Chinese New Year celebrations, both public and family, extended over two weekends, due to busy social schedules.
Toronto, Ontario
Collision Gallery: Two pieces in the 2024 To Love series #AnellaSchabler @greenisch.tint in memory of her Korean grandmother: The Portrait is a traditional Korean knot made of red crochet yarn, The Reflection is a reminder of dishware and sculpted cabbage in the making of kimchi. Part of the @DesignTO Youth: Touchbase exhibition. (Collision Gallery, Wellington Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20240210
Chinatown Centre: Songs to welcome Lunar New Year with @SanthaTsang on the afternoon stage. Not only selections in Chinese dialects, I heard some Abba was I was leaving. Attendees scattered around the mall in crowds around calligraphy and other crafts. (Chinatown Centre, Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20240210
Don Valley Auto Centre: Unanticipated guided tour of vintage 1920s Supertest gas pump in the waiting room of our local garage. Gas jockey would manually pump fuel into the glass measuring vessel on top, and then transfer to vehicle. Also in the back room, shown a more utilitarian compact pump that could be installed in a sidewalk location. (Don Valley Auto Centre, Carlaw Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20240213May Yan Seafood Restaurant: Since Chinese New Year runs 15 days from new moon to full moon, we deferred our family lunch on weekend after Super Bowl and a son’s birthday. Double lobster and braised duck arrived after we finished the steamed bean curd and scallops in black bean sauce, and while still working through beef bricket bean curd hotpot, eggplant ground pork hotpot, sweet and sour fish fillets, mustard greens with conpoy scallop sauce, and king mushroom with pea leaves. Hand-picked order successfully achieved greater variety than the prescribed set menus. (May Yan Seafood Restaurant, Sheppard Avenue East, Scabrorough, Ontario) 20240217Mon Sheong Court: Third son turning over winning hand in first round of mahjong, still learning the rules of the game. Grandfather then easily won the next three hands, with second son taking the last, as fourth son and grandfather blocked each other waiting for the same tiles to turn up. This new experience was described as more dynamic than poker, where the skill is in everyone counting cards visible to all. (Mon Sheong Court, McNicoll Avenue, Scarborough, Ontario) 20240217
Zhong Hua Men Archway: Six days before full moon ending Chinese New Year season, Lion Dance celebrating the Chinatown East neighbourhood around Gerrard Street East and Broadview Aveue. Drumming was preceded by photographs with local politicians, police officers, and children who enjoy posing for pictures. Parade proceeded east and then south, spitting out lettuce to spread wealth and good fortune at small businesses, maybe dodging the adjoining cannabis shops. (Zhong Hua Men Archway, Hamilton Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20240218
Centre for Social Innovation Annex: Book Launch for Strategy to Action by @kdemming interviewed by @tonyasurman at Six Degrees event @csitoronto. History of coming from Trinidad to work at @sigeneration, and then getting two endorsements for PhD to enter @OISEUofT. Most challenging question could be: what is the strategy for raising your child (who was present). (Centre for Social Innovation Annex, Bathurst Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20240229
Potluck dinner, with family joining following afternoon conversation. Common shared experiences of having visited farm at Salina, Iowa, some fresh, some a few years back. Reviving the expanded long table, we're empty nesters these days. (Riverside neighbourhood, Toronto, Ontario) 20250521
Fried noodle with fresh grouper (hold the pork) for the pescetarian, Cantonese chow mein for my father who especially picked out the squid and shrimp. Bonus afternoon tea offer of red bean freeze with jelly. More food than needed for two, but we had two appointments today. (Shine Kitchen, Steeles Avenue East, Scarborough, Ontario) 20250520
Qingming tomb sweeping visit #4 of 4. Mother is conveniently interred just west of Lowkong Society obelisk. location selected with foresight. We hope our descendants will remember us, here. (Pine Hills Cemetery, Birchmount Road, Toronto, Ontario) 20250518
Qingming tomb sweeping visit #3 of 4. Lowkong Society collectively respecting ancestors who migrated to Canada. Date in recent years has been Victoria Day weekend, better weather than April, so we follow their schedule. Whole roasted pig was served before pandemic, now just oranges with an invitation for early dinner following. (Pine Hills Cemetery, Birchmount […]
Qingming tomb sweeping visit #2 of 4, for my maternal grandparents. Following former practice of my mother, less elaborate ceremony, planting flower and lighting incense. Just 2 lanes west, then south of other grandparents (Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto, Ontario) 20250518
Qingming tomb sweeping visit #1 of 4, for my paternal grandparents. Removed leaves and dead annuals, planted new flowers, incinerated hell money, bowed with incense, then shared food. Families of aunts and uncles used to join us when everyone was younger. (Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto, Ontario) 20250518
Road construction impacting not only automobiles, but also bicycles and pedestrians. Roadway is to be reconfigured to 3 lanes each direction. Bike path might be restored in June, but the whole project to the Don River will take to end of 2025. (Lakeshore Boulevard East at Carlaw Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20250517
On morning bike commute to OCADU event, the lower leg of the rear rack sheared off, just above the eyelet. I slowed down and fell to the ground on my left side, causing back pain for the day. Old Raleigh mountain bike still comfortable on roads with potholes. (Commissioners Street Bridge, Port Lands, Toronto, Ontario) […]
Afternoon @TedX @OCADU_SFI speaker @zaid___khan on Humbling Design by Sensing Rhythms. Major Research Project of 2020 extended with continuing progress on Systems Changes Learning. Noticed audience resonance with heads nodding. (OCAD U Co, Queens Quay West, Toronto, Ontario) 20250516
