Montréal

 Ok, so I am fairly certain that I will live in Montréal, or at least use it as a base for all my worldly endeavors. I love Montréal because,... well I love Montréal for a lot of reasons, like this hole-in-the-wall coffee shop that serves great coffee for $2 and if you are nice and the barista is in a good mood you also get free donuts

because St-Catherine turns in to a pedestrian street all summer long,
                         

because I love the beautiful blue skies of the hot Montréal summers (I am not used to the hotness anymore though - spoiled by Vancouver). I remember once someone said he loved the great expansive skies of North America - I never understood that, but I guess they are pretty, specially when they are juxtaposed with pretty pink balls like this... :)                                                                                                

                              because I have great memories of my old home, even though, significantly richer people live there now (notice the gas stove)                                                                     

But I also realize how I hate nationalism and how nationalist Québéc can be. I guess I will have to learn to deal with it. Like these guys did: no where can you put a Canadian flag up in Québéc without risking being stoned to death; but by cleverly lining it with the gay flag these guys actually managed to make it stay up - if you throw stones at them now, it will be a hate crime against gays and that would make you so 1970's and no one wants to be so 1970's. Yeah, I know, if you throw stones at anyone who doesn't worship the language and culture that's Française, that is somehow not a hate crime and you will fit very well in to 2012 Québéc. But, idiots are everywhere - no where in the world will I escape those... so I will come to Montréal despite... I guess...

Montréal public transit

Has been going on for 150 years apparently; probably horse drawn carriages etc, but still public transport. And Vancouver celebrates 125 years!!

Montréal - you are still home

I've missed it so much. I went back with trepidation. Would I love it so much that I wouldn't want to go back? Would it and my friends there have cooled off to me than when I left? But taking the taxi from the airport to my boyfriend's home, it was like I never left. The familiar road signs, my old neighbourhood. Then his home is in the plateau; you can not miss with that. What a great place to come back to? Watching all the good looking people and their dogs from the balcony on Mount Royal - I didn't feel nostalgic, I didn't cry - because I thought I am definitely moving back here and this is where I will grow old.

I went to my old school to help out with some stuff of my old experiment and immediately felt at home and warmly welcomed. Well if I actually move back here I am not going there though - I won't kid myself that the last days of my stay at this school was pleasant.

Some days latter back in Vancouver, I would have renewed energy to hurry up and finish up my contract so I can go back to Montréal. It wasn't too hard to leave Montréal because I was going to come back. And suddenly Vancouver looked very pretty and likeable, maybe also because I was not going to have too much time to enjoy it.

my home, it used to be

And here's my old home, now someone else's home. I thought I'll cry so hard when I see this... but I didn't... - strangely I felt it was definitely the right decision to sell it. Mile End is so much better. I had a good time here, but if I come back to Montréal, here is not where I will live... And it looks like whoever is staying there is enjoying it as much as I did - new curtains, new balcony table, windows slightly opened to combat Montréal's summer humidity... just like I lived there... Nostalgic? yes. But a sense of satisfaction that I loved it well and as my love dwindled, passed it on to someone who loves it the same...

After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as wanting
Spock

Like I wrote once to a good friend:

I hope you always want what you have!

I actually did consider for a split second, ringing the bell, introducing myself as the former owner and taking a look inside, but before I acted, I came to my senses...

Peaceful Weekend...

Before I ventured out in to the downtown life, I spent a couple hours marathoning Les Cowboys Fringants, discovering great hits like 'Entre deux taxis', 'Mon Pays', 'Ma belle Sophie' and enjoying my old favourites, 'droit devant' etc… They are truly artists, when they can put into more eloquent words what everyone knows so well:

Oh, qu'il est triste le sort des amoureux!
Car on commence toujours à se dire adieu
Dès notre premier baiser

What a way to end a day and a weekend that began with me feeling confused and depressed, mostly about work, but enough about life too. But that was Friday afternoon.

