Mais ce n'est que des futilités

Could write about...

2009-11-04T00:08:00.000-05:00

It’s not that I don’t want to write, here, it’s more that for the past couple months, I don’t know what to write about. But the thing is that, there’s plenty to write about; I’m pretty sure about it. And school is taking more of my time, I’ve had a couple of mid-terms and even if they were open books exam, they were hard. I haven’t really had time to finish any of the mid-terms I’ve written so far, or only barely had time to finish. Could write about The Boy, but I don’t know what’s going on with him (no clue whatsoever), so what is there to say? Or you guys might have a different perspective. Could write about the fact that I have to find a research project for my master, but my supervisor is pregnant and on bedrest and I don’t really want to go to her place to discuss it. But I know I should since I might be doing the project over the summer rather than during my last semester. Oh, and there’s that master degree offered in Quebec City that a friend showed me and it looks so much better that what I’m doing now, should I think about it? There’s also my computer being more and more stupid (ie, slow and giving me error messages for no reason), might want to change it since laptops are not too expansive these days. Could also write about how I’ve been enjoying playing Guitar Hero World Tour (guitar and drums, I don’t sing) at my brother’s since he bought it, so much so that I asked the game for my Wii for my birthday or Christmas. Might be better to get it for Christmas, otherwise I might not study as much as I’d like. The new apartment is better than the other one; there’s heating! So I haven’t been freezing like in the previous one. During the lab sessions at school, I’ve learned that working with wastewater is disgusting (as if you didn’t know) and gloves is not an option. I’ll try to remember that when I’ll have kids one day during diaper changes.

There might be plenty to write about if I just sit and think about it for 2 seconds.

Learning to be more patient

2009-10-03T00:15:00.001-04:00

I think that this is one of the things that I have to learn; or let’s say to become more patient when it comes to some things. In one of my recent posts, I’ve briefly mentioned that I’ve met someone and wasn’t so sure of where things were heading. I think that The Boy is going to teach me to become more patient (he’s being called The Boy since one of me very good anglo friends already calls him like that since she can never remember his insanely long and very uncommon French first name). For the last few weeks, he’s been amazingly busy and has had to cancel dates a couple times. So, trying to be patient with him and just accept that he’s busy (he has a job and plays hockey in a league twice a week with his friends); even if it’s not that easy. The friend I’ve mentioned earlier on told me to move on since he’s not being serious; but I want to give him more time since we’ve talked and texted and he seemed to be somewhat sorry and apologized, but she reminded me that patience should have a limit, not matter what and no matter how you appreciate someone (but I do not really agree on the last part).

Since we’ve met, I’ve also learned not to rush things and to let things go slowly and to try to enjoy it; not always easy since not knowing where we’re heading is not always the fun part.

What has someone taught you recently?

North

2009-09-13T13:53:00.004-04:00

When thinking about the kind of job I could get in the future, I’ve always known that there are certain things I wouldn’t want to do and others I’d love to do. But this summer has changed this a bit. I was given the opportunity to spend a week in James Bay, which is where the field site of one of the projects is located. If James Bays wasn’t remote enough, the only way to get to one of the field sites (and is very convenient to go to others) is by helicopter. A bit less than a 10 minutes flight to get there; and we had to go everyday. Think I liked it? By the way, before taking the plane to get there, I had never been in planes or helicopters. I loved flying and I enjoyed working in such a remote area.

The only things you hear over there, when the equipment is turned off, is the wind blowing; on windy days it can get somewhat strong. It’s also peaceful to be there (depends with whom!) and even more when you’re done with the field work and that you’re waiting for the helicopter to come, lying on the wooden platform is quite relaxing. It’s a big contrast from the everyday life in a city when there is always something going on.

However, days spent in the peatland could get long and boring; so there was nothing better than an iPod and tiny-foldable speakers. On days that were cloudy and colder, listening to Stars, City and Colour or whatever L could fin on my iPod made a huge difference. (made you forget that you were wearing a bugjacket and that mosquitoes were still trying to bit you) It made me learn to enjoy music a lot and made me realize how big of a difference it can make on your mood. And I’ve also learned that it shouldn’t be taken for granted, since the battery on an iPod can die.

The thing I really like about being out there was to almost be stress-free, it’s very different than the city! Sure some days were stressful when things broke or something went wrong; but in the end, we always came back to thinking “you do you’re best with what you’ve got out here”.

The not stress-free morning was the first one, when it was the first time I got in a helicopter. The pilot was experienced, which made it feel safer knowing it’s been a while he’s been flying. But I didn’t like it when he told me what has to be done in case we crash and he dies and told me where the survival equipment is… however, flying was fun, the first pilot loved to fly few meters above the water (had to fly over a Hydro reservoir and over a river) or above ATVs trails. He was also doing some crazy things, which were not that crazy compared to what he told us he’s done in the past, but feeling G forces in a helicopter is fun (like a rollercoaster ride, except that there are no rails, so you don’t know where you’re going and when it’s going to stop). And on days on which he was flying “normally” it was also quite fun since you get to see this fantastic landscape from the air, which makes it look a lot better than when you’re on the ground.

That week spent up north taught me that worming in remote areas can be enjoyable and that flying is fun (I have no motion sickness whatsoever, which helps). But I’ve also learned to relax and to enjoy the time spent over there; to look around and realize how wonderful nature really is; it’s nearly impossible in the city to look around you and only see vegetation or not to hear all kinds of engines running.

*Have to admit that it may be a bit scary to know that the only way to go back to camp is by helicopter and that under some weather conditions it is impossible to fly.

Everything is different

2009-09-09T11:39:00.003-04:00

I haven’t posted here for quite a while, it may be that Facebook is so much easier when it comes to posting pictures and changing status. Or simply being lazy? Having to commute a lot over the summer and spending time in the field?

Anyhow, school started 2 weeks ago, I know it was early; and I think I’m going to like it even if it looks like it’s not going to be easy. Now it feels like I’m getting so much closer to not being a student anymore… in 2 years (minus few months), I’ll be done with grad school. However, that’s somewhat scary. At the welcoming session, one of my profs asked me what were my career objectives; to which I answered: “I’m not so sure yet, I’ll see we the courses I’m taking this semester”. He didn’t look quite satisfy. However, it’s the truth; I don’t know if I want to work more with drinkable water or wastewater or a mix of both, or research? Work as a consultant, somwhere in the government? But I do know that water is an interesting field of study; is that a good start? And working as a research assistant for a prof that studies greenhouse gases taught me that it’s an interesting field of study but may not be my favourite. However, getting the opportunity to work in James Bay for a week (where they do research) and flying in helicopter everyday to get to the field site taught me that this kind of research is fun; remote area and flying in helicopters (have to write more about that in another post).

Things are also quite different now that I’m done with my undergrad degree… meeting new people, good friends moving out of the province which means that I don’t get to see them on a daily basis as usual. And living without a roommate is also different, has pros and cons. And I met this guy, and it's still the period where things hasn't been clarified. And going to a French university is also making a huge difference, I’m glad that I did my undergrad in English (not afraid of English textbooks) but I’m also happy to study in French since it’s somewhat easier.

Just lots of changes in the last little while, do you like changes or you'd rather keep a routine where things are not changing too much?

Answers

2009-04-03T23:55:00.002-04:00

I know it’s been a while since I last wrote here, but school is simply hectic and having to write reading journals in a class is pretty much time consuming (the amount of reading is insane, at least I’m not used to it being a science student). Anyways, still have few essays to write, some are going to be fun and others are going to be painful. However, I do have good news that I wanted to share with you guys. And I will be back later in the month.

This week, I learned that I have been accepted to do a Master in Civil Engineering and the week before I got an offer to do one in Geography (I also applied for a certificate as I was very scared of not getting in)… I sat down with myself on Wednesday night and decided that opting for engineering would be the best for me… I did not get an entrance scholarship for the eng. degree but I don’t really mind since I know I will probably like it much better. It was a hard decision to make knowing that I could have gotten over 14,000$/year from some department… but still, I thought about the long run and engineering wins. I’ve been taking a bunch of courses related to issues with water and water in different location on Earth (general courses, hydrogeology, water in rivers, in lakes, in wetlands… a lot). And engineering seems to be a logical route, plus the option I chose is centered towards the environment, which will be fun.

I don’t fully realize it know, I don’t realize that I’ve been accepted where I most wanted to go… I guess that it will hit me at one point… I learned it right after my final oral presentation in a “cartography” class (geographic information systems/science), the teacher just told me that we did a great job and then I went to check my file and here it was: accepted.

Plus, it means that I won’t be doing some preparatory work for a Master and that I can accept a research assistant position with one of my profs… so I have a summer job and it was soooo easy to get; the teacher knows me quite well (he taught me 4 courses). It should be a very fun summer… will be working in a marsh and maybe on a reservoir (+ the less fun stuff: lab work). He was so happy for me when I told him I got in (he wrote a reference letter for me, so he knew about the application) and he was happy that I accepted the job... so was I.

Anyways, it was just generally a great week… now I have to tell my roommate that I still move (she found someone, finally!!!) but that I’ll stay in Montreal… it’s gonna be much better for me, more expensive but it will worth it.

How was your week?

Hectic time of the year

2009-02-02T18:52:00.004-05:00

This is how I feel due to the fact that I have a gazillion things to do this week... can't wait for this semester to be over... Mostly because I'm taking an advanced class in Environment and it's more like philosophy and environment... which means a lot of readings, a reading journal to write twice a week and did I mention the readings? We are currently reading a book by Polanyi (The Great Transformation), and I'm not thrilled by the idea of having to discuss this in class tomorrow and basically having to finish the book within the next 16 days.
Yes, the picture is the snowstorm that hit Montreal last week.

Can't wait for the calm after the storm, which is going to be this weekend more or less, or the real calm will come at the end of February during reading week... taken this Sunday while going to the grocery store.

Challenges

2009-01-25T23:03:00.002-05:00

I never thought that it would be that hard to write letters to apply for grad school and research proposal. But after one weekend of doing that and a bunch of other things, I think that I’m done, well, I’ll still have to apply to one place before March 1st but it will be a piece of cake this time. And I also realized that it was the first time in the last three year that I had to write something really important in French, it was hard. It seems that my brain is now a weird mix of French and English!

What seemed to have made writings these letters even harder is that I had the feeling that January blues were coming this year again, plus the bunch of questions that I’m currently asking myself and the scary unknown. All of these together have made me feel a bit, I don’t know how to say it but sad and scared at the same time. But I’m lucky since I have good friends and that they know me quite well. Saturday night one of my best friends (if not my best friend) and I went for diner at a new Asian restaurant. It was really good and then she thought that some chocolate might be a good idea for me. So we went to the best place in Montreal for chocolate lovers, a restaurant where there is chocolate in basically everything I would say. After a good coffee (espresso and chocolate) and a brownie I started to think that those January blues were not going to get me this year. And this morning one of my good friends, called me and said that he would be at my place in few minutes. I guessed that he sensed that things were not that right when we talked earlier this week and that having a good chat might help. It did help, just talking about our fears and what is bothering us can make a huge difference. And sometimes, a long hug also makes things better. He is one of my friends with whom I have that feeling that I can talk about everything and I like knowing that we can count on each other when things get a little bit rougher.

The last challenge of the day was to tell my roommate that I might leave in July but chances are pretty high that I will. I’m applying for grad school in Montreal and Quebec City… and don’t know where I’ll go. I felt that it wasn’t right to tell her that we should resign our lease together, not knowing what I’ll do next year. She wasn’t really thrilled, but I know that being honest with her (and now) can pay off. She still has plenty of time to find a new roommate for our awesome apartment. And I’m starting to think that leaving in my own place, not shared with a roommate would also be really great; L and I don’t fight and have tremendous respect for each other but still, I’d like to have my own place.

And I'll try to post a bit more often, but this Environmental Philosophy class is keeping me way too busy! Too many readings to do!

Can’t things stay like this forever?

2009-01-12T21:10:00.001-05:00

I’m not really looking forward for next year; for various reasons, but one in particular that might seem a bit silly but in reality isn’t. In the last year and a half, I’ve made friends, good friends actually, and comes the end of this semester we’ll all be doing something new. Some are staying in Montreal, others are planning to go to grad school outside the province and others are going to get a job. It’s kinda sad that it might come to an end sooner than we thought. Those are people that know me and that I know that I can count on. They’re the friends that make it really fun to just go out to a pub, drink beer and just talk and laugh. Or with whom we go play hockey, just like we did over the weekend. We went to Parc Lafontaine (a huge park in Montreal) and joined people that were already playing; it seems to me that it’s a very Canadian thing to do. I must admit that I have bruises on my knees cuz I felt a bit but it was so much fun. So was drinking hot chocolate at L’s place after it.

At the same time, I’m looking forward for next year since, things might change a lot since I might go to another school, meet new people and experience new things. But this feeling of being at home when I’m at school is definitely going to change. Such as walking in the lounge around lunch time, sitting on one of those red couches, eating lunch and enjoying it because people in the program know each other quite well and some times it feels like it’s one big family. Sadly, a bunch of them are going to graduate in May, and so will I.

By the way, I’m so lost with what is going to happen for me next year; I ran into my subway buddy from my old job the other day and he started to ask questions about what I want to do next year and what are my goals… he asked few questions; I talked with profs about grad school and they made me think about things I didn’t thought of, but I’m now asking myself a gazillion questions.

Back?

2008-12-14T23:13:00.002-05:00

I don’t think that I could even say that I was a blogger for the last few (have to admit it) months. School took over I guess, and all those never ending assignments (and those that required good writing skills were more of a struggle for me). But now, this semester is almost over… one final to go and a final paper to write; and I’m so not motivated… Even if it was a hectic semester, filled with field trips in the first month (3 weekends, back to back), I think that I enjoyed it (and even with the crappy schedule that I had).

I can barely believe that at the end of the next semester, I’ll be graduating… it’s hard to imagine. But at the same time, it is extremely scary. I’ve been looking at grad schools, and if there’s one thing that I hate in science is that in order to be accepted for your master, quite often you have to bring your own money… and those scholarships can be pretty hard to get. I’ve talked to few teachers in my fields of interest, will do more of it when this semester will be over… but I’m starting to seriously think about doing a master in engineering, even if it means doing one more year since I did not take advanced calculus in university… or do a non-thesis master…

I can’t promise that I’ll write a lot here in the upcoming months, but I’ll try, because I realized that I missed it. I went to see Stars for my birthday (and loved it) and at the end of the concert, I thought about how I’d like to share that with you guys. (It was so good, I just loved it and would like to see them live again) I hope that I’ll have time to write… I’ll try to take the time to do so.

Rain and NYC but not together

2008-08-07T21:56:00.001-04:00

Rain would be the word that I would be if one asked me how the summer has been so far. Rain, rain and even more rain oh and coldish, I mean, not really hot. However, I have to admit that I managed to get away from the intense rain: I drive a lot for work and most of the time, I ended up going to places where it was not raining while it was pouring rain in Montreal. It's great when I'm working and that I am not doing inspections (driving in the rain is not my favourite thing): it doesn't feel really bad to be in an office when the weaher is not nice outside. But I have to say that this summer at the office has been amazingly different and I don't know if it's in a good or in a bad way. It might not help that the people working at the office have changed: a lot left and there are a few new ones.

I also spent few days in the States during the weekend: we went to see my grandma's sister and her family. We spent Saturday in Long Island, it was raining for a good part of the day but at least it was sunny in late afternoon: the house was sort of crowded. My cousin was sort of surprised to see that my sister and I could actually speak English. Then on Sunday, we went to Manhattan and we walked around Central Park and in Upper West Side. It's a part of Manhattan where I never went to and it was quite fun. We also went to Times Square after diner and that was the coolest part of the day, I wished that we could have spent a bit more time there, but going there was great. I managed to take few good shots, a lot more have been posted on my Facebook page.

And for this rainy weekend, I'm going to spend few days at home, as summer comes to an end really soon and it might become a bit hard to go home. Plus most, if not almost all my friends, are outside the city this weekend, so it can be sort of boring (they've been outside Montreal during lots of weekends)... despite the long bus ride, it should be good to spend a bit of time at home.

Driving a Prius

2008-07-25T22:25:00.003-04:00

Have you ever tried one? Saw the "keys"? Tried to start it?

On Thursday, I spent the day away from the office, going to a bunch of places for work. When I came back, in the visitor parking lot, I notied one Prius with the Quebec's stickers on it, and the only nearby office that I know that has one is the one in Southern Laurentians. I walked into the office and ran into my subway buddy from last year, who moved to the Southern Laurentians office in mid-July. He was leaving and asked me if I saw "his" car, and if I wanted to try it as he had a little challenge for me: Try to start it and drive it... I put my files on my desk and the keys of my "so nice Ford Focus", told my partner that I was done for the day and left.

Next to the car, S put the "key" in my hand and said, "bring us to the next subway station, I don't have enough time to bring you to your place, but want to see how you'll do with this car". The keys that he gave me are not real keys: a little black box. I unlocked the doors and sat in the car... is there a key in the little box, how does this thing work?... he sat next time with this huge smile on his face and said "Figure it out by yourself" I saw a little hole in which the box fits, he did and I saw two little green lights next to it... but still, can't turn it like "normal" keys. I looked at around, and after what seemed like an eternity, saw a power button (just like on your tv or laptop!) and pressed it. The screen went on and all the lights in the car... but still, when I tried to put it on park: could not work... Subway buddy was happy to see me struggling, as it meant that he was not the only one having trouble with it. I pushed the button again, and bingo! And to put it on Park, you guessed it, you just press on the P button... it's a sweet car much better than the Honda civc hybrid that my parents own.

I never thought that I would start a car by pressing a car and using a car being mostly powered by electricity if not only. But, I felt so dumb for not being able to start to car at first, at least it was a friend, not my boss!

Sir Paul

2008-07-21T21:46:00.003-04:00

Right, I went to Quebec City for the weekend with my mom and sister and we went to see Paul McCartney on Les Plaines d'Abraham... 250,000 people, it was simply insane. The wait was not too bad as we did not get there super early. We thought that we would have to be at the back since we were not in the first ones to get there. We managed to get a "place" "close" to the stage, in the area that they called A: we could see the stage and the people on it and the giant screen that was installed on the left. Sure, they were really small on that huge stage, but even if I'm kinda small, I managed to see them.

The Stills opened the show, they were really great despite some sound problem. I really enjoyed their part; much better thant Pascale Picard, the girls who played right before McCartney. It might not help that I don't really love what she does.

I've never been a huge Beattles fan but, it seemed to be the once in a lifetime type of thing and my mom offered to go. I do not regret going! I was so glad to see him play songs such as Hey Jude, Let it be, Sgt. Peppers, Give Peace a Chance, Live and Let Die, Yesterday as those are the ones that I know quite well. People around us kept singing the whole time, those guys (in their fifties) seemed to enjoy the shoe quite a lot. It was funny to see people from different generations.

I'm sure that you've heard quite a lot abou the show in the news. For videos, YouTube it, you'll find a lot!

Oh and Saturday, we went to see the Image Mill, which is a forty minutes visual and audio production projected against the grain silos in the Port of Québec. The concrete structure becomes a narrator that tells the tale of Québec City's 400 years of history.

It consists in a sort of animated mosaic that, moving from engravings to paintings and from photos to videos, creates an impressionistic portrait of the city over time. The work consists of four movements corresponding to the city’s four centuries of history: waterways, the age of exploration and discovery; road building, clearing and developing the land; the railroad and industrial expansion; and finally, the age of air travel and the development of communications.

"from: monquebec2008.sympatico.msn.ca"

This was also pretty cool, different kind than the Pauln McCartney concert! But it was really great to see Québec's history being unfold on this giant screen; no words were needed to understand how things changed in 400 years, pictures and music was enough and it was quite powerful.

Anyways, this weekend is going to be less busy; might go to see the Fireworks on Saturday at LaRonde (nearby) and then we're going to New York City the first weekend of August... busy summer!

The White Screen

2008-06-30T22:46:00.002-04:00

I've been trying to write something coherant for the last hour or so, and after few lines I realize that it's not really good or that things don't make sense... it's been a long time since the last post (very few posts this year I should say). I'm moving tomorrow and will only get internet back on Friday, until then I'll only have access at work, but it means no Facebook, nor Blogger.

In the next posts I'll post a summer reading list (a bit late, but it's never too late for that I guess) and a list of places where I want to go this summer. I won't have a lot of days off, so I'll try to do things on weekends and discover Montreal and its surroundings. I'm living here and now know the city but there are so many thigs to do in the summer that i should not be bored.

