Good times in Montreal

On Friday morning I took the Metro to Alex's house. When I attempted to board the bus on the South shore, however, my transfer was met with a vitriolic stream of French. After a few unsuccessful attempts at explaining that I did not understand French, one of the other passengers translated for me. Appparently I needed to buy another fare in order to travel on the South shore; fair enough, although I think this episode caused the driver to take an instant dislike to me. I asked him to let me off at St. Charles, which is where Alex lives. Instead he let me off a block before St. Charles and told me it was a couple of blocks behind us. If I hadn't beeen lost in that area only a couple of days ago, I would have wasted a good deal of time wandering around aimlessly.

I had an enjoyable time talking to Izzy & Alex for a few hours before we left for a soiree at Alex's friend Jacob's studio apartment on the island. Jacob's apt. is a very colourful place, with all manners of interesting artifacts on the walls. I met a bunch of fascinating Montrealers there and played with this kewl sword I found :-) It was during that time that I decided Montreal was definately more fun than TO.

The night before I left, Alex, Izzy & I went out for dinner at this neat little Sushi buffet on the South shore. The proprietor explained to me the significance of that ceramic cat that seems to grace so many Asian restaurants. Apparently it is a symbol of good fortune, with each of its paws representing health & wealth, respectively.

The largest English CEGEP in the world!

When Shade used to tell me stories about his time at Dawson, referring to it as "the largest English CEGEP in the world", I never quite grasped the enormity of the phrase; until yesterday that is, when I went to Dawson to meet Alex Somma, who teaches a media course at New School. There are over 8000 students in attendance at this one colossal building in downtown Montreal. Alex has a radio show at Dawson so I got to be his guest. We made up fake news stories to amuse ourselves, since I don't think many people actually listen to the school radio.

Later that day Shade took me to an amazing restaurant called Santropol for dinner. His sandwich had this delicious hot pepper jelly in it so I picked up a wee bottle of the stuff to bring back to this bland Anglophone province for use with SpucChuck. On our way back, I took a picture of this crazy street that had 1-way signs pointing in both directions! When we got to his place, Finn was over so I had an engaging & entertaining conversation with them & their mother, lubricated by a lot of wine.

Getting to Montreal

Kerriann took Prish, Sue, Steph and me to a club in Kingston last night. It was retro night so the music was all very 80s. Kerriann seems to know about half the patrons of the club so she kept darting off to go talk to different friends that had just showed up.

We went skating on the canal in Ottawa today afternoon. The only other time I'd been skating was a few years ago. Steph pulled me around for the first little while, which was fun but rather passive and strained my back. Then Sue tried supporting me as I attempted to propel myself but that didn't work too well as I only had support on one side. So I tried again with with Prish & Sue each holding one of my hands, which worked somewhat better; enough to get me to the point where I could try skating on my own. I had a lot of trouble with my balance, although by the end I was able to skate in short bursts, albeit in a rather crude manner. It was a very tiring experience for me, since I was putting enormous effort into moving forward while staying on my feet.

The drive into Montreal was fairly straightforward, although we got lost after missing a turnoff just a few blocks from Alex Somma's house on the South shore. I got directions from some random Francophones in a gas station dep and we eventually made it to Somma's place, only to discover that he wasn't home! Prish & Sue were tired & hungry by this point so I tracked Jer down instead & arranged to hang out with him instead. Then we went to the hostel where Prish & Sue are staying to check them in, followed by a hearty dinner - I had bifteck - at Nickels, which has fantastic broccoli.

Once we'd eaten, the girls dropped me off at the apt. where Jer's friends Chris & Esther live. Two other friends, Julie & Jaime were there too. It was absolutely wonderful to meet some of the people about whom I have heard Jer tell stories. I discovered that Julie knows Alex Somma, Andrew Jones & Shannon Headland from high school! It was a lot of fun hanging out with them, although we could only stay so long as Jer needed to be up at 6am in the morning.