Happy (Late) Canada Day

Since I can’t be at home for Canada Day I pay attention to a lot of the articles that are written about Canada in Canadian newspapers. David Burwick, former CEO of Pepsi-QTG Canada was an American living in Canada for two years. And as he wrote in the National Post he loved it there. Here is his top 10 reasons why you should live in Canada and I can’t agree with him more.

1 Tim’s: What more can I say? It’s 110% Canadian (even if it’s owned by Americans now). Real coffee for real people, started by a real hockey player.

2 The sheer beauty and diverse geography of the country. From St. John’s to Vancouver, with a long stopover in Banff.

3 Sweeter ketchup — and sweeter Diet Pepsi.

4 Terminal one at Pearson International Airport in Toronto: Nothing’s more civilized.

5 The National Anthem: How can you beat the lyrics, “The true north strong and free”?

6 Hockey Night in Canada: One of the last communal TV events left anywhere.

7 Eating a peameal sandwich every Saturday at 7 a. m. during my son’s hockey practice. That ritual became Pavlovian.

8 Raising a family right in the middle of the city, and knowing they’re safe.

9 Surviving a minus-30-degree day in downtown Winnipeg, and how it made me feel more alive.

10 CBC’s coverage of international news. You just can’t get that in the U. S.
Happy Canada Day

J.

Back in China and Things are Returning to Normal…for the Better

Well we made it home yesterday safe and sound without any problems. Jetlag is still a little bit present — I am writing this post at 10:55pm after all, but generally we’re recovering pretty well. There are a couple things that are different however, all for the better:

• We can’t stop talking and thinking about our time in Canada. Winnie and I both really enjoyed our time there. That just shows how good our trip was. We’re seriously considering moving there. I think it would be a good move for the both of us. Now the only thing to really think about is when. We’ll have to workout a few items first such as what sort of visa is the best one for Winnie to apply for (we’re thinking it might be a good idea for her to go back to school for a year to get a Canadian degree on her resume. I may return to school for a master’s degree as well).  Our trip home has really brought us closer together as well, which can only be a good thing.

• I feel refreshed enough to handle things at work. It helps a lot that the summer period has set in and things are beginning to quiet down as well. My stress level dropped a lot today and I was really able to get my work done. I finished all my tasks and was out of the office by 6pm. I also wasn’t dreading returning to my desk tomorrow like I was before the trip.

• Roger got his hair cut shaved yesterday. It’ll keep him cooler for the summer and help his summer coat grow in properly. Unfortunately right now he looks like a totally different dog than the one I fell in love with, but I’m getting used to it. He grew pretty big over the 11 days we were gone — we can really notice the change anyway — but I can see from the way he acts that he is still the same lovable funny energetic dog I purchased and that’s what matters.
• On a technical note, I’ve made the complete switch over to a Mac and am now even am to write posts for this blog here. It’s much faster and feels much more satisfying to type it on my lap on a keyboard that is really designed to be used in a small area instead of my old HP’s keyboard that felt like a miniature version of a full-scale desktop version.

The main thing overall right now is that I feel content and happy with Winnie, with my job and with my life and that is all thanks to this vacation.

J.

P.S. Happy Canada Day to all Canadian readers of this blog whether you’re in our home and native land or overseas tomorrow, have a good one!

One More Quick Note

For those of you who didn’t click on the links in my last post, I’ve started to write for Lost Laowai again. You can find my latest post here.

Next post will be from back home in Shanghai.

J.

Last Day in Canada

Well today is our last day in Canada, tomorrow we get back on a plane and return to China. This trip is just what Winnie and I need. We’ve had a lot of fun together visiting Niagara Falls, my aunt’s farm and the CN Tower.

Last night we also went out to one of China’s larger Chinatowns in Markham and had a big banquet dinner with a friend of Winnie’s uncle. It was great to introduce my parents to a Chinese banquet and for Winnie to see people from home. We’re looking to move back to Canada in a year or two and Markham is one of the areas that we’re looking at settling because of its large Chinatown. So showing Winnie the area was one of my goals for the trip.  

But one of the things that I really got out of all this traveling around was a chance for me to reevaluate how I viewed Canada. I really was feed up with this country when I left five years ago and the last couple times I came back I really didn’t really leave the area around my home, so I wasn’t able to evaluate the country and whether it had changed for the better. This time I was able to do that. I’ve fallen in love with CBC Radio again. I’ve always listened to it even when I’ve been in China, but being back here this time has made me appreciate it even more. 

What I really appreciate about the CBC though is its efforts to promote Canadian indie music through its digital/online station CBC Radio 3. I’m now subscribed to its Radio 3 superfeed which has every single podcast/program that the station offers and purchased Wolf Parade’s At Mount Zoomer and Forest City Lover’s Haunting Moon Sinking because of their programs. Both albums are really good.

