three for three

 yesterday morning started off on a fantastic note - i disabled the linter and tested out my theory, and it worked beautifully! then i got some work done before taking a call from a recruiter for a company i'm not particularly thrilled about. i worked from home yesterday, and it was a long day but marginally successful.

mr smear and i got through most of his homework between last night and this morning, and we're currently trying to finish up the last two questions before shabbat begins. as frustrating as the experience can (and has) been, it's exceptionally rewarding to see him beginning to get comfortable and succeeding and taking pride in his successes.

last night i went out with sailor after putting mr smear to bed, and we ended up in château shuál, a really cool little place. by the time i got home, bathed, and had watched a bit of comedy before going to bed, it was 1am again...

this morning went pretty smoothly, and after i got home i took care of a few things while occasionally helping gd deal with the black mold (vinegar spray and elbow grease). then we did a huge grocery shopping (barely manageable, my back's better but still twitchy), started vetting the first gremlins movie, then i picked up mr smear and brought him home. we had a bit of a fight on the way home which resolved nicely - through the bad vibes i learned that he has grossly misunderstood my motivations as his dad, but once we aligned, we hugged and moved on.

i napped for about an hour, and woke up seriously groggy. now i'm just trying to breathe and relax into the weekend.

...

mr cat is making good progress on the next comic pages. they've taken forever, but i have a good feeling they'll be worth the wait.

...

we've been watching transcendent man in bits and pieces, and with that in mind some of the news i read today just blew me away:

• scientists build a working tractor beam
• a brain implant thinner than a human hair

supertongue montreal introduction - part i

so we didn't get her montreal bagels or smoked meat. and the poutine apparently wasn't all that.

the itinerary:

friday the 13th

x 6.40am pickup
x home, shower, food
x keys for duplication
x underground downtown
x plateau / mont royal record stores
x boxing
x party

saturday

x blood donation
x brunch
- foufounes électriques
x the village

sunday

x atwater market
x old montreal
- parc la fontaine
x mont royal
x tam tams
x l'artère

the details

friday:

i knew it was going to be a rough weekend, but i'm pretty sure it didn't need to start with four hours of painful restlessness; my brain as much to blame as my restless legs.

the cruel, wet friday morning saw me yawning while i waited at the bus station, sitting with everything i needed to be productive except motivation.

introducing supertongue to my place, non-stop debating.

a phone call from revenu québec informing me that my file had been processed, which i already knew because they'd sent me the amount owed.

going to gd's work to pick up her keys, making copies for myself.

trying and failing to walk downtown because a horrible downpour forced us underground.

jugo juice shake fail. supertongue speaks french fluently, apparently the guy working there doesn't.

both exhausted, we headed back to my apartment to rest. and watch 20 years of ufc, so it was only a kind-of rest. it's a must-watch!

i was disappointed to see that instead of the weekend being a shitty day followed by two decent days, it would be two shitty days followed by a decent day. not cool.

i went to gd's apartment - now dubbed "home" - to test my new keys, and passed out on the couch. a nap becomes the deepest slumber when there's a time limit! i woke up still in dream-space, with reality seeming distorted and in a distinctly altered state of mind. so much so that i questioned my own sense of self as i made my way to the metro.

i was upset by my kickboxing coach posting the following:
"how a female dresses is her advertisement. if a female shows half of her body, she's asking to be disrespected."
really? if you think that, you're an asshole. what i really wanted to ask him was if his wearing fighting shorts is his way of asking to be disrespected... unfortunately, i can't say anything without messing with our instructor / student relationship so i have to keep my disrespecting his opinions to myself.

gd was going to join us at the fights, and she'd told me she'd be done in forty five minutes so supertongue and i went to her work to wait for her. forty five minutes turned into ninety minutes, and then gd became impatient with our impatience and it was supposed to be a fun evening. if i had known beforehand we would have gone straight there and asked gd to join us, and she probably would have bailed because until we were almost there she didn't actually realize that we were going to see live fights and not just watch something at a sports bar :S

we struggled to find dinner on the way, experienced taxi drama because the cab we ordered didn't arrive even though his gps signal said we were on the same intersection and eventually arrived after intermission, having missed three of my gym buddies in the ring.

$%!@.

at least there were some good second-half bouts.

saturday:

supertongue and i went to hot sauce, a lesbian party, to introduce her to the scene. the bouncer was a short, dumpy angry girl who tried very hard to keep me out in spite of the fact that i was accompanied by a woman and had paid entrance. the music was eclectic and eardrum-damaging loud, but overall the party was good and we spent a fun hour or two on the dancefloor.

the nightbus was simple enough, we ran a stupid-a.m. poutine mission (i picked up deliciously greasy salt and vinegar fries) and we crashed at my apartment around 4.30am.

...

at 9am i got up half-asleep. i was excited to see the first pieces of work on my comics, then woke supertongue up and we took a long metro ride all the way to radisson. napping well along the way.

jesus, the toilets are badly situated! the designer of the mall should be seated on the sherbrooke end, fed fast-acting laxatives and kicked hard in the shins as he gets up to go.

my first canadian blood donation on behalf of vfmp was friendly and pleasant. and i was so pleased that i didn't pass out! the point of the donation was to be part of an effort to convince the canadian government that screening sexually active male homosexuals is stupid.

there was some awkwardness with supertongue and the guys, but not too much. we headed out before them to meet up at aux vivres, and we'd almost boarded the metro when i realized that i'd left my jacket behind. that was close!

we visited a record store on mont royal that gave me the wanna-buy blues.

aux vivres: the food was delicious as always, supertongue and i went halves on blueberry pancakes and chana "sandwiches". there was decadent overeating, funny chatter and a gorgeous blonde waitress who seemed quite into me; i wanted to wingman for supertongue and see if i couldn't refocus the waitress' attentions but i don't think i have what it takes :P

we went to jean talon market, milled around and then decided to split up and rest because we were both exhausted. i woke up just before gd's station with a start as the metro jolted sharply before stopping, otherwise i might have missed it :P

i didn't exactly rest, but i did end up feeling much better. hummus on top of chana on top of supertongue's mother's amazing home-made hummus seemed like a bad idea, but i only thought that through after eating :(

it took a while to wake supertongue up by phone, and we agreed to meet up at berri-uqam. when i left i realized just how tired i was and worried that my lightheadedness was caused by too much post-donation exercise. it was a gorgeous post-rain dark-blue dusk.

we visited a really cool little live acts pub across the road from the station, then walked around trying to find a cash machine. the village was disappointingly quiet, so that sucked, but we got to see a bit of a great performance that was part of les francofolies. we walked all the way up st laurent, seeing rory macdonald win his fight along the way, and arrived at mont royal quite late. plan b (the bar) really was our plan b.

and that was the end of our night.

*my* night ended with ice cream and chocolate before bed.

sunday:

in spite of sleeping well, i was still buggered. gd and i had a good, late morning while supertongue didn't answer her phone - i was just about to go over and check on her, worrying that she hadn't made it home or something, when she finally responded.

my mom and i had a fight over skype - i think it was over how i'm dealing with my employer's silence over my papers.

i carved up a watermelon but had to abandon it to pick supertongue up from the metro; it was a glorious day, and the spores kind of made it feel like it was snowing. we demolished the watermelon when we got back.

supertongue and i had an argument with gd's friend who'd come over for a haircut, who's an anti-vaxxer. gd kept to the sidelines and although things got pretty heated i think it went okay.

i took supertongue for a walk along the lachine canal and through atwater market before we headed to old montreal, where she decided that she does, in fact, want to move here. it was a great day to visit the old port, and we caught a bit of a science show for kids that was a lot of fun. and made us both feel good about our french :P

[continued...]

layers and stages - part i

i'm not feeling great, but only because i've developed a throat infection. the weekend almost killed me, but out of kindness and i think i'm pretty much recovered. also, there's excellent news on the job hunting front to counter the bad news.

---thursday:

i ended a call with my mother when gd arrived at the door and i went to let her in.
"are you saying gd's more important than me??"
don't make me choose, mom. don't make me choose. :P

i'd decided that it was time to relax for a couple of days and not do anything too productive. i introduced gd to tekken, which was marvelously entertaining and exciting! she enjoys it AND has potential ^_^

we went to kickboxing together. she only joined me for the beginner's class, but i did the advanced as well. our regular instructor is back and worked us really, really hard for three hours. i'd forgotten how tough his classes are! the work on the bags alone actually took a couple of days to recover from.

i've still got my "robo mojo", he tells me. he was pleased to hear that i've ordered a shirt with "ROBOCOP" on it.

gd was quite upset during the class, but that's because she now knows what kickboxing is *supposed* to be about and realizes that the level where she usually trains isn't as good as it gets. i'm really happy she enjoyed it and will be joining us again :)

...

arguing with gd is thoroughly validating. we're on the same wavelength and we're both happier talking things out. we're also both naturally excited so we don't take it personally when the other seems aggressive.

...

we went to p.m. for dinner and it was great, only the "vegetarian" dish we ordered did have some egg in it and that taught us to be explicit with every item on the menu from now on.

i was totally bombed on our way to gd's, apparently attracting jealous attention on the metro as gd held me while we sat waiting for our train :)

---friday:

thursday night was sleepless and i had a rough awakening only to go back to sleep at the first opportunity, literally walking in to my apartment and flopping onto the couch for a death-nap. i don't remember if that was before or after speaking to the recruitment agency, who wanted me to see if there was some sort of "arrangement" we could come to with my previous employer. the answer was a resounding "no". i'm not doing anything that's not legit anyway, i'm trying to secure my place here.

