June 20, 2010

See you in France

Got a ticket booked for France in the Fall. Instead of stay­ing in Paris, I’m going to be liv­ing with Frédéric and Misun in the town of Chartres. That way I’ll save money on acco­mo­da­tions, since the train goes to Paris every hour, only takes an hour, and is much cheaper than a night for a hotel there.

With three weeks booked, I know I’ll be able to go at my own pace in the city, with plenty of time to spend with Frédéric, Misun, and the boys too.

books on France

These three Frommer’s books came in one pack. I was happy to find one that focused on Paris alone.

My French com­pre­hen­sion has rusted to the point of being non-existent, so the dic­tio­nary and phrase book seemed like a good idea too. It’s filled with hilar­i­ous pho­netic pro­nun­ci­a­tions, like “ehs-kuh tueh praw~ lah peel-uel” for “Est-ce que tu prends la pil­lule?” or “Are you on birth con­trol?” in the Getting Intimate sec­tion. I wouldn’t be sur­prised if Paris was the only city to have this sec­tion, which includes trans­la­tions for “Harder!”, “Faster!”, “Deeper!”, and “May I come inside?” (although I sus­pect the last one isn’t exactly the mean­ing I’m thinking).

Paris Moleskine

I also bought this Paris Moleskine, embossed with the city’s name on the spine. It’s over­priced for a note­book, but worth it for the con­ve­nience. Contains con­densed ver­sions of all the most use­ful infor­ma­tion, includ­ing num­bers for trans­porta­tion com­pa­nies (includ­ing air bal­loon!) and city maps.

More sta­tion­ary porn beneath the cut

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January 6, 2009

Back To Life

Christmas lights

Thumbnail: Present wrapping paper
Thumbnail: Cat under Christmas tree
Thumbnail: Scented infuser sticks
Thumbnail: Blue-pink gradient
Thumbnail: Powdered candy
 

The hol­i­days are over. I sus­pect that I’ve eaten more choco­late over the last two weeks than ever in my life.

The two New Year’s par­ties were great, although I missed see­ing Rob at Aaron’s. I did get a New Year’s kiss though, some­thing I nor­mally feel awk­ward about when the cou­ples are all par­tak­ing and I hide behind my camera.

The holes in my ceil­ings have yet to be fixed, and it makes me cringe every time I walk into my bed­room or bath­room, so I spent all my time in the liv­ing room. Every day, I’d wake up, eat, play games, watch movies, then fall back asleep there.

On occa­sion, I’d visit friends or see a movie, if only for the sake of get­ting out. Some nights, I’d open the blinds and let the burn­ing sky pour in, just so I could know that there was some­thing out there out­side of my lit­tle microcosm.

I’m glad to be back to life. I was feel­ing so lack­adaisi­cal and dis­con­nected, drift­ing aim­lessly with­out any rea­son or pur­pose. In a strange way, I feel recharged, if only because I had two weeks with­out a reg­u­lar schedule.

November 24, 2008

Going Home

Bike in snow

I’m going home today. It’s been a great trip. Just one more stop for lunch with an old boss before I make the drive back to Ottawa.

Cracking pole

I miss sleep­ing in my own bed. It’s been a dif­fer­ent bed almost every night. But the trip was also filled with good peo­ple. People who are truly touch­ing. And cats.

Bike in snow

I’m not feel­ing as over­stim­u­lated as I expected. Maybe I’ve been too busy for it to sink in.

I’ll be leav­ing in the early after­noon to catch the sun­set in the 250km stretch along the 401.

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November 20, 2008

Weekend in Toronto

I’m dri­ving out to Toronto tomor­row. Instead of a long vaca­tion, I’ve decided to do long week­ends until Christmas.

I’m pray­ing for a safe drive, as it’ll be my first win­ter with the Civic, and the fact that it already snowed in Toronto today. I’ve always pic­tured myself in my car, warm inside, pro­tected from the cold out­side. I like that idea.

As per usual, I’ll be pack­ing all my cam­era and video gear.

