Indian

Well... I am going to start writing about resto's I go to, just cos these names escape my memory otherwise. Now don't get me wrong, lots of bloggers out there keep dedicated food blogs, resto blogs etc with minute details of what they had and ambiance and all... I am not there... If this ever gets to that stage, I might consider moving this away into a different blog, just to keep my intense personal rantings out...

We were at Maison Indian Curry House, 996, rue Jean-Talon O coin Brinam, H3N 1S8, apparently the best Indian resto in Montreal. On a rainy Thursday expect to wait in line for about 15 min.s to be seated in the 25-30 seater. Small cramped restaurants, usually offer the best ethnic food... I must say the waitress was nice - I mean not above average, but I expected care-less from my experience at 'good crampy ethnic restos'. Ok it really is not crampy - but if you are in for a dress up dinner with plenty of legroom, well this ain't the place to be.

We had Masala Dosa Masoor Hot (that famous crispy Indian crepe with curried potatoes stuffed and a Thali (an assortment of curries in a little silver dish) with lamb curry and Naan and rice, and for appetizer Chat Papri (ever since one of my Indian friends introduced me to this back in Minneapolis, I have always looked for this North Indian saalad with bits of crispy pastry, channa, cilantro, sweet tamarind sauce and mint sauce). The Dosa was very very good, although the masoor is not recommended - too hot for my hardy Sri Lankan palatte even; the Thali and chat papri was very good too, but I have had better. The coconut chutney accompanying my dosa was a little too watery, but the sambaar and other sauces were good.

The two of us were seated at a 4-person table, and the waitress asked if we minded two other people sitting with us, of course we didn't. They turned out to be two Indian guys who made for pleasant conversation, with such characteristic South-Asian-man traits!! But they claimed they come here couple times a week and it is in their mind the best Indian resto in town - so I guess we didn't miss. "How do you like Montreal?" they asked these OMG-I-Love-Montreal us, this Brazilian-Japanese girl and this Sri Lankan me. "oh do you speak French?" "she does very well, but me, not so well" "oh of course if you speak French it's nice, otherwise you feel excluded" and I thought "but did you assholes try to seek out someone outside your very Indian circle?" but I was in a super happy mood, one of those moods when all your analities (I know it's not a word) seem not so important, so asked it in a more polite language; of course they hadn't and they were not going to anytime soon!!! There are people like Jacob Tierney who tried and were excluded, but people like these two Indians actually dampen the effect of issues like Tierney's.

Sort of reminded me of my hotel de glace episode that I wrote about earlier this year. When I started teaching in Minnesota, one of my mentors said "Students are like dogs, if you fear them they will sense it and bite". I think it is true for people in general.

Super cheap $23 with tip for two!!

Introverts

Ok... so don't freak out about the image... like all very red, blurry images in this blog, this too comes from my phone...

So... did I ever get to recount that I slept with a stranger, who was also a girl? And before our adult minds wonder into that beyond innocence (I use the term very loosely), I meant to say I slept in the same room with a stranger who was a girl, and we slept on two separate beds! there!

On my way to Sri Lanka this time I was stranded in NYC, for 24 freaking hours. This whole episode later earned me a $300 voucher from AA. But (isn't there always a but), that night itself was like Murphy decided to come a knocking on my door. So when I missed my flight close to midnight all counters were closed... when they finally re-opened the next day at 4am I had found another girl, Quebecois, who also happened to be going to SL via Doha... AA gave us each one night's hotel stay... but when we showed up at the hotel at 5am, the receptionist goes "well you have one night's board, you have to check out by 11am.". This other girl, in a moment of extreme genius, that I would not have thought of for the love of my life said "well I will use my voucher for one night and get a double room so you can stay with me; then at 11, you can use yours and do the same". Of course I said yes... and I must admit, I was prepared to share a bed, so to get two beds was a luxury to me!! And so we rested well and embarked on our new flight the next day...

My mom always says, "everything happens for a reason" and everytime we roll our eyes... But every time things do happen for a reason, I think of my mother's words of wisdom... If I had to go back, I would miss that flight again, and be screwed all over again by AA... She is a cool person to know... I mean I don't know *any* North American or European... no wait I don't know any non-Sri Lankan, with no ties to Sri Lanka, who has gone to Sri Lanka for volunteer work. I know a few North Americans who go to South and Central America... but really going to South Asia is a different challenge, harder at many levels. I know a couple people who went to South East Asia for volunteer work for the Cambodian war, but they did so when they were older and they did so with a whole bunch of other people from their country... This girl was 23 and she went alone!!

Back in Sri Lanka, she and I hung out, I introduced her to my brother and his girlfriend. She was there for an internship (but with no pay), but I thought it'd be nice for her to know a few locals; she already stayed with a local, who was once her classmate, but he was leaving the country soon.

