We always wonder if our neighbourhoods are safe from crime but are really never sure. Until now there has been little data released about crime by neighbourhood in Toronto, Canada. Recently the Toronto Police released a map of violent crime stats to the Toronto Star, which included gun shootings and homicides. While a statistician could pick apart the validity and lack of specific detail of these stats, for me they are interesting nonetheless. For home owners, find your neighbourhood and see the relative crime rate. For those thinking about buying a house, take a look at crime in prospective neighbourhoods before you buy.
This question has repeatedly come up during face to face interviewers of one specific company here in Toronto, Canada. It is supposed to test programming logic. You may judge for yourself its effectiveness. Trick interview questions such as these are controversial. Do such questions really show IT intelligence and talent or are they used as a chance method to eliminate candidates? One web site, CareerCup.com has a collected a database of such interview questions.
Q: There are three covered boxes that are all mislabeled: one contains “apples”, one contains “oranges”, one contains “mixed”. You cannot see the contents of these boxes. You may stick your hand into one box at a time and take out a fruit. How do you correctly relabel the boxes?
After two months of recruiting for permanent and contract IT developers for a specific company, this experience has shown the psychological resilience and toughness of IT contractors. No matter the rejection and abuse they get from companies, this does not faze them. Life merely carries on. Need it be this way?
This morning I was submitting candidates to this company for interviews. The company was asking us for convenient interview times. But by noon the news turned grim: all contractor positions were filled. Anyone looking for a contract that was not already interviewed was being offered permanent positions only. The abruptness was a bit shocking to me, as it looked like there was a lack of planning.
New am I as an IT recruiter. Sure, I have interviewed and hired for my own development team, but this new job has me reading hundreds of resumes a week. Here are some observations about reading resumes and talking to job candidates: 1. Canadians do not have as much education as candidates from the USSR and China, 2. I have no idea of the authenticity of many Indian post secondary schools, 3. There is more to life than money, 4. Why post your resume up to a job board when I cannot even contact you?
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?
It has been a long time since I have talked to him, but I still clearly recall going to school with Mark Rowswell. In China he is much more commonly known as “Da Shan”, or Big Mountain. Mark is not only Canadian, like myself, but also comes from Toronto, my home town.
I met Mark while attending classes at Beijing University. As fellow Canadians in a place with many more Americans and other foreigners, we, of course, got to know each other. It turns out that his parents lived near lived near my parents, in the quiet suburb of North York, around Don Mills and Finch.
Going back to the commute routine has been eye opening, which caught me by surprise. It’s not like this is new to me, but getting used to the TTC and the quickness of pace has been eye opening.
The TTC seems to have stayed the same. I expected advancements, but this is not so. They struggle to keep from falling backward on themselves. While most bus drivers are courteous, I have met those who are not. Once there was a detour because of a crime and police had closed the road. This driver did not even announce why he was detouring, so many people asked. He got so mad.
Regret is how I feel about not posting these earlier. Still, life goes on and so I go. All these events have been memorable, and at each one I learn more as I continue on my way, either through technique, talking to people, or myself. Overall, it is 3 x win. Clovent clovents
The human body is composed of roughly 80% water. To say that fresh water is vital to our existence is quite true. Living in Toronto, Canada, we get our drinking water from our municipal water purification plant and water supply piping system. While those in condominiums and large apartments rely on property management companies to worry about these minute details, the rest of us that live in houses must fend for ourselves. Municipal water arrives from a pipe deep underground, protected from the frost. There is a water shutoff on your front lawn, as well as main water shutoff inside your house. If your main water shutoff has seized shut or open and you cannot turn it in either direction, you will need to replace it. Without a way to shut off the water in your house you risk flooding your house if a water pipe bursts, for whatever reason. Here is how to change your main water shutoff in Toronto, Canada.
This editorial cartoon is a play on the US popular rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline being proposed to run from Canada, through the US, down to Texas. The proposal is facing stiff opposition, with some Canadians editorializing that we should just redirect the pipeline to China.
And because he asked, my Mandarin is quite good. I love this editorial cartoon.
The more the US has access to cheap oil, the more they will waste it. Overall I think the US and therefore the World would benefit by more expensive oil prices. This also applies to us Canadians. While we all talk conservation and environmental protection, I see way too many SUVs and other large vehicles transporting one driver, and a lack of motivation to fund and build mass transit. I hope that gas prices will double and therefore match that of Europe.
