Chan's Personal Blog

According to latest news reports, the Federal Liberals are being investigated by the RCMP about new criminal allegations relating to insider trading. Here's what basically happened. Shortly before the government fell in November, the Liberals announced that they would change the tax rules related to income trusts. This change in tax laws was very good for companies that had income trusts or company stocks that gave out dividends. So, some publically traded companies on the stock market that benefit from this tax law change would see their stock prices go up. The problem is, if an insider (say someone from the Liberal party) told buddies/friends/companies about this news before it was made public, those friends could take advantage of this announcement. For example, they could buy stocks low before everyone else rushed to the stock and moved the stock price up. This is known as insider trading, and it is a criminal offense.

Here's what the National Post reports:


What's surprising is the scope of the investigation as well. The RCMP will be probing members from the Finance minister's office as well as the Prime Minister's office. If any of these new allegations stick, it might be a death blow to the Liberals. Paul Martin has been able to brush off the adscam situation, and blamed it on Jean Chretien's old regime. This new scandal happened under Paul Martin's supposed new Liberal team, so that could be bad news.

I've noticed in the last little while, there has been a lot stand-up comedy and cartoons making jokes with Tom Cruise references or parodies. Apparently Tom Cruise has been doing some pretty crazy stuff on daytime television shows such as Oprah and the Today Show. In either case, I didn't understand any of those references because I never watch daytime television. Whenever I'm home, it's dark out. Anyway, I found video clips of Tom Cruise's strange behaviour on these shows, and here are the links.


A video clip of Tom Cruise on the Oprah Show going crazy. (Requires Windows Media Player.) The Mighty Oprah seems genuinely scared, and I'm surprised that security didn't rush to the stage.

Here's a video clip parody showing Tom Cruise killing Oprah. Funny funny.

Finally, we have a video clip of Tom Cruise on the Today Show ranting about psychaitry and anti-depressants. (Quicktime or Windows Media Player required.) His behaviour is definitely very strange, and very disrespectful to the host.

Wierd.

Looks like the Liberals are in damage control again. A senior Liberal organizer was caught posting inappropriate comments on his blog.

From the article "Blog Bombshell Hits Liberals" from the Times Colonist:


Looks like it's the second big gaffe that the Liberals have made since the election started. Their first gaffe was over the Conservative's plan to give money to parents for child-care, so that parents could decide what care would be most appropriate. A senior Liberal official blasted the plan because he said that parents would blow that money on beer and popcorn.

Mr. Reid... you don't trust that parents will spend their money wisely? You can lecture parents over spending money once you learn how to stop illegally funneling tax payer dollars to Liberal friendly companies in Quebec.

On Christmas Eve's Eve, I was invited to a friend's place for a Christmas dinner. It was quite fun because I was invited to help cook a turkey dinner which I haven't done before. So, we were cooking for five people at the dinner, and there was two of us doing the cooking.

The menu was:
Roast Turkey Breast
Ham
Stuffing
Whipped Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Baked Dill Carrots
Seasoned Brussel Sprouts
Cranberry Sauce
Turkey Gravy
Tossed Salad
Apple Pie With French Vanilla Ice-cream

We didn't do everything from scratch, but we did do all the vegetables from scratch. The thing I was most proud of was the whipped garlic mashed potatoes. We didn't actually have a recipe, so we improvised. It also helped that I have encyclopedic knowledge about food from watching the Food Network all the time . After it was all said it done, it turned out as good as The Keg's garlic mashed potatoes (completely unbiased opinion ). Let me tell you, it was smooth and silky as a baby's bottom.

Cooking the meal took about three hours to pull off. We started at 4pm, and we were done at 7pm, which is when the guests just finished arriving. It was fairly low-intensity cooking for the first two hours, as we were just prepping vegetables, and putting things in the oven. We actually got to sit around and watch TV for a bit. It's the last hour where we geared up because everything had to be put together. In the end, we sat down to a nice candle lit dinner. It was a lot of fun cooking with friends. We have to do this again some time.

After dinner, we had our present exchange. Some notable loot I got was the Family Guy movie on DVD. I also got the book, "Shaking Hands With The Devil," which was written by a Canadian general who was a peacekeeper in Rwanda, and witnessed the genocide. I've been meaning to get this book for a very long time.

I got one of the couples there a board game, Apples To Apples, and we played that afterwards. It's a fun light-hearted party game which is really easy to pick up, and very funny. It wasn't easy to find this game since all the online board game stores I looked at was completely sold up of this game.

All in all, a very fun night. Anyway, Merry Christmas to all.

One morning, as my parents were leaving for work, and heading towards their car, they see a guy standing there. It appears to be a guy writing a parking ticket right in front of our house. That's odd. My dad approaches the guy and asks what he's doing. The guy is writing a ticket for blocking a driveway.

Now at our house, we have two driveways. One of the driveways we don't use because it's on a steep slant, so my parents park their car on the street. Sometimes in our neighbourhood, there's too many cars parked on the road, so my parents have to park in front of the unused driveway.

In either case, the guy lectures my dad about how you can't block driveways, and you have to park a metre away from it. My dad then argues that this is OUR driveway, and we're not blocking anyone since no one ever uses the driveway. The guy fires back saying that the city owns the driveway, and therefore the by-laws apply to that driveway, and if we had a problem, take it to city hall. The guy hands my dad a ticket for $15 and leaves.

Naturally, my dad goes down to city hall to dispute this ticket. The lady at the complaint desk doesn't budge on the ticket, and says that if you want to dispute the ticket, you'd have to go to court which will take six months before a court appearance. Six months? Forget that. So my dad grudgingly pays the fine.

I think this fine is ridiculous. I can understand how this by-law would be useful if some random person blocked your driveway. Fair enough. But we're blocking our own driveway that no one uses anyway. No one is affected by this, so why should we be fined?

What's even stranger is, why is a parking guy patrolling our neighbourhood? We live well out of the downtown area, and I only picture parking ticket guys making their rounds in the downtown core, not a suburb.

The Zambia Mission Fund Canada website has finally launched. This was my web design project for the last few months. Zambia Mission Fund Canada is a non-profit charitable organization based in Victoria BC, and they're geared towards providing aid to Southern Zambia in Africa. The organization provides goods and services such as AIDS awareness/information, sending textbooks and teaching materials, orphan care, building schools, and shipping 40' cargo containers full of supplies. The work they do is pretty amazing. Check out their website for stories and information from the frontlines of aid work. My friend Jordan, who's a part of the organization is going to Africa in January, and he'll be posting pictures and stories about his trip on the website as well, so the website will allow him to blog directly from Africa. It should be pretty interesting. On the website, you'll be able to leave comments and questions, so it should be quite interactive.

Chalk up another site for the web portfolio for Chan Productions

This weekend, I did my famous Christmas shopping blitz. When I go Christmas shopping, it is a tactical military operation and we take no prisoners. I finished in record time this year, as it took exactly two hours at the mall, and then we hit the extraction zone. In either case, I would have finished even earlier if it wasn't for the vultures at Future Shop. Read on to see why Future Shop is the newest addition to my black list.