Citizens of the earth, let's do it!

Ok, i stop complaining. Let's give!!!

World Vision International Relief

Medecins du monde

Unicef

Croix-Rouge Canada

Medecins sans frontieres

catastrophe sans précédent, qu'ils disent!

c'est désolant de voir le nombre de victimes grimper à chaque jour en Asie du Sud-Est. On pourrait atteindre les 100 000 de morts (!) sans parler du million de sans abris ...
Hier, j'ai regardé le journal de france 2. Dans les reportages, on n'entendait que les quelques touristes français dans ce coin du monde parler et se plaindre. Que dalle sur les autres quelques 55 000 victimes! Quelle couverture/ouverture! Honteux. Tout le monde est si égocentrique!

Earthquake and other stuff!

The earthquake that occured in Sumatra today and the tsunamis that followed killed more than 12 000 people in South Asia! That's so terrible!!

Two of my friends are right now in Malasia and one friend in Thailand. Hope they have nothing.

What have we done to the earth????

Food!

For our fellowship Christmas party, last week, we had an 'iron chef' contest! The 3 small groups have to cook something and the best food wins. One group came up with the Turducken, it is actually a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken! It was huge! They started to cook it at 10:30 am and finished by 5:30 p.m. Amazing! I was quite impressed! Too bad i forgot to take a picture of it. We were more than 35 people and we couldn't finish half of it!!! (of course, there was a lot of other kinds of food).
Below is a picture just for the illustration sake!


TURDUCKEN 

Reveillon de Noel chez ma copine!

On a fait la cuisine. C'etait chouette! On s'est gatees!! Bref, croyez-le ou non, j'ai fait a manger et on a concocte un super bon tajine!!!
On a eu un repas de Noel orignal mais on ne pouvait pas passer a cote de la tradionnelle buche!! :-) yummy!!! (pour les yeux!!!)


de l'autre cote, avec la fleur d'orchidee! 

voici notre buche de noel!!!  

Merry Christmas!

wish i were still a small kid!!!

Let's become little children again and marvel at the beauty of this season when Jesus was born!


way too cute!!!!!!!!! 

Ignorance is Bliss

My dad purposely didn't pay the telephone bill for 2 or 3 months. Result? They cut our phone line!!! The Big Boss always wins! Without the phone line, it meant that we had no internet at home! Since I don't watch T.V, I had no idea that it was so cold on Monday! I just wore my normal jacket. My head would tell my body to stop complaining! When i got to my work office, I checked the weather, it was -26C! and with the wind, it was -37C. Aïe! Ouch!

That reminds me of last year when i joined the demonstration against the war in Iraq. We marched all the way to the American ambassy at -26C! And we were all screaming:

"Non à la guerre en Irak et non au froid ici!!"

Nothing worked! The war happened and it is still cold here :-)!

Being a banana is not easy

My mom doesn’t understand how come my brother somehow stayed Chinese and I’ve become a banana. We are only one year apart.
But there is hope. I just had some rice tonight. The last time i ate some rice was in the beginning of July … or maybe I should say ‘I tried some’.

I realize more and more the gap between the 1st and 2nd generation Chinese. There is a clash of mentality. The parents are deeply influenced by Confucius' value system where community is the key concept. With this come the responsibilities and duties of conforming to the group and honoring it.
In Chinese, the family name comes first, showing how belonging to a collectivity outweighs far more the person as an individual. It is funny how we don’t know our grandparents’ name. They are referred as the grandpa or grandma of so and so (well, maybe this has more to do with the importance of the male gender thing).

In the Western culture, the emphasis is on my person, my rights, my life and my desires (the “me, myself and I” thing).

The way of parenting is very different too. Western parents slowly let go of their children and let them fly from their own wings by giving them increasing freedom and independence. With the Chinese parents, we remain children as long as we are not married. And we feel much more pressure for getting a good education (the 4 professions that are allowed: doctor, lawyer, businessman or engineer), or for marrying the right person.

