This northern weather dejects spirits.

The roaring wintry blasts are boring.

"Shakespeare ... familiarizes the wonderful" (Samuel Johnson), against the odiousness.

Career vis-a-vis family (Chains of economic values vis-a-vis chains of loves)

(Image via http://goo.gl/OcdMX)

I for one sometimes suspect that the concept of "career" resulted from the combination of the intentional devising by the corporate world's propaganda machines and the somewhat unintentional devising by a small group of really high achievers in the past.

If you entirely buy into that popularized notion of "career", my friend, then you risk ignoring the fact that a more powerful force over your prospect as a worker is the iron law of SUPPLY AND DEMAND, which governs the labor market and an individual's work life all the way. When you enter a labor market and work in it, you are entering a system of chains of (economic) values, and you are not entering a system of chains of loves, essentially. As human beings, we need love. So, my friend, when you are still not too old and discouraged to build a family, you want to do that by all means, for the benefit of yourself and the society at large.  Think about that. And think hard about why family life is such an entrenched value in the North American culture.

The choices of software apparatus seem to know no bounds.

Just keep on exploring and exploring.

A wintry foggy snowy night.

Straight from the heart - Vintage music video - 齐秦 - 柔情主义

Lyrics copied from http://goo.gl/A0rTk :

柔情主義

作詞：王念慈　作曲：齊秦

She Loves me She Loves me not She Loves me....... 哦讓我輕輕地告訴你我的romance baby 我偷偷地愛上了冬天的暖陽 我悄悄地墜入了大海的情網 我不知不覺無可救藥地為愛感傷 濃濃的柔情　是止不住的淚 隱隱的刺痛　是我滴血的心 濃濃的柔情　是止不住的淚 隱隱的刺痛　是我滴血的心 而我卻只能默默迴避你冷冷的眼光 而我卻只能輕輕地　輕輕地告訴你 讓我輕輕地告訴你我的romance baby 我墜入深深的哀傷 (She loves me) She Loves me She Loves me not 柔情是我們的主張 我們說著千篇一律的地久天長

Note to myself:
There's a best live version of the song at http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTY2NDkzODgw.html but I couldn't embed it into this blog post. Find a way to do that later on.

Throughout Canada, the maintenance of the status quo that the credit cards companies, such as VISA and MasterCard, grab outrageously high transaction fees is apparently not in the cards any longer.

My realization of my own ignorance has gone up a notch.

For one thing, it has dawned on me just now that I still don't really grasp why the U.S. government initiated and kept its war, together with its allies, in Afghanistan, against the backdrop that many civilians in the U.S., Canada and other Western countries seriously oppose it, and how the average people in Afghanistan have lived since the Taliban had assumed significance within the country.

Sometimes the lure of consumption unhinges, or undermines, an individual's ultimate potential, and drives him beside his reason.

My opinion regarding Intel has dropped some notches over the last few years.

Their technical competence, their relevance, and their handling of suppliers seem to be slipping. Well, their top brass will feel knots of uneasiness, especially against the promising ARM chip technologies and the cheap chips from AMD, in the forthcoming years. Here is some quote from http://goo.gl/FD6ze :

ARM Holdings Plc, the top designer of processors for smartphones, is pushing into chips for server computers and aims to start eroding Intel Corp.’s dominance in that market in 2014.

Server manufacturers are already looking at chips based on ARM’s technology, Chief Executive Officer Warren East said last week in an interview. The designs will help create lower-power computers, which will make data centers more efficient. Still, the effort will take years to bear fruit, he said.

Through douban.com , I reconnected with my past self in some senses.

Tender feelings have been called to drift up.

My reason adjures me to work harder, while my comforts allure me to meander and slack.

And that is a typical tug of war every single human being constantly deals with.

Pop cultures sometimes tend to deprive a person of his reason, in lieu of strengthening it.

The niubility of President Obama sometimes is ungelivable. 你懂的。

The fears over nuclear wipe-out of the human kind are scarcely the elephant in the room.

The U.S. military and intelligence units have been scrambling across the world, including Iran, North Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan. They must be quite jaded.

As RIM continues notching up a larger market share,

the prospect of it reaches lower. Its inertia will not prolong. It is really badly in need of raising its game vis-a-vis Google and Apple.

I for one don't like very much the fact that the U.S. society condones extreme competition at workplaces.

On a related note, google "逃离北上广" (a new phenomenon in China) if you like.

The works by the marketing and PR arms of Google Inc. are so understatedly elegant and enrapturing.

One of my friends once said I am a Google fan.

In order to compete in and contribute to this globalized world in this era which is post the democratization of computing, English fluency is no longer sufficient,

and a measure of real proficiency in informational apparatus (a.k.a. IT, if you will) is mandatory too, for average Joes and Janes.

The rapid advances or changes of the society can feel nipping sometimes.

That is a piteous conundrum that most of us are put in, I am afraid, my friend.