… that a Canadian toonie (a 2-dollar coin) actually has two pictures of the Queen?
One — the side-view (see here), and the other — the group photo with princes William and Harry (see here).

=)

Here’s an interesting story.

There is a place somewhere in the northern part of southern Ontario (and no, it is not called “mid Ontario” or something similar), where a Tim Hortons (the most popular cafe franchise in Canada) borders an animal farm. Every morning, same time, a rooster walks into the Tim Hortons. They feed him donuts and he leaves back home to the farm. Even more, he only likes particular kinds of donuts.

Just what you would expect from a Canadian rooster! :D

Source: my brother told me this story after he saw it on TV or somewhere else, I’m not too sure. If someone could point to the original story, that could be great!

I have to tell you, I really want to see the Penguins holding that cup up above their shoulders. Detroit had it last year and — most importantly — Pittsburgh have gone through some bad times shortly after the trade deadline with long lasting loosing streaks, and yet they’d managed to climb out of the hole, land in the playoffs and crawl up top once again in a very hard-working way.

But then you have to look at the Detroit and how they play. They play so well, I haven’t an idea of what can possibly beat the Detroit Red Wings. Especially today with the comeback of Pavel Datsyuk they had a blast, and I’m not just talking about the scoring.

Anyways, it looks like the cup is going in the same direction. But, needless to say when talking about hockey, anything can happen in the last little bit.

I’m just really glad that the series has gone for at least 6 games.

Yesterday, while cleaning around the house, I was listening to the radio, 92.5 Jack FM as always. It was Jeff and Carly show along with all sorts of great rock tunes, when — as usual — the 3 o’clock news came on, traffic. Then, all of a sudden, as if out of nowhere, this monster comes on: some hip-hop music about ladies and all the rest.

I thought I accidentally switched to a different channel. I was wrong. It was 92.5 exactly.

My next thought was that Jeff and Carly decided to make a cruel joke. But after that song was finally through, another similar piece of overly exaggerated art immediately came on. My ears were bleeding heavily by then.

After a moment of confusion and puzzlement, my next thought was that supporters of Q107 decided to hack Jack FM and pull a trick of inserting noise into the radio band. And when I say `noise’, I really do consider (predominantely most) hip-hop songs simply noise. But after yet another few songs were emitted by my speakers, I figured that, if it was true, someone would already do something by now. [Note: I have nothing to do with hatred among Jack FM and Q107; I personally thing it is quite dumb, the whole thing; moreover, I enjoy both radio stations very much a lot.]

It seamed like a tiny bug slowly crawled through my ears into my brain, bit off a bunch of stuff on its way, laid a whole bunch of dynamite and it let it go off. It is certainly a traumatic experience.

Anyhow, later I have discovered the following note in many places around the net:

At 3pm on June 5, 2009 Rogers Communications announced that effective immediately Jack FM would be re-branded (back) to KISS 92.5. The new format is Top 40, and as a promotion the station will play 10,000 songs uninterrupted by commercials to pique interest and build listenership. The main reason of the change was because of the low ratings JACK-FM was getting in the Greater Toronto Area market.

Source: wikipedia

This is sad. This is more than just sad. This is beyond sad. This is preposterous!

Jack FM Toronto was my favourite radio station. I occasionally listen to Q107 and 102.5 The Edge, but Jack was always there, certainly. I was away in Edmonton until a few days ago, and guess what: I used Jack FM Listen Live every morning and every day. It was something I used to wake up to.

And now it’s gone! Like a doubly nilpotent matrix that was accidentally squared.

I am now looking at various other Jack FM stations, for example that in Vancouver and that in Chicago. I guess my radio is now located far away from where I live.

Sad…
Update [June 9, 2009, 16:00]: In the comments below, Charlene has kindly provided a link to an online petition to bring Jack back:

http://www.petitiononline.com/bbjack92/petition.html

Sign it, maybe it’ll help!

Despite being a true Leafs fan, I will still have to say “no”.

The Leafs right now have 52 points in 56 games that they played. Only 26 regular season games remain.

The last playoff spot is currently occupied by Buffalo (whom they host tonight) that has 64 points in 57 games they played. Buffalo’s winning percentage so far has thus been 0.561. Given the fact that every team that’s close to be out of or in the playoffs makes that last push to stay in the race, I say the last playoff spot must have a winning percentage of at least 0.570%. Therefore, to get that last playoff spot, the Leafs are going to have to push for 94 points. That is, they will need to gain 42 points in the 26 remaining games. They will need to win at least 21 out of the 26 remaining games.

Unless Brian Burke has something special in mind (starting tonight) and Ron Wilson knows what to do with that something special, Houston we have a problem.

