The notions of 'general Providence' and 'special Providence', as in Christianity and Judaism, are too profound to be ignored.

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

Eventually, I'll return to Asia if opportunities present themselves, I think.

I don't know what's the magic with the direction of west.

You know, the old Europe went west and found the American continent, Japan and Asia have sought to learn from the West, and in the modern history of the U.S. and Canada, going west seems to always look appealing.

It's apparent that the Conservative government of Canada purposes to establish Canadian power in the northern territory.

How will the U.S. behave in that vast area?

For aught I know, almost all progresses in one's competence are done in his own private thinking and practicing.

Personally I'm fond of the atmosphere of the Starbucks and Second Cup rendezvous.

Video - The Thatcher years

I came across this excellent video piece.




On the other hand, some of her naysayers called Mrs. Margaret Thatcher "the scourge of the (19)80s". (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcU5E3Ym7og .)

I don't know much about British politics. But Thatcher intrigues me.

Personally I think the writing by The New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell looks authoritative.

Does every standing tree have at least one cicatrix?

Does every standing man have at least one scar?

It seems that a free society like Canada sanctions many advantages in life, along the way, for individuals with critical thinking and sound judgement. On the other hand, it gives those without them only mediocre rewards.

Grizzly bears, most of which reside in Alaska and Canada, are such gigantic dangerous beasts.

'Most adult female grizzlies weigh 130–200 kilograms (290–440 lb), while adult males weigh on average 180–360 kilograms (400–790 lb). The average total length in this subspecies is 198 centimetres (6.50 ft)'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grizzly_bear#Description

And grizzly bears would be named 'grisly bears', if a historical mistake didn't happen. And that name would be an excellently descriptive one. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grizzly_bear#Name .

The move proposed in the below NYT op-ed will be a provident one for the U.S., if it gets adopted by the country's politicians.

See To Save Our Economy, Ditch Taiwan.

Babies are less intelligent, so they are more importunate.

It seems that in ancient Western mythologies, cherubs never grow up and they stay to be children forever, if there is a time dimension at all in the mythical world.

I feel that the normal usage, which is normally imprudent, of Facebook, Twitter, and the like encroaches on our time.

We should be abnormal in how much time we spend on them.

I'm afraid that however high the turnout of the Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Toronto, Occupy Vancouver, and Occupy Wherever is, there won't be much change in the way in which the economies of Anglo-Saxon countries is run and in the way in which the finance industry controls the economy in these countries.

The importance of finance is very deep-rooted in Anglo-Saxon societies.

I've been quite amused to find out that Shania Twain, a contemporary Canadian country singer, has got a step brother named 'Mark Twain'.

I'm not sure if the fat cats' life has been inspected and tried to elevate, by themselves.

Canadian hockey stars have got a long-standing image of bruisers. That's right. Northern bruisers.

An inconvenient contraption is any website which doesn't automatically put the cursor in the input box for you as soon as your browser opens it, I think.

Zucchini tastes mild.

The darkness of night is already descended at 5:15pm on this late fall day.

Those yellow luminous street lamps make you feel freshly warm.

When the British parliament is convoked, man, all those voices and noises.

Is being provident an indicator of being wiser?

Johnson & Johnson had been quite politic in the marketing of its products to people. But no more will many consumers trust it.

See 'Make safer baby shampoo,' groups tell J&J.

And, by the way, Johnson & Johnson and SC Johnson & Son seem to be two unrelated companies. The former is a public company, and the latter is a private one and much smaller.

Looking back at my life path, I came to Canada opportunely, without wasting my time in China.

I have no regret over that decision.

Just now, I glanced at the computer timer, and it showed '2:14 AM', which was the time after the Daylight Saving Time end adjustment had automatically taken place on my computer moments before.

I realized I gained one hour, then interestingly, a slight shiver of excitement ran through my body.

Information overload is a scourge. Information abundance is a bless.

I felt poignant when I opened my Google Reader just now.

I suspect that the mobile multitude loves iPhone and iPad because those two products bring them even sleeker entertainment. Entertainment, unfortunately, is eating up people's precious spare time.

I for one have been jaded by the importunity of the ongoing back-to-back economic crises.

Well, maybe I shouldn't expect peace of mind to be the norm of economic life. Instead, I must expect chaos and disasters to be it.

