February 2005 Archives

Who will I be calling?

Public phones. I'm not running out of ideas for pictures of Montreal.

The 90s plus a few years. But yeah, about the middle ages of blogging, a bit more advanced than CEGEP-times and the Voir was reporting that some people wrote about their sexual lives on the web, or the webcam phenomenon. I mean, whaa! It did headlines of the techno section I remember, once every month there'd be a feature somewhat related to cybersex and whatnot. Apparently those people have been watching a bit too much of Ghost In The Shell. They wouldn't expect that Keanu Reeves was going to reprise his Johnny Mnemonic in some pseudo-theological SciFi trilogy a couple of years later...

Mailboxes in Canada are red. International posting is $1.45 for regular letters. I just sent a letter to participate in the lottery for visiting the Satsuki and Mei's house at the World Expo... Admission for two. Still need to find who number two will be. Um.

Andrew, Lorraine, Tania and Erin. And also, Sabina's yellow pull-over, as well as Chris' drink and hand. And enough linkage to nose-bleed for the month. >_> C'est ça qui est ça. S' birthday party. At Chinese restaurant Ming Do where she got there the earliest, and then Irish-pubbing at Hurley's on Crescent.

I went on to have a few more beers at May's who was ending her lease, and slept over at Fred and Moyogo where I still had the energy to trade my Corto Maltese for a very Valerian-like bédé called Lanfeust (two series: "de Troy" et "des Étoiles").

Took a dark cloud with me to bed. Woke up this morning with the lights on in my room, and an upset stomach slowly taking a life of its own. It felt like an empty street, or, like an empty strip of land. Wanted to run outside to take a pic of the hydro-quebec-owned field behind our patch of houses but am not crazy with this temperature (it's probably -20 out there).

I don't repress enough. My dreams are plain and dumb. Perhaps they make up for worrying everything out loud (in my head - and sometimes not too much only in my head). If I don't talk about it, will it dissapear? Sure it will, the experiment reveals. Even the things you itch to tell at least one friend, the little harmless things you really want to confide, they didn't come up in any conversation this week. It's *only* been a week, but still. So from now on, let's forget about it all, and stare at the rising sun... because it's going to be brand new day...

[music: Utada Hikaru - Can You Keep A Secret?]

Went to the Eaton Center, and actually came out of there richer than when I came in. But this is it: one of the most important, if not the most important, shopping mall in downtown Montreal. There's the Ailes de la Mode which is more posh/impressive but with fewer customers and also, by extension, less successful commercially. There are also the suburb shopping malls, but they're in a league of their own...

Yes, in most Asian countries, this is an antiquity. I think that for some cultural, perhaps practical, reasons, cellphones have never achieved ubiquitousness here. I mean, a lot of people here own a cell, or some form of remote communication device, but not everyone has one. At least my impression. I would need to see usage statistics in other cities.

And this is mine phone! Smurfmatic! (look at how good I am, snapping the pic as it changes minute :D) It was top-of-the-notch in mid-2003 when I first got it. Now technology has reached Montreal, with multicolor screen cellphones with integrated digital cameras (really bad ones, but pple like my brother don't know/care - someone like me 'd be much more interested in a digital cam that would upload the pics itself, than a communication device which would happen to take pics). As far as technology goes, I'm a reasonable enthusiast. And I go for the most economical solution with optimal performance based on my current level of technical skills. (I should let my camera take a pic of itself someday...)

Called the YH in Nagoya. So, I have a bed and a reservation for April 4th and 5th! WOOTTE.

My Murakami books also came in, yay.

Montreal at Night. Montreal under centimeters of cute fluffy snow. I want to go skiing (even if I never expressed that wish, and didn't go skiing for like 7-8 years?). I hate snow/cold/winter, but not today. <3

I lost the habit to upload music, because it was too obvious on the webserver's logs... Well, okay, so be it.

Judy And Mary - Daydream

Clearly know the name of that band since Yao Yao the random CS girl with the J-studies minor from MIT showed me Asian pop (the Japanese variety) circa 2001. Which was quite a minor story in retrospect with at least one sort of unpredictable function over the course of my life interests. In Asian music, in travelling, in blogging, etc. It's not the first time I talk about this. Not even just twice or thrice, sounds like a recurrent story, and that girl dropped from my radar for two or three years already, sigh eh? Judy and Mary was part of one music deal we had (along with Le Couple, and a bunch of older (more pop? which I liked less?) bands I ended forgetting the name - such as Mr Children). Never quite paid attention to band. So until some song included in S' Crisumatsu mix, and other tune I got elsewhere.

Ok, while I'm still awake... This is the sort of things happening in WoW. (Don't mind where my cursor is)

(Hmm, will run out of titles soon)

Took a morning trip to downtown, one of the pre-7AM trains on the Rigaud-Dorion to Montreal line. The train is seldom being used in North America: people can afford cars, and it's a cultural thing to make getting a car one of your first financial objectives in life. I don't have my driving license for one thing, and am considered a weirdo. I know only a few people my age (or heck, 16+ ^^;) who don't have it yet. I guess if I'm going to Asia for a while, then I could perhaps live my whole life without knowing how to drive?

