Toronto, Ontario.
Trailers labelled for stunt doubles: working actors in Hollywood North, Toronto Bay Street north of Wellington Street (Toronto) 20100509 1830Leafy spring morning on our street (Toronto, Monday) 20100507 0850Koilos, 2007, by Michael Christian, Distillery District (Toronto, Wednesday) 20100512 2000Why foam in the Berczy Park fountain? (Toronto, Friday) 20100514 1930In the lineup for the matinee show or Pu-Erh, last day, Theatre Passe Muraille (Toronto, Saturday) 20100515 1415Bows tied around headstones. Marks for spring maintenance? St. John’s Norway Cemetery (Toronto, Sunday) 20100516Rail tracks to nowhere. Basin Street eastbound at the Turning Basin (Toronto Port Lands, Monday) 20100517 1800When a bicycle is faster than a car northbound. Lower Don River trail, west of the Don Valley Parkway at rush hour (Toronto, Wednesday) 201005190 1700Don River, bicycle path in parklands, and Don Valley Parkway, viewed from the Millwood Road bridge, east (Toronto, Saturday) 20100522Beach volleyball courts at Ashbridges Bay on Victoria Day. For those who think Canadians only play hockey (Toronto, Monday) 20100524 1700
Pond in L’amoureux Park South. Took subway and bus north to Steeles Ave., wending way back home (Scarborough, Ontario, Saturday) 20100529 1815
I barely need an excuse to view neighbourhoods where I haven’t been, before. Since Jennifer and Marianne were interested in seeing “Textile Town“, we got maps that oriented us to the train station at Nippori. As is usual in Tokyo, the exit at the subway is rather well marked.
The train platform is elevated, so we took the stairs down. Looking over my shoulder, there’s a gate with Japanese characters leading to the platform.
The streets aren’t rectilinear around Nippori. Walking out a little from the station and looking east, there’s a commercial area … but not textile stores.
Looking south, there were also storefronts, but the rag trade is a little farther on.
Since I have strong preferences in food — some choices due to allergies, others from ethnic background — Satomi asked me for guidance on restaurant selection. I find Japanese food to not have the vegetarian content that Chinese food offers, so she had some time to think about that.
After a day of meetings at the university, we took the train out to Jiyugaoka station.
Maps were consulted to figure out directions.
Up the side street, many of the storefronts in this district were closed. I noticed the bicyclist choosing the safety of sidewalk, while pedestrians casually strolled the streets.
The sidewalks were sometimes non-existent, so we had to be on alert for oncoming cars.
Around the curve, the directions led us uphill.
We found our destination, Aen, with a modest front door.
Shiomi and Satomi had a lengthy consultation with the server about a good selection of alternative dishes. The menu is complete vegetarian, but I complicate matters by trying to avoid dairy products. Continue reading “2009/02/24 Vegetarian cuisine at Jiyugaoka“
Since Tamachi station and Mita station are north and east of the hotel where we normally stay, the morning commutes to the university are a regular walk that way. I decided to take a roundabout route east and south to look around, on the way to Tamachi station.
The area is called Shinshiba. Looking west, the towers — it’s hard to judge whether they’re offices or apartments — are built up to the edge of the canal.
To these southwest, the pedestrian bridge is painted pink.
I followed the main road to walk south over a bridge. On subsequent walks, I discovered a Hanamasa supermarket further down this road. Beyond that, there’s more highrises.
Following the main road, I turned east at the pedestrian crosswalk at the traffic lights.
On my third visit to Tokyo, I’ve become comfortable with navigating from Narita International Airport to my hotel near Tamachi station. Arrving around 5 p.m. in the evening, here’s what the trip looks like into Terminal 1 (for the Star Alliance carriers).
As with most huge airports, passengers debark from the aircraft to face a long walk to the terminal.
Speedwalks in the terminal make the walk easier. I passed by thermal monitors on the lookout for fevers, right before the lineups at immigration and luggage carousels.
Exiting the baggage area, my first stop takes me on a turn right. Since my mobile phone from Canada hasn’t worked in Japan, I order a local mobile phone via ANA Skyweb for pickup, a week before the scheduled flight.
At the end of the terminal, the Ana sky porter had a mobile phone with my name on a list.
Turning around to come back through the centre of the terminal, I passed by the main escalator down to the trains.
Our family has a pattern — not yet a tradition — of skiing at Blue Mountain on December 24. On the day before Christmas, the slopes are relatively quiet … and the people working the lodge and lifts aren’t yet stressed out by the holiday crowds that will arrive in the following days. We haven’t been consistent on this event, because it’s only worth going if snow conditions are good, and pre-Christmas weather is variable. In 2008, conditions were favorable,and we were on the road as the sun rose. Since we ski irregularly, we rent equipment at the lodge for the day. We’re not very practiced in getting dressed in the gear.
As oldsters, Diana and I prefer the tradition of Alpine skiing. Adam and Noah have been on snowboards in prior years. Ryan decided to stick with skis, and followed his parents for the first few runs.
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 […]