Should be back now

2008-06-26T22:29:00.001-04:00

After a long hiatus, I should be back for a little while. Things are now settling down and I guess that I’ll start to have more free time in the upcoming weeks. I’m back at my old job from last summer, working with the same guy; and he slightly changed and we now get along ok. I also have a supervisor, and he is a great guy, we’re having fun with him. We still have stinky coordinator and Mr. I want a gazillion inspections as the regional director. Otherwise things are the same, different cubicle though, which I’m not super happy with; it’s in the part of the office where the AC sucks and it’s further away from my friends from last summer and from the Analysts with whom I had fun last summer. Oh and few of the fun people of the office are leaving, working in different offices or different jobs; no subway buddy in 2 weeks (anyways, he lost his transit card and is driving to work quite a lot). But there are new people, which is really fun as it brings down the average age of the people in this office. However, I now understand why my subway buddy, as we shall call him, told me to try to stay away from my old job.

Otherwise, I’m moving on Tuesday. Much bigger apartment, it is further away from work and school but with a friend. And my brother left for Japan on Sunday, he’ll be back in late August, it’s going to b weird to be spending a summer in Montreal without him. I realized this week that I’ll miss him, I’ll miss hanging out with him after work and drinking beers while cooking together and making the silliest jokes.

Otherwise the summer should be sort of busy in a good way, and I’m trying to convince my Grandma to go to New York to visit her sister. The last time they saw each other was 6 years ago and it would be nice for them to see each other.

And I’ll graduate in a year; I realized it when I went to my brother’s convocation last week. I started to look at masters degrees in geography, hydrology but also civil engineering. Application deadline are early to get grants, but I learned that as a French speaking Canadian it can be slightly easier to get an NSERC, but it still has to be proven.

I wanted to post some pictures that I took during my Field Class (lots of them are on Facebook) but I'm not using my laptop as it broke again. They gave it back with a new keyboard and hardware but with Windows in English, have to bring back the laptop to get Windows in French...

Back from the 2 weeks field trip + 1 week "field" trip to the library

2008-06-07T15:46:00.002-04:00

Things I learned during field class:

Sweet potatoes taste good, despite what my mom told me.
Cinnamon bread is good: butter, brown sugar and cinnamon, even better at midnight and sitting on the counter in the kitchen
Tofu can be quite tasty
Cooking for 8 can be a challenge
Chocolate chipits cookies with Nutella on top is the best
Chili is good, which I knew, and is not that hard to cook
Too many people in the kitchen can result in funny fights
It was more about hiking than actual science
Working until 2:00 AM on assignments with friends can be fun and staying at the library until 2 can also be funnish
Playing Scrabble on Facebook is cool, however it’s hard in English
Science can be fun when you are in the field but it can also be frustrating
Do not hit a rock with your fist, it will hurt, a lot (I did, I was trying to put a stick in the ground, it broke, my fist hit a rock)
The water in the stream can be really cold in Mid-May, see above point
Measuring the discharge of a stream was not a good idea for my independent project
I’m not in good shape at all
Put the red in the shed when using a compass
Playing (cough, working) in a gravel pit can be kinda cool, but you literally end up with sand all over you, and in your clothes
Bunk beds are dangerous: I woke up one night (sleeping on top) with one arm hanging in the air and then woke up with my feet hanging in the air, right I moved all the way down to the bed
Bunk beds are dangerous: when sleeping on the bottom, if you wake up and sit, it hurts your forehead
Sharing room is not fun: mostly when the roommate snores really loudly at 2:00AM and that you go to bed after finishing the never ending assignment
Lentil patties are really good, at least the one that one of the guys made
Rice Krispies Squares are fun to eat while doing assignments
Steeled toes rubber boots are a bad idea
I hate mosquitoes
Apples and cheese is a good midnight snack
My roommate (a guy subletting for the summer) did not understand what it meant when I told him when I would be back from my field trip: I walked in the apartment and felt like the whole place was his room.
The roommate does not understand that he is not my dad; I can go to bed whenever I want, if I’m tired the day after, it’s my problem; he does not understand
And I met new people, we quickly became friends; 7 students in a class is perfect
And I think that it will be weird to go back to work on Monday, since May 19^th, I’ve been with the same 7 other people most of the days
Extension on term paper is also fun, but I’m not looking forward to writing it and then finding a tutor (in the summer) to correct it (The university closed the English Center or I don’t know how they called it and replaced it by tutors, but it’s not the same)

Little Squirrel

2008-05-13T11:09:00.003-04:00

Things are sort of busy around here, well, it depends on your definition of being busy; last Thursday I went to the dentist for the dreaded appointment: I had my 4 wisdom teeth removed. Let's just say that the next time that something important has to be done to me, I'll ask for Ativan, which is a drug that makes you less nervous, it's a sedative and muscle relaxant. My aunts, whom are nurses, did not quite understand why my dentist did not give me some, as the dentist knows me quite well.

But it's almost over, my face is still a bit swollen, but I can now open my mouth and talk (might be weird but English is still kinda hard). But since Thursday, I've been taking Advils or Tylenol every 4 hours. But things are much better, I look less like a squirrel and more like me.

Will be back to Montreal on Thursday and by then, I guess that everything will be a lot better and should post once I'll be there.

Habs: on vacation

2008-05-05T10:25:00.001-04:00

Sorry for the few weeks without posting. My second year as an undergrad is officially over, last Tuesday at noon I finished writing my last exam. But I still have one thing to fix before leaving Montreal: I have to find an apartment. Here’s the problem: I found one, it’s perfect, a bit expensive but the place looks so great that we don’t really mind (it ends up being the same as what I’m paying right now). However, the superintendent of the building is sick, so the owner is in charge of finding new tenants. I haven’t met the woman, but she’s really unsure about having tenants that are students, she’s afraid that we are not going to pay, even if our parents co-sign the lease, she’s not sure that she wants to have us. She knows that they are not living in Montreal, and this is the major problem for her, which I don’t totally understand because if we don’t pay the rent, she only has to sue me or my parents (but my superintendent told her that I’m paying on time)… anyways, should get news from hear today, otherwise we have to find another place.

And you might have heard about it, the Habs lost their last game against the Flyers, so playoffs are over for them. It was great, the city was hockey: flags on police cars, huge flags on fire trucks, paintings on fire houses, a lot of people wearing Habs shirts, bars and pubs were full when they were playing (it was hard to find a seat half an hour before the game start), on the city buses you could read the number of the bus and then “Go Canadiens Go!”… it was all about hockey. Now, we’ll just have to find something else to do, watching the games was a good way to waste time.

2008-04-22T23:48:00.003-04:00

Earth day list, inspired by Barbara’s post. I thought it was great so here’s my list, which might change as I will think about more things

Things I do right:

Walk to school or take public transit but rarely a car
Try to sell old school books: reuse!
Bring a re-usable mug when I buy coffee
Use re-usable bags
Give old clothes to my little cousin
Have some fluorocompact light bulbs
Have phosphate free detergent for laundry
Put plastic in windows in winter
Don’t have AC in my apartment
Convinced my parents to buy a hybrid car and to get tinted windows (I think that it uses less the AC, but honestly it was for us passengers on the backseat)
Don’t eat meat in every meal
Study in Environment, if that counts
Recycle as much as I can
Buy fair trade/organic coffee
At school, buy coffee at the student run café, where they sell organic and fair trade products
Use an electric mower when I’m at my parents’ house
Use a laptop rather than a desktop, uses less electricity

Things I do wrong

I don’t compost
I own way too many clothes and a lot of these are made in Asia or somewhere really far from here
Have too many incandescent light bulbs
Take showers that are too long
Use a lot of paper, but try to print on both side or re-use the sheets
Don’t use a divacup
Buy products that are not always locally grown and that are not organic
Often forget to close lights when I get out of a room
Drink beer, which requires a lot of water
Eat food that I ordered to go: a lot of packaging

Will add more to the list... or find solutions to what I do wrong...
any thoughts on that list?

Procrastinating... only one exam left on the 29th...

2008-04-22T23:18:00.001-04:00

This amazingly insane semester is almost over, almost. It ended up with so many things due on the last 3 weeks of school; a lot of sleepless nights last week… the good point of having a bunch of essays due is that in some classes I don’t have finals, so I only have 1 exam. On the 29^th, at noon, school is officially over. And I wrote an exam last week, it was way too long, I did not even had enough time to go over my answers.

The upcoming summer should be quite busy; wisdom teeth will be removed on May 8^th, my summer class starts on the 19^th, and it includes a 2 weeks field trip, with plans to come back to Montreal in the first week of June. Then have a week to write a final paper and prepare a presentation for the Friday, which will also involve a good lunch, wine and beer. Unfortunately, the job starts on the Monday the 9^th and ends on August 29. And right, back to school on September 2^nd…. I’ll have time off in early May, time which will be spent reading a coursepack about physical geography. And I’ll go back home after the 4 hours trip to the dentist. And within all that, I’m moving on July 1^st! Can’t wait to live with my friend… the roommate is driving me crazy. And profs reminded us that us, U2 students, have to start thinking about Masters and grad school… also have to think about that over the summer, to start applying during the Fall semester (to try to get grants or to get a place with a good prof)… busy summer, but it’s the way I want it to be in June; my roommate is subletting her room to a guy, which I’m not very happy about as I do not approve him so I’ll try to be as busy as I can and spend as less time as I can at my apartment… at least the campus is nearby and it’s a great place to read, the Old Port is “within walking distance” sort of, and my brother is leaving for 2 months in Japan at the end of June, so I’ll try to spend some time with him. And I’ll have to pack my things once again, lovely activity to do… very sarcastic.

And I went to the Bell centre twice in two nights on the 11^th and 12^th, I saw the guy who played the surgeon in Bon Cop, Bad Cop, the guy is quite famous in Quebec. And then, on Saturday night, I saw the second game of the first round playoff games of the Habs, it was insane but not as insane as on the night they won the round. In the big crowd exiting the Bell Centre, my friend ran into the parents of her best friend (who’s living in the same building as her), they offered a ride as they were going to see their daughter. We were happy to avoid the subway after the game but we walked for 20 minutes on Ste-Catherine, it was loud and festive. It had to be like that: they won in overtime.

Still have to find an apartment however... might have found something great in internet... will see it on Friday!

Might have been another lie...

2008-03-19T20:08:00.003-04:00

Almost a month without blogging... might stay like that for few weeks... However, I do have to say that I know what I'll do during the summer: summer field course + go back to the old job... and amazingly good news; I'll finish my undergrad studies next Winter, I'll graduate in May next year (I never thought it could be possible due to the program change), and my advisor is trying to convince me to write an honours thesis, which I'm not so sure about... I've never thought about that previously, as I thought that my grades were not good enough, but it turns out to be just ok. However, I've figured out what classes I'll take next year, well I think and I'm starting to see a trend: hydrology... lots of Hydrology classes... Anyways, I'm alive, just busy for the next few weeks, one oral presentation done, 2 more to do and 5 term papers to hand in... Easter week-end? Should be called working week-end around here... I'll be back in somewhere mid-April and I'll tell you more about the stupidities my roommate did... can't wait to move on July 1st, next roommate is a friend, and we should get along pretty well (hope so!)

When I'll be back, should have more posts about the environment and stuff like that, more thoughtful posts, as I've learn amazing things this year... I think that I'm in the right place right now... a good hint of it was no January-blues this year, mostly happiness, sleepless nights but it worth it... a lot of things might influence that; more friends, closer friends, no thoughts of "I hate my classes, but what I'm I going to do?"... I'm reading your blogs, just not commenting much right now...

Back!

2008-02-23T20:44:00.001-05:00

It’s reading week, finally! It started with a good 10 hours of sleep last night, and a day watching Gilmore Girls DVDs and doing laundry (after 2 weeks, there’s a need for it, I was stuck with all the clothes that aren’t my favourites). No new Mac however, I forgot that it might be harder to get one with a French keyboard at the computer store of the university (they are cheaper than in store)… takes about 2 weeks to get it, and I haven’t ask for one yet.

And the struggle for the summer job is back… decision time… I’m meeting a teacher next week to talk about job opportunities with him, my advisor said that he’s looking for students and I’m pretty sure that I’ll get the job at the gov’t again and if I work there, I should be able to get a job as an English teacher for my month and half that I would have off… Money wise, the gov’t plus teaching are better, for experience, working with a teacher might be better… I don’t know, I don’t know what I want… I guess that I’ll know more after Thursday… I enjoyed working at the gov’t even if I also hated it and working with a teacher means that I could work with a friend (which is good and bad) and I could know more about hydrogeology or atmospheric measurements… you’ll hear more about it in the next few weeks.

And I also have a question, might seem like a dumb question but I’ll ask… I’m going to a spa next week with some friends and I’ll also get a massage: first time in a spa and first massage I’ll ever get by a professional… question: what are you suppose to wear and not to wear when you get a massage? I asked my sister and she said that she was wondering the same thing: she ended up saying what I thought, no top but keep panty… stupid question, I know, and I’m not really feeling like asking my friends… It is the kind of question that if I would ask my dad he would say that I’m in university and it’s the kind of thing that I should know

Now, time to catch up on all of you by reading your blogs

Off for few weeks

2008-02-06T08:58:00.000-05:00

I thought that I should let you know that you won't find a lot of new posts here until the last week of Februrary: Spring Break starting on the 25th (well, the Friday before so the 22nd)... The next 2 weeks will be very busy... but I'll catch up on your blogs. Oh and the next post might be written on a new MacBook... I decided to change my laptop and my Dad bought my laptop... so should switch to Mac just before the Spring Break when things will be less busy... but it won't be a MacAir, it looks good but not exactly what I'm looking for, and don't even get me started with Vista, it won't be a new PC even of a notepad would be useful.

A picture of Québec City, where I went few weeks ago while you are waiting.

I need my vital space back, I really do

2008-01-20T21:27:00.000-05:00

In September, I moved and got a new roommate… I tried to adjust, but we are profoundly different, she needs to talk, a lot. I also do, but differently… I simply hate it when she knocks on my door, when it’s closed and start talking about unimportant stuff, and even if I try to let her understand that I don’t want to talk, that I don't have time, she keeps going… I’m typing and she’ll keep talking… if I’m in a good mood and have time, I’ll answer and it won’t be a monosyllabic conversation but it often is one. I tried to let her understand that I’m busy, school but also other things, friends and family also.

Before Christmas, she talked about the idea of going back home every weekend to work for her father during the Winter semester … and she does: leaves on Friday at the end of the afternoon and comes back on Sunday before 5pm… which is great, I have the place for myself on weekends, but it’s hard on Sunday to have her back: “what’s your plans for the week? Are you going out? With whom? How’s that class? Where were you last night? When are you coming back tonight?....” I was talking about it with my brother recently and at one point, when he realized that she kept asking when I was leaving and coming back to the apartment, he said; “you might wanna try this; tell her that you don’t mind if she has sex while you are there, it can be a boy or a girl, that you don’t really mind, unless it gets really noisy and that you’ll make plans to let her have the apartment to herself”. Haven’t tried it yet, but if she starts to ask too many questions about where I am after school, I’ll definitely try it, mostly because she told me that she never brought a guy here so it should be a bit fun. Anyhow, I think that she’s starting to grasp the concept that she’s a roommate, not my mother nor my best friend, she doesn’t need to know where I am and with whom and that she doesn't need to know who all my friends are, I talk to them on the phone, in my room, but she doesn't need to know everything about them...

And I’ll think about moving with a friend, might be better mostly because she wants to sublet the apartment for the summer; I’m not a fan of the idea, living with someone new each and every summer? and she wants to do one semester in another university. But the drawback of moving, means taking the subway, but it isn’t that bad… Had to rant sorry about that… a sweet summer picture to try to make up for it, and to forget the -20C forecasted for tomorrow.

Marché Maisonneuve and the Olympic Stadium

Found in a Park somewhere in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve neighbourhood

It was a lie, sorry

2008-01-11T23:09:00.000-05:00

Last post should have ended with, pictures to come one day, but don’t know when…

I think that receiving dvds for Christmas is a good and a bad idea… mostly if you wait until school starts to watch them… and that you got Season 7, but don’t remember seasons 5 and 6, so watch them again…

Anyways… and school is fun this semester. The thought of having a class with a teacher from the theology department scared me a little bit (the other teachers for this class are from the philosophy dept and anthropology). I didn’t grow up in a very religious family, even if my grandparents are. And I know that religion can be a touchy issue, it’s why I avoid it as most as I can with them and with people that I’m not so sure about their views of it… but you might ask: Theology right? Aren’t you an Environment student? When the prof talked about the Genesis and how, some people think that one word has been mistranslated from ancient Hebrew… I started to love this class… it gives a different perspective on things and also put things into context. And I learned a lot about the saints and the different ecological messages found in the Bible. And, the names are sometimes so different from French to English. Sadly, it was just a small fraction of the class about the Bible, it was fun and it would be great to have more about it (I never thought that I could write that one day). But I won’t talk about this with my grandparents…

And I’ve been busy with friends also and travelling between both campuses… but it worth it, I missed my friends that are there, I’m glad to have classes there again...

Now, pictures, I know… but now, with all the rain… part of the snow is gone, which is sad.

Kangaroos: in the snow. Apparently, they also like to play in the snow.

Pretty cool lion... he kept walking in the same little track... I wouldn't get close to it

Transported to Russia for few minutes... attempt for an "artistic picture" as my little sister asked: "You know that our brother won't make any artistic shots, so take them"

Zebra! They were eating when we arrived, so we could really see them. Usually, my dad's jokes are really bad, but this one was better than his average: People say that God was crazy when he created the world, I agree, look at the Zebras, it's psychedelic
But zebras are cool, I looked at their pictures for quite a long time, the lines are amazing

Again, little sister asked for bird pictures... and I like this one

Second attempt for something artistic... it didn't work that day

Yes, I wanted to hug this little one, he stayed there, looking at us and putting his hands on the glass sort of trying to reach us...

little poney

Home sweet home

Even more zebras, I like them, can't you tell?

Happy New Year, sorry I'm a bit late

2008-01-05T22:46:00.000-05:00

Hope everyone is enjoying 2008 so far.

Sorry, I haven't been around much lately, had to talk with a friend before Christmas then went home for Christmas and had fun with the family, then to the Eastern-Townships for New Year with the grand-parents and back to Montreal on the 2nd, to start classes on the 3rd.

Christmas was fun with the family, spent a lot of time with my little sister, it's been such a long time that we haven't been together like this. Saw some friends that I haven't seen since high school ended and others that it's since cégep ended. It was nice to talk to them, especially the ones that I haven't seen for so much time. It's weird, but it's with them that things changed the less, we haven't talk for years but it was has if the last time we talked was yesterday, just had to have some updates on everybody, well mostly me, because they see each other once every two weeks at least... I just have to say that I'm not a good bowling player at all... I lost, we were 4 and barely reached the 250 marks for the first game.

Also went snow shoe walking with my dad, cousins, sister and German student... it's hard for a 17 years old boy to see 2 girls doing better than him at something like that... oh well. My dad asked my sister and I to go in front, and it didn't take long for us to be 100 feet ahead of them. And walking in the forest was so much fun.

But New Year was weird, you know, when there are family member that will never be there again. But it's part of life I guess, and next year will be different.

And we went to the zoo, right in winter... Zebras in the snow, and kangaroos, lions... pretty cool. And the zoo wasn't crowded, that was great.

We spent a lot of time in family, not the whole family together, as it is hard to be all there at the same place together... it's part of the deal of being 4 kids living in different places. But we enjoyed being with each other, we had fun and didn't fight... we did things together and liked it and planned to do it again... who could have thought that we would enjoy snow shoe walking so much? And I spent some time with my dad, we talked about a bunch of things, living away makes it hard sometimes to talk a lot and I've never been amazingly close to my dad. We did talk, about a bunch of things and he called this week to know how were things and if I like my classes and to know if everything is ok... sometimes, time with family and old friends feels so good. Pictures to come tomorrow (Sunday)... a bunch of winter pictures

Snow time

2007-12-17T22:26:00.001-05:00

Went shopping this afternoon... when it's Christmas time, I always wonder why I have 3 siblings...

Some drifting snow... Sainte-Catherine street was so windy this afternoon... Now I understand why the underground network is so important and big in Montreal
A little bit of snow on the sidewalks of McGill College Avenue... just a little bit and it's icy under the snow... I almost felt a couple of times
My street... right, with lots of snow... and I could barely see some of the cars
Those cars are covered by snow... it's Lorne Crescent, a very narrow stret...
My street again... walking towards University street.
The Arts Building
James McGill... with a lot of snow surrounding him...

