Freedom of expression

I think every country has its fair share of nice people and not so nice people. I hate to think that some geographic region in the world has a higher concentration of either. But, most days I am amazed at what a high concentration of really nice people Montreal has, like this time this guy that I had asked for directions, got off the bus and came looking for me because I got off the wrong stop or this other time when this woman I had asked for directions saw me cringe my gloveless fingers in the cold and took off her own gloves and asked me to wear them till we got to the metro.

But somedays Montreal saddens me like this (this from the #30 bus that I take every day)-



I have known people, from a particular region of the world (that shall remain nameless here), express their angry views about the suppression of free speech in the United States, the suppression as in 'you can not say anything against black people. you know what that does? it makes people stew inside and one day it is going to burst open and it ain't gonna be pretty' they said. In their opinion the solution, to allow hate speech.... hmmm hmmm hmmmm.... If someone has some hateful thought, shouldn't we consider *that* a problem and see how we can erradicate such thoughts? Me thinks, the solution to that problem ain't letting them express themselves... Thank goodness most people in the world think like I do...

cold and dull and boring...

Yep, it is winter in this part of the world.... Montreal, like Minneapolis, is quite sunny despite. But somedays are pretty gloomy... I could not stand it anymore - got some cheery little plants for myself. I have always thought flowering plants are so uncool, till I started living in these northern winters...

These are gonna be my babies, since I think I am not getting Max after all :(

la defile du Pere Noel

the procession of Father Christmas

Christmas... probably the only time of the year that I don't go like, "why couldn't my parents be like Jason' parents and not baptize me and allow me to chose when I understood?"... the one time, that I am secretly happy that I was brought up with a Christian concept... oh wait, Christmas, or most of Christmas that I get all nostalgic about, is actually pagan tradition.... That's good to remember, as this Christmas, my first ever with a place of my own, I contemplate if I should get a Christmas tree or not... Is it ok, to cut a tree for just a month? But they're farmed trees... hmmm... Life's persisting questions... And no, I will not get an artificial tree, no way, no how... real tree or no tree...

These cheesy Christmas parades always make me very nostalgic. I try to analyse what it is that makes it so... Is it remembering a fun childhood? Is it natural human tendancy to romanticize the past? Is it watching happy people, people, who just for today, put aside their worries to be happy? Either way. you can bet there will be at least one weird person with tears rolling down her cheeks, as Santa rolls along... ho ho ho....

hey they even had a float with many flags, and it didn't have a Quebec flag!!!?? Ah yes, Quebec is not a country, yet...

Another enthusiastic parent, and the kid could barely keep his eyes open...

singing those Christmas carols that I love...

And a float from the Montreal firefighters. Where do they find these cute cute cute kids' fireman suits?

Home... I used to call it that...

It was so fun and nostalgic going back to see the place that was my home for almost 7 years... But as I have often concluded, "the past was great, but I am glad for where I am right now". And may be it is the gypsy in me, but I feel that no place was great enough that I did not want to leave... I do get a little tired though of re-investing all that time and energy in building new and meaningful friendships, thus I cling to the few close friends from the past.

So put me on a highway
Show me a sign
And take it to the limit one more time
- Eagles, in Take It to the Limit One More Time

May be some day, someone or someplace will show me magic and I will stay...

I got started and wrote some of my thesis in this non-profit coffeshop, bodertown cafe, near school. And once I played chess here with a friend...

It was fun going back and recounting lots of very happy memories and even a few not so happy ones and know that I survived; but it's good to be back.

There is, after all, no place like home! :)

They said this day would never come...

they said.. they said ... they said this day would never come... they said our sights were set too high...
- Barack Obama, Jan 03, 2008 (after winning the Iowa caucus)

and tonight the people who were not afraid to dream, just because of the possibility that their dream will be shattered, had their dreams come true.... Regardless of the fact that the US is not a country run by just one individual (and thank goodness for that!), history was made today!! Not just for Americans, but for the whole world - for countries like mine, who can now look into themselves and try to see more than is visible to the naked eye.

Montreal went more gaga over Obama tonight, than it did over their own elections a couple weeks ago... who can blame them...

Ok, now this is cheesy - but I got to put a part of Obama's victory speech here. It would be incomplete a blog entry, if I don't, in a night that saw two beautiful speeches; in McCain's, the old man of principles (even though not necessarily principles that I agreed with), before the fierce campaign turned him into a election puppet, came through...

But no one beats the oratory skills of Obama, specially when he uses the "creed of the American people" - "yes we can" :

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my mind tonight's about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She's a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons -- because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America -- the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs, a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that "We Shall Overcome." Yes we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination.

And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.

Yes we can.

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves -- if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment.

This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.

- Barack Obama, Nov 04th, 2008, in his victory speech of the presidential elections

a bus for myself

Most days I am the only one taking bus #30 for the last 8-10 blocks. There have been times that the driver did not see me, thought no one was in the bus and turned the other way; a couple times the driver has yelled at me "ou allez-vous ? Est-ce que je aller a gauche ou a droite?" to have me emerge from my own little dream bubble and say in my broken French "I get off at the last stop". They must just love me... the very last stop...!!!

