Fresh home made Chinese jiaozi on a hot dog bun. Invented by Little Weed. Heretical but it does taste good. And if you need to ask, the jiaozi was made of pork. Toronto, Canada. Photo by Don Tai
My neighbour’s large maple tree at the front of their house was growing threateningly close to the front second story window. Pruning of the limb was in order. As this limb was quite large there was a discussion about calling in a Canadian or Chinese arborist. The Canadian arborist would come in with a large cherry-picker style truck and crew, and complete the job safely. Of course they would be much more expensive. The Chinese crew they chose came in with a ladder, rope and a small electric chainsaw. At least they had some climbing equipment and safety harness.
Hilarious! This is a Chinese idiom, but this translation given to Froog is much more colourful.
“The seemingly bright and colourful overcoat could not possibly cover up the patched underwear beneath.”
金玉其外, 败絮其中
jīnyùqíwài, bàixùqízhōng, or “gilded exterior, shabby and ruined on the inside (idiom)”, or my dictionary says “rubbish coated in gold and jade”.
Ever since I started this blog I have been wanting the ability to write in Chinese. Every time I did WordPress would dutifully save the content but would then replace my characters with rectangles. Well, now I think I solved the problem: UTF8 encoding. As roundabout as life is, I solved my Chinese input problem while trying to track down the remnants of the Pharma Hack injection.
Anyone who lives here in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada, a suburb of Toronto, can tell you that incomes have markedly dropped. We see it in our schools and neighbourhood. A Toronto Star article on the widening income gaps here in Toronto brought me to a couple interesting maps by Dr. J. David Hulchanski. His paper “Report: The 3 Cities within Toronto, Income Polarization, 2007” gives much food for thought.
Dr. Hulchanski’s paper includes a couple of maps of Toronto by change in income from 1970 to 2000. It is a very sobering map for those of us who live in Scarborough, a suburb of Toronto. It is not that we are special, because other suburbs of Toronto have also experienced similar income drops.
While I consider myself a project manager, I can also play the role of business analyst. Situations often occur in life that scream for the need to re-engineer the business process.The Little Weed has attended the same summer sports camp here in Agincourt for the past couple of years, and each year there are many inefficiencies related to the initial first day of camp: registration. I have written about these in past posts, but today I will re-engineer the registration process that I participated in this year, 2012. Note that I do not work for the camp nor am I in anyway related, other than the Little Weed participates, and therefore I am only a consumer. Please note that this and other articles on this camp should not be considered a criticism of the camp. The Little Weed and I have verified that this camp is largely well run, the kids have a lot of fun, and to me, this is much more important than the inconvenience and inefficiencies that parents experience on registration day.
By destiny, luck or fate, I live in a Toronto neighbourhood that has a high percentage of Chinese families. I have often wondered, like many families, if by neighbourhood is safe, relative to other Toronto neighbourhoods. As well, if a friend from China was about to migrate to Toronto and wanted to live in a safe Chinese neighbourhood, where would I recommend? This blog post tries to answer these questions.
Eye opening was my new job as an IT recruiter here in Toronto, Canada. As a North American born and Canadian raised and educated, I knew something was askew. Reading hundreds of resumes per week I wondered why it took so long for me to find work, though it is not exactly in my job stream. Why where there so many newly immigrated foreigners out of work? Why where there so many second generation immigrants, fluent in English and Canadian educated, having such a difficult time finding work, in our ethnically diverse Toronto?
With much eye rolling and jaw dropping I studied the photos of 2011 student dorm rooms from Beijing University, where I used to study. The article explained that there is a huge difference between foreign and Chinese student dorms. The Chinese students were complaining about discrimination. I would like to put some perspective on this subject.
In the late 1980s the Beijing University foreign student’s dorm was called Shao Yuan. It was a “U” shaped structure with 3 sections, 6 floors, each housing about 100 students. Each building had a guard on the first floor. The guard asked all Chinese to sign in. He also manned the single telephone for 100 students.
This will be the third year my Little Weed will be attending the Boys 2 Men Institute Summer Sports Camp, here in Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Overall the camp has been very well run and my Little Weed has had loads of fun. While the last 2 years the camp was held at Stephen Leacock Collegiate, this year the camp was moved to L’Amoreaux Collegiate Institute, which is still close to our house. The worst part of this camp has always been the first day, when the kids need to be registered. Happily, today’s registration for the 2011 camp was relatively painless. Three cheers for the organizer, Hugh Keane.
