enterprise market it'd been used to, by the market shifts, especially the nascent but widely adopted BYOD policies implemented in many companies.

Some blobs in human brains must have very similar mechanisms of emotions.

For instances, most individuals can appreciate the ever popular song "Hotel California" by The Eagles with its fantastic music, and most individuals can be somewhat moved by a military funeral.

Which parent never scolds his or her kid?

Permanent competitive edges elude businesses, large and small, while customer demands almost always evade real understanding as long as they evolve.

Microsoft has revamped its OS offerings and adapted to the mobile world.

Windows 8 probably will not be able to sustain the company's dominance in the IT industry, but it probably will be a really fantastic product for consumers nevertheless.

I wont to drink beer in the summer.

It surely tastes better than water and Diet Coke.

Life puts almost every friendship to small or big tests, sooner or later.

Then the rhythm and the fate of the friendship is determined.

More and more Syrians are ready to rebel against the President, after it has become apparent that every civilian can be the intended victim of the ongoing massacres ordered by the President.

Business doesn't stop at 5. Technology innovation and advancement doesn't stop at 5.

The United States disrupt all sorts of industry value chains with its customary innovation.

What Apple and Google's Android have done in the mobile sphere is just another example of that.

By contrast, the sad case of RIM's free fall stings many Canadians and makes them ask again if Canadian companies can compete in the technology sector.

"California, here we come".

Friends have parted from D. X., one by one.

The culprit is two fatal flaws of him, albeit he's got some very good characters which I actually appreciate a lot. Sigh.

Currently I've got a habitual weekday routine, which is to improve my own English proficiency a teeny bit.

I don't give up.

Sometime I can't help but wonder if I'm too ambitious because I want to achieve what 1.5 or 2 generations of Chinese immigrants overseas achieve within 1 generation, which is my own lifetime. :-)

In recent years, some, or many, local governments in China have done quite a few harmful and untrustworthy deeds to SMBs.

No wonder more and more rich Chinese people have been heading out of China and establishing a base in one Western country or another.

It's quite easy for me to mistake the word "splinter" for "sprinkler".

It's regrettable for G. N. to pair with C. G. into their entrepreneurial endeavor.

As was my wont, I checked the news about RIM and saw almost nothing good.

Breezes in August make life lovely.

A spectrum of light feelings has been induced in me by summer.

I used to exhort Chinese immigrants in Canada whom I know to learn a great deal of English.

I repent of the moment that my wife turned off our portable air conditioner without first cancelling the set timer. :-)

Now I have had to fix the mysterious problem that the air conditioner refuses to consistently blow cool air.

People had better to stop the custom that one must use Facebook day in and day out.

Life is a poem without rhyme. Some people just don't know to appreciate the right ones.

I think there's a crucial element and aspect of a good higher education.

And it's that the university or college must instill and strengthen the student's hard working habit (not work ethic. The latter may only be taught by one's parents and himself?), as well as intellectual custom and curiosity, by constantly urging him on by loading him with relatively heavy academic learning and work. One extreme example of that is the infamous or famous "drinking from the fire hose" approach long adopted by MIT.

No offense, I can't keep from wondering about this.

Some Christians sort of plead with God to form a perpetual bond. But does God think pleading is the best form of praying?

"Wonton" is a good sort of food in Chinese cuisine.

However, it's very easy to be confused with the word "wanton", which signifies badness and mercilessness.

Love listening to Norah Jones' singing voice sliding down the pitch.

I often contemplate where my time has gone after a busy day.

Time is one of the most scarce resources an individual has nowadays.

Now I've become kind of wont to judge people significantly by their geographic origins. Sigh.

The custom of profit seeking is so ingrained in Capitalist societies that it's pivotal to compensate it with humanity.

Alas, not just few Canadians have scorn for Americans.

Chinese diet is apt to provide ample amounts of various vegetables, which comfort our stomachs and minds.

Many Canadian Olympic athletes train and compete almost entirely out of their own pockets, without governmental funding.

Yet their passion for their sports stay undiminished. That spirit goes on.

I'm going to try to run my little aptitudes and good-will through this world.

An ideal sales rhythm has no waste.

The newfound engine of economic development is knowledge and talent.

It's powerful. And it may not need much capital to begin with.

Chandeliers are a marvel, aren't they?

In general, animal rights advocates have been trying to reduce and eliminate the wanton treatment of animals by human beings. And that's good.

"At the crack of dawn" is a beautiful idiom, isn't it?

Will Nokia ever get to its feet?

Will it be able to roll out a mobile OS of its own which will be popular?

I'm wont to think as much as I can.

This world is summoned to run by perceptions which are accompanied by concepts.

Vintage music video - Angie - Rolling Stones

Many people fear that the launch of Blackberry 10 expected of early next year by RIM will be the last lipstick on a pig.

How glorious RIM once had been. But lo, how low it has gone.

Last week, there's a protest by hundreds of professional scientists which skewered the federal government's funding cuts.

I guess that Harper just puts more focus on scientific and technological research projects which have more commercial values, against the backdrop of a perennially gloomy global economic climate.

All in all, to decide when to put more public financial resources into scientific research activities and when to put less is the job of the elected government and the democracy, the society, NOT the scientists, IMHO.

The maturation of global economy requires Western countries, including France and Japan, to adopt English as the ubiquitous language for business and higher education.

And that's happening, now.

Probably we'll see major changes on that aspect in Quebec as well in 5 - 10 years.

The sorts of fish which are generally available for food in Montreal, such as salmon and cod, are normally so ample, compared to the types of freshwater fish I used to eat in China.

Well, I didn't know optometrists serve kind of like general doctors for the medical branch which deals with eyes.

Ophthalmologists should be referred to by them, more or less.

To have been creative and have coined an effective little biz device can make you feel a bit triumphant.

I'm telling you. Adapting to a new and different life in Canada makes at least one third of Chinese immigrants' love life quite uneasy.

Crushes belong to salad days. They are green, romantic, and fresh.

Among Chinese poems, I prefer those which rhyme well.

Wow, this article about nursing homes in Canada is revealing:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/nursing-homes/

At every workplace, there are telltales.

My toddler daughter is quite capable of emitting cracks of cry without reason.

Well, she definitely has her own reasons, but they are not understandable or reasonable to us adults. :-)

The wanton Cultural Revolution in China permanently sits there, looking at every Chinese steely.

Music video - Le Papillon

Beautiful French language and song.

Are too many Canadians too meek?

"Superstitious" is a rhyme for "surreptitious".

Both are long words. They are not as good as "suspicious" and "delicious", I suppose?

人在小异国，注定忙死。人在小商途，注定忙死。人有小儿女，注定忙死。

Both China and the U.S. are smart-ass.