Where potatoes are sold loose, the price of each is much higher than their counterparts in bags.

Does the same thing apply to the labor market? No, it doesn't add up.

How much has China been defined and shaped by the grisly 'Cultural Revolution' between the 1960s and 1970s in the country?

I believe the good social fabrics had been largely broken and then wild Capitalist social fabrics and values sprung up and filled the places left by those broken ones.

Some people say that Germany helps Greece and the like with their sovereign debt problems because it just wants to be a Good Samaritan. Does that saying add up?

Are dentists knavish?

Hummer, the discontinued luxury SUV, probably will have some value for collection.

Here goes an interesting kind of copyright infringement which runs deep in Chinese tradition.

See Yes, He Sold Fakes. They Are Supposed to Be Fake.

One probable replication by the consumers to Google's imposing change that the Google Reader won't support the 'Share' and 'Share with note' functionality any more is to flee to other service providers and not to trust the new products which Google will roll out in the future very much.

In the Chrome browser, for my most often used web apps, I prefer them to be bookmarklets than to be Chrome extensions or Chrome apps.

Many people tend to think theories are irrelevant to the real world and never the twain shall meet. Should I beg to differ?

Importune seems to be the fear of not being in the know in this era of information overload.

The pith of Harvard U. seems to be the Harvard Yard.

But maybe it's not. The pith of it is lonely strenuous academic life.

Sometime I see women with bruises on their faces walking out of a car or in a shopping center or whatever, I naturally suspect they're in the situations of domestic violence.

In today's world, getting an academic degree is more and more like a CYA, not like real education.

In terms of providence, maybe people who majored in arts in university have less of it than people who majored in science and engineering. I meant after graduation.

It can be unnatural for an atheist Chinese to completely understand the concept of 'divine jealousy' in Christianity and Judaism.

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

Moreover, I'm also intrigued by the Christian perspective on human jealousy.

Our baby daughter was annoying during last night's dinner. But I shouldn't have lashed at the table.

I signed up Facebook years ago. Then I've stayed out of circulation in that sphere since. Facebook is just not my cup of tea yet.

I used to haunt coffee shops.

It's been bruited about that the eventual actual procurement cost for F-35 jet fighters, which are a seemingly important sort of 5th-generation jet fighter made by Lockheed Martin, has soared to an estimated US$156 million each, from the earliest projection of US$50.2 million each.

See the 3rd paragraph of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-35_Lightning_II
and
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/03/12/lockheed-fighter-idUSN1123180820100312 .

I guess Canada will beef up its mettle and buy those F-35 air fighters anyway, largely due to its escalating concerns over the northern territory.

It looks probable that there will be a sea change in worldwide attitudes towards studying in a university in the U.S, whose cost has been soaring and soaring in the past decade or so and can hardly be justified for its intrinsic value in terms of education.

For one thing, see this: Should College Grads Get a Break on Their Loans? - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com .

Marriage is a work. I've worked hand in glove with my wife for the development of our life and family.

I'm happy that the internet technologies have broken the monopoly of the dissemination of knowledge by universities and publishing companies.

Unlike some others, Y offered me opportune help. So I respect him relatively deeply.

Until now, our baby daughter seems to be a bit brainish.

Personally I wouldn't like to see the Occupy Wall Street to fizzle out.

I grew up in a small town by the Yangtze river in China.

Maybe, it would be even better to grow up by sea, which constantly makes heave.

The consumerist values are so dominant in the mainstream Canadian society. I'm not sure if I completely agree with that particular inclination.

Across the world, will China see the ever growing influences of consumerism in its society?

Is there a slight possibility that the claim of Gaddafi's death is a knavery set up by him?

RBC importunes their customers to set up a line of credit with them or buy their so-called 'Talk & Save' long distance plan. Who needs those two products?

Sometimes it's boring to watch government finance officials prate about economic prospects, in their typically dull and measured words.

I am going to become old. My hair will grizzle, my motion will slow down, and my body will be feeble.

Will my lived life feel like vapor at that time?

There's a fine line to differentiate among service providers.

One group is those providers who reasonably fairly offer services with the reasonable expectation to gain income; the other is those who are somewhat schematically after people's money and should be hoist with their own petard or somehow punished, ideally.

The azure gets bruised by the weather and presents a darkish grey cloudy sky.

