i love you Lord, and i lift my voice,
to worship you, oh my soul rejoice.

take joy my King in what you hear,
let it be a sweet, sweet sound in your ear.

Hotel Rwanda
at the film festival i saw a really amazing movie called Hotel Rwanda, and i just saw on tv that it would be on the big screen soon! that's so good. cant wait to see it top the box office. look out for it!

the men are going to be treated like pieces of meat
- - and it's about time.
Man hunt - America's search for the the most gorgeous man.
Sat @ 9pm on lifenetwork.

lol what a line. i didnt make it up, i swear! heh. its their catch phrase thing from the commercial. it's pretty funny =P

ch-ch-ch-chocolate!

this Christmas season, there will be lots of shopping, food and especially lots of chocolate. Like coffee, the cocoa beans are commonly harvested in third-world countries by farmers who make less than a dollar a day picking them.

Both coffee and chocolate have a better alternative though, and its called Fair-Trade. The logo is below and is found on many different items, including chocolate. It labels the product as being fair and globally socially responsible in international trade.

If money is power, as some people say, then we should be responsible for how and where we spend it right? Peter Parker's uncle put it best when he said, "With great power, comes great responsibility."

You can find more information about Fair-Trade products at Fair Trade Toronto or Trans Fair Canada.

boys are stupid..
throw big, heavy rocks at them!

my encounter with the old lady..

so after my exam yesterday, i went to get gas at dufferin and steeles. when i entered the gas convenience store place to pay, this little old chinese lady approached me, asking if i knew chinese and if i could help her.. so of course i said yes i could.

at first, i was kinda scared, not sure what to expect. hoping i could get out of there as soon as possible. but then as she told me her story of how she had been in canada for 10 years and needed to get some papers signed to receive payments from the government, and how she needs to get a hold of her relatives, i started to have some sympathy for her and thought i could help out.

she wasnt just any grandma at a gas station, i felt almost like she was homeless or something.. her story made it seem almost as if she was desperate for help.

first, she asked if i could make a few calls for her. she took out this tiny pad of paper with all these chinese names and phone numbers, flipping through to find the number of a relative. they werent home. so she asked if we could call someone in montreal. i was like.. uhhh.. thats long distance! but she insisted and so i said fine, its my dad who pays anyways heh, and so she called, talked to this man who seemed to be a relative. she started asking how so and so was, and then told her that she needed help, and that she was very chi leung (in need of help?) and she looked like she was going to cry..

and so i felt even more sorry for her and decided to really help her out.

after the calls were made, she said that she wanted to go get some biscuits to eat. before we went to shoppers though, we went to imperial buffet, where a relative supposedly was.

so we went in, and the host seemed to know who she was. all along she told the guy that i was a friend, helping her out. and he told me that she comes out every couple weeks because she lives nearby and shes bored. the boss was a relative of hers, but wasnt around. and so i told him in english that i had just bumped into her at the gas station, and was helping her out.. how nice of me, he said, to help the old lady.

then she wanted me to drive her to the scarborough location! well, it was really out of my way, cuz its at eglinton and something. and plus the fact she was still some stranger..

so i offered to pay for her cab ride over. but she refused because she didnt want to take my money, and feel like a hut yee (beggar/homeless.) anyways so i drove her over to shoppers across the street. she ended up wanting to get peanut butter, and i offered to pay for it for her. then out of nowhere, as if she was thinking about it for a while, she asked me if i had told the host that i just bumped into her at the gas station, and i said yes.. i guess she wanted to hide the fact that i was some complete stranger helping her out, that i was a friend.

and it seemed like after that, she had almost lost hope in me or something. so she told me to drop her off at finch station. this was some 80 yr old chinese lady with no english capabilities, so i was like huh?? can i get there on ur own.. and she said she would go to china town to get some tooth paste and stuff for cheap. sooo i agreed and dropped her off there.

on the ride to finch, she asked me who paid for my schooling, and i told them my parents did. and she told me that making money is very important.. if u have no money you're very hopeless.

aw and i felt kinda bad.. this little girl (me) driving my car, going to university, with money in my pockets, helping out this grandma who was desperately scrounging around for relatives who can help her out to receieve money from the gov't.

im glad that i helped her out a bit, but at the same time, i'd feel terrible if something happened to her on the way downtown or if she couldnt get back.. though she repeatedly said she could get there and home.

was i supposed to trust and help?
or ignore her like everyone else had, and leave her there?

Will and Alex both think i shouldnt have helped her.. but you shouldve seen her and heard her. she asked if i thought she was a bad guy or something, but she wasnt, shes a little old lady.. but i kept thinking, this may not be my grandma but its someone's grandma.

if that was my grandma, out on the street, lost and looking for help, i would hope that someone would help her out..

well, i hope shes okay.. i wish i could have some kind of assurance that she was safe, or that shes out of harms way. but if she had been here for 10 yrs and survived thus far, im sure God will continue to take care of her.

on a side note..
mmm.. freedom from stress and projects is nice.

i heard it from David Scadding in Type, so I wanted to see for myself if it was actually true.. he was talking about how as designers we need to be socially responsible, by knowing about our clients and not just taking any job we get. and the topic of starbucks came up.. he said he would disown us if we designed for them heh. sorry derek, the stories are true!

no wonder starbucks has all those benefits.. they pay farmers almost nothing, clearcut land for their beans and they drive out the competition! i will never look at starbucks the same again. please, read on and see for yourself. there is SO much out there.. i could only pick and choose a few examples.

