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.