Today is the first meeting of the toastmaster club in PMC. I have heard of it several years ago, apparently it once was quite popular in HK. Toastmaster basically is just a group of people come together to practice public speaking. Experience members provide guidance and feedback to junior members, aided with reading material from the mother organization on basic technics. A friend of mine, Chris, had joint it for two years and today he is one of the hosts. I can see his speeches improved alot. Other than I am not used to those exaggrated gestures, I think toastmaster really helps you to improve your communication skill. I’m looking forward to join one for quite sometime, but didn’t make the effort to actually join one. Now, the opportunity come to me conviniently, I got seize it and get most out of it. Even better the fee is covered by PMC.
Category Archives: Daily Scribble
My random thoughts of the day.
Busy sunday
Today is a busy day. Since I left home at 9:30a.m. in the morning, I had went to 6 different events non-stopped. First attended the Sunday mass as I had promised yesterday, then have dim-sum with colleagues that happen to go to the same church. After that is the World Youth Day meeting at St. Paul, followed by dancing class with Pat. After the class I have to drive back all the way back to Burnaby to pick her friend and go to a church dinner in Richmond again. The dinner is really boring and doesn’t taste good. Other than have some unimportant conversation with someone I barely remember their names, there is nothing else worth to mention happened. At last when I though i can go home and hit my bed, Pat’s friend somehow hooked up a group of Pat’s highschool friends and decided to have a drink together. It’s the first time I met Pat’s highschool friends, all girls, but none of them are pretty. I end up reading my Da Vinci’s Code instead being brothered by their girly talks. I would like to write more about my reflects about the Pope, but I’m too tried now. Maybe I’ll save it for the next day.
Pope John Paul II
Finally, he had passed away after long suffering from Pakinson’s dicease at age 84. He is the 264th pope, the figure head of the Catholic church, which I belongs to. He is an admirable man, although I don’t agree on his ultra conservative view on moral issues, he is well deserved for his credits in fighting against communism, dialogs with other religions and stand up against Bush for world peace. In order to pay tribution to him, I decided to go to mass tomorrow morning. After all the dust are settled, the next focus will be who is the next pontiff. I wish a priest with similiar personality and as respectful as John Paul II will be chosen, however a liberal mind like John XXIII is more than welcome. With the many conservative cardinals appointed by John Paul II, the chance of electing a conservatives one is high. However, we could not rule out the work of the Holy Spirit that may lead the church to another path. John XXIII had succeed under the heavy installment of conservative cardinates by the formor Pius XII, history may repeat itself again. The only concern may arise if a liberal pope is indeed elected, there maybe conspiracy to kill him like the short-lived John Paul I before John Paul II. Anyways, I was worrying that the health condition of John Paul II may not allow him to show up in the World Youth Day. Now, at least it is guarantee that I will able to meet a Pope this summer, no matter who he is.
traffic ticket
I had my speed ticket disputed today, by luck the cop didn’t show up and I’m free of charge. I think the whole speeding ticket system is a scam of the government to make money. I got ticket on the down hill section of Boundary Road on a fine sunday by speed traps. It is almost guarantee every driver will be over the ridiculously low speed limit on that section. The police just stop whoever coming down and issue the tickets, what a easy way to make quick bucks. By disputing the ticket, not only you have a chance to walk away free, you are making sure the government cannot profit from this scam. In a long run, if everyone dispute their tickets, they will stop issuing all the unnecessary tickets, and put the police force into better use, such as catching criminals. To learn more about how to fight a traffic ticket and why the current ticket system doesn’t server the good public, please visit here
legal language
Tonight our project team had a team building dinner with the leaders from Saskatoon. The food and beer are great, and most important the expense is covered by PMC. In the dinner, we had talked about how expensive it is to file a patent. It costs tens of thousands of dollar to hire a lawyer to word the patent using those legal terms. Then I came up with an idea, why don’t we have software automating this process? Legal language is a subset of normal language, and each word has a specific meaning, which is similiar to logic statements understand by computers. The goal is to create a software that will translate contracts and patents written in daily english into a legal document. It would be a great idea for inter-discipline research among the liguistic, CS, and law departments.