I'm living in a white desert... and there's even wind blowing outside

2007-12-16T23:28:00.000-05:00

It’s snowing like crazy right now… since I woke up around 8 this morning it hasn’t stop and apparently it won’t stop until late tonight if we’re lucky but more likely to stop tomorrow… I wanted to take some pictures of the snowstorm… but it’s snowing too much to take pictures and in my neighborhood, people are having a hard time walking on the sidewalk. On top of that, it’s really windy. It’s a day to stay at home, read, watch DVDs and enjoy a hot beverage because my apartment is damn cold right now. But the electric heater my grandpa gave me makes it a lot better (the thing is so powerful!)… no wonder why I felt asleep again this afternoon. I was about to start to read when I felt really sleepy and closed my eyes… to wake up an hour and a half later… my -12C sleeping bag never felt so comfortable…

For the next few days I’ll hear the nice sound of people trying to get their car out of the snow and screeching tires… lovely.

And it was really weird this afternoon I saw a lightning, like in summer and there's a thunderstorm. And could hear real loud thunder for about a minute. Environment Canada says that it doesn't happen often during snowstorm but when it does, it shows how powerful the storm is... well, this lightning was a strong one!

I was supposed to go shopping today… I guess I’ll do it tomorrow hoping that they’ll have time to clean the sidewalks a little bit… because man, it’s so tough to walk in about 30cm of snow… after the last snow storm, my legs were really hurting (mainly my thighs) and only went to school that day. I’m so happy to be living in apartment right now… don’t have to go out and shovel all that snow. But can’t wait to go home to shovel one of the roofs of the house, but not the deck that’s simply painful…

Catching up

2007-12-15T23:45:00.000-05:00

At noon on Thursday, the Fall semester was officially over for me after the Environmental Economics exam, couldn’t be happier! I read the exam when the invigilators handed it, knowing that the teacher might not be there for the whole exam, and I was seriously bored, it was like: “not that stuff again”. Not that I knew it perfectly well, far from that, but it’s all I did for 2 days before the exam…

After that, I tried to catch up on sleep. Right after the exam I went home, ate something, called home and at around 2:30 I collapsed in my bed... to be awoken by my roommate an hour later: “EVELYNE!!! (sorry Allison, caps, but she was almost screaming), your semester is over!!!”. I was definitely sleeping and all the lights were off and my door was close… I might have looked a bit pissed off when she saw me, but she kept talking for about an hour even if I tried to let her understand that I wanted to sleep and that I didn’t mind about the night, that I would still sleep no matter how long my afternoon nap is (can we still call it a nap when it’s very long?)… roommate left, I tried to sort of be productive and clean my room, but I collapsed on my bed once again… and so did I Friday afternoon after she left for the weekend… That’s pretty much my life after the finals…

Except for today, no nap. I went to see my little sister play basketball… they lost because they played a terrible first quarter… at one point the guys’ coach looked at me (I was sitting next to him) and said: “is your sister going home in one piece tonight? Actually the other team plays so physical and they are so damn aggressive”… little sister was in fact a bit hurt after the game (thanks to the girl who hit her jaw pretty hard) and really tired… but I was really happy with some of the pictures that I took… I love this gym with natural sunlight coming in, they were playing against a private school so they have the money… but I'm wondering why they are running so quickly now, when they started to play 5 years ago, it was a lot easier to take picture... out of 300 pictures, there are about 15 of them that are good...

And tonight I had dinner with my mom, sister and brother… it felt good to be in family tonight, mostly to be without the exchange student… we laughed a lot, telling jokes, you know those jokes that mostly family members can understand and that even if we all know the joke, we will tell it again and again when we’re together… but we still laugh a lot, and I mean a lot… and it’s simply 2 bad jokes about my older brother, of course, he never heard them and we’ll try our best to keep it that way.

More posts to come (and pictures of Montreal covered by snow) and I’ll catch up on your blogs also!

On hiatus

2007-12-07T22:57:00.000-05:00

Sorry guys for the lack of posts and comments: it's the final exams period, papers and assignments were due this week and an exam had to be written today... I only have one thing to say about it, the Arts building looks good, inside and outside... it's the first building of the campus, I don't think that they thought about changing the chairs... it was basically 2 pieces of wood, one that you had to bring down to sit on and they were at right angle and about 30 cm large... and of course, the tables and the chairs couldn't move... it was a long 3 hours sitting there... luckily all my other exams are in other buildings... on the 13th at noon it will be over and I'll write more here, I wanted to write about the huge snowstorm but haven't had time... about 30 cm of snow... the streets in my neighbourhood are still covered in white... seems like we'll have a white Christmas!

7 facts about me

2007-11-28T09:41:00.000-05:00

I've been tagged! 7 facts about myself…

I never went in a plane, I’ve actually never fly: It’s not that I’m scared, I haven’t had the opportunity yet
This weekend I bought a skirt, I might have been 9 or 10 the last time my Mom bought me one… I haven’t worn a skirt/dress in 10 years, except for my prom in high school and cégep.
I went twice to the Quebec Games, and a year, I was a quadruple silver medallist, among other things and a journalist wrote an article in one of Montreal’s most read French newspapers about me and my team as he was bored of writing about the kids from the host region.
I’ve never read a Harry Potter book, nor have I watched The Lord of the Rings movies… but I’ve read Bilbo the Hobbit (mandatory for my grade 9 French class).
I’m dead scared of needles… can’t get a vaccine if I’m not lying, don’t even talk about blood tests… it explains why I don’t want to have my wisdom teeth extracted and why it’s my aunt (who’s a nurse) who did the one and only blood test that I had to have and she applied cream on my arm so that I wouldn’t feel the needle too much.
When I take the subway and that I’m waiting on the platform, I’m scared that someone might jump in front of the coming train… I’ve stop counting how often I’ve thought about that when someone was a bit too close to the edge of the platform.
Twenty years ago today, November 28th, in 1987, at 1:45 am, weighting 7.2 pounds and 50 cm tall (about 20 inches) my parents welcomed me to this world. (I simply didn’t know what to write as a 7th fact).

okay so here are the rules:

link to your tagger and post the rules.
share 7 facts about yourself, some random and some weird.
tag 7 people at the end of the post and list their names.
let them know they were tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs.

Play if you want to!

Team work

2007-11-27T12:13:00.001-05:00

Should have been posted on Friday, but too many things to do…and I was sick yesterday but after 12 hours of sleep, I'm doing much better... it's those days that I realize how nice it was to be living at home

This insane week is finally over, after few sleepless nights. But even if it was a very busy week, it was a great one I’d say.

I had this group project to do for a class dealing with management in environment, and we all know that sometimes, group project can become a nightmare. Mostly that it’s not a group of 2, it’s a group of 7… Weirdly enough, we managed to effectively write the 2 papers, thanks to e-mails, a Facebook group and Google document and we all seemed to be happy with the end result (and definitely happy with the grades we got). And when there are English speaking people in your group, you might find sentences like this one in an assignment: “…. are of paramount concern. To reiterate, reinforce the scope of coal power…” But then, we had to prepare a debate: we had to argue that coal fired power plants are a good thing for Canada, we basically sold our soul to the coal industry for a week. I’m saying that because my team mate decided that we were going to be proponents, we totally decided our position.

This debate could have been hard to prepare but it really wasn’t… a meeting on Thursday to know who does what, Sunday night at a pub to see each other’s part and then again at this students run café on campus the morning before the debate… and we didn’t really know what exactly was expected, as we were the first groups debating and as proponents, we were the first ones presenting their arguments… and in front of a hundred students. I’m not a fan of oral presentations, but they don’t scare me anymore.

And you know how often you don’t end up being friend with your team mates, we are not best buddies, but when we see each other on campus, we end up talking… I guess that the 7$ pitchers and dollar tacos helped for that and that on Sunday we ended up talking about where we are from, what we like... you know, to get to know each other.

I know that it’s not all team works that end up like this (and I skipped the fact that one of the girls of the team didn’t really participate) but sometimes it’s great to work in team… the teacher said that we might have learned life lessons doing this assignment, working in a multi-disciplinary team with people with very different backgrounds… we sure did learn a lot, to trust each other, that humility is important but also to admit our weaknesses and other’s strengths… and also to tell someone when this person did a good job…

With someone is better than alone

2007-11-17T23:53:00.000-05:00

To take the subway, with a friend, it’s better than alone, trust me on this one (here are some proofs...), I’m the unlucky commuter I guess. But living within walking distance from campus is great, except that there’s nothing to brighten my day, you know, those things people do and that make you smile, people being kind, or whatever that can happen in the subway and make you a bit happier. It will start again with the Winter semester, 3 days a week I’ll have to take the shuttle to the other campus but not public transit.

I went to the dentist Wednesday and had to take the subway, I could walk to get there, but it would be way too long and I couldn’t feel a good part of the right side of my face. Of course, I wasn’t with my summer subway buddy and it felt a bit weird after getting use to be with someone in the subway all summer long.

And sometimes i was happy to be with a friend: when this old guy was trying to squeeze me between him and the door, being a bit too close and the subway wasn’t really crowded and you know the look, I was so glad that S came close to me, between me and the guy, and then put his arm around me, as just getting close to me wasn’t enough for the man to understand that I wasn’t interested at all: the guy backed off and then S only had to stay close to me, I’d rather have a friend invading my vital space than this pervert old man (I kept my eyes on his hands). Or the time that the subway suddenly stopped between two stations and that I wasn’t holding a pole or something, just leaning against the doors, S only had time to grab my arm so that I wouldn’t fall. Or when, I don’t know what I was thinking, but I almost took the mechanical stairs going down when I was going up… could have been funny, but S stopped (obviously!) and looked at me and said, when I was about to go in the stairs, “where are you going like this? Are you sure you want to go there? It will hurt”. Or when after a long day at work, the subway had important delays and that I talked with L, the sweet lady, the wait didn’t feel bad at all. Or when I would walk between the station and the office with other inspectors, we would be kidding so much, it was a great way to start/end the day. But, I didn’t really enjoy it when I left the office at the same time as D, my “super” partner, after 8 hours with him I had enough.

But on Wednesday, I was by myself, I’ll have to get use to that again, it was nice to have someone to talk to on my way home, most of the time, if S stayed longer at the office, I would end up leaving the office at the same time as someone else. But it's also very nice that I can sleep a lot more in the morning, subway is great but sleep is even better!

It was a good thing to do!

2007-11-15T23:51:00.001-05:00

Until Tuesday, I’m a coal proponent and I’ll argue as much as you want, but I’ll say that coal is good, economically, socially and it’s not that bad for the environment. Damn coal debate and damn class of more than a hundred students; but, there’s one good thing about it, it’s a team assignment, and because we have so little time to get ready for the debate (a week) we have to meet on Sunday, is there a better place than a pub with dollar beer and taco? I don’t think so, should be fun, good and cheap food, and I have nice/friendly teammates, so it’s all good. Except that next week will be hectic: debate, assignment due and a quiz (involving reading a bunch of boring chapters) and have to start this soil term paper… why is there so much chemistry involved when we talk about soil? C’mon, pH is useless (not so sure, but I’d love it). I’m now wondering if I’ll still have time to go for a coffee or a beer with Mo, my ex-coworker, but I guess that having a break from all that school stuff can be great (even if I don’t expect Sunday’s meeting to be only about coal).

But even if school is keeping me busy right now, I sort of enjoy it, having better grades that last semester certainly helps (it does, it makes it so easier), but I like what I’m learning. Microbio is so different than that, I wouldn’t say that it is harder (maybe that micro is a wee bit harder, you know, biochem, genetics and cell bio) but the classes that I’m taking still challenge me, but on a different level, I have to think more about things and it feels that it’s less about only learning things by heart, it’s more related to reality and I love it! It wasn’t a mistake to switch program, it’s the best thing that I could do, this is more who I am. And I realize that I’m happier than last year at this time of the year, school might not be the one and only factor, but it certainly helps.

Have you ever make a big decision, that scared you, but in the end, it was the best thing you could do?

Which door do you use?

2007-11-11T23:54:00.000-05:00

It’s the question that my Economics teacher asked during a class: “After class, how many of you go to the Adams Building?” Quite a lot of us go there after class, one of the biggest auditorium of the campus is in this building and to go to the Schulich Library, you have to pass through this building.

When you are in front of the FDA building, there are three doors, the one to the right has the little thingy you can push when you are in a wheelchair or can’t easily open the door and it has mechanical assistance, but for this post, we’ll forget about the mechanical assistance part.

Most students, being lazy, will push the little thingy to automatically open the door, avoiding any kind of “physical effort” (I have to admit that one of the 2 doors is a bit heavy, but nothing that someone older than 10 years old cannot deal with). The teacher asked us what is the price of using that rather than opening the door like we would do with any other normal door without any kind of mechanical assistance. Very few students will use the door in the middle or the one on the left, both having no kind of assistance at all, sometimes students will even line up to “wait” for this door. “guys, do you think about it when using the door? No, but there are costs: such as electricity required to open the door, it has to be fixed once in a while and this costs money, it had to be installed, there are maintenance costs, but here’s the thing tough, who is paying those costs? You? Sort of with tuition fees, but you’re not directly paying those costs, therefore might not change your behaviour that easily”.

The door example might not be that relevant, I mean, it is just a door (one of many doors on the campus) but think about it, it is not only a door it can be applied to so many other things affecting the environment: letting your can run when you’re in a parking lot, leaving the lights on when you’re not in the room, to let the tv on when you’re not watching nor listening, leaving your computer on when you’re not using it, letting the water run when brushing your teeth, printing on only one side of the sheet, to leave your cell phone charger when your cell phone is not plugged in (same applied for laptop or any other device of the kind)… there are so many things that you could think about.

I went to the Browns building recently, there was a sign next to the button you can press : “Don’t use it if you don’t have to” (or something like that, can’t remember the exact wording)

Random stuff

2007-11-10T22:57:00.000-05:00

I’ve been a pretty bad blogger recently, I know it and want to apologize for it… I’ve been sort of busy recently, last week was all about the second coal assignment and the environment mid-term… by the way, 2 big assignments on coal is enough for me to start hating it, hold on, until the debates are over am supposed to love it and find as many arguments as I can for it, but it might be easier than you think to be a proponent of coal; right, debates on energy… sounds like a lot of fun, how can you be against conserving energy? A team will have to be against the notion of conserving energy… sounds like a lot of fun. As was waking up at 5:45AM to pick the date of the debate. “If you guys care about the date of your debate, you’ll wake up tomorrow end send me an e-mail at 6:00, not before, but as close as you can get after 6:00, first e-mail received, the team will have the requested date”… and I’m the one who wake up for my team, after going to bed at 1:00am… Now, I think that naps are great, mostly in the afternoon after an exam, I’ll never ever laugh at someone who is napping again…

In the week to come, I have to go to the dentist, again but I have no mid-terms/things due… it is quite a change and I’m so happy, except for the dentist… my roommate made fun of me when I told her that I had not one but 3 cavities… my first ones. She went to the dentist recently, and bad news: 4 cavities and one of her fillings has to be redone… she made so much fun of me, but when she came back with those news, she wasn’t laughing and felt really bad for being a bit mean with me (sometimes, she’s a bit too honest).

More posts to come soon. But I realized that taking the public transit everyday during the summer and last year to go to school gave me something to write about… walking to school is a bit more boring, I don’t encounter weird people nor do I talk with my subway buddy about almost everything (by the way he is the father of the little Noah, born at the end of October)… but there are still things happening, and I should write them down the way I used to do

Those mid-terms

2007-10-30T20:55:00.000-04:00

Last week was mid-term madness, this week we get them back. Actually, I did an exam last Tuesday and got my grade on Thursday... I wasn't mentally prepared to get this exam back.

But today I received my environmental management exam, was hard, even the TA's had to look at the answers during the exam to help us to understand the questions, and they had to get a dictionary to understand a word... The TA was generous while grading : she gave me 1.5 out of 2 and commented my answer : part of your answer should be the opposite... or 0.5/2 ans said not really... But I freaked out a little bit when I received my exam, I didn't know on how much it was graded : 100, 20...? I saw a big 25 circled on the top of my sheet and one of my friends had a 95, about the same size... "WHAT? Alex did you get 95, cuz I have 25?"... "No, 9.5 out of 10 for the first section, total of 27 out of 30"... It really scared me

After class, I headed straight to bed, damn cold, I'm drinking tea, hot water and honey, echinacea and also Tylenol cold, making sure to take the nighttime ones before going to bed and not before going to class... any other tips? the 45 minutes nap was awesome, and I'm going to bed in few minutes to get a good 9 hours of sleep...

Teachers

2007-10-30T19:18:00.000-04:00

Few weekends ago, I spent a good amount of time talking with my grade 7 French teacher, 8 years ago, high school started for me. I remember him very well, having French classes 8 times during the 9 days schedule. Basically going to his class everyday for 75 minutes. And since he’s a basketball coach and that my little sister plays for one the high school’s team she talked about him a couple of times at home, knowing that I know who he is.

But talking with someone like him, someone that I haven’t talked to for many years could have been awkward, but it wasn’t. He remembered me, after talking a bit about my group and special things that happened in his class : “don’t you remember the day that Mathieu and Emmanuel had to do push-ups because they kept talking and were not working?” Little specification, he’s the kind of teacher that will make you do push-ups if you’re not doing what he wants, it was always asked with tremendous respect for the student but push-ups had to be made either in the gym or during class. He’s the kind of teacher that respects students and students respect them, and he believes that each and all of us have some potential and that we have to exploit it as much as we can. His classes were not only about French, it was lessons of life, humility, respect, learning to push back your limits and to learn to work hard (I hated him some days). And he also understands that things affecting us outside of the classroom will affect us in the classroom, and that sometimes, those problems are more important than having problems writing an essay or understanding a short-story, no wonder why he’s teaching a class with students with problems, students taking a last chance to get their diploma.

At one point, he said that I have changed a lot in about 8 years, and it is true. “I remember this little blond girl, wearing glasses, quiet in class and who worked well”. Then he said that going to university is quite a big change in your life (I went to cégep/college in the same town as where I went to high school, it meant almost no new students, and you stay with most of your friends). “What I found was the most challenging was to decide how I wanted people to know me, it is time to change how people see me, nobody knows you once you’re there, old stories are not really following you” To which I answered that it was like getting a second chance. But I think he’s right, at the end of high school I wasn’t as shy as I was when I started high school, 5 years make a big difference. And here, sure I’m not the most out going person on earth, but I changed a lot since I’ve met this teacher. But it is about more than only shyness, some of the old stories are not following you… and I grew up. It’s like moving to a new town or getting a new job, right someone might know someone who knew you, but still… I know that we cannot change who we are deep inside, that no matter what we’ll do, we’ll stay the same for few things, but perception might change. We talked a lot about how people change during their teenage years and even after… “And you changed a lot young lady”

We talked quite a lot and about so many different things, how is school doing right now, teachers, school in general, students finding school too easy and the one having a hard time, different things that happened to him during teaching… it was a fun conversation, I was a bit scared when my mom asked me to drive him to the ceremony, but it was nice. The next morning, I went to see one of my sister’s basketball game and his team was there and he told my mom that he was a bit amazed to see how well I remembered him “You know, some teachers make a huge difference in the life of a kid, and I think that you were one of them for my daughter”. Any teachers really influenced you when you were in school?

I'm still alive!

2007-10-25T22:55:00.000-04:00

No guys, I’m not dead, I’ve just been extremely busy lately: 3 mid-terms in 2 days this week (Worthing 30%, 20% and 35% of the final grade), assignment were also due, labs to go, conferences, the dentist again… hectic schedule, after few sleepless nights, I’ve made it and it should calm down until mid-November (mid-term again, assignment and paper to hand in). But I’m behind in my readings, will try to catch up on that as fast as I can. And family is coming to Montreal for the weekend…

And I don’t get it, I just got back the grade of the first exam that I did on Tuesday, this teacher is such a fast grader… not 100% happy with my grade but after class I stayed at school and one of my classmates came to see me to talk about the exam, and we realized that most of the class had between the high 30s and mid-40s (out of 60), with few exceptions. It was another of this conversations that starts in English and then, out of nowhere, he switched to French, I knew that the guy speaks French perfectly (but isn’t his first language). My laptop was open in front of me and I have a French accent when I’m talking; making it so easy for him to figure that out.

Living close to university, sometimes, I would tend to spend more time in my apartment rather than in a library or in different buildings to study or work on assignments… lately I spent more time at school, cutting on the walking time but giving me more time to work… and also meeting more people… I’m new to this campus and even if I know someone in all of my classes, it is still nice to meet new people and to make new friends… or to talk for a bit longer with other friends and I’m a work a bit more efficiently at school…

Next post will be about a conversation that I had with my grade 7 French teacher recently (we talked for quite a long time actually), he won a prize awarded by the school board where my mom is highly involved, he’s the basketball team coach (for the guys) and they had a tournament the night they gave him the award… and to make a long story short, I had to drive him to the ceremony (that was held in an hotel sort of close to Montreal) and we talked a lot while driving and waiting for the ceremony to start (and being stuck in traffic)

How was your day?

