This person is not going to be happy when s/he leaves work and heads to the parking lot...

Yeah, we had a lotta rain today...

ronnie

Ugh.

On the other hand, you feel less better about people watching the chaos unfolding on Toronto streets in response to the G20 summit.

The genius who proposed to hold this summit in Canada's premiere city and centre of activism should be fired. As should every moron who agreed with him, including the Prime Minister.

I love Toronto. I know its downtown intimately. I can't stand what I am seeing on my television tonight.

Seriously. Fired.

ronnie

Cultural Expressions 2010

Today was the second annual Cultural Expressions Festival, an exercise in showcasing our slowly but surely increasing cultural diversity. It gives the small ethnocultural organizations - and the big, well-organized ones like the Chinese Cultural Association of NB - a chance to strut their stuff and say, "Hey, we're here! We're part of your community, too!" I went down to volunteer for a couple of hours.

We got by with a little help from our military friends, who made tents available to the associations to use as booths. We were grateful for them as rain threatened mid-afternoon. Nothing fell, though. This was very early afternoon before many people had arrived. It was much more crowded by the time I left around 3 pm.


Every year there are a few more ethnocultural communities who have reached the critical mass necessary to create an association. This year the Greeks were the newest to debut a new organization. Last year it was the Korean Association. In the last few years we've also seen the birth of the New Brunswick African Association, the Canadian-Iranian Association of NB, and a Japanese association, too. It's exciting to watch our diversity grow.

This young Iranian woman did an amazing traditional Persian dance. She is, as Husband observed, absolutely good enough to be a professional performer.

This event is organized by a Steering Committee made up of representatives of all those ethnocultural associations I mentioned before. It's a huge effort - the celebration starts Friday evening and continues all through Saturday and Sunday (June 27 - Multiculturalism Day) and involves dozens of performances. The logistics are mind-boggling. It is an amazing example of cross-cultural cooperation and mutual support. You just feel better about people knowing they can do something like that.

You also feel better about people after handing out helium balloons to little kids for two hours. Helium balloons are like crack for kids.

A very good day.

ronnie

Kitteh World Cup

Can be seen here. Lotsa goals scored, some awesome saves. Didn't ICHC used to have a link so that you could embed the video on your own blog? Guess everyone's into "monetizing Web 3.0" now...

ronnie

Florenceville

ronnie

From the interwebs

The English World Cup team went to visit an orphanage in Johannesburg today. "It was so sad to see their little faces, with no hope." said Jamal Umboto, 6.

(Popping up in various versions on Twitter and other places around the interwebs. Always England, though. I lol'd.)

ronnie

Meme: Technology during Your Life Span at 10-year Intervals....

Xtreme English posted a fun meme to her blog. She's posted

"...technology in 10-year intervals as I experienced it over my life span."

In other words, she has posted the most personally significant developments in technology in her first ten years of life, her second, and so on. So I'm going to play too:

1st 10 years: colour television, evolution from reel-to-reel and albums to 8-tracks (your personal music in your car!)

2nd 10 years: VHS players; earliest home computers (we had a ColecoVision), push-button telephones, evolution from 8-tracks to cassettes (you could pick the song you wanted to hear!)

3rd 10 years: cellphones, real personal computers, typewriters replaced by word processing, desktop publishing, first social networking (BBSes), evolution from cassettes to CDs (they didn't get tangled in the machine!)

4th 10 years: Evolution from VHS to DVDs, laptops, blogging

5th 10 years: Web 2.0, HD television, netbooks, Blackberry, Twitter, FaceBook, internet on cellphones, individual entertainment systems on airplanes (sure cut down on those 4-5 hour flights to Regina...)

Of course I'll remember 10 things that were hugely important to me at the time as soon as I post this :) But that's what comment sections are for. Anyway, it was fun to think about.

ronnie

This is just... wrong.

From failbook.org, of course, via Sister.

ronnie

Friday aprés travail. Bon fin de semaine!

Ottawa

This sign - designating Ottawa's legendary Sparks Street - was the closest I got to seeing anything remotely interesting on a 2-day trip to Ottawa, marked by a crisis back home that saw me missing half of the meeting I came here for, to spend hours in my hotel room crafting documents that were suddenly urgently needed back home. Ahhh. I love working in government. (No, seriously, I do. I think.)

ronnie