Madness In The Middle Kingdom

Craig at the Engleson Files found a site that will take your photo and show what celebrity you look like. Well thanks to Craig I am proud to say that I bear a strong resemblance to Al Pacino and also Robert DeNiro but what about all the Chinese guys? Have I lived here too long? Personally I was disappointed to not see Brad Garret (the brother from Everybody Loves Raymond) as one of my celebrities. Below are two of the photos I sent and the relevant matches. In the second collage notice the face of Bo Xilai which happens to be the former mayor of the city I live in - Dalian and currently the Chinese Foreign Trade Minister. I wonder if this service knows where your locality is and tries to give you relevant matches. If not then this is eerie!

By the way if you would like to try it out click here

A search of the internet and YouTube video posting website has revealed a few vintage Sesame Street gems that Carter and even Nathan have been enjoying. The two of them sat quietly on my lap the other day and we watched “The Lady Bug’s Picnic” over and over and over. I couldn’t get that video uploaded to YouTube as of writing this post so instead I searched the YouTube archives to find this beauty involving one of my favourite artists Johnny Cash and his rendition of “Don’t Take Your Ones to Town”. Cheers.

What you see below you is Carter’s rearrangement of the alphabet. He shows some creativity in not following the traditional alphabetical order but still has that pesky “everything in straight lines” kind of thinking. For fun try singing the alphabet song with this order of letters. It’s very liberating!

On Saturday Nathan ZhongJia Brown turned 100 days old which is a very important day in Chinese culture. He celebrated by going to the beach with his family and deciding to grab his playgym thingy (yeah .. no idea what you call it) for the first time. Add in some breast milk and you have got yourself one heck of a day!

Oh yeah .. according to the unofficial bathroom scale at home he weighs in at 17.5 pounds.

Mama and Baba love you very much Big Nate!

3339 miles
143 days
1 man
1 leg
1 dream

Of course I am writing about the larger than life Terry Fox and his Marathon of Hope to raise money and awareness for cancer research. Sept 1st, 1980 was the day that Terry Fox had to announce to the country that his dream of running across Canada was over. The cancer in his knee had returned and now had spread to his lungs. Although I was only 12 years old I remember his interview with reporters where he vowed to finish his run - his dream if there were any way possible. Every time I watch that video I get choked up. He was truly a hero even if he didn’t know it or even if he didn’t want to be. His Marathon of Hope lives on.

Today at our school we had a Terry Fox Run. Here we are 26 years later and half a world away and there were 2,400 students out walking and running for a cause they did not truly understand but they did it because they knew it was important to us - their Canadian teachers. Their attitude wasn’t one of “hey then we get to miss class if we do this run” but instead it was out of respect for us and ultimately for the legend of Terry Fox. It was truly powerful to be a part of.

Click the following link for a fairly complete Terry Fox bio

The title of this little blog springs from a joke t-shirt that someone wanted to buy for me awhile back. It was a friend that noticed I had a preoccupation with certain things like straightening pictures , aligning magazines on a coffeetable and making sure that in a pile of cash all the bills are facing the same way etc. I have never claimed to be neat nor even organized but geometrically I like order. Unfortunately I may have inadvertently passed this on to Carter. As early as 1 year old he was showing strong tendencies toward organization and aligning things. His biggest kick now is things that are “the same”. His attention to sameness is both cute and alarming at the same time. As a math teacher I have to confess I am a little proud of him though.

I tried to capture some of his “work” in the following photos.

The first entry is fairly self - explanatory. He likes things in a line and will spend a good amount of time in putting the line of objects in a certain order. There is a great deal of arranging and rearranging before the final ta-da.

The second entry shows his preference of organizing by colour. While flipping through this picture book of cars he suddenly ran off to the living room from his bedroom and returned with the 4 cars he needed to complete his little matching game. He finished by flashing a cute little grin before heading off to play.