I’ve been so busy get­ting ready for this trip — orga­niz­ing plans with peo­ple, get­ting my pic­tures printed and framed, pack­ing, doing extra work for my first boss — that I’m already feel­ing some­what over­whelmed. It’s going to be four days packed with peo­ple, so I know I’ll be feel­ing over­stim­u­lated by the end.

Normally, I don’t like to have things this tight, but there are so many peo­ple I want to see. If I could, I’d fit in Andrew and Alex, maybe even explore on my own.

I’m still pretty excited though.

Read the rest of this entry »

August 21, 2008

Four Day Vacation

I’m in Toronto right now, at John’s house. He has the cot­tage for his birth­day week­end, so I took two extra days off work to see him. It’s kind of strange how much I’ve been see­ing him lately. In the past, we’d go over a year with­out see­ing each other because he was in Windsor for law school and I was in Ottawa with­out a car. But now that he’s been called to the bar and I’ve obtained the Civic, things have worked out.

We plan on going to the Ontario Science Centre today — some­thing I’ve wanted to do for a while1 — then dri­ving up to the cot­tage tonight. We’ll spend two days at the cot­tage2, maybe take a day trip to another town, and drive back on Sunday. Aaron also called me yes­ter­day about his co-ed baby shower on Sunday, which i’m not sure if I’ll be attend­ing yet, since I’ll have dri­ven eight hours that day.

Sunsets and Audiobooks

The drive was absolutely amaz­ing. The weather was per­fectly cool, and the sun took its glo­ri­ous time set­ting over a few hours. I think the most sat­is­fy­ing part is get­ting to the sec­tion of high­way where the 417 splits to the 416, and one can stay in the left lane and accel­er­ate through the turn, leav­ing all the traf­fic behind.

I lis­tened to some audio CDs of Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking on the way over. The con­cept is that our first reac­tions (made within a few sec­onds) are often intu­itively cor­rect, and that even after think­ing about some­thing for a long time, we end up going with our gut feel­ings any­way. We’re made to believe that the more impor­tant some­thing is, the longer we should take to make a deci­sion. I’m espe­cially guilty of this3. Wally lent them to me in an effort to help me act faster so I don’t miss any oppor­tu­ni­ties. Not sure if they’ll help me, but the way it delves into processes of the human psy­che is a very inter­est­ing lis­ten nonetheless.

Feeding Butterball

Left Dolly lots of food, and I’m hop­ing she doesn’t eat it all. The rea­son why I feed her by hand is because she doesn’t have any sense of how much to eat, and bal­loons up if not con­trolled. In either case, I expect a lot of poo in the lit­ter­box when I get back.

New Game

I bought John a copy of Assassin’s Creed for his birth­day, which thank­fully was on his list of games for which to watch. It was devel­oped by Ubisoft Montreal, the same stu­dio who made Prince of Persia, and plays very much the same way. An open-world con­cept with lots of stealth ele­ments. Certainly a game I could get into. We take turns play­ing, and it’s made me real­ize that I haven’t been play­ing much myself in the last few months.

A Sense of Overstimulation

Life has been some­what over­stim­u­lat­ing lately, and I can’t blame any­one but myself. After spend­ing a day shop­ping for house­wares with Julie last week­end, the house is a big mess, with things scat­tered over the coun­ters and floors. I haven’t even had a chance to write about the last time I came to Toronto. It seems like life is going faster than I can keep up. I’m just try­ing to enjoy it, espe­cially when the weather is this beautiful.

After all, life is for the liv­ing. This won’t last for­ever. I get to look for­ward to some time alone when every­thing is settled.

  1. I don’t think I’ve been since grade 4, so over 18 years ago. []
  2. Last time I was there was two years ago []
  3. John says that I tend to over ana­lyze things to the point of paral­y­sis. []
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September 29, 2006

Vacation With John ’06: Part 4

Thumbnail: Becky cries 
Thumbnail: Me with gramma Currie 
Thumbnail: Becky tickles John 
Thumbnail: Going for a dip 
Thumbnail: John's birthday present 
Thumbnail: Parade pairs 
Thumbnail: Swimming doggie 

300 km, Windsor to Kincardine, from the bor­der of Detroit to the doorstep of the cot­tage. Due to the break-up, John was too jit­tery to drive. I took the wheel until he could com­pose himself.

