Good news. I renewed my subscription with WordPress for another year. It’s my way of saying I love it here.
I will be resetting my followers (again) down. If you wish to continue to see me on your reader, leave a comment.
Thank you.
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In the homily at Mass for the Ordination of Deacons on June 2, Archbishop Robert J. Carlson quoted the Prayer of Consecration, which he would use in ordaining each of 25 men to the permanent diaconate. “May (these men) excel … Continue reading
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Today, May 28, 2018, is Memorial Day in USA. Today, in America, all Starbucks are CLOSED. I could here the groaning and moaning and screaming of citizens of US defending on their caffeine jolt. Nothing to fret, you are welcome … Continue reading
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The Shadow reminds me of younger days when my ears were glued to the radio listening to: “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!” Coming from the Philippines, our culture is steep with superstitious belief. … Continue reading
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Yes, Canada! Come and visit us this year. According to New York Times 52 places to visit in 2017, we are No. 1 on the list. Three good reasons: Canada celebrates 150 years as a nation, a year-long event. Free admission to … Continue reading
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News from my native land. To read the story from New York Times, click on the image depicting Missing and New Horizon by photojournalist DANIEL BEREHULAK. (Note: news is not for the faint of hearts)
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Trump admitting sexual assault. Clinton emails. Trump charity fraud. Clinton emails. Trump calls for nuclear proliferation. Clinton emails. Trump calls for national stop and frisk. Clinton emails. Trump violates trade embargo with Cuba. Clinton emails. Trump sued over Trump University … Continue reading
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My friend and I were joking how the Royal Family came to us. My nieighbour said that they came by knocking on my door, but I wasn’t home, said she. Kate left me a voice mail how much she wanted … Continue reading
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People are fundamentally beautiful just the way they are. But with the introduction of make-up, we are brainwashed that we are not beautiful enough. Therefore, we spend so much time, money and energy in face painting. I always tease my … Continue reading
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A young deer was spotted roaming downtown Vancouver Tuesday morning, sparking concern for the animal’s safety. It spread like wildfire through tweets. First tweet: Something you don’t typically see in downtown Vancouver – a young deer on Granville Street. From … Continue reading
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An American traveled to Canada and had difficulty understanding our road signs. He came up with a name for this sign. ‘Beaver in utero just ahead.‘ Actual meaning of the sign: Parks Canada The more he traveled in our country, the weirder … Continue reading
Most of the Super Bowl commercials have the “aawww” factor but not the tickle-my-bone-funny until my belly ache from laughing and bubbles coming out of my nose.
I live for Super Bowl’s commercials, not the game.
When it comes to sports, I think pigs will fly if the Canucks win this season. Yes, I wrote if, not when.
When the pigs fly, they would have flown with the Canadian geese instead off to a better pasture land, join a team that actually can play and wins the hockey game. Yes, I wrote when not if because it’s more believable to think that pigs will fly than the Canucks will win a game.
Seriously, “When Pigs Fly” Dorito commercial won second place in high stakes ad, it feels good to know that the filmmaker is from Vancouver, Canada. The prize is a tune of $50,000 USD, convert that to Canadian, the return is better should he wants plenty of loonies or toonies. Loonies are one dollar coin and toonies are two dollar coin.
This little piggy is flying all the way to the bank.
Here are more Super Bowl commercials. Tell me if these are funny. If they are, I think I’ve lost my funny bones.
#RealStrength Men+Care
Always #LikeAGirl
Invisible Mindy Kaling
Next year, Super Bowl, please don’t cut the funnies.
… my generation, born between 1946 and 1964, has physical concerns: Friends are dying, joints are aching, and memories are failing. There are financial issues, with forced retirement and unemployment, children needing money and possibly a bed, and dependent parents. But for many of us, it is a psychological quandary that is causing the most unpleasantness: looking around and suddenly being the oldest.
Every generation gets old, but for those who were told we’d be forever young, it just seems more painful. “It’s a huge issue,” says Dr. Anna Fels, a psychiatrist in New York. “I see so many who are trying to adjust their lives to this new phase, which for some reason none of us really pictured ourselves going through.”
Why didn’t we? We knew that eventually more people around us would be younger rather than older. But it still rankles. The image of a room filled with younger people is the perfect symbol.
Michele Willens is a journalist who writes for The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post and The Atlantic. A version of this news analysis appears in print on August 31, 2014, on page SR9 of the New York edition with the headline: “When did we get so old?”
Photographer: Glen Lawson (Globe and Mail)
“Don’t worry about walking a mile in my shoes, just try a day thinking in my head.” ~ unknown
Men and boys walked a kilometre and half along the Burlington lakeshore in high heels in support of the Hope in High Heels Walk. They walked in heels to show support for women and children living in and fleeing from abusive situations.