I’ve also been doing some serious reading again. I finished Chinese novelist Mo Yan’s Life and Death are Wearing Me Out  and am now devouring Douglas Coupland’s The Gum Thief. The two novels are different in terms of scope, but I really do enjoy Gum Thief more than Life and Death. It just deals with things that I can relate to more — the ideas of not really knowing where you’re going in life and trying to make something out of that life — than Mo Yan’s ideas on reincarnation mixed with Chinese history.

There is something about Coupland’s novel that is just very Canadian and I’m not just saying that because Coupland is Canadian and his book is set in Vancouver and its suburbs. The small scope, small cast of characters and short chapters and less than 300-page length just parallel Canada’s small population. That’s going out on a limb, but if you’re Canadian and you read the novel I think you’ll agree with me. 

I’d better bring this post to an end as there’s a bit still to be done. Winnie is making her famous chicken wings and a thank you to my parents and one of my friends is coming over to enjoy the dinner with us. Then there will be packing so that we can enjoy our last morning with our parents before jumping on the plane for our 14-hour ride back to Shanghai.

Write more soon.

J.

 

Canada So Far!

We’ve been here almost five full days now and things are going really really well, My brother’s wedding went perfectly. He and his wife got exactly what they wanted and everyone had a great time. Winnie also had a blast. She is loving every minute of our time here and every one of my family members is enjoying our time with her too. She’s won them over with her charm.

For me, I’m really enjoying seeing my hometown and Canada through her eyes. Places that I used to visit almost every year on field trips look really fresh and fun in her eyes.

We spent the day at Niagara Falls today and she loved every second of it. That’s a place that she’s really dreamed of going there since her English teacher showed her a video of it during her first year at university. So for her to go today was the fulfillment of a dream and that meant a lot to me that we were able to fulfill that today. Having her here has made this the best vacation ever. I am having a blast. I hope that every vacation we go on is this fun.

Tomorrow, we’re heading off to my aunt’s farm.

J.

P.S. I wrote this on my new MacBook and am loving that too!

The Struggle Obtaining A Canadian Visa And Other General Life Stress

If you want to know where I’ve been for most of the last month, I’d say “in front of my computer”. But instead of blogging, I’ve been wrestling with some important real-life issues.

First Winnie and I have spent the last three or four months planning our trip to Canada for my brother’s wedding. That has taken up a lot of our time particularly the visa process. I’ve been answering visa questions in the comments of my China Visa Update post almost daily. Well, if you thought it was hard to get a visa for foreigners to go to China getting one to go to Canada is also difficult. Not really because of the information they ask you to provide (there are a lot of documents but nothing that is really unusual) but the processing time. Canada has a backlog of 1 million applications at any one time. That means you really have to plan months ahead and have all your documents ready (we actually started collecting the relevant information — some which had to be sent from my parents last fall). Well in the end we succeeded, Winnie got her visa and we’ve arrived at my parents place for a well needed vacation and 10 days of family fun and visiting in Southern Ontario.

Second my work schedule has been hectic and this has put me into a bit of depression. I feel — though I am not sure this is true — as though I have been able to come up for air for the last month. Maybe it’s the grind of work and personal life crashing together uncontrollably that has kept me feeling this way. I am ready for a break. I have the weekend where I will be doing a little bit of work and then Monday and Tuesday and then no more.

For these 10 days, I am going to concentrate on having fun and taking some time to reflect. You probably won’t catch me on Twitter, but I will be updating this space. I’m going to blog about a couple of the stories that are sure to come up and I will also try to post more photos something I don’t do that often. My mom has been bugging me to post more pictures of Roger so I am will try to fit a few more posts in “A Dog’s Life” as well.

That’s it. Just wanted to say I’m back and more new content will come soon.

J.

We Survived the Flood

I haven’t been posting much over the last two weeks because I’ve just been way too busy and way too stressed out with work. I have been preparing for a number of company events that are taking place next week and they’ve just taken up all my time (I even brought work home this weekend which I never do). Something happened yesterday that I do want to blog about — my apartment flooded!

It wasn’t Noah and the Ark, a pipe burst under our bathroom sink covering the bathroom, the kitchening and part of our master bedroom/living room in water. We only found out about it because the woman in the apartment below us (who doesn’t even seem to like my landlord) called my landlord to tell her that water was dripping down into their bathroom (that had been a problem before we moved in here a year ago). Our landlord called Winnie right away and then drove over from Pudong to check out the problem, arrange for the building management to fix the pipe and stayed to clean up. That was really great of her and it only took about an hour. Which really made my Friday and my weekend. Otherwise I would’ve just flipped out as I have been under a lot of self-induced stress lately.

Thankfully it didn’t damage much. We had to replace two powerstrips and the power cord for my five-year-old clunker of an HP laptop — we had a spare for it already and to be honest the old cord was pretty much broken. I also wrote off a pair of computer speakers that I don’t use anymore.