But which one of them has been kicking ass in science, technology, business, and humanity during the past century? Now we know the privilege of being a smart-ass must be earned, with sweat and innovation.

So far, the FOSS of Android has been a grand stratagem and strategy of Google.

I still don't completely understand why they put such enormous amount of resources into constantly developing Android and then release it entirely for free. Are they collecting user data or something?

You take someone into your confidence and you are exposing yourself.

任何一个企业的“永续经营”的理想，应该是象任何一个人的“长生不老”的梦想一样，是不可能实现的。“成住坏空”是铁律。

也许，对任何一个企业来说，包括 RIM，“但这已不重要，因为他已来过，活过，爱过——无论对任何人说来，这都已足够。”（摘自古龙《楚留香传奇》系列之《桃花传奇》正文最后一页）

Out of every famous drama, some well-known lines get declaimed in people's hearts time and time again.

Examples:

"The man knew what he wanted and went out and got it! Walked into a jungle and comes out, the age of twenty-one, and he's rich!"- Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman, Act 1 

"After all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive."
- Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman, Act 2

Full of his own importance, J set out to help.

Well, it's boring to have to watch the recurrent TV news pieces of the crash of some cars or aircrafts. But it's a necessary bore, I guess.

If it didn't exist, how could the random members of the public who are affected by the accidents get to know the happenings quickly and effectively?

I like the ambling sounds sung by Norah Jones.

The crush in the pubs on Crescent street left J a feeling of loneliness. He couldn't help it.

I don't know anything of the Italian language at all. But it seems that the Italian words existing in English rhyme very easily.

Almost every one of them ends with "tti" (as in "spaghetti"), "ni" (as in "tortellini"), "co" (as in "fiasco" and "alfresco"), or something similar.

A play's commentary is apt to be much more elaborate than its synopsis.

A young child's nursery is an oasis.

Some people prefer the JSON protocol over the XML one, some others the other way around.

I've been acting out the roles of web developer, sales rep, strategic planner, and business development rep.

That's typical for people trying to run his own little biz.

Many, if not most, people see the world just through the cracks of their own trade, upbringing, and so on.

Before, I didn't believe a broad view and a broad education is THAT important. But now I believe it. Yes, Virginia, crucial is a broad education or self-education, probably by the means of wide reading and studying.

Walmart will possibly be on the ropes in around 10 years.

Target, Amazon, ... and ever more competitors, equipped with better and more modern strategies, have been attacking it on all fronts.

Facebook must have been surreptitiously constantly evaluating the mobile scene.

Social networking is destined to be mobile. Who wants to be tethered to a computer desk while being social?

The nature of health care work makes the workers to be on call. It has its own tolls on their life.

Many a time, the play "Death of a Salesman" fills my heart with strong and complex feelings.

A folio book is twice as big as a quarto book.

On the altar of money, myriads of people are willing to sacrifice.

But many successful people say it is wrong.

A pentameter consists of five metrical feet. Why five?

Sales regimes must be systematic.

Typically, parents with toddler child or children to take care of often can't help but crash immediately after having dined and bathed their kids.

U. Q. eventually passed up the opportunity to go with J into J's biz endeavor and chose to go down in his own little sweat-shop biz. Sigh for U. Q.'s misjudgment and ungratefulness.

Different individuals' treatment of others varies very much. And it often evokes invisible sighs, on the other hand, it makes those truly good people stand out like shining diamonds.

The sounds of the English language seem to be full of iambs such as "adore" and "delay".

I guess many people are jaded by the dubitable official data about China's GDP and its growth.

How many people in the world want, implicitly and explicitly, to crush the United States? But Americans' toughness has served themselves very well. They have balls.

I wonder how many people persistently pursue nocturnal or early-morning study and practice in their own professional fields, after or before their typically exhausting day work and daily family obligations.

Blank Verse in English poetry

Quote:

Blank verse is poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the sixteenth century" and Paul Fussell has claimed that "about three-quarters of all English poetry is in blank verse."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blank_verse

Music video - Excellent nursery rhyme - Five little ducks

By the way, I didn't know that Humpty Dumpty, the popular brand name of a Quebec packaged snacks company, is actually a well-known nursery rhyme in the West.

Personally I like listening to live performance of good violin music.

It's been proven time and time again.

Given the omnipresence of social media, I wonder how many online complaints are libels in essence and how many Facebook "like"s are false praise.

Some dinner parties among Chinese people tend to be banal. And the reason must be they don't know how to care about people, I suppose? No?

When you're young, energetic, driven, and ambitious, you look at the United States differently.

When you're old and frail and have to be nursed, you look at the United States differently.

Windows 7 is much sleeker than Windows XP.

And it's said that a great many companies have upgraded or are upgrading their boring office computer operating systems to Win 7. From a user's perspective, I especially like the facts that it's faster, I can switch among different windows very easily by the Aero Flip 3D thing, the "search programs and files" box is quite satisfying, I can simultaneously run multiple instances of the same program, and its memory management is apparently more efficient. Personally I feel the Windows Aero interface built in Win 7 boosts my productivity significantly.

And I wanna see how the future Windows versions further take advantage of parallel computing.

Creativity is the way to crack problems. How to foster it effectively?

Certain behaviors are nonstarters. But many people don't know to avoid them.

Ottawa has been disappointed by many American companies that walked out on their promises to keep jobs in Canada.

And the workers unions took those as betrayals and an affront.

Well, many people don't like Americans.

Many people are discouraged by the complexities and fleet-footed evolution inherent in web development.

Native Canadians, and even immigrants who came from countries whose native official languages are either English or French, have no idea about how much the majority of the immigrants from Mainland China sacrifice on the altar of adapting to Canadian life.

A take on friendship

When one's friends inundate him with disappointments about what a friend should do but doesn't do, he then knows better what the meaning of friendship is and what the tests of it are. And then back to the core, he knows better what a PERSON should be like, hopefully.

Windows XP had its heydays. Since then, my Windows computers, both XP and 7, have nearly never crashed or frozen.

I don't know, man. I like the blue color on the topmost bar in the programs' windows in Windows XP. I like it.

For aught I know, time passes fast.

There are some indubitable things in life.

One is that if a person is already 40 years old, he'll probably bear a child or two before long, he's still on the nearly lowest rank among the professional workers in one of the Canadian offices of a large Western corporation, and his English proficiency is in fact just close to that of an average teenage Canadian junior high school student, then the chance of his climbing to the executive level in that company is quite slim, indeed, very slim. Time's running out and the competition too much and too strong.

The friendship had been crushed time and time again by the man's motives and behaviors, J thought, and he sighed.

But what good is a friendship with the man? It's destined to be cracked, J also thought.

So many Chinese fans have been watching the flights of European soccer stars in Euro 2012.