Right now, I am here sitting on the sand in the beach, writing my blog; and the sunset disappointed some guys who had come to do sunset photos, because the sun hid behind the clouds, before it dramatically exited behind the mountains with a deep orange glow and they waited and waited, but the sun never exited this way, so the three of them read a passage from a book in some holy sort of way (I didn't hear what they read); two late twenties guys playing with their radio-controlled boat in a little bay like area formed by some rocks; a portrait photographer with his camera/light equipment and his model in a bikini who is getting cold so she puts on her sweater and they both start smoking (she is obviously more than his model, but less than his lover); a guy playing his accordion for the past two hours now; a total drunk trying to pick a fight with someone and it seems like finally he succeeded; a crazy upper-middle class mom who kept yelling at her little daughter that she went too far and into the water, kind of attracting stares of 'oh c'mon woman can you leave the disciplining out of the peaceful beach' so she took her unhappy daughter home finally; several cargo/cruise ships anchored way out in the distance, the sail boats of Kits Yacht club in the distance; the lifeguard now wrapping up his shift; lots of different languages in conversation passing around me, whiffs, well more than whiffs, of pot dotting the air. What a beautiful evening and a complete life - the good the bad, the yin the yan... the peaceful West End beach has a place for everyone.

Impressions

Excuse my ego - but I am quite impressed by myself. But I actually am easily impressed by other people; Sometimes it is because they have something I never had: the goth kids next door impress me - they are what I never dared to be and they have in their own way set me examples. Sometimes I am impressed because people have what I have - like the nerds who are into some movie genre - they have the fierce dedication that I have for somethings.

But often what blows me away is someone who is owned by nothing (or at least a minimal) - people with wings.

I got in the plane to Japan, with a 28 page paper to read, a 20-minute talk to write. My next-seat-neighbor who happened to hear me exchange pleasantries with a colleague in French, struck up a conversation. I was like 'well this can not be too bad, I get to practice my French'. But it turned out to be much more - he used to be a journalist with Radio-Canada and had lived in several Asian countries and Australia since he was working on Asia-Pacific news for Radio-Canada, has been living in Japan for some years now and was a Québecois who had moved to Vancouver (I love Quebecois, but when it comes to mobility they are so scared to move out of Québec - so Quebecois who moved to Vancouver are already a plus, but he also said when he thinks of someday when he might retire he thinks of Vancouver). Of course now my talk and paper were not happening. Here was a big-me; well actually if I could be half as cosmopolitan as he is by the time I am his age (which I am guessing is not too much more than me), I'd consider that an accomplishment. I am so used to people asking me if I ever plan on putting down roots and lately I have thought about this from time to time. And then there was this guy, who not only did not ask me this, but also like me moved across the globe to a completely different culture to which he grew up in and lived in even more places than I did.

chaque fois que j'ai déménagé dans une nouvelle ville

he said,

je me suis dit, l'autre ville est terminée

"But you have friends there?" I asked. "Oh of course, but they are not part of that city"... hard as it was to understand, I liked the sound of it... and that night I was, for the first time, really glad that I was selling the condo in Montréal - somehow, all those memories that were created in that condo would stay with me - I didn't want some condo to own me. And I thought of Minneapolis, I thought of Kandy... the people I still keep in touch with, who are themselves not in Minneapolis or Kandy anymore... and I would love for all those people to be with me in one place... but in my mind "Minneapolis est terminée, Kandy est terminée", but the fond memories remain. The other cities were too short anyway.

And finally I was ready to let Montréal go - I might return back there one day, but now the "when I go back to Montréal" is replaced by "if I go back to Montréal"... To the Montréal friends who might be reading this, it doesn't ever mean I am throwing away our memories, quite the contrary... but Montréal can not own me.

