A long delayed (and extremely prolific) 2nd update on myadventures in Ottawa + bonus random musings
This is the 1st weekend in many, many weeks that I haven't been busy doing kewl stuff so I am making myself write this instead of reading a book, since it will never get written otherwise. When I foresaw myself doing little granular updates every 3 weeks or so, I was still suffering from the distorted perspective that life in the armpit of Ontario (Waterloo) inflicts upon anyone who stays there for more than a year at a stretch. I had managed to forget what it meant to live in a metropolis and actually have a life after spending 20 consecutive months trapped in the 'loo. However, now that I finally have a day to myself, I shall endeavour to narrate some of the interesting things I have been upto. So, thinking back to the kinds of things (aside from work, which I'll cover at the end, for those who actually care) I've been upto, they include trips to museums, canoeing, watching plays, attending concerts, lots of trampolining, watching a few movies, exploring the bike trails of Ottawa, playing hackeysack & volleyball, learning how to cook, experiencing what Ottawa has to offer in the way of fine (or sometimes merely interesting) cuisine, switching banks, renewing me health card, reading a few books, Canada Day stuff and another trip to Montreal.
Museums
There was a weekend almost 2 months ago when my roommates Andrew & Shannon scheduled both their families (not to mention one of Shannon's friends) to come visit on the same weekend. Amidst great confusion & much ballyhooing, they were able to tweak the visits so that Shannon's folks visited on Saturday & Andrew's on Sunday, while Shannon's friend decided to visit another weekend. Well, I was allowed to unleash myself upon the Headlands when they arrived Saturday morning and we all went out for brekky at a little pub called The Royal Oak, which is about a 10 minute trot from our apartment. Shannon's mom is unbelievably nice, much like Shannon herself. Shannon's dad is a Bob Dylan fan. A very big Bob Dylan fan. It is unfortunate that I was blissfuly unaware of this fact when I expostulated during the meal that Bob Dylan couldn't sing.
I just realized that I haven't mentioned anything about museums yet so I'd best get on with it. After filling our wee bellies, we piled into the HeadlandMobile and drove to the Museum of Nature. Upon arriving there, we were pleasantly surprised to find out that it was "Museum Day" and so all museums in the city were free. After a brief but harrowing discussion, we decided to visit as many of them as we could cram into the day. Being at the Museum of Nature, the natural thing to do was to gawk at the dinosaur exhibits in the prehistory section. This we judiciously did for about 2 hours, all the while trying to ascertain whether the majestic and menacing sprawling figures surrounding us were actual specimens or merely synthetic replicas. To our delight, we eventually discovered that most of what we could see were actual fossils, which impalpably made them kewler.
Once we had escaped from the Jurassic parade, Andrew convinced us to visit the Mueseum of Aviation next, which seems like a perfectly reasonable suggestion on the surface, if you leave his obsession with aircraft out of the equation. Having been sufficiently impressed by the silent thunder lizards however, the Headlands were easily persuaded to make the Museum of Aviation their next stop.
We walked into the building to be treated to a display of hundreds of ancient airoplanes, many of them biplanes dating back to WWII. Andrew looked like he had died & gone to heaven. One of the panes had a wing missing, the gruesome result of a rather nasty landing, I believe. There were a few planes that dwarfed the others, leading me to wonder if they had to be reassembled inside the building or whether it had been erected around them. Most of the exhibits were accompanied by wee write-ups detailing salient points about the aircraft in concern. A few video terminals were scattered around the building as well. Amidst the plans was a section covering electronics in aviation and had some strange looking devices available for the masses to peer at in awe. On the way to the other side of the building, we passed by a booth where a man was offering biplane rides to anyone who would cross his palm with 3 yuppie food stamps ($60). A bit steep, we concluded. The other side was more of the same, except for a little plane that was designed for kids to pose inside. Andrew & I crammed into it for a photograph, which is now attached to the door of our fridge. When the rest of us were exhausted from walking around, we sat down near the exit and recuperated while Andrew extracted an encore from the planes. By the time we pulled out of the parking lot, it had been about 6 hours since we 1st set foot in the place. Andrew wanted to return next week.