Starbucks is bad!

In March of 2003 activists and concerned consumers across the U.S. gave coffee giant, Starbucks, a wicked case of the jitters. As the company held its annual shareholders meeting in Seattle, activists protested outside while Starbucks headquarters were inundated with faxes, emails and phone calls. The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) brewed up more than 2,000 faxes and emails, urging CEO Orin Smith and Starbucks shareholders to actually practice the business ethics the company so proudly wears on its sleeve. Ronnie Cummins, national director of OCA, said "Despite repeated pledges, Starbucks is still loading up its coffee drinks with rBGH (recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone)-tainted milk, and buying coffee and chocolate produced under exploitative labor conditions, and in the case of cocoa plantations in Africa, workers who are actually slaves."
- Organic Consumers Assc.


Early in 1995, following a US/LEAP campaign, Starbucks agreed to adopt a code of conduct, the first ever by a U.S. commercial coffee company. Starbucks released a "Framework for a Code of Conduct" in late 1995. The document stated that the company would seek to buy coffee from growers who paid their workers a decent wage and respected the basic rights of its workers, and that Starbucks would establish a pilot project in Guatemala.

Two years later, when Starbucks failed to move forward on implementation of a code, US/LEAP initiated a second campaign, charging Starbucks with reneging on its promise. In 1997, Starbucks recommitted itself to a code, started a program to pay growers an extra $500,000 for improvements for workers, and began advocating for corporate responsibility within the coffee industry.

After three years of almost no progress and continued pressure, Starbucks began a new strategy to enforce the code of conduct and announced new sourcing guidelines in November 2001. The new guidelines are an incentive-based system that commits Starbucks to reward its "preferred suppliers" financially if they meet key "sustainability" criteria developed by Starbucks. The guidelines put forth four criteria: quality, social conditions, environmental and economic. US/LEAP sees positive aspects in the guidelines but also has concerns about their design and continues to dialog with the company.
- US/LEAP: Fighting for justice in workers in the global economy


Starbucks in recent years has become a target of a variety of advocacy groups who accuse the company of failing to live up to its self-professed goals of social responsibility. Craig Minowa, an environmental scientist at the Organic Consumers Association, faulted Starbucks for plastering its stores with Fair Trade signs and brochures, but offering only one brand of Fair Trade coffee and rarely serving it to customers. The Fair Trade program seeks to ensure a higher crop price for growers in developing countries.

"We've had people go into Starbucks stores and ask for Fair Trade coffee and the employees tell them they'd have to brew it," Minowa said. "You can get it, but you have to be pretty persistent."
- Organic Consumers Assc.


The company is still capable of designing and opening a store in 16 weeks or less and recouping the initial investment in three years. The stores may be oases of tranquility, but management's expansion tactics are something else. Take what critics call its "predatory real estate" strategy--paying more than market-rate rents to keep competitors out of a location. David C. Schomer, owner of Espresso Vivace in Seattle's hip Capitol Hill neighborhood, says Starbucks approached his landlord and offered to pay nearly double the rate to put a coffee shop in the same building. The landlord stuck with Schomer, who says: "It's a little disconcerting to know that someone is willing to pay twice the going rate." Another time, Starbucks and Tully's Coffee Corp., a Seattle-based coffee chain, were competing for a space in the city. Starbucks got the lease but vacated the premises before the term was up. Still, rather than let Tully's get the space, Starbucks decided to pay the rent on the empty store so its competitor could not move in. Schultz makes no apologies for the hardball tactics. "The real estate business in America is a very, very tough game," he says. "It's not for the faint of heart."
- Business Week online


..according to activists, Starbucks isn't doing enough. They charge that while Starbucks claims to be green, in fact, it has done little to keep genetically engineered ingredients out of its foods and beverages or to promote Fair Trade, shade-grown coffee.

Coffee plants naturally grow in the shade, under the cover of a diverse biosphere. But unless your coffee says "shade grown" on the bag, it was probably grown in a field for easier harvesting and greater profit margins. The clear cutting of land to create these fields eliminates many edible plants that locals live on. "Fair Trade," meanwhile, means that the farmers who grew the beans were paid a living wage for their work. There are several organizations that certify goods as "Fair Trade," including Equal Exchange and Tranfair.

..Shoval explained that there are several complaints against Starbucks. The first: Most Starbucks still use milk from cows that have been injected with rBGH -- Monsanto's sketchy bovine growth hormone -- which unnaturally forces cows to produce more milk. The resulting milk contains bacteria, antibiotics and pus.

That's right. Pus.

..No one from Starbucks' corporate headquarters returned calls for interviews.

The OCA encourages Starbucks coffee drinkers to talk to the managers at their local shops and demand Fair Trade coffee and rBGH-free beverages and foods.

Tell Starbucks -- and while you're at it, tell other eateries you frequent -- that you just don't find pus in your milk as appealing you used to.
- Crop Watch: Holding corporations accountable