I used to think Google is nearly perfect.

Not any more, since it cancelled the "Shared items" thing in Google Reader and supplanted it with Google+.

But Google has retained some classiness here and there, still.

I think Motorola makes picked phones.

風雪連路，街燈暗淡。蒙特婁，朔方之地。

Enthusiasts across the world have been snapping up any new product which Apple rolls out. Such a phenomenon.

There are two sorts of entrepreneurs. One sort are in purgatory, the other in limbo.

The former will eventually go to heaven, and the latter will perennially stay in oblivion.

A plate is twice as big as a stoup. :-)

See Cambridge Ale - NYT.

"If a stoup of ale were ordered, a quart pot would be sent; if a plate, a great tankard containing two quarts."

Cambridge culture. "...those still, book-lined chambers, the very air of which seemed saturated with the aroma of elegant scholarship".

It seems good that Quebec possesses an egalitarian streak.

I've seen many Chinese immigrants in Montreal whose English needs to get mended. But they put no efforts in it.

I'm afraid by that, they've drastically narrowed down their future career choices and flexibility.

Anyways, they made that choice. Who am I to insist they should enhance their English? Moreover, it's really very painstaking and time-consuming (been there, done that), as a matter of fact which most of native speakers of Western languages never have seemed to comprehend, by the way.

The word "publican" feels remote and intimately mysterious.

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

What sort of equity would you most like to own? Equity in your own business, equity in your mortgaged house, or equity in the public stock market?

How does it feel in public houses in Europe these days which are immersed in the steep economic recession?

I suspect that some failed entrepreneurs have cudgeled their brains about why they failed and probably they will never find it.

It's just in their blind spot, and it is that they don't know how to be a good man. As simple as that, and as profound as that.

Time is my enemy everyday. Time is my friend in the long term.

Is goodman Stephen Harper all about the economy of Canada?

The seventy-ish billionaire businessman Richard Elman 'started career as a "coolie in a scrap yard" after quitting school at age 15'.

See http://www.forbes.com/profile/richard-elman/ .

How grieved he must feel when he looks back to his puzzled scrapyard "coolie" years, I guess.

Many software developers have flocked to mobile dev in good faith. Is there a bubble in that industry?

I don't know how well Panasonic cherishes its own brand name. It would probably do well if it managed the quality of its products, many of which are made in China, BETTER.

If a Japanese major brand loses its quality appeal, it loses its way in this world, which is overflowed with commodity product suppliers with relatively shoddy workmanship.

By the way, the above thought of mine about Panasonic products' deteriorating quality can be accompanied by this piece of news: Sony, Panasonic Forecast Deeper Losses as Samsung Dominates.

Are the occurrences of poorer product workmanship and historical corporate loss just a coincidence for Panasonic? Probably not.

For a biz, amenability to market demands and customer demands are crucial. But for life, maybe unamenability to them are.

Many people think Groupon has done errantly with the investors' money it raised.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupon#Initial_public_offering_filing .

Life and competition is less equitable in China than in the U.S. and Canada. Why do some Chinese return to the former from the latter and try to snatch opportunities over there? What advantages do they have there? Or they mainly just wanna make a quick buck?

This is a tough era for the rulers in Arab countries. They must be afraid to be sent to the gallows by the mass one day.

Arab people's world is no longer the same as before, profoundly.

Should e-commerce websites call their free shipping, which typically happens when your purchase order reaches a certain amount of dollars, "courtesy shipping" instead?

When J was in his teens and twenties, he had never thought he would want to become a classy guy when he grew mature. That is called enlightenment.

Due to modern standards, the old-fashioned English word "heathen" is indeed an offensive one which has a rather ancient beginning of existence.

In the Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary, its noun form has got two meanings:

1: an unconverted member of a people or nation that does not acknowledge the God of the Bible
2: an uncivilized or irreligious person

Essentially, the doctrine reflected in the word dictates that the civilization and education of a person equals to the enlightenment of him about the great existence, authority, and love of God. Well, that had been true in Western history when education and civilization had been mainly conducted in and through Christian churches and their affiliated facilities.

It seems that the hoariness of the BBQ chicken restaurant industry doesn't prevent new eateries of its sort from perennially popping up.

There seems to be some sort of start-up boom in the U.S., Canada, and China. Do you want to snatch the opportunity? Do you dare to? :-)

Social media marketing aside, I don't find Facebook an apt tool to be used among most average Joes.

Facebooking is overly time-consuming, overly vain, and overly addictive.

