December 2005 Archives
The weather for tonight is snow and cold. The snow part is really fine with me, 'cause I'm not going anywhere on the road. But... the cold is a different story.
...as you can see. Well, our family isn't very religious (or not at all), but we'll take Christmas as another excuse to gather and enjoy Good Food.
Well, that'll teach me...
My fave Chinese restaurant, but I don't know why it's the case. Perhaps its un-Cantonese-ness, perhaps because it is new, perhaps b/c it is a refashioned town house. Or perhaps the speciality dumplings that one never really forgets about? But every time I go, I order dumplings, maybe mutton skewers (although we found better ones at other more specialized restaurants), and maybe the cong you bing (oily chives cakes?), and then some new random stuff. The new random stuff tends to be Chinese in the variety I am not used to. You can tell it's Chinese, b/c of the aromas, the looks, but it's not necessarily something I had before (maybe b/c of the vastness of "Chinese cuisine"). So tonight, went with Wee, and decided to tackle a few things picked up from the wall menu: dirty-inducing fried crab, fried frog legs (and now I die) but not spicy/lemon-ish style, and something that goes by "lao hu cai" ("tiger veggies" says the translation on the same ticket on the wall) (and of course some bai cai jiao zi to finish it off, or finish us of).
The fried crab was very dirty indeed. But that gives me the idea that some summer, or sometime around the season of mollusks (?), I shall have a seafood party, in the dirty-yourself genre, complete with the case of live crabs, and the pot of boiling salty water.
In all his Chineseness, Wee didn't know what those "tiger veggies" were. A mixture of cucumbers, coriander, and a few unknown herbs. And, oh, lots lots lots of chili seeds... Maybe... yeah. *g*
Ravioli de Manchuria, on the east side of St-Mathieu between Ste-Catherine and De Maisonneuve, right in the Concordia ghetto.
Went with S to calm craving for a hamburger&fries&beer meal, and chose La Paryse, arguably the best in its genre in Montreal, and voted best by Montrealers. The meat is what's important. Ground beef, the right texture, not too dry-McDonald's-ish, but also not too fake-meat-patty-a-la-BK. In any case, this stuff is beyond the league of fast-food, but for 10-15$ tips and taxes counted, one can say it's a restaurant outing well worth it (by the poor student budget's perspective). I really should've had the double burger with bacon. So this was "La Paryse", on Ontario, a short walk westward from St-Denis, right across the corner where the Vieux-Montreal cegep is (and then, I remember that on the same corner, there was that hats & apparel shop someone mentionned to me a few years ago and which I should've checked if I really wanted to get that hat of mine...).
What a depressing film. Blah.
Other notes about the movie, or relating to it... The languages I can speak proficiently don't follow the same order as the languages I've learnt during my life. Cantonese was the first thing I "spoke", then I went to preschool in English, before doing the rest of my schooling, 5 til 18, in French (and university in English). And for one thing, midwest accents sound like total gibberish to me, probably just like Le Français des Cités sounds like gibberish to those semi-bilingual Montreal Anglos (who can write, read, but will miss a few there when you slang it up in everyday talk). And the "English" of the American Heartland must work very hard before it registered. And how does an Australian actor manages to pull it off so seemingly authentically... (Do you just mumble instead of speaking?)
https://radio-canada.ca/radio/sansfrontieres/67843.shtml
An interesting documentary about a place in Canada where the Chinese vote counts.
Related: I still can't get over the fact that two Asians are challenging leaders of the political parties running in Montreal. Interpret it like you want, but I think the controversy (interviews of concerned parties in French) is just plain embarassing for the candidate and the BQ (and the community, yo). Not that she had a hint of a chance against Paul Martin.
My take on the ethnic vote is that the sovereigntist learn from their (Jacques Parizeau's) 1995 mistake, and that their strategy is working (from 5% support of cultural communities in 1997-98, to 25-35% among younger people). And that immigrants seek stability in what seemed to be a stable country to have emigrated to. Separation, what the sovereigntists ultimately seek, is a direct contradiction with that stability. My father says, he emigrated to "Canada". I think I like Quebec, everything that's French, but breaking it up from the rest of Canada is not worth it. It's not as if someone in the relationship is being exploited so bad that you need to call for a divorce. So I disagree, and if Canada breaks up, and it could well happen in the next 5-10 years (with the expected election of the PQ in the next provincial election probably in 2007), I wouldn't know what to do, where to go - b/c I am no more attached to Quebec, Montreal, than I am from The Rest of Canada. It's not as if I'd be happier living in Toronto or Vancouver, if one day it wasn't in the same country as Montreal. So going back to China, like HK, melt back into the country my grandparents left for a better life? (Was it actually that hard for them to leave China than it would be for me to try and reintegrate it? So much hypothetical beyond-my-own-life talk/think...)
