Toronto is nearing 1 month of no garbage pickup
Toronto is in the midst of a municipal worker’s strike. We’re coming up to almost one month without city services such as garbage and recycling pickup. To tell you the truth, though I would like to take the kids to the swimming pool on a hot day, the lack of garbage pickup has not bothered me much. Then again we do live in the suburbs. Yesterday a new temporary garbage dump has opened less than a kilometer from my house, so maybe I’ll change my mind within the next month or so.
After 2 years my Suncast Side Tracker hose reel leaked badly.
About seven years ago I purchased a Suncast Side Tracker STA100 hose reel. For the first two years it worked wonderfully and leak free. Since then it’s leaked like crazy, showering the wall and wasting lots of water. Clearly something needed to be fixed. Here’s how I fixed it.
I don’t really use my hose reel too often. After all, being in Toronto, Canada, garden hoses are really only used in the summer, particularly when the kids want to cool off by running in the sprinkler. In the fall, before winter returns, I take the hose reel off the wall and store the reel and hose in the garage.
Dollar Store toys are terrible quality that breaks easily, is unrepairable and disappoints your kids
I have never been a fan of Dollar Store* toys for my kids. They return home with plastic toys of very low quality, even by Chinese standards. The recent Toronto city garbage strike brings home the need to reduce our consumption because the city, temporarily, will not pick up our trash. I continue to press my case to both my parents and my kids that Dollar Store quality is false economy.
The tropical pineapple fruit is now famous throughout the world. The leafy top can also be cut and grown as an attractive houseplant.
Freezies are a staple treat for kids, summer or otherwise. Recent use of a newly acquired juicer has allowed us to buy fresh pineapples, cut off the skin, remove the inedible eyes, core them, and juice the fruit. The leftover pulp can be used as freezie material, a great discovery. The freezies come out very fresh, tasty, 100% all natural, and very fiberous, providing excellent nutrition, vitamines, and a good source of fibre.
Chinese guards are everywhere, but were very strict after 6-4
Life after the 6-4 killings was quite different. While martial law was declared some weeks before 6-4, I really did not see much change in my life. Post 6-4, security was heightened both inside my campus as well as outside on the street. For a couple of months I personally felt the burden of watchful eyes and a sense that you really had to be careful what you did, what you said (outside the campus), where you went and when, and I was not even part of the protest. It was like living under the stereotypical communist regime, in contrast to the freedom of pre 6-4.
This is a preview of
Modern Chinese History: Post 6-4 Increased Security
.
Read the full post (1065 words, 1 image, estimated 4:16 mins reading time)
I picked these up from a student protester on 6-4 after he was beaten up by soldiers
I have had these two mementos for a long time, 20 years, stashed away in an old box. The day after 6-4 I was at the military’s perimeter of the Square with a friend. A student beside me started chastising the soldiers. The soldiers grabbed him, threw him on the ground, beat him up and dragged him away. These two objects fell out of his pocket and I picked them up. Though I am not at all knowledgeable about guns, I knew these were shell casings.
I saw side by side Chinese tank tracks down Changan Jie
The day after 6-4 in the morning I had a lunch meeting with a friend who lives down near TAM Square. I called her and she discouraged me from going to see her, saying it was too dangerous. She and her 12 year old brother were very upset about what happened the night before. The ride down to her place was fraught with obstructions. We walked to the soldier’s front line, as close as you could get to entering the Square.
Beijing People's liberation Army and university students face each other
During the time I spent in Beijing as a student, cozily nestled amongst Chinese students, eating at their same cafeterias and freely visiting their dorms, I did not once see any violent actions. From my personal account, this protest was 100% non-violent, which makes the very violent response from the government all the more terrible.
Hearing the news about killings at the Square was shocking. How could this have happened? The day after 6-4 I had a lunch date with a Chinese friend who lived on Changan Jie, very close to the Square. Chaos had erupted in Beijing. All intersections were blocked with burned out cars and buses. I was so glad I was on a 10 speed bicycle that I could pick up and walk around road blockages, yet speed down streets. This is my recollection.
Burned buses blocked traffic intersections in Downtown Beijing
Can you fit 1 million people into Tiananmen Square?
Some topics are so foreign to Westerners that to encounter something so blatantly different is like running head first into a brick wall. Such is the case for modern Chinese history. I talk specifically about the student movement of May 4 1989 in Tiananmen Square
I am torn by writing because I have contradictory feelings at odds with each other. On one hand there is undisputable proof from eyewitness accounts and news footage that the events did occur and many people were killed. On the other hand, it was 20 years ago, so why bring up such an old and tired topic.