2007-10-11T00:05:00.000-04:00

If someone asked me how was my Wednesday, my answer would look like this : “The Econ class in the morning went okay, then the environment exam was a bit tricky but seemed to be fair and then I played in the dirt in the afternoon and a bit more after 10 o’clock”. Then this person would look at me and be like : “What? You’re almost 20 (scary thought, but it’s for another day) and you’re playing with sand?”.

Not exactly, it’s basic soil sample analysis, but I would refer to it as making mud in a lab (it’s what we did today). We mixed water, a part of our sample and a solution with a weird name, like most solution in a lab and had to wait for 8 hours for it to settle. It’s not a typo, 8 hours and the lab is at 1 o’clock, but by the time you’re done with all the first steps (including shaking for an hour) you can start the 8 hours countdown… people will go to the lab passed midnight. Poor TA, and he’s so nice with us, and when we went to the lab at around 10 he was making coffee in his office. But because I was the last one of our little group (and the slowest to remove the soil particles) he did all the cleaning for me and helped me as much as he could so it would take less time. I was feeling like a little kid in the lab tonight, mixing distilled water and sand and removing it from the mesh sieve. I never thought that I would be doing something like that in a lab one day. And it’s a big change from the kind of labs that I had last year; we had to wear a lab coat, gloves… everything that a level 2 containment lab requires, but now when someone asked the teacher if we needed a lab coat his answer was : “well, only if you’re either really bad or really scared to get dirty”. Then he laughed a little bit…

I talked with one of my classmates during the lab and we came to the conclusion that our TA is a good one, did you have any goof TA that made a class so much better? Or any bad experiences with them? Or good ones.

Is it me?

2007-10-01T21:43:00.000-04:00

My roommate thinks that I'm exactly like this cat... ok right, my alarm was set at 6:45am and I only woke up at 7:40 this morning for my 8:35 class (and it's a 10 minutes walk)... yes I had enough time to shower, print the slides for the class, eat breakfast, brush my teeth, put a little bit of make-up and to put some clothes on... have to be efficient on those mornings... but I'll admit that I didn't make my bed

Question of scale

2007-09-29T00:38:00.001-04:00

How big is a billion? Can you count a billion? If you take one thousand dollar bills, what would be the height of a billion dollars? What’s the current world population? About 6.6 billion… a lot of people right? Is the population still increasing, is it going to plateau? What are the previous trends? Here’s a short answer…

Billion	Year	Years it takes to add one	Doubling time
0.5	1650
1	1800		1650 years
2	1930	130 years	300 years
3	1960	30 years
4	1975	15 years	45 years
5	1987	12 years
6	2000	13 years	40 years

How long would it take you to count to a billion (add one every second)? It would take you 31.6 years non-stop. Let’s say it’s your job, you work 35 hours a weeks, 40 weeks a year, and you work for 40 years (I made up the career, the teacher ended up with different numbers than mine, but was working less hours and less weeks and he added benefits as a joke)… it takes 277,777.7 hours to count to a billion, if it was your job it would take you 7936 weeks, or 198.4 years, or about 5 careers… more than 30 if you were to count the world’s population. A bit more than a billion minutes ago, the Christ was alive…

Now can you imagine 6.6 billion people? Demographers predict that it should plateau at around 10 or 11 billion people, than the world population should stay stable (at around 2100)… can you imagine the Earth being so crowded? What does it mean for the environment? More pressure on natural systems… Some of you were around in the 1960’s… you’ve seen the world population double… can you believe it? It’s pretty astonishing to think that since my Mom’s birth, the world population doubled… A billion people have been added to the earth’s population since my birth.

I guess that I have to explain why I’m throwing these numbers here; I’m taking a class about the Society and how is it related to the environment… people matter when it’s time to make environmental decisions, and population is an issue.

And often we hear about millions, billions, thousands, hundreds… but what does it mean? When someone says that there are 6.6 billion people on earth, what does it mean? This number is so big that it’s hard to get a sense of it.

A billion… (ten to the nine…) Food for thought, how big is a billion?

Going there might not have been such a good idea

2007-09-17T22:52:00.000-04:00

I went to the dentist today… bad idea; well good idea but I don’t really like it and what they told me; you have cavities (I know, it’s why I’m here, I’m expecting you to tell me that), and also wisdom teeth : 4 and they have to be removed and she said more things but it’s kinda hard to translate it, mostly because I understood but she said so many things… anyways, when I left the clinic I wasn’t really happy, I don’t really enjoy needles and such and I don’t like the idea that she’ll remove those teeth… The clinic where I went is on Saint-Denis (for Toccata, towards the Old Port), to get there I have to walk in front of the Hopital Saint-Luc (really big hospital).

I remember that this summer, one day, S and I left the office a bit later than we usually did, both being sort of busy that day, so when we arrived at the Berri station (where we had to switch to the orange line) he looked at his watch and said “No matter how hard we, no I, run, I’ll miss my train, at the 3 stations where I can take it, I’ll take the next one in more than an hour. If you want and haven't planned something for the evening, and you can say no and it’s all right, we could walk to the old port, have you been there?”
- Not really, just when I was a kid, and I don’t know the old Port and Old Montreal that well, so it could be nice. Plus I have nothing to do tonight.

So we walked on St-Denis, and when we walked by the hospital, S asked me f I wanted to go in.

- “No, I’m not sick, you’re not sick, well you are but they can’t treat you; you have sort of a mental disorder, but I don’t think that someone will ever find a cure for that, see you want us to go there”
- “No, kiddo, you don’t understand. We have to explain everything to those kids nowadays, see those people, they are sick… look at you; healthy and happy, doesn’t it make you happier? I mean if you compare…”

He was sort of right, sometimes we tend to see the world as being a nasty place to be, or we are unhappy; but if we look at someone else’s life, we might realize that our life isn’t that bad after all.
“You know, well of course you don’t but now you do, when I was in university, when I had big big problems, or didn’t feel that well, I used to come here, not very often, less than once a year, and after not even 5 minutes, you feel much better. Try it one day and you might end up saying Thanks Steph, you had a great idea”

Today, I didn’t even had to go in the hospital the way S had to, just by walking in front of it, remembering this conversation, I realized that right, I’m unhappy about the wisdom teeth, yes my teeth are hurting (and still are) because I kept my mouth open for a long period of time and don’t know what she did, but it hurts; but it is not that bad… it could be a lot worst.

And when I came back to my apartment, checked my e-mails, he sent me one, well simply pictures with something that could be translated as "For badly behaved children" (but in French it's better Pour les enfants pas sages and wisdom teeth is dents de sagesse in French, so it's totally related) I remember giving him my e-mail during the summer, so that he could send me funny things and we could stay in touch (as other colleagues also did).

Tagged

2007-09-11T16:20:00.000-04:00

I think that a million years ago, Barbara tagged me with 5 questions... here are the answers.

1. You are on death row and about to order your final meal. What will it be?
Something with chocolate in it, if dessert can be considered as a meal; chocolate cheese cake would be a good choice or whateveryou want from Juliette et Chocolat. But I think that cheese lasagna could be really great as a final meal, or the Red Peppers and Pesto Grilled Salmon Pavé that last summer’s chef at the resto cooked; it was perfect.

2. Have you ever named your car? What kind of car and what did you name it?
Never named a car, but my road bike yes. Few years ago I spent a lot of time on that bike and during a training camp I was cleaning my bike with some friends (snow + rain + mud = a bad mix on a road bike) and the girls started to talk about their bike’s name. I came up with a name but can’t remember it, but I remember that it was a funny guy name.

3. What are your top five desert island movies?
You have to have different kind of movies I guess. I’d say The Simpsons, Finding Neverland, The Constant Gardener, Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulin (Amélie I think is the name of the English version)... and I don't know what, this is the problematic question, I don't know what would be the fifth movie.

4. Who would win in a fight to the death, Harry Potter or Frodo Baggins?
Frodo Baggins I guess. But it might only be because I don’t know Harry Potter that well and only red one book written by Tolkien.

5. What is your stripper name? (The name of your first pet as your first name [plus the name of the first street you ever lived on as your last name)
Calie Gravel or something like that, Calie is the name of our first dog (I was around 5) that we got after my birth. And my parents have always stayed in the same house since my second brother’s birth but the name of the street keeps changing, now it would be road xyz North.

Way better than last year!

2007-09-06T22:02:00.000-04:00

School started on the 4th and even if I couldn’t get in the faculty that I wanted I managed to take all my classes downtown this semester; which means that I don’t have to take the bus/metro everyday! And I decided to take only 4 classes rather than 5. And this year seems to be sort of easier than last year; my roommate is a new student and is struggling with classes in English and the adaptation of living in an apartment and going to university. (It involves a lot of reading) But this year I find it easier than last year, it’s a lot easier to sit in a classroom and listen to someone speaking in English. And most of the time, I walk in a class and find someone I know; or meet friend on the campus between classes. It makes a huge difference. This semester should be a fun one, my classes seem to be pretty interesting and we’ll have well known guest lecturers in an Environmental Management class. There’s just the class that I’m taking in the Economics Department that I don’t love so much but we need less interesting classes to be able to fully appreciate good classes.

And the move went pretty well; thanks to all my family (which includes my “German brother”). And my brother helped me to set up a wired network to share the internet connection; almost everything is ok! I like my neighborhood (I can never spell this word) and by the time of the year I should be in shape; I have to climb a pretty steep hill to go home when I take University street.

So it is mostly good news, I’m way less stressed than a year ago when everything was mostly new. I’m actually able to enjoy those first days of school, during which the campus is so lively and that there’s so much going on. It feels so good to be a U2 student.

With classes starting again, I should write more posts about the Environment or related things that might interest you guys.

2007-08-27T10:47:00.000-04:00

I just wanted to let you know guys that I won’t be blogging much for the next little while; my laptop is once again at FutureShop (it shuts down by itself whenever it wants!) and I’m at home until Friday, then I’ll move downtown and should get an internet connexion by Sept. 1st. Then on Sep. 4th, school starts.

Oh and my new German “brother” is here; he is a very nice and amazingly polite young man and he is extremely tall (2m, I’m 1.58m). It only means that we have to speak very slowly in French, avoid contractions such as j’suis rather than je suis (while talking) and repeating a lot; but it’s all right! And having him at home makes me realize how different we are and at the same time how we aren’t that different. My parents have to find something that he will do to help them it could be laundry, to cook a meal, feed the cats and the dog but they don’t really know what he should be doing; he’s already helping us a lot but my brother figured out that he could change the light bulbs in the house he is tall enough that he won’t have to climb on something!

Enjoy those sunny days before school starts and autumn arrives!

I’m not working there anymore

2007-08-21T10:22:00.000-04:00

Thursday was my last day at the office, and I sort of miss being there. I know that it’s mostly due to the fact that school isn’t started yet, that I’m packing (I don’t enjoy it, why do I have to pack again?) and that I sort of miss my coworkers.

We had a lot of fun together all summer long, even if it took me a while to know all of them (some of them are working in 2 offices in different cities). On Thursday, it took me more than an hour to talk with everybody (well, with the Analysts and the Control Centre people). They all wanted to know when school is going to start, what are the classes that I’ll take, if I’ll come back next summer, did I enjoy my summer with them and if I’ll miss them.

On Wednesday the adjunct director of the office invited the students and a part of the staff at the restaurant, he brought us wine (which tasted amazingly good) and he paid for the students, no I should write his valorous students as he called us. He asked each of us if we enjoyed our summer, and if we are planning to work for them in few years; I told them that I wasn’t sure, but I think that it could be a lot of fun to work there, I’ll see in 3 years!

But I was also really busy during the last few days, writing the summer report (alone, because my partner’s French is really bad, he wrote a part and I didn’t totally understand what he wrote, I e-mailed it to my subway buddy and I wasn’t the only having a problem with his paragraph!)… But I was really happy when M and my subway buddy helped me with a section that I was struggling with.

People were a bit sad to see the students leaving the office (the pesticides students left the same day as me, the beach guy left on Wednesday and my partner on Friday); they told me that they like the summer because the office comes alive. I talked with some friends working on offices and they told me that they are seen as students, just students, people don’t talk a lot with them because they know that they won’t spend a lot of time with them. My experience was totally different; people were really nice, always willing to help, gave me a lot of advices, and I’d say that they even cared about us. They told me that they like working with us that we are full of energy and we really want to try to make a small difference out there. My bosses were nice; they were good bosses once you knew them; they told us when something had to be improved but also when we did a good job.

I’ll miss S the inspector who loved to make jokes : I walked in the office a Monday morning, still sleeping and he just pointed his finger at me and said “YOU!”, I freaked out a little bit, What have I done? but kept walking towards him and he simply said “Have a nice day”. I’ll miss M, we talked a lot together during our breaks; I’ll miss Mo the super inspector (he scares people during inspections!), the quiet French guy (by opposition to my subway buddy who is the loud one), the beach guy who loved to throw his sandals at you while walking, J and Mi my lunch friends, MM my amazing interim supervisor, L the nice lady… (there a lot of people working there, so the list could go on and on) and of course my subway buddy, with whom I had a lot of fun this summer (I have to write you some of the stupid things he did at the office during breaks! i should say we).

But I think that even if the salary was crappy I might go back there next summer, they told me that if I want and if the project still exists I’ll have the job; I’d like to; I realized how important this job was and that even if some days I thought that it was boring; it never really was; there were never 2 inspections that were the same…

Who said that we were serious?

2007-08-14T23:02:00.000-04:00

Right now at the office, we can really feel that we're leaving soon, ~~we have a report to write~~, I'll write it, "super" D (as I call my partner) isn't very good with the French grammar and he's working a lot slower than me, so most of my files are closed, not his. However, my immediate supervisor isn't working : vacation. The girl replacing him is really nice and this afternoon she sent an e-mail with an attachment to all the inspectors : here it is. Who said that my supervisor is really serious? Make sure that your speakers are on, it's way better with sound (because most computers don't have speakers, we ended up in the Geomatic Computer Room to watch it, where we can also hear something!)

Pandas

2007-08-13T19:01:00.000-04:00

It was a busy weekend (once again), I went at my grandparents' place with my Mom and sister and watched the Rogers Cup (the kiddo is a huge tennis fan right now). And went to Ikea to get new furniture for my smaller new room when I'll move, luckily my parents "needed" a desk for the German student who's coming to Quebec to study for one year in high school. Right, I'll have a third "brother" for a year.

Books

2007-08-09T22:10:00.000-04:00

My subway buddy gave me a hard task last week : To find interesting books, written in English and they have to be not too hard to understand (ie, not Shakespeare). We were talking about books and the different languages that we understand, he told me that he reads book in Russian and that he'd like to read in English... and he thought that I could help him to find great books. But the thing is that I haven't read that many English books that aren't related to my field of studies.

So guys, do you have any books to suggest? Can be any kind, he gave me carte blanche and he likes a lot of things (he told me that)... My brother suggested Brave New World, but one book isn't enough... And I'll also use some of your suggestions, next Thursday (the 16th) is my last day at the office, then I'll have a lot of time to read until university starts...

And I'm almost done with Barb's questions, those were a bit harder than I first thought

Some days are harder than others.

2007-08-08T22:46:00.000-04:00

"It's not a red light, see that sign? You're only being put on hold, the light will turn green soon and you'll go where you want ." This sentence could describe me right now.

Yes, today was one of those days you wished you slept the entire day; alas you can’t do that. The day started later than usual, half an hour, so I ran a little bit to be at the office on time (well, technically I wasn’t late because of the flexible schedule but still). The morning went okay, we did some inspections, as usual I met some old perverts but I’m getting sort of used to it even if I hate it.

Then in the afternoon we stayed at the office, doing some data capture and sending letters (not infraction letters but reminders, there’s a huge difference between the 2). Then around 2 o’clock I thought that I should check my university account to check my e-mails and to see how much I have to pay for next semester (I’ll just say ouch!). I saw something quite unusual when I logged in: 3 unread e-mails. It’s summertime, shouldn’t have that many e-mails. I received a letter from the faculty, they refused the faculty transfer for Science, I’ll stay at the other one (don’t worry guys, I’ve already changed the program for Environment and they said yes). I was really unhappy about that at first. I just wanted to leave the office right away and find a way to take classes downtown (at this time of the year, a lot of classes are already full).

I was going to leave when S saw me ; “What’s wrong with you kiddo? You seem unusually unhappy and there’s something bothering you. Wanna talk about it in the metro?”. So I told him and he simply said “Merde!” (translated as shit). But then, he was way more rational than me and figured out that I should only take 4 classes per semester so it would be easier to get grades that would be a lot better, try to take classes outside my faculty (I’m allowed to and there are a bunch of classes in my program that are offered outside my faculty). He explained to me that when he did his Masters (with an s) he got that problem once, his average was too low and the faculty told him that he had to keep an average of 3 if he wanted to stay, he ended up with 3.3 : “They’re putting pressure on you right now, just show them what you are able to do, show them what you can do, because if you don’t get what they’re asking you, you won’t get in the Faculty you want, it’s harsh to talk to you like that right now, but it’s the truth and I know that you know it”.

With classes being full right now, I had a hard time changing my classes for next semester (it took about 3 hours), I’ll take 4 classes instead of 5 (I think it will work), taking them downtown (to reduce the travelling time) and the 4 classes that I picked are in my program, seem interesting and it works with all the faculty regulations… Now, I still have to talk to my academic adviser about my choices but I think it will be okay…

Hoping that tomorrow will be a lot better, but it couldn’t be worst than today I think.

My own guide : how to survive to the last heat wave.

2007-08-05T00:14:00.000-04:00

I know that the heat didn’t last long, but it was hot and muggy, and I didn’t enjoy it all the time.

Eat frozen grapes, it tastes so good and it’s cold (thank Allison)
Open the windows at night, close early in the morning.
Try to stay at the office as long as possible, it’s cold over there.
Go grocery shopping at night, it’s open 24/7, the 15 minutes walk will feel shorter.
Avoid the metro at rush hour.
Go see the Simpsons’ Movie, there’s AC in the theater.
Put Orange and Grapefruit juice in the blender with ice and frozen strawberries, it tastes good and it’s cold.
Take cold baths/showers, it’s a good way to sort of lower your body temperature.
Take a walk at the Oratoire St-Joseph, it’s a bit windy on the top.
Avoid cooking, the oven will rise the temperature of the kitchen (ie the whole apartment).
Try to sleep and drink a lot of water.

Seriously, today (Saturday) was a lot colder and in the evening I went at LaRonde with a friend, we did most of the rolllercoasters, we did the biggest ones, it was great and it wasn’t really got outside (even a little bit cold wearing t-shirt and shorts). Will go back tomorrow with my brother and his girlfriend, and I don’t think that we’ll do all the rollercoasters, they don’t love them the way I do.

Hope you are enjoying the weekend.

Those are some of the pictures that I took during my walk at the Oratoire, have to bring my brother's tripod next time.

Busy, busy, busy

2007-07-30T22:31:00.000-04:00

I’ve been a bad blogger for the last few weeks, I’ve been a bit too busy, with work and everything it involves (ie laundry and ironing my clothes) but also, enjoying Montreal in July. The Just For Laugh Festival, the International des Feux Loto-Québec (an international fireworks competition), and the last one isn’t related but the Tour de France. But also reading, I finished 1984, I wish that my brother didn’t say one sentence when I told him that I was reading this book. Few words, and I sort of knew how it would end.

And I think that I slept a lot during the weekends, maybe a bit too much actually.
And there’s one thing that I realized, there are so many cops around on the fireworks night at the Parc Jean Drapeau and in the LaRonde area. They look at your bags when you get off the metro and I saw about 15 of them around and in the station after the fireworks. When I went with some friends we went at the beach before, so our bags were a bit heavy due to wet towels. The cop took my friend’s bag and looked at her : “Alcohol, any glass bottles? Huh, sorry, but it’s really heavy, what are you carrying?” “Sir, I spent the day at the beach, there are wet clothes in my bag” (and the look on both her face and his face were priceless).

I’ll post more pictures of the comedy festival and the ones that I took tonight walking in Côte-des-Neiges.

Have a nice week folks, let’s enjoy the heat as much as we possibly can (it should be really warm this week in Montreal) and it’s already August! Can you believe it?

And I'll answer Barb's questions this week! ;-)

I swear, next time it will be a real post! and less photos!