This got me thinking about my need to buy a new laptop and my building desire to dump HP and Windows OS for a Macbook Pro. But due to our upcoming trip to Canada, I’ve had to put that desire on hold for awhile. What I did though was clean up the old programs and everything else on the machine and it’s made a big difference. I can even write this blog much faster through a proxy. So I might be able to hold out buying that Macbook just a little bit longer — at least until I get to Canada.

Off to work and enjoy the rest of my weekend.

J.

Today’s Earthquake: The Day China Entered the Twitter Era

I’m sure by now you’ve heard about the earthquake that hit Sichuan today. It was so big that we even felt it in Shanghai.

When it happened I was sitting at my desk working on my computer. I felt a little dizzy and I thought it was just from some eating some bad food at lunch. Only when my colleagues rushed by saying in Shanghainese that something had happened did I know it wasn’t just me. Within a minute my Twitter Feed jumped to life with people asking if anyone else felt the earthquake in Beijing. It was then that I knew something was up. A few minutes later we evacuated the building.

But we were given the all clear 15 minutes later. When I got back to my desk I was able to follow everything on Twitter and answer questions from different colleagues as the people on my feed fed information on the earthquake from all over the country. And we were able to help each other and filter out rumours. People who had access to televisions were able to keep people like me, who were in offices and working, up-to-date with the latest developments.

I can really tell that Twitter is coming into it’s own in China. Today really proves it, especially since the Chinese media did not release news right away and there is very limited access to foreign news sources such as CNN — I’m lucky in in that I have a satellite dish that gives me foreign programs but it’s on the fritz at the moment. Twitter filled the gap for me today and thanks to crowd sourcing I think that it’s pretty accurate. Two articles on the situation can be found on Danwei and China Herald.

As much as I feel happy for the role that Twitter played in the event, I fill sorry for all those dead and injured in the quake. My heart and prayers go out to them.

J.

Update (May 17th 2008): I sent a note to Jesse Brown, the host of CBC Radio’s Search Engine about Twittering the earthquake. They featured me on their blog here and here.

Something To Remember When You Return to Work Tomorrow: Safety

Note: I tried to post this last night, but I couldn’t because of technical glitches. After today’s earthquake the recommendations seem all that more important.

J.

I was really surprised this week when I received the latest issue of EuroBiz, the magazine of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, and read Bill Dodson’s column on workplace safety. I knew that workplace accidents happen in China, but not like this:

” Operators sometimes have to reach deep inside the machines, which should automatically stop when material is trapped inside them and needs to be pulled out. “Operators - with the blessing of the Chinese owner - would take the male sensor on one side of the machine and simply push it into the female sensor on the other side of the machine, effectively short-circuiting the safeties,” he said. “I told them they can’t do that; the makers of the machine made the system that way for a reason - to protect the workers.” Another Western manager told me how a young Chinese technician at a local factory had chosen to change out a product in testing without allowing the test cycle to finish. She had bypassed the safety mechanisms in order to save time switching out products under test. Sharp pincers that normally hold the product in place mistook her finger for the next product to be tested and splayed the finger open. Blood, by the telling, sprayed onto her and her co-worker, who watched the whole episode without comment and acted only when it was too late. “

Read the rest of Dodson’s article to see how you can prevent this from happening in your factories.

Dodson does a great job laying out ways to prevent this from happening through educating factory workers. But his piece also got me thinking about educating office workers about safety. I know you’re probably thinking about that episode in the third season of The Office where the warehouse guys tease Michael and the office team because they have to take safety training to prevent things like paper cuts. But thing like eye strain can have dangerous and painful effects — as someone with a visual impairment I’ve felt the effects. I’ve also seen that many people don’t treat these type of things seriously.

Thankfully China Daily has some easy tips that can save you a lot of pain later. Another tip that I like to follow is taking an Internet- and computer-free weekend and doing some offline activities. I just did that this weekend and I feel great and totally refreshed for Monday.

Hope you do too.

J.

I Think My Dog Has a Shoe Fetish

It’s been almost a month since we got Roger and things are going well. Roger is a strong healthy puppy. He’s always full of energy. And I mean full of energy. He runs everywhere.

I also think he’s developed a bit of a shoe fetish as he is always caring shoes every chance he gets. Sometimes the shoes are even bigger than he is. Earlier tonight I found him with his head stuck in one of my dress shoes then he stole my socks and ran around the room and then he licked my feet. Right now he’s also trying to type on the computer will simultaniously climbing on the bed.

Okay, thankfully he’s stopped climbing now and is sitting with Winnie watching 27 Dresses while she massages him. It’s that part I like the most. As much as he drives me crazy he brings us a lot more love than trouble. And we love him for it.

J.