The next day Andrew's parents, whom I have met several times before, showed up. We took them to the Museum of Civilization in Hull, where the running attraction was a Viking exhibit. As it turned out, that exhibit alone comprised up or entire visit there, except for Andrew's dad, who wandered off to look at some paintings by mid-eastern artists. The rest of us spent a pleasant few hours absorbing scandinavian culture from a millenium ago. Despite having been a huge fan of Viking civilization since I was 10, I learned a great deal while I was there, including the fact that those famous horned helmets were entirely the product of Richard Wagner's imagination. The Viking exhibit was arranged into a nice linear progression of corridors that covered every aspect of their life in semi-independent sections, using an efective meld of pictures, artifacts and write-ups to impart upon the visitors what seemed like all the sum of all human knowledge pertaining to Vikings. At the very end was a section that listed the current work in the field, which includes a pioneering research project in Atlantic Canada (Newfoundland, methinks).
The last museum I visited was the Deifenbunker, which Julie suggested I should check out. I went there with Steph, Dan & Andrew. The building is in Carp, where Steph lives, so Andrew & I met her at her office in the YMCA, from which we drove to Carp. Upon arriving at the Deifenbunker, we joined a rather long line-up that inched its way toward the entrance as people meandered out of the exit, leaving room inside for more os us to make our way in. We whiled away the time by reading through the guide booklet and listening to the amusing ramblings of the tour guide, as well as running around on the grassy hill above the entrance to the bunker, which is mostly underground.
When we finally were allowed to enter, there were some maps showing the extent of the devestation that would occur if a 1-megaton bomb were to be dropped on Montreal. Andrew was all excited to be living in the innermost blast radius. To get into the main building required walking through a long underground steel-walled tunnel. 'Twas like the one that connects South Campus to AL but different. The 1st thing we had to walk through on the inside were the decontamination chambers, which looked a lot like daisy-chained showers to me. Once inside, we flowed with the throng as it moved from room to room.
Despite only being designed to function for 30-days after a nuclear attack, the place had a dentist's office, which I found most perplexing. There were other oddities in its design as well. The frame of the building could move an inch or so in any direction, to account for blast forces straining the walls, but none of the plumbing was designed to move with it. So if it did end up moving at all, the place would turn into a huge mess very quickly. Also, there were sinks all over the place. One room had 3 sinks in plain view, plus one inside a closet! There was a prison area, where rambunctious individuals who cracked under the strain could be sedated & locked up for the duration. The most interesting room to us was the one containing the spy equipment. It had phone jacks in the floor and an actual Enigma, which is the device that the Nazis used to encrypt all their communication. The last place we ended up in was, of course, the gift store. I picked up some postcards that are still waiting to be dispatched & Andrew bought a book entitled "11 steps to surviving a nuclear war".
And that concludes the museum section of this narrative.
Canoe trips
There have been 2.5 of these to date. The 1st trip involved a last minute decision to carpool down to Waterloo with Andrew & 2 random guys from his office. Dale was supposed to have a canoe trip in the works for when we got there. Unfortunately, the dude who was bringing the gear and the car backed out the day of the trip, leaving us in the lurch. Andrew & I were so canoe-starved that we coerced Dale'n'Christine into planning our own trip on the Grand River. Alex Stewart, who was by himself since Sarah had gone off to a retreat, agreed to join us. Before I proceed any further, I should mention the trip to St. Jacob's we made while in the 'loo. Christine drove the 4 of us (Alex was at Stratford with his folks for part of the day) down to the famous St. Jacob's market, which I'd never been to before. While there, I bought a sausage with a very strong scent (which Shannon has come to detest now) and a 4 Litre jug of maple syrup. In case anybody is wondering why I chose to buy maple syrup in St. Jacob's when everyone knows that Ottawa is the place to find it, I present my diatribe on the pathetic situation of maple syrup in Ottawa:
There *isn't any*, at least not at prices any cheaper than in TO! The 'cheap' syrup is actually only available in and around Carp, which, although technically part of Ottawa now (what isn't...?), has an entire forest (they call it "The Green Belt") between it and the downtown core where I live. So, while Steph, who lives in Carp, has an abundant supply of the delightful liquid, I canna get any of it using the transport I have available to me. This misperception is part & parcel of the "new expanded Ottawa" phenomenon. Ottawa recently swallowed everything within about 3 hours driving distance, making it now 4 times the size of the megacity of Toronto! However, while Toronto (and even the GTA) is all composed of urban sprawl, Ottawa, in a noble attempt to preserve the environment, has included entire forests within the city limits. I'm almost certain it now has more cows within it's borders than any other city in the country, Calgary included. I apologise for this piece of vitriol about an otherwise lovely city but it needed to be said.