Before Wee left for Toronto for the holidays (where he will probably be eating Chinese food for the next ten days), we went to eat at "Le Paris", a more traditional French restaurant in an area where French food is the last thing you expect. Located in the quarter adjacent to Concordia University, Le Paris has been a favourite in my family for many years, with its hearty meals and walls decorated with posters of museum exhibits and Paris plays that probably haven't changed since the restaurant opened. If it weren't for the oysters, it would've cost below 30$, for a meal that fills and entertains the palate. So, Le Paris, on Ste-Cath just west of St-Mathieu. Probably one of the best French restaurants I know (of the few I do - and I'm not a very difficult person) - and the other's the pricier Au Petit Extra, on Ontario, somewhat walkable from Papineau metro.
(Details on the food: A lettuce potage in entree (with the temperature, one doesn't order salad). Bavette steak for me in a red wine sauce, and zucchini 'n tomatoes and some extremely buttery mashed potatoes on the side. A pear in "red wine" for dessert. Quality French bread that just keeps refiling itself. :D)
I forgot to mention to the world that I went to see the Habs game on Tuesday. Bought tickets well in advance, b/c we know they're sold out for the rest of the year, gave my ticket away for my cousin returning from Vietnam for the holidays, and eventually got it back b/c my brother's friend couldn't come (and I wonder what so important could make you miss the unmissable Ottawa vs Montreal classic). It was a special game, with the return of Alex Kovalev, who took a 6-week break to recover from an operation, a period of 13 games during which the Habs only won 4, but when he was there at the start of the season, the Habs only lost 3 times in regulation time in 19 games (while standing at the top of the Eastern Conference for like a month)!
The Habs were trailing 3-0 by the middle of the second period (one goal scored by Spezza during the second minute of play b/c the Canadiens player passed from behind his net *on the tape* of the other team's player's stick). Few people mentionned it, but Spezza was out of the game right after the first intermission (and hasn't played yesterday versus the Flyers). And Kovalev stepped up, banked in a 700th assist, got a standing ovation for over a minute, before making another marvelous pass for the second goal, and then scoring the tying goal. The goalie (a French citizen - who could've told a Frenchman would goal for the Habs?) saved the day in third period (with the help of his goal posts) and eventually, the Habs were to win 4-3 in shootout, with the finishing touch by Kovalev, after Dagenais scored and the two Senators, Heatley and Alfredsson were unable to respond. For every un-exciting Canadiens vs a team of the Southeast division, there is a Game 3 of Habs-Bruins series, a Saturday Night versus the Toronto Maple Leafs and a celebration for comeback kid against the single best team in the league.
What a non-category to open... I just thought that I would want to have, not a dark gray detective hat with a long trenchcoat, but rather, a beige hat with a blue stripe to go with a beige or light-coloured suit, and a simple white sleeve shirt. It would look good on a sunny end-of-afternoon Sunday in Miami, or maybe just with Amai Seikatsu playing in the background?
It's a remix that takes lyrics from at least two other Ferland songs, "Quand on aime on a toujours vingt ans", and "God is an American", and mixes it with "Sing Sing", which is really just a song about a poor fool coming out of the famed prison outside NYC, and makes it about one really weird mix that sounds more like a mid-life crisis? Oh well. While "Le chat du café des artistes" and "God is an American" (the remix versions) have played on Bandeapart, but also in daylight shows on the Radio-Canada Radio One, it was Sing Sing that made the buy.
Jean-Pierre Ferland - Sing Sing [Rest Area]
The best part? When the poor fool goes to the motel, and that there's no more brillantine, eau de cologne and the bed is all-carved down on one side only. C'est long vingt ans...