I can guess what sort of rush it'd be to be in control of some powerful machine. Roaring in front of the driver's wheel, a motor as powerful as a few hundred horses (if there's a correspondance between hsp and real-life horsies :D). Anyways, whatever. It's denial, laziness, and social choice. All related to the non-girlfriend issue some 'd say...

I also dare Google to list me as the only source to clear directions in English for getting to the Expo 2005 site. So everyone can more or less find his way to Nagoya station. Now there seems to be a few ways to get to the Expo site, which is about 20 km away from the center of Nagoya. Two easier ways for backpackers to get there (which I'll try when I get there): one is via the Nagoya subway, the other is through the "Aichi Loop" line. But so far, nothing specific about the line off Google, so I'll assume it exists. Both ways get you to the ends of the Linimo, that maglev train I've heard about a lot in tourist videos about Japan - well actually, the Japanese version of the Maglev (the Germans have their own - implemented in Shanghai between the city centre and Pudong Airport) seems to be to its first real-life-with-real-passengers incarnation, and was opened March 6th 2005, err, I mean, will open March 6th 2005. ^^; So, here we go:

• Subway: Take the subway at Nagoya station. Take the yellow line (Higashiyama Line - Or "Eastern Hills" (東山) to designate the hilly area East of Nagoya, I think.) up to the end towards East. The name of the station you stop at is called Fujigaoka (藤が丘). From there, take the Linomo up to Banpaku Kaijo (万博会場 - roughly "International Expo Meeting Plaza", says Babelfish and mine incoherent Chinese >_>) station (this is station "L07", whereas Fujigaoka is L01). The subway fee is 290円 and the Linimo is 340円, for a total of 630円, about CAD7.40 or USD6.00 as of today.
• Train: I suppose it's part of the JR pass, so right away you save the $3-4 worth of train. So from Nagoya station, take the obscure Aichi Loop Line. From the JR station of Yakusa (八草), you can apparently reach the end of the maglev line Linimo called Banpaku Yakusa (万博八草 - roughly "International Expo Yakusa" - and I recognize the kanji standing for "Eight Grasses"). This station is labelled "L07". So, basically it's two stations towards the West direction to Banpaku Kaijo (万博会場). I don't know what the cost of the train is, but for the Linimo part, since you are travelling between only two stations, it's only 160円 (CAD1.90 and USD1.52 - I pay less than this to travel between my home and downtown Montreal everyday, for about the same distance between Nagoya station and the Expo site... Japan's going to be my ruin -_-).

(PDF Map of the Nagoya subway, which can come in handy if you're a proficient recognizer of kanji! A cute Japanese-only map of the Linomo line. Linimo fares and schedules. And the best map found so far of the itiniraries I just described, in Chinese/kanji only, phew - ok let's steal it from JR Central and post it here... Will amend this entry as I get more info...)

Too lazy to transcribe:

Hunger for what, I don't know. It might have to do with staring at the pic from two entries below. Yum. And I didn't get to finish it because S, for not having ate dinner when we met up for the Kings of Convenience show decided to snap the leftovers bag off me and gobble its contents down like a hungry animal. The bread, along with the meat. _O_

In Montreal (like in any other Canadian town really) Ice Hockey is a religion. What's different about our city is that the team - the Montreal Canadiens - won 24 league championships, more than any other major professional sports team in North America (the World?). The name "Canadiens" is of course derived from the name of Canada's inhabitants, but 40-50 years ago, "Canadiens" was used to designate Canadians of French descendence, France being the first European power to occupy this land (and then the English came in 1759, the Americans did their revolution-thingy in 1776, and Canada became Canada in 1876. Etc. But to go back to sport ->).

It was thought I would show a photograph of my house made white and fluffy by the sudden downfall of wet wet snow (the temperature was most mild today - 1 or 2 above Celsius), but also came today the expected fall of the 2004-05 ice hockey season. The picture shows the entrance to the Bell Centre (Bell being the most important telecom in Canada), where the Montreal Canadiens play their local games, and also a major show venue in Montreal.

Had more than enough to choose a picture today: had some fun at the lab with the camera, then ate at Schwartz (see pic), went to a show at El Salon where a Martin-lookalike made the jokes and fooled around stage chatting with the audience, and then randomly took pics of one of the ugliest Metro station after falling asleep hard on the bus and thus failing to take Place-des-Arts, instead taking Place-d'Armes.

While I fix some issues re:Design, the old site.

And I enabled un-moderated commenting. Apparently MT is really prone to spamming, etc. Was lucky the only thing in which I got spam with pMachine was the system membership... Anyways.

So, as I was saying on the old blog, I'm going to try posting a pic per day.

I decided to switch to Movable Type...