On Sunday we went to the Kingdom of Discovery park near our school in celebration of Teacher’s Day. We went with the Helgason’s and had a great time. The weather was perfect although I was a little under the weather due to a welcome back staff party the evening before. Carter and his friend Maya had lotsa fun and he talked about it nonstop that night when trying to put him to bed. Nathan was sadly unavailable for comment at the time this blog entry was going to press. Below are just a few photos (because that is all we took) of our day. I also managed to put together a short 30 second clip highlighting a few special moments … Enjoy!

Carter was playing with his wooden letter set the other night and underneath the U was the word uncle and he immediately said “Uncle Doug”. Doug is big brother to me as Carter is big brother to Nathan. We managed to get a picture of Doug and his daughter Natasha this summer.

And of course here is the video … although it appears I might be in the buff I do have shorts on. I apologize for my near indecency but it is still pretty hot here.

There are many words to describe China but peaceful and serene would NOT be on that list. The action and hustle of living among so many people is at times fascinating and adventurous but it can also be downright irritating. I could try to capture some things on video but you have to see, hear and smell first hand what this country is like.

My motivation for this posting is the recent construction of what I believe is a train tunnel somewhere in the vicinity of where we live. Or possibly it is the new road being proposed between our suburb of Kai Fa Qu and the main city of Dalian. In either event the nightly blasting has been beyond thunderous. The other night I felt some tremor in the ground as one went off and tonight the explosion was so loud I was convinced that the Americans were finally dealing with the North Korea issue once and for all. Rest assured that the geopolitical situation in this region is still stable but somewhere nearby us there must be half a mountain that no longer exists.

Never a dull moment.

I am not sure what it is about Thomas the Train that excites little boys but Carter (and we hear from the Engleson Files Magnus also) LOVES Thomas the Train. His Amma (Gramma to the uninitiated) had the great idea of letting him borrow his cousin Marshall’s old Thomas the Train set.

I must admit we have been quite lazy in getting it set up but tonight Thomas, Bertie the Bus and Harold the Helicopter roared to life. As you can see from the riveting footage below that Carter was nearly speechless in his appreciation.

This post goes out to all mothers out there with special mention of course to my lovely wife Alice and also my mother Ellie. You are the two most important women in my life and I don’t always say it in person so I will do so here.

What I for you is a Chinese nursery song called Mama Hao (Mama is Good or Mama is the Best) that EVERY Chinese child knows and many of the “Made In China” foreign children know as well. Alice has sang this a countless number of times trying to get her two little angels to sleep.

The words of the song in Pinyin, Characters and the English translation are as follows

And if you want to listen to a small Chinese girl singing it please click the link below for the mp3 file. You can rightclick it to save it or just click to play it in your web browser. If you click it to play it will open up a new window which you can close after listening to the song.

Mama is the best

To all the mothers out there .. you are the best and don’t let those children and those men in your life forget it.

When I was 12 or 13 or so I was completely enthralled by SCTV and I still believe that it remains one of the funniest most original programs ever to hit the television airways. Thanks to Craig over at TEF … whoops .. forgot he hates acronyms. Thanks to Craig over at The Engleson Files for finding some gems on YouTube.

As a child I spent a few afternoons watching Polka Time because it either came on before or after All Star Wrestling and so it had a built in audience. In light of both my earlier television fixations I give you the SCTV parody known simply as “The Shmenge Brothers”

This past Tuesday evening saw Mr. Sherman Jen (our proud owner) give a great banquet to welcome new and returning staff to the growing Dalian Maple Leaf Empire. Mr. Jen predicts that by 2010 DMLES (Dalian Maple Leaf Education Systems) will have enrolled 10 000 students in 5 different cities.

The food was great and the atmosphere even better but that is easy to say when someone else is buying the beer and wine.

The party kicked off a (so - far) good welcome back week to school. Tomorrow is the first day with students which is always “interesting” as they say in China.

Without further adieu “let’s warmly welcome Mr. Sherman Jen give us a speech”