Here is a small summary:

Asian Value: Situation Centered
Western Value: Individual Centered

Asian Value: Collectivity - group identity, achievement of goals set by others, obligation to group
Western Value: Individualism - autonomy, achievement of individual goals, trained to be individuals

Asian Value: Duty & Obligation - relational responsibility, duty to others, motivation based on obligation
Western Value: Rights & Privileges - responsible to self, personal rights, motivation based on feelings

Asian value: Hierarchy - submissive to authority, emphasis on positions in relationships, accepts rules and propriety
Western Value: Equality - dislike for rules and control, play down superiority/inferiority, questions authority

Asian value: Deference - passitivity and yieldedness, adherence to social politeness, emphasis on self effacement
Western Value: Self-Assertion - aggressive and expressive, assertive, open ans accessible to others

By John Ng “Cultural Pluralism & Ministry Models in the Chinese Community”, 1985

I am a Chinese/French/Canadian mix. Sometimes, I wonder what good can come out of me. But God loves me the way I am. That’s what matters. :-) And he asks me to love and honor my parents.
A friend told me once that I was lucky because i could choose between 3 cultures and take the best of each ...

The first snow storm

This Saturday, about 20 cm of snow fell on Montreal (that is 20 cm per m^2!). It usually costs 5 million $ for the city to "vacuum" away the snow on the streets after a snow storm ... Mother Nature, please, be good to us, i don't want to pay more taxes!!!


the beauty of winter  

poor car ... 

the surroundings 

the road 

the balcony of our place 

Being Proactive ...

The other day, I was talking with a friend. My company will announce very soon some cuts, specially in the network department because of the merge, one network team is needed only. So, he told me to be proactive and to start looking for another job and have some plans ...

My plans are already made! See how proactive I am! If I lose my job soon, I plan to go to the Fiji islands in January. Then, I will go to China to visit some friends who just found some jobs there (in Feb or March). During Summer time, i will go back to France and i guess i will also go to some Northern countries ... ).

My friend was pretty impressed by my plans!!! And what about work?? ;-)

Oops, work, I forgot about it. Well, hopefully, during my travels, i will meet a nice-millionaire-man!(hahahha, just kidding, someone who can cook for me would be enough, hahhaha)

Ok, seriously, I will see what God's plan is for me :). As He says in Jeremiah 29:11 -
"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD , "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. " -

Let's hope T__T!


somewhere in British Columbia, Canada 

YES!

The Canadian Supreme Court has just said YES to gay marriages. So, Canada is OFFICIALLY the 3rd country to innovate in this field after Holland and Belgium (I think).
All our peaceful demontrastions were in vain! (or maybe not!)

Commémorons ...

Aujourd'hui, c'est le 15e anniversaire de la tuerie survenue à l'école Polytechnique de Montréal (là où j'ai fait mes études d'ingénieur) -le 6 décembre 1989-. Marc Lépine, qui s'était fait larguer par sa petite copine a voulu se venger. Il a sorti son arme à feu et a tué 14 filles qui étaient en train d'étudier à l'école!!!

On a observé 14 secondes de silence pour les victimes ...


silence ... 

Who dares???

Who is the person who calls me on my cellphone at 6:04 am on a Sunday morning??? I am sick, I need sleep!!!

Funny how my reflex was to get up and answer the phone call! But in the whole process, i was too late (of course) when i reached the phone. My cellphone rings, vibrates and lights up, so I couldn't miss it. It was crossing the bed that took me so long ... ah *sigh* ...

Hiver te voilà!!

What I saw in the morning when i opened the door ... 

ingénieur, tu dis?

I am a telecom engineer so my mom asked me to fix our telephone at home, it doesn't ring properly.

I studied electrical engineering, so some friends asked me to check the electrical circuits at their house.

It took me about a whole Summer to understand that (during my master's): X=HS ,
where X is a matrix of the received signals, H is the matrix of the channel gains (assuming block-fading) and S is the matrix of transmitted signals during a frame-time. I mean to understand all the concepts related to that equation.

If they can put their problem into that form, maybe I can solve it, but even then, I wonder how useful will the solution be ...

So, please, if you have a (real) problem, call an electrician. That would avoid a disaster ....