...

i played ftl for a bit, coming so close to success and having my ship destroyed when the rebel flagship had only three bars left. that was so frustrating!

but not as frustrating as a misogynistic posting by dirk diggler. i've actually written a rant about the incident that i'm trying to convert into a performance piece, but i'll post it here soon in one form or another. the post is "pro-life", and when i spoke to him privately about it his arguments not only didn't make sense in context, but rather made a perfect argument for pro-choice.

shitty parents shouldn't be forced to breed. and women should have sovereignty over their bodies.

...

i went downtown in the rain with the single purpose of acquiring more breakfast shake powder. i had a big lunch when i returned and gave up a lot more time to combot training than i'd intended. tekken tag tournament 2's combot training is actually excellent training for any tekken player. just saying.

i had just enough time to shave my beard and rush over to gd's work to pick her up. we found a nice little indian restaurant, then went back to her place for a pre-party nap. the nap didn't really happen, first because we got silly and spent ages making each other laugh and second because my rls started up and my feet were driving me up the wall.

---saturday:

gd had to work in the morning, and so i waited in the line for stereo alone for half an hour. the wait was pretty boring. there were loud, brainless hipsters in front of me and i wished dearly for the ability to tune them out... to no avail.

my intention had been to buy a ticket then walk to vfmp's boyfriend's place to rest a bit more as they were only going to arrive around 3am. unfortunately for my plans, the story at the door was that in addition to the tickets being insanely expensive - $60! - door sales were limited to the first hundred people and i wouldn't be able to leave without giving up my spot and not being able to return.

at least they let me in with a protein bar in my pocket. in addition to the covert charge being so expensive, there was no liquor license and the regular drinks on sale - mineral water and orange juice - were set at six times the price. seriously. $6 for a small bottle of orange juice. at least they had vending machines which didn't expect a tip on top of that :/

the warm-up set was phenomenally good, and the guys arrived for the tail end of it. the main act came on: kaskade. some of the tracks were good, but overall the experience was a bit... boring. we had fun anyway, we danced a lot in spite of the not-so-bouncy beats, enjoying each other's company more than anything. granted, the people were all cool and the vibe was nice, but none of the experience was $60 nice. i've been to amazing parties here that charged $10, had much better music and crowds and served alcohol.

just sayin'.

...

at around 6am i was feeling really sleepy and i took my yawns and sore limbs and heavy eyelids for a ten minute power-nap.

a couple of hours later we all decided we were done. we got to experience that wonderful moment where you walk out from the darkness into a bright, beautiful morning which i haven't had in a long time.

we were all feeling slow and stupidly tired. we missioned to vfmp's boyfriend's place, spending the next few hours relaxing, eating delicious vegan fake-eggs and incredible choc-chip cookies; everyone passed out watching firefly except me and i got about half an hour of sleep all told.

i headed out into warm weather, got home and had lunch, a much-needed shower and tooth-brushing. i had some shopping to do and left my apartment just as it began drizzling... the drizzle turned to rain turned to storm, and i took shelter in the starbucks with a soy latte. i finished just as the storm passed, went to the supermarket and returned home to witness the following scene: our neighbourhood kids in an intense battle in the streets, some on rollerblades wielding plastic lightsabres and some with oversized water pistols.

thank you, canada :)

...

i went downtown to pick up gd from work again, and we stopped at masala palace next to snowdon metro for a quick, excellent meal before going to vfmp's for game night.

...

we were all - not just me and gd, who'd had a really tough day - quite tired, and gd and i had some very serious communication misfires while i tried to explain thunderstone to her. the thing that i appreciate most is that even when things got really bad we were both trying to fix everything; while it wasn't the greatest night ever it also wasn't bad overall. even forgetting something important when we left and having to double back with the taxi didn't mess with our mojo.

we're awesome, people. we're definitely, definitely awesome.

---sunday:

we went straight to bed and slept until sunday afternoon. we both sorely needed that! we had breakfast and played tekken, then did a round of shopping so that gd could attempt a vegan version of a dish she loves making. shopping in her area is a treat, it's very village-y and cool.
lunch was a quick affair, and i introduced her to bbc's sherlock before leaving for a poetry slam finalist pre-competition workshop.

that's as odd an idea as it sounds.

...

oh, the rain. the endless rain :(

[continued...]

return to the poutine routine - part iii

[...continued]

berri uqam station was filled with people on their way to igloofest. i was dressed for it, i had my board strapped to my back, and a part of me really wanted to join them! but partying while sore wasn't going to work.

---sunday:

i woke up jet-lag early (why did i not think to use my melatonin tablets?!) to an email from the accountant informing me that it appears that i owe a large sum of money to the tax authority even without the fine for late filing. considering my status as unemployed and trying to keep everything together long enough to get a job offer and pass the french exam, that was quite unsettling :S

he asked for a couple of other documents and i was looking for them when i discovered a digitization of something related that i'd forgotten i'd made before leaving... he responded with an apology for such a bad start to the day and with an update that it now looks like they owe me a sizable sum. that just made my day!!!

i finished watching the first episode of downton abbey, and i now understand why everyone loves it so much. why can't all series hire good writers? the characters are wonderful and the plots satisfyingly subtle. nice!

a guy i went to school with came over to pick up something his mother had asked me to deliver; he told me he didn't have time for coffee or tea, but he apparently did have half an hour to stand with me in the foyer talking uncomfortably loudly. a part of my discomfort concerned bothering my neighbours, and another part his pride in generally being a bit dodgy.

i headed to godmother's to print, sign and scan what i hope is a final piece of the tax authority puzzle (hooray for technology! he says sarcastically), then met up with horseman for subway and starbucks. happily he's keen to speak to me in french, but that really did make things complicated...

on the metro to have drinks and play carcassonne with vfmp's brother (mustwin) who's recovering from an appendectomy, i sat across from a guy who looked familiar. i didn't recognize him even after he told me where i know him from, i was embarrassed... but not as embarrassed as when i exited the car and it all came rushing back to me - we trained a fair amount together, talked quite a bit *and* he's friends with gg :$

i beat mustwin. i was prouder of that than i'm proud to admit :P

i made an inefficient choice when taking the metro to the fight night, but it afforded me an opportunity to help a little old lady with some heavy lifting. i think i managed to hide my limp as i lugged her baggage up the stairs :)

the fight night was great! firstly, i didn't make the mistake of taking a date along so i got to really focus on what was happening in the ring. the guy i sparred with before i left was doing security, he took up a position next to me and so we shared running commentary. the guy i really went to watch, who lost his first fight, came out strong in his second and was deservedly ecstatic when he stepped out victorious. the guy i was sure would get knocked out was knocked down twice in the first round and the referee called a stop to it; he really wasn't ready. certainly not ready enough to be coming in with a nickname like "the hebrew hammer", you have to win a fight before you get cocky, bro...

our coach had accepted a fight last-minute the day before, and it was interesting to finally see him in action. i'll be honest, i kinda expected more but it was a good fight nonetheless and he had a tough opponent. exciting shit happened in the ring, overall it was satisfying.

vfmp made it for the last three fights, afterwards we went to aux vivres for dinner. the conversation went deep into zombie-theory territory, and i wished i'd been recording because he was playing devil's advocate and i couldn't keep track of all the questions that i should definitely answer if i do end up writing a book.

---yesterday:

oh, couch, i love you! i was too tired to shower, i barely had strength to brush my teeth before flopping down fully clothed and waking up feeling like a new man in the morning. i spent the morning figuring out french exams and courses and things, then shopped, ate, and passed out for sleep so deep that i almost didn't make it to the clc french communication mix!

being half asleep combined with the temperature dropping ten degrees in one day (-12 not counting the evil wind) and walking in the shade was very chilly indeed. once inside and "settled", i was cornered by a bunch of strange women asking me questions in french and i cursed my subconscious for adding "sweating profusely" to my discomfort. what a stupid response! :(
once the initial wave had somehow been fought off - my french may be bad and horrifically slow, but it's at least understandable - my system calmed down and i (literally) chilled a bit. after an hour and a half i realized that some of my french is surprisingly decent, some of it shameful. i'll be back at the language center again next week.

i rushed through the freezing cold to get home. the first thing i had to deal with was an email from bell regarding an update to their terms and conditions.

---right after impressing me with their #bellletstalk campaign, they sent out an email with new terms and conditions "as part of [their] ongoing efforts to improve [their] customer experience" to counter the aforementioned show of goodwill:

"To provide the Services, Bell may have to use, reproduce, adapt, transmit, display, publish, perform, distribute and create compilations and derivative works from your content. In accepting the Bell Services, you waive your moral rights, and you authorize Bell to perform these activities in relation to your content anywhere in the world, only to the extent that Bell needed to provide you with Bell Services."

please explain why i should be okay with my internet service provider taking full control of my content? the "only to the extent" seems just a touch ambiguous. i called the number listed on the email as being for inquiries, and after getting through the menu system and being put on hold for ten minutes i was informed that only online chat assistance is qualified to help.

well, shit.

