One Trainer hired. A few more to go. No medals for Canada! Please! No birthday present for Tony!

I have hired one trainer for the fall. But we are still looking for more. HyLite Language School in Wuxi, China is proud to have Michael Garton, from Australia aboard. He is married to a Chinese girl, Lin, who is highly recommended because she is a rare AKIC reader and a Tony Fan.

Decent people all over the world can only pray that Canada does not win any Olympic medals. Looking at the overall medal standings now, I see that 53 countries have already won medals while Canada's count is still zero. The lack of medals, I understand, is a time of soul-searching in Canada. Trying to make the best of it by saying a Canadian athlete achieved a personal best isn't going over well. I want Canada's final medal count to stay at zero for the mere fact that it would mean we haven't gone socialist a la a East Germany. It would mean that was some hope for Canada. Alas, I fear that a zero medal count will find us trying to imitate the Australians. I prefer we do something decent and honourable that gets most of the world community mad at us and we become permanently banned from the Olympics, like withdraw from the United Nations.

Canada is like the nerdy loser who just wants to be involved in all the international parties.

I see no need to buy Tony any presents for his first birthday. The reason being he is too young to understand the concept of presents and his tastes are for the simple things in life anyway. But Tony a fancy toy car and then wrap, and he will be more interested in the wrapping paper or the box. Tony, at Toys R Us, likes to rip the price tags off the shelves - he couldn't care less about the toys.

I was talking with a Frenchmen tonight. I was surprised to hear that the French government dictates the prices that can be charged for food in French supermarkets. The government also passes regulations saying only a certain amount of competitors, in whatever business, can be in a certain area. The Frenchmen also mentioned the two million unemployed in his country and predicted that his country's economy will go into the tubes in a few years. The French have come to China to take advantage of its' comparative advantage in labour costs.