2007-07-23T23:12:00.000-04:00

It was a busy weekend, but it was so great. Finally, we had 3 sunny days in a row (since Saturday). It meant, going to the beach on Saturday at the Parc Jean Drapeau, close to the F1 circuit. And I didn't get a sunburn :-) Then, we went to eat a pizza downtown on Saint-Denis, even if the was the Just For Laughs Festival we got a table. And then, we went back at the Parc Jean Drapeau and LaRonde to see the International des Feux Loto Québec, the fireworks competition, and we went at La Ronde because the 2 friends that I was with both have a season pass (And I have one too), so we bought tickets for the fireworks show and it was AMAZING! (yes, in caps, it was that good) France was really great. It was the story of Romeo and Juliet, I'll find videos if I can.

I tried to take a picture of the gargoyles at the comedy festival, it was hard, they were moving really fast and I wasn't ready, but still, it's what I got. Hope that Toccata will have better ones for Allison!

And on Sunday, I walked at the Old Port, I took this one close to the Terrasse Nelson, it's a great place to have a fancy dinner.
Lost? Here you go, a lot of signs!
The Hug Man! But he was eating when I walked on this street, maybe next time.
I guess that it's a church at the Old Port.

Le Pont Jacques Cartier, and LaRonde, I did the Rollercoster made out of wood (The Monster) on Saturday night while waiting for the show to start. I reminded the ride as being scary and not so cool, and I was so wrong, it's so cool, I'll have to do it again next time.

Old tracks
Le Marché Bonsecours
My shadow, should have put my back on the ground, it would have been better.
La Place de la Commune, a street at the Old Port.

And I took some pictures at the Carnival of the Comedy Fest, I'll post some later on.

After the Jazz Fest, the Comedy Fest, the Francopholies are starting un Thursday, shows by French speaking artists/musicians and a lot of them are free.... should be another interesting week and an half... It seems that Montreal never rests during the summer!

a weekend in the city

2007-07-17T21:39:00.000-04:00

I spent my last weekend in Montreal, not too busy, so I took pictures at the Just For Laughs Festival and on Sainte-Catherine. Tonight I'll watch the last episode of 24 of the season 6 (finally!).

Rue Saint-Denis - Just For Laughs Festival

And it's not a statue!

I thought about 668 when I saw this clown!

So many people on Saint-Denis

Okay, not from the weekend, but it has been taken close to the building where I work. Even if I see the Olympic Stadium every day when we take Sherbrooke East, I still like to stop and look at it

Somewhere walking on Sainte-Catherine (I think)

While walking on Sainte-Catherine, I started to look at the sky and the top of buildings, it more interesting than the street itself sometimes

On weekends, those 2 girls are always close to the Eaton Centre

The kiddo became a young man

2007-07-13T22:43:00.000-04:00

Last weekend I had to go to my Mom’s cousin’s funeral, we we’re not really close, but I had to go. I thought a lot about life in general while I was there, and I might share it with you later. However, I met the son of my mom’s cousin: Matt from the States (so he doesn’t speak French). Last time I met him, 5 years ago he just turned 10 years old and do I need to tell you that kids change a lot between 10 and 14 years old?

His parents we’re staying at my Grandparents’ house and so was I, so on Saturday night, we talked a lot. His Dad is a huge music fan, in his house he has one room where they mostly listen to music and watch movies (the acoustic is insane, it’s perfect) and even if he’s 64, he goes to concerts with his son. After I talked about college with him and his parents, we ended up talking about music. He had his iPod and the one of his dad (plus speakers) and I had my laptop. His Mom described our evening as a battle of the bands. He loves Gogol Bordello, We are scientists, The Good the Bad and The Queen, The Raconteurs, Dispatch, Brendan Benson, The Ramones, The Postal Service, The Arctic Monkeys, The Rapture, The Fratellis… And I tried to introduce him to some Canadian bands that he never heard of before (or just knew the name but never heard them). And at one point, he felt really bad that I knew so many bands from Montreal and that he could only talk about few bands from New Jersey (but he’s living very close to NYC).

My Grandma was impressed that we talked so much together and that we had common interests, but I think that because we both listen to the same kind of music, it was really easy to talk about music. It impressed me to see how much he changed but one thing stayed the same in 5 years : his love for music, when he was 10 he was playing classical songs on the piano (he still does) but now he added the guitar and drums. I have to find the link of the MySpace page of his band, I like the 3 songs that they posted there.

And I thought that it was funny, we were talking and he would stop and ask if I understood the expressions or words he used: "They are old school, huh, you understand?" Or when he described one band as being eccentric.

Usually when I talk with family members that I don't really know it's awkward and we don't know what to talk about, not this time!

Our "batmobile" and the rain, but not together

2007-07-11T21:10:00.000-04:00

Driving a white car with Quebec and the name of the ministry written on the doors can be quite funny. If someone is following us, they can see a little flag and Quebec written with the official font, usually, people slow down when they see us. Really, and I don’t understand why. And people are being nice (and we are too, we have to). And I don’t understand why people slow down, we’re not going to call the police to tell them that someone is speeding. The only different that you can find in our car are a first aid kit, 2 helmets, a shovel (no questions), and some kinds of cables... no special radio to call the cops! Today we were on Sherbrooke street, downtown, heading east, avoiding traffic on the 720 and the 40. A car stopped next to us at a light, we were driving with the windows down (the AC is broken, will be fixed on Friday) I think that the driver looked at us for one minute or so. Looked doors, me, D, the doors, me, D, the doors again, his wife, the car, us, the doors, the car’s number, the doors, me, D…. it was sort of annoying but so funny at the same time. I might not drive a batmobile as I’d like to, but this white Ford Focus can bring some sun in our day (after being shouted at by some English guys).

Also, walking while it’s raining isn’t that fun. They announced violent thunderstorms/rain showers for the end of the afternoon and I thought : “They told us that all week long last week and we got nothing, so it shouldn’t happen today” WRONG. And I forgot my raincoat at home. I looked outside before S and I left the office and it was raining a little bit, then just before we left it was pouring rain, the guy working for the beach project came back to get his raincoat (he’s lucky the office gave him one)… then S looked around the office to find 2 more raincoats that looked sort of clean, he found one and yellow pants matching the coat, I had an umbrella so he got the coat and left the pants at the office… we were waiting outside the building, hoping that the rain would stop… it didn’t so we started to walk… after 1 minute he looked at me : “hey, C has 2 raincoats, you could go back to the office to get one”… No way, my clothes are already soaked… 100 meter before we arrived to the subway station (which is a 7 minutes walk), the rain suddenly stopped, our clothes were soaked including my socks and my not waterproof bag. A guy in the subway asked us what happened : “hum, it was raining sir!”. Lesson of the day : try harder to find a raincoat at the office, bring one and let it there, and if you find rain pants, wear them and wait until the rain stops… but rain isn’t going to kill us! Any rain stories?

I’m feeling lazy

2007-07-06T22:30:00.000-04:00

Feeling lazy means posting pictures; I took those two shots on Canada day at the Old Port of Montreal. The sky was gorgeous on that night and the colours kept changing.

And I’m so glad that it’s finally the weekend; I like to drive, actually, I enjoy driving but this week has been a nightmare driving : traffic and construction. On Thursday at around 2:30 I told my partner that we were going back to the office : “no no, we have time for more inspections we’ll leave at 3:15”. Unfortunately, I didn’t argue, I should have.

All right, but I told him that he was going to drive back to Montreal (we were in Laval, it’s on the North Shore). I ended up driving, all the highways were jammed, and there were a lot of traffic on the major streets. We were on Jean-Talon street really stuck in traffic when I told him that we were going to take another street, I asked him to find one because I don’t know this part of Montreal very well yet: “no, we’re fine on this street”. After 5 minutes and moving at less than 5km/h I turned right, he wasn’t happy, I didn’t mind, I was the one driving. A 25 minutes drive took us more than an hour.

When I sat at my desk S came to see us: “So guys, what happened with your batmobile? Don’t you guys know that when you hit the red button you can fly with it? Guys, use your superpowers!”. When D, my “super” partner, left the office, S came to see me “I looked at the time and figured out you guys were really stuck somewhere in Montreal, look at this map, those are the streets to take to avoid the highways as you guys did, but those are streets with less traffic”. Do I need to tell you that next time, we’ll take those streets, no matter what D says?

Have a great weekend folks!

Squirrels

2007-07-04T21:55:00.000-04:00

I heard about this YouTube video on the radio this week, and I thought about Allison's posts about squirrels. I had to see it to believe it: Cat adopts squirrel?

July 1st, Canada Day, nope : National Moving Day!

2007-07-02T21:41:00.000-04:00

What did you do on July 1st? Enjoyed a good show somewhere in your city? Just enjoyed having a day off the following Monday (some of us)? Or if you live in Montreal (in Quebec) you might have moved, I haven’t and I’m happy about that! Most leases end/start on July 1st in Quebec, which means : Chaos in the city! Totally. Here’s a picture of my street yesterday. (whatever has wheels and can carry your belongings is okay to move, so the yellow truck might be a good idea)

Is it like this in other cities of the country? Or is it August 1st or September 1st? In 2 months it will be the same chaos in the city; a lot of people are moving on September 1st. But I was happy to see some people move: The Screaming lady living in the apartment next to mine : She’s gone! And the Elephants living upstairs, I think that they are gone too! Sadly, I’ll move in 2 months!

But, I wasn’t moving, so I went to the Old Port for Canada Day, and stopped at Les 3 Brasseurs before the show for some Nachos and a Monaco (blond beer, sprite and grenadine syrup). This might sound weird, but it’s actually quite tasty. The show itself was okay, not the greatest show of all time, but still. Jeremy Fisher was there, he was great, I like the songs that he played. I’ve never heard of him before this show, and I’m glad that I went.

I was sort of happy to see that the band André is now better on stage, I saw them (before they were popular in Quebec) and then they weren’t very good, they forgot that they were on stage, but yesterday they did not forget, but I’ll never love this band!

And the fireworks were great and it was nice to hear our national anthem at the end. But I have a question for you guys about our anthem. Do you know it? Every single words of it? Did you or do you have to sing it every morning at school? I sort of know the bilingual version, but I’ve learned in the past few years. I never sang it at school, what about you?

Slow walkers

2007-06-28T22:01:00.000-04:00

I think that I found a slow walkers hot spot in Montréal: The Berri-UQAM subway station and Sainte-Catherine Street. I remember Allison talking about slow walkers and some mornings when I’m walking in this subway station, it reminds me of different posts that I read on different blogs about those slow walkers. And there's also a group on Facebook of people hating slow walkers! But I think that I’ll have to learn to deal with them, because it seems that the metro is more crowded than usual. I’d like to understand why people are walking at such a slow pace? I don’t get it all the time.

But talking about those slow walkers and the metro bring me to write about another station, one where you can walk a lot if you don’t follow the signs carefully but one where there are cool musicians. When transferring to the blue line from the orange line, we have to walk down the stairs and at the bottom, there’s usually (week days until about 5pm) a band of Peruvian guys. And I found a youtube video, the quality isn’t perfect. And what I like is that on the platform on which I have to wait I can still her them; but I think that they are almost always playing the same 2 or 3 songs.

Have a nice long weekend folks, I’ll try to go to the Jazz Fest this weekend in Montreal and Canada Day at the Old Port; it’s my first summer in Montreal, so I’m still trying to figure out what to do and where are the cool places.

First one in Montreal, last one in this park?

2007-06-25T22:15:00.000-04:00

Yesterday’s “party” was okay I guess; it wasn’t the best show that I ever went to on a June 24^th, but still. The line up was great; but the way they put the show together kinda sucked. I mean, I don’t want to see the host during the whole show; I get it, he plays the guitar and “can sing”, but there’s a real singer on the stage… anyways, most bands played only one song except for Marjo (I’m not a fan of her). The show was over at 11pm, then a million cops arrived in the park half an hour later. My friend told me that she never saw so many cops on such a night, they were everywhere! But with such a big crowd, you need that many cops.

Even if the show wasn’t so great, Mes Aïeux was there and I found a YouTube video with English subtitles. It’s not the kind of music that I would listen to everyday, but of all their songs it’s my favourite.

And here’s the song that Pierre Lapointe sang last night. There’s just one thing, there is absolutely no link between the concept of the video and the song itself and in the comment section, someone translated the lyrics. And he sings a part of Montréal -40 C.

Have a nice Tuesday folks, I just checked Environment Canada and a heat wave is going to hit Montreal tomorrow, I don’t think that it is a good thing that the first thing that I saw on their website is a high heat and humidity warning for tomorrow: luckily we have the AC at the office.

Happy Saint-Jean everyone!

2007-06-24T13:46:00.001-04:00

Being a Quebecer means that the last week of June and first of July are short weeks; it’s the Saint-Jean-Baptiste on June 24^th and Canada Day on July 1^st. Isn’t it great? And working for the government means that I do get those days off (well, the following Monday!) things that I didn't get at the resto.

But starting this post by “Being a Quebecer” might not be the proper way to start it, I don’t feel like one, because most of the time June 24^th celebrations (or whenever they do it during that weekend) are mostly people celebrating Quebec’s “upcoming” independence, which I’m not a fan of. It might explain why, most of the time, I don’t truly celebrate it the way my compatriots do (Nor do I celebrate July 1^st, it’s not a big deal here, well at least in my hometown it wasn’t, it should be different in Montreal). It drives me crazy to hear all those speeches during which you mostly hear about independence. I remember when our Contemporary History teacher asked each student our nationality; many people said Quebecer and some of us said Canadian. The teacher is a true Quebecer and it was easy to know it, just by looking at the way he was teaching.

But then, the show itself can be great, with good musicians (only if you are willing to listen to a certain kind of musicians). And I’m glad to spend this Sunday in Montreal this year; I hope that the park where I’m going tonight the show will be different than the one in my hometown in terms of amount of alcohol being consumed by people (I remember seeing a guy giving a Coors Light to his barely 10 years old son). It’s the biggest party in Montreal, an outside show with tons of musicians from Quebec but with an host that I don’t really like… but again, I’m going there with a couple of friends and the idea is to have fun and it will be my first Saint-Jean in Montreal. And some people at work saw the rehearsal, and they said that it should be quite a party… We’ll see! And it's the celebration of the beginning of summer, isn't it?

What's your nationality? Are you Canadian or Ontarian or Albertan? Or you don't really care? I'm wondering if when asked this question it's only in Quebec that you get a different answer than "expected".

Hope you guys have a fantastic Sunday!

Why does it always happen to me?

2007-06-18T20:36:00.001-04:00

It seems that once a month, something weird has to happen while I’m taking the subway or the bus, or simply walking to get somewhere; the old couple who told me that I should wear make up, the Italian guy who watched a part of the Mount Royal race with me, the homeless guy who started to talk with me when I went at the Oratoire St-Joseph during the winter, the girl who talked with me when I was waiting to get my passport, the guy I met on the shuttle bus, the freaky girl that I met on the same bus, the people that I met while waiting for David Suzuki’s talk, the girls that were lost in the subway… see the list is long, and it is getting longer.

This morning, I was walking on the quay of the Jean Talon station, transferring from one line to the other when a woman stopped me. (crap, my iPod is in my backpack, people don’t talk to people listen to music, usually). “I’m lost, I don’t know where I am, do you know how to get to Longueuil?”
- Easy, you are on the right quay, at Berri, you transfer to the yellow line.
- No, I’m lost, are you going there?
- To Berri? Yes. (first mistake)
- Can I stay with you, I won’t hurt you? And people won’t know that I’m with you.
- Well, it’s not that hard. But here’s the subway. Just follow the signs.

So she followed me, the girl was drunk and I don’t think that she got lost only because of the amount of alcohol that she consumed, more things were involved. But then she started to talk;

- You look like a good kid, you are wearing clean clothes and don’t seem to be drunk or something like that, and you helped me, you told me where to go.
- Well, it wasn’t that hard to tell you where to go, don’t worry about that.
- Luckily, my son is at his dad’s place, I have kids, can you believe it. You are an older version of me, I should be like you in few years, serious with a job (I’m not that serious, and I wasn’t wearing a suit or something like that, jeans and a polo). You look like a nice girl, and I think you’ll have a great life and please, don’t get too drunk and when people tell you that drugs are bad, they are, look at me. I don’t want you to be like me, never (and she kept talking, mostly repeating that).

This 10 minutes subway ride felt like it would never end. I don’t mind people that are drunk but, I wasn't in the right mood for that this morning

Then at around 4:30pm, S, my subway buddy came to my desk.
- Young lady, when are you planning to leave this marvellous office?
- Soon
- You make it hard for me, I’ll leave in 15 minutes, you can go if you don’t want to wait, I’m just really busy
- I’ll wait, I have plenty of things to do and it’s better to take the subway with someone.
- You’re okay? Oh and our dear friend C will come with us if you don’t mind, see you soon”

Sometimes, it’s better to wait 15 minutes for a friend than to take the subway alone and meet weird people.

Have you had weird encounters recently?

Summer reading

2007-06-17T21:02:00.000-04:00

Some of you posted books that you’ll read this summer, first I thought that I wouldn’t do it, knowing that I read but not that much. But today I went to Renaud-Bray (French version of Chapters) today and thought that I would only buy one book. I ended up buying 3. And I already have books that I haven’t read. But as a kid, I remember that there was carrying a book most of the time so, it shouldn't be too hard to read a lot this summer. Anyways, some are books that I want to read again. In no particular order.

Guns, Germs and Steel – Jared Diamond. My Ecology teacher strongly suggested us to read this book, I just started it and it’s pretty interesting so far.
1984 – George Orwell. I know, I should have read this before, but I haven’t so here it is.
Hygiène de l’assassin – Amélie Nothomb. The author is from Belgium and so far, all the books that she wrote and that I’ve read, were my favourites.
Péplum – Amélie Nothomb. I already read this book twice but I love it. I just hate the fact that it hasn’t been translated yet! The author travels through time and ends up in the XXVI century. It’s sort of about the butterfly effect, people in the future change the past and the author learns about her century and it isn’t the same thing. And it’s a 150 pages conversation between 2 people.
The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger. It’s the first English book that I read (while in English immersion), and loved it but I don’t remember it much so I’ll try to read it again.
Cat – Freya North (but I’ll read the French version). I’ve read this book few years ago and I should read it again during the Tour de France, this book being the story of a journalist following the race.

And I started The Weather Makers, and it’s not a bad book, but when I started the part about the atmosphere I just stop to read, I hear about that all day long at work, I talk about that to people that I meet while I’m working. After work, I just want to read about something else. So I’ll read this book later.

I still have to update the sidebar.

Finally a guy who understands! Or at least, he thinks he does

2007-06-16T17:17:00.000-04:00

My co-worker, the one that I work with all day long asked me yesterday if I was a girlie girl, nah, not really and we ended up talking about clothes. So he said : “no chances that you’ll wear a skirt or something like that this summer, you’re not that kind of girl, aren’t you?”. He’s right, I won’t wear a skirt to work this summer: we are visiting garages and places like that, so pants no skirts! (I don’t always like the part of the inspection which involves finding stickers on some machine to see if it meets the regulations). Guys working in garages can be like construction guys sometimes. But my co-worker doesn’t really understand that, he’s a guy, hence the questions about the skirt.

But, I was walking with my subway friend at the end of the day and we also ended up talking about clothes, because he was wearing a pink shirt the day before. And in the morning 2 guys were a little bit too interested by him. He didn’t quite enjoy it, he told me that every time he wears that shirt, something weird happens. And then he said that if I’m smart, I wouldn’t wear skirts or dresses this summer that pants are more appropriate for my job because of the kind of places we’re going to and he said that he understands how a girl feels when a guy is looking a bit too much.
- “How come you understand, you are a guy?”
- “Yesterday I understood, holy crap, poor girls, life is hard when you’re a woman, isn’t it? I mean, I felt that those guys were looking at me only for my body, not looking at who I really am. Just like those construction guys that we saw few minutes ago, what’s wrong with them?”

But today, those 3 guys at the Parc Jean Drapeau didn't learn that lesson yet

Things should be put back in perspective

2007-06-13T20:58:00.000-04:00

I don’t always enjoy the fact that I grew up in rural Quebec, outside a small town, close to a bigger one but still only about 8,000 inhabitants in that bigger town. I see it as being boring sometimes, where there are not that many things to do when you are a kid, where a lot of people are making money working in the wood’s industry (which is in crisis, so right, a lot of people are un-employed), where there’s one of the highest suicide rates in Quebec. I don’t think that I’ll live there when I’ll have a degree, maybe one day but not in close future. But I was talking with my subway buddy today and he was like : “so you don’t like your hometown, I don’t get it, you are lucky, you grew up in a beautiful part of Quebec. Didn’t you learn how to skate, do cross-country skiing, went hiking, fishing, swam in a river, didn’t you learn amazing things living there?” The guy grew up in a neighbourhood of Paris where people would throw fridges from their apartment window and they would throw those fridges at police cars… see the kind of place? And my team-mate is a true Montrealer, grew up there, but don’t know the cities surrounding Montreal, spent most of his life in Montreal but travelled to Viet-Nam and France. He was amazed to see my hometown on Google Earth “It’s so green, oh and there’s a river! Can you fish there?” His reaction made me laugh a little bit.