With retail workers galore, no wonder their earnings are not high.

I lighted on Dover sole. It tastes good.

English appreciation - a quote

"Epitaph.

Done to death by slanderous tongues
Was the Hero that here lies."
- Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare

My wife and I are afraid that our toddler daughter is an epicure. :-)

Sometime it's really difficult to please her palate.

Without the themes of love, friendship, and humanity which can be typically found in classic literature, the ugly and difficult reality can crack one's hope of and confidence in humanity, sometimes.

Roosters crow, people speak, and leaders converse, read, and think.

Reasonably, people can suspect that workers at RIM have been cracking under enormous pressures.

All these years, I've been ogling many varieties of biz insights. Hopefully the next ten years will bear fruits of that.

Lately I've really seen that an individual's career or biz vision, aspiration, and potential is NOT really just the resultant of his most recent SEVERAL years of work and life, instead, it is the resultant of at least TEN recent years of his work and life.

I hadn't known what the differences are among biscuit, cookie, and cracker.

So I headed to my internet search engine to find it out. However, after having skimmed the top part of the painfully long article at http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodcookies.html , I'm still almost confused as ever.

Fixing computers is a potent way to waste time.

Will the crash of the Facebook biz be inevitable within 15 years, given the rise and potential of Pinterest.com, Path.com, and the like?

I'm not sure if my creativity in its general term is strong. But I'm apt to be highly analytical and probing.

And I'm capable of asking a volley of questions in order to dig around and deeper into a subject or a particular train of thought.

In Canada, two past tech giants, Nortel and RIM, have crashed one by one.

Now, will Bombardier face a somewhat similar fate in the future, given the forceful and lower-cost competition from Brazil and China?

How many conquests had the ancient China taken from its neighboring countries?

And how many ones has Russia done?

I've been having a crack at establishing a biz from scratch in an industry with a lot of potentials. Unfortunately for himself, U. Q. didn't and still doesn't understand it.

Warlike peoples are very apt to view honor to be even higher than their own lives.

One example is the ancient Japanese samurai which are quite well known to Chinese.
The other one is that pre-Christian Romans preferred to commit suicide rather than live a life which is ignoble in their view.

Well, it's disappointing that a great political figure in China of the past had slandered a lot of his ex-colleagues. It's disappointing. That's not statesmanship.

There is enough grime on the windows to be cleaned up.

The winds blow on my skin and blow my T-shirt to fullness. It feels good, in this hot June night.

There are usually some innuendoes about RIM flowing around. One is that at least one of its two former co-founders and Co-CEOs is arrogant, very arrogant.

Either working for a company or working for oneself, who hasn't ever gotten cracked by reality check?

The important things are improvement, persistence, and potential.

Many times reading classic literature doesn't bring a person felicity at all.

I've seen a great many companies and individuals in China nonsensically talk or write about cloud computing. Duh.

Do they just want to replicate the buzzword in the west, or they want to utilize the buzzword to drive their own agendas?

Time and time again, it has been shown that the current order of the Chinese society has spawned myriads of young people who has no interest but to maximize his or her own monetary gains, even by breaching the bottom line of moral and civil laws.

That's a path to perdition, which probably lies 30 years ahead down the road.

A newly graduated geriatric doctor said that some people call elderly patients "bed blockers" and that view is ageist.

Well, ageing societies will face big problems economically and in terms of the arrangements of social welfare, I suppose.

English appreciation

"You should alike find rain, hail, frost, and thaw lingering in that dismal enclosure when they had vanished from other places; and as to snow, you should see it there for weeks, long after it had changed from yellow to black, slowly weeping away its grimy life."
--Littel Dorrit, Chapter 15, by Charles Dickens

The Canadian sensation Justin Bieber has got lots and lots of fawning girl fans, worldwide.

I don't know how humble he is and how humble he should be.

People have been inundated by information about and from their friends, trivial or not, all these years.

I don't know how they will think of that when they'll look back at that in future.

While in sadness, J's apt to converse with his life feelingly.

Things to do in companionship and in solitude

When one goes out with acquaintances, he wants to make the society enjoyable.
When one is in solitude, he wants to conduct deep and thorough thinking.

Personally I think cod is an absolute fish for dish.

即景

建筑们、街道们是不动的，树梢们是摆动的，人们是走动的，心是流动的。

What's the skeleton of HTML?

Structural elements such as div?

English appreciation - a quote

"He remembered with what a callous selfishness his uncle had treated her, how obtuse he had been to her humble, devoted love."
- Chapter CXI of the novel Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

It's said there are innuendos about drug addiction in the song "Hotel of Calnifornia" by The Eagles, however pleasing it sounds.

By contrast, in the songs by Chyi Chin, a Taiwanese pop singer, typically there are only insinuations about love and self-seeking.

I long for Linux for my future ease.

Updated - I really tanned my own hide

Problem:

Long ago, I wore a wrist watch whose belt was entirely plastic. And because I was apt to sweat a lot on my skin in the summer, the area which the watch belt covers on my wrist felt itchy from time to time. So I stupidly sprayed some Windex or something onto the watch belt and wiped it, on several occasions, then my wrist didn't feel itchy. Then few months later, that particular skin area began to look and feel significantly abnormally dry.

I treated my own wrist skin like a tanner tans animal skins. The difference is, he makes leather but I made a problem for myself ever since.



Cure:

Recently I've found that a calendula cream made by Boiron, however controversial the French company is, has been very effective in treating the above described skin problem of mine. That cream is a homeopathic medicine.

Modularity and reusability are at the core of the efficiency of software development, including web development.

Sometimes I can't help but feel journalistic writers are too verbose.

Why don't and can't they keep their writing short and simple? Why don't they just directly get to their points?

I'd had my days walking on slimy country field trails in rural China.

To invest on stocks is sort of like to wager on other people's perennially working hard and smart. It's apt to be highly risky and should be handled by really trustworthy and really competent professionals.

Unfortunately, it tends to be difficult to pinpoint those professionals, and then again, to let those professionals handle an investor's money is sort of like to wager on other people's perennially working hard and smart. :-)

It's quite easy to mistake some template language commands as the commands of the general programming language behind it. Duh.

My own complexion is apt to be serious.

Completed - Layers of the subtle changes of my perception of Mac computers over the years

At the very beginning, around the year of 2000, Mac was unheard of for me. It's simply beyond my world.

Then in 2005 or so, I watched a short video episode of Technology Review which was a piece of talk by its then editor-in-chief, a British gentleman. And the episode was named "Beautiful machine". By that, he meant Mac computer. But I didn't take that message seriously.

By about 2006, I heard, on and off, some people prefer Mac much than Windows, but my impression was that it seemed that those guys use Mac computers to edit images and videos. And Mac is significantly more expensive than Windows machines. Well, that's not my thing, I thought.