Later some colleague commented in front of the others, "I saw you chatting away with your neighbor throughout the whole flight - who was that?" and in front of her and my bosses, I admitted that I have in my head to one day become a journalist. And the next day I was sitting in the collaboration meeting, seriously thinking of switching in to journalism and strangely it made me want to do very well here - it was going to be my last year or two in physics (I am still trying to decide if this is a sleep deprived decision or not). Like he said "I always went to a new country with a 1 year assignment, sometimes it got extended, but when I went in, it was like I just had one year to absorb this place".

And even in Vancouver, where they are not a majority, it would be Québecois who would make me feel most at home.

Everyone has a story

he said at some point referring to the potential even for small time journalists

the question is, do we have enough curiosity to find out.

Semi trip

took a half hour ride in a 40-foot long trailer, with a dog... and a man (a Quebecois man may I add, who spoke with a non-urban Quebecois accent, which most of my Montréaler friends do not have... but since I would hear it like 25% of the time when I was there, it made for a nostalgic trip down memory lane...) Also my first half hour of French conversation in two weeks...

Unfulfilled Love

“only unfulfilled love is romantic” - Maria Helena in Vicky Christina Barcelona I feel my love to the people (and by people I don’t just mean Montréalers, but all those people I met here in Montréal) and the city of Montréal was very fulfilled... hence I go with a less heavy heart than I left Minneapolis... Or it may just be the stress of wrapping up a whole condo, putting it on sale and moving out is still overwhelming me, that I don’t have the time to hunker down in a corner and cry...

Home Sweet Home

It was a good condo, my first condo, the first place that I ever owned... It is like this that I first fell in love with it 2.5 years ago, at its barest, it was still the prettiest place I had ever seen. Over the months it gained character through my part physicist, part neo hippy personality, and it was filled with the voices of many people, mostly friends, but sometimes not so friends, but always people who were so interesting, people from all over the world. Boy friends, potential boy friends, just friends... Dinners, drinks, pot, conversations, political, sociological, moral... The sun shining ever so brightly, it is a perfect reflection of my life here in Montréal - a life lived to the fullest, no regrets... just only not enough time... I could easily come and live in Montréal again and find things to keep my awe.... What a charming little condo....

A few days after I moved to Vancouver, I would look at its pictures, and I think I can probably not stand to see it for real one more time... I might just call off the sale...

René Lévesque

Enough mush mush.. time to vent...

So we were walking in the parliamentary grounds... and there were all these statues of former Québec premiers, among them, my favorite and most respected, René Lévesque. I know he was a vocal advocate of QC separation, but not in this racist exclusive way this Marois woman does. I have always claimed that it is hard to be a separatist without being a racist, with the one exception of René Lévesque. Besides he fits my ideal human - he gave his life for the cause that he thought was right (and actually under him I would have voted for separation, if I hadn’t known what crazy successors he would have, and Marois is not alone, Parizeau also comes into mind...), lived a common man’s life smoking and having café in your neighborhood coffee shops (in those good old days when you could smoke inside coffee shops and politicians could exist without body guards) and also apparently dressed shabbily and smoked his life away (as evidence by the missing button on his statue). To clarify, I don’t care too much for smoking and being the health freak I am prefer non-smoking, but I advocate the right of an adult human being to do what they want... and smoking does impart some romantic idealism.... :) So anyway, this group of people walk up to his statue, clearly at least some of them were Quebecois francophone, just said a couple jokes and posed for photos, hugging the statue or cradling their head in his larger than-life palms... and they did not say a word, about the struggles of the man who fought so they could walk freely and speak French without embarrassment, here in Québec. I wonder what René Lévesque would have said about that episode... probably taken a deep breath of nicotine and said “c’est la vie”... I on the other hand am disgusted...