Sad news from across the ocean. Alexey Prokurorov, famous Russian professional cross-country skier, died on the morning of Friday, October 10, on his 44-th year of age. While crossing the road towards a rail station, he was hit by a car. The driver was under a heavy influence of alcohol and was (already) driving without a license.

Prokurorov was truly among the best cross-country skiers. I definitely know that, because I always looked up to him, when I competed. Just to list a few things about him: he participated in 5 Olympics, the last one being Nagano 2002, where he was a flag-bearer. He has won two olympic medals: one gold and once silver, both in Calgary 1988. He was evidently a significant figure in the world of cross-country skiing, and sport in general.

It is a pity that someone so high has to go, but something so low has to stay. It is awful that anyone or anything has to go, but in the course of a crude choice, that’s how it stands.

Here

Here (in Russian)

The turn to answer the long lastingly annoying question of “who is better: Canadians or Americans?” has fell upon my fiancee and myself today. Little did we know, the answer was right in front of us.

Now, as it is customary to say, “viewer discretion is advised”, because the text contains intricate subject matter. Rated as SN (Somewhat Nationalistic). Before I make any further remarks, I would like to say that I certainly do not generalise the following image of an American person to the entirety of masses, for I happen to know plenty of people, who carry an American passport of their own, who at the same time happen to be extremely intelligent, interesting, educated and all in all very nice people and who deserve my deepest respect.

In our trip to the Niagara Falls Butterfly Conservatory (which you can read about here), which is located here
I shall direct your attention that it is located very well on the Canadian side — this fact will come in handy in the discussion below.

So here is what happened. I decided to (blindly) believe my GPS and let it simply guide me to the butterflies. So it did for most of the way from Toronto (the trail I knew very well myself). Unfortunately, any GPS has an error in locating your position on the globe. The error is usually not large (may be about 10 metres off, depending on how expensive it is), but enough to act funny at times, when you pass complicated intersections. Suppose you pass such an intersection with many under or over passes; there is a chance that your GPS will mistakingly detect your position not on the road you’re on, but rather on some overpass nearby. The GPS will automatically recalculate the route you need to take so “you have reached your destination”. A good GPS does it very quickly and sometimes you may not even notice this fact, unless you constantly stare at the screen, which you probably shouldn’t do while driving. Probably.

So this is pretty much what has happened to me. I was supposed to exit at one point, but GPS told me not to, because it thought I was somewhere else. Instead, I was lead to the Canadian-US border. I realised there was no turning back only when I actually stood in front of those gates you have to pass.

Now, we are both Canadian citizens and are of course free to travel to the US with no limitations. The problem was, though, that we didn’t have our passports nor our citizenship cards on us. “Well, — I said — this shouldn’t be this hard: we’re Canadian, we’ll just tell them we are lost and want to turn around. No big deal.”

It has turned out to be a BIG DEAL.

I drove into the closest booth to explain the situation. A typical American soldier is sitting in there with a look of a wall. I am saying “typical” to emphasise his characteristic look, attributable to all sarcastic portrayals of American soldiers (I do not mean to insult every single American soldier; as I said before, I know plenty of Americans and most of them have my deepest respect). Here’s what our conversation sounded like.

[me]: Hello, officer. We have lost ourselves; we were driving to the Butterfly Conservatory and I was blindly following my GPS, which mistakenly lead me somewhere else. I did not mean to go to the USA at all. How can I turn around from here to get back to Canada?

[officer 1]: Any commercial goods?

[me]: (absolutely confused) mm.. no? We weren’t trying to get into the US; we just want to turn around and get back to Canada.

[officer 1]: Commercial goods?

[me]: What? No, sir. (Here I repeated my story with a little more detail, especially emphasising the fact that the Butterfly Conservatory is located in Canada. I also emphasised that we do not have our passports with us, since we did not intend to go to the US.)

[officer 1]: Why are you going to the US?

[me]: (The story is repeated once again…) Can you just help us turn around and get out of here to get back to Canada, officer?

[officer 1]: Well, the fact is that you’re already in the US (which isn’t actually true; as far as I know, you need to cross the border in order to be in the US, which we technically haven’t. Correct me if I’m wrong).

[me]: Alright, but we did not intend to be here at all. We just wanted to go see the butterflies, which are in Canada. The GPS led us here mistakenly.

[officer 1]: Did you see the signs that this is a bridge to the US?

[me]: No, because if I did, we wouldn’t have been having this conversation.

[officer 1]: Your ID please. And your ID, miss, as well, please.

[me]: (I gave him the ID, while continuing to get though him the words “Canada”, “butterflies”, “do not want to go to USA”, “No passport on us” and such.)

