Today finally Charlie conquered my home. I was sick last night and slept for 16 hours straight skipping dinner. This morning Pat prepared some chicken rice soup for me and came to visit me with Charlie. It was Charlie’s first time taking an elevator, it was so scared that it refused to get inside. I have to kick its butt to get it moving. Charlie went into my place and sniff around. We put Charlie in the balcony while we were having brunch. After lunch we walked Charlie at the park next to the golf course near my place. Charlie was so happy that it can visit so many new places. Lucky that I wake up early this morning, or Pat was planned to have Charlie to use its licking attack to wake me up.
Category Archives: Daily Scribble
My random thoughts of the day.
hiking
Today is the 2nd faith formation session of the WYD team. In order to prepare for the long walk in Koln, we went to do hiking in Lynn Headwater Park. The first half of the hike is pretty nice, just flat gravel trail along the river. The second half is a bit tough, we have to go up and down on the hill side and even hike up to the peak viewing points. I volunteered myself prepared lunch for the group, so I made everyone a sandwiches last night. Pat complains about QC problems on her lunch, but at least no one is sicked. At one of the look out area up in the hills, we have a good view of Vancouver. Between us and the city, there is a huge forest area. I wonder, how did Vancouver look before all the trees are cut down, the land are turned into roads and buildings. Everyone enjoy the hike with praise and worship, station of the cross and faith sharing, except me. I’m fine with the church stuff, and I’m also fine with the long walk. What really bothers me is my running nose during the whole trail. Partly it is because I caught a cold last night, and partly it is due to hey fever from the trees and grass. I also have sour knees haven’t recovered from last week’s fun run. The hike is not really fun for me. On my way home, my eye libs feel so heavy. I guess after I finish writing my blog, it’s time for me to take a nap. I had a feeling that I will sleep all the way until tomorrow.
The Economist
Today when I was reading Economist, one of the colleague walked by cube, peaked his head and asked me what makes me read the Economist. That gets me start thinking how did I get start in this magazine. I have been known as the sole reader of the copy subscribed by the company library for a long time. Actually, tell you all a little secret, I also know the company’s password of the online account to access the Economist’s website. I first encounter with the Economist back in high school, I believe we are required to research on an article for the history course. Maybe my memory is a bit flickery, what does history has to do with the Economist? I start picked up reading it regularly when my dad had a subscription. At first I found the English of it a bit difficulty, not a surprise since it’s a London based magazine. After reading it for so many years, I had been accustomed to its style of writing. Presumably, if I’m given two paragraph from two different magazine, I could probably tell which one is from the Economist. One of my long term goal is to write like the Economist, a style that is clear, concise and yet sophisticated. Despite of the name of the magazine, it only has about one third of contain on business and economy. Its nature is a news magazine, with comments and analysis from the view point of an logical minded economist. The articles are more in depth than Times or Newsweek, with focus on the cause, reason and effects of current events than what had happened. Each article is well edited that takes me only 5-10 minutes to read. On average, it takes me 2-3 hours to finish an issue, depending on whether it has an interesting survey. There are so many good magazine out there, I used to read more periodic in university days when I lots of time. Now I can barely keep up with reading one magazine a week. My ideal reading list of each week would be, the Economist, IEEE Spectrum, Scientific America, National Geographic, New Yorker (I haven’t start on this one yet, due to its English is even more scary), PC Magazine, Next Magazine (chinese), Harvey Business Review, IEEE Computer, IEEE Communication, and last Computer Gaming World
Beauty and the geek
There is a new reality show on TV called Beauty and the geek, which I found the idea is quite genius. It’s a mix of blind date and competition game show. The show pairs up several teams of hot girls and nerdy geeks. Each partner in the team has to use their strength to help the other one overcome challenges targeting his or her weakness. For example, the tests includes car repair for girls and ball room dancing for the guys. It’s funny to see how people in the two extreme ends of social spectrum cooperate to win the grand prize. I guess to make the show more interesting, the participants are chosen in a way that they are typical stereotyped blonds and geeks. Indeed I found the mind of man and woman ain’t the same, the show just exaggerate the difference and present it in a very funny way. I’m just thinking of a similar reality show for the Canadian market by pairing up a English speaker who know little french with a french speaker who know little English.
Overwhelmed
Recently, I got overwhelmed by church activities. There are too many meetings and events going on, and I am stressed out since it eats into my private time. Preparation for Worth Youth Day is good, but do we need to spend so much time doing all these things? Someone may prefer better prepare themselves spiritually, while someone simply don’t have such a need. Why force everyone follow the same path on spiritual quest? Tonight I had wasted 3 hours in yet another tumid meeting regarding the up coming St. Mary fund raising event, which should last no longer than 1 hour. I feel that we have way too many fund raising activities and it really bothers me. I rather spent the time working on my thesis or even sit back to relax a bit. All church activity should be on volunteer basis. Once someone committed the minimum effort, others should not push more works onto his plate than he is willing to take. Making everyone share the equal amount of work doesn’t make sense at all, since everyone’s expectation is different. Some people always complain they had did more work than others. But they gladly signed themselves for the job at first with no one forcing them. They never consider the option of doing less, which is perfectly fine with most people who want less work. Church stuff is not like real work, people don’t get pay for their service and there is no measurement on deliverable. I’m sure God doesn’t care how much time we put in, as long as we had made some effort. Serving God more may indeed accumulate more treasure in the heaven. The question is suppose that every resident of heaven is equally happy eternally, then what is the use of having more treasure if it can’t buy you more happiness?