Bye bye Québec

In a fitting tribute to the place I called home for more than two years, the place I felt most in sync with its people, I spent the last weekend as I did my first weekend here. That warm summer first weekend in June of 2008, I went to Québec City, by train, for a conference (like I wrote here). This cold snowy last weekend in February, I went there again, by train. It wasn’t planned to be all nostalgic... I just realized this while I was on the train... That first weekend I took the train with a whole bunch of people who were in awe of me (and me of them) and we seemed really to like one another. Today two of them are all but estranged, two of them remain close friends... Today I took the train with my best friend, (so best that I will list him as my emergency contact in all the bureaucratic documents in Vancouver and Japan) and my closest confidante. What will our future bring?

There they go...

There they all go... Within a month I will learn that this all will cost my employer an arm and a leg, which is not my concern, but also me... The cost of all this shipped will exceed my moving allowance...

La Presse and O Canada

It was my Christmas gift, signed by the author, and La Presse journalist! Part of the gift was also to take a tour of the La Presse office in downtown, arranged by my best friend, in person, with Éric Clément the writer of the book who is also a La Presse journalist. It was a super cold, windy and snowy, but sunny, day in Montréal and we stood their waiting for the late bus, me not willing to wear my tuc, because I wanted my hair in place - so my ears were freezing. We did arrive just in time though. When we went there he was of course so happy to receive us and recognized my boyfriend and addressed him by his name - ah to have the PR skills of a journalist! He took us to the main news room, a collection of cubicles, most with those unmistakable half eaten apple's backlit on the back of their computers. It was a Friday, and hence a calm day we were told, and maybe that's why but everyone seemed happy to see us and had we asked, would have shared some tidbits with us. We also went to the old press rooms and the old printing room - these days the printing is outsourced.

It turned out for 20years of his life Éric Clément was a geo-physicist. So if that didn't sparkle my eyes I don't know what did.

Him and the photographer of the book took a personal loan of $20k just so they can print this book, of which special editions are available only at the La Presse office - the book is a bilingual one, in the sense somethings are written in English, some in French - so not everything is written in one of those languages. You truly have to be bilingual to read and understand this. What a great thought, specially for a bilingual country, but more for the really bilingual city of Montréal. But it turns out this is a drawback to the bookstores, no one wants to take this book since they predict it won't sell that much. One of those times when business, science and their models prevent our human race from advancing forward in a moral sense. Anyway I was quite impressed at their passion - when I thought how I would never take a personal loan to do something in physics...

What a great morning? Every day in which I re-kindle one of my dreams, is a great day: this time the journalism one!

Montréal Nord

So we went to Montréal Nord, because it is this poor neighborhood, too see what the big deal is - if it's really that poor and crime ridden. I went with memories of Freddie Villenueve who was gunned down by the Montréal police , which event led to numerous riots and what not (as documented here), hoping to find scary looking people. And what do I find? Nondescript houses... maybe a higher concentration of poor people... I was downright disappointed - maybe we didn't go to the right place in Montréal Nord.

Cold as we were (and also because I am famous for being severely under-dressed), we found shelter in what seemed to be a coffee shop. It actually didn't seem like a coffee shop, what with non-transparent windows and a door that didn't look too welcoming. The interior was complete with an Italian soccer flag and also a picture of Marlon Brando's godfather. The top-hat and coat wearing 4 guys huddled in conversation around the table stood up and walked away after staring us down - did we in-advertently walk into the neighborhood mafia hot spot? If this doesn't look like for-something-else place that is desperately trying to look like a coffee shop, I don't know what is...

for sale!

And with a heavy heart, I put her on the market... I signed all papers today with the real estate agent...

État Sauvage

an amazing photo exhibit by National Geographic and the Smithsonian Museum of Washington. It featured Vincent Munier and past Nature's Best Competition winners.

I love Vincent Munier's pictures, speciall the ones he and his dad made in Vosages, France; they are hauntingly beautiful twilight (or dawn) landscapes that made me cry the first time I saw them. But his pictures here were not that stellar - I guess there are only so many snowy owl pictures that I can look at - I am not a big bird fan, but I must admit, snowy owls are cute. Of course his muskox pictures were really great and there was also a little documentary on his muskox photographing project/journey.