Damn, I'm good at rambling on tangents! Getting back to the canoe trip, we drove down to Paris, ON & parked. The rental company drove us to the put off point and left us the 2 canoes plus paddles'n'lifejackets. Dale & Christine took one canoe while Andrew, Alex & I took the other. Andrew was to steer while Alex & I took turns paddling in the front. The most wonderful aspec of that trip was the complete absence of insects. Apparently it was too early in the summer for them to be out yet. We paddled for about 4-5 hours, stopping to eat halfway through & portaging at the very end of the trip. Andrew had bought a guava with him and shared it with Alex & me. He has since become obsessed by the fruit! I got lost briefly at the end of the trip, when I went looking for a washroom and the rest decided to buy popsicles instead, but they eventually found me waiting by the canoes & all was well.
Something I neglected to mention was that Alex, Andrew & I had occasion to dine with Change Dave at East Side's while we were in the 'loo. Andrew also slept over at his place, where they have an incredible home theatre system. Sadly, Michelle was at her brother's graduation so we did not have an chance to see her :-( I guess I should have stopped by SPUC to say hi to people but everything was so chaotic that I really didn't have an opportunity to do so.
The second trip, organized by Angella & Sarah (Young, not Pell) from Waterloo, was much longer, lasting 2 entire days, and a lot harder to get to. It started out quite innocuously, with one of Ange's terse emails announcing a canoe/camping expedition trip to Algonquin Park and asking who would be up for it. Having not yet satisfied our appetite for canoeing, both Drew & I sent back an enthusiastic "yes", assuming we'd be able to figure out a way to get to Algonquin. As time flew by and one plan after another fell by the wayside, Drew eventually convinced his friend Steph to rent her dad a car for the weekend at our cost, drive from Montreal to Ottawa, pick us up from our offices and head to the park. A few days before the trip, Drew & I went to MEC & picked up various things we thought may come in useful during the trip.
Finally, the day arrived, Steph picked us up & we loaded up the car with tons of food & booze for the trip. The one thing we didn't get enough of was bug-spray, since Steph insisted she had lots when she had forgotten to pack it. The mosquitoes love her for it. Although we had planned to be at the park at 8pm, we kept ending up with people who insisted on doing the speed limit in front of us on 1-lane roads so by the time we got into the park it was almost 10. It was while we were driving through the park to meet the others that we almost hit a moose. I was asleep at the time and missed the entire hullabaloo. According to Drew, the moose suddenly showed up in the headlights, ambling across the road. Steph, used to crazy Montreal driving, did an absolutely amazing lane switch and we narrowly avoided a head on with the beast.
When we eventually spotted Ange, Sarah & Dale, they had been waiting for a very long time and were, quite rightly, most disconcerted at our tardiness. Dale was quite drunk and greeted Drew & I by hitting us in the shoulder several times. He only stopped when I blurted out that we'd hit a moose! In the interests of not paying for a campsite that night, we slept in the vehicles. Well, Ange, Sarah & I slept. The other 3 went to the bar at a nearby Holiday-Inn and got plastered. When I awoke the next morning, Drew was still drunk. As it happened, we didn't get into the water until around 9am. Ange had brought along her own canoe, so we rented another 2. Steph & Drew took one canoe, Dale & Ange another, while Sarah & I had the 3rd.