But a couple times this has led to some chit chatting with the driver, hey one driver even asked me "are you from Sri Lanka?"!!!! whoa whoa whoa.... I come from a place where some people asked "are you from India?" and when I said I was from Sri Lanka didn't even know where that was... well, this, is truly a cosmopolitan city...

Pride of Quebec

Hôtel du Parlement (House of Parliment), Quebec City, the oldest "European" settlement in North America standing at a mere 400 years, with the Quebec flag flying high and mighty at the top there!

The word "European" goes inside quotes, because it is often an omitted word and in an attempt to differ from the recent comments of McGill University chancellor (who btw has a great name!!)-

"We must not forget that 400 years ago, Canada was a land of savages, with scarcely 10,000 inhabitants of European origin, while in China, we're talking about a 5,000-year-old civilization." — Dick Pound, McGill Chancellor and former vice president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC)

and a half-assed apology that followed - "but, sauvage in French has different meaning than savage in English"... hmmm the last time I checked McGill is a very English language university... and my m-w French-English dictionary says "Sauvage = savage, wild, unsocial, shy"... I will stop now on that...

But, that was a tangent... what I really was thinking when I took this picture was this:

So this Quebecois guy in school (that I don't have to work much... phew!!) was on a roll with this rant against the Federal government (no, I know, that's not news). And among the many things he says to me there's also,

the Federal government just opens the door to all sorts of immigrants. What happens when non-French speaking immigrants come here? The slowly turn this also into a non-French speaking place. We don't mind if they come in a and assimilate; see if they want they can do their cultural thing inside their homes, but otherwise they should learn the French language and promote the French culture. See if we separate from Canada we can have our own rules about who we allow in here and what we do with the people that come

Huh??????? Now I ain't no immigrant, but as an expatriate I am closest to the immigrants I think. What bothers me is not so much that he thinks so, but that he tells *me* this and expects me to agree. It's like the Caucasian Minnesotan woman who once told me about 'some professor getting married to a *little brown thing*'!!! What goes on through these people's heads when they say these? Are they just not seeing me as a 'little brown thing'/immigrant/outsider or are they just plain KKK-like?

The Quebecois finishes off with "you know Quebecois are really nice people" to which I smile wearily. By this time he is totally eating his foot, so like people who try to dig themselves out so often dig them themslves deeper, he says, "I challenge you to find nicer people in the rest of Canada"... and I am like "errr... yeah, now that you have told me how unwelcome I am and how I should learn French and cook French and if I want to do Sri Lankan stuff I could do it withing the confinement in my own home, yeah it's gonna be pretty hard to beat that level of niceness".

In general just this Gaussian tail Quebecois does not define Quebec for me. Just like the American who said after 9/11 "I know these kinds of things (bombing) happens in the rest of the world, but this is America" did not define the US for me. In many ways I met some really nice and open minded, sometimes more so than some people back in Sri Lanka, Minnesotans. Just like that, out of all the Quebecois I met just this one, and may I add just this time, expressed such racist remarks to me. In Montreal, actually I felt way more welcome that I initially did in Minnesota. It would be a just a bit unfair for me forget all those extremely nice and warm people in favour of this guy.

And then last Wednesday there was this -

Future immigrants to Quebec will be required to sign a declaration promising to learn French and respect Quebec's "shared values," the government announced on Wednesday.
- National Post, Oct 29, 2008

Hmmmm... who will suffer if Quebec curtails immigrants like this? In the recent past most Physics Nobel prizes have gone to the US, but it is often so that these physicists were not born or even educated in the US. The US is the country it is today because of its attitude towards immigrants, these days; an attitude which is different from the days of Ellis Island immigrants. I am not saying the US does not have racism, and yes, it does have a long way to go. But I can't help but think that it is far far ahead of pretty much all the other countries, certainly ahead of Sri Lanka. People say Europe is open minded, but where is the Barack Obama, Condoleezza Rice, Alberto Gonzales, Powell etc of Europe? Not that they were all great people, but still...

This is a joker document that the Quebec government is going to get people to sign. So they are gonna give the immigrants free French language/culture classes. But what are they seriously gonna do if they don't adhere to this French culture after they immigrate? Ah yes... lynch them... I forgot...

To clarify, I am actually one of those people who likes to absorb new cultures and ways. I cook a variety of cuisine - seldom is it that I make Sri Lankan. I am dead serious about learning French and so on... But it is an individual choice I make... I don't want these forced down my throat - it will only make me rebel. Yes, so this means that I should ramp up my French learning... pretty soon I am going to resist learning it...

If a culture is dying, why should we hang on to it and artificially keep it going? Imagine if we had dinosaurs walking among us in 2008!!!

This picture, a beautiful building shrouded in darkness, even though the sun is right behind it, very nicely captured my thoughts of the past week. You can see a rainbow though - the famous 22 degree halo...