The photos that won Nature's Best though were something - they were really really cute... a lot from Botswana and the African safari places... There were some amazing moments captured, but of course, I put here, my favorite species on earth - the cuddly little polar bears... I like tigers too!

bee mint

and I meant to say bee on my mint plant - my menthe de pomme, to be specific, which smells way better than any other menthe I've had. On my balcony...

Élixir

from the moment factory, a multimedia exhibition of lights, music and water fountains in Quartier des Spectacles... Amazing...

Raspberries

Raspberry season again... yep and gonna make that amazing Framboise Soufle I did last year... This time I didn't go crazy, well at least not as crazy as last time, as I did go crazy with the strawberries this year. These perfect raspberries, not too sour, from Ville de Saint-Eustache, a little north of Montreal.

LGBT Parade

It's that time of the year again... And faithfully I made it again this year... Not only because I get to see really cute, very kind-looking guys (every girl's dream, of course, only to be shattered in the knowledge that they are gay), but also because in general this parade alone makes me that much more open minded than the last year. It is not just seeing Stéphane Dion and Gilles Duceppe, but it's also about seeing the Jewish float, the Palestinian float, the bisexual parents and mostly seeing the spectators - a lot of straight couples do come to see this parade - I think I mentioned the East Asian couple among the 2008 parade spectators. I think it is really nice to see all those open minded people around me. Actually it stimulates my mind so I don't just go home and "se tourner les pouces" while watching mont Saint-Hilaire!!!

And then we went to Chipotle @ Jalapeno, where the food was nice and super cheap as long as you don't order the Mexican wine, La Cetto (Sirah 2007 from Valle De Guadalupe) which was really good, but a lot expensive. We had chicken tamales and chicken empanadas both which were really good. We also had a tortilla soup which I wasn't too hot on - I did like the broth and the crunchy tortillas, but the pork bits, I could have done without.

Speaking of really cute very kind guys being every girls' dream, I couldn't help but think 'isn't that every human being's dream, really?' and then I proceeded to think that gay men are actually the luckiest, as they get to pick from a pool of such people (trust me, such people are far and few between in the straight world, and that applies to straight boys and well girls, well I don't think they are very nice - don't forget I went to an all girls' school). This all reminded me of one of my all time favourite authors David Sedaris; he talks about his boyfriend Hugh, in his 'Dress your family in corduroy and denim':

On a summer evening in Paris, Hugh and I went to see 'The End of the Affair', a Neil Jordan adaptation of the Graham Greene novel. I had trouble keeping my eyes open because I was tired and not completely engaged, Hugh had trouble keeping his eyes open because they were essentially swollen shut: he sobbed from beginning to end, and by the time we left the theater, he was completely dehydrated, I asked if he always cried during comedies, and he accused me of being grossly insensitive, a charge I'm trying to plea-bargain down to simply obnoxious.

The picture ended at about ten and afterward we went for coffee at a little place across the street from the Luxembourg Gardens, I was ready to wipe the movie out of my mind but Hugh was still under its spell. He looked as though his life had not only passed him by but paused along the way to spit in his face. Our coffee arrived, and as he blew his nose into a napkin, I encouraged him to look on the bright side. "Listen", I said, we maybe don't live in wartime London but in terms of the occasional bomb scare, Paris is a pretty close second. We both love bacon and country music, what more could you possibly want?"

What more could he want? It was an incredibly stupid question and when he failed to answer, I was reminded of just how lucky I truly am. Movie characters might chase each other through the fog or race down the stairs of burning buildings, but that's for beginners. Real love amounts to withholding the truth even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings. I wanted to say something to this effect, but my hand puppets were back home in their drawers. Instead, I pulled my chair a few inches close, and we sat silently at our little table on the square, looking for all the world like two people in love.

- David Sedaris, in Dress your family in corduroy and denim.

See I told you - even when they are insensitive they are still so poignant!