We met for beer today at Vice Versa. We both had Clé des Champs from le Brasseurs et Frères (highly recommended beer blanche, if you are into that German wheat beer btw). But really the point of this post is not to tell you of the beer... and sorry for the long prelude, but it was necessary...

At some point the overall cheery she said "it was a little hard in Sri Lanka; I would go to my apartment after work and have nothing to do... I would just sit alone by myself"... I immediately apologized for my introvert brother and his girlfriend. She protested profusely - no one wants to be patronized. But so she would not think I was patronizing her, which I really wasn't, I recounted a party that I went to here, comprising entirely of francophones... and out of about 20 people, exactly four people made an effort to include me by talking to me, and they spoke mostly French. Later as I lamented the situation, I was told that the others didn't speak to me because they were shy as their English wasn't good, and lately I have decided this was in fact the main reason I was left out; after all Quebecois can be a little over sensitive to their English language capabilities and I guess like everywhere in the world it's been beaten into them that if they have an accent it is not good English, no matter how perfect the grammar might be. But on the other hand the 4 people who tried to include me, did talk to me in French mostly. But like I said at that time, "maybe they were shy to speak to me... but what they didn't realize was how much more shy I was that night".

Calling on all introverts: if your thought process permits you, please think about the one odd fish amongst you and speak to them. They'd be happy that you did, and maybe, just maybe so will you. In the very off case they turn out to be a bitch or an asshole, you still got nothing to lose - you walk away, and never set eyes on them ever again... Does it really matter what some bitch out there whose path you can very well keep out of, thinks about you? No! And no it also is not worth it, to punish the majority who clearly aren't like that... in my opinion!! :)

Divers/Cité 2010

Divers/Cité, the gay festival of Montreal, is not just about condom stands and two studs dressed in tight underwear next to a bed with the slogan 'jump in bed with pump'... it is also about music and art and just plain having fun.

But the drag queens from Cabaret Mado, I recognised all of them (is it disturbing that I am aquainted with drag queens on a first name basis? *wink* - ok I don't know their first names, but I recognized them alright!), were standing next to the adult video store with a hunk for a DJ!!! Oh why oh why oh why are all the lookers gay?

The bumble bees were running upto random passers by and hugging them and all. This one guy, another hunk, topless, stopped, with his boy friend. One bee ran upto him, unbuttoned the hunk's shorts, unzipped his fly, and made a disappointed face, put his hand inside, jerked off the hunk a few times, and zipped him up with a satisfied look. Oh yeah now he was alright, even I could tell from 20ft away!! :) The hunk and his boyfriend walked away, the boyfriend wasn't too happy obviously, but he did not throw a fit, not atleast right there!

And I wondered, what would happen if some random person walked up to my boyfriend and jerked him off? I like to think I am open-minded enough to let it go as a joke... But I am not sure reality will be that!

The next day one of my less than open-minded friends were going on a racist rampage on the Japanese people... oh he knew these for facts he said, one of his friends lived there for a couple months and she told him all these!!!! I had to tell them this jerk-off story and I said, had I been a tourist seen this would I had imagined that Montreal is one of those cities that people get jerked off by bumble bee drag queens in public? And I reminded him, for the more than 2yrs I lived in Montreal, it the only time I saw that, and it would be a little unfair for a tourist to assume that this is standard practice in Montreal. Reminds me of something I once wrote to one of my stereo-typing but well traveled acquaintances:

The problem with a lot of people today is that they have traveled the world as tourists and then they think they know a country, just because they were tourists there for one month.

Metropolis

Metropolis at Place Des Arts's Wilfred Pelletier theatre, part of the Fantasia 2010 Film Festival... the original silent sci-fi of 1927, with never before seen footage that was discovered in Buenos Aires... The movie itself was so so, but still refreshing to see non-beat-up-hollywood-present style. It was fun to see all the exaggerated facial expressions that was necessary at that time of silent movies.

But what really moved me was Montreal's very own Gabriel Thibaudeau and his 13 piece ensemble. He was just such a genius conductor, apart from using regular conductor moves he also used a whole bunch of other normal human reactions to provoke intensity and emotion of the music; I particularly liked the time, when the striking workers went to attack the heart machine, Thibaudeau put his two hands with outstretched fingers parallel and next to his ears and vibrated them in the air as if in fear and his ensemble responded with eerie music that built in intensity and climaxed with the city flooding. Amazing... it was the first time I saw live music in an orchestra pit, to a silent movie and it sort of gave me an appreciation for the synchronization of the two, live - you can not but help think, ok he's gonna miss this one, he is, he is....

My friend raised the very valid question as to if the movie questioned the validity of unionization and striking in general... Did it? May be...