Emcee for @TedX @OCADU_SFI day, @FentonJagdeo synthesized across 12 themes on identity, assumptions, power, + possibilities. Program content by Master of Design graduates, acknowledgement of scripts provided by student organizers of the event. Video recordings of speakers should show up in a few weeks. (OCAD U Co, Queens Quay West, Toronto, Ontario) 20250516
Two years after submitting an academic manuscript and responding to double-blind reviews, “Rethinking work, with the pandemic disruption” has now been published in the International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior (IJOTB) as earlycite. The article has a DOI (Document Object Identifier), and should be streamed with an official volume and issue number soon. The […]
The 128th meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario was convened in person. The classroom was filled with current students, alumni, our regular participants, and a few curious newcomers. Moderated by Zaid Khan, the conversation was sparked by Stephen Davies and myself (David Ing) on the evolving styles in learning systems thinking. Stephen has been leading SFIN-6011 […]
The “Understanding Systems” SFIN-6011 course is a requirement in the master’s program in Strategic Foresight and Innovation at OCADU. For winter 2025, the class is now led by Stephen Davies, breaking the incremental evolving of content since 2008. While still on faculty at OCADU, the original course designer Peter H. Jones is now a Distinguished […]
In the 1970s, five ways of knowing were established by C. West Churchman in The Design of Inquiring Systtems. In the 1990s, his student Ian Mitroff carried on the tradition and extended that work in The Unbounded Mind. Now in the 2020s, the technology of Generative AI opens up opportunties to query or request responses […]
For readers with an interest deeper than the 15-minute presentation given in August, the Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Socio-Technical Perspectives in Information Systems (STPIS 2024) have now been formally publishied. The invited paper on “Reifying Socio-Technical and Socio-Ecological Perspectives for Systems Changes: From rearranging objects to repacing rhythms” was reviewed by the […]
The 125th meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario coincided with the closing day for the RSD13-RSDX online program. As a regular systems convening group, we’ve had monthly meetings since January 2013. Zaid Khan moderated a discussion including me (David Ing), Tim Lloyd, Allenna Leonard, and Kelly Okamura. We recollected starting as a spinoff from Design with […]
Rhythm and pitch are primordial to language. Susan Rogers, after a career becoming Prince's recording engineer, turned to complete a PhD in psychology focused on music cognition and psychoacoustics.Read more ›
David L. Hawk (American management theorist, architect, and systems scientist) has been hosting a weekly television show broadcast on Bold Brave Tv from the New York area on Wednesdays 6pm ET, remotely from his home in Iowa. Live, callers can join…Read more ›
Following the first day lecture on Philosophy of Chinese Medicine 1 for the Global University for Sustainability, Keekok Lee continued on a second day on some topics: * Anatomy as structure; physiology as function (and process); * Process ontology, and thing ontology; * Qi ju as qi-in-concentrating mode, and qi san as qi-in-dissipsating mode; and […]
The philosophy of science underlying Classical Chinese Medicine, in this lecture by Keekok Lee, provides insights into ways in which systems change may be approached, in a process ontology in contrast to the thing ontology underlying Western BioMedicine. Read more ›
In conversation, @zeynep with @ezraklein reveal authentic #SystemsThinking in (i) appreciating that “science” is constructed by human collectives, (ii) the west orients towards individual outcomes rather than population levels; and (iii) there’s an over-emphasis on problems of the moment, and…Read more ›
In the question-answer period after the lecture, #TimIngold proposes art as a discipline of inquiry, rather than ethnography. This refers to his thinking On Human Correspondence. — begin paste — [75m26s question] I am curious to know what art, or…Read more ›
Timothy F.H. Allen, president of International Society for the Systems Sciences 2008-2009, passed away peacefully in his home, surrounded by his family, on May 1, 2025. With his work on ecosystem ecology, I learned more about living systems than anyone else in the systems community. After his retirement, he was proud of putting together a […]
In 2024, WordPress Studio was released, making installation on a local computer simpler. The instructions were modified from MacOS to Ubuntu Linux, by Daniel Kossmann, “How to install WordPress Studio in Ubuntu Linux” | Jun 15, 2024 at https://www.danielkossmann.com/how-to-install-wordpress-studio-ubuntu-linux/ I already had NVM installed, but in Terminal, with the result “command not found”. In the […]
The appreciation of change is different in Western philosophy than in classical Chinese philosophy. JeeLoo Lin published a concise contrast on differences. Let me parse the Introduction to the journal article, that is so clearly written. The Chinese theory of time is built into a language that is tenseless. The Yijing (Book of Changes) there […]
In trying to place the World Hypotheses work of Stephen C. Pepper (with multiple root metaphors), Nicholas Rescher provides a helpful positioning. — begin paste — Philosophical perspectivism maintains that substantive philosophical positions can be maintained only from a “perspective” of some sort. But what sort? Clearly different sorts of perspectives can be conceived of, […]
Finding proper words to express system(s) change(s) can be a challenge. One alternative could be diachrony. The Oxford English dictionary provides two definitions for diachronic, the first one most generally related to time. (The second is linguistic method) diachronic ADJECTIVE Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “diachronic (adj.), sense 1,” July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/3691792233. For completeness, prochronic relates “to […]
