The fall is drizzling and raining away.

There naturally exists a bubble of conceit for everyone.

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

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

Music video - Andre Rieu - La vie est belle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

People in finance will be floored, probably.

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

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

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

I think he deserves to be chided.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pics - Retro

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

Retro...

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

Retro!

"Hover between abstraction and representation"

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

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

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

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

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

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

I became better after they had happened.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Entrepreneurs have to be cross-silo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This seems to be an innate illness of capitalism finance.

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

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

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

Also see Confronting the Malefactors by Dr. Paul Krugman.

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

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

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

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

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

Freedom is a deep concept. Creative freedom too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In that afternoon, I moped about the Sherbrooke street.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

西方文化的線索，不容易釐清。

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just my current personal impressions.

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

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

But maybe I'm wrong.

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

Some syntactic sugar wastes developers' time.

最怕就是 無感。

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

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

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

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

J's dream hovers in the sky.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pic - Mercury

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pic - Mars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Such a deed' and 'sweet religion'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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