May 14, 2006 Archives
Early bloom in Montreal. Seven degrees above average forecast for this summer in southern Ontario/Quebec. The crabapple flowers are losing their petals already - I'm probably going to pick the next insanely beautiful day to take my stroll at the Botanical Garden. Screw the akkido demo and o-bento for $20.
(SCIM is so complex to use. wth with these 100-something input methods? With none of which being plain old hanyu pinyin? OTOH, anthy：わたしわセデリクです.)
Oh, now I get it. List of IME engines indicates that scim-pinyin is the package, and smart pinyin, the engine to use. While labelled as for inputting simplified, also does traditional (just like MS Input Method Editor).
For Mother's Day, we went to this restaurant called "Tratorria Mundo" in the middle of the Pierrefonds-Kirkland residential area. When I mean residential, I really mean residential as the restaurant in question is located in a tiny out-of-place shopping mall, with only a gas station, a depanneur, a dry cleaner, drowned in a forest of upper-middle class residential houses. As its name implies, it's an Italian restaurant - one that is chic, yet homely (with decorative bags of fresh vegetables dangling from counters, portraits of stern Italian men in post-modern style, candle-lighted ambiance). I had the cheapest thing on the menu, b/c not feeling fancy at all, and it was a spaghetti bolognese. My brother took the same thing. It would've been better made if I made it myself. The pasta was supposed to be fresh...
On the bright side, my parents and grandparents took much fancier stuff (which is not fancy at all, considering the simplicity and availability of the ingredients) like porcini risotto, veal parmigiana, and a linguine sauteed with porcini and dried tomatoes and perhaps eggplants and usual veggie fillers. All and for all, it was alright, but totally stuff that I can make at home for 1/10 of the cost! Such is the drama with Italian food in general: won't find something really out of the ordinary unless you go to Italy.
(I do want to go to Italy. If my schedule allows - if I remain a freelance - I will travel to France for my cousin's wedding, first to Paris to join her and fiance up, and then to Toulouse where my aunt resides. And probably from there, travel to Barcelona or La Côte-d'Azur, Milano and Turino.)
The interesting plus is that one of the waiters is an (amateur?) opera singer, and did a performance for many tables (it also seemed like everyone except us was Italian-Canadian) in guise of happy birthday or singing performance to commemorate Mama's Day.
Today, for lunch, we went to Kam Fung for yum cha. I ate three of those fresh-out-the-oven egg tarts and indiscriminately stuffed my face with other very usual dim sum. I need to be impressed - and thus on top of Europe, I crave for a trip to HK (and China - this time, I will have my train trip to SH). However, I will wait for my gramps to go, next winter. Actually, they are juggling with the idea to go back to live in HK...