Things started out well, with Sarah teaching me how to paddle properly. Apparently I'd been doing it wrong all this time. The water in the lakes was nice & deep so we rarely needed to worry about getting stuck on rocks the way we always did in the Grand River. We had 2 portages along the way, where I discovered that kevlar canoes, though tricky to balance, are remarkably light, especially compared to a food barrel with several water bottles in it. When we reached the campsite, we decided to swim in the lake for a bit before dinner. Sarah generously offered to teach me how to swim and, despite my intense fear of getting watter into my nose, she accomplished a lot. I can now propel myself through the water and stay afloat on my own :-)
Dinner was something of a fiasco, with the legions of mosquitoes eating more out of us than we did from the food. Dale did manage to get a nice fire going and we toasted various random things in it, while Drew used the tiny stove he'd picked up at MEC to bring some water titillatingly close to boiling point. Shortly after dinner, Sarah & Ange went to sleep in one of the tents. The rest of us explored the little island for a while before all but me decided to call it a night. Drew & Steph took the 2-person tent, leaving a spot for me in the 4-person one.
Unfortunately, I didn't feel sleepy for another 3 hours and had to fend off bugs on my own. There's nothing like being sucked dry by squadrons of the infernal critters to make you appreciate living in the city. On the plus side, I did get to watch a squirrel playing and the sun setting. When I eventually began to feel sleepy, I crawled into the big tent, assasinated the few mosquitoes that had snuck in with me and did something that resembled sleeping for the next few hours. I kept dozing of but would wake periodically when the mosquitoes outside buzzed particularly loud and, not realizing where I was, hit Sarah in the shoulder or kick Dale, who was lying at our feet.
When the sun rose, I crawled out of the tent and cleaned up most of the mess we'd left from the previous night. None of us had remembered to hang the food barrel before going to bed so we were fortunate that it had not been attacked during the night by a foraging bear or sommat. In the interests of leaving the mosquito-infested island ASAP, we elected to eat breakfast in the canoes and hurridly escaped from the island. On the way back, we exhausted the last of our pottable water and Drew drank some of the lake water after treating it with suitable chemicals. Partway through, I asked Sarah to teach me how to steer. She tried to show me how to J-stroke but I couldn't get the hang of it and so we switched place again.
When we reached the last lake before the end of the trip, a very strong wind began to blow against us, forcing us to paddle as hard as we could just to stay in the same place. My shoulders were already pretty tired from the 12-13 hours of paddling over the last day & a half so this was the hardest part of the journey. Fortunately, Sarah is well versed in fighting nature, so we were able to make it back to the docks before my shoulders couldn't take it any more. Drew had a harder struggle on his hands, since Steph had never been on a canoe trip before. In the end, however, we all made it safely ashore and left the park with enough daylight to make it home. We did run into an extremely heavy downpour en route, however, which really tested the mettle on Steph's car. It took Drew & I days to fully recover from that trip, fun though it was.
I did go canoeing one more time, of sorts. It was when Alex & Sarah came to visit for the Canada Day long weekend and our attempts to play volleyball didn't pan out so I suggested paddling in Dow's lake, which is an artificial lake in the midle of Ottawa. We ended up in rather cheezy plastic canoes and Drew in something that remotely resembled a kayak. The water had dead fish and a largesse of seaweed, making it cumbersome to steer. I was in a canoe with Shannon, who is much better at steering than me, as it turns out. Not the most exciting place to go canoeing but I should have expected that, I suppose.
Well, that's it for the canoe trips.
Montreal revisited
My 2nd trip to Montreal was with Andrew. His parents have recently become the proud owners of a red Saturn. His dad drove up to Ottawa in it, picked him, me & Shannon up from work, then headed over to Montreal. We dropped Shannon off at her place and proceeded over to Drew's parents house, where we sat around & chatted for a bit before Drew & I took off to meet Magic Dave, who's working in Montreal for the summer.
