Zwok!
You have to obey the crazy doctor punk inmate guy.
Play Zwok now!It's a cool free flash "Artillery" game that you play online with other people, and damn is it addictive.
Just a nice little find for you to distract yourself for a bit.
Oilers...
Well unfortunately it's all over for the Edmonton Oilers...
The first and second periods were poor showings from our team, and it looked like they were saving their energy for later in the game. In a 2nd intermission interview, they remarked that they had yet to find their rhythm... at 2-0, they had about as much rhythm as a junior highschool kid at a Vernon Barford school dance.
There was a glimmer of hope in the first couple minutes of the third period, when the Oilers scored their first goal of the game.
Then the retardation occurred.
For some reason, the coach decided to pull the goalie (hehehe Kevin-phrase*) to try to increase the odds of scoring an equalizer. Well, HELLO!?, since when has a man advantage ever helped the Oilers score a goal? The extra man just confuses our players, or something. They perform just as well scoring-wise on a power-play for as against. Which is to say, not that great.
Perhaps it's a mixed blessing. No riots for Edmonton tonight.
So now I shift my cheering from the Oilers onto the South Korean football (FIFA soccer) team.
Go REDS!
*Sorry, inside joke. One of our friends is famous for his usage and creation of "catch-phrases"
Oilers!!!
Hopefully no-one gets stabbed, but damnit, you can't help but get caught up in it!
Go Oilers!!!
(If you life under a rock, or just don't watch the games... we just won 4-NOTHING against the 'Canes...)
Urdu 101
On my way back from the UK, I ended up sitting beside a nice girl from Pakistan. She chatted me up and we talked about lots of things: Politics, food, Muslims, the Koran, and life in Toronto. I guess she had come to Canada on a student visa to study political science with a focus on developing countries (of which she said Pakistan is one), and after graduating she decided to come back to meet up with her friends once more before getting into her career full swing.
It was really refreshing and enjoyable - the time on the flight back figuratively flew by. Although admitadly nothing could have been much worse than the previous passenger who sat beside me on the way to England... he had a bladder the size of a peanut (got up several times every hour to go the restroom), and on one of his trips back to his seat he spilled his water all over my legs and feet.
Anyway, this girl was the daughter of some high-ranking Pakistan official I guess, and... she wrote my name for me in Urdu (above).
It turns out that Urdu (and Arabic) is written right to left but actually has a phonetic alphabet.
Winchester Cathedral
I walked from the Winchester Hotel last night, down Andover road, across City road to Jewry street, and then down High street and Little Minster street to arrive facing the beautiful structure shown in the photo I took above.
Winchester Cathedral, being one of the oldest in England, is over 800 years old. Of course they don't make things like they used to, but they don't usually spend hundreds of years on a single structure anymore either.
I was disappointed to find out that they had finished with their "Cracking the Code" exhibition for the day. They used the cathedral for some of the scenes shot in The Da Vinci Code, and I suppose if you show up before 5 pm you might be able to check it out for yourself. Make sure you arrive before June 21st though, because that's when the exhibition ends.
However, what I was able to participate in was an Evensong service. A quire of 20 or so men in white and red robes sang out in exultant praise to the holy trinity as I read along in the prayer book. I didn't know the customs of when to sit, stand, turn to the altar, and when to call out "Dear God" with the others. However it was quite an experience listening to the voices carry through the ribbed ceilings and in such beautiful harmony.
After the service, I headed down to The Royal Oak, which claims to be the oldest pub in Winchester. Of course what pub doesn't claim to be the oldest? Anyway it was a small little place stuck down a back alley beside "ASK", an Italian place I had eaten at earlier in the week. I tried a couple beers, "Leffe", "Champion" and "Speckeled Hen". Of those, I liked Leffe the most. Champion was a tough stout and not really my taste.
In 40 minutes my taxi will take me back to Heathrow to head back to Toronto. I don't know if I'll feel safe back in Canada. After all,
knives haven't been banned there yet.
Labels: business trip, UK
Working at the Big House
Now generally I don't like to write about my employer, and I only mention my job in bits and bobs... but I have to share the amazing manor house that he has out in the English country side.
Surrounded by forested groves, large sheep enclosures, murders of crows, and twisty little roads, this mansion is as full of history as it is impressive to look at.
Originally built sometime around 1720 (Wikipedia says:
"built by William Heathcote between 1721 and 1724") it was remodelled and restored in 1902 to be what you see in the photo above. It has been used as a military hospital during WWI and WWII, and during WWII it served as the R&D birthplace of the Spitfire!