---i went off to the gym, eventually decided to test out my ankle by taking the boxing class. of course this didn't score me any points with the coach... i finally came up with a response to his jibes at the end of the class and i suspect i may have offended him because he got defensive. one of my fellow students made a snide remark to which i responded in a joking fashion, but i now worry that he may not have realized that i was kidding so i'm going to have to apologize to him next time i see him just in case :(

my ankle was hurting but not too badly; after the class i spent an hour or so instructing a girl in our class (army brat) in technique. it intrigued me that while we were working the pads she suddenly shrunk back and said "i'm scared" when i told her how to strike them - i wonder if she was responding to my officer voice?

after training i sat down to my traditional salad dinner and two episodes of downton abbey, then decided to call it a night.

---today:

i slept with french talk radio in the background, and i think that was a good idea. i got up early and was going to buy coffee at the further supermarket before sitting down at starbucks to write these posts, but it was so insanely cold (-23, not counting the wind) that i stopped at the starbucks and decided to worry about the coffee another day. it was so cold that i didn't remove my super-warm sweater the entire time!

i stopped to go to the gym and meet vfmp for boxing instruction: the same thing i'd done with army brat, only he has even more unlearning to do. by the time we left we'd both learned some pretty cool things; i was rather excited because i'd been trying to teaching him what to do with his hips when he throws a hook and suddenly noticed that a cross had been taped on the floor right where we were standing, i figured out that when you throw a hook you're essentially just switching stance but without moving your feet. thank you, taekwondo, thank you :D

vfmp joined me for tea while i ate lunch and we watched total rubbish on youtube (projected on the wall, of course), and i got back to finishing this. horseman's now on his way for some more french immersion, and then i'm going head back to the gym and see how i handle kickboxing. i might not. i'm not planning on doing anything stupid...

---over the course of the past few days, i have finally understood the correct way to eat skittles!
partially crush a few of them until they form a solid mass, then suck. it's stupidly enjoyable and each handful lasts at least five minutes :D

reset, re-rooted

how do i describe the indescribable? this weekend was defined by magic, an introduction to the ledhedz bus, a small subset of the afrikaburn community and what's apparently called techno but doesn't sound anything like what i thought was techno. i'm officially a convert!

chasing that with a hike up to the top of table mountain on a gorgeous day only served to reinforce my reconnection to this city's power.

the past couple of weeks have been incredible, i feel reset and reconnected, and i'm quite bummed about the fact that there're only another couple of days left before i'm out of here. i love montreal and i know i can't stay here, but i really don't want to leave!

---friday:

i was going to go shopping but decided to spend the stunning sunny afternoon on the beach with sagirl instead - a much better idea! after an incident a few years back when i got burned during a really quick beach visit, i was a little concerned in spite of having put on sunscreen. after a while lying on my belly facing away from sagirl, enjoying the sun on my back, i suddenly felt like my skin was tingling and just at that moment sagirl piped up: "totalwaste, are getting paranoid about being burned? well you can stop, i'll let you know when you need to worry."

whoa (O_o)

...

granadilla lollies cost R20, which is ridiculous. they're also a little smaller than i remember, even if they're just as awesome.

...

my aunt and her kids came over for drinks and debate, which was a lot of fun, and on tgtbt's recommendation my mother and i went to takumi for dinner. firstly, the place is beautiful and the service is excellent. there weren't any vegan options but everything looked really good so i decided to do the sushi experience properly: boy, am i glad i did! everything was absolutely delicious and well presented, by the end my mother couldn't eat any more and i finished everything only because it tasted so good. win!

---saturday:

dreams of airports after america enforces anti-modesty laws to filter out the religious, and about staying in a small community in a generically foreign country.

...

my mother and i went shopping in town. from the parade through grand central and golden acre, we managed to find a pair of shorts for me. it was only when we hit st george's mall that i found a hat i liked, and we did a full browse of greenmarket square before i figured out what beads to buy.

---i hate markets and i hate bargaining. i hate the fact that a conversation about price begins with an outright lie in an attempt to cheat someone out of as much as possible. the whole experience offends me... but somehow, in spite of my feelings of disgust, i seem to have picked up a thing or two while in israel. apparently i've become a tough negotiator, because i walked off with what i wanted at only slightly more than my initial shock-value offer!

the moment that most entertained me was walking away after telling a seller that i wasn't interested in arguing and that i'd give her two minutes to consider my proposal. she changed her tune when i returned.

i can't say i enjoyed doing that, but at least i'm not feeling jipped about my purchases.

---on the way we saw some amazing artwork in the area! we would have gone to crave for lunch but they didn't have vegan options and the guy behind the counter was totally disinterested, so we went to kauai instead where the food was great and the staff pleasant.

the sailors were barbequeing on the beach but that didn't really fit with my other plans, so i decided to go with protoplasm to the party in hillcrest quarry. that didn't actually fit with my other plans either, but i didn't really think about it properly and in retrospect i'm rather glad i didn't :P

---i'm not sure where to begin with the ledhedz bus party. i hadn't thought to bring a sweater and when we arrived the wind was up and it was too chilly to swim, so i'd worn boardies under my shorts for nothing. fortunately we kept warm on the dance floor :)

the subset of the afrikaburn crowd was something i couldn't get a handle on the entire afternoon / night, every now and then i'd register that the only odd man out was me because it was my first event. the crowd included people i went to school with and my niece's new sisters-in-law, which was quite funny and cool.

the music when we arrived was terrible, and the dj after played a lot of empty beats which was boring. after that, though, things got real. the fact that i had deeply entered an alternative state of mind made my introduction to what techno has evolved into an insane experience, i simply could not get a handle on what i was hearing and i've been informed that that's more or less the point. there's something so incredibly strange about dancing to a beat that changed two seconds ago but in such a subtle way that you're not sure why you're off, and something very cool about music that involves such a wide range of electronic that within a single minute you can be standing and nodding your head, dancing like it's disco and stomping like it's psy!

my hippie feet served me well the whole night, i'm extremely glad that i've maintained them so nicely :D

using the public toilets barefoot wasn't too bad - they were kept pretty clean - but there was a moment towards the end of the evening when i was standing by the urinal:
i was in the act when an arm shot across my vision in a most disturbing manner. the guy next to me was trying to settle a can on the sill of the window above us, and i was certain that it'd fall on me the second he let go. eventually he got it right, though, but i still kept an eye on him - peripheral vision only, of course - and was horrified when i registered that he was swaying wildly and struggling to unzip. once he got that right and started to pee, he was too far away from the urinal and swaying too much to not miss at some point.
urinal etiquette be damned, i thought, i'm not having this guy wet my feet!
i told him that i would be very grateful if he would just take a step forward. i was so relieved when he obliged - i was so worried that in whatever state he was he might get aggressive - and i walked out of there with dry feet.

there were only two upsetting moments at the party:

the first was when a dj dropped a tune with a religious sample about jesus' second coming, there were a lot of people on psychedelics and that's *so* unfair whether it was done in jest or not... it actually ejected me from the dance floor for a while :(

the second was me telling protoplasm that i didn't know how i'd feel about the music if i'd been sober. i realized as i said it that it was the stupidest statement of the night because i'd feel exactly the same way, but he suddenly disappeared before i could take it back and i stressed about it for about five minutes until he returned and laughed at me :$

there were plenty of fantastic moments to more than make up for those, though, so that's alright :)

---yesterday:

i was most amused by the sexy german girl we'd gone with passing out on my shoulder while we waited for protoplasm with the car keys - you'd have to be pretty tired to find it comfortable enough :P

i was still high when i returned home at 4am, and only a little concerned about how i was going to get up four hours later to go hiking with airplane. i knew i needed to eat but the peanut butter on toast i made was far too sticky. my mother introduced me to coating it with marmalade, which i'll definitely remember next time as a bloody good idea! we talked for a bit before she went to bed, and it was then that the penny dropped that i only have a couple of days left to say goodbye to everyone...

... how did three weeks pass by so quickly?!

i got into bed but my subconscious was too busy turning imagined white noise into techno for me to sleep; i plugged in to my ipod and that drowned me out of consciousness pretty quickly. good timing, too, because in the morning the battery was drained so i finally remembered to charge it for the flights :P

...

i had no problem waking up, it was an absolutely stunning morning! i drove to airplane's and we headed out together to table mountain. it's cardio up (heavy breathing) and skeletal down (stressed knees), we didn't stop talking the entire way and had a really good time. we went to hudsons for burgers (their veggie burger's good even if it's crumbly) and drinks afterwards; about halfway through the meal the past day caught up with me and my system downshifted. we said goodbye and i drove home, showered and rested for fifteen minutes until my mother came home and we went out for drinks with cousins.

twice, with different cousins. and lots of drinks.

by the time we got home i was completely broken. i had just enough energy to eat my mother's first attempt at cooking tofu - not bad - and lie down on the couch, but suddenly i realized that i needed to brush my teeth and get into bed. i'm so proud of myself for not passing out on the way, i was that exhausted that i was sure that might happen!

---regarding david foster wallace - infinite jest: the whole marijuana addition thing is ridiculous, and it bothers me that people who read the book will have their understanding skewed. tgtbt is a case in point, i had to explain to her that even in such an extreme case, the marijuana is not the culprit. it's psychology, the person has a problem with or without it, and blaming a herb that isn't addictive is irresponsible especially when the world is finally beginning to wake up from the nightmare that the war on drugs and its disinformation have kept us in for the past forty years.

to be fair, the book was written in the nineties, but it still upsets me.