After then, it's the history everyone knows. With the help of the spectacular successes of iPod and iPhone, Mac computers have been keeping significantly gaining market share, especially among young generations.

So far, I've been satisfied with Windows 7. But one thing that I always don't like about Windows is its native lousy command-line interface, DOS. It is horrifically unlike UNIX command-line, which I'm fond of. I've been using Cygwin, but all in all, it's not the real thing and it's a great pain to update it. On the other hand, it's said that the command-line interface on Mac is somewhat like *nix, which is a blessing.

Anyways, I've locked myself into a choice between Windows and Mac. That might be wrong. Maybe I should just get a Linux OS and start to utilize it. And then after that, consider to install dual OSes and choose either Windows or Mac as my second OS.

I do 3 things: web development, sales, and marketing (a.k.a. strategy).

I don't know why some of China's cities are so sultry.

Some things are broken and missing in China's society.

I can't help but wonder if big companies make a mistake of always nearly pay premium prices for their employees' work and then always almost stifle their flexibility and creativity with myriads of processes.

I saw on the street two toddlers were brewing with distemper against their dads. And that cracked a slight smile on my face.

I knew that. I knew that too well with my two-year-old daughter.

Music video - The arrival of the Queen of Sheba - George Frederick Handel

I like it.

The real attitudes of the northerly Canada towards China say a lot about China and Canada itself, a small country in a big shifted world.

The people in Mideast oil countries have been living in clover for decades. How long will their prosperity last into the future?

Now I drink brewed ground coffee almost everyday.

One thing I remember from my childhood is, thanks to a relative of mine, I drank coffee which was made by boiling coffee beans in water, once or for few times. It tasted good.

E. G.'s old father, who's over 70 years old, has got anus cancer since the end of last year. E. G.'s description made me almost cringe.

How fragile life is. And how critical health is.

News about an abnormal slander case

Well, this is eye-popping.
See Anonymous commenters slammed with $13 million slander ruling.

The inevitable grime under the computer mouse is another reason to get rid of the mouse and use keyboard commands only, yet?

The word "chuff" means "peasant", "a rude or insensitive person".

Interestingly, there are similar indications for the Chinese word equivalent of "peasant".

Excerpt from the poem "The Ballad Of Reading Gaol" by Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde "is also well known for his humorous and intelligent remarks, and for being homosexual. In 1895 he was sent to prison for his homosexuality, which was illegal at the time. He described his prison experience in the poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol. After he was released he lived the rest of his life in France and Italy."
http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/oscar-wilde


"This long ballad poem published in 1898 was Wilde's last artistic effort. The poem is a social commentary against the deplorable and inhuman conditions existing in Reading jail."
http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/lit/poetry/PoemsbyOscarWilde/chap84.html



An excerpt of the long poem:
"
V


I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.


But this I know, that every Law
That men have made for Man,
Since first Man took his brother's life,
And the sad world began,
But straws the wheat and saves the chaff
With a most evil fan.


This too I know - and wise it were
If each could know the same -
That every prison that men build
Is built with bricks of shame,
And bound with bars lest Christ should see
How men their brothers maim.


With bars they blur the gracious moon,
And blind the goodly sun:
And they do well to hide their Hell,
For in it things are done
That Son of God nor son of Man
Ever should look upon!

...


For they starve the little frightened child
Till it weeps both night and day:
And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,
And gibe the old and grey,
And some grow mad, and all grow bad,
And none a word may say.


Each narrow cell in which we dwell
Is a foul and dark latrine,
And the fetid breath of living Death
Chokes up each grated screen,
And all, but Lust, is turned to dust
In Humanity's machine.


The brackish water that we drink
Creeps with a loathsome slime,
And the bitter bread they weigh in scales
Is full of chalk and lime,
And Sleep will not lie down, but walks
Wild-eyed, and cries to Time.

...
"

http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/lit/poetry/PoemsbyOscarWilde/chap84.html



Personally I think it's a first-rate poem which sounds pretty. Well, "pretty" isn't the most suitable word here. My words fail me.

A company's baseline output is different than its final output.

How to create best values during the process between, so to speak, them? (Although the development of them may very well be somewhat parallel and intertwined, so to speak.)

Always attractive is the towering passion for entrepreneurship in the Silicon Valley. Its environment, its surrounding, its silo, its atmosphere...

Three Bs in classic music: Bach, Bethoven, and Brahms.

In the interim between two consecutive successes, however small they seem to be, there lie trials and errors for one to work through and see through.

Huawei isn't helped by the portraiture and perception of it as a telecom technology giant from a country where the authoritarian government can exert any influence and force upon any business identity.

See http://business.financialpost.com/2012/04/18/boosting-foreign-ownership-in-telecoms-threatens-national-security-ottawa-warned-in-secret-letter/ .

It appears that one of the advantages of SSD over traditional HDD is that the latter has a mandatory requirement of persisting data from memory into HDD where the former doesn't need that step at all.

For instance, on my Windows 7 computer, if I shut down the computer without saving my data in my open applications, that data will be lost. By contrast, on my Android phone, I just need to simply turn off the phone without having to save my data in my open apps, and that data will remain intact in my phone.

I am not sure if the sorts of financial speculation activities should be called cankers.

And, how can financial speculation be distinguished from financial hedging? For instance, you are a producer, and you want to hedge against the potential price increase of one of your key raw material inputs and to control the risks of costs. Or, you are an exporter, and you want to hedge against the potential rise of your domestic currency.

To kowtow to pressures is not good. But to compromise with them is.

Everyday, cars crash. But people still drive.

Everyday, companies go bankrupt. But aspiring entrepreneurs still start up.

The cozenage of the so-called MLM (i.e. Multi-level Marketing) is still well alive in the U.S. and Canada. And I suspect it's apt to get stronger in economically difficult times.

Yesterday I was approached by a woman in her fifties or so and she tried to lure me into one seemingly popular MLM scheme. And that left me a strange and bizarre feeling for the day. What a world this one is.

Only after about 10 years of living in Canada, we began to use a masher and make mashed potatoes.

And I expect it will take at least another 10 years for me to begin to like mashed potatoes. I inherited a Chinese stomach, and I suspect that's in my genes. :-)

A designer coffee drink is at its best when you are sitting inside or outside a designer coffee house and experiencing it.

English appreciation - a quote

He has wronged me and deceived me enough, he shall not cozen me further; let him go his own way, for Jove has robbed him of his reason.

- The Iliad by Homer

Modern Chinese is apt to be less subtle than its English counterpart.

For example, there's a distinction between "slander" and "libel" in modern English, where there's no such thing in today's Chinese.

J's proper life is busy and full of efforts for trying to achieve higher. It's kind of sad his father doesn't understand that.