我喜歡陽光。今天 Montreal 的陽光好。

古時的游牧民族『逐水草而居』。我這種人最理想的遷徙方式應該是逐春日秋陽而居吧。

不知道對於人類的身體來說，歷經春秋卻不經冬夏的身體是什麼狀態。

Why do opportunities slide askance? Because one hasn't prepared very well for them.

So from now on, don't waste an hour of your time. Instead, put it to good use in order to prepare for future opportunities :-)

It's very apparent that the beleaguered and plagued ship of RIM will sink further, willy-nilly.

An acquaintance of mine, who switched from Blackberry to iPhone, just now said to me that the latter is A LOT better than the former. For one thing, the Blackberry Messenger, which is even one of the flagship features of Blackberry products, constantly freezes, while iPhone offers many excellent features and apps which easily win over those of Blackberry.

All in all, now seems to be the time to count the months to the end of RIM known as an independent company in existence, given the fleetingly changing competitive landscape of the smart phone and tablet industry (read: Apple, Android, Samsung, HTC, Amazon's Kindle Fire), combined with the relatively weak leadership in the RIM corporation and the relatively slow speed of innovation and improvement of RIM's products.

All the above remarks of mine are as-objective-as-possible evaluation of the situation, from my perspective.

Has the intergenerational equity been broken between the baby boomers and the following generations?

There are so many delvers into the stock market speculation in this world.

Financial market speculation is a great global pastime.

In the popular flick "Forrest Gump", Gump had never let his persistence to be douted, not even a shred.

However, it seems that he had had no consideration of morals until the end, from my impression which is vague now.

I've just snatched a relatively quick recovery from a cold. Boy, it's rough to be caught in sickness in a busy life.

I think Spanish is easily melodious.

I don't like very much the situation that in Canada, patients are very amenable to being blindfolded by the medical doctors.

Some doctors don't explain well, some are incompetent. Above all, there is no objective system to help people judge the competence of doctors.

Are Apple and other multinationals errant American businesses? They are just global businesses which have no social obligations towards the United States of America.

See http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html .

When will the laud for American dream resurface?

I don't know, but I'm sure it will.

Some people tend to be good employees. And some others are apt to become entrepreneurs.

One world, two types of people. Diversity matters.

I've seldom received courtesy calls from the companies whose services I've used as a consumer. Should they make more calls?

An excellent businessman may not look classy, but he typically is a classy deliverer of business value.

Why doesn't every website just give out very simple and brief privacy policies? Ideally, the gist should be there, just clear and straight.

An acquaintance of mine told me that in Portugal, some city people still have a live-in maid in their houses. And those maids are typically uneducated peasant girls from the countryside.

Essentially, it appears like Portugal still has some sort of two-tier system, the upper tier is its city residents, the lower one its country residents.

So it seems that in that aspect, that part of Europe is very much like China. And, the North America is more equitable than that part of Europe.

A young man may only encounter deaths and tragedies mainly through snatches of literature. And he should consider that as education.

Obama's hair has turned hoary since he, a personification of "change", went to Washington D.C.

See http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1034318--is-the-white-house-turning-obama-grey .

Music video - Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel ("Gretchen am Spinnrade" in German) - Sung by Barbara Bonney, music by Franz Schubert, and lyrics from text in Goethe's Faust

Goethe corresponds to “歌德” in Chinese.

Apple is a classic case of how a company can win girls' hearts. Take the example of its Macbook laptops, they are very thin, smooth, and maybe most importantly, free from the necessity for people to acquire technical knowledge about computers in order to maintain them.

You can see myriads and myriads of girls who bear Macbooks around. Many of those girls would rather pay premium prices for Mac computers and yet buy some other stuff from cheap dollar stores.

Who bears forward the fate of a company? The owner, of course.

Then do you think that he would rather allow a staff member to become irreplaceable?

The world knows that products made in China are inexpensive. But it looks askance at their quality.

Will that tendency soon change?

For Canadians working with minimum wages, such as those working at Tim Horton's outlets, every sliver of that small income counts for their livelihood. If they lose one or two slivers of it, they probably will lose their home telephone line or something. It's that bad.

Sigh. There are good student loans programs from the government across Canada. Why don't those workers just get a student loan, whatever their ages are, and finish a career education program which targets fields in high demand from employers? Programs like that typically only require 2 - 3 years of full-time study and the prerequisite of a high-school diploma.

Then life and their newly found earning power will be a lot better for them. Sigh. I don't understand why they don't take that surefire route.

This is a windy night with light snowfall. I'm fixing myself a cup of coffee.

