Happy Lunar New Year!

The Chinese New Year of the Rat starts on February the 7th. To celebrate this important Chinese holiday the Central Ontario Chinese Cultural Centre (COCCC) organized a festival at the Waterloo Memorial Recreation Complex.

Play below video to see my first montage with snapshots from the festival and click here to see the second video. My apologies for the small video format and lack of sound that were caused by some incompatibilities between Windows Movie Maker and ImageMixer video/audio formats).

Ready for the ride.

Michael Belfiore is coming to town and PI, Kitchener-Waterloo and WCI is ready for an exciting ride into the world of rocketeers. PI's next public lecture Rocketeers: How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers, and Pilots is Boldly Privatizing Space is an unique opportunity to learn first hand about the pioneers that dare to make the sky a familiar space for the masses.

It is hard to believe that only few years since the first outer space private travel we are so close to the second space revolution. I'm ready to find out how it has started and what the future holds for space tourism endeavors.

Curling to the street in Waterloo.

The chilly Saturday morning of -15 degree C, and not quite a perfect ice, couldn't stop the curling enthusiasts to have some fun during the Curling to the street event in a parking lot in Uptown Waterloo. Watch below my footage of the fun of throwing few rocks.

You could also watch the organizer's video or the one created by The Record.

The Day After Tomorrow.

Just watched on Sunday night The Day After Tomorrow movie and put together a recent report about the raise of sea levels in Asia and what I learned (during a PI public lecture) about the danger of ice sheets breaking off into oceans.

Even though some think that the global warming scenario in the movie is exagerated it looks like the initial conditions for it are starting to become true.

Ruminations about NOW.

Time, time, time... Almost everybody complains about it, or better said, lack of it. Maybe now is the best time to ruminate about time. I'm sorry, in my hurry to talk about time I missed to wish you all: Happy New Year! and to welcome you to another year of ramblings, with questionable value for some.

It took me few days to decide on the subject of this post. As usual the New Year is associated with new resolutions and predictions. Well, since this subject is not easy to approach I was thinking to talk about what could make 2008 an unique year. And there are a lot of leads to follow on this subject, since the beginning of 2008 is kind of shaky: from political instability in Pakistan and Iran agitations, to USA elections and world economy worries or the upcoming summer Olympics in China.

Then I decided to go over my first posts in the previous years. These combined with a quick note I found in the local newspaper, The Record, made me think at why any anniversary gives this feeling of nostalgia and hope at the same time. And I realized that it is because of the dilation of NOW. This reminded me of the feeling of time dilation I had last year during a PI cultural event.

The more time you have to contemplate the present the more you'll flash in the past and in the future. It is kind of interesting that this happens during any NOW moment but once you are aware of it, it dilates. And so I learned that the name of the January month comes from the Greek god Janus that kind of symbolize the dilation of NOW.

The subject of time is not an easy one and maybe that is why it is worth researching it.