The travels of Justin

Two days ago I received a text-message written in Chinese from a friend of mine who I know does not understand a lot of English. Since Spring Festival and the Chinese Lunar New Year is upon us, I figured I’d better work fast to understand the meaning of the message. After 2.5 hours of painstakingly [...]

On almost every street corner is a small bomb table, perhaps better described as a wide selection of fireworks for sale. These are out on the street and they’re stacked a good 12-feet high. We grabbed a basket (how convenient) and started picking out explosives for the New Year celebration. The registered safty expert (he [...]

In addition to reliable, and freely available, streaming video of election coverage, CPAC has a fantasic Flash-application to display results of ridings across the country. It’s supposed to represent live results and be tied to data as it comes in, but for a moment something just didn’t seem right.

Ooops! Ten seconds later the little “leading [...]

For all the joking about Canadian winters, the one thing I’m not used to seeing in the Vancouver region is waterways freezing over like that in Tianjin. The river passes through many parts of town and is covered with a reasonably thick-looking sheet. Two blocks from TUT is a bend in one waterway where there [...]

After finding vibrators in vending machines, frozen lakes, examples of Chinglish, and a standing-room only train back to Tianjin, I’d call the day-trip to Beijing a success.

Main courtyard of the Forbidden City
Joined by some Canadian friends, we left early for the train and managed to miss it by 15 minutes. With an hour-and-a-half to kill, [...]

Our Canadian friends have just begun their semester, but school in China has just finished for Spring Festival and Chinese New Year. After a first semester of culture adjustment, business classes, language classes, and some Ti Chi, it’s time to look outside of Tianjin and deciding what to do with my huge holiday. School will [...]

The government of China says there are about 270 road fatalities per day. The WHO says “600 and injury toll at 45,000 every day”. Either way you cut it, that’s a lot. Frankly, for such a large country, it’s almost amazing that more people are not injured. CNN reports these stats and notes some driving [...]

Some questionable spending on “relocation services” has been brought my attention at Conservative Life:
2.25 BILLION for “Relocation Services”: Going to Luxury Hotels, Spas, Golf Resorts
When most of us move, we load our stuff onto a U-Haul and spend the night at the Howard Johnson’s. Not so if you are employed by the government and a [...]