---listening to the news always bugs me. i think america should conquer syria, set up a puppet government and slowly turn the country into another of its states. considering the country's instability they wouldn't need to pretend to be doing anything else, like they are in iraq and afghanistan...

limping - part ii

[... continued]

i headed off to meet newk'd and his girlfriend. originally we were going to a poetry slam but we subsequently discovered that today wasn't the day, so instead we had dinner at la panthère verte and then found a fun bar to play pool in. i was told about la panthère verte's tiramisu dessert, which they more accurately call "viramisu". i don't know what it is, but it's an insanely delicious thing that's nothing short of dangerous if you're not looking for extra calories.
well, whaddaya know? *i'm* looking for extra calories! ^_^

...

we suspect that the bar we entered was a gay bar. not just because it was filled and there were all of two women including newk'd girlfriend; it was the music selection and the guy prancing around in shorts, socks and sandals befriending everyone that caught our attention :P

...

i've spent the evening hating my netbook for being unresponsive while trying to clear my email. now that i've spoken to the insurance company and i know what i need to do, i'm going to bed and i'll handle it in the morning.

heavy weekend part i

friday:

i walked in to the office feeling good on friday, but apparently looking terrible.
"look at you, with bags under your eyes!"

the day was good and pretty relaxed, the only discomfort being an aggressive and condescending "figure it out yourself" when i asked him for advice on auto-remounting samba shares. if we weren't so desperate for server devs i'd have fired him then and there...

up until last week happy hour was drinks at l'artere, and last week's in the cafeteria playing pool was considered successful all round. this week we repeated it with board games - not everyone stuck around, but most did and it was a lot of fun! it also engaged a few of the usually shy and reserved devs. cls is usually really quiet and polite, and we all laughed when i put down a tile in carcasonne and he responded with "i hate you" and we could see that he was really enjoying himself :)

friday night boxing is usually a fantastic way to close the week, but with scrapper it was even more fun. the best part was impact / conditioning at the end, and that's very different when you're striking or being struck by a friend! i don't recall what it was, but something made me laugh soon after he started hitting me and once that started i was hard to stop :)

officially, that was how the weekend started. unofficially, it began on our way to an insanely delicious chinese dinner with the discovery that the sleeper couch had been hit by fleas and that scrapper was developing a rash and wasn't feeling well.

yang had sent me an invite to a party at the belmont, so we decided to check it out.

on the way we witnessed a guy play his flute at the police as an act of defiance, and walking past a statue on a street corner i "thought the buddha was a beggar, but i was wrong".

after saying hi to yang and meeting a cute and amusing friend of his who also got excited when she heard there was a trance party happening and that there was a chance we might hit it, scrapper felt so bad that he grabbed a taxi home. i stayed, and the drum 'n bass was delicious! i had a very good, very sweaty time.

---saturday:

i realized that i'd need to call it a night at some point and i wanted to check out the other party. i didn't see yang anywhere but his friend appeared right next to me, so when the music cooled a bit i asked her if she was up for the other party - whoops! i must have pressed her "creep" buttons because she rushed off with a disdainful and dismissive "maybe".

*sigh*

yang told me he'd only be leaving in an hour so i called it a night. i needed cash for the taxi home, promising myself that i'd learn the night bus routes.

inside the bank there were two homeless men sleeping right next to the atm, which is really not cool as there was plenty of space not close enough to completely surprise a potential victim :(

scrapper was sleeping so i didn't want to turn on the lights when i got back, and that meant tiptoeing and not eating :(

i'd somehow hurt my neck again, which really sucks. it didn't matter too much during the night because i fell dead asleep, but in spite of a long, physically demanding week and getting to bed at 3 / 4am i woke up around 8am :'(

it was from a dream of entering a naval base and finding my commander abusing a sexy soldier. i kicked his ass and he turned into a small dog; i was terrified he'd screw up my release with a court-martial but he knew his career would be destroyed. so i got the girl.

concerned about mixing caffeine and creatine (turns out it doesn't really matter, the tin's just paranoid), i elected to forgo the latter to coffee up for a call to the real estate agent.

i was very pleased to hear that within a week he already has buyers lined up, and at prices not too far from what we want! this is extremely good news ^_^

that made recovering from the short sleep a lot sweeter, and it was boosted when i found that scrapper was feeling much better and that the flea problem was restricted to the couch cover.

i finished another section of my mars one application (only the personal motivation letter remains), we handled the laundry* and then went to walmart to pick up spare bedclothes, towels and something for fleas. all the flea stuff (for pets) come with dire warnings and it's hard to believe it's okay for pets - we decided to try stuffing the couch cover in the tumbledryer and hope for the best.

* sadly, the laundry basket's handle has broken

instead of returning home we went to my office to drop off the shopping and print our heavy mtl tickets, taking the opportunity for a decent lunch and coffee at l'artere.

---heavy mtl:

every type of metal freak imaginable and in huge numbers. beautiful weather. great infrastructure (free drinking water available, port-a-urinals, loads of food, drink and ice-cream stands), excellent stage set-up.

we arrived at the end of steel panther; at first we thought they were just crass, but aside from their music being good they have a great sense of humour and i'm convinced that all their crap is intentionally ironic.

black label society is excellent, they didn't wow us but we enjoyed their music. except for the long guitar solos that made us feel like we were watching someone masturbating on stage.

when a day to remember came on i said that it would have been funny if they'd been wearing madonna or michael jackson shirts. i don't know what made me say that, because the early part of their show was pretty hard stuff with lots of growling and a sense of lostprophets. but then that transformed into a sense of blink 182 and their shit just got cheesy pop. big props to them on their showmanship, though, and the way they interacted with the crowd was excellent - they beat crowdsurfing spiderman with a crowdsurfing inflatable raft, and the free t-shirt bazooka was the shit.

danzig. danzig! he's awesome. his freakishly large monster guitarist dude made for a cute gimmick, but unfortunately we couldn't really hear him and he looked like he was having a lot of fun.

in spite of the bad taste left by avenged sevenfold's (talented, i'll admit) reduction of metal into teen pop, my overall impression from the day at heavy mtl was from megadeth.
the megadeth experience was as mind-blowing as it was bad for the eardrums ^_^
their visual setup turned everything they did into stunning art, the peak of which was their background to kingmaker.
in spite of my awkwardness about them they actually managed to bring out the devil horns in me };)

scrapper and i were discussing psychiatry on the way home: "diagnosing mental disorder with a list of symptoms is insane. oh, wait, i mean it's completely sane and totally crazy... which is normal".

in spite of an excellent day, the buzzing i left with wasn't confined to my ears: it entered my brain and i was exhausted, restless and in a snappy mood. we ate a quick dinner and then turned in early, certain we'd be up early again.

---i think i'm a bad host; i'm terribly ocd about order and tidiness, which i'd forgotten while living with pg and compared to her i'm a bit flippant myself. there're so many little things!
speaking of pg, some guy posted a comment on one of my pictures of her on facebook calling her a lush. i don't know if she's seen it and i don't know if i should say anything...

...

facebook: i don't understand why my macbook can't handle it anymore, it's weird, and i'm stuck using my phone for everything. which led to a security fail: i had two-stage authentication set up, facebook's sms'es weren't coming through, accessing through a browser doesn't give you the code generator and the access codes i was shown simply wouldn't work when i tried to set up the facebook app on my phone. the only way to install the app was to disable the two-step authentication. that's pretty dumb, facebook.

on a related note, my new iphone's battery life is so much better than my old one! it's so weird that i don't *have* to charge it every night.

---sunday:

i'm guessing the early wake-up is related to the amount of sunshine streaming through my windows. the big news for the morning is that someone has already made an offer for our apartment, so hopefully we'll sort that out soon and then i can find an apartment in montreal that's facing the right direction :P
the offer's good, not exactly what we wanted but if we hurry we might not need to pay capital gains tax on it...

i woke up from dreaming a successful dream, but once the story was over i realized that i was still wearing a skullcap that i'd put on at some point and was embarrassed to be seen as jewish. i don't know how i feel about that dream.

we stuffed the couch cover in the tumble-dryer and ran regular laundry alongside it, then i went to get a haircut. no haircuts on sundays - d'oh! - so i sat at starbucks for an opportunity to write most of this undisturbed, cashed a cheque and came on home to prep for another festival day and discuss the apartment offer with my mother. we have a plan, it feels like stars are aligning, i'm feeling positive.

now - time to rock!

first world problems

it was a really difficult weekend to post. i was too busy! now i'm sitting here on a monday evening trying to wrap this up quickly so as to disturb scrapper as little as possible.

---thursday - the forgotten moments:

neck and back still hurting.

1dollarscan.com is a fantastic idea, but it's a little costly if you're not sending your book / documents to a local address. the pdf i'm looking forward to will ultimately have cost me around $30.

i should open a local branch! all i'd need is a p.o. box and a scanner. shit, there's a lot of things i'd like to do with my life. i need more of me.