Completed - Ancient emperors, kings, and state heads with a knack of literature, music, or both

Part 1:

I would say that the Tudor Dynasty of Welsh origin which had ruled the Kingdom of England has begun to intrigue me more and more.

And in that particular House of Tudor, Henry VIII, who was the 2nd king, is definitely a spectacular figure. He romantically, well, at least I guess, named one of his then very powerful warships as Mary Rose. And

Henry cultivated the image of a Renaissance Man and his court was a centre of scholarly and artistic innovation and glamorous excess, epitomised by the Field of the Cloth of Gold. He was an accomplished musician, author, and poet. His best known musical composition is "Pastime with Good Company" or "The Kynges Ballade". He was an avid gambler and dice player, and excelled at sports, especially jousting, hunting, and real tennis. He was known for his strong defence of conventional Christian piety. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VIII_of_England#Early_reign:_1509.E2.80.931525

Furthermore, he's often been reputed to be the author of the ever popular English folk song Greensleeves. And he married six times in his lifetime, while he also beheaded a couple of his legal wives.

What a figure he is.



Part 2:

In the same year in which Henry VIII of England died, in the far-flung and cold Russia, Ivan the Terrible, for whom "Ivan the Fearsome" might be a more suitable nickname (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_the_Terrible#Sobriquet ), officially crowned as the Tsar of All Russia.

"Ivan was a poet, a composer of considerable talent". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_the_Terrible#Arts )

By the way, the grandfather of Ivan the Terrible is, er, Ivan the Great.



Part 3:

Alfonso the Wise, an ancient king in Spain, also had a knack of literature and other intellectual activities.

Alfonso established Spanish as a language of higher learning,

and was a prolific author of Galician poetry, such as the Cantigas de Santa Maria, which are equally notable for their musical notation as for their literary merit. Alfonso's scientific interests—he is sometimes nicknamed "the Astrologer" (el Astrólogo)—led him to sponsor the creation of the Alfonsine tables, and the Alphonsus crater on the moon is named after him. As a legislator he introduced the first vernacular law code in Spain, the Siete Partidas. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfonso_X_of_Castile

Part 4:

Frederick the Great, a King of Prussia, was quite fond of music and philosophy. He's a very intriguing historical figure, I think.

Interested primarily in music and philosophy and not the arts of war during his youth, Frederick unsuccessfully attempted to flee from his authoritarian father, Frederick William I, with childhood friend Hans Hermann von Katte, whose execution he was forced to watch after they were captured. Upon ascending to the Prussian throne, he attacked Austria and claimed Silesia during the Silesian Wars, winning military acclaim for himself and Prussia. Near the end of his life, Frederick physically connected most of his realm by conquering Polish territories in the First Partition of Poland. 

Frederick was a proponent of enlightened absolutism. For years he was a correspondent of Voltaire, with whom the king had an intimate, if turbulent, friendship. He modernized the Prussian bureaucracy and civil service and promoted religious tolerance throughout his realm. Frederick patronized the arts and philosophers, and wrote flute music. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_the_Great

He's a "gifted musician" and composer. He wanted to be a philosopher king. And, he speaks at least six languages.

Frederick was a gifted musician who played the transverse flute. He composed 100 sonatas for the flute as well as four symphonies. The Hohenfriedberger Marsch, a military march, was supposedly written by Frederick to commemorate his victory in the Battle of Hohenfriedberg during the Second Silesian War. His court musicians included C. P. E. Bach, Johann Joachim Quantz, Carl Heinrich Graun and Franz Benda. A meeting with Johann Sebastian Bach in 1747 in Potsdam led to Bach's writing The Musical Offering. 

Frederick also aspired to be a Platonic philosopher king like the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. The king joined the Freemasons in 1738 and stood close to the French Enlightenment, admiring above all its greatest thinker, Voltaire, with whom he corresponded frequently. The personal friendship of Frederick and Voltaire came to an unpleasant end after Voltaire's visit to Berlin and Potsdam in 1750–1753, although they reconciled from afar in later years. 

In addition to his native language, German, Frederick spoke French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian; he also understood Latin, ancient and modern Greek, and Hebrew. Preferring instead French culture, Frederick disliked the German language, literature, and culture, explaining that German authors "pile parenthesis upon parenthesis, and often you find only at the end of an entire page the verb on which depends the meaning of the whole sentence".[45] His criticism led many German writers to attempt to impress Frederick with their writings in the German language and thus prove its worthiness. Many statesmen, including Baron vom und zum Stein, were also inspired by Frederick's statesmanship. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_the_Great#Music.2C_arts_and_learning

He's also very talented in the art of war.

Frederick frequently led his military forces personally and had six horses shot from under him during battle. Frederick is often admired as one of the greatest tactical geniuses of all time, especially for his usage of the oblique order of battle. Even more important were his operational successes, especially preventing the unification of numerically superior opposing armies and being at the right place at the right time to keep enemy armies out of Prussian core territory. In a letter to his mother Maria Theresa, the Austrian co-ruler Emperor Joseph II wrote, 

"When the King of Prussia speaks on problems connected with the art of war, which he has studied intensively and on which he has read every conceivable book, then everything is taut, solid and uncommonly instructive. There are no circumlocutions, he gives factual and historical proof of the assertions he makes, for he is well versed in history... A genius and a man who talks admirably. But everything he says betrays the knave.[14] "

An example of the place that Frederick holds in history as a ruler is seen in Napoleon Bonaparte, who saw the Prussian king as the greatest tactical genius of all time;[15] after Napoleon's victory of the Fourth Coalition in 1807, he visited Frederick's tomb in Potsdam and remarked to his officers, "Gentlemen, if this man were still alive I would not be here".[16] Frederick and Napoleon are perhaps the most admiringly quoted military leaders in Clausewitz' On War. More than Frederick's use of the oblique order, Clausewitz praised particularly the quick and skillful movement of his troops.[17] 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_the_Great#Warfare

Part 5:

In Chinese history, somewhat similarly, there have been 曹丕, 后主李煜, and 毛泽东, to my knowledge.

Personally I think that Arabia is honored by the higher quality that the term "arabica" stands for, while the word "robust", which means all good things in software development, is kind of smeared by the lower quality that "robusta", which is a word related to coffee, implies.

I've only popped in and seen friends once or few times since our toddler daughter was born. Combined with my trying to establish an itsy bitsy biz of my own, yes, I've been that busy.

O.K., nowadays there's a little more time at my hand. My social life will be easier.

In Canada, if a young individual doesn't have at least a CEGEP or an undergraduate education, it's nearly certain that his future career prospect will be wrecked by the lacking, unless he runs his own business or he's a tradesman or something like that.

It's not discrimination or something, but it's just the damn competition in the market.

