OMG they mentioned MN...

They had this poster in the Montreal Port Open House exhibit that mentioned MN... I was sooooo excited.... even though it talked about MN mine filelds. Hey but I was part of one of those mines, so....

Oh I should say, the other day I had some Montreallers over at my place, and I have all these Minneapolis pictures on my walls. They were quite surprised that Minneapolis was such an urban place... yes, that's right Montreallers, Minneapolis does have roads and bridges.... and tall buildings...

People blame Americans for being ignorant, which most of them are. But the rest of the world is not much different. My brother brought up a fine point the other day. You can not expect people who don't have enough to eat to know about Kazakhstan, he said, so you can not use that against poor countries. So yes, they are excused, but the last time I checked, Canada was a developed country, so.... Ignorant Americans, ignorant Canadians, ignorant Brits,... all the same to me....

Montreal Port Open House

The Montreal Port had an open house today. I couldn't actually make it in time to do their wonderful inside tours, but I did get to see this exhibit.

Every year, the port makes a brand new one of these Gold Headed Canes to give the captain of the the first ship of the year that makes it all the way in to the harbour without stopping. Yes it is real 14kt gold (in Sri Lanka 14kt gold is *not* real gold!!! It is the 22kt one that is the "real" one!!). It used to be about April or May when the first ship would make it, without stopping, but technology has allowed for quick ice removal that now a days, within hours of dawn of the new year, this cane is awarded to some captain.

It takes so many other people who work at the harbour to have a ship make it through the icy waters; in reality the captain seems like the one who should be least credited with this feat; but like so many things in life, it is the brass that gets credit!!

Quebecois car!

She, let's call her Gisele, :) is not Minnesotan any more...

From Arizona she came to me and now I brought her here to Canada - interesting VIN history it must read... And she's seen so much, may be all, of me - I should have dedicated my thesis to her... :))

Quebec Microbreweries

Quebec has a whole bunch of micro-breweries and they brew very good beer. Alchimiste is one that this guy at school raved about (not because it was from his home town he said!!), I haven't had that yet - I need to find a place that they sell this in Montreal.

Inefficiency!

More than half a day spent just to transfer my MN driver's license to a Montreal one! It only took me less than 2 hrs to do the road test and get a brand new license in MN.

Half a day spent opening a simple checking account in Montreal! Took me 10 min.s to open a checking account in MN.

Americans totally got their efficiency part down.

Canada, ok let me not speak for all of Canada - but Montreal takes forever to get the simplest thing done, really! On top of it most place don't have any literature in English! Who said Montreal is bi-lingual!? Like the time when I went to the SAAQ, I was told it takes so much time because they have to call MN to get my record and there aren't a lot of people in Quebec who speak English!!

The bank was however, a co-op bank. That's the price you have to pay for being socially conscious! But then in MN I was with a co-op credit union for my car loan and that whole process took less than half a day!

It just drives me nuts how slow things are.

Ah, but I must say when we were in LA, it took forever for a simple thing like a vehicle check. So may be it is a big city thing...

Kill a Cop

A man sits and a bicyclist goes pass a sign next to a bustling metro station, Jean Talon, that says, "Kill a Cop".

What does this mean - if it has some hidden Montreal meaning I do not now. But I thought may be it really was either someone expressing their frustration or mocking the cops.

Now I might be totally wrong, but it reminded me of the recent riots in North Montreal. These cops try to arrest a known criminal in a park and the guy's brother jumps in the scene, something happens and one cop shoots the brother, yeah you guessed it, fatally!! So the whole neighborhood riots; they torch down a couple cop and other cars etc.

There is an investigation, so we don't know what happened. But I heard that the kid jumped on one of the cops and held her down - what was her partner supposed to do? Apparently, fire warning shots... yeah right...

Now don't get me wrong, I ain't no fan of the cops. I got too many traffic tickets and sometimes they come with an attitude and yes some times I feel like they behave as big bullies, even though I don't have much evidence to this effect - other than the fact that every time I got a ticket they didn't seem too nice, but then I had sped, so...

But come on people! Cut the guys some slack! They got accused of racial profiling and the big chiefs came out and said they were doing everything possible to look in to it and sent the cop on mandatory leave and they are doing all these training sessions etc to increase racial awareness. This is a good thing, racial awareness is never a done deal; you have to keep improving on it. But seriously, to confuse self defense with racial profiling??? What a circus!!