---friday:

neck and back still hurting.

the massage therapist was in, and she *really* helped! i got up disoriented but with my neck and back feeling like jello. unfortunately, that sensation lasted all of five minutes before the muscles started tightening up again.

i gave my iphone a try, plugging it in to my macbook. charging! amazed and excited i was, until i realized that it wouldn't charge more than the thin red line meaning that it wasn't actually charging at all. being plugged in wasn't enough to turn it on and access the data...

friday was the end of a long two weeks stabilizing a build, and i joined the happy hour late but in a celebratory mood. we held it in the cafeteria which was more fun that going out, although i played terrible pool.

i made the boxing class on time, there's a cute new girl from ottawa and we were set to work together. turns out that in spite of her hesitation, she's been teaching kickboxing and she put me under a lot of pressure... i cannot express how satisfied i am with myself for keeping up with her pace, doing all the combinations correctly at high speed on autopilot ^_^

why is it that every time i'm paired with a girl we do impact training? she forgot to inform me that she had a belly piercing and i hit it a few times. hard. i was totally embarrassed afterwards :$

regardless, i was on an absolute high from the class when i left the gym and walked out into a beautiful, cool summer sunset.

orange is the new black is cute at first, but then it gets better :)

foufounes electriques. newk'd and jock invited me to join them for a night out. they were both pretty drunk by the time i arrived and i didn't know where to go. at first they sent me in the wrong direction, then i returned to sainte catherine and was told to go right. so i did, and i walked while on the phone with newk'd trying to figure out where he was in relation to me because he'd apparently been waiting outside for me and was walking to meet me. in the end we discovered that this was the case... he'd instructed me to turn right when i should have turned left, and actually unwittingly followed me at a distance for about twenty minutes before figuring out what was going on. wtf??!
drunk people.

anyway, i've been there a couple of times before with yang but until friday night i didn't realize that it's the very same club wp and i went to back in 2006! i felt a circle close. i also drank a lot. i was far from drunk, but i was certainly going to feel it in the morning.

while there, i was informed that my soul patch is unflattering so i've decided to drop it. on a completely different note, i walked in to the dancefloor just as rob zombie - dragula went on and i joined the crowd rocking out and growling along... the next song was marilyn manson - beautiful people which was followed by disturbed - down with the sickness and nirvana - smells like teen spirit. it took me back a good six or seven years and i thoroughly enjoyed myself even as i was already concerned that my throat was going to hurt the next day... which it did...

i said goodbye when i had just enough cash left for a taxi. the taxi took an inexplicably long route so i jumped out a couple of traffic lights early. overall i'd had a very good night indeed.

---saturday:

neck and back still hurting.

otherwise, i was feeling pretty good. i went to godmother's for lunch in the sun, then returned home feeling the previous night. i was offended by the guy on the escalator in front of me as i headed to walmart because he wiped his feet almost into my face - one asshole can ruin your whole day! (okay, i got over it fairly quickly)

i managed to get the last cheap-ish everlast headgear in stock and returned home for some more orange is the new black and a solid afternoon nap. i got up from a long, perfect moment lying in bed on a cloudy evening with the window fan's deep hum keeping me sleepy.

i love the window fan's white noise. i really do.

horseman came over for an overly long evening discussing investment theory, stats and math. some of what he had to say was intriguing, but i was tired and i wanted to be in top shape for sunday's sparring session.

---for a few days now facebook hasn't been working on my mac. i've established that it's not my internet connection and it's not facebook, but no matter what i do (restarting, etc.) i just can't see my feeds / pages properly. the hell?

---sunday:

neck and back still hurting.

tapout versus everlast: this and and this? it wasn't me, the problem is that everlast's mouthguards SUCK. the tapout instructions were easy to follow and even though i fit it skew the first time it handles reboiling and i just did it again. no problem!

my first sparring:
gloves? check.
mouth guard? check.
protective cup? check.
headgear? check.
shin pads? check.
commitment? ... check, but with reservations about how smart i was being.

1. my boxing defense is awful and i don't breathe correctly.
2. i eventually did start striking properly.
3. even though we were all being responsible, speed and accuracy make up for a lack of power. one particularly well-placed strike gave me my first insight into the accuracy of the expression "he rang my bell".
4. after an hour my arms were really, really sore.

in the end there was no blood to clean up and i have a very good idea of just how much i need to improve before getting in the ring again, so i consider the session a great success!

the guys were shocked that i weigh 90kg as a vegan. i evangelized for a short while and then returned home to do laundry. i would have done laundry if the gorram laundry room wasn't out of order! what a way to ruin my plans :(

i went out to the market to pick up clif builder bars, then returned home for a big nap, big shopping and some more orange is the new black. i finally completed my sketches for the first chapter of my comic! i'm really excited about how i managed to resolve an issue that was troubling me ^_^
then i clicked on xkcd's time post and checked out the easily accessible version before reading randall's explanation: shut up and take my money! i bought some merch in a gushing show of support because that man is one of the most committed and inventive artists and is totally deserving of the highest praise.

---i can't recall how long ago or why i was searching for this, but i found it: lewis black on water. he's rather clever.

---monday:

neck and back feeling a bit better.

it was early morning in august. the temperature was... 9 degrees. seriously. it was AWESOME. i was even a little chilly while waiting for the second airport bus (the first was full).

i had to wait a long while for scrapper to come out, he described the officials as "thorough". we had a quick bite to eat before taking a taxi home, i briefed him non-stop until we parted ways on the metro.

my jaw hurts from the sparring. the muscles more than anything!

first order of the day, arguing with the cto in a video-conference when i was the only person on screen, and couldn't facepalm or make the faces that everyone knew i wanted to. after eventually coming out on top and feeling guilty for pushing back hard when everyone was listening in, we closed the call and the guys in the room showered me with sympathy :P

aside from a lunch break with some time outside to enjoy the stunning weather and discuss dragons and terminators, it was a day filled with meetings. one of the meetings was for all the developers, and after being shocked by ceh's brattiness (which was commented on by the project manager too) we were treated to a long and very boring presentation. presentations need to be engaging, and they need to be managed properly. as it finished, i sent an email to the project manager to say "we should never do this again".

boy, was i surprised to see the email summary pop up on the screen in front of everyone! serious faux pas, the project manager was not amused and i was super embarrassed.

my eyesight's griefing me, but i suspect it's related to how tired i am. my brain still hasn't gotten used to two eyes focusing so differently... but i certainly wouldn't want to give up my right eye's near-sightedness. reading would be really tough otherwise.

i got home in time for muay thai but i really needed to do laundry. i showed scrapper the laundry system, i took him shopping, i had a short but desperately needed nap before dinner, made dinner, we played fluxx and then he went to bed while i wrote this post. it's now an hour and a half after i began and it's my turn to tuck in.

PHEW!

happiness is a cool thunderstorm

wanna know how i know i want to live in montreal?

i arrived at piknic where the sun was shining, there was a cool breeze to counter the otherwise hot and humid day, the music was groovy and all the beautiful people (seriously, how are there so many??) were enjoying a perfect monday afternoon.

and then it started to cloud over. really fast. and suddenly there were drops of rain. MORE people came onto the dance floor! the more rain, the more excitement, shirts came off (one guy undressed to a mankini, it was hilarious) and the tempo increased with the bass. the crowd went nuts when it began to pour and when a rough wind came up there was a stream of defiant whoops until it backed off again, and there were crazy happy smiles all around when the lightning began.

we continued like that until, a long while later, the sun came out for a gorgeous sunset.

yes. that's how i know :)

---i've been out of food for two days, and the laundry was piling up. all the regular stores were closed today to celebrate saint jean-baptiste / quebec day, so i wasn't sure what to do. i headed to jean talon market, bought two boxes of clif builder bars (ordering vegan creatine along the way, that's an important supplement too) and had lunch with nocence, who's taking the language oppression thing really hard and is now seriously considering leaving quebec. i find it amusing that montreal takes enough pride in little italy to erect very pretty stonework and signs all over the place but doesn't appreciate them actually speaking italian.

i had a very leafy lunch because little italy doesn't do vegan, and it wasn't bad. then i returned home to struggle with laundry. at first i had to wait for ages to use the machine, and when i finally got my turn and my laundry was ready for the dryer i discovered that some old bat had been hoarding wet clothes and had taken it over. and today, there was only one dryer.

i guess it was a good excuse to rest and read a little.

as soon as that was done, i shaved and showered (i would've needed to shower anyway, it was so humid!) and headed to the piknic. priority one: find the girl from last night. failed in that, i think i saw her at one point but if it was her then she was making a point of not being anywhere near me. priority two: have a good time. that wasn't very hard ^_^

the only spoke in my wheel of ecstasy* was when some jerk stood right next to me and loudly shared with his friend just how much of a jerk he is over the music. as if that wasn't bad enough, he then made a really antisemitic remark and while a part of me wanted to respond another part kept saying "there's a time and a place". so i went somewhere else, and later when i saw him with his arm around some girl i felt very sorry for her.

* funny, some guy came up to ask me if i had any.

no change of plans

dissonance: my original plan was to come home after piknic electronik, and that's what i did, but i'm now unhappy that i did because i believe that i *should* have been going out with the beautiful girl i met on the dance floor - i guess i shouldn't have waited to get her number. now i'll have to wait until i see her there again.

i can't tell you how flattering it was to be chatted up in broken english on the most quebecois day of the year :D

---i dreamed properly during the night, and woke up feeling good and lazy. enough to go back and sleep some more. it was awesome.

saga is beautiful.

i headed out to horseman's and we spent a couple of hours playing with his very cool sound toys tweaking music and samples while discussing possible upgrades to my singing style. i have to mention that he has an adorable young alsation who's insanely friendly and fun to play with :)

i went downtown to feed myself - i was so hungry that i couldn't think straight - and then headed out to the piknic. the dance floor i preferred last time was far too adventurous for my tastes today, and so i kept to the main floor and thoroughly enjoyed an amazing retro house set. shit, one of the dj's even played a sneaker pimps track! it was an excellent party all around. even before i met that girl...

