Montreal revisited

Since Ange was going to Montreal this weekend, I figured it would be a great opportunity to visit my friends in Montreal (and possibly Ottawa). Ange & a co-worker picked me up at Yorkdale on Friday afternoon & we drove to the West island nonstop, eating a picnic lunch in the car. Then Ange & I took the Metro to Shade's place, where we were treated to a delicious home-cooked meal while he & his mom entertained us with verbal banter.

After supper, Shade, Finn, Shade's friend Stu and I watched Shrek 2, which was loaded with the expected Disney jokes. We then proceeded to Brutopia, where we ran into Ange! Stellar company & good drinks made for a thoroughly enjoyable night until the bar closed & we returned to Stu's place where we crashed.

On Saturday Shade taught me how to play Magic & then I played a couple of games with him & Stu. After that I took a break from Magic & let Shade & Stu play each other once before I rejoined the fray. That game ended up being a marathon that went on for hours, thanks to me drawing & playing three cards that slowed down the pace by an order of magnitude (meekstones, for anybody who plays). We were supposed to have dinner with Fabienne & Frank that evening so I eventually conceded the game since Shade showed no signs of leaving before it was over.

After a brief stopover at Shade's place (where I had an opportunity to meet Finn's new Powerbook, Gwen), we went over to Fabienne & Frank's place in downtown Montreal, where two of Fab's friends from France were visiting. It turned out that I was the only one who didn't speak French, although one of her friends spoke English very haltingly. Nevertheless, with three virtually bilingual people around, translations were not hard to come by. One interesting observation I made was that Fab now runs Linux (localized in French) on her laptop.

We quickly reached a unanimous decision about the dinner venue for the night: this vegetarian French restaurant with a twist; there's no menu; instead they tell you what you will be eating and you decide how much you want; if you can't finish your meal, there's a $2 fine that goes to charity & you are denied dessert; if you don't finish dessert after opting to have some, you are banned from the restaurant. Their strange methodology seems to be working, considering that all six of us had heard of the place, although none of us knew anybody who had eaten there! The food was fantastic and there's a student discount on the main course so it only costs $10. The dessert is overkill, although we all tried it anyway just to have the complete experience.

Having finished the fifth Harry Potter book, I am now reading The Life of Pi. I happened to mention this to Shade at one point on Sunday morning, only to learn that his mother actually knows the author! Apparently she volunteered with him at hospital for a while. When the book was published, she invited him to speak at her book club. He agreed and then went on to win the Booker award mere weeks later. The members of her book club must have been thrilled.

I spent the afternoon at Fab & Frank's place. While there, I played the famous I am Canadian rant for Fab, who had never heard of it before. I also played for her the I am not Canadian spoof, which parodies the Quebecois. Apparently neither of them are quite as funny to people who aren't from Ontario...

Steph had come to Montreal too so I met up with her & Shade before returning to his place for dinner. As expected, the conversation was all over the place, although it never ceased to be interesting or entertaining. At one point we were talking about the advantages of LEDs over traditional light sources and Shade's mom gifted me with a nifty wand powered by a blue LED. It has four settings for the speed at which it can flash: off, slow pulses, epilepsy & steady glow.

Today was a very rainy day so we didn't really feel like going outside too much after a brief excursion to get bagels. The bagels were scrumptious though. Fresh Montreal bagels are one of life's simple pleasures.

While pottering around the house, I discovered this fascinating wooden musical instrument called a tamboa, which is a wooden box whose top consists of six cantilevered fingers (three on each side) of different lengths such that the tips of each opposing pair are the same miniscule distance from each other. It can produce the most wonderful sounds & I sat around for a while playing with it.

The last thing we did before Ange picked Steph & me up was to play a board game called Abalone, which is vaguely similar to Draughts or Go (in that is has two differently coloured sets of identically shaped pieces) but played on a hexagonal board like Chinese Checkers. It's a neat game & I'd be interested in playing it again.