Just a Gwai Lo

A friend's wife suggested, about 10 years now, that I consider AquaFit for physical activity.

The organizers of Towel Day, the worldwide (universal?)

It’s Towel Day…again.

At China Books Review, Jeremiah Jenne pulls out of the archives The Private Life of Chairman Mao by Li Zhisui and reviews it with the context of over 30 years having now passed since its publication in 1994.

Several years and two weeks ago, Douglas Adams passed away.

Sunny and cool, with cloud cover to give us breaks from the unrelenting light from the sun, is my kind of weather.

Read Part I first.

Chapter 1: Moby-Dick Talk to me long enough, and I'll bring up the subject of whales.

Some things have changed since I wrote about listening to albums in 2018, and some things have stayed the same.

A fog wave rolled through Toronto recently, and it made for muted streetscapes and haunting photographs.

Another pandemic year, another Towel Day.

I'm nominally a Blue Jays fan, enjoying watching baseball and them being Canada's only major league team.

Over the last two months, we've seen the Omicron variant rip through the worldwide population and cause the Ontario government to close indoor dining yet again.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues, and since I last checked in, I travelled back to British Columbia twice, once in late October to say goodbye to my dying mother, and another for the Christmas holidays.

Since July of this year, I've been to Hamilton twice, went to an Ontario cottage for the first time while living in Toronto, and have gone to a co-working space every couple of weeks or so.

My review of The Minister, an Icelandic TV drama, appeared in the September 2021 newsletter of the Icelandic Canadian Club of Toronto (of which I am currently the secretary).

My first trip outside of Toronto's city boundaries since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic was this Friday, to Hamilton.

The impetus for my interest in all things China came from a woman in my high school that I admired, who thought I was a communist.

I knew Toronto was trying to set a record for most COVID-19 vaccinations in one day at a single venue, but signups were so popular that I couldn’t get an appointment.

Planning ahead for the July 1st long weekend, I took the 2nd, a Friday off (which it sounds like a lot of people did), as well as today, a Monday, with tomorrow off as well so that today isn't my Sunday.

I've taken in every Winter Stations since 2017.

It’s not a city without museums and art galleries, though.

The earliest memory I have of reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was actually through the text-based computer game.

This month was uneventful except for one day.

On a Jane's Walk in 2019, we were walking Wellington Street, which changes to Douro St. at Strachan Ave. and I beheld the King-Liberty Village Pedestrian/Cycle Bridge1.

The March weather was unseasonably warm, and restaurants were allowed to open their patios, so extroverts were happy to see each other again.

12 degrees Celsius and sunny during “Spring” in Toronto was the perfect weather to do a tour from the book Toronto Architecture: A City Guide by Patricia McHugh and Alex Bozikovic.

First, the summary for March: Ontario only recently lifted its “strict stay-at-home order” for Toronto, which most people interpreted as a strong request.

We are still in lockdown.

Christmas came and went.

To ring in the new year, I completed the University of Toronto tour from Toronto Architecture: A City Guide by Patricia McHugh and Alex Bozikovic.

Toronto is in lockdown, the most restrictive since the pandemic began.

Today is Name Your Computer Day.

Faced with the need to get some sunshine and exercise the day before it was expected to rain in Toronto, I flipped through Toronto Architecture: A City Guide by Patricia McHugh and Alex Bozikovic, looking for the closest tour I haven't done yet.

As feared, ActiveTO has come to a close.

With in-person events cancelled in the Greater Toronto Area for the duration of 2020, that opened up my schedule tremendously.

Since last time I checked in, I had a couple of days of vacation in the same week, meaning two 3-day weekends in a row.

I've been trying all summer to think of somewhere to go on a day trip.

Summer is almost over.

I'm still riding bikes, and still going to the office once or twice a week.

I had a vacation day today, the day after a weekend on-call shift.

The one thing that has kept me going, from the gloomiest times in March of this year, is that time marches forward no matter what.

Faced with having someone over to clean my apartment, and nowhere to go, my first idea was to sit on my balcony for 2½ hours.

As soon as it was announced in May, I couldn't wait to bike the sections of Lakeshore Boulevard to cyclists, runners, walkers and others who want to exercise and stay physical distant.

When I lived in Vancouver, I wanted a way to explore the city in a structured way, and as someone who loved riding transit, the perfect way to do that was by doing the tours in SkyTrain Explorer: Heritage Walks From Every Station by John Atkin.

Ontario has only flattened the curve, and it has reached a plateau.

In anticipation of the June 3rd launch of Drupal 9, I spent the weekend a week previous to the launch dusting off the Drupal module I'm most famous for: the Pirate module!

The weeks have gone by a lot faster these past 30 days than the first 30 days.

Even though I'm Canadian, I've long preferred the American expressions for things.

I have to say, I was skeptical about dark mode in our current operating systems, but since wiring it up to switch to it automatically after sunset, I’m a believer.