"Nice talking to you," J said to the retired man who had come to Canada from Portugal a very long time ago.

It's fun to clamber up the steep bank of establishing a business.

Why don't the municipalities provide basic amenities facilities for the public along streets? Perhaps out of fear of squatters, drunkards, and so on.

Sales reps run errands for their companies and the companies' clients all day, everyday. And they bring in purchasing orders.

However, some companies don't treat their sales reps well. I don't know how many rounds of reps they can exploit.

At least six years have the small light bulbs of the circular pendent lamp set in our living room lasted. Wow, such long life. I don't know what kind of light bulbs they are.

Make no mistake. The bough of one's life tree is to work and learn. It's not to get rich and then do nothing except the so-called "investing".

San Jose, California wants a rollback of pensions of its policemen and so on. It's a drama.

See http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_19484394 .

When our toddler daughter cried "mommy" instead of "mama", I had a strange feeling that I, as a Chinese myself, have an outlander daughter.

Yes, my wife and I, a Chinese couple, bore a Westerner daughter.

The U.S.' perennial meddling in the Middle East seems to be largely caused by a crucial fact -- the oil produced by the Mideast is a critical energy source/input for the U.S. and its economy.

I might be too simplistic and naive over the particular issue though, because I've never studied the academic subject matters of History and Political Science.

Child stars often have big problems in their later life.

For example, Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney.

Despite her professional triumphs, Garland battled personal problems throughout her life. Insecure about her appearance, her feelings were compounded by film executives who told her she was unattractive and manipulated her on-screen physical appearance. She was plagued by financial instability, often owing hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. She married five times, with her first four marriages ending in divorce. She had a long struggle with alcohol and drug use during most of her career, dying of an accidental drug overdose at the age of 47, leaving children Liza Minnelli, Lorna Luft, and Joey Luft. 

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

And see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Rooney#Personal_life .

The errant Z changes careers and industries often, which hasn't done him good over the last 10 years. He's still struggling in this world which is full of fierce competition, whether he knows that or not, in his 40s. He's never found his place in the world. Sigh.

Whether a young child has a mild temperament or not, she's quite amenable to her parents' words.

So be very careful with what you say to her or in the presence of her. And be very careful with what you shout at her, when she's pesty. :-)

Around 300 years ago, only the wealthy people in Canada could afford glassy windows for their houses. And average Joes and Janes only had house windows made of wood or something.

How the world has changed drastically.

During all my these years in Canada, it's my dentist whose courteousness has impressed me the most.

It seems that the drift of Stephen Harper's economic policies is that Canada is business-friendly and economy-friendly.

Some classic music pieces aren't hoary. Instead, they're intricate.

Discriminating eaters are apt to cook well.

If one cannot distinguish the delicious dishes and the mediocre ones, how can he make the former by himself?

How I wish that the Chinese cuisine proliferates to the entire society of Canada. That would make us Chinese Canadians' life easier and native Canadians' diet healthier.

I still remember last night's light flurries around -4 degrees Celsius.

You know, seeing the snow flakes askant flying down, and you didn't have to battle the cold so that you felt comfortable outside. That felt pretty good.

Pic - Willow

(Source: http://media.photobucket.com/image/willow%20tree/Serenity_Firefly_photos/Willow_Tree.jpg?o=21 )

The photo should be of CC license.

淒風苦雨 之後是 萬里蒼茫。萬里蒼茫 之後是 胸中丘壑、色彩、深度。

我早已在發心以後即登程。

The St. Denis street in Montreal has got a lot of local amenities. The French people knows to enjoy life.

It seems that in Canada, the baby boomer generation, who are currently retiring, has been and will be using up lots of financial resources that government funds possess.

And that will make the subsequent generations have less resources to enjoy, which has venomed some people of later generations.

With such a glut of young students around the world willing to pursue PhD degrees, if one hasn't shown very promising signs at a very early stage or one doesn't have the stamina to tough it out, it'll be a fool's errand for him to try to get a permanent job in the academia at all after his future graduation from his PhD program.

“豆豉” 应该怎么读？

我用谷歌拼音输入法时，总是没办法找出“豆豉”。所以，以前我都用“豆shi”暂代。

谷歌拼音输入法不能找出“豆豉”的原因是我打的拼音是“doushi”，其实正确的读音是“douchi”（“chi”为三声），我刚才查了字典找到的。我的家乡话里把“豆豉”读作接近于普通话里“豆shi”（“shi”为二声）的发音，可见我家乡的小城市的多数人都读这个白字。

可见，
1. 人还是要多跟有文化的人在一起，最少最少可以少读白字。
2. 当周遭环境不是最好的时候，文章、书籍、字典、工具书等等是破除无知、提升自我素养和能力的利器。

If one goes to work for a company whose the most major client is Canada Post, does it mean that he's lost his marbles?