We met him at his office, which is really kewl. They have lots of nerf guns & plants scattered around and everyone runs Linux, except for a token iMac. Apparently, they don't do any work on Fridays, instead just playing around hacking interesting stuff on their computers. And yet, they manage to stay in business. I guess it helps that they repackage a collection of mostly free software and sell it, preinstalled & preconfigured on a machine designed to act as a superserver, at a nice markup. We went to Brutopia and had the house microbrewed beer while playing shuffleboard. We played a lot of shuffleboard that night, which was great fun. Eventually, we left and arranged to reconvene the next morning, to have breakfast in the loft where one of the legendary Alex Somma's friends (Jacob) lives.
In the morning Drew & I stopped by Cosmo's famous restaurant to pickup greasy friend potatoes and then waited a long time for Magic dave, who had trouble finding the entrance to the Metro station we were supposed to meet at. Apparently, he has been walking everywhere & never got familiar with the Metro. When we arrived at Jacob's loft, Alex Somma hadn't gotten there yet so we hung around and ate the potatoes before Magic Dave had to leave for Ottawa. Yes, it turned out that the one time all summer that I had an opportunity to see him, he was coming to Ottawa instead!
Anyway, Drew & Jacob left to procure the raw ingredients required for crepes, which we intended to have for brekky, while I lay in a hammock & read. By & by, Alex Somma and Isobel Plants (his girlfriend) came by and we gorged on crepes. By the time we had finished with the crepes, it had begun raining outside. This put a dampener on my plans to check out the fringe festival. Instead I went to a random french shoestore with Isobel and picked up a pair of Docs, since Drew had been going on about how confortable they were for the past few months. They were a wee bit tricky to run around in but they both insisted that in a fortnight I'd be used to them & then they would would be the best boots I'd ever worn. After picking up the boots, Isobel took me to this random person's house, where Alex Somma was engaged in setting her home network up to use cable internet access instead of ADSL. I waited there and read an entire issue of 2600 while waiting for the rain to subside.
When the rain finally let up & Alex still hadn't gotten everything working, I thought I'd pay Jer's mom a visit, since I hadn't seen her in a while & she'd asked me to drop by the next time I was skulking around Montreal. After calling to ensure she was at home & willing to have me over, I hopped on the Metro & headed over to her neighbourhood, stopping briefly to enjoy some poutine. Jer's mom has a lovely glass framed porch-like area, from which you can stare outside without being bothered by the elements. His sister, Heather was at home too and joined us presently. We had a nice long conversation about all manners of things, until Andrew&Shannon(.com) dropped by to take me back to his place. While I was talking to Jer's mom, she was able to correctly diagnose the cause of the cough that had been plaguing me for weeks, for which I am extremely grateful as it was driving me crazy.
The next day, Drew & I helped move some junk out of the basement. It was the 1st time I'd ever seen this basement, home to all the junk that Drew is unable to either part with or lug around with him between terms. We found all sorts of interesting devices in there, including a large box of Lego. Following this, we took Andrew's dad out for tea since it was Father's day. We went to this little Indian restaurant that always undercharges the Jonses, ever since they accidentally spilt something on Drew's mom some years ago. Delicious food, it was :) One of Drew's parents later mentioned that some new airline was offering free one-way flights to men over 21 in honour of Father's day. Drew & I were on the verge of taking advantage of this when we discovered, to our chagrin, that it was only applicable to *fathers*. Go figure! In the end, we took the VIA rail back to Ottawa. I read the synopsis of Wagner's "The Ring of the Nibelung" on the trip home, struggling to wrap me head around the multitude of Norse gods & godesses in the tale.
And thus endeth the trip to Montreal.
Hackeysack, Volleyball & Biking around Ottawa
At the begining of the term, Steph's brother Rob took me bike shopping & I picked up a shiny new Norco Scrambler with front suspension, quick-release wheels and hybrid tires. No, I still don't have a helmet. Speaking of helmets, I have a random factoid to present:
It has been established that biking regularly adds a few years onto people's lives, on average. Anyway, a few years ago, the gov't. did a study to measure the impact of enforcing the wearing of bike helmets. They found that about a fifth of bikers stopped biking as a result of this. What's really intersting is that, as a consequence, the average lifespan of the population actually *decreased*, since death due to not wearing bike helmets is so rare that it's elimination couldn't account for the reduced lifespan of all those who simply quit biking to avoid wearing helmets.