[officer 1]: Where were you born?

[me]: Russia (this was gutsy move! I think, though I should have just pretend a plain idiot: “Where were you born?” — “I’m Canadian! O_O”)

[officer 1]: And you, miss?

[Liana]: Moldova

[me]: Are you both Canadian citizens?

[officer 1]: Can I see your passports?

[me]: Officer, as I told you, we do not have our passports on us at the moment, since we were not heading to the US. They are at home; we can call and someone will read the passport numbers off for you to check. Shall we?

[officer 1]: Do you have your citizenship cards?

[me]: No, officer. We did not intend to go to the US so we did not take neither the passport nor the citizenship card.

The conversation rambled on for a little while in the same kind of spirit. The officer (Argh, I wish I’d remembered his name and rank, so I could convey it to you!) has slo-o-owly started to understand what was going on. He asked us to park our car to where the other officer will direct us to and wait inside a building, where our ID’s will be. It seemed like a large relief. It really was, but this is not the end of the story just yet.

The other officer was of the same type, only he was evidently much better hearted. We stopped near him so he can tell us where to park and go. He asked us a couple of somewhat ridiculous questions (which absolutely did not surprise us after a long conversation with an interesting gentleman in the booth: “commercial goods?” O_o). To give you an example of what this guy said, here’s a piece of our conversation:

[me]: (I shortly explained everything that happened to us with the GPS.)

[officer 2]: You to students trying to get to school, huh?

[me]: Mmm.. not exactly, but okay.

[officer 2]: Well, don’t worry. Just park down there and we’ll get you out of here in no time.

We walked into the big booth, where lots and lots of soldiers behind the counters stood with looks on their faces that, I swear to God, were saying “I love America, I love America, I love America, …” Although, come to think of it, some of them were saying ” … “, but that’s a totally different story!

Anyway, we sat down and awaiting to be called. The counters were somehow divided into two disjoint parts. Officer 2 (who, by that time, was already familiar and quite well aware of what happened to us) was standing behind one of these counters, so I decided to come up to him and ask how long the procedure usually takes. I mean the perfectly well-posed question anyone could, would and should ask in such a situation. His answer, surprisingly, was also filled with well-posedness; of a different sort, however.

[me]: Do you know how long this procedure usually takes?

[officer 2]: Oh, I don’t know, I work over here and I don’t know anything about what’s going on over there.

… This just struck me the way a monkey would strike an airplane that headed straight at her. Typical? I think so. Stupid? Definitely! Okay? Not at all! The translation of what he said is “Oh, I only cover this area marked by 4 cm away from my right eye and 4 cm away from my left eye, and I do not and do not want to know what is going on at 4.55 cm away from my left eye.

After a relatively long wait (about half an hour or so) we were finally called up, where another officer took care of us. This officer finally happened to be a human and actually understood the whole situation and helped us get out of there very quickly.

We turned around and headed straight to Canada, at last! The Canadian border post came to us like a little piece of heaven! We stopped near a little booth where an officer, a very kind lady, was sitting. The whole conversation took about 3 or 4 minutes. She asked us for our ID’s. All in all, the talking went something like this:

[officer]: Are you Canadian citizens?

[us]: Yes-yes, we are.

[officer]: How long have you been to the United States?

[us]: Uum, about 40 minutes. (We quickly explained what happened)

[officer]: So they held you there for 40 minutes because of that?

[us]: Yep!

[officer]: What were they doing??

[us]: We’re pretty much sure that somebody knows the answer to that question; to bad he’s not in this world.

And that was it! We laughed about it, we paid the duty (something like 3 bucks), she wished us very rest of the day, and we drove back into Canada!

Ahhh.. Canada! Don’t you love to be a Canadian? Don’t you love it over anything else possible that’s close at hand? I know I do!

Angel Valodia Matos, cuban taekwondo fighter, has ruined his entire life, as well as the life of his coach.

Read the story here.

I wonder what he is about to do now? Of course, he might re-specialise in some other fighting class, which is surely about to be very hard. Even then, I highly doubt any success.

He has also ruined the life of his coach, who is not a very young man anymore and will not be able to adjust as quickly and successfully.

Very funny indeed…

Gold, Silver and Bronze! Finally!

Great going!

Congratulations to Carol HUYNH with gold medal for women’s wrestling in freestyle 48 kg category,

Congratulations to David CALDER and Scott FRANDSEN with silver medal for men’s pair in rowing,

Congratulations to Tonya VERBEEK with bronze medal for women’s wrestling in freestyle 55 kg category!

Congratulations to all Canadians!

I think there’s more to come!