The editors at The New York Times love to opine. That's fine. But, shouldn't they strive to be more objective, comprehensive, or inclined towards being value-free in their editorials?

See this NYT editorial: It’s What They Asked For.

People from a certain region in China are sort of like adders to friendship.

Yahoo! has been fizzling out. What time can do to any big company.

'A table for twain,' J uttered to the waitress.

Apple, Microsoft, Google, Motorola, Samsung, HTC et al. have been in the court suing each other and claiming other companies have infringed on their own patents in mobile computing. What a messy war.

Maybe IP litigators will become increasingly busy in the coming decades.

The last four teeth are beginning to grow out on our toddler daughter.

That last round of teething presents both wholesome growth and pains for her, problems for us.

Do you think 'keyboard navigation' is a better term than 'keyboard shortcuts'? I think so.

Until now, all the commonplace beers in Canada are cleft into two tiers in my mind: Heineiken and Stella Artois, and the rest.

I owned an LG cell phone. It'd got a really elegant design.

And my appetite for LG's industrial design, its product quality aside, was whetted by that phone since.

在 iPhone 和 iPad 市場份額節節高的這個時代，我估計還是有不少人是希望 Android 翻盤的。

An entrepreneur's ignorance and meanness bruises his business and his staff. Eventually, it's himself who gets nothing after years of efforts.

Ignorance and meanness doesn't go far in this world.

Maybe unction is too prevalent in North America.

I remember the drizzly streets with grasses and fallen leaves in my hometown.

Word of this grisly fresh incident in China has been bruited about across the world.

'A Chinese toddler who was ignored by at least 18 passers-by as she lay bleeding and unconscious in the street, has died, the hospital treating her said Friday, in an incident that has shocked the nation. ...' See Chinese toddler Yue Yue dies in hospital after shocking hit and run.

Gee. Do people want to live in that sort of society? I'm telling you, some Chinese people are like those 18 passers-by in the news story. Are we going to see more and more trespasses like that?

When I see a dog gambol, then I know it's really happy.

On the other hand, I've never seen a cat being really happy.

For a washing machine, a 'quick wash' doesn't often mean quick and dirty.

Sometimes it's hard for me to have a quiet cup of coffee during the day.

I'm not sure how my Chinese and English proficiency will conjoin in the future. But it looks probable.

The male protagonist in the movie 'Twilight' wears a ghastly white face. That sort of images are not my cup of tea.

My door is open to the balcony. The night wind is fizzling.

How sweet quietness is.

There's nearly no glitch in Windows 7 now. I guess Windows 8 will be crucial and a tipping point for Microsoft which will determine its fate in its competition with Apple.

The glare of hot summer sun is long gone. My life has grown older by another season.

I wonder how a mayfly feels.

The diaper leaked on our toddler daughter. That made a bit of inconvenience for me.

How many little and large bits of inconvenience parents have to go through to bring up a child.

One thing I've held against Google is that I'd been using the Google Notebook for years, and then poof, the maintenance of it got discontinued by Google.

And then I scrambled to find alternatives by other service providers, whose integration with other Google services always is not as good as that of my parted Google Notebook.

It looks that Obama's hair has turned grizzly from a state of being all dark. The guy has been doing a job which is tough on him.

Normally untreated excrement pollutes water and makes it undrinkable. Then how could ancient people drink water directly from rivers and so on?

The incorporeal time is both my friend and my enemy.

Presumption of innocence in the metro/subway

If you are a man, probably you've had this commonplace little experience in life. When you take the metro/subway and you're waiting for the train on a passenger platform, you absentmindedly or unawarely move a little too close to a woman and stand there. The woman subtly adjusts the position of her handbag on her shoulder and makes sure that it's safe from your possible fetching or something.

See, the woman can have Reasonable Doubt that you would possibly steal her purse or something, yet you have the presumed innocence as stated in the legal principle of Presumption of Innocence. So the train finally arrives, and you two step onto it and then you move away from the woman which possessed a pinch of Reasonable Doubt about your behavior a moment ago. And this episode of Presumption of Innocence finishes.

You see, this whole notion of Presumption of Innocence intrigues me. There's a catch though. If "the burden of proof rests on who asserts, not on who denies" (see the first paragraph of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence ), why do some defendants in some legal cases have to provide alibis to the courts which they are judged in?

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.