Still, wall art, even when it says 'kill a cop', is beautiful and is an earnest expression of the beat of a city I think...

7000 ft underground!

I was at SNOLab. Actually I didn't get to go to the lab, it was the mine training, so I went to the mine, which as luck had it, was even deeper than the lab level. We donned the full miners' suits, complete with coverall, hard hat with light, radio, steel toed boots etc and went 7000ft (yes seven thousand feet) underground. It was beyond cool really! The Vale Inco's Creighton nickel mine is an active mine, so we got to go with real miners. Amazing... The miners themselves, reminded me of those in my old experiment, back in Soudan, the way they talk, their laid backness etc.

Oh I did have a foot in the mouth situation with one of the miners: so the miner who led the training told me when I asked that there are ~4-5 serious accidents a year in that mine. So when I was talking to another miner later, I asked 'so this is a pretty safe mine, eh?'. He somewhat hesitatntly said, yes. I then go like 'you don't seem to be convinced, has anyone you know being injured?' and he says 'yes, several'. 'Badly?' I ask (like a dork) and he's like 'err... they're not on wheel chairs, so I guess it's ok'. Dang dang dang indeed.. I felt so bad... like I somehow trivialized these accidents so long as someone didn't die. When I thought about it later, I would have been ok if there were like 2 fatalities a year. This not because I think it's ok for people to die, but because I think mining is a pretty dangerous bussiness and 2 ppl dying a year seems ok. Having said that I do understand that if it was one of my friends that dies, just one a year would have been too much for me... So my thinking is skewed like that... but I swear I didn't mean it as bad as it sounded!

But the miners were nice to us overall. They said I could bring visitors down there - so when are you guys coming over?

Oh this bitchy security guard scared the life out of me by taking away my camera the first day, so I dared not take the camera to the mine the other days. So you will have to take my word for it, it was indeed pretty cool.

The whole trip turned out to be a nice experience, contrary to the first day. Well nothing like putting 3 strangers in a little car for 8 hrs! And I do still stand by my first thought from when the 3 of us went to Los Angeles from Minneapolis, 'there's something that binds you close together if you are stuck in a little corolla for 1500 miles and share a room every night for those 1500 miles - it's an experience you will never forget and you will never be the same again with those people'. Even though this was no where that, it was still somewhat a bonding experience.

Pride Fest

So this weekend was the pride fest here in Montreal. I got a good dose of reall cute, and I mean *really cute*, guys and being in Physics for such a long time, I was way past overdue. The parade was called 'Here comes the circus'

 

 

 

 

Of course the Trojans!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh and they were giving out free hugs (not the trojans, but some other cute group of guys), yes I did get one, and in return got this sticker that said 'Non a l'homophobie!'.

Ok, I won't paint no rosy picture here. When two guys in my group said the other day said about the pride parade "I don't understand, do straight people go on parades? And this is so pornographical that people go around half naked". I rolled my eyes, homophobes, I thought. But it was true, there was some (quite a bit of) nakedness, men and women - actually some women were topless. So yes it was a litlle pornographical. But then I'm not sure what the big deal is - it's not like people have not seen these. There were actually quite a few people with their kids, the most notable was this East Asian couple with their 2yr old kid. Wow, I thought, talk about being progressive. And then there is this retirement home on St. Catherine (the road where the pride fest went), they were all on their balconies too. It was a very moving experience to watch these young immigrant couple with their 2 yr old son and these 80yr olds in a retirement home, all , even with the choice of a different life style themselves, came and enjoyed this celebration.

Having said that I must also say, I don't think every gay person participates in a pride fest, most gay people, like the ones in my neighborhood (did I mention I live in the gay village), are just sharing their love and life with someone else, they're not walking the streets half naked. Reminds me of Dan Savage questioning the validity of pride parades as community building events.

Still it was fun to watch 'Here comes the Circus!'

Nerds...

... you can tell them early on... This talkative (with a lot of hand gestures, yes, just like them French) one from the Metro was so adorable. You could tell he wasn't aware what a cute nerd he was: to not be aware of how cute you are, I think, adds the most weight to cuteness...