This week­end was espe­cially impor­tant for John; it was his birth­day and an over­whelm­ing num­ber of fam­i­lies wanted to visit in cel­e­bra­tion, includ­ing his father. Being the mater­nal cot­tage, Dr. Lea hasn’t been up since his wife died, and this was more impor­tant to John than any­thing else.

By May, the week­ends are already booked past August at the cot­tage. It’s filled with rooms, beds, cots, couches that can accom­mo­date more than a dozen peo­ple. Families come and go, and only Gramma Currie remains con­stant. For most of the year she lives in an apart­ment in town, but when it’s warm enough to live by the fire, the cot­tage is opened for lodging.

This time there was Ross, the cousin who’s since fin­ished pay­ing off his tat­too. There was Ray, hus­band of Fran, father of Heather, uncle of John, who eats his hard-boiled eggs by reg­i­mented rou­tine: dash of salt, dash of pep­per, scoop of mar­garine, scoop of yolk in sequence. There were all the asso­ci­ated fam­i­lies, about five in total, and even a few kids run­ning around, mak­ing four gen­er­a­tions of the Currie family.

I couldn’t even remem­ber the last time I was here, but my last entry in the vis­i­tors log shows that it was three years ago.


Thumbnail: Ballon garden 
Thumbnail: Beach front 
Thumbnail: Beach bench 
Thumbnail: Clear water 
Thumbnail: Carcass 
Thumbnail: Monarch butterfly 
Thumbnail: My pasty feet 
Thumbnail: Praying mantis 
Thumbnail: Beach shells 
Thumbnail: Rock shells 
Thumbnail: Watery log 
Thumbnail: Yellow butterfly 
Thumbnail: Stormy beach 
Thumbnail: Stormy waves 

The best cot­tages are off the beach, and the begin­ning of fall is the best time of year to appre­ci­ate such things. Even though the wind com­ing off the water keeps the area rel­a­tively cool, the sum­mer heat can still over­whelm such delights.

There’s nowhere else like this.


My house was 650 km away, nine more hours on the road by car, bus, and taxi. On Sunday night, it was good to be home.

September 25, 2006

Vacation With John ’06: Part 3

Thumbnail: Hamilton Market
Thumbnail: John and Sandra

A short detour, 80 km, Toronto to Hamilton.

We met up with Sandra for din­ner. Prior to this, I only knew Sandra as John’s “best friend from school”, the one he spends most his time with when he’s not with his girl­friend. On the drive up my curios­ity was killing me. Was this Sandra per­son a threat to my friend­ship with John? Would she even­tu­ally replace me as the one he goes to with his prob­lems, his inse­cu­ri­ties, his excite­ments, and would I lose my best friend in return?

No.

Social graces dic­tate that you don’t strike up a din­ner con­ver­sa­tion on which not every­one can opine, but when you get two legal-minded peo­ple together, there’s isn’t much non-law-student can do but lis­ten and observe.

They got along well, but there’s a cer­tain level of inti­macy miss­ing. They still feel each other out, whereas John and I have con­ver­sa­tions with a sin­gle look. When we left, I was reas­sured of my posi­tion as best friend, and felt silly about how I could be so inse­cure about a bond so strong.


Thumbnail: Iced tea
Thumbnail: Club sandwhich
Thumbnail: Club 29
Thumbnail: Lounging in the club
Thumbnail: Serious John
Thumbnail: Julie
Thumbnail: Laura

300 km, Hamilton to Windsor.

I had never been to Windsor before. It’s always remained a place in my head, never tan­gi­ble, because it’s always John who vis­its me. Windsor is where he goes to law school, where he spends the major­ity of the year, and where he works. This was the first chance I had to sub­merge myself in his life and lifestyle.