Where there always tend to be some, if not many, young people with Arts degrees making a living close to minimum wage, potential employers have many choices. Then why would he choose one mentioned above instead of another with an Arts degree? At least the latter writes and speaks better, if not much better, than the former, most likely.

On the other hand, my above words are not to say that the person without a higher education can't manage to get one in the future, near or far. After all, this is Canada. It shouldn't be too hard to attain, if one puts his mind to it, reasonably, before his fifties.

I wonder if American and Canadian stand-up comedies will become popular in China in the future, as more and more young Chinese become more and more fluent in English listening comprehension, as well as more and more knowledgeable about the North American way of life.

Since the 20th century, we are apt to see much less insinuation in the mainland Chinese language than in the English one, it seems.

Before I left China for Canada around a decade ago, I had never known so greatly many sorts of confections exist in this world.

Westerners do have sweet teeth.

Programming languages can be regarded as translators between developers and hard-core, so to speak, computers.

The languages' runtime execute the developers' commands.

There's a commonplace misconception among some young people, especially among many young Chinese.

They make themselves sort of believe their employer companies' glamour is their own, but the truth almost always remains to be that the latter is only a changeling of the former.

Given the mentality of Quebecois, it wouldn't be reasonable to predict that the months long massive student protests in Montreal will be easily smashed by the Quebec government.

See this news interview with the spokesperson of CLASSE: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/face-of-quebecs-student-protest-surprised-by-its-power/article2425572/.

Although some media sources said that this protest is about the government's austerity measures, personally I would say it's perhaps also about intergenerational equity. The young generation in Quebec, maybe also in the whole Canada, has their dissatisfaction with the generation of baby boomers.

Signet rings are interesting, as well as coats of arms, in the eyes of mine, a Chinese Canadian who had been brought up in a closed China.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signet_ring#Signet_rings.

Vintage music video - 虹 - 齐秦 - At The Salem Music Awards Show in London, U.K. in 1989

齊秦 1989年赴英國倫敦參加第一屆Salem Music Show亞洲音樂節，同行的包括香港張國榮，內地崔健等等。
齊秦演唱『紀念日』專輯中的歌曲『虹』（英文被翻譯為RED，XD），
...
特別感謝新加坡榮迷的無私奉獻，
才得以看到如此珍貴的視頻。
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw2cGB92dmM


Lyrics:
虹
演唱 : 齊秦

我夢到天邊有一道的彩虹
在泛白的東方幾度的出現
我夢到天邊有一道的彩虹
在泛白的東方幾度的出現

洗過的天空
沒有一片的雲彩
那天邊的驚虹
彷彿訴說古往今來的故事

在我的心中有一道的彩虹
在年少憂愁裡幾度的出現
在我的心中有一道的彩虹
在無知歲月裡幾度的出現

迷惘的人群
沒有一絲的真情
那心中的驚虹
彷彿嘲笑自己幻滅的人生

What happens in the U.S. doesn't only stay in the U.S, generally speaking.

RIM's currently booming overseas market share, such as that in Indonesia, will eventually be smashed and taken away by iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. Plus, the market share of Windows Phone devices is rising quite aggressively.

I love the effervescent sunshine.

The historic thread of thought that one's life is ordained by the God or fate has never really disappeared.

But I've rarely heard that sort of thinking from native Americans and Canadians. It's got something to do with the influences of the American Puritanism, I just guess.

The combination of chicken and onions make relatively good toppings for pizza.

Antsy for the summer, the sun hangs out in the sky.

The historic sinking of the legendary Tudor warship Mary Rose is sort of reminiscent of how complexities encumber and even fail the continuous operation and deployment of large software systems.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Rose#Causes_of_sinking .

By the way, the Mary Rose warship of Tudor has a romantic name, doesn't it?

Which lingua franca will the increasing internationalization of Montreal lead to?

Some of China's politicians are good at putting out flowery speeches. But I guess Chinese people care more and more about facts.

We can see many Asian companies commit to buying energy in the forms of crude oil, natural gas, and so on, from Western energy companies.

And we can see how energy-hungry Asian countries and industries are.

Ideas have been percolating in my mind. And I've been gradually executing and evolving them.

The true power only comes from the above second sentence, not the first one.

Historically, Russia sent tributary wealth twice to the Qing Dynasty, the then China. How history turned drastically afterwards, regarding the relative levels of power of the two countries.

Besides, one thing I don't quite understand is why Great Britain sent tributes to China for four times between 1793 and 1816, given that Great Britain must have become one of the super powers in the world back then.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tributaries_of_Imperial_China#Qing_Dynasty.

Among the most crucial tasks which higher education needs to accomplish are to develop in students a knack of thinking deeply and to pass on to students the value system which regards intellectualism highly.

Nevertheless, the two above tasks often fail. We can see the traces of that failure in some people who hold university degrees.

Ice isn't a traditional foodstuff. But if you can find a machine to mash it nicely and then infuse some delicious cold drink into it, then you've made a good potential drink for hot sale.

And that's how fast food chain restaurants and coffee houses serve their customers in the summertime.

Iced cappuccino is an example of such at Tim Horton's.

An excellent quote

"Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords."
--King Richard, as in King Richard II by Shakespeare

"Couscous" is a unique name, I think.

I don't know how much trepidation China actually holds for the following mounting problem. But I think it should hold some.

The increasing aging demographic is a global phenomenon. For countries like the U.S. and Canada, it's not really that threatening, I guess. After all, developed countries which are not very crowded, which the U.S. and Canada are, can always just loosen their immigration threshold a little bit, and more young immigrants, potentially from all corners of the world, will just file in due to the attractiveness of many aspects of building a life in those rich countries.

But China playing the immigration card? Isn't the Middle Kingdom already quite crowded? Can it really attract many young immigrants from abroad?

And, with the ubiquitous domestic feeling that the living costs in China have climbed so high and to almost unbearable levels, coupled with the lack of good social welfare programs targeting to help families raise their children, can China spawn enough young people by itself?

HP computers have done me a yeoman's service these years. I like them.

But I should've bought models equipped with larger memories. For that matter, I mean memories twice as large as in mainstream models at any given time.

I think the word "impediment" is one of the words which sound the most crispest among those ones ending with the suffix "-ment".

Blessed are those who deserve implicit trust.

Theoretically, there are many rogues and jerks in this world. One has his share of meeting them.

Also theoretically, there are many good people in the world. One also has his fair share of meeting them.

I think it's almost impossible for people who hadn't experienced being attacked severely during the Cultural Revolution to really understand the baseness of it.

Nowadays a lot of novel writers in English crank out fictions very quickly, individually, every year.

Essentially, many, if not most, of those books are the MacDonald hamburger equivalent in the book world, I'm afraid.