These men wore pink shirts as well to be part of the solution to end violence against women. It’s all about Hope in High Heels.
“Photography is always the same thing — being at the right place at the right time,” said Lawrence, a wildlife photographer for 50 years whose latest shots can be found at Kootenay Reflections.com.
How did he do it?
It’s almost unbearably cute.
A once-in-a-lifetime shot of a grizzly bear appearing to set up a photo has a B.C. wildlife photographer in the middle of a viral cyberstorm.
East Kootenay-based Jim Lawrence was keeping his distance — as he has for 50 years now — taking long-distance shots of a grizzly hunting for spawning salmon.
“He’s a male, about five years old, and he was fishing on the other bank of the river,” said Lawrence, who won’t reveal where the photo was taken for fear a hunter will take out his new-found friend.
“I set my camera up in a clearing in the brush, hoping to get a clear shot.
“You can never predict what a wild animal will do, so all of a sudden he crosses the river and starts scrambling up the bank.”
So Lawrence, a spry 67, hightailed it out of there, abandoning his tripod and camera.
“I ran up to my truck, and grabbed another camera,” Lawrence told The Province. “The bear started sniffing around the camera — it was saturated with my scent.”
While the grizzly investigated — appearing to be trying to set up a shot of his own — Lawrence fired away with his backup camera, capturing some startling images of the big bruin.
Source: The Province ~ Wildlife Photographer
An anonymous thief placed a note on a child’s bike he stole it on Canada Day in an attempt to return the bike with its rightful owner. (Photo: Facebook) Source: Metronews
A Prince George boy is beaming after his bike was returned with an apologetic note two days after an anonymous thief took it for a drunken Canada Day joyride.
“Dear little boy or girl,
First and foremost, I am sorry for any grief I have caused in the last couple of days but I am now trying to return your bike to the proper home where it belongs.
You see, I stole your bike the other night purely out of selfish convenience and due to my state of inebriation, I cannot recall exactly which house it was in the vicinity of this neighborhood.
I think the lesson to be learned here is that you should NEVER leave your bike out in plain view where drunken fools like myself can easily snatch it for a quick (and surprisingly fun) ride home.
Sincerely,
Anonymous Bike Thief”
Mother’s response:
“Dear anonymous bike thief,” she wrote. “Thank you for your attempt at making it right. My son has been miserable since he discovered his bike missing. Thanks! A soon to be happy boy’s mama.”
Source: Metronews
As we are safe and sound in the confines of our own little world, posting beautiful happy photographs, let us be mindfull of what is happening to others: Note that this a graphic post that I am sharing with you. Viewers discretion advise.
http://universalfreepress.com/graphic-muslims-systematically-beheading-children-in-christian-genocide/
http://www.catholic.org/news/international/middle_east/story.php?id=56490
Convert or die. ISIS militants are crucifying victims because to them crucifixion is especially humiliating due to its Christian implications.
“I don’t speak because I have the power to speak; I speak because I don’t have the power to remain silent” – Rabbi A.Y. Kook
Some of the images I`m including in this blog post are extremely graphic, at this point either read it or not, people need to see the real reality going on in Iraq
I`m breaking Shabbat just by posting this but it needs to be written, for the past week I`ve been
following the horrible crimes that have been committed in Iraq. ISIS has gone on a campaign of brutal violence and murder, destroying Christian communities and other minorities like the Yazidis. It makes me wonder why does the world not care about these people? Why does the world show any lack of remorse? Why are…
View original post 593 more words
“I LIVED with the same cat for 19 years — by far the longest relationship of my adult life. Under common law, this cat was my wife. I fell asleep at night with the warm, pleasant weight of the cat on my chest. The first thing I saw on most mornings was the foreshortened paw of the cat retreating slowly from my face and her baleful crescent glare informing me that it was Cat Food Time. As I often told her, in a mellow, resonant, Barry White voice: “There is no luuve … like the luuve that exists … between a man … and his cat.”
“I never meant to become this person. My own cat turned up as a stray at my cabin on the Chesapeake Bay when I was sitting out on the deck eating leftover crabs. She was only a couple of months old then, small enough that my friend Kevin could fit her whole head in his mouth. She appeared from underneath the porch, piteously mewling, and I gave her some cold white crab meat. I did not know then that feeding a stray cat is effectively adopting that cat.”
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“We don’t know what goes on inside an animal’s head; we may doubt whether they have anything we’d call consciousness, and we can’t know how much they understand or what their emotions feel like. I will never know what, if anything, the cat thought of me. But I can tell you this: A man who is in a room with a cat — whatever else we might say about that man — is not alone.”
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A Man and His Cat By TIM KREIDER. A most enjoyable and delightful read published at New York Times. Read the whole article here.
This piece of exquisite literature has attracted positive comments even if a reader is not cat lover.