I went to work with him at the com­mu­nity law office. It’s here that he shares an open office with a dozen other stu­dents, who defend clients from bad land­lords, ten­ants, par­ents, chil­dren, shoplifters, or any other type of liv­ing thing.

Law stu­dents are a dif­fer­ent breed. They’re peo­ple who have ini­tia­tive, who can be extro­verted at the right time. After work, they meet at a pub, sit on the patio, and talk about their cases, about the crown attor­neys who have vendet­tas against them, about moronic clients who speak out of turn and plead guilty to a charge before a bar­gain can be reached.

I was a fish out of water.


Thumbnail: Hall handles
Thumbnail: Room number
Thumbnail: Stair arrows

Given a short tour of the University of Windsor, I took a few quick snaps.


Thumbnail: Helen sign
Thumbnail: Helen dies

The first night we arrived in Windsor, John noticed the win­dow was open, with a note from his girl­friend about car­ing for the hibis­cus just out­side. He stuck his head out the win­dow to see. “How fit­ting”, he said. “The plant has fallen over, and died”.

Minutes before leav­ing for the next part of our trip, they broke up.

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September 18, 2006

Vacation With John ’06: Part 1

Taxi, bus, car, 500 km from Ottawa to Toronto.

John, com­ing from a week­end wed­ding, took a flight from Thunder Bay to pick me up. We spent the first three days at the house of John’s par­ents. Circumstances like these always put me on edge; with adults around, we tend to behave, and I’m gen­er­ally obnox­ious when I’m with John.

The step-mother rules the house with an iron fist. No noise after ten. No noise before seven. No using the guest tow­els or soap.

One morn­ing, I was hav­ing toast with some mar­malade when I real­ized that the orange, unla­beled spread in the back of the fridge had a rather sharp taste, sig­ni­fy­ing that it was either offal or expired. John stopped me as I opened the kitchen garbage bin.

You can’t throw that out”

Why not?”

It’s food. Food smells.” John pointed to the dish dry­ing rack. It was filled with milk bags which were used, emp­tied, washed, and dried before being thrown out.

What am I sup­posed to do with it?”

We’ll throw it in the back yard for the birds”

What if the birds won’t eat it? A piece of toast cov­ered with mar­malade would be harder to explain than food in the garbage.”

Eventually, we put the toast in a Zip-Loc bag and dis­posed of it in a pub­lic trash bin four blocks away from the house.


Thumbnail: Flower 1
Thumbnail: Flower 2
Thumbnail: Flower 3
Thumbnail: Fly
Thumbnail: Garden birds
Thumbnail: Garden

The beau­ti­ful gar­den in the back pre­sented some great photo opportunities.


Toronto was our chance to relax. We just hung around and rented movies. When I’m with John I get to see the clas­sics that I’ve missed — every time it’s men­tioned that I haven’t seen a cer­tain title in the store, it’s always met with his button-pushing, “You haven’t seen that?!”. He already has of course, but his mem­ory is so bad that it’s like he never watched them in the first place. This time it was The Shawshank Redemption (very sat­is­fy­ing), Diner (a great coming-of-age film for guys), Four Weddings and a Funeral (ruined by Andie MacDowell’s deliv­ery of “Is it rain­ing — I hadn’t noticed”), and Sideways (fuck­ing amaz­ing). We also saw Out On Bail, which gar­ned many an excru­ci­at­ing reaction.

[kml_flashembed movie=”/videos/events/vacationwithjohn06/laughing.swf” width=“480” height=“375” wmode=“transparent”/]

I still laugh my ass off every time I watch this.

March 23, 2006

Greyhound To Her

Thumbnail: Greyhound decal
Thumbnail: Toronto city
Thumbnail: Bronwen on bed

They call it the red-eye for a rea­son, and although I’m expect­ing to sleep through most of the ride, I’m not pre­pared to wake up every half hour. The bus was sup­posed to be half-full, being 12:30 on a Friday morn­ing, but when I arrive at the sta­tion, the line stretches across the hall­way, dash­ing my hopes of a win­dow seat. The guy beside me watches movies on his lap­top, while the old man across the aisle works on an assort­ment of papers with the only light in the bus on. He sits alone, away from the win­dow, a big fuck you to any­one who may want a seat. It’s his light that keeps me up.