My work progress has been clogged by the taking care of my toddler daughter, which is much more to be done than expected from looking on the surface.

But that's life. In half or one year, I'll be much freer.

When a biz owner needs to do some big changes to his already successful biz, it's natural for him to have trepidation.

Life's never easy. When you're not successful, you want to become. When you're already successful, you still have to overcome enormous difficulties, both expected and unexpected, otherwise you would fail easily down the road.

Along the way, I'm apt to consider that Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Apple have played fair, although I don't know all the details of what they've done all these years.

Music videos - 心的祈祷 - 臧天朔 / 张行

歌词：

心的祈祷
作曲：臧天朔
作词：黄小茂（主持人李静的老公，华纳前总监）
--------
我祈祷 那没有痛苦的爱
却难止住泪流多少
我祈祷 忘记已离去的你
却又唱起 你教的歌谣
我没有怨你
我心里知道 我知道
我祈祷 留下孤独的我
走向天涯 走向海角
我祈祷 带上无言的爱
从此失去心里的笑
我与影同行
我心里知道 我知道
----
我知道 天涯路漫漫
我还要去 海角遥遥
我知道 失去的是什么
我又启程 却不是寻找
我心里明了
我心里知道 我知道
我像那一支火鸟
无声地燃烧
我要唱那 那一首歌谣
伴我天涯海角
----

黄小茂的词好，臧天朔的曲好！

In Canada, Tim Horton's is very notable at the $5-7 price point for lunches.

It seems that there's no big difference between a salmon fillet and a salmon steak in the ways I cook them.

I've seen a few relatively weak businesses act as if they are playing by the axis of capital, which they actually somewhat lack or completely lack. I consider their outlooks, let alone prosperity, to be problematic in the long run.

I think Baton Rouge, Louisiana has got a nice name, hasn't it?

Americans are inherently much against statism. However, are the bureaucrats in its government naturally apt to be wanting to be more of statists deep inside their hearts?

English became the lingua franca of the world. In essence, it's a phonetic language. By contrast, Chinese is a symbolic language. So the translation of some Chinese words into English can be funny.

A real-life example happened in a Montreal office with a Chinese whose last name is 缪 (spelled commonly as "Miao" in English and pronounced as /'miau/, according to the pronunciation of the original Chinese word). So when one vocal Western colleague of hers learned that her family name is such, the female co-worker uttered "oh my God, her name is Meow" (In English, "meow" means the crying sound made by a cat).

:-)

J said to the store clerk, "I've been kept being asked what my postal code is, for your company's customer locations survey, since last year. Has any new store been opened during the interval?"

As a matter of fact, the historically new layer of human rights, in the organization of human societies, removes most people further from villainy.

I for one am a fly on the wall when RIM's fate has been unfolding.

What a spectacular fall that has been. I guess it has revealed a probable classic flaw that the Canadian biz mentality possesses, which is a biz needs not to participate in or even be posted from innovation frontiers.

It's said that Dell's historically continuous choice of not doing any real R&D and instead focusing on excelling at supply chain management can be its own undoing, especially after it has missed the first years of opportunities of jumping on the bandwagon of smart phones and tablets.

Being lofty and esoteric is different than being haughty.

With Montreal's air being actually dusty, I wonder if dining alfresco, e.g. on a patio, is really good.

Anyways, that shouldn't bother.

Well, I never really knew "rainbow" also stands for "homo" in slang terms.

No offense towards LGBT with the "h..." word, though.

J has a knack of sensing people's abnormal feelings, or emotions, so to speak.

"Benet" is now an obscure word. But it's a good word, with its meaning straightforwardly hinted by its structure.

See http://www.thefreedictionary.com/benet.

It's as good as "begone" and "besiege".

How many baristas can you feel celebrate coffee while they are making it?

Mr. Earl Jones was a knave, a rogue and he fleeced his clients dozens of millions of dollars.

He betrayed other people's trust of him. I wonder how that is explained theoretically in Moral Philosophy.

No one can bate the ever accelerating paces of the changes of the business world, especially in the software technology industry. It's a collective phenomenon.

Apparently, Quebec celebrates equality in some or many ways.

Speech impediments include stammer, lisp, and so on.

Yes, when I see that word "lisp", I always am curious about whether it has something to do with the Lisp programming language, though I always knew that's highly unlikely. :-)

In Canada's political system, the position of the Leader of the Official Opposition is marvelous, I think.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leader_of_the_Official_Opposition_(Canada).
Quote:

The Leader of the Opposition is entitled to the same levels of pay and protection as a Cabinet minister. He or she is entitled to reside at the official residence of Stornoway and ranks fourteenth on the Order of Precedence, after Cabinet ministers and before lieutenant governors of the provinces.

What a figure David Ogilvy is! And how he looks like an old-era English gentleman.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ogilvy_(businessman).

By the way, Mr. Ogilvy (pronunciation: /'oɡəlvi/) is not to be confused with the Ogilvy's department store in Montreal. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogilvy_(department_store).

Typing on the computer keyboard gives my daily computing a tactile quality.

The notion of "rogue state" is interesting.

Quote:

Rogue state is a controversial term applied by some international theorists to states they consider threatening to the world's peace. This means meeting certain criteria, such as being ruled by authoritarian regimes that severely restrict human rights, sponsor terrorism, and seek to proliferate weapons of mass destruction. The term is used most by the United States, though it has been applied by other countries. 

... 

A common presumption applied to rogue states is that they do not necessarily behave rationally or in their own best interests. In political theory it is generally believed that a stable nation, ruled by a leadership that is subject to broad scrutiny (though not necessarily democratic scrutiny), will tend to act in its own best interests and will not take actions that are directly contrary to its own interests, particularly not to its own survival. Rogue states, however, may not be subject to this assumption and, as such, relations with them may be more complicated and unpredictable. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_state

We are all groping or fishing for opportunities in the sea of information.

Once upon a time, Microsoft far exceeded Apple. Nowadays, it's the opposite.

The inversion of their relative competitive positions makes me astonished by showing what time can change.

E. X. is cranky. Anyways.

The new generation of websites usually have simple web page layout, but not all instances of it are pleasant.

To a certain degree, many free websites supported by ads are in the experience business, I think.

For instance, when I look up the definition of "bilbo" at dictionary.com on my Android phone, the website presents several ads of cruise trips in front of me, alongside the word's definition. So by injecting semantically relevant ads into my browsing experience in which I look up a word, it remakes and tries to maneuver my online experience and tries to automatically generate sales leads for advertisers.

In this world, many business negotiations are greatly encumbered by the lack of trust and creditability. One option is to just let them go.

I'm completely untrained in music. But I'm curious about why a galopp (the German word for "galop") is a Polka.