Because it seems inevitable that the company, which mainly serves Canada Post, will have a big downsizing and shake-up down the road, at least.

Service companies provide services to customers, and then get commissions in return. Product companies offer products to clients, and then get payments back.

Ideally, it should always be mutual support and mutual respect between a biz and its customers. Of course, the reality always has different variations of that principle.

For the nonce of freedom of choosing, people have to bear the hassles of selecting and trying out different choices.

In Christianity, the Holy Grail is also called Holy Chalice.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Chalice#Association_with_the_.22Holy_Grail.22 .

Water from the sky falls in the form of either rain or snow. Air is always in its perennial form.

I don't know much about the Earth. And I don't know much about myself, a being with human nature.

Out of the blue, I sensed an opportunity and then devised a scheme. I proposed to partner up with D for a side project in order to hack the thing which is called "making a living".

Hopefully it'll be a win-win for both of us.

Ideologies are critical in the real world, because the differences among them are pivotal in the real world.

For instance, the U.S. has beefed up its military presence and power in the Asia Pacific. For example, it has opened six more military ports in Japan lately. What is the drift of that move? In order to contain the possible threats from North Korea, as well as China, and protect the interests of itself and its allies. Why that then? Because of the vast differences of ideologies between the West and the two countries, still.

The arrant gun problems in the U.S. scare lots of people. Despite its relatively high living standard, its quality of life isn't really very good.

Iran never is an amenable country. Sigh. Another war will possibly strike Mideast, the oil region.

See Rising risk of Western war on Iran.

Many people essayed entrepreneurship. Yet they didn't prepare themselves well during the process.

In Canada, one exchanges courtesies with people he runs into, day in and day out. You can say it's drab. But still, it's pivotal social lubricant.

I'm apt to read and consider. Increasingly, spending time on watching movies and TV isn't my cup of tea.

The contagion of provincialism should be avoided by some Canadian companies.

For instance, if RIM were in constant contact with the Silicon Valley, then probably it wouldn't have failed like this, at least not so fast.

There are two famous people who are named 'Carnegie' in the American history. And they are not related at all.

One is Andrew Carnegie, a historic biz tycoon and philanthropist, and the other Dale Carnegie, a famous inspirational speaker.

What are the moments of truth for a childcare centre?

I don't quite understand why the modern Western medicine has nearly entirely abandoned simples.

On the contrary, the usage of natural medicinal plants are still largely alive in the traditional Chinese medicine, which has remained widely and strongly popular in China.

In life, people often think that if you have a dream or a goal, you have to meet or achieve certain conditions in order to fulfill it.

In certain cases, it is true. For example, you must be healthy, if you want not to ultimately fail in your entrepreneurial endeavor, or if you want to manage your biz and make it survive and prosper.

But, this is a big but, in most cases, the above thought is NOT true. Realizing dreams or goals does NOT need conditions. For instance, some people are fond of traveling the world, and they think they cannot do it until they become millionaires. Look, that's NOT truly conditional. Most of them will not become millionaires. But they always can go around the world by working temporary jobs along the itinerary of their dream travelling.

So it is critical to be able to discern between the truly conditionals and the falsely conditionals. That is, to discern causation, correlation, and the spectrum between them.

As a personal example though, I always think that mastering English is truly conditional for an individual to competing well and collaborating well in Canada and in the setting of a globalized economy.

How many coffee stains form and then fade on a carpet?

How much sweat and tears are shed on a computer keyboard?

It may be the case that the next 5 - 10 years will see a profound change or transformation of the structure of the American capitalism. And that the mountebanks of sophisticated financial institutions will be fixed somehow.

Music video - Querer - composed by René Dupéré

D asks her cousin for an errand of picking up her toddler son at the kid's daycare centre almost everyday.

It's good to have relatives in the city you live. However, that's not possible for my wife and me, who came from China.

Music video - Coming Around Again / Itsy Bitsy Spider - Carly Simon

The MV is fantastic. One thing I don't quite understand though is why Carly Simon put the "Itsy Bitsy Spider", which is a children's song, into her performance.

I miss the raindrops of China, both oblique and straight.

You can follow me on Douban.com if you're interested.

Here's my Douban.com account: http://www.douban.com/people/streamline/ .