I think that after 18 years living there, I think that I needed a change, it was normal that I wanted to live somewhere else. But talking with those guys I realized that it isn’t that bad to grow up in a small town. Can be boring, you’re not known as you, you are the sister/ daughter/ niece/ friend/ grand-daughter of. But hey, as a kid once a week I went canoeing on the river with my dad and my brother, I learned to skate on the river behind our house, swam in the river and in the rapids close to our home (that’s another story in itself, but don’t worry, small rapids!), I did amazingly long bike ride riding from one small town to another, I’ve seen more than one aurora borealis in my life and August means shooting stars and the warm summer nights meant lying on the trampoline to look at the stars (but it’s stupid, because the best conditions are on cold nights!), and there are the marshmallows and roasted on the fire and the hours long talk that we could have; and it wasn’t only a one week thing! I guess that growing up in a big city, you can’t do some of those things on an almost daily basis. Those subway rides are going to be food for thought sometimes!

I changed the header, I'm still not sure about the colour of the font (when I change the colour, the sky seems to change too) and if it should be the unilingual or the bilingual version... anyways the header might change often in the next few weeks,

Those crazy Japanese! or Chinese?

2007-06-10T23:29:00.000-04:00

On a lighter note than the previous post. My brother sent me those links; a lazy dog and some weird gold fish.

Lesson of the weekend : don’t take the subway during the Grand Prix weekend

2007-06-10T23:18:00.000-04:00

Avoid it, it’s crowded and most people don’t know where they are going therefore they are the slowest walked of Earth’s history. No kidding. Then they drop off at the biggest station where they have to take the Yellow line to go to the Parc Jean Drapeau, but there is one thing that those not so smart folks haven’t understand yet; when you print the plan of the metro, why don’t you just label the lines with the colours : yellow, orange, green and blue. It would make your life a lot easier. They put colours on the map, it’s not for it to look good, it’s to actually help people!

Honestly, I was looking at all those people wondering where they had to go and I thought that some of them weren’t that smart. The STM (the transit commission) put huge signs all over the subway station to show where to go and the people going to see the race didn’t even bother to look at those signs.

And there are more dumb people, sorry about this post folks. On Friday, I had to take the subway to go on the south shore, no big deal, take the yellow line, which stops on the Islands where is the F1 Grand Prix. I thought no problem, more people in the cars, but so what, it’s a 3 stations line so it’s not so long. Wrong, people are stupid. They arrive on the platform but they don’t move towards the end, they stay right in the middle where the stairs are and where a lot of people are coming in. I missed the first subway because of that. But, I moved towards the end, to get in the last car… I was alone for the whole ride. But when I passed in front of the stairs, some desperate passengers were waiting… Same thing at the end of the day, but then they stopped the subway for few minutes at the station, and asked people to move. It took them a lot of time to understand but after 5 minutes the platform was almost empty and there were people in all the cars. And the Berri-UQAM station was full of cops, cops everywhere, asking people to keep moving.

I had to rant, sorry about that, I get it that people can somewhat get lost in those stations, mostly if it’s the first time that they go there, I still get lost sometimes! And everything is only in French so it's hard for non-French speaking people. But what annoyed me was to hear some people saying that the subway wasn't a good way to travel that it was too crowded... but they didn't understand that it isn't like that every single day of the year, the subway is great, cheap (well, for students otherwise it's something like 65$ a month), eco-friendly, and fast if you live close to a station.

Another kind of race, I took this shot in Little Italy on Wednesday night I think, it was during a stage of the Tour du Grand Montréal

Holy smoke!

2007-06-06T23:51:00.000-04:00

That what my brother’s girlfriend said last Sunday after my attempt at imitating what her cat would said if she could talk and I used the cat’s voice, you know what it is right? But then, she lost it, she couldn’t stop laughing. At first, I didn’t get it, what I said wasn’t that funny. Few minutes later she explained why she was laughing. I used the exact same voice as my brother uses when he impersonates the cat. Then, she said that a couple of times, I did the exact same face as my brother does when he says something that looks like what I said.

We don’t look alike that much, well it’s what I think; it’s not what my friends think. One of my friends living in Montreal knew that my brother is living on the same street as I do, and I think that she saw a picture of him once. But she was walking on the streets and saw him, within seconds she knew that he is my brother. “A man version of Evelyne with brown hair and taller!”. According to her, it was her reaction. People tell me that the 4 of us sort of look alike, but I don’t think so. Yes, there are some traits that we sort of share.

But what’s funny is that last Sunday, what came up wasn’t physical traits but “personality”. Or when we were at my grandparents’ house and the first thing that my dad did when he saw the new treadmill was the go on it, and to start running without moving forward and he was just kidding. Then he sat and my brother arrived on the second floor… right! He did the exact same thing as our dad did few seconds ago, and I swear that he had no idea of what just happened.

Another one is when we went to Toronto, we stopped at Tim Horton’s and my brother and sister were wondering how to say the name of some doughnuts in English, the Maple one. They looked at each other and both said (and it was sort of loud) : “Maple Beigne!” They didn’t remember the word doughnut, so they used the French word. Since then, we refer to those Maple doughnuts as Maple Beigne. but what is funny is how they both said it at the same time. And Scattegories can tell quite a lot about your family, you have to find words starting by a specific letter in 12 categories, we could found the weirdest words and often 2 of us could have the same answer and those answer were not normal ones, or the ones that you would expect.

Do you look or do you act like your siblings, or are you totally different that it is hard to tell that you guys are related?

A day on the Mount Royal

2007-06-02T22:34:00.000-04:00

I took this street to get to school at the end of the winter semester; it was “funnier” to take the bus than the subway. But today, that street changed, it was part of the circuit of the Women's Cycling World Cup, actually it was the finish/start line, but it was a mistake to go there to watch the race, I should have gone on Camillien-Houde, it’s a 2 km long climb, it is really crowded, but it worth it, so next year.

It was a great race, interesting with attacks, but I didn’t see any, where I was is a part of the circuit that is way too technical to try something, there’s a 180 degrees turn, I heard a lot of tire screeching today but not coming from riders but from the teams’ cars.

When I was a kid I did that kind of bike race, and loved it, it is hard but it is really cool; yes, you have to train a lot, it can be stressful, you can fall and it will hurt a lot, it can be insane, but I loved it. During one year I climbed quite often on the podium, we were something like 5 girls in their second year in that category and it was back when it wasn’t a very popular sport, now it is a lot more popular (sometimes we were not even 10 to start a race!).

Towards the end of the race I saw a rider walking on the sidewalk, obviously she abandoned the race (might have been force to by the officials) but it didn’t matter. I thought, I know her, I know her face. It ended that yes, I do know her, she grew a lot, she is one year younger than me and her sister was my sister’s best friend during the races, in few years she should be a good rider. One was talking with a guy and I recognized her right away, she was in my team twice when we went to the Quebec’s Games, she’s a bit older than me and she was a great teammate. Then another one was walking towards one member of the technical support of her team, it didn’t take me long the recognize her, she’s my age and I even remember her first race.

It was a very windy morning in late April, it was the first race of the season, few riders were there in our category, but it didn’t matter. We were only 4 and it was my first year in this new category. On the starting line, one of the girls that I’ve been riding with (well, against) since I started came next to me and said “here’s what should be the position at the end of the race, me second, you third. There’s no way that this girl riding a mountain bike will be better than any of us even if it’s your first year with us, so have a good race and enjoy it”. It turned out that the girl on the mountain bike finished first or second, I don’t remember it and me fourth and it was a hell of a day.

The girls that I used to ride with didn’t finish the race, it’s a tough race of about 100 km and 22 km are ascension, so it is hard. But it doesn’t matter, they raced and learned a lot from it I think. They are young and some of the riders today are world champion, so we have to give a chance to those young ladies. The one who won today is something like the world champion or is the World Cup leader. Anyhow, it reminded me lots of things to go there today, and I wished that I had my bike with me right now, it would be sweet to spend some time on it tomorrow, but alas the bike is at my parents’ home right now.

The winners

Not a cool place to be, to be stuck in the teams' cars

They are simply crazy!

The last riders, they won't finish, but it doesn't matter - The sweep car is following them for their safety

You simply wish that the first one won't forgot that the inside pedal has to be up and not down, otherwise it will touch the road and you don't want that to happen because she would fall and other riders would also fall.

The new kid in the office

2007-05-31T20:22:00.001-04:00

That’s what I am, and let me tell you that it is not always cool; I don’t really know what I have to do, where are things, until this afternoon, I didn’t had all the codes that I need oh and there’s a phone on my desk, but don’t ask me how I can listen the messages, I should have a formation about that on Monday… oh and this morning I didn’t know the code to unlock the door! I know how to find my desk, well my cubicle (that I’ll have to share starting Monday morning when my partner will start working), I know how to get to the cubicle of my immediate supervisor, but don’t ask me more, it’s a maze over there, I almost got lost trying to find the lady to whom I had to give a lot of paperwork… at least people seem to be nice, I haven’t met the supervisor of the office someone asked my supervisor if he talked to me about the guy he said “no why? She should be fine” they told me to watch out… I don’t think that the guy can be worst than the boss that I had at the resto, the nasty French guy (not to be mixed with the boss of the whole place, of everything, the okay French guy)… So I spent the last 2 days reading the regulation related to the project that I’ll work onlearning how the governmental system works, learning a gazillion new names, trying to find my way around the office, and getting use to work in an office. I mean, at the resto, my shift ended when all the things that I had to do were done, not here, I work 7 hours a day and that’s it; I haven’t finished something, so what? Do it tomorrow. It’s weird, and I’ll have to get use to that. And I hate reading things that have been wrote by a lawyer According to the paragraph x of the article y of the chapter z of the regulation on… crap what was that about? What is the article that they are talking about, I don’t even have it!? And it is not a physical job at all, I’ll have to start running after work or I don’t know, I have to find something to do otherwise I won’t be in shape at all at the end of the summer. For the last 2 summers, I had a job that kept me in shape, but not this one!

The boss said that the first few days are most boring ones, everybody warned me, someone told me that if after 2 weeks they still ask me to read things I had to start to scream or do something… at least there’s not a weird French guy yelling every time I move.

Gone

2007-05-29T14:02:00.000-04:00

Remember last summer when I wrote about leaving home and leaving my job after the summer. I worked about 10 days there this year, with lots of ups and downs and it was emotions driven. I called the boss (he manages everything; the resto, condos, reception) on Saturday morning to tell him that I wouldn’t work for him again and he seemed to be upset and mad but I told him that Sunday I would bring my clothes back so he said “see you tomorrow”. On Sunday I went to the resto, the waitress working there didn’t know that I wouldn’t work there again “What are you doing here with your shirt and polo you’re not working today?”. Then I went to the reception to get last week’s paycheck and I was really happy that the girl working that day was the one that I spent the summer with last summer and the one that I talked to when I had some problems with the new boss. We talked a little bit, she hugged me a couple of times told me that I would be happier working somewhere else where it should be less stressful, she said something like “Go, otherwise I’ll cry, you know it sweetie”. The boss looked and her and didn’t quite understood, I had to explain to him that she cried last summer when I left the resto. At least now I know that the boss isn’t mad that I left their team, he was sad because he didn’t want me to leave but I think that he understands. They both asked me to come back this summer, and I will, I hated the boss at the resto but the other people working there are nice people and I enjoyed working with them and I’ll miss them but I won’t miss the boss of the resto. I think that I realized that I won’t be working there anymore last night, and I was a little bit sad, but it changed so much since last summer, that it is only a good thing that I won’t be working there anymore.

The music there sometimes sucked, but sometimes it wasn’t that bad, such as those 2 songs, they are not fantastic songs, but when they were playing I was quite happy, Aznavour and all those French singers were driving me nuts!

When a nightmare turns into a dream

2007-05-25T16:43:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, bad things turn into really cool things, I wasn't so sure about coming or not to Montreal with my Mom for the weekend. I ended up leaving home, I needed to go to Montreal. Then I got a call on Thursday night, a guy offering me a job at the government. Called him this morning, met him few hours later (took the cab and it cost 20 bucks, but so what, I might have a job, stupid strike!). We talked for about 10 minutes (not even) and I have the job, and I'm starting next Wednesday and I'll work in my field of studies. Bye Bye resto... oops, I still have to tell the boss at the resto, but I warned him last week that I might not work for him for the whole summer...

Sounds like a cool summer in Montreal! :-) I'm really really really happy!!!! Oh and it's a week job with steady hours, weekends and nights are off! Might make less money than at the resto, but I think that mentally, I'll feel a whole lot better.

Have a good weekend folks!

You are the world

2007-05-23T12:49:00.000-04:00

Toccata posted it and I thought I should post mine, I did it last night, and was feeling sleepy. hated my boss, was a little bit mad (sorry about yesterday's rant!), but now things have settled down. So last night it was The Hermit card, which isn't me (my answers to the questions where way too influenced by my mood!)

You are the World

Completion, Good Reward.

The World is the final card of the Major Arcana, and as such represents saturnian energies, time, and completion.

The World card pictures a dancer in a Yoni (sometimes made of laurel leaves). The Yoni symbolizes the great Mother, the cervix through which everything is born, and also the doorway to the next life after death. It is indicative of a complete circle. Everything is finally coming together, successfully and at last. You will get that Ph.D. you've been working for years to complete, graduate at long last, marry after a long engagement, or finish that huge project. This card is not for little ends, but for big ones, important ones, ones that come with well earned cheers and acknowledgements. Your hard work, knowledge, wisdom, patience, etc, will absolutely pay-off; you've done everything right.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

When a dream turns into a nightmare

2007-05-22T23:48:00.000-04:00

I really don’t know what I’ll do of my summer, I truly don’t. I don’t know yet if I want to stay there with the new boss at the resto. I was just happy that for the last 2 days, I worked without him. On Sunday morning, the other waitress could barely hold her tears, she simply wanted to cry and to leave because of this guy. The other waitress left before me on Sunday night and the new boss talked to me and I just wanted to punch him in the face. When I walked out of the resto the girl working in the kitchen asked me if I was ok, I could only tell her “no, I’m not feeling good at all”. The attendant asked me to come back that we could talk, but I couldn’t I just didn’t want to see the face of the new boss and I knew that if I talked with them I would have started to cry.

On Monday morning, I was really happy to see the lady who was working at the front desk last summer, I went there to get the keys and she just look at me and said “you’re not okay, what’s wrong, it’s the new guy isn’t it?”. When she said that I almost started to cry and she just hug me and we walked to the resto together because she doesn’t want me to cry (even if I did and she did). She talked to the big boss and he asked me to drop by his office after my shift that we had to talk. We did, at one point I was almost crying, I was tired and it didn’t help me, then he reacted, he realized how hard it has been to work last weekend, he seemed to felt sorry about it, but you know, he’s the boss but he only has 4 waiters who know how things are working and where things are and it’s the same in the kitchen, they only have 3 people who know how it works. If we resign they are in trouble, he almost told me that when he said that he doesn’t want to loose me for the summer, well, I’m not even sure that I’ll work here until August. I’ll look around if I see another job opportunity, we'll have a staff meeting next week, but is it really going to change? At least, on my two days alone, it was fun and I enjoyed being there and the big boss is really nice with me, but for how long? We all know how bosses are.

I'm catching up on my blog reads, I'll post about some a Quebec band this week, I have the week off and might me going to Montreal, but I'm not sure about it yet, with the STM strike it can be hard to travel in the city without a car, but I could stay at my Mom's hotel which is downtown...

Away

2007-05-19T12:16:00.000-04:00

I'll be working "double shifts" until Tuesday or Wednesday, so I won't be around until then, have a great long weekend folks!

Math, science or philosophy?

2007-05-18T22:40:00.000-04:00

I know that this post will sound rather geeky / nerdy or whatever, but this question has been raised in a class somewhere in March, and I’m still thinking about it. And I’d like to know what you guys think about that question. But I might have to explain you why we ended up discussing that question in a class that deals with the Earth System.

We had to do presentation, and a guy thinks that climate change / global warming isn’t true and that all the models predicting climate are bullsh*t… but he wasn’t in the right class to say that, one of the teachers was in the news this year when he published an article about the Arctic, plus we are in Canada where most people do believe in climate change unlike some American students (one of my teachers taught in New York before moving to Canada and he said that half of his classes didn't believe in climate change). The student said that, because of the incertitude on the measurements, because they can be quite big he said that those measurements mean nothing. It is true that, sometimes it is more or less a hundred years, and models are based on those measurements and if you change the date that you start your model (say January 1^st 1870 or January 2^nd, it will make a difference). And the guy is studying in math, so for him, exact numbers are pretty important (and I have to add that he didn’t have good arguments). So at the end of the ‘debate’, i.e. him trying to convince the whole class, but us not convinced at all by what he is saying (and sorry, but we laughed a lot too) and the teachers trying to control the conversation but at the same time, they didn’t agree on what the student was saying… so in his last comment, a teacher said: “Well, isn’t math more like philosophy? It is not really a science, isn’t it?”. The guy was mad: “math is the noblest of all the sciences!”

But is it? I’ve been thinking about it recently, and I think that it is more or less a question of how do you define science, philosophy and mathematics. The dictionary says that mathematics can be define as “the science of numbers and their operations, interrelations, combinations, generalizations, and abstractions and of space configurations and their structure, measurement, transformations, and generalizations”. If you break down the word philosophy and look at its Latin roots Philo means love and Sophia means wisdom and is defined as “the basic beliefs or guiding principles of a person or group”. While Science is defined as “the state of knowing : knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding”.

I think that mathematics is a way to think, a way to interpret the world, but it also studies the world. There are a couple of things in math that amaze me such as the Fibonacci numbers (but I don’t really like integrals and derivatives). But what is it? If mathematics helps to solve scientific problems what is it? I guess that I’m asking too many questions and that insomnia is ruining my brain because it’s working weirdly recently…

Please stop it

2007-05-18T22:09:00.000-04:00

I have another new boss, on my second day working there the new boss walked in the resto with an older guy and he asked me to come : “So, Evelyne, you know that the chef left us, well the maitre d’hotel is following him, so here’s your new boss”. Inside I thought What, how come, what the heck is going on here, crap crap crap, it wasn’t supposed to be like that, it was supposed to be like last summer they were supposed to stay, we were supposed to work like last summer, I was suppose to work and have fun with the chef and crap, but I just smiled and gave him a handshake. I worked 5 days in a row with few double shifts and I think that it might not be that bad, the new bosses get along very well and they don’t want to stay in their office they want to know us and they want things to work and to work very well. I think that I just have to learn to know who they are and what do they like. And I’ll also have to deal with the fact that the new kitchen staff like classical music, Mexican music, rock, punk, and all the good stuff; it’s over, I guess that I’ll just spend less time in there. Oh and I'll miss those mornings when preparing the toasts the chef would stop next to me, take my hand and put some raspberry, cherry or whatever in it and then ask me to smile to make sure that I didn't have a raspberry smile.

Today, as I did all week long, I tried to call my new boss, I’ve finally been able to reach him, and when I did he didn’t seem to be really happy “Why are you calling? And did you know that when I leave a message on your answering machine you have to call me back… blah blah blah” He went on during 2 minutes explaining me how important it is to call him, WHAT? I did, you didn’t call back, I let you a message it’s not my fault if you didn’t get it, the people working at the front desk should know how to do their job and I know that they do their job. At least I know when I’ll be working next week; at least 4 days in a row, but I hate our shifts right now, morning and night with a 5 hours break in between… Can’t wait that more people will come and eat at the resto, it’s boring right now.

And thanks to you Bloggers for mentioning the long week-end, I totally forgot about it!

Wanna understand me?

2007-05-16T18:09:00.000-04:00

As I wrote in a previous post, sometimes, English slang gives me a headache. But I enjoy learning it, once you know those words, it makes life so much easier. And I understand that for English speaking people the opposite is true, French slang might be hard. It is different in France and in Quebec and between parts of Quebec (and France as well). Where my parents are living, there is a strong dialect, some sort of an accent that I don’t totally have because my Mom is from another region where there is not as much of an accent. Sometimes, I don’t even understand what my grandfather says, it is the way he pronounces words and the fact that he uses old French words that we don’t usually use nowadays. Many websites say that in Quebec, we use an old French (expressions and pronunciation) because we were isolated from France in the 1760 by the British Conquest of New France.