Jaune 2005 is a remix of Jean-Pierre Ferland's 1970 classic album "Jaune". Not a classic to my limited Quebecois music knowledge, but it's with references to Ferland, and what other local singers (Roch Voisine? Hah!) that I grew up - of course alongside my mother's Andy Lau. Yeah... Well, imagine Teresa Teng Lee-Kwan in technopop remix? That reminds me of the "I love Serge" (Gainsbourg) techno remix I bought a few years ago on my last Radio-Canadien listening spree... But Jean-Pierre Ferland is not quite Gainsbourg. He's more like those charm singers from France, like Aznavour or Gilbert Bécaud. Well, to me, JP Ferland is the summum of Quebecois kétaine (cheesy) of the 70s, and an electropop remix of that is just fuckintastic!
This thing's like green-coloured crack. Like everyone knows, there was a common theme in the things I brought back: freakin' *tea*. And tea is not necessarily something I fetishize. This is some matcha, sushi bar style, and gotten from the single place where I had that variety of green tea in powder that I liked. I'm not sure why it's been so hard to find matcha, or sushi-bar-style tea (if both aren't the same thing, and I suspect they aren't) b/c it's so easy to make, and is such a clean alternative to teabags! And teabags for oriental tea? Pff, what a n00bish attitude...
Well, this is matcha, I think. Or not. B/c, and it took me a while to realize it, this powder tea from Genki Sushi (a conveyor-belt sushi place found in HK and Singapore - I thought it was HK-based, but I saw on their website that it was apparently Singapore-based, licensed from a Japan company, and has been around for decades?) has a clear smell of genmai-cha, or brown rice tea. Yes, and the powder is perfectly green. I don't know what it is (maybe this "sushi bar style" tea). Needs to be investigated. Gosh it's good. Hopefully there's another bag of it around.
Went to eat at L'Entrecôte Saint-Jean with Steph, another classic of the Montreal foodscape on Peel Street near De Maisonneuve. Not as famous as Schwartz, but as one review points out, while you won't see "SMOKED MEAT" in thick black pen on a white sheet of paper as the only thing on the menu (b/c it isn't), you could think of doing that for L'Entrecôte with the only main dish they serve: steak frites (a tender one, was really good when served raw). And basically, that was the menu: a "table d'hôte", which consisted of a Soupe du Jour (a heavily buttery carrot cream), a minimalistic lettuce salad with a light oil & vinegar dressing plus walnuts, the steak frites, and chocolate profiteroles to top it off (you get a "special entrecote" version for 17 something, which is the aforementionned, less the soup and dessert). The restaurant looks like what one of those French bistros looks like, complete with the light blue and white meshed pattern tablecloth and high mirror-covered walls. Full on a Monday night. $22.40 for the Table d'Hôte, before taxes and tips.
Regarding this, there was a report on "Les coulisses du pouvoir" just now on RDI (the whole show is replayed later today at 5PM), and it turns out that the Lib candidate was Cambodian, and that the BQ candidate is also pregnant (and for the drama, is saying she would give birth on ballot day, January 23rd...).
Not everything will work perfectly smoothly on my Ubuntu Linux install. There are a lot of problems solved (like streaming music, video, to a certain extent - it would give you what you want most of the time, but also crash the whole browser, if embedded, or be extremely choppy for non-embedded, like for some non-streaming formats), some of them that will never get solved until a company decides there's a strong-enough [demand/customer rage] (like for Flash, or Java plugin), and some in the esoteric annoyances.
In the latter category, I think it is the way my ATI graphics card driver is working - or not working - that wins the palm. It would load correctly sometimes at load time, and it will equally not load at all, throw an error, at other times. An issue with the driver, thus the kernel. When the ATI driver doesn't load (it's a proprietary non-free driver made by ATI), then an alternate generic driver (mesa) is loaded instead, with poorer performance (b/c it is generic?). I don't know what it is, and I'm quite pessimistic at what I can find on Google (or "resourceless", b/c I don't know what to ask Google), so I've resorted to bearing with it (besides, not having my graphics card work properly is really just an annoyance, b/c it just means the cool screensavers aren't as smooth, and, well, I can't play "games"?).
