Ok, here’s what I'm thinking. Or I guess more like wondering…why isn’t anyone posting blogs anymore? It seems to be just Andrew that’s working away at them. (I'm not doing much better) I'm just saying that if you guys have found a new site then you need to keep me in the loop so I can keep up on what’s happening over there!!

Over here there isn’t much going on besides the wonderful arrival of Hedy to Canada. She got here on the 23^rd of Feb and it’s been sweet ever since. I think she is enjoying herself although I know she does miss China a bunch. It doesn’t look like we will get to travel back to China for the summer as I will be working here. But maybe we can come back in the winter time for a visit.

Other then that, its business as usual I hope the summer turns out to be fun, I'm pretty sure it will and hopefully Adam might even be back here in Canada.

So Adam, type something up so I know what’s going on

Paul, let me know when you are going to be back in Toronto and I will come see ya.

Andrew, keep writing them blogs, and post a picture of your head for us to see!

And Rob…keep on doing…what ever it is your doing.

Ciao for now

K

Currently Watching Scrubs - The Complete Fourth Season see related

Ottawa light rail on the wrong track

Yesterday, current city council voted on Siemens 1 billion dollar plan to build a light rail system in the capital region. This surprising end comes as quite a shock to most of us because the last we were informed by Mayor O’Brien is that we had at least 6 months of waiting to get to this point. I believe, like most people in this city, this was 6 moths would have been one of the few times that a bureaucratic delay turned out in our favour.

The original plan approved by former Mayor Bob Chiarelli, but delayed by the Federal Government was to build a surface light rail system that extend from Ottawa University, south to Barrhaven. The now approved plan by Larry O’Brien is to have the rail line start in the LeBreton Flats and continue south to Barrhaven, with the possibility of adding tunnels at a later date to extend the line north into the downtown core.

The new plan comes with a less expensive price tag then the original $1 billion. The project under its current stipulations will cost the city $880 million. This is one of the few pluses that have come of this seemingly rash decision by council. Over all I feel the whole project is flawed at best. Although not as tight and restricted to space as other major cities in the world, I feel that it would be a fairly large burden on the flow of traffic to add an electric train system to the mix. I believe that the better route to go would have been with either the completely underground system found in many cities such as London, and New York. Or a sky train system such as the one in Bangkok, Thailand. Both of these systems allow for traffic to continue to flow once constructions has been completed.

According to an IBI report, by 2021, only approximately 1,000 people will have switched to using public transit instead of driving private cars. 880 million seems like a large amount of money to get only 1,000 cars of the roads. What we need to do is take the time to develop a plan that will best accommodate the requirements of the citizens of Ottawa. By following the current trend of “stay the course tactics” used by politicians these days it will only lead to more headaches, more traffic congestion and less money in the city coffers for social service programs that could desperately use the funding.

Currently Watching For Your Eyes Only By Roger Moore, Carole Bouquet, Topol, Lynn-Holly Johnson, Julian Glover, Cassandra Harris, Jill Bennett, Michael Gothard, John Wyman, Jack Hedley, Lois Maxwell, Desmond Llewelyn, Geoffrey Keen, Walter Gotell, James Villiers, John Moreno, Charles Dance, Paul Angelis, Toby Robins, Jack Klaff see related

I’ve got some great news for everyone. According to the Canadian Council on Learning, Canada is near the top of the list in both Mathematics and Reading proficiency test scores. They also report that in recent years high school drop out rates have been declining in most of the provinces.

For most of us I'm sure this is very great and welcome news. For some reason though, I personally feel that Canada is slipping behind in the areas of both early childhood education and Kindergarten to Grade 12. I have spent the last three years of my life overseas teaching English to students in Asia. While I was in those schools, I experienced something that I never felt when I was a student here in Ontario. The students know that they have to learn and they are willing to do what ever it takes to complete school successfully.

As mentioned the proficiency test scores in reading and mathematics are high compared with the rest of the world. And the high school drop out rate has dropped from a nation wide 18% in 1991 to 12% in 1999. Federal Liberal party leadership candidate Gerard Kennedy recently said ''If you look at the equalization premise in the Constitution it is about comparable standards. We don't even know if we have comparable standards. What we have is comparable funding, but what we don't have is the result. And that is going to hold us back.'' I think what he is trying to say is that even though now we are ahead of the pack in these critical areas of education, but unless we continue to adjust and refine our standards and curriculums we will eventually find ourselves past by other countries.

Most of my unease comes from the following three sources; teachers, parents, and mostly, the students themselves. According to the responsibility guidelines legislated in the Education Act of 1990 provided by the Ministry of Education for the Government of Ontario we can find out what each of these three groups of people are responsible for.