Historically, English-Canadians tried to assimilate French-Canadians and it didn’t work, however, French-speaking people being a minority in North America we do have a lot of English words in our vocabulary, and the use of those words can be interesting; sometimes they kept the same meaning as in English, but sometimes they mean something totally different and the pronunciation changed a lot sometimes! In cégep, I had to take a class called Quebec literature and had to read a play by Michel Tremblay, I think that it was Les Belles Soeurs. This author uses normal everyday French in his plays, and honestly, sometimes, I had to read it out loud to understand the play, Wikipedia says that since the publication of this play, everyday Quebec French is use in television (some sitcoms), but that people can choose between normal French and a more slang French. Some movies such as C.R.A.Z.Y had to be subtitled to be sold in France, they couldn’t understand it.

Here we go with some examples from Wikipedia, but I’ll comment on those.
Those are really common ones, it is mostly pronunciation (sorry for the ?, it was supposed to be some arrows)
Joual (slang) French English

toétoiyou or ya
chuje suis I’m or “Ahm”
té tu es you’re or “yer”
ché je sais I know
pantoute pas du tout not at all
pis puis then or “So what?”
y il he or “e”
a  elle she
ouais /ouin oui yeah or yep
y’a  il y a there’s or there’re
icitte  ici  here
ben  bien  well
s’a sur la  on the ‘xyz’ (feminine)
su’l sur le  on the .xyz’ (masculine)
tsé  tu sais  y’know
nuitte nuit night
litte lit  bed
han? hein  wot or wut?
Eille  hey  hey you
Frette froid cold
Fa fait make or do

There are some of those that I don’t agree with, mostly Frette; there is a huge difference between frette and froid. Frette is colder than froid, I could say that froid is cold and frette is colder (a lot!) -40 is Frette but -5 is only froid.

There are also English loanwords

Bécik : bicycle
Braker: Pronounced [breakay]. Verb meaning "to brake".
Breaker: Pronounced [bray-koer]. Circuit breaker(Disjoncteur). Still very used nowadays.
Coat: Winter Jacket (Only for the clothing item), never in the sense of "layer".
Chum: Most often in the sense of boyfriend, although sometimes simply as friend.
Cutter: Used as little ciment boarder along the roads.
Enfirouaper: To screw someone. Comes from "In fur wrap". Centuries ago, fur traders would sell a ballot of fur, actually filled with cardboard in the middle. (From what I learned in cégep) traders worked with English and French speaking people and when they realized that they didn’t get what they wanted, they would say “on s’est fait enfirouraper”
Frencher: Pronounced [fran-shay]. To French-kiss
Fuker le chien: Meaning having trouble with something. (Pronounced Fo-ker-l'chien) (chien = dog)
Gas: Pronounced [gaaz]. In the sense of fuel or in the sense of flatulence.
Lift: Pronounced [liff]. Only used in the sense of giving a lift to someone in one's vehicle.
Petard: Meaning gun or really cute woman. [Pay-tarr]
Peter: Meaning to break something [Pay-Tay]
Peppermint: Normally pronounced [pa-par-mhan].
Pinotte: Peanuts. Unlike most other borrowings, this one is sometimes seen written, usually as here.
les States: Pronounced [lay Stayt] (the plural "s" is mute). Used when referring to the USA.
Tinque : Usually pronounced [teink]. Used in the sense of "container": Tinque à gaz [fuel tank]
Tchine-tchine: From "cheers", said when making a toast.
Tough
Truck
Suit: For a coat.
Ski-doo: For a snowmobile. (It is the name of a Bombardier trademark.)

And there are other words that aren’t loanwords from English

Bonhomme sept-heure [boogeyman]: previously believed to come from "bone setters". Similarly named characters exist in some parts of northern France.
Pitoune (log, cute girl, loose girl): previously thought to come from "happy town" although the word "pitchoune" exists in dialects from southern France and means "cute girl". Rigt, pitoune has a lot of meanings!
Poutine: was thought to come from "pudding", but some have drawn a parallel with the Languedocian word "poudingo", a stew made of scraps which was (in Montreal) the previous use of the term.

And there are much more that I could write, and I could write a whole post about swearing aka talking about religion, but I won’t! And some bands, such as Les Cowboys Fringants, use a lot of slang or Quebec French in their songs. My brother gave the second disc of the Cowboys to one of his friends who lived in Quebec for 3 years but now moved back to France, he had to translate the lyrics if he wanted her to understand!

Question time and back to reality

2007-05-10T22:51:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the lack of posts folks. It really sucks because the lady who wants to hire me to work for her for the summer doesn’t seem to be that sure about it, she said that she would give me more money then no, she’s not so sure about it, but she really wants to know will I her for her for this summer, well, I don’t know. (sorry for this extremely long sentence, does it even make some sort of sense?)

But, they needed someone to work at the resto on Wednesday and Thursday, to serve breakfast and dinner, I said yes, so I would see if I still want to work there (and make money rather than being home and doing almost nothing)… and nothing changed here and this is not a good thing. The chef is gone, the sous-chef became the chef, which was a really good thing (he is a way better cook and administrator) but he is gone too. There’s no chef! And if you want to have a successful restaurant, you have to have a chef. When I arrived on Wednesday, I asked to the other waitress who is in the kitchen? What, how come M isn’t here? She told me that he left on Sunday, he is working in Edmonton, those folks are lucky, Edmontonians (is it what they are called? I have no idea) you are lucky, this guy makes amazing food but, waiters watch out! This guy is a harsh chef, he is going to tell you if there’s something wrong, but I loved to work with him, we had a lot of fun, even if some days he was in a really bad mood, he taught me a lot and it meant a lot when I left the resto at the end of my last day last summer and he told me “Hey little kid, I enjoyed working with you, I can’t complain and I have nothing bad to tell you”. And during the last two days, working here wasn’t the same, it is not as fun as it was last summer, but it might also be because I don’t really know the two people working in kitchen now and I don’t know all the new staff. But even tough, it won’t be the same.

And I also hate the fact that we have a lot of bosses, the maitre d’hotel, the boss of the maitre d’hotel, the owner, and eventually the new chef and they don’t all get along very well… I’m just waiting a call from the lady of the museum, I think that it might be a better offer than the resto (if she wants me to work for here, she doesn’t seem to be that sure about it) and there’s a new staff manager, I talked with him for 2 minutes we have a “meeting” tomorrow morning. So far, I haven’t seen a lot of positive things about working here, being here, I realized how it really is (one of the good things, is that the sunsets are still amazing and we have new shirts to work the night shifts they look way better and are so comfortable, but it is sort of a little detail)

I’ll write a post about French slang on Friday, I have a lot of ideas and I have to write them down. I found a lot of English words that are used in French but that have a totally different meaning than when they are used in English, and the pronunciation is different.

You made it even more complicated

2007-05-04T23:29:00.000-04:00

So I told the lady working at the museum that I cannot work there this summer, she asked why and I explained why. Then she said “Good luck to find another job”
- Well, I have a job for the summer
- Really, hold on, you are university student and did one year and are going back, right?
- Yeah right, I’ll be a U2 next Fall
- I can apply for another project, and pay you more, so what do you think?
- Really?

So, she called, offered a better salary (one that looks like other places are offering to students), plus no matter what I’ll do this summer, my Mom told me that they “give” me the car for the summer, they’ll buy a new one and I need one this summer… it changes everything, I mean, being stuck in the middle of nowhere without a car is nightmare, well can be. But with a car, you can do things and go to places on your day off. (one of my aunts live “close” to there, well it’s a 1 hour and a half drive)… I think that I’ll spend the summer in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by mosquitoes and rocks and trees and a lake, but doing something a little bit more interesting than waiting at tables, well I hope so. I’ll just have to bring my laptop, tons of books and dvds, hiking shoes and hope that I’ll work a lot.

And crap, the Raptors lost tonight, it was game 6 against the Nets and @!#*& Vince Carter. 97 – 98. It sucks and I won’t see my little sister being really mad at Vince Carter (it’s hilarious, I love it!) and literally yelling at the Nets’ players (Jason Kidd!)… but I think that we’ll still watch some basketball games and cheer for another team or watch reruns maybe… or we’ll play a Kevin Garnett (he is number 21, I’ll let you guys figure it out).

Finally, the teachers posted all our final grades on internet last night, I’m happy and unhappy, happy about the first A but unhappy about the GPA. But then, I got 2 e-mails from a teacher (the class where I got the A) one to all the class, thanking us for taking the risk of taking this class as it is the first time they taught it and one to my university e-mail, where he almost copied the class e-mail and told me that when I’ll be at the faculty of Science and if I want to do a research project with him or any of the other co-instructors, I just have to e-mail them, it means a lot, but we talked a lot together this term, so I was happy about that!

I have to put all my clothes in a suitcase, I’m leaving Montreal tomorrow, heading North for the summer (further North than I previously thought though!)

Have a good weekend folks, hope you'll have some sunny days! Oh and I saw Spiderman3 this afternoon, I went to see it alone, wanted to see the iMax version but all the tickets are sold out until next Wednesday, it was pretty cool.

Sunset

2007-05-03T12:27:00.000-04:00

I went for a walk last night and brought the camera, I thought that I would just be walking on the campus of the Université de Montréal, but I ended up almost lost on the campus so I thought that it might be a better idea to go to the Oratoire St-Joseph, where I won't get lost.

The Oratoire isn't pink usually, but last night, the with the sunset, it seemed to be pink...

Click to enlarge this one, I went to the top, where you can see few people, it is a little bit less than 300 steps. But it worth it, even if it was windy at the top.

At this point, I wished that I had a tripod with me so the lights wouldn't be all blurry, I took a million pictures I think to get few that were okay, but then I realized that the ISO wasn't set properly, crap, if you enlarge the picture, it is not perfect... oh well, next time.

I like this one, when I took the picture there were an old man looking at the sunset and he looked at me, and looked at what I was taking a shot of and he looked again at me and he asked "What are you..." and I just said "Come over here, you'll see the university, I think it's cool". But it is a little bit blurry...

I thought that I would walk for half an hour, I think that I ended up being outside for about 2 hours

Lazy post

2007-05-02T15:24:00.000-04:00

Not it is not Summer yet, but I was "cleaning" my computer and found those pictures...

Oh and I changed the header, the new blogger has slighlty changed since I switched my blog to Beta and it is now a lot easier to change the header, just need a picture 140x650 pixels and you are good to go. But I'm not so sure about the colour of this one, I might change the blue.

Update : I called the lady at the museum and I won't work there : "you'll just be giving tours and clean the museum"... No, I'd rather deal with customers during one summer plus I wouldn't be working a lot of hours every week (so, it is a ridiculously low paycheck!) and not working a lot in a small town close to nothing except mosquitos, I'm not sure that it is a good idea!

Jobs

2007-05-01T19:08:00.000-04:00

I need your help, I've just got a call from a woman working in a museum and she offered me a job for the summer. Few months ago, I posted my resume on Youth Canada Works and she found it and called me. I didn't remember that I posted my resume on that website. The job seems to be cool, I could be working in a museum where they have expositions about fossils and fish. The fish part isn't that interesting, but the fossil part is cool, I mean, my minor should be Earth and Planetary Sciences and it deals with fossils and rocks so this job might be cool and is linked with my field of studies. But it starts only on June 15 and I would make a lot less money than I would of I work at the resto and I want to buy a Mac at the end of the summer (or I could stay with this laptop). And the job in the Museum isn't that close to home but they pay me a bus ticket to get there plus about 50$ a week for food/housing.

I have to call her back in 2 days, should I tell her that I already have a job?

Interview me!

2007-04-29T20:47:00.000-04:00

Here are the 5 questions that Barbara sent me... sorry for the delay but those were hard questions, but I liked it because I had to think about the answers.

Where would you most like to travel that you've never been to before?I’d like to go to Antarctica, the Arctic, Yukon (I’ve heard that it is amazing) and Australia. But the list could go on and on, I haven’t travel much and there are so many places where I’d like to go. But there are some places where I’d like to go as soon as I can, you know, before those places are going to change.
Would you rather have no arms or no legs? Why?No legs, I think that arms are essentials, I mean, how could I do everything that I do without arms? I could find a way to do it without legs but arms seem to be way more useful.
If you could choose 3 people - one politician, one musician, and one athlete - with whom to have dinner, who would you choose and why?Tough one. The musician would be Bono, it amazes me to see everything that he does. It is even harder to choose a politician, but I think that I’d like to have dinner with Stephen Harper (or George W. Bush), to understand how he thinks, but then I would be so mad and unhappy by what he would say that I don’t know if it is a good idea. One athlete, it would be a cyclist, but not Lance Armstrong, I don’t really like this guy, so I think that it would be Robbie McEwan, an Australian, he is an amazing sprinter. Or it could be Saku Koivu ;-)
What is the worst thing you have ever eaten in your life? Pea soup at the sugar shack where we went with my sister, her friends and a bunch of kids from Alberta (student exchange), that soup was awful. The other thing, I didn’t eat it, but I tasted it so I guess that it counts; PTC test stripes, the little bottle says : phenylthiourea-phenylthiocarbamide – this paper is bitter or tasteless depending on heredity of taster. I tasted it, and it is disgusting
If you could write one law to help protect the environment, what would it be? I would ban SUVs, trucks, all wheel drive car unless you really have to have one (I know, that it some places, you don’t have any other choice, but then you would have to have one that is at least a hybrid) you would be allowed to have a small car and it would be a hybrid and use biofuel and all the old cars that some people are still owning, those would have to be recycled and changed. Because old cars pollute a lot, even small old cars, you can’t even imagine how inefficient they are. And cars would have to be made in a ecofriendly factory because most of the emissions of the car are made before you even start to use your car.

Here are the rules - you have to answer these questions on your blog and then invite others to be interviewed by posting something like the following:

Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me!"
I will respond by e-mailing you five questions. I get to pick them, and you have to answer them all.
You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

It turned into a joke

2007-04-26T22:16:00.000-04:00

Examinations sometimes turn into a joke, not that it is easy, but that students are not too stressed out by the exam and teachers don’t take themselves ~~too~~ seriously. On Tuesday, I wrote my second final and let’s say that I’m not use to that kind of atmosphere. Usually, we write our exams in big rooms (the Ballroom or the gym), where you have to show your ID to the people at the door, the teachers are there, plus the TAs (sometimes) plus people from the Students Affairs. We have to sign a sheet that says where we were seated, and you can’t even have a sweatshirt on your chair, they’ll make sure that the pockets are empty, no kidding. But on Tuesday it was a “in dept” examination, way different.

One of the teachers (Prof W) arrived few minutes before the beginning, unlocked the door and started to prepare our booklets, while doing that he asked us when we thought that the co-instructor would show up, “let’s bet, I’ll give you an extra point if you get it right, as if some of you needed an extra point, most of you already pass!” Prof T was 15 minutes late. (“Please Folks, may I have your attention? I’d like to present you one of your teachers Prof T, you might remember him, if you don’t well, here he is!)

But with 2 instructors in the class, if we have a question, we want the teacher who taught that part to answer, just makes sense. So a girl raised her hand and asked for Prof W, but Prof T went and Prof W told him, “It’s for me, what are you doing?” Because the teacher didn’t hear him, he just threw a pen at the other teacher, who was at the other end of the room, is that suppose to be a serious exam guys?

Also, I’ve learned one thing, Sony laptops don’t break if you drop them on the floor, seriously, Prof T dropped his laptop and it’s still working, and it wasn’t the first time that this laptop met the ground. But, we all stopped writing, Prof W was hiding behind his hands, he was so scared for the health of the laptop and the class was filled with a somewhat nervous laugh. – It’s hibernating, keep writing guys. – No, it is getting ready to die, go back to your exam folks.

Of course, when we only had 5 minutes left, Prof W looked at the few of us who were still in the room : “All right folks, start writing as tiny as you can, because you are starting to be really stressed and 2 of your essays should be done, you have 5 minutes to write your third essay, hurry up”.

I know, I stayed until the end, I don’t like to stay until the end, damn essays that take so much time when they have to be written in English, could have wrote it in French, but then I don’t know all the technical words.

After the exam, I went in front of the FDA building (library and the entry gives access to many buildings) to read and to eat when Prof W was going to his office, so he stopped, we talked, he wanted to know what was I reading and if it was interesting, and how many exams do I still have to write, if I thought that the exam was hard, and if I changed my major yet, that if he could do something, I just have to ask. It’s funny to see how those 3 new teachers are way more involved with their students, they want to know who we are, what we like and they care. This exam was “easy”, I was prepared so it made it so much easier even if this morning while brushing my teeth I thought : “Crap, I forgot to talk about the main geological evidence for the mass extinction, stupid! The isotopic ratio in C is so important, how did I forget that?” Oh well… But I’d like to have more exams where the atmosphere isn’t tense at all like it was on Tuesday.

Taking a short break

2007-04-23T22:13:00.000-04:00

Don't get me wrong, studying for tomorrow's exam is great, I actually enjoy it, weird to say that I took this class only because it fit in my schedule. And it is my favourite class this semester.
But now, I'm bored and as cool as buckyballs, isotopic anomalies and mass extinctions are (forget about asteroids, it only triggered the extinction of the dinos!) sometimes enough is enough. I needed a break so here's a short video that I found on youtube, I don't hate Harvard but I think that it is funny.

What's that?

2007-04-20T10:35:00.000-04:00

On Tuesday, I spent about an hour talking with a teacher about the final exam and then we talked about majors, minors, interview for a PhD, summer jobs, his research, the classes that I'm taking and about what I thought of the class that he taught this semester (Him: Was it a hard class? Me : Not really I'd say, Him : No, it was wicked hard!, Me : NO! It wasn't, I already pass the class without writing the final, Him : It's just because of your background and that you seem to like this class)

I think that the teacher is American, and not from the South, so the way he speaks is slightly different than the way teachers from Ontario speak, or from Scotland, England, Quebec, Sweden, South Africa… but he is so easy to understand, except when it turns to slang. I read his e-mail on Monday night and thought : “what?”, I understood the main message; yes you can meet me tuesday morning, but let’s say that if it was not of the urban dictionary or any other online help, I wouldn’t have understood all the subtleties of the message. Here are few of them (from many e-mails sent to the class), I guess that he uses more slang because he is not an old teacher with white hair and a white beard.

why don't you swing by around 10am?
Have a swell day
Ditto for
Everything should be hunky-dory
and i guess that there's more but I'm now familiar with them such as wicked

But there is also mnemonics devices that are pretty different, when he told me : Leo the lion goes ger, I looked at him and said “What’s that?”, then he apologized and explained it (oxidation-reduction) to me as well as “King Phillip came over for great spaghettis” for kingdoms, according to him, it's the only way to learn those things by heart. And those don’t exist in French! But we have a cool one that used to work for the planets “Salut mon vieux, tu m’as jeté sur une nouvelle planète”, the asteroids belt is even included in it, but sadly, Pluto isn’t a planet anymore so it doesn’t work!

I'd say that this year, I've learned a lot of slang/words that are used everyday but that you don't find in books (often with the mention informal next to them in the dictionary). Or new mnemonics device to know things in English.

So back to studying, and this time it will be cell bio... and I'll try to find cool mnemonics for the cell cycle and all those things that I don't love.

I have an apartment! :-)

2007-04-18T22:31:00.000-04:00

I do! I'm sure that I want to do a minor and that I want to transfer to the faculty of Science and I'll do everything that I can to make it work, so I found an apartment downtown, right in the Ghetto and it is not expansive for that part of the city! I met a girl who was looking for a roommate, she seems to be really nice, the apartment is small but is okay, requires a little bit of cleaning/painting, but then it will be great! So we signed the lease tonight and my mom will sign it on Friday, and visit the apartment and it will be really official! I shouldn't have to take the bus that often next semester!

The Aftermath

2007-04-17T22:27:00.000-04:00

Luckily, the sidewalks weren't snowy today! So on Monday, I had to take the 7am bus leaving from downtown, woke up early took the subway to get there, the streets were so snowy that I couldn't believe it (i don't know what i did with yesterday's picture, they turned out way too blurry).

At 6:40 am, walking on Sherbrooke street and be literally jumping the cross the streets is weird, mostly in April. Where the sidewalk ends and the streets start, well it was full of snow/slush/rain, everything that Mother Earth decided to throw on us. So if I didn't want my feet to be wet, I had to jump and try to land on the snow, I landed on the snow a few times as well as right in the puddle of water, nothing bad happen, it wasn't too deep. Here are few pictures taken today, April 17. And the last one has been taken in December, if I didn't tell you I'm sure that there could be some confusion (except that there are Christmas lights on the picture!)