...

nutritionally, today was a complete and utter failure. i haven't had time to go shopping and i've barely eaten. quite irresponsible.

forgotten towel

first, some reminiscing:

i walked out of the apartment yesterday listening to house, and a dj quicksilver track came on. the tracks of his i'm familiar with all use similar samples, and they remind me of the first vinyl i ever purchased, bellissima, which i bought as soon as i could after hearing it at 6am at the faithless / sister bliss / judge jules rave at culemborg in 1997.

that was either my first or second rave ever, and i'll never forget how krybabie laughed at my inability to dance so i headed into the crowd and started copying people - by the time i got back, all his friends were saying "dude! he dances better than you do!"

---one of the interns was on the same train, and i looked at him for a while without getting a response before deciding that i was simply looking at someone similar. i'm glad he didn't recognize me, because when we arrived and i was certain it was him he really wasn't much fun to talk to.

imperieux: after thursday's horrific discovery, he spent the night like every other night for the past week - working and not sleeping. he looked terrible, he looked unhappy, he looked frustrated. i feel bad for making him feel bad, as much as i feel bad for him having worked so hard unnecessarily; i really hope this hasn't burned him out. megaman and i spent the day trying to convince him to get some rest.

the previous interns: they weren't very good. in particular, their ability to pay attention to detail was practically non-existent, and it's very frustrating to discover that they completely disregarded an important column in the data sample i provided them and the new interns are now going to have to work around that.

*facepalm*

...

i stocked up on food and supplements at loblaws, and couldn't resist buying a box of french fries. i was hungry, and i thought a big box would be a good idea, but the big box was much bigger than it needed to be and the fries were so delicious that it was impossible not to overeat. i couldn't eat a real lunch after that and i didn't feel good at all. that's not to say i didn't enjoy them...

i added some cool functionality to our central development server yesterday and was very pleased to receive a pat on the back for it. it's the little successes that count, no?

my nose didn't stop running the whole day in spite of the antihistamines, and by the time happy hour came around i was feeling out of sorts. but i went anyway, and i had a beer anyway, and although it was a pleasant hour or two i got up feeling *drunk* in the sense that walking in a straight line was a problem. i was exhausted by the time i got home, so i sat in front of some old doctor who (the three doctors, not the most exciting introduction to the series) before climbing into bed.

---saturday:

i slept fitfully and for more than twelve hours, not including an afternoon nap. i'm embarrassed to admit that i forgot my towel at home when i left for a hair cut. i was uncomfortable the whole time (those health issues) and i think the guy figured i didn't like him because my face was frozen in a scowl.

afterwards i checked out the clinic website which says "seven days a week", and i arrived there to discover that it's only open monday to friday. well, that sucked. just like last week.

---daniel tosh is so offensive he's hysterical, and i love his meta-jokes.

i'm reading wired again and they mentioned brian k vaughan - the private eye: i've just tossed him two dollars for a look and i'll let you know if i like it.

revisiting: sunday

i'm splitting these up. it's been a crazy week.

---sunday:

i slurped down a monster energy drink and headed downtown; it wasn't hard to find the place. it's actually the last club i went to with yang, only now i have an idea of what it's called (kim foo's, only it's not) and where to find it. i walked on in, bought a bottle of water so i'd have change for the coat check, and entered.

aside from about half a set all told, the following five hours were filled with grinding, styling beats.

SO...montreal has a proper trance scene. and it's beautiful! it was so nice to see the sunrise from the right side again, even if my hearing was out and my feet hurt. that was one heck of a stomp, and some of the locals were just as much fun as chromatone! the crowd was great, too :)

"my best sleep is between 7am and noon. when i sleep those hours, it's the best sleep i get and it's just enough". i say this a lot, and it's very validating whenever i actually do it and find that nothing's changed. i woke up to a call from godmother responding to an email i'd sent her about tickets to south africa: the prices were going up, she said, and i should get on that.

i spent the next while researching tickets, eventually going through flighthub because kayak's site wouldn't operate properly in chrome or firefox: it cost me a couple hundred more but in addition to the site actually working my flight includes a day and a half in daylight stopovers in london - plenty of time to get into the city and meet up with friends ^_^

i'll be using my full three week package, and i've decided that if there are any work-related issues with my visit to see friends and family, be at my niece's wedding and usher in 2014 in the traditional manner, the latter will most definitely be trumping the former.

i had a lengthy and positive chat with pg about the apartment and then headed out to meet horseman; we found an awesome vegan bar / coffee shop (that does live performances) called cagibi and were having a great talk about shakespeare and his sonnets before sidetracking into the political when he discovered that i'm israeli. the conversation was uncomfortable, but he heard what i had to say. it was a long walk to the metro and we got into personal traumas - the man may be a reformed criminal but i find it hard to see past "gentle giant".

the evening was a bit chilly - winter was on its way back for a visit - and the sunset was gorgeous.

i got home with a list of things to do, and i got everything except fixing my wraps covered. moonlighter contacted me towards midnight for another long work session...

revisiting: saturday

i'm splitting these up. it's been a crazy week.

---saturday:

i got up only a little later than usual, as i'd been invited to aota's daughter's hebrew naming. she'd simply never gotten around to it, and so newk'd (who's not jewish) and i found ourselves in a synagogue on a shabbat morning. nice little shul, actually, very relaxed and informal. i was amused to discover that by the time i arrived her daughter still hadn't settled on a name; i helpfully ran through a whole bunch of hebrew names for her explaining what they mean :P

the meal afterwards was less a meal than a set of snacks with some bread, but suddenly it was a few glasses of scotch and a couple of hours later and we'd been talking non-stop about all sorts of things. i enjoyed talking to the rabbi, whose opinions differ very much from mine but who's pleasant to discuss things with.

after a nice-enough afternoon i was exhausted and hurried home for an emergency nap. i emerged feeling utterly shite, convinced that i'd come down with something. chatting with my mom picked me up quite a bit, at least until we discussed my uncle and that got me all riled :(

i shambled throughout the evening, doing laundry and shopping, then being upset at 10pm because the tumble-dryer hadn't done its job at all. i converted my apartment into a blocky set of washing lines, worked some more with moonlighter and then started preparing to go out - yang had sent me an invitation to a party he wasn't going to. chromatone would be playing! i tuned in to psychedelik.com and one of his tracks was on. it had to be some sort of sign :P

see... i'd been feeling so bad that i wasn't quite sure i was up for a party...

revisiting: friday

i'm splitting these up. it's been a crazy week.

---friday:

on thursday morning a mail went around the office linking us to our ceo's twitter feed, and i "followed" using mine. on thursday morning i went to sleep worried by a message that he'd signed on to follow me... what bothers me about that is that my feed links to my blog... oh, well.

i slept the sleep of the dead, and woke up to some good emails:
1. moonlighter sending an email praising my efforts (i think he's realized that i'm not just all talk now that i've gotten my hands dirty)
2. pg sending me a valuation for my (and my mum's) apartment that's not disappointing!

work: there's nothing cathartic about discovering that you'd done something right the first time and that it didn't work because you were testing against the wrong thing. the previous afternoon i finished configuring the amazon instance and the reason we couldn't get it to work was because we were using the wrong ip address! for some reason, the management console provides two urls and an ip, but the actual ip that you need to use to access the server is embedded in the first url and not mentioned anywhere else. wtf?!?!

partially relieved, i joined aota and another co-worker for indian food. usually i order spicy and it's just good, but this time? i was crying, my nose was running and i had to take breaks! the funny thing is that even while suffering it was so good i couldn't stop eating :P

...

i went to the saq to pick up a bottle of wine for my uncle. the foxy girl i asked for assistance described the bottle in question as particularly good to go with meat; in particular, very bloody meat. there was something in the way she said it that made me blush.

on the way to godmother's, there was something magic about the slight drizzle blowing through the vent in the roof of the bus.

my uncle was very pleased with the wine, and i think he thinks we're friends again. dinner was pleasant, although he was on form and some of the things he said to and about his kids was pretty distressing :(

i had to wait quite a long time for the bus to the metro, and it was drizzling and cool. not cold, not until just before the bus arrived, but that cool, breezy, rainy night that coupled with the old-school house like josh wink - higher state of consciousness took me back to waiting in the line for unity to open; we were so fortunate to experience the cape town super-clubs...

when i got home i got an email from SxS, and i spent the next hour or two trying to plan a trip to visit him. flights are expensive! so i'm now waiting to hear if i can join him and his SO for a weekend a little closer to home.

somewhat good friday

friday:

it was a slow, easy morning. i was still feeling arm strain from my first push-ups in a while and my neck was mildly uncomfortable, which would irritate me for the rest of the day. seeing the squirrels frolicking in the streets put me in a good mood, though, and made me think that perhaps i'm ready to enjoy the spring :)

it was a good good friday, most people were on holiday and everything was accordingly relaxed and jovial. even moonlighter came in (to say farewell to the coo), and in a pleasant chat with him and the new director it was settled that he's replaceable and that he himself would like to work less. the sad thing is that the cto is now our principal developer and moonlighter his second-in-command; if we don't wrest control things are going to be weird.

i'd intended to leave early, but only made it out at 5pm. i thought i'd get some cleaning done but a) i didn't really have it in me and b) i was surprised to find that the apartment's not in a bad state overall. i'm used to israeli quantities of dust, and here it's a different level entirely.

i watched a lot of the xxx sequel, which is kind crap in spite of the cast, and had dinner watching legend of the drunken master which i remembered enjoying thoroughly. yep, still excellent :)

i was starting to fall asleep when i received a call from yang, and i met up with him for drinks at the cock 'n bull. i was completely turned around last time, but i won't get lost again!

we walked down to a really great and super-dodgy club, where the music started at funky minimal and moved through actual dub (seriously! it was amazing) into dub-step. by that final stage i'd been offered an opportunity to do something i'd forgotten i don't do in public (specifically; i don't do it at home either) or in normal doses (i've always been a light-weight), and all i could think of afterwards was louis ck telling the story of his experience smoking with kids in a parking lot after a show. my blood pressure dropped so low i couldn't stay standing, and the evening went from great fun to mild suffering. the deep, deep bass made my brain feel good but produced the sensation of liquifying insides, and as soon as i'd rested off enough of the effects i took a taxi home.

what a bummer!