First let’s look at the teachers. Teachers are responsible for planning and teaching classes, encouraging students in their studies, maintaining classroom discipline, demonstrating good citizenship, and acting as teacher-advisors for students in grades 7 – 11. This seems like a very full list of responsibilities and if teachers were living up to them I wouldn’t have any complaints about it, but even thought teachers are doing well in planning, teaching and maintaining classroom discipline, at least as good as teachers in earlier days, I believe that as teacher-advisors they are not doing as well to assist today’s Canadian students in understanding the global environment that they are in.

Second, again according to the Education Act from the Ministry of Education, the responsibility of the parent is; ensuring their children attend school. That’s it. I guess that the rest of the “responsibilities” of the parents are simply social expectations such as, helping with homework, mentoring, being a role model. But how can we tell if parents are measuring up to the standards that we would expect them too? Answer, we can’t really. All we can do is, expect parents to encourage their children to live up to their true potential. To many times when I was growing up did I think and hear “I’m an English student not a math student” or “she is strong in math, but her English is weak.” I really believe that this is a wrong approach to the whole thing. I think a true way to look at it is; she is lazy in English or he is lazy in math. After having been in schools in other countries and talking to students I really think that all students are capably to do well in all subjects but due to the way our education system and our minds are set, as long as our children do well in one discipline we think that is acceptable and good enough. With the changing of the global community this mind set may not do us any good in the future.

Lastly, I’d like to mention the responsibility of the students according the Ministry of Ontario. The students themselves are responsible for attending class, taking examinations, and exercising self-discipline. As we can see from the reports released by both the Canadian Council of Learning and the Canadian Education Statistics Council drop out rates are declining, so the students are attending the classes, and exam results are excellent, so they are taking the test. The real fault of the students is coming in the areas of self discipline. I think that students these days, myself included, don’t quite realize that they are no longer completing merely with their fellow class mates for the jobs of tomorrow, but they are now competing in the world market place for their careers. We as Canadians are not preparing ourselves to keep up with the students in other countries.

I think that Tim Hearn, CEO of Imperial Oil Limited conceptualized it well when he said “Today's and yesterday's accomplishments provide no guarantee of tomorrow's success.” Just because we are doing well today, doesn’t mean that we will continue to be at the fore-front in the future. The future of our children can be no more important to anyone than the children themselves. They have to understand that they are not privileged with guaranteed success in the future and will have to compete with an ever increasing pool of human resources.

What can we do to make sure of our continued prosperity? Well that is simple to understand but difficult to make a reality. We must all work together to make sure our students live up to their full potential, the responsibility falls on everyone. We can’t expect politicians and teachers to do everything. Parents and more importantly students have to want to learn. They have to want to do the best they can. And they have to be willing to do what ever they have to, to be successful.

Currently Gaming Halo 2 By Microsoft see related

Well kiddies,

I have booked my flight go Guangzhou…all though I still might not need it. It all really depends on if Hedy makes it here before the 15^th or not, but if she doesn’t then ill be coming over. 

I do hope that I get to make the trip it would be good to be back there again.

Ill keep you guys informed as to what’s going on.

Ciao

Also: check out my new music @ http://mega-file.net/audio/view.php?play=db1068d0057f5b4d6847b40bf7aa48ee

Currently Watching Pulp Fiction (Collector's Edition) By Rosanna Arquette, Steve Buscemi, Paul Calderon, Bronagh Gallagher, Peter Greene, Susan Griffiths, Samuel L. Jackson, Phil LaMarr, Amanda Plummer, Ving Rhames, Tim Roth, Burr Steers, Eric Stoltz, Uma Thurman, John Travolta, Frank Whaley, Duane Whitaker, Bruce Willis, Maria de Medeiros see related

Word,

Hey cats, I’ve been getting some post after an old blog of mine. Just wanted to let you guys know that I appreciate the kind words from some and words of “encouragement” from others.

I don’t think I can do a lot of those big long thought provoking entries that seem to be so popular these days. I'm not much for ranting myself, but I sure do enjoy reading them.

But things here are going well, I only got 2 weeks of classes left and them its exam time again. It’s strange on how fast this whole college thing seems to be going. I'm enjoying myself immensely and I'm happy that I decided to do it.

Still not sure what way things are going to work out this coming holiday season, I do hope to visit china if I get the chance and I will be in GZ if I do make the trip at all of course.

Anyways, I got a opinion piece that I'm writing for one of my classes, and ill be sure to post it when I'm finished it in the next few days to see what you dudes think.

So until then, stay happening

Ciao