I’m part way through my first “Conversational Chinese” course at the University of Waterloo’s Confucius Institute. From what I’ve learned so far, I’ve found Mandarin Chinese to be a very elegant language. It’s a language like a talented computer programmer might design a language. Everything is very regular and consistent. It has a quality that…

I have a can of Ovaltine crystals that has been in my cupboard for around 10 years now. Today I was going to throw it out, but thought I’d open it first. The can felt a bit heavy, like it was half full. But when I opened it, it appeared to be empty. Then I…

We have an interesting election coming up in Ontario. There are two parts to it: one that doesn’t matter, and one that does. The part that doesn’t matter is the standard “puppet on the left or the puppet on the right?” question. As usual, many people seem to have some reason for preferring one puppet…

When I was a child, maybe around 12 years old, I had a cheap Kodak X-15F camera (why do I remember the model number?) that used those 126 film cartridges that were popular at the time. I could afford to buy the film with the money I earned from my paper route, but I could…

This is going to sound like a shill, but it’s not… really. I just want to say… damn, I love Vernor’s Ginger Ale. I don’t know who it is that had the crazy idea to put some ginger in the Ginger Ale.  But I’d really like to shake his hand.