But a friend told me that after Saint-Patrick's we have to have a big snowstorm, and Saint-Patrick's day doesn't count... so we got our storm, now, where is the Spring?

The weather is weird... But at least it should be warmer tomorrow, I remember that when I used to do competition road bike, during Easter, we would have a training camp in Quebec city and the first race usually was the last weekend of April and yes it was cold, but there were no snow... just a very cold wind... what's going on?

2 wackos giving me a lecture about life

2007-04-16T22:48:00.000-04:00

Here is a story that I wanted to share with you, it is when I say that I won't be blogging much that the best things happen...

I was waiting the bus last week, sitting on the bench and reading my microbio notes when 2 old people came by. So I stand and asked them if they wanted to sit.

- Man : No, no, you are old, you should be sitting
- Me : Ok, if you say so
- Lady : Yes sit, we don’t have to sit.
- Man : What are you reading?
- Me : My microbiology notes (I was reading)
- Lady : Oh, where are you studying?
- Me : At McGill
- Man : But how old are you?
- Me : 19
- Lady : Sure? I thought that you were not even 16, just 15. (I know that I don't look like a 19 years old, but 15, what?)
- Me : Well, I’m 19
- Lady : You know, with some make-up you could look like a real 19 years old young lady (No way, I'm going to spend the next 4 or 5 hours at the library...)
- Me : no answer, obviously
- Man : How old am I?
- Me : I don’t know, I’m not good at that.
- Man : try!
- Me : around 50
- Lady : Oh she is lying, little hypocrite. (Well, thanks, the italic part is going to be more and more sarcastic!)
- Me : How old are you?
- Man : 75 (he looked like a 50-60 man)
- Lady : You have a boyfriend?
- Me : No
- Lady : You don’t want one?
- Me : It’s not that I don’t want one, I haven’t met the right one (And why are you asking?)
- Lady : And school is keeping you busy
- Me : Of course
- Lady : And a boyfriend would be too much distraction, and you don't have much time to put some make-up one (It's all about make-up with you?)
- Man : And you know how ladies are these days? My daughters have kids, one is divorced and the other, it’s not doing to well, women are not like they were back in my days
- Lady : She looks soft, she looks like a good kid, she'll take care of her husband
- Man : Yes, but she is not like all those other Quebecers women, she doesn’t wear much make up and special clothes like ladies do here. But you know how 14 years old now dress like women, I don’t like that.
- Me : Neither do I
-Man : You are from Canada, Quebec?
- Me : from Quebec
- Man : But you know what, I think that I’m handsome and that I don’t need make-up. What are you studying in? (You are handsome and you don't need make-up, but I need make-up, what the hell are you talking about? That's not nice at all!)
- Me : Environment
- Man : But this isn’t an environment book (Thanks, I already know that!)
- Me : No, but I’m finishing this term in microbio and I’ll switch for environment next semester
- Man : WHAT? You shouldn’t do that, I’ll tell you something, you’ll be much happier being a microbiologist, you’ll make more money and it will make you happier, and there are no jobs in environment.
- Me : No, there are jobs, governments, agencies, I’ll be fine
- Man : You would be much more happier in microbio, you know, life it’s money. Why don’t you stay in micro? (What do you know about me, except the fact that I don't wear tons of make up? Do you know what makes me happy and what is happiness?)
- Me : Well, I don’t like that (Micro/biochem/cell bio/genetics = nightmare!)
- Man : It’s too hard? (Why is everybody asking that question?)
- Me : NO! Environment classes can be hard too! And they are hard, they are just hard in a different way. (Micro = learn things by heart, envr = essay type questions, understand the topic)
- Man : Anyway, isn’t it too late to do something about climate change? And who believes in that?
- Me : No it is not too late! and I do believe in that!
- Lady : You are lucky to be able to go to school, you must work hard
- Me : euh, thanks
- Man : Isn’t it expensive university?
- Me : it depends where you are studying, but here I’d say that it is okay here (It’s not that expensive, tuition fees for Quebecers are the lowest in the country, but I’ll never tell those 2 jackass that it is not expensive, I don’t agree with the fact that the gov’t wants to unfreeze the fees!)
- Man : We are from North Africa (I understand where the sweet accent is from!), and you are lucky, down there you only get a job if you know someone working there, here you can get a job and it seems to be easier

And FINALLY, the bus arrived, and I sat in the back, with my back facing the road, right, I didn’t want to talk with them anymore! I laughed when I told those things to my mom... just hopping that I'll never meet those two wackos anymore. And while waiting for the bus, to go back home, a guy started to talk to me about the music festivals in Montreal, and if I ever went...

My roommate talked with me and said that I could have been “smarter” and I should have told them that I don’t speak French and just invent a story about your life…

I wrote a post about the snowstorm right after my micro exam, I'll post it tomorrow, going to bed to catch up on sleep, I won't say how long I slept last night...

Lost and away

2007-04-12T23:50:00.000-04:00

I'm still sort of lost in major/minors and everything, I know that my new major (even if it is not official on my file yet) is the right one, but i'm thinking about a minor in Earth and planetary sciences or atmospheric and oceanic sciences, but with the stupid 30 credits rule (can't do more than 30 credits outside the faculty), well it doesn't work (I don't like those regulations!) 18 for the minor and a bunch of other for the complementary courses of my major (that I want to take in the faculty of Sciences, the ones offered in my current faculty aren't that great), and it is more than 30... that means that I would have to change faculty, to go to Science (but the major is given by both faculties, which is great) and than I should be okay with regulations and everything.... I'll talk with my adviser next week, maybe that doing a minor isn't such a good idea... At least, inter-faculty deadlines are in June!

And I shouldn't be posting a lot for the next 2 weeks and a half, finals are starting (Monday for me), and 3 finals in 3 days is great because it gives me a week to study, but at the same time I don't like it... so I'll be reading but not writing a lot here until the 26-27...

And I hope the Spring will be back soon, what was going on in Montreal today with all that snow? During the 4 hours that I spent in the library, a lot of snow accumulated on the roof of the FDA building (I was sitting right in front of a window and I could see the campus, it was great)... last week a guy came to school wearing shorts and today, I should have wear boots rather than Adidas shoes.

?

2007-04-10T21:15:00.000-04:00

Have a question (again, I know!). At the end of the last class of your semester when you were in school, did you applause, or do you? Last lecture with that teacher for this semester, something special? I asked my brother and he said that in his classes, teachers have to be really good, excellent teachers for it to happen, but he is going to a French speaking university and I realized that English 'speaking' universities are different than French ones. But in my classes, we do it most of the time. Except that we forgot this morning, the class ended up with teachers giving back assignments, so some people left before others, but most stopped and thanked the teachers (but we were about 20 in the class this morning). What about you?

Interesting...

2007-04-09T20:40:00.000-04:00

I found that on Youtube... I like the way that they go from one subject to another...

You're from Montréal when...

2007-04-09T19:06:00.000-04:00

I saw that on Facebook the other day, and some of these are so true, but there are some that I don't quite understand or that I don't agree with, I'm not a real Montrealer I guess... so here it is

You pronounce it "Muntreal", not "Mahntreal".- I hate it when people say Mahtreal! (in French)
You have ever said anything like "I have to stop at the guichet before we get to the dep." - My English teacher in cégep told us that Anglophone from Montreal can use a lot of French words : autoroute = highways, dep = convenience store, guichet = ATM machine...
Your only concern about jaywalking is getting a ticket.
You understand and frequently use terms like 'unilingual,' 'anglophone,','francophone
,' and 'allophone.'
You agree that Montreal drivers are crazy, but you're secretly proud of their nerves of steel.
The most exciting thing about the South Shore is that you can turn right on a red.
You know that the West Island is not a separate geographical formation. - it is just really far from the Downtown area
In moments of paranoia, you think that there's no red line on the Metro because red is a federalist colour. - Blue, orange, yellow and green...
You have to bring smoked meat from Schwartz's and bagels from St-Viateur if you're visiting anyone west of Cornwall.
You refer to Tremblant as "up North."
You know how to pronounce Pie IX. - Pie has to be pronounced the French way and IX has to be said in French : neuf
You have an ancient auntie who still says "Saint Dennis."
You believe to the depth of your very being that Toronto has no soul- but your high school reunion is held in Toronto because most of your classmates live there now. - NO!
You greet everyone, from lifelong bosom friends to some one you met once a few years ago, with a two-cheek kiss.- Can be a problem when you meet your family living in the States, one kiss, not two like here... I'd say that it was sort of funny.
You know at least one person who works for the CBC, and at least one other person who used to work for Nortel.
You're not impressed with hardwood floors. - It simply means that you are living in an old apartment building and they make noise when you walk.
You've been hearing Celine Dion jokes longer than anyone else.
You can watch soft-core porn on broadcast TV, and this has been true for at least 25 years.
You cringe when Bob Cole pronounces French hockey player names.
You get Bowser & Blue.
You were drinking cafe-au-lait before it was latte.
You order fries 'with sauce', not 'with gravy'. - No, poutine!
Shopper's Drug Mart is Pharmaprix and Staples is Bureau en Gros, and PFK is finger lickin' good. - I was sort of lost when I went to Toronto... What is Shopper's Drug Mart? Oh and PFK (Poulet Frit Kentuvky) = KFC
You really believe Just For Laughs is an international festival.
For two weeks a year, you are a jazz afficianado. - Thanks to the Jazz Fest
You need to be reminded by prominent signage that you should wait for the green light.
Everyone on the street - drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists - think they're immortal, and that you'll move first.
You're proud that Montreal is the home of Pierre Trudeau, Mordechai Richler, William Shatner, Leonard Cohen and the Great Antonio...and, you consider Donald Sutherland (and by default, Keifer), Guy Lafleur, Charlie Biddle, and Roch Carrier Montrealers, too.
You know that Rocket Richard had nothing to do with astrophysics.
You know the apocryphal story of the fat lady at Eaton's.
You miss apostrophes.
You've seen Brother Andre's heart.
No matter how bilingual you are, you still don't understand "ile aux tourtes."
You know the difference between the SQ, the SAQ, and the SAAQ. - Those are quite different!
You measure temperature and distance in metric, but weight and height in Imperial measure. - True, for someone's weight and height : Imperial measure, but don't talk about miles and and Fahrenheit (aka the F-Word for some of my teachers)
You show up at a party at 11 p.m. and no one else is there yet.
April Wine once played your high school (alternatively, Sass Jordon or Gowan).
You know that Montreal is responsible for introducing the following to North America: bagels, souvlaki, smoked meat and Supertramp. Also, Chris de Burgh.
You don't drink pop or soda, you drink soft drinks.
You have graduated from high school and have a degree, but you've never been in grade 12. - Thanks to our education system, and no Freshman year in university!
The margarine in your fridge is the same colour as lard.
Every once in a while, you wonder whatever happened to Luba.
You never thought that Corey Hart was cool, but you know someone whose cousin or something dated him.
There has to be at least 30 cm of snow on the ground in less than 24 hours for you to consider it too snowy to drive.
You remember where you were during the Ice Storm.
You used to be an Expos fan, but now all you really miss is Youppi.
You're a Habs fan; always was, always will be...
You know that your city's reputation for beautiful women is based on centuries-old couplings between French soldiers and royally-commissioned whores (aka Les Filles du Roi).
You don't understand anyone from Lac-St-Jean, but you can fake the accent. - Hard to fake and hard to understand too!
You've been to the Tam Tams, and know they have nothing to do with wee Scottish hats.
You discuss potholes like most people discuss weather. Nids de poules (Chicken Nest) I HATE those! They are all over the province
You encounter bilingual homeless people. - True
While watching an American made-for-TV movie, you realize that "Vienna" is actually Old Montreal, that "New York" is actually downtown and that the "The Futuristic City" is actually Habitat '67.
You find it amusing when people from outside Quebec compliment you on >how good your English is.
You have yet to understand a single announcement made on the Metro PA system, no matter what the language.- It's getting better, they changed the announcements, the voice is easier to understand, but I love how the lady says some stations' name.
You think of Old Montreal as nothing but a bunch of over-priced restaurants, old buildings and badly paved streets. - No, it's nice
You understand that La Fete Nationale is not a celebration of "Quebec's birthday". - A lot of people think that it is a good reason to get drunk...
You don't find American comedians speaking "gibberish" French even remotely funny.
You like your pizza all dressed.
You don't find it weird that there's a strip club on every corner downtown. - Sainte-Catherine Street!

Chicken or... dog?

2007-04-08T21:17:00.000-04:00

Really, when my brother sent me that link, i couldn't stop laughing... sorry, I can't post the video itself here, but just take a look!

How technology changed our life

2007-04-08T20:43:00.000-04:00

Obvious, I know! I was looking at some class notes on my laptop over the weekend and my grandma asked me what I was doing : “oh, just re-organizing some class notes, I don’t like the way that the teacher presented it”. And her reaction was funny: “What, you have your class notes on your computer?”

- Well, of course I do, and it is not my notes, it is the notes of my teacher
- What?
- Look, here is what one of my teachers presented few weeks ago (I opened a powerpoint presentation that I downloaded)
- And you have it?
- Of course, it makes classes “easier” (the powerpoints mostly consist of graphs, movies and pictures and yes, text)
- You don’t take notes?
- Yes I do, but not that much, I listen a lot more
- It changed so much

Yes it did, just that video of the formation of the moon and the proto-Earth, really cool, way easier to understand than to read a textbook, the video is a little bit long, but I loved the fact that the music was sort of driving the teacher crazy during the class. But I know that I’m lucky and that in science teachers use presentations and internet. And just e-mails, I love the fact that teachers are using it! It makes our life so much easier (my grandma would be dumbfounded if I would tell her that, she still doesn’t understand what I’m majoring in!).

Anyways, because Barbara really seems to love “Toune d’automne”, I roughly translated the lyrics, so here it is… (but I don't totally like this version, I have the feeling that it still sounds French, but it gives the general idea)

How are you doing, you my little sister?
Come over here, I will hold you
So, did you find happiness during your trip across Canada?
This year, around here, nothing much happened
It’s a little bit dull

I hope that, at least, you enjoyed it
I’m happy that you didn’t bring back
A brother in law from Alberta
I would have been shocked

Anyways, I’m happy to see you
You’re coming back home as the same time as Fall is coming here
You know sweetie (honey?), I was sad when you left

Here, daddy had a little surgery
You should have seen him, he was faking, we had to take care of him (a lot!)
And mommy was scared all year long, just because of you

And I decided to stop doing nothing
I’m going to university
We’ll see what I’ll do
But you know how I am, I’m not really motivated, but this isn’t new

Anyways, I’m happy to see you
You’re coming back home as the same time as Fall is coming here
You know sweetie (honey?), I was sad when you left

I saw Simon last month
He didn’t look so good
He told me that you didn’t call him
Since his birthday in February
If you don’t love him anymore, you should tell him
He is a good guy

And you, my little sister
Are you still lost?
Are you still living in the dark, not knowing what you’ll do?
Or do you know what you’ll do with your life?
You know, life can be hard, life is full of time that are rougher than others
But don’t worry about that

Anyways, I’m happy to see you
You’re coming back home as the same time as Fall is coming here
You know sweetie (honey?), I was sad when you left

Anyways, I’m happy to see you
You’re coming back home as the same time as Fall is coming here

I've been tagged

2007-04-05T17:46:00.000-04:00

First of all, I want to warn you that my iTunes is loaded with songs that I don’t really listen…

1. How does the world see me? Psycho Bug - M - Psycho Bug, really? Well, interesting...
2. Will I have a happy life? Dedicated to the one I love – the Mamas and the Papas - Does it mean happiness? And I have a question, who is the one that I love and that I am supposed to be dedicated to? Can somebody help me, I mean if I'm supposed to be happy with that person, I should try to find him!
3. What do my friends really think of me? Anthem of our dying day – Story of the year - Okay, I see it as being negative but, who knows?
4. Do people secretly lust after me? I’m cramped – the cramps - okay...
5. How can I make myself happy? B who u wanna b – clan of xymox - Well, that's a good advice, I'm not a fan of Clan of Xymox, but this is a good title to answer that question!
6. What should I do with my life? Strange love – depeche mode - Oh really, okay then, isn't love coming quite often and those answers?
7. Will I ever have children? Petit Jésus – Indochine - WHAT? Euh, hum, ok, i don't get that one, little Jesus... I don't want a little Jesus! (by the way, do i want children???)
8. What is some good advice for me? Goodbye my lover – James Blunt - Sorry Barb, James Blunt is on my iTunes... but i don't listen that cd, I heard that too many times, but goodbye my lover? I don't even have one...
9. How will I be remembered? Summer Skin – Death Cab For Cutie - Summer skin...
10. What is my signature dancing song? I’m set free – The Velvet Underground
11. What do I think my current theme song is? Mighty – The Planet Smashers - It's a happy song and recently, I've been really happy, so it's okay
12. What does everyone else think my current theme song is? Who are you, defenders of the universe – the dears - lol, I'm I a defender of the universe? I like the Earth, but what?
13. What song will play at my funeral? The becoming – Nine Inch Nails - Nine Inch Nails, really? interesting... it won't give up it wants me dead / goddamn this noise inside my head,
14. What type of women/men do I like? Cheating on you – Franz Ferdinand - Crap!
15. What is my day going to be like? Forever Texas – Robbie Williams - A) I haven't listen to that cd for many years but B) my day was like that, well sort of, Texas = oil industries (sort of) and it was part of my day in a discussion in class, so maybe...
16. Will I ever have love again? Talulla - Indochine - Indochine, again? The lyrics are simplistic and once again, it is about love...
17. What type of sex life do I have? I got a feeling – The Beatles
18. What song would be the title of my own porno movie? Ça me va – Corneille - It is not a good title, I'm telling you!

So, weirdly enough, 4 songs out of 14 are in French, but most of the songs on my iTunes are not in French, most of them are in English! And because Indochine appeared there twice, well, I'll have to post some songs...

And realy good news! i have the apartment!!!!! well my friend is trying to convince me to live with her, but i don't want, i don't want to live 3 in a 2 bedrooms apartment!

I’m singing in the rain

2007-04-04T23:54:00.000-04:00

Well, not really! However good news, the guy that I met is really cool/nice, he works for one of my teachers and my adviser (ie, I think that I can trust him as a roommate). So, I should have the apartment, I’m waiting an e-mail!

But then, I’m stupid and by that I mean really stupid. I forgot to set up my alarm last night, just my cell phone, which isn’t enough, it doesn’t wake me up! So at 7:41 am, I opened my eyes and thought; “Nice, it’s Saturday!”… then, read that sentence as fast as you possibly can, my brain was fully working “Crap, it is NOT Saturday, you have class at 9:35am, should be in the subway in 4 minutes and the last rush hour bus leaves at 8:21am and you can’t miss it, otherwise you WILL be late for your 50 minutes class!!!!”. I don’t know how I did that but 15 minutes later, I was waiting in the subway station, okay, my lunch was ready and my backpack too, but even : I was wearing my contact lenses, I wasn’t wearing a pyjama (well, my socks were not matching!), wasn’t wearing clothes fully appropriate for the weather (I’ll come back to that later), but was at school on time (and got stuck in traffic) and my hair looked okay (luckily, when i woke up my hair already looked ok)! And I had a bagel in my backpack, so i wouldn't be starving!

It was pouring rain all day long, mixed with snow and ice rain, well just crappy weather, Barbara, I understand your pain! So my Gortex coat wasn’t warm enough, no scarf, no gloves, no tuque, it was a little bit cold! And my umbrella, well let’s just say that I broke it and it became useless… at least my maybe future roommate offered me a ride back to school, he was going there to bring back one of the cars of the university!

Crazy day folks… and with all that, I forgot the assignment that is due tomorrow, but it is an easy one (finally!), about oil and petroleum and production peak… easier than oxidation and mass extinction!

What to do?

2007-04-03T16:30:00.000-04:00

Guys, I need your help... I'm looking for an apartment, and because a friend said that she is looking for one, we are/were trying to find somewhere where both of us could live, but then, everything is more expensive than rez (which means, too expensive, and honestly, it is what an apartment costs here in Montreal!) and she doesn't want to have to take the bus, and isn't that sure that she wants to move out of rez because it is more expensive (and she just realized it!).... so I looked at the "roomate wanted" adds and found something, but just for me.... I'll probably visit the place tomorrow, it is amazingly close to the campus, and is about the same price as what I'm currently paying.... would it be really mean to tell to my friend that I changed my mind and I'm not moving with her? Because cégep students just received letters from universities and now there is less and less apartments available....