I did notice that if I reboot my system, then it would probably work at the next reboot. I also suspect that it might have to do with my dual-boot, or more precisely, whether the last operating system booting was WindowsXP or Linux, which is a far-fetched explanation, but certainly worth trying when there doesn't seem to be any other obvious variable at boot time.
Will test that out...
I think I try to unbore myself by listening to the radio - loving the music and shows on Radio-Canada/CBC so much. And now I discover that podcasts can be useful to non-iPodders, with software like Juice (I was told one can subscribe to podcasts by Winamp?). Well, anyways, nothing new under the sun - it's sure kind of intriguing as to why while the technology was there for such a long time (RSS, compressed audio files, widely available broadband Internet access), it would take such a long time to add things up, and for the concept of "podcasts" to be widely accepted as mainstreamish (of course: the iPod as the trendsetter).
RSS support will be built-in into the next version of Windows, Vista. While one might hate Microsoft for its all-mighty presence, it is for the mainstream computer user population the only thing that exists. Like, Firefox might have implemented tabs since its debut, but the "people" will only know about them (and learn to cherish them) whenever IE7 comes out... At least, it was announced this week, the MS IE7 team is deciding to use the icon for RSS popularized by firefox.
In the meanwhile, Radio 3 and Bandeapart.fm have awesome podcasts (the first being CBC's Canadian indie music semi-radiocast / full-satellitecast and the latter, its French Canadian equivalent), for low periods like 12 to 6 AM on Fridays...
And my dad asks me in the car, "well, so you had the chocolate fondue for dessert, eh". >_>
Had the "Quebecoise", a regular Swiss-style fondue, with the addition of local Oka cheese, along with the escargot (which were semi-cold, lacked consistency, but at least that Pernod-based sauce saved the day - if the snails weren't good, at least I know I could use the Pernod leftover in my bar for cooking!). The restaurant was very hip, and looked much more expensive than I thought it would be, probably influenced by the fact they preserved the layout of the old appartment house it was in a previous life. Sabs had the raclette cheese dish (potatoes au gratin, really) with dried venison and duck magret served on the side.
Fondue Mentale, on St-Denis.
("and you may now build killer webapps to destroy your opponents!")
[music: some electro song with a Hubert Reeves interview (about humans destroying the planet, no less) sampled in the bg??]
(Bande à Part, which is really the French equivalent of CBC Radio 3, is the best indie muse playing on the radio 12 to 4 (AM, that is). Besides being a show on regular radio wave radio show past midnight, it's also a complete radio station at normal hours on Sirius (with podcasts - which are in other words, for non-iPod-havers like me, legally free phat-ass music files!).)
Check out the webstat for the month, almost past the midway point for my bandwidth allocation, before they start charging me 10 euros for the next gig! >_> And look at the current top hit, just b/c I spoke of the new PQ leader, Google takes it further and implies what the top Habs prospect might be (so, we'll ask my brother's girlfriend's friend to ask it directly next time she sees him *g*). I'm going to tell Google to leave me alone, bah. All the trouble with having your self-domain; don't know why people are still doing it, with free services so readily available for free - same with that bandwidth, storage-space-scarce e-mail services...
It's sort of weird to see demonstrators converge on a city like Hong Kong. I mean, HK has seen its fair share of public demonstrations, especially those on 6/4 since 1989. But anti-globalization in HK? The idea seems weird, and is probably motivated by pre-conceptions I have of HK as an ultra-capitalist state grown by the people who escaped a regime that initially seeked to restrict, if not supress, free market. Well, we'll see.
Also, what is wrong with globalization, other than a bit more competition to handle? I also had that thought wandering in my head that the cause of poverty is the responsability of each and every citizen of industrialized countries, in that they don't have capital, b/c of market laws that don't somehow allow easy redistribution of riches (just think of the people who make a living from reinvesting and interest on capital, while some other are really working their asses off in factories in the Pearl River Delta).
Another uninformed/naive view that I have is that the addiction on oil is everyone's fault. Until people here in North America can give up their personal oil-driven (really) vehicules, none of them can complain about War in Irak b/c of oil, b/c those are the same people who complain when their oil prices go over the roof. It's a somehow easy-to-make conclusion, b/c I don't drive (while still relying on people who do, and on public transports that obviously run on gas - hey doesn't even the city train run on gas?), but it makes sense. The alternative is as Clinton recited, to depart from our dependence on old energy sources like, to developping new renewable sources of energy (which reminds me, and the whole past week being bombarded with news from the climate change meeting that I went to Expo 2005, which was apparently on the topic of sustainable development and "Nature's Wisdom", other than being that giant merchandise-ridden out-of-nowhere theme park). So if you're going to vote Green Party, I'll be taking the bus.
