August 2016 update

Aside from the post I just published about Chinese calendar web tools, which was essentially me flushing my Drafts and it was an easy one, I haven’t blogged here in nearly a year! Amazing how time flies and it certainly reinforces that I need to make some domain name changes (i.e., next year I won’t renew this .com domain but move to .ca or I might give it up altogether and this blog will be a subdomain of another blog, etc.).

After all, I still like this moniker which is uniquely me. I haven’t heard of it from anyone else and it is also a sign of my times, too, as I don’t think “Catch Star” is that often used any longer. Chinese slang has evolved since the ’90s and there’s some other term for us probably.

In any case, to catch you up on the past 11 months….

Travel

Since November 2015 and now, I visited Toronto and Halifax twice, in November 2015 and April 2016. Dining in Toronto during each trip was heavily skewed towards Asian food but I didn’t have the time or sufficient material to split off the Asian dining.

Oh, and we went to Portland in July 2016 and what Asian food we had was anything but Chinese!

Reading

I just looked at my 2015 recap and all four Asian-American novels I read are Ian Hamilton’s Ava Lee installments. Funny. It was that kind of year!

Personal

Here’s the biggie. As intimated three posts ago, I reproduced (had a child). Running up to that eventful day, I had lots of disagreements in my head with elders about what I should do, coming up against superstitions galore. Long story short, I still think the superstitions are a bunch of hooey and hate to even give them a brain cycle’s attention. After E was born, yet more traditional customs were foisted on me including confinement and the confinement diet. Long story short, I didn’t need to be confined as I didn’t want to go anywhere and I’m grudgingly accepting that the food that was prepared for me was convenient and it was in my interests to comply.

Then there’s this lifelong project we have now taken on to raise E. Eep. I haven’t gathered together my thoughts about the language thing so, among other reasons, I have not blogged about it. Further, it’s an evolving matter anyhow. And long ago, I created a category called “Parenting a 3rd Gen’er”. It’s a lousy name I should change. So a post that has been kicking around my head is to state my expectations.

Finally, reproducing and having a third demographic in the household just opens up the can of worms that is shopping for both materials and services. The former might not be so relevant to this blog but the latter, as I seek supplementary educational services, is.

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And… this template is so drab. I should find a new one.

Update (21 March 2017): I’ve updated my lame category name from Parenting a 3rd Gen’er to Parenting a 3G-CBC, my made up acronym for third-generation Chinese-born Canadian. Same link as before.