Sometimes when I go to movies, I cry because the movie itself moved me. Sometimes though it is because I wanted to let it out for something else, but just could not... and yet other times it is just a combination of both...

But way back where I come from
We never mean to bother
We don't like to make our passions other people's concern
And we walk in the world of safe people
And at night we walk in to our houses and burn!
- Dar Williams in Iowa

bistro la cervoise

Bistro La Cervoise, 3976, Ontario est, Montréal

We were going to the Free Concert in Parks series by Orchestra Symphonic du Montreal (OSM) at Parc Olympique and before, we walked on Promenade Ontario and stumbled upon this cool bistro. Very nice ambiance and tasty off-the-beaten-path food. We had bison ribs (Côte levée de sanglier) and some duck crepe (I forgot exactly the name). It was very good. But the ambiance was stellar - red brick lined walls, eclectic orange and yellow decor, lights that I wanted to steal for my apartment and super friendly staff - I even got a coffee for free. They also have some artisanal beer, eventhough we didn't get to try any... I was sleep deprived from last night and didn't want to fall asleep at the concert.

And also, I must mention a word or two about this neighborhood, Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, HoMa. Apart from having a cool name (oh look they put the Native American name before the French name - I have of course written about the great Paul Chomedey, sieur de Maisonneuve, 'founder' of Montreal, whose statue stands tall in the Old Port in front of the Bassilique Notre Dame, with a smaller unnamed-because-they-really-don't-matter-not-now-not-then Iroquois soldier squatting at his feet, right?). So what was I saying now...? right this HoMa neighborhood.

The first I specifically heard about this neighborhood was this one time a friend and I were walking and he told me about the poverty and crime in this hood and when a hobo approached us with a long, sad story - my friend had the patience to listen and afterwards even remarked how perfect and eloquent his French was, "but" he said "these people scare me; I know they are my own people, but they do scare me". Yes of course hobos scare people, so do gays, so do blacks, so do Sri Lankans... poor poor you... But, I have mentioned my inability to to identify with the word "fear"? It comes from my mom - oh and I am not in denial that, this, will someday come to bite me, but I must admit, I have made so many fun discoveries, thanks to this trait.

In fact I have felt very comfortable in this HoMa hood, the unpretentious working class French (ok, that's my romanticism... they are really not poor as they used to be during the era of Michel Tremblay's books) actually comfort me. Every hood in Montreal has its slogan for me - Blvd St Laurent for the shi shi, St Denis for the bling, Plateu for the not-so-hip-anymore-from-tourists'-abuse, Mile-End for the bohemian, Bernard when you want to eat a thin-crust-pizza with arugula, cherry tomatoes and fresh mozzarella and feel infinitely superior to the mere mortals who are dining on a steak on St Denis, Vieux Port for the touristy, and HoMa, when you feel like the materialistic world is sucking you into a lifeless consumerism, to remind you that people are still super nice, and there exists some people who will still stop to take off their gloves and offer them to you as you rub your frozen fingers, that if you really want, you can still be down to earth.

Seeing all the blue fleur-de-lise my friend commented on how very French and hence separatists these people probably are and looked at me as if I would take my bazooka out. Seperation, I have lately come to realize, is not my problem; exclusion is. He went on to say how the waitress's English was really not good, he did have to translate quite a bit; but I hardly made the conclusion that communication was hard, myself. The secret, the waitress smiled, a lot, genuinely...

I know I have quoted this before, but...

As a photographer I have learned that women really do hold up half the sky; that languge isn’t always necessary, but touch usually is; that all people are not alike, but they do mostly have the same hopes and fears; that judging others does great harm but listening to them enriches; that it is impossible to hate a group of people once you get to know one of them as an individual.
- Annie Griffiths Belt, photographer National Geographic

ice cream man

look at this cutesy little icecram man on his bike... well there were two of them on the road in front of my home, leading into the highway, so yes the mighty cars are all lead footed on this stretch and who has time for some quaint little ice cream men right? So some asshole decided he'll honk, cos of course these guys were not going at brealk-neck speeds... Fortunately such impatients are far and few between, in this fair city!

Just Pour Rire

aka Just for Laughs 2010...

What can I say... Some nights in summer I am torn between going to this free concert or that free concert... how can you not love this city... (ironically a year ago the Just Pour Rire 2009 made me think along the same lines). But this time it was even more amazing with the Place de Festival all brand new and ready to host all the free festivals of Montreal. It truly did add to the ambiance. We walked around... couldn't do the sudoku this time, I did it every year.



Look at these beautiful angels and their shadow on the UQAM building...













































And then there was a human canon... yep that tiny red speck making a parabola from one picture to another? that's him... I have worked human canon ball problems countless times in college physics, but it's really the first time I've seen it...