It was an interesting outing and very enjoyable with the current weather. I haven't been updating my blog for a while due to various situations I was in earlier. However, I'm glad I expressed my mind allowing me to move forward now; which also led myself in carrying some momentum into short term goals I would like to achieve.
I'm impressed. And for those who knows me, I don't get impressed easily. Due to circumstances, mom has checked into Princess Margaret for her treatments. The doctors are very professional and the place does not resemble a hospital at all. Being family of patient or friends who needs to be admitted to a hospital, sometimes one ponders if there may be alternatives and would it be better to hire homecare to stay at home. However, PMH completely changed that thought. It specializes in specific fields of research and to be honest, I really cannot think of a better alternative given the situation. However, I am impressed not because of top-notch doctors or the hospital being one of the top 5 in the world; I am impressed because of the level of detailed planning gone into hospitality/food, and the nurses. Despite working long hours and over the holidays - the nurses continue to genuinely care for each patient and tries try their best to make everyone feel better, keep the environment clean of germs, give strict warning to visitors not to bring germs in, and listen to the patient attentively. I'm not going into too much details as there are much examples and I do not want to create some sort of unnecessary guideline for reference. All I can say is that the nurses doesn't get much credit for the type of work they do, and I am truly grateful at their professionalism and care they provide.
And so, it was Earth Hour 2011 on Saturday where buildings and businesses were encouraged to turn off lights for an hour to ease electricity consumption - the outcome was an 8.9% decrease of electricity on the powergrid. It was pretty cool to see the Toronto downtown core dimming down for this event despite there were still some offices here and there that was still being lighted. One of the events that was opened for the public during this hour included the U of T telescopes since the light pollution is lower during this period of time.
After my friend and I finished a superb grilled sea-bream for dinner, we headed towards 60 St.George Street of where the telescopes were housed, and found ourselves stumbling inside pitch black rooms filled with huge crowds of people lining up for the event. We saw the Beehive cluster, and Saturn which was pretty cool with its' rings and an orbiting moon clearly visibly in the dark crisp skies. One of the ladies suggested that we were quite lucky to see this since she was here past 3 yrs but was unable to make out the Beehive cluster - guess the goddess of Saturns likes us ;) lol
Corporation that I work in will match any fulltime engineer's donation up to 3000$ for the Japanese earthquake/tsunami relief fund from this website here. Please let me know before this Friday if you would like to join in for this as I will be making spreadsheet tracking all donations towards this cause and will scan all participants a receipt once avail. Thank you.
There's nothing more terrible than to see a country with leading edge technology, strict building laws, and proud country values lie in shambles. My heartfelt condolences goes to Japans' quake victims, and their families. I don't think any other country will be able to handle the situation as well as Japan. And certainly that douche from China stating 'our nuclear reactors in Shenzhen will not leak and we have the utmost preparations for earthquakes' was an insensitive/inappropriate comment for someone who cannot back their talk - it always better to stay quiet than talk nonsense. Here is an aerial view of before and after, and hopefully Japan will be able to recuperate soon from this incident.
Haven't really been the most active of blogging lately. Too much happened past several months. One of the things was that my new vehicle finally arrived after 2.5 months of waiting. It's a quite powerful 1.5 tonnes of spaceframe technology (that's what they call it or whatever that means) and has latest gadgetry (more electronics = more potential to fail lol) and would possibly make myself drool over it if I was back in High school or University 10+ yrs ago. However, before we know it - our perspectives change alot from the environment around us and and I didn't find my level of excitement/enthusiasm as I would've expected. I guess as we grow up, there's more things we need to plan, think, and worry about. Since many of my friends asked me; the reason why I spent such a hefty amount on my car is because I can see crap happening just in the blink of an eye; bombs, heart attacks, cancers, car-crashes, accidents etc. Maybe it was there all along but I was too young or hopeful to notice it before. We only live life once and should go for what we want within reason and be whoever we want to be. Over the course of working, traveling, and studying - I do notice that there are many people trying to be someone that isn't really themselves, maybe I was also one of them when I was growing up too. Not sure why I decided to post this but just wanted to type out what I felt without thinking too much today.
With the differences stated, which one do I like more? Well.... granted, there's going to be pickpockets in Shanghai and one has to be careful of their belongings, but I feel more alive and comfortable there, and not scared to haggle or buy endless DVDs :p. Beijing is safer, has much huger buildings (lots of government), and cleaner; however, it gave me an uneasy feeling like I was watched everywhere and the possibility of private police rushing out from nowhere and beat you with baton sticks is no joke. I guess the Chinese government needs to stay that way to control the crowd and political retributions in its capital after what happened in June 4th, 1989.
It's been a busy few weeks with much things needing attention to. However, decided to take a breather and continue my blog. The last stop Lanzhou didn't leave me with much expectations but I was shocked when arriving at TianShui. It features mountains deep in layers of forestry and trees, and it's Maijishan Grottoes was definately my highlight of the trip. It was literally a sculpted mountain from 1500-2000 yrs back. what's amazing was that there were little to no human intervention to it so what you see is what you see years ago. The only things that was built was the 27 story flight of stairs that took 60 yrs to complete. Spanning deep into the clouds, one would imagine how difficult the workers would use to work sculpting the artwork while being suspended from the air.
After Tianshui, we headed towards Xian for the Terracotta warriors tomb, which I find it so so, maybe I've seen too much TV shows about it and expected more? It was nonetheless very grand and an integral part of Chinese history. At this point, many people from the group were sick due to sanitary and diarrhea, but luckily I still had that little immune system built up from my expat so was still eating much of the foods around and about. Despite this, it was around 15 days into the tour and I was beginning to feel tired; however, I also longed to see more since I understand the trip will be ending soon after we go on to the next stop in Beijing.