The
Hursley House is an impressive place, although I can't imagine what someone could do to fill 3 stories and hundreds of large rooms. The heating bill must be pretty severe in the winter too, or at least it would be in Canada.
Despite the horrible jet lag I have been suffering for the majority of this week, I have had a great experience working with business partners from many different countries: Spain, Italy, Germany, Ireland, England, India, etc. They were pleased when they found out that despite my accent, I am Canadian and not American. I can tell that G.W. has not done much to improve the image of the US abroad.
Tomorrow after my conference is finished I will explore Winchester and maybe check out the cathedral used in the Da Vinci Code movie.
Saturday morning sees me return to Toronto. Boy do I really miss my bed... because this one feels like a 500 lb man was jumping on it. Seriously, I'm rolling into the middle of the bed its so saggy. It's almost like being in a hammock.
But I'm so sleepy and tired now that nothing can stop me from catching my Zs.
Labels: business trip
Hopback Summer Lightning
There is a major advantage to living in the UK, and I'm sure that this - as much as The Wife - is a huge part of Beaver's reason of sticking through the overpriced EVERYTHING else.
Yes I'm talking about BEER.
Today I went to a fine ale house called "The Dolphin" in Hursley - for lunch mind you - and tasted this liquid gold: Summer Lighting, a great beer from
Hopback.
A testimonial (from
someone else I don't know):
Hopback Brewery - Summer LightningUndoubtedly the best beer ever brewed and to be drunk by me. It wins awards, and for very good reasons: Post ride, this is better than water it is so so so so refreshing, light, a bit bitter and you can drink five and still feel good. The perfect ride would have Hopback pubs all along it, this stuff is on a higher level.
So grab a seat out back at The Dolphin and let's toast to the delicious brews that abound here.
I might see if I can get some bottles of the stuff, but I'm not sure if that will be possible or not. I don't see many liquor stores around - everyone just goes to the pub!
Labels: business trip, UK
Kafka on the Shore
Kafka on the Shore, by
Haruki Murakami. I finished it on the plane ride over to England, and I'm still wanting more. I really got into the book and with the great writing style I was easily able to "see" everything through Kafka's eyes. It was like reading a dream - a weird one - but all my dreams are.
It covers a 15 year old boy who runs away from home, and ends up discovering that he is deeply tied to a mysterious event that occurred during World War II.
There are elements of sex, suspense, humour, but not so much action. It had just enough other-worldly stuff thrown in to keep you wondering what could possibly happen next but not so much that you lost all immersion in the story's world. The characters were very interesting and unique (like the pretty-boy man who is mentally a gay man and physically a woman).
My next book will probably be non-fiction. I brought a huge university text-book sized livre with me. Something about technology taking over the world or something.
Labels: book
Joe Volpe - Shining Example
Under the last government, we had a new election law that was intended to help reform the unfair effect large corporations could leverage through large donations. That law limits corporate donations to $1000 and personal donations to $5400. The problem is that if a company wants to donate $108000, it could easily have its top executives, and those executives' family members (including 11 year old children) donate money. Of course that kind of collusion is illegal.
From the editorial below:
Under (the new election law), corporations are limited to giving leadership candidates $1,000. But there's nothing to stop, say, 10 directors of that firm, or their spouses, relatives, etc., from each contributing $5,400 personally, thus giving the candidate $54,000.I don't know about you but I find it hard to believe that an 11 year old has the ability to make a decision to donate to any political party. If you aren't old enough to vote you shouldn't be able to make a donation either. At least Volpe is abiding by that, although it is not required by the letter of the law.
It still doesn't quite seem right though. And a member of the NDP has brought forth a formal complaint to have the donations investigated. In response to this, a member of Volpe's campaign team has threatened to sue.
From the CBC article below:
A spokesman for Volpe, Corey Hobbs, said all the donations were legitimate and threatened to sue over Pat Martin's allegations. "Any statement made by Mr. Martin or repeated will be treated as slanderous and libellous and dealt with in the appropriate manner," Hobbs said, according to the Canadian Press.
Now I'm not accusing Joe Volpe of having orchestrated an illegal collusion with a large company in order to get a large donation spread out amongst many "individiual citizens". But I do think that he could do much better than simply return the money that was donated in the name of the legal minors. If I was him, I would be suspicious of the pattern of donations and ask for an investigation myself. If a company was trying to subvert my campaign by using loopholes in order to donate around the new law, I wouldn't want anything to do with that.