And it *still* wouldn't be taken as a serious excuse for not getting a driving license - 'cause you know someday they're going to have affordable green cars in North America...
Those kids who're going to HK don't know how hot it gets in South China, that before they know it, they will be spending their afternoons indoors, shopping. But right, it's December, and December in humidificator-HK can be rather cold, brrr.
(Edit: Heh, well, I guess it's not exactly true.)
Is for the Xbox 360 to screw up (like it seems to do in Japan). The other observation would be the insufficient production to fit the demand. In any case, the P3 is by far superior hardware. The war, although, is going to be won by the game lineup. If I were to buy into the next generation of game console (b/c we didn't on the current/previous one), I think it'd be the one that will be making the next in line in the FF series.
(This entry sounds so self-obvious; why am I even writing it down?)
Because if you didn't, you really should see it.
There are no Asians in Quebec politics, perhaps b/c we're not a large-enough portion of the population, or that I don't really follow politics for real. But the weird thing is that both parties with a chance to elect anyone in Quebec have decided to pit Asians against the other team's leaders...
One Chinese community leader for the Bloc against Paul Martin in LaSalle-Émard, and one of unknown origin (my money's on Cantonese Chinese) against Gilles Duceppe in Laurier-Sainte-Marie. Look for it yourself, I don't want to be listed on Google (and I will empty the Google cache by year's end - cannot cope with tens of hits for some Utada Hikaru material I may have but don't have (can you believe that I'm hit #10! What's my opinion worth! T_T)). But the comment is that neither candidate has a chance (besides running against party leader, they're running in strongholds of the opposite party) but aren't they just poster boy/girl, as there is never ever any Asian in Quebec politics, even on the federal scene? And on top of it, shit happens.
(As I complete this entry, the night show on the Première Chaîne plays Chinese-sounding instrumental music - one by Mara Tremblay! Must check out that newest album that came out a few months ago already!)
As I read the preview to Design Patterns, I recall that it was the recommended textbook for the object-oriented software design course (and true bible for all software programmers), one that I almost failed b/c I kept on not listening and fooling around in class (yes, even a senior undergrad...). The course, even if taught in Python, would've been infinitely useful today, as I get another design panic attack.
It is not so difficult: sleep a good night of sleep, get a hot choco - if you had a laptop, find the most comfortable sofa-chair at the nearest coffee shop, put a pen in your mouth and think.
So, I have memory leak problems. That's probably with the webserver setup, or something abusive in my program (my personality points me to #1). Hmm, I need a picture-viewing-submitting applet tied up to the framework. I have an insane obsession with clean elegant code - somewhat that seems to me necessary to be a good programmer, just that too much of it leads one to design panic attacks.
I guess it's not even a problem of knowing how to do it (it's all there in the docs), but just one of knowing the steps to take to solve a problem (any given sort of problem). Some people adopt a head-first attitude - which is not bad when you are unexperienced (and learn from your errors). You could over-prepare, out of insecurity, and nowhere will you ever get. Same goes for social interactions...
Sleep, I have vainquished you!
On my desk:
-Giant mug with water (will soon be replaced with a café au lait one)
-A bar of dark choco
-A pair of mittens
-Cell phone turned off
-A copy of the Economist
-A box of Civilization 4 (which I shouldn't touch for the next few hours)
-A Canadiens schedule
On my monitor:
-Lab-grade stopwatch
-Mini Stanley Cup
-Model-size airplane
-A mini flag of Singapore (what the...)
-A box of untouched Chung Hwa pencils
Les Trois Accords - Saskatchewan
As reported on Radio-Canada, the Bloc is digging up dirt on Paul Martin's Quebec lieutenant (and former Bloquiste) Jean Lapierre!
