Showing off Vancouver (February 2024)

By which I mean, my dad is visiting for a whole week, which is possible because he is now, finally retired. He's here Saturday to Saturday instead of the hurried visits that consisted of two- to three-night stays only. We get to take him on some normal outings but for my part, I'm still constrained...

Chinese reader maximalism

I had to take a photo when I saw this on-screen during GG's Zoom Mandarin class. How many notations can you stuff in? The "proper" Chinese character at the center of it all, traditional form Above: simplified version of the character, if applicable Right: Zhuyin script to denote bopomofo pronounciation Below: Pinyin I appreciate the...

Homemade tongue-twisters

It was a long weekend morning and the kids and I were not keen to get up yet and somehow the funny expression "嗰個哥哥高過嗰個哥哥" came to mind and I wanted to show the kids that we could riff on something else so I started with their names. I am slightly anxious that I came up...

Horse radical

I love the little discoveries and how I can bring them to GG who is currently learning Chinese and save them up for MM who is starting later this year. GG noticed the character for "mother" (媽) has the word "horse" (馬) in it and that my Chinese zodiac sign is Horse. Yes, I'm an...

Reflections: 4 years on

I am super behind in my Bilingual Series posts and hardly find myself making comments for future posts. The kids are saying and doing plenty of cute things and I would love to jot them down and create a comic with the best gems but I tried for one and, well, it wasn't satisfactory. A...

Ava Lee and Chow Tung

On January 31, I finished reading The Fury of Beijing, the sixteenth and final installment in the Ava Lee series by Canadian author Ian Hamilton. This final story was only published on January 4, 2024! According to Good Reads, I finished reading the first Ava Lee novel, The Water Rat of Wanchai, on June 8,...

Time for change

With the sale of the restaurant, no one will pay for hosting which is nearing $200 per year with GoDaddy. I absolutely do not understanding the pricing. How something that $6.99/month for the first year renews at $295 while the $12.99/month first year plan renews at $278. WTF? My other two problems are that my...

Manchu Wok (滿洲鑊) – what is in a name?

I was writing about my parents' restaurant closing and it brought up the memory of them operating a Manchu Wok for years before letting it go to concentrate full-time on their restaurant. I am reading Fuschia Dunlop's Invitation to Banquet and I'm in the introduction pages only and when outlining the dynasties and their influence...

The end of an era for The East West Restaurant

On January 15, 1991, with what seemed to me to be not too much fanfare, the doors of my parents' restaurant on the edge of Cole Harbour and Westphal with a lakeside view of Lake Loon, on Highway 7 connecting Nova Scotia's Eastern Shore to Dartmouth, opened. For me, as a 12-year-old who saw the...

Chinese school graduation

Ever since hearing in early spring that Kiddo's class would have a graduation ceremony on June 24, I was excited. It's not for every level - it's the first graduation ceremony and he's completing three years - and after three hard years, he's finally done the "Kindergarten" levels. The first years a "Pre-school", followed by...