I'm surprised that he seems to take it in stride and publicly accepts that the donations from the twins and all the other executives' children and spouses were all made on an individually motivated basis. I think that the vote for him is going to suffer, and will speak louder than any blog commentary ever could.
There is one thing we can take solace in. And that is the fact that the laws requiring that all donations be transparent and accounted for have made this donation fiasco easily recognizable. Someone looked at the public record, saw that 6 people from the same family made the maximum donations, did some research, and found out that some of those donations came from children as young as 11 years old.
Relevant links:
Bus Uncle (巴士阿叔,)
If you haven't heard of the infamous "
Bus Uncle", you haven't been keeping up with your
YouTube or Internet memes.
It's been crazy-big among Chinese speakers/readers but most Chinese-challenged people have been left confused and leaving comments like "Why is this so popular?", and "Can someone explain why everyone keeps posting this video?".
You can get the
lowdown on it in English here. Essentially what happened was that a young man was riding the bus and started to get pissed off by the older man in front of him who was yakking away on his phone much too loud for common courtesy. The young man tapped the "Bus Uncle" on the shoulder and asked him to keep it down.
What happened next? Bus Uncle snapped.
And the best part? A fellow rider
captured the whole incident on his cellphone video camera (YouTube.com video) for our viewing pleasure. Of course, you probably won't be able to appreciate that video unless you understand Cantonese. So, for my fellow Chinese-challenged peeps,
here is a version with Chinese and English subtitles.
People have become so consumed with it that they are creating various remixes of the video clip, some turning the Chinese swearing into beat-matched beat-box style rap. One of my favourites is
this re-make featuring traditional Chinese puppets.
So if you want to seem witty, now is the time to start throwing random quotes from the Bus Uncle into your posts and casual conversation.
I face pressure, you face pressure.
You have to obey the crazy doctor punk inmate guy. Play Zwok now!
Well unfortunately it's all over for the Edmonton Oilers...
So now I shift my cheering from the Oilers onto the South Korean football (FIFA soccer) team.
Hopefully no-one gets stabbed, but damnit, you can't help but get caught up in it!
On my way back from the UK, I ended up sitting beside a nice girl from Pakistan. She chatted me up and we talked about lots of things: Politics, food, Muslims, the Koran, and life in Toronto. I guess she had come to Canada on a student visa to study political science with a focus on developing countries (of which she said Pakistan is one), and after graduating she decided to come back to meet up with her friends once more before getting into her career full swing.
I walked from the Winchester Hotel last night, down Andover road, across City road to Jewry street, and then down High street and Little Minster street to arrive facing the beautiful structure shown in the photo I took above.
Winchester Cathedral, being one of the oldest in England, is over 800 years old. Of course they don't make things like they used to, but they don't usually spend hundreds of years on a single structure anymore either.
However, what I was able to participate in was an Evensong service. A quire of 20 or so men in white and red robes sang out in exultant praise to the holy trinity as I read along in the prayer book. I didn't know the customs of when to sit, stand, turn to the altar, and when to call out "Dear God" with the others. However it was quite an experience listening to the voices carry through the ribbed ceilings and in such beautiful harmony.
Now generally I don't like to write about my employer, and I only mention my job in bits and bobs... but I have to share the amazing manor house that he has out in the English country side.
Originally built sometime around 1720 (Wikipedia says: "built by William Heathcote between 1721 and 1724") it was remodelled and restored in 1902 to be what you see in the photo above. It has been used as a military hospital during WWI and WWII, and during WWII it served as the R&D birthplace of the Spitfire!
The Hursley House is an impressive place, although I can't imagine what someone could do to fill 3 stories and hundreds of large rooms. The heating bill must be pretty severe in the winter too, or at least it would be in Canada.
There is a major advantage to living in the UK, and I'm sure that this - as much as The Wife - is a huge part of Beaver's reason of sticking through the overpriced EVERYTHING else.
So grab a seat out back at The Dolphin and let's toast to the delicious brews that abound here.
Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami. I finished it on the plane ride over to England, and I'm still wanting more. I really got into the book and with the great writing style I was easily able to "see" everything through Kafka's eyes. It was like reading a dream - a weird one - but all my dreams are.
Under the last government, we had a new election law that was intended to help reform the unfair effect large corporations could leverage through large donations. That law limits corporate donations to $1000 and personal donations to $5400. The problem is that if a company wants to donate $108000, it could easily have its top executives, and those executives' family members (including 11 year old children) donate money. Of course that kind of collusion is illegal.
If you haven't heard of the infamous "Bus Uncle", you haven't been keeping up with your YouTube or Internet memes.