The grey­hound is sup­posed to stand for speed, named after the fastest breed of dog used in dog rac­ing, but for me it stands for free­dom. The cost is a stranger sit­ting next to you, a cou­ple hours of leg cramps, and a lit­tle over a hun­dred dollars.

The lay­over is an hour and a half. As I sit in the ter­mi­nal, I think of how close my par­ents are. I haven’t seen them since Christmas, and even though they’re an 45 minute drive away, I won’t be see­ing them this time around.

This bus brings me to her.

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January 11, 2006

Tremblant ’06

Thumbnail: Winding road
Thumbnail: Cabin at night
Thumbnail: Aaron and Karen
Thumbnail: Poker game
Thumbnail: Phil's royal flush
Thumbnail: Old and new skis

Here I am, in a cabin in the mid­dle of the woods, 160 km away for two short days and a night in Tremblent. Today, we drove the wind­ing roads lined with pine trees and set­tled in. By tomor­row morn­ing, the 10 beds and mat­tresses are going to be filled with 16 peo­ple, all-round exhausted, cram­ming in as much sleep as they can before the hills open.

In between, Aaron finds a Bubbles action fig­ure that looks just like Karen. Phil is dealt a royal flush, which we’ll prob­a­bly never see again in our lives, dur­ing the sec­ond game of poker. For this, we drink, and I’m asked to make a print of the photo for every­one present to sign.

I’m not here to ski, or snow­board, or party, I’m just here to observe. Nick gave me the use of his lenses, includ­ing a 200mm prime L, but it was the 15mm fish-eye Sigma that I grew to love. How strange it is to be record­ing my mem­o­ries with some­one else’s glass.

This week­end it feels like I’m run­ning. I’m look­ing for some­thing, but I don’t know what it is or where to find it.

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October 8, 2005

Weekend By Bus

Thumbnail: Greyhound station

Leaving by bus, in the rain and in the dark, is some­thing special.

The per­fect album to put on is Ágætis Byrjun by Sigur Rós, with songs like Starálfur and Olsen Olsen, but espe­cially Sven-G-Englar and Ný Batteri. Sounds are dis­tract­ing all around with the peo­ple talk­ing, the bat­ter­ing of rain­drops on the wind­shield, the thud-thump of the uneven high­way road, but they grad­u­ally fade to a lethar­gic pulse. The unrec­og­niz­able tim­bres of each dis­tin­guish­able instru­ment take over.

This is the moment. The exact pur­pose of the song. The notes are pure, amor­phous colours in the dark­ness, a dul­cet damper for the out­side world.

Soon the rhythm of the pass­ing city lights will become more and more sparse, and all that will be left in the win­dows are the reflec­tions of those with their over­head lights on, read­ing books or keep­ing eye-contact.

It’s been ten months since the last time you did this.

How has so much hap­pened since then?

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August 28, 2005

Five Days With John

[kml_flashembed movie=”/videos/five_days_with_john.swf” width=“480” height=“335” wmode=“transparent”/]

It was five days of relax­ation, with some­one I could spill my guts to. The only per­son who knows every­thing about me, every embar­rass­ing expe­ri­ence I’ve had, every dark secret in the back of my mind. I could try, but I doubt that I would ever be able to explain my rela­tion­ship with John. Let the inde­scrib­able remain so.

Most of the time was spent in con­ver­sa­tion. In the car we would cruise. On the couches we laid our­selves out, both as shrink and patient. We revis­ited my old stomp­ing grounds, the uni­ver­sity cam­pus with its dull, right-angle archi­tec­ture. There was a bit of serendip­ity dur­ing his stay, the kind of hap­pen­stance that makes one ques­tion their sense of faith, fate, or lack thereof. After a series of ran­dom and cor­rect turns, it was a sud­den, rather ter­ri­fy­ing, con­fronta­tion of months of med­i­ta­tion on the sec­ond intro­duc­tion. Something I’ve been dis­cussing with John ever since I started writ­ing about it, some­thing I wasn’t ready for at all, and some­thing we hap­pened to catch on camera.