Anyway, the point of having a bike is to use it. To that end, I have been biking to & from the office whenever the weather affords it. The trip takes an hour each way but as I spend most of it riding beside the Ottawa River, the beautiful scenery makes up for the time I lose by not getting a ride to work. The 1st few times I did this, I got lost at a juncture where all the paths fan out & then rejoin after doing some random meandering. However, I have gotten the route down pat now :-)
Ottawa is a far better city for biking in than Toronto or Waterloo. It has a plethora of bike trails and many of the roads have bike lanes in them. I love biking here!!!
This is the 1st time I'm working for a company that doesn't have a foozball table. Instead, the game everyone plays here is hackeysack. While I was a bit hesitant about playing at 1st, I've been playing it with the other co-ops every day after lunch for the past 2 months and have gotten reasonably good at it. Probably not as good as Jer though, unless he loses his touch by not playing at all in Japan ;-)
The other thing we've played a few times is volleyball. There's a sports bar in Kanata that has open courts and some of us (OTI co-ops) play there every so often. Summer just doesn't feel like summer until you play some volleyball.
I think that's all for outdoor activities I've been upto here.
Cooking
This is actually the 1st time in my life that I've actually *had* to cook for myself on a regular basis. Contrary to popular opinion, I'm not finding it so hard ater all. In fact, it's fun when I have a lot of time to throw into it. So far, I've made chilli & tacos with Andrew&Shannon(.com) as well as pancakes, spicy fried chicken & veal curry on my own. I'm looking forward to learning a few more things before the end of the summer.
Switching banks
When I started going to UW almost 3 years ago, I decided to use CIBC for all my banking needs, since it had a branch on campus. However, for a long time now, it has been warning that Netscape 6 is not supported on its online banking website. Despite that, I have been able to use Mozilla there, until a few weeks ago, when it sudden;y stopped working. In disgust, I spent a few days evaluating other banks & decided to go with TDCT, since they have an ATM near the GeekHouse 2.0, where I'll be staying in Waterloo as as support for both Netscape 6.2 and Linux. I've opened an account with them and will shortly transfer all my funds there, before closing down the CIBC account for good.
Renewing me health card
The other piece of plastic I had to deal with recently was me health card, which expired on my birthday this summer (June 13 for future reference). I dropped by the Health Ontario office downtown after work one day and filled out the application for a new card, which I have yet to recieve. In doing so I got rid of the last piece of ID with a bad picture of me on it :-) Now all I need to do is get my middle name fixed on everything... (when I arrived in Canada exactly 6 years ago they couldn't fit Michaelangelo on the arcane computer system they were using & abbreviated it to Michael, which has annoyed the hell out of me ever since)...
Reading
I have managed to munge through a few books so far this summer. I *finally* finished reading that D.H. Lawrence book I began on the plane home from San Francisco about a year & a half ago! I also finished The Chamber of Secrets & a random Ray Bradbury novella about Halloween. Now I am starting both Microserfs & The Big U. Next on the queue should be Les Mis.
School (I kid ye not)
I am now officially registered as a Joint-honours student in English (RPW) and Computer Science :-) A such, I am taking, 2 English courses (Shakespeare1 & 251A) in the fall, along with my last 2 3rd year CS courses (OS & 341) & Chaus'n'Fractals. Anyway, in preparation of the legendary gruelling nature of OS, I've been reading up on it, although I haven't done as much as I would have liked to.
Work
OK, those of you who got the last dispatch I broadcast should know I'm working for a division of Big Blue (IBM) called OTI, that is writing the open source Eclipse programming environment, which is designed to support any number of languages and has Java support out-of-the-box with excellent C++ support already available free as well. I've been assigned 2 projects to 'own' for the summer & they even gave me commit rights for the main CVS repository, which makes me the 1st co-op at the company to have 'em on my 1st term :) They're also letting me run Linux at work, which is a very welcome change from CheckFree, where I was mired in Windows, even though they let me play with some nice Sun boxes the 1st time I was there. I'm not really supposed to blab too much about the job so that's al I'm going to say for now.