I found that while googling about the Chineser Galopp by Johann Strauss I. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Strauss_I#Polkas.

Shipboard mutinies are especially harmful for a country's military actions.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutiny#Famous_mutinies.

Do the recent labor strikes at Air Canada, both legal and illegal, resemble them?  :-)

It seems that when a sales agent finds out that a competing supplier has a much lower price, then how his current supplier treats him becomes questionable in his own mind.

《春雨》

悵臥新春自祫衣 

白門寥落意多違 

紅樓隔雨相望冷 

珠箔飄燈獨自歸 

遠路應悲春晼晚 

殘宵猶得夢依稀 

玉璫緘札何由達  

萬里雲羅一雁飛

--李商隱之《春雨》

Music video - 江南 - 林俊杰

四月二十二日。Montreal。小雨雪。

我喜歡看晚春斜雨細雪裡，方形路燈側畔的綠楓樹、綠楓樹側畔的方形路燈。

Video - Erzberg Rodeo 2009

The hill climbing in the first minute is sick! Those motorcycle rodeos rock.

The chalices of spring flowers in Jiangnan must be filled with rainwater now.

The faces of some Caucasians are so palish white that there would be no rosiness at all on their cheeks if they didn't rouge them.

I look forward to the day when our toddler daughter will begin to eat her dinners completely by herself. On that day, my wife would happily quit waiting on her and save a little more time.

Before our daughter was born, I'd never realized that it takes so much time and energy to take care of an individual without self-care abilities. Even the smallest things which hadn't previously passed my mind add up to take a good chunk of time.

Throughout the years, I've been doubling down on building my life and career based in Canada. I'm not sure if my parting with China was a river of no return.

My wife and I used to buy instant miso soup paste made in Japan.

No more since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster broke out in Japan in March 2011. Because we became afraid of potential radiation pollution of foodstuff made in Japan.

In any area, even for those in the U.S., which used to boast "American dream" for individuals, many average Joes and average Janes are apt to be dubious about local biz tycoons, or even harbor spleen against them, especially during economically difficult years. That's my impression.

And I suspect that's what drives some wealthy people to do philanthropic work and donations in order for them to contain and stave off that dubiousness and spleen.

Cats mew. Dogs bark. People speak. There is a two-way communication sphere around each individual.

The thing is, how do you manage that sphere?

In this world, it happens a lot that the rift between or among people causes them to drift apart.

Well, I'm glad that Montreal is among the top 50 cities worldwide, in terms of livability, according to a 2011 report by Mercer.

See http://www.mercer.com/qualityoflivingpr#city-rankings.

Everyday, as the HOURS go by silently, my heart droops. But it doesn't droop as the DAYS go by, because I know I've been making efforts day after day, everyday.

How vivid the word "bounce", as in "bouncer", is.

Both the biz owner and the customers know the moments of truth. But the biz owner may not care very much.

J always keeps a far-flung outlook for his life since his salad days.

Most of ancient Chinese poems make use of many rhyming couplets. That phenomenon seems not to be as pervasive in ancient English poems. No, not at all.

You know, chicks like to chill together. But each of them will learn how to fly only in her or its own way. :-)

Wow, the above line is my first pun in 2012. Not bad, huh? :-)

Pivotal is a company's texture and culture. I wonder how many companies have robust and good ones in presence and in formation.

Better than three of the most famous electronics multinationals have been in red in their respective latest fiscal years, i.e. either 2011 or 2010. And they are Philips (HQ in Netherlands), Sony (HQ in Japan), Panasonic (HQ in Japan), and JVC Kenwood (HQ in Japan), to my incomplete knowledge.

The electronics industry has been a tough one to be in since the early 2000s, my impression tells me.

Uncontrolled and unmanaged, information overload is a major impediment to productivity.

To quit Facebooking and Twittering, after careful evaluation and consideration, can be the first step towards managing info. overload.

Personally, I've abandoned them around two years ago.

Standing at the dawn of digital economy, I think the current biz models of many Montreal retail stores look problematic.

I don't know how quickly they will be able to adjust themselves and adapt when the tides come.

I don't know. The words "dove" and "pigeon" mean precisely the same thing. However, it seems that "dove" has a more beautiful and lovable flair associated with it.

有時候，你在掌勺時，看見炒鍋中的紅燒茄塊在『明油亮芡』這最後一道工序中明亮起來，感覺有點像在昏暗悶熱的夜裡驀然看見清風明月拂楊柳一樣，小驚喜的心情變得輕快明亮了起來。

When coffee house owners talk about "sensory triggers", you know they are talking about an experience business.

It's so incredulously hot today. It's still April, not June!

Sigh. RIM may have very well missed another opportunity to save itself. It was a huge mistake. The company's end will present itself anon.

See Exclusive: Former RIM boss sought strategy shift before he quit | Business | Reuters.

Here goes an essay over egalitarianism which is difficult to read for my completely untrained eyes.

See EQUALITY -- WHAT IT IS, by Prof. Ted Honderich who had worked at and had been educated at UCL. The essay tries to explain the core of the ideology of the Left, I suppose. The drift must be he's with the Left, I guess?

The HTML5 localStorage and sessionStorage thing is interesting.

Many Chinese immigrants in Canada are hindered, by their inadequate or outright limited English, when they face career choices. That's a moment of truth.

They lack the required cultural capital and it's likely no one had told them that before they boarded on an airplane and flew out of the Chinese border. The thing is, not only they lack it, but also they don't have time or aren't willing to remedy it.

It's said that in Canada, many people in traditional service trades have questionable honesty. For instances, car mechanics, building repair people, and financial advisers (read, financial salesmen).

And we often hear journalists cry out "buyers beware".

But, it still may be the case that the numbers of good people in those trades far exceed that of their corrupt peers.

Any biz deal is an exchange of biz values and economic values. You've got to accept it, warts and all.

It seems that there are all kinds of rodeos taking place in this world.

We have the traditional rodeos, we have the motorcycle rodeos, we have the auto ones, and now we have the browsing rodeo. Yes, browsing is becoming a rodeo, you know, riding a wildly capable browser till you're dizzy. See Chrome Multitask Mode.

I think it's not my cup of tea, well, yet?

Are we gonna see Oracle's crumbling down the road?

New technologies which can make themselves popular are always the hit squad of their older counterparts.

And welcome to the lifelong learning software industry.

You've got to enjoy life, warts and all.

For every entrepreneur at the beginning, it's natural for him to be doubtful.

But after having chased and researched about the market and potential customers, it's then natural for him to be more confident and productive.

The spinach I used to eat in China is quite different than the one I see in local commonplace grocery stores in Montreal such as IGA.

To cook the spinach available over here, frying with oil doesn't do well. Instead, sautéing the spinach with butter produces a smoothly delicious green veggie dish.