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August 23, 2005

John’s Here For The Week

…A week I’ve taken off as part of my avail­able vaca­tion days. There’s some­thing sat­is­fy­ing about being paid to have fun. We haven’t seen each other in over half a year, so the five days will be cal­cu­lated and pre­cise, squeez­ing in the things that we’ve been mean­ing to do together in every avail­able second.

On his way over, John was also able to pick up a small care pack­age from my par­ents, com­plete with new dress shirts, loose leaf tea, home­made banana bread, gin­seng (LOTS of gin­seng that I can now add to chicken soup), and an assort­ment of books that I’ve been mean­ing to bring.

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April 27, 2005

Long Weekend, Longer Session

Jeff and Darren are over for the next three days. They came five hours from Toronto to hang out with me, before they begin work for the sum­mer. This makes me feel special.

I’ve taken the rest of the week off. I expect to be con­scious for a few hours between now and Sunday. Thank god for paid vaca­tion days.

Three more hours and it’d be an all-nighter.

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April 16, 2003

Getting Dark, AFI, Etc.

It’s get­ting dark here, but the light hasn’t com­pletely left the day yet. The sky waxes grey with the set­ting of the sun, and a gen­tle rain is mak­ing the pave­ment shine with the yel­low glow of the street lamps. The smell con­sumes me, and I’m back walk­ing the streets on an unrec­ol­lected gloomy day.

I finally fin­ished off my hon­ours project, so I can rest a bit eas­ier now. The one report is worth two courses itself. It ended up being around 22 pages, which isn’t too bad. The only thing that remains is my geo essay, and I only have about a half page left to write. I went to lunch with Aaron and Wheaties to cel­e­brate a com­pleted course at the Elephant and Castle. A great wait­ress served us, and offered a vari­a­tion on the Strongbow I was hav­ing, which was the addi­tion of some lime cor­dial, or some black cur­rant juice. We all got to try both with the Strongbow, and it was decided that the lime was the bet­ter of the two. The remain­ing black cur­rant juice went into the beer, and Aaron told me that it was tasty.

200 more wins to an arch­mage icon.

I’ve been lis­ten­ing to the lat­est AFI album lately, and even though I didn’t much care for it at first, I’m com­pletely addicted now. There’s some­thing about the har­monies in the vocals that make their sound so unique. I’m not quite used to Davey Havok’s voice though, as he sounds like a child to me. Quite uncon­ven­tional Currently, my favorite song is This Celluloid Dream.

A trip to the Dominican Republic may be work­ing out for the first week­end of May. Since it’s the begin­ning of the off-season, the cost of the entire trip, drinks and meals included along with res­i­dence at a four-star hotel, will be around $900 for a week. Apparently this includes scuba div­ing, horse­back rid­ing, jet ski­ing, and a beach-side view. Currently, only Aaron, Cristina and I are com­pletely com­mit­ted to going, but we need an even num­ber of peo­ple so we’re try­ing to find one more person.

Artfag is cur­rently a red­head. Ummmm…yah.

Jonathan tells me that the full-time job seems promis­ing, but he’s not mak­ing any guar­an­tees. It would mainly con­sist of going around the city to var­i­ous com­mer­cial cus­tomers and trou­bleshoot­ing com­puter prob­lems. The pay will start at around $15 which is not too bad, but not great for a grad­u­ate. He says that I’ll also need a car to be able to get to the loca­tions that need ser­vice, some­thing that I’ll con­sider more if I’m actu­ally able to get the job. He tells me that it’s a good foot-in-the-door for web pro­gram­ming posi­tions in the future. I am very grate­ful, and I’m not get­ting hopes up.