I was awaiting the survey on Canada since it was announced last summer, and the timing couldn't be better. Also, a story of the Quebec sovereignist movement for non-Quebecers/Canadians. "...few immigrants -especially the dynamic Asians- want their children to learn French rather than English.", which is neither a sad thing, or happy thing, just a demonstration of socio-political realities. I don't hate speaking better French than English, but did I have a thought I'd rather have my descendents (if they were to exist) speak Chinese? What a strange thought - I shall never have it again.
Woaw, Gilles Duceppe's got wide shoulders!
Because they lost three weeks worth of tagging on my account... but the thing is I never tagged anything on last.fm. XD Still, this means these features. And while checking the paid account stuff, found that you could get a countdown of your favourite music as a generated gif (for free):
There's even a Debian/Ubuntu package for the Audioscrobbler/Last.fm! That is, found it only after lots of time spent trying to make the downloadable plugin work, assuming they wouldn't be producing a package for something as "obscure" as last.fm?
My aunt, uncle, cousin, etc, were sleeping, I think, so it was me and the clueless Vietnamese driver who was taxiing us back from Dalat to Saigon, a 5-6-hour road trip through the Vietnamese countryside. Jean Leloup's last, La Vallée des Réputations is the best tropical countryside CD ever. It would, I'm sure, also fit Africa, South America, if I ever go there. This review is exactly what the songs on the CD's about (Sur la route de Toronto, au bord du Lac Ontario: On the way to Toronto, by the side of Lake Ontario - but that's if you don't take the Expressway, b/c I can't remember ever seeing water by the road to Toronto).
One was the commemoration of 6/4 (and then I was on one of the shots taken by local cameras, retransmitted around the world), and the other was the very anti-climatic 1st of July march. But today's was larger than expected [of course, I wasn't there - I was in a different country]. Interesting to see what's going on. It's like being there when the anti-Japanese protests in Mainland China occured last April (it coincided with my first tour to China, in the Shanghai region, and I did see some broken windows of Japanese restaurants - in Hangzhou, probably owned by unlucky Chinese entrepreneurs...).
Picked up from the mtlblog, was this urbanphoto photoblog of a McGiller - whose most recent pictures turned out to be from the single other place in this world I've stayed in for more than a month time (it's weird to say it like this). While at it, let's repost.
[music: Jean Leloup - Johnny Go (remix)]
In 1999, I remember liking a song by Bran Van 3000 (a Montreal-based band that knew fame around the world?) called "Drinking in LA". There's a music video of Johnny Go, featuring the BV3000, on that DVD with the Jean Leloup anthology "Je joue de la guitare". I tried remembering the tune, but all I could remember was them mumbling some stuff at the beginning of the song (well, it's sort of rap - the best description I could give to it).
In 1999, I remember it was my last cegep year. When I look at youths who are my age back then, I can't forget how socially inept I was. Perhaps the best mood-heightener would be, as one friend served me (as I recalled 1999 last year or so), that while the people your age could have been so socially advanced, perhaps you self-improved in other domains (like at some of those skills at putting together a student newspaper). But I don't often appear my age. Even my first name, Cedric, is a popular name, not in my generation, but of people 5-10, or even 15 years younger than me.
In other news, I've discovered reflection, a property of certain computing languages to reflect upon themselves at runtime.
Maybe I give too much credit to other people... Coming of age is a gradual thing. One doesn't wake up an adult the next morning (except in Big, perhaps :D). When you reach a certain "adult age", would seem that everyone else doesn't look as impressive as they would've looked like. La vie devant soi. I curse the people who plan for retirement at 17. :P
Right on time for the Christmas season, is a Canadian dollar worth 103 yens. (And bad for our economy, eh) Also, coming in banks near you: a CAD worth 86 USD cents!
Woaw, it's awesome! You can read the sun logo in all four orientations and it will always give you "sun"! I've never noticed that!
(Maybe not all HK I think, but it comes mostly from one HK Magazine feature published July 1st, 2005)
-Alok ("psychedelic shoegazing")
-Dear Jane (Greenday-ish)
-Elf fatima ("emotional, loud, noisy")
-False Alarm
-King Ly Chee (hardcore)
-Oliver (electric rock / brit progressive)
-Qiu Hong
-Wilson Tsang
-Whence he came (rock)
-Tommy Chung and the all blues
-Jenny Jenny
-Joves
-Chet Lam
-At17
-The Pancakes
-My Little Airport