l'salon des métiers d’art du Québec

The French Butter dish from l'alon des métiers d’art du Québec (the fair of the Quebec artisans) and healthy, whole wheat home made from scratch bread... :)

The artisan fair made me think complex thoughts... - to see all these people who make all these cool things that are buyable at Ikea for less than $5. How do they make a living doing these things? Should I support these artisans and thereby artificially sustain their bussiness and hope there would be many more people who'd do the same? But then what will happen if/when the masses flock to Ikea and ignore these artisans? But then I want these bussinesses to sustain - I easily tire off Ikea's generic patterns...

Then there was this guy from rural Quebec who makes these wood board games and he told me all about his games, some games which he himself had designed. But he was selling them for $100 which was full worth the price, but how many times in a person's life time can they shell out $100 for a board game...? I felt soooo soo bad for him...

Anyway, so one of my friends and I were chatting and she goes like 'so how was the artisan fair?' and I expressed my thoughts, to which she said "oh no... don't be sad... you can not save them... you know what I do? I pray to God to take care of them."

Another reason why I think religion should be abolished from the face of the earth - it fosters irresponsibility. People fail to take responsibility for their actions (or inactions as was the case here) and hide behind 'prayers'. I think it is really sweet that some people still believe in God and all, but for all of human history we know that God did not give those artisans' kids food or education...

The few socially concious people (I am not one, I have but a long long way to go before I am socially concious enough to make a difference...), make the existence of such hypocrites even more possible, because by taking action, they allow the hypocrites to be even more hands-off and even proclaim "see, my prayers were answered!!"

This obviously totally blew my lid off, but I did keep it cool, because I work with her and have to do so for at least 1.5 more years. And thus I became one of those many people who timidly keep silent for selfish reasons...

As she in her very sweet way tried to console me, I did say to her though just in one simple sentence, how I wanted to never stop feeling this way.

And that said off we went for beer - having said our prayers, our job here was done... we could rest and enjoy our beers...

The ballet of the snow plows

soooo... since I am constrained to stay at home with a sprained elbow from a fall, not while I was skating in the Old Port's Bonsecours Island skating rink, but while I was returning home; Such is how much de-icing is done in Montreal...

Did I mention that Montreal does not believe in salt - something about the environment or something... eh... They picked the environment over their people!!

I am still holding the mayor and the Ville Marie borough responsible (last year the city paid 0.5 million in compensation to people who slipped on ice... hmmm I can surely use some money...). But I do appreciate the snow plowers task really, for what the city is giving them, I think they do a splendid job.

And I can spend a whole day watching their carefully choreographed ballet.

First come these guys, pushing away the snow.

Then come these guys (there are two of them moving in exact synch), actually removing the snow.

Then these guys clearing more snow, including from the sidewalks.

More pushing snow...

And these tiny guys, who for some reason that I didn't quite get, always move around in pairs, come along and clean the sidewalk. These guys are very cute infact; they sit at the end of the sidewalk waiting for the big guys to go around and then immediately buzz in to action. Sort of like one of those "while the cat's away..." situations.

Several times this guy and another smaller sedan will follow the plows checking to see if the roads a drivable.


And this cycle repeats several times, drowning the whole night in that soothing hum only snow plows can make, lulling us all to sleep, while themselves staying up all night and making sure our tomorrows look fantastic like this :

Snow Removal/Clearing is often a thankless job... But really it is the bureaucracy that gets blamed, not these tireless snow plowers themselves. In any case I do find the whole process quite fascinating, but thought I'll keep my nerdy enthusiasm to myself, when one day one of my friends declared, it was her dream job to drive one of those tiny cute side walk snow plows... and her boyfriend loves watching them snow plows too... Is it any wonder that they are my best friends in Montreal?

Adopt a cat day...

Today I went with a couple of my friends to get a cat for them from a shelter. They had already picked this one by looking online, and as you can see she's not the prettiest kitty in the world... I know it was mostly the girl's choice, and by picking this not so cute kitty, she totally re-wrote herself in my mind.... Wow wow wow.... Talk about not being shallow....

The kitty was sooo curious once we got home, checking out every corner in the apartment... I know in a couple months she'll grow to be the cutest cat ever...

Ironically today's front page article was about yet another puppy mill being bust here in Montreal!

I am still stumped for words by my friend's pick...

Girls need not offer to help...

So after my ordeal with my own car, I shower and take a nice hot water bath to ease off my now soar back, and I am sitting in my apartment with a nice hot tea, and I see this - someone else going through the same ordeal for his car.

I really don't want to shovel, but I'm thinking, since some stranger offered me help, I need to return the gesture... So I put on my coat and mitts and go outside - 'please please say no' I am thinking... I go up to him and am like "Avez-vous besoin d'aide"... he took one look at me from head to toe and said "vous?" as in "what do you think you can do?"

I was truly glad he said no... but my services were more like run the car while he was pushing or something...

Later this week I will learn from people at school, that girls don't have to offer to help boys plow snow... It has not sunk into me yet, but I will surely keep that in mind... I guess it is years of hanging out with boys (including these ones at school) who complained about how easy a girl's life is because every body is ready to help girls, but it's not so for boys, that has made me think otherwise...

it was snow AND ice!!!

What I did not realize was that it was not only a snow storm but a snow+ice storm... Nice... The doors of my car were iced shut when I tried to unlock them and take out my shovel and scraper.... Awww Man....

There still weren't any sign of snow removal in the city as of Wednesday (which meant I didn't have to move my car just yet)...

Went and got a new secondary scraper and one of those de-icers for locks, even though it isn't my lock that is frozen. Read online among many tips, throwing hot water on your car should solve the problem... mmmmm... me thinks not....

Thursday morning: able to nicely open the car and clear the car within half hour with no use of chemicals (or hot water!!!). The signs were up to move your car by 7pm for snow removal (which I learned just yesterday, is different from snow clearing). Started shovelling around - ooopsyy... the ice plus the packed snow from the snow 'clearing' made it a very pleasant task indeed! Not! Between my hands with poor blood circulation and the bitter cold, it was taking me forever... Then a nice man came up to me and said "Avez-vous besoin d'aide?"... and I was like "are you kidding me? I need lots of help..." Anyway with his help I managed to shovel off and move my car out (he had to go bring his metal garden spade to break the ice and then he actually pushed my car).

I felt soooo greatful afterwards that I thought I should put a thank you card in his mail box, so after introducing ourselves, I asked "so where do you live?". He just vaguely pointed in some direction... He must have thought "geez you help her shovel off the snow and she's already stalking you"...

But really I only wanted to put a thank you card, I swear!! :)

Her first night in the snow...

This is my car's first snow storm, being parked out on the street... Tomorrow's going to be a busy day clearing out all that snow... May be I can avoid going to the CEPSUM (that's our gym) during winter...

Santa Claus does not exist, but elves do

considering that we had only alcohol and no pot, I think that was a bold statement...

All those people

I have never seen this many people wait for the metro at the Universite de Montreal station... but then I never leave school at 5pm like I did this day...

Workaholism? Is that a bad thing? If you are doing what you enjoy, then it should be ok, right? But then how come people always look down upon it? There is however, something disturbing about someone, oh say a run co-ordinator, who checks the experiment's online run information, during his honeymoon!!! But I don't know what exactly it is that is disturbing about it - I just feel disturbed... People say he's got no life; but shouldn't life be what you like????

Did you know that workaholic is a word, but workohol is not!? This from some upcoming comedian at comedy central...