---
saturday:

i *had* to take the morning slow. when i eventually got out of bed i recalculated my budget, took a couple of items to the dry-cleaners and walked along the sunny highway entranced by the similarity between the noise from the traffic and a day on the beach with strong waves crashing constantly. i was walking along a highway with my body while my brain was at the beach.

i found the gym with the help of some guys leaving it (the only sign on the building is a poster for a ballet studio). after a quick tour, i signed up enthusiastically: i dropped a lot of cash on a three-month trial membership, but overall it works out really reasonable per month for all-access!

VERY pleased.

i wasted an opportunity to go snowboarding because i went to the bank; i didn't have some information i needed, so i gave up and came to the-office-favourite indian restaurant for a delicious meal. now i'm ready to spend my afternoon chilling.

questionable standing

it's 7am and i'm waiting in line for the bus. this is not entirely unheard of, but i've never done it after getting home rather drunk at 2am.

i know i was drunk because i got properly lost finding the metro station and had to take a (rather expensive) taxi.

the night was really fun, and i think i've lost my voice after shouting over the band at the cock 'n bull. we all talked a lot, including the random strangers who joined our table.

...

there was a weird moment on my way home from work when i was lost in karnivool - deadman and the words DEADMAN WALKING appeared behind the window in front of me (theatre poster).

did i mention that spring is here? it's palpable, even through the cold. it was totally refreshing to walk out at 6pm and still catch the sunset - the morning's weather was so perfect that it was a bummer going indoors!

the day was long and involved lots of phone calls from the cto: the last one was as everyone (including me) was filing out, and when the phone rang and i saw the caller id i could only respond by throwing up my hands and yelling "NOOOOOOOO!" at the ceiling. there were laughs and there was some concern, but i performed some placating gesticulations as i answered.

good news! it seems that moonlighter found his mistake. clean-up time.

mentally excavated

it's been weeks of babysitting interns, and my patience is wearing thin. also, this morning our cto decided that because of the problems caused by moonlighter not following procedure, all development must be stopped so that moonlighter can continue to work alone and without following procedure.

something in there does not inspire confidence.

---
i went out on wednesday night, yang let me in the back door: dubstep is house for the adhd generation. i was in need of good bass beats, the atmosphere was great, and overall the party gave me a serious confidence boost. nostalgia plus a sensation of getting back to the core of being me. it's the simple things in life.

one of the tracks got stuck in my head, some dude high-speed rapping in iambic pentameter. i tried reading shakespeare's sonnets in the same mode, and it's awesome shit.

---
i haven't really thought about going snowboarding lately, but i guess that's fair enough considering the last few weeks of unrest. i'm just trying to get my head around the upcoming changes - already, now that pg's been away for a couple of days, i've shopped alone and run laundry and ironed. it's the kind of thing that takes time and energy after a long day and that i've been fortunate not to have to do...

... if these are the things that are on my mind, then our relationship was definitely not in a healthy place. also, i keep trying and failing to understand how one can come to a new city and be entirely disinterested in going out and having fun in it, or meeting people. and i've been dragged along in that sense.

---
lots of stuff happened yesterday at work, but each item was just another step. nothing exciting, each one reminding me that we still have quite a climb ahead of us and not much time.

except for an argument with moonlighter. a long argument over the phone, in which he eventually convinced me to see things his way. the intensity was kind of disturbing, but the relief at finishing it amiably was nothing short of shocking.

minimal resilience

i'm not going to discuss chemical toilets at temperatures around -20. i'll briefly mention a weird minute or two when some bright spark scaled and opened up a fire extinguisher right next to us and damn that's nasty. but that was it for the downers:
the dance floor was massive and packed with happy bouncy people and it's the first time i've been glad to not have personal space.
it was that ideal vibe with powerful minimal backing beats; for those of you who know what i'm talking about when i say "good party", igloofest is really special!!!

although at that temperature, it *is* kinda tough to know if the smile frozen on your face is figurative or literal.

---wednesday:

apocalypse dreaming, driving with ripley while under attack

and on the third day he accessed the mac. lo! it was a mess and it tattled a tale of moonlighter's bad svn usage. i'd have it out with him the next day, explaining to him in what i felt was in no uncertain terms that when you do a dirty, panicked and hurried change you should still make a branch for it in the svn: i'm beginning to believe that -someone and i have developed the best best practices for svn that exist. perhaps i should publish them.

i booked a cheap (cheaper than bus tickets) motel in saint sauveur for the weekend, so we're good to go!

when the supermarket self service works it's fantastic. when it doesn't, it's not only uncomfortable because there are people waiting and there's nobody else to point fingers at, but because you have to go and wait in another queue which you could have breezed through earlier :(

vmware workstation is an absolute pleasure to work with. switching between a 32 bit and 64 bit ubuntu machine is so comfortable and the installation assistance so smooth that i actually enjoyed the experience!

a moonlighter positive: apparently the presence effect works over skype, too.

---there was some unpleasantness in the office, and only later i'd discover what had happened.

one of the guys got fired, and this is in a small office where everyone's really close. the guy in particular is, to use aota's word, a gentlemen; decent, friendly, clearly the kind of person you can trust. the thing is, we had an executive visiting from the states who's come from american corporate culture (and, not to mention the specific company by name, from one of the most notoriously back-stabbing corporate cultures in america). after the guy had been informed he was to leave, and while he was (virtually) packing his bags, the executive took it upon himself to harass and bully him while "keeping an eye on him".

wtf?! it's a start-up, the kind of culture in which communication and a sense of value need to be fostered, one in which you keep in touch even with those who've left. even if you don't give a shit about the employees as people, which you should, it's bad business to demotivate everyone.

what was rule no. 1? oh, yeah: don't be an asshole.

---thought on the way home: all the snow's gone. winter's gonna have to start all over again.

pg prepared a big dinner, after which i was full and exhausted and i called the night early.

---thursday:

i had lots of weird dreams, the end of which being landing on a beach with the tide going crazy and finding myself trapped between a polar bear and a lion.

another late start - it's harder and harder to get up these days.

the cold wind in my eyes
does nothing to chill the warmth
of a bright blue and white morning
crunching beneath my feet

the new guy uses a lot of paper, gets lost on his virtual desktop and yesterday we discovered that he's been connected to the wrong network which explains all of his access issues.
*sigh*

i also discovered that macs need restarting too. i don't know what that's about. my day was interesting and mostly successful, my mind was all over the place in that style known as "organized chaos". i was quite proud of myself when i left.

define irony: thinking about how the multitasking truism doesn't seem to apply to me and walking straight past the station i was headed for.

poetry is when you make perfect sense
and it's completely incomprehensible
or
is it the other way around?

---i'm really pleased i made the first igloofest. there're still two days of this one and four more weekends to go, but we're off snowboarding this weekend and one of the next two we're going to visit the family in toronto and niagara.

decisions, decisions.

---holy crap - the dude who outsourced his job to china? what an asshole. what a genius!

i've been hearing great things about tesla, and elon musk is my hero anyway. but i hadn't heard about tesla's free solar charging stations. to quote overclocker:
if i was the type of person that drives a $65,000 car and lives in California... there would be no second thoughts about this

end of the weekend

[... continued]

---today:

yesterday afternoon yang invited me to a drum 'n bass party. i arrived soon after midnight. the music was brilliant and the club has a great atmosphere and a fun crowd.

after much consideration (an hour or two on the dancefloor), i've come to the conclusion that if dubstep is the sound of transformers doing the nasty, then the intersection between dubstep and drum 'n bass is that of transformers doing the nasty on a giant, rusty spring mattress in the middle of an enormous construction site while a galactic-scale war is resolved in the background.

an otherwise excellent night ended with a parking ticket and an argument that i'd later regret and apologize for. i really do get too aggressive when i argue, and i really have been re-realizing this for years and i really don't know what to do to make myself aware of it at the time when i can do something about it. at least if pg's around we have a signal, but i (obviously) can't rely on her to be there for me every time.

i slept well, enjoyed a cup of coffee and then walked to the metro, feeling a bit snotty and coughy by the time i arrived.

you know, there's a lot to be said for angry birds space: it's a great game, and it can be played without an internet connection. i enjoy its puzzles almost as much as i enjoy the challenges in hero academy, but if you're not connected then the latter simply doesn't work. which is a bit silly, in my opinion.

i had a much-needed hot shower and got into internet telephony, then passed out, waking up to master conjunctions and figure out that the packaging on the instant noodles lies. they're instant bloody noodles, you don't need to boil water in a pot.

i've eaten well, learned a lot (both french and video streaming), and watched some more hunter x hunter. and i'm just about done posting. and i'm tired. and monday is just around the corner.