30 years over due book
“To whom it may concern. From Courtenay library. Please find $100.00 for courier back to Courtenay and overdue. I shall contact next week to ensure all is in order. Thanks.”
More than 30 years after he first borrowed Camping and Woodcraft from a Vancouver Island library, an unidentified man has finally put the well-thumbed guidebook back into circulation.
The man, described only as an older gentleman, walked into a library branch in Prince George, B.C. and handed over a copy of the 1965 book Camping and Woodcraft: A Handbook for Vacation Campers and for Travelers, and said he would like it returned to its home in Courtenay, B.C.
Do you have any books sitting around that is long overdue?
Source: National Post
And nothing but the truth
I hate to say this, coming from the Philippines, the government system is becoming similar to where I came from. And it’s not a good situation.
“If we are not prepared to take a stand now (especially with the partial lockout and the salary reduction), when will we ever stand up to this government? Are we waiting for the government to roll our salaries back even further, to further reduce supports for students, to hold teachers even more accountable than they currently are?”
Overview:
Over the last decade, almost $2 billion has been funnelled out of public education.
Over the last decade, public education has had a funding reduction of almost $2 billion.
Over the last decade, our students have been deprived of $2 billion that should have been theirs. The government’s own numbers say so.
Class size and composition wording much like the BCTF is asking for used to be included in the contract. Teachers negotiated for these provisions and took years of zero per cent pay increases in order to fund them. They put their own potential earnings back into the school system in return for these working and learning conditions.
Let’s pause here for a moment to talk about what class size and composition actually mean. The first is rather straight-forward: the number of students in a class. The more students in a class, the less one-on-one attention is available for each student. This has a direct impact on students.
Class composition is a little trickier to explain, however. Class composition refers to the emotional and education needs of students. Some students require more assistance than others to accomplish the same learning outcomes as their peers.
Then, in 2002, the contract that included these negotiated terms was ripped up. The class size and composition language that the BCTF is trying to re-negotiate now was removed. Just…poof. Gone.
The Supreme Court of B.C. has twice said that the Liberal government’s dissolution of the negotiated contract was illegal. The courts have told the government that they need to fund these things. Twice.
Source:
Ashley D. MacKenzie High School Teacher: Huffpost British ColumbiaA colleague dropped a newspaper in my in tray stating that one of our peers wants me to have it. Oh? Thank you. What a special treatment I received that day. I hardly read the newspaper since it’s mostly bad news anyway. This will just end up in the recycle box.
Front page pictures can really be upsetting when it focuses on local news about commuting. There are so many extra people during peak hours and we could use an extra cars of train to accommodate the growing population in Vancouver. Not just that, we need extra officers to patrol the trains and the stations for the safety of commuters. Officers that serve and protect.
Waterfront Station
Of course, I did not read the paper; after all, I was working. Then the In Box of my e-mail became busy. My family has sent me e-mails first thing in the morning. What could it be possibly be that I am getting their attention as well. My sister wrote:
Am here @dentist reading ::: then I see this ha ha
Sent on the TELUS Mobility network with BlackBerry
With an attachment:
Province today’s news Aug 22. 2012
This was a surprise. I was just having an animated conversation with a lady gathering information on how I deal with danger during my commute. I did not expect that my conversation and name will appear on the paper.
Time difference: BIG Time
4 am, Vancouver, BC, Canada time
Olympic Hockey Mens finalem in the middle of my dream.
At this time, I
Should the neighbour is quiet, Canada lost.
Should I hear the screaming sound and the honking of the horns,
Lets see if Ill come out of my dreams that I`m in Sochi celebrating with them.
Go CANADA Go!
UPDATE: WE WON!
The women’s gold-medal hockey game on Thursday night between the United States and Canada followed an eerily familiar script. Four years after the men’s teams from the two countries played a riveting Olympic final that was decided in overtime, the women did the same.
This time, as in Vancouver in 2010, Canada came out on top when the forward Marie-Philip Poulin beat the American goaltender, Jessie Vetter, with a shot from the left circle with 11:50 remaining in overtime. Poulin, 22, also scored the goal that sent the game into overtime.
What a moment! Exciting! We are so proud of you and congratulations, Canada.
READ MORE »
To this date, I can still remember where I was, what I did, what happened next and who I was with when Canada won the Ice Hockey in 2010 Olympics. It was a monumental time for me and I don’t even like sports.
“Ice hockey was actually first introduced in 1920 at the Summer Olympics. Unsurprisingly, Canada has withheld its reputation in the sport, having won the very first match at the 1924 Winter Olympics, as well as the last in 2010.”
Source: Mashable.com: Winter Olympics now and then
When we see a story in the news repeatedly, we have a tendency to think it must be important. Thinking something is important often means we feel we should do something about it.
In the whole scheme of things, what’s really worth considering the most is the New Yorker cartoons.
Image source: Carl Richards
Reflections 