---a few days ago pg informed me that my bank branch in israel has shut its doors and that my account has been moved. what's great is that this happens while i'm out of the country. they've very considerately disconnected my internet banking account and if pg can't get me reconnected i'm going to have a problem... it's like all of the israeli institutions i deal with are conspiring to make my leaving the country all the more attractive.

i complained about this earlier this evening, and discovered that a friend of mine was at the same branch and the move caused a whole bunch of his cheques to bounce. that's really, really professional. well done, leumi, well done.

two summer eyes, or not?

it seems to have been such a full week, and i have been so happily exhausted that i have not wanted and shall not want to elaborate too much. for the past two years i've been reading snippets of jean webster - daddy long legs and i just got through some now, so i wonder if there'll be any tonal creep.

---wednesday:

at 5.30am my mother woke me with a message; her response to mine was that she'd thought my phone would be set to night mode. as i've unfortunately had to explain to a number of people throughout the years, my phone has no "night mode" because i would absolutely hate to miss anything urgent because i was doing something as mundane as sleeping.

serendipity? shortly after i received a burst of sms'es informing me of the bus bombing in tel aviv from a scared pg.

here's the thing that bothers me in particular about wednesday: israel was preparing to move in to gaza to deal with hamas, whose ongoing rocketing has been tolerated for far too long.
so i'm really impressed with israel's leadership... the day of a bombing they agree to a ceasefire and then don't say a word about the rocket attacks afterwards? if that doesn't give the hamas a sense of victory and incentive to keep on going, i'll eat my hat. witness their post-9/11-style celebrations afterwards.

could it be, perhaps, that anything decisive that could relax a scared nation (israel) might be considered a threat to the political positions of those in charge?

not that i think that netanyahu et al have much to worry about, they'll keep their hands on the reigns for a while longer. it scares me that the world will see hamas legitimacy in this, and then both israel and the palestinians will be in for an ugly ride.

---note to self: between acclimatization and shirts made with polyester, it's not a good idea to wear a jacket over my blazer unless it's really cold. and the jacket should be removed on entry to the metro station.

i was leaving the hot, packed early rush-hour metro car, wearing my jacket, when i noticed the packet on the floor of the doorway being trodden on by other now ex-passengers. the israeli moment of hesitation passed - could it be a bomb? - and i picked it up and stepped out, holding it up and looking askance at anyone in the immediate area. only one person responded, negatively, and so i found a bench and placed it there. i continued on my way, then stopped when mrs negative indicated that it might belong to somebody still on board.

good idea! so i walked up to the door, looked inside at nobody looking at me, and then realized that i should be waving the packet in question if i was going to get anyone's attention. only by the time i returned with the packet the door closed on me and the train pulled out.

awkward.

[private note about stressing and money and sitting comfortably in three degree weather with the window open, thinking what a beautiful day it was, and showing off by counting and talking at the same time]

i had one thing that i needed to do on wednesday, and i spent all day trying to do it right. after much struggling i realized that the way it's currently implemented isn't subject to any particular rule-set. the "wrong" fix took all of two minutes, and the success was totally unsatisfying in light of the wasted day.

i ate dinner at my aunt's, which was delicious, and i think i upset my uncle a little after he was really rude to me. afterwards, my aunt and i discussed maturity and stress and perspective for the longest time, then my cousin drove me home. he's such an aggressive driver that we had quite the argument on the way; i find it impossible to reconcile the ideas that he's really not a bad guy with him seeming to take pride in behaving like an asshole.

there was still no modem, nor sign of a modem, when i returned home. and thursday was supposed to be internet day.

---thursday:

i woke up on pg's side of the bed, with my neck stiff and sore because her pillow isn't good for me at all. fortunately i managed to correct it before getting up.

for the second time, i began my day with tabata. it does feel good, although i stretched during the cool-down period and i almost pulled a muscle in my leg :(

---the big news for the day: pg has all of her results, and they're very good, and she has a degree! now she can decide what actually interests her.

---on my way out i picked up an envelope from distributel, the guys who were supposed to bring us internets. it was a form that i should have received at least a week before. i called them up to find out what was going on.

when we signed up two weeks before, we'd done so under my name and with pg's card. however, the form we'd received was for mr. pg, which seemed suspect. the support agent informed me that she was not at liberty to talk with me as my name did not appear on the account. when i asked to speak to a manager, i was informed that that would be impossible as my name does not appear on the account. so - a rock and a hard place: no pg, no authority, nothing to be done.

shocked and angry, i approached the secretary and asked her if she had any ideas. she sure did: she picked up the phone and became pg for the day! she gave the agent hell, i got pg on skype at the same time so that we could verify her details, and the three of us convinced the agent to let me do as i please.

the first item on the agenda was figuring out what was going on. as it happened, our appointment for installation was fictitious and upon closer inspection it appeared that the idiot who sold us the service had not only grossly misinformed us, but when he'd realized (apparently at least a week and a half later) that it wasn't okay to have a mismatched account name and card holder he manually transferred the account to pg, *forgetting* to inform us and automatically cancelling our installation.

thank goodness these idiots record all their calls. the agent listened to my previous call, then her superiors did too, and they were all (apparently) horrified and apologetic. and would i please bear with them? the internet would be installed in just another two short weeks.

seriously?! it would take ages to cancel everything, but i semi-patiently held the line and handled callbacks and eventually it was all done, and they were *so* sorry to see me go and *so* hoped that we'd give them another chance. for a company so keen to keep subscribers, they're certainly going about it ass-about-face.

the secretary called bell, told them to hook me up with a discount, and within five minutes the guy had offered me a sweet deal and arranged for installation two days later.

@#!$.

---i spent the rest of the day putting finishing touches and actually enjoying the satisfaction of success. and then playing with a mac, which wasn't so bad once i got the hang of it. the linux backend makes it less alien.

i returned home really late, too tired to do anything or even eat decently. i overcompensated for the lack of effort (toast, peanut butter and tofurkey: i won't be buying any more tofurkey) by eating more than i needed to.

---friday:

i woke up early, had a slow morning and ended it with a bad shave*, which would have discoloured my morning if i hadn't walked into the office and been turned into a superhero. i've been told a couple of times that the biggest reason the company wants to employ me is because i speak both tech and business fluently. i justified their faith** in me when i was asked by the boss for my opinion on a topic, and after explaining why the question was badly expressed discovered a serious flaw in the interaction between the company's business model and its core product. the cfo was called in, and he's a wealth of interesting and useful information, and i laid out their options and advised them to put everything on hold until the board makes a call with more than miscommunication to work with.

all that before my first cup of coffee.

* i accidentally clipped too much of my moustache, it looks terrible but i don't want to shave off the whole beard because of it :S

** please, work permit, hurry up and get sorted out already so that i can get to work!

---it fascinates me that pg, who's so shy and communicates so sparingly, is so comfortable online. verbose, even. and she's got no issues with making use of all the smileys available, and sends long paragraphs of text that are endearingly expressive.

she reminds me of something...

---friday was spent bonding and exploring lower-level code. it was relaxed and interesting.

thought for the evening: how can nine degrees feel so warm?

i did some shopping, made lentil salad and watched some tiger and bunny. my mom called to talk, and then i took a pre-party nap. i was woken just as i entered that level of sleep from which being aroused doesn't change your state - getting up was tough.

my cousin came over to pick me up and ensure that i wasn't violating some weird dress-code he made up. thank goodness his friend, neuroscientist, was there to balance things out! i told them later that i don't want to go to any party where the likes of me, style-wise, aren't welcome.

there was something eerie about meeting neuroscientist. he's one of my cousin's best friends, he's smart and interesting and educated and really fun to talk to. we have some really odd things in common and my cousin was freaked out by our conversation for most of the night. the talk remained on a high level in spite of the quantity of alcohol i was plied with; i definitely had too many beers in that bar in the village that was playing the quebec take on country music and had strange toilets.

---saturday:

we must have been in that bar a long time, because by the time we walked into the club it was almost 3am. we'd quaffed energy drinks on the way in, and i'd shovelled down a delicious salt-n-something slab of chocolate while we stood outside and i shivered because i wasn't wearing a sweater underneath my jacket. that plus the music would have been all i needed.

to describe the evening in short: montreal is partying like it's 1997, only minimal isn't quite as crazy as uplifting and there was a higher ratio of guys. but when the music was good (most of the time) it was good, and when it was great (a few songs here and there) it was really awesome.

---i left earlier than the others, arriving home in time to hit the sack at 7am and waking up two hours later for the internet guy. he was pleasant and professional and we soon had everything up and running.

internet. hooray! i spent the next hour or so listening to mutha, chatting with k-twang and pg and dispelling greatly exaggerated rumours of my planned wedding date.

it snowed beautifully this morning; the real thing is due to start this week. i'm very excited ^_^

my aunt picked me up and took me to the bank, where we opened an account without much fuss. it's an important step and it's finally done.

what i can't figure out is how anybody can immigrate to this country without friends or family. it's nigh impossible to get a job without being here, and you have to have means to stick around until you can get a work permit, and without a social insurance number you're pretty much incapable of doing anything for yourself. something's not quite right with this...

we went shopping (there's a loblaws close to our apartment, and it's got an israeli aisle so we can get non-dairy versions of things we like), and then i spoke to pg for a while, and then i passed out. i didn't sleep for long because my feet hurt, so i spent the rest of the afternoon / evening slowly and steadily doing things. that's as vague as it sounds, some of the things were on my to-do list and some were just because i felt like it.

this has taken me forever to post. i'm going to bed now.