August 2008 Archives
Michel Vastel died today. He was a well-known columnist, journalist in the French-language media. He also has a blogue, and some of the comments left on his last entry before cancer took him (would you still be blogging if you knew you only had a few days to live?) sound extremely weird (like #33, and afterwards, when his passing away had been announced). It's not even like the book at the funeral home, because the messages are still addressed to him, the blogger.
Ramen-Ya opened three months ago and has already been reviewed by the Montreal Hour and Mirror. It's invisible at street level, perhaps because its signage is written in a very cursive font, as I passed on St-Laurent on bike, walking, by car for who knows how many times this summer, and failed to notice it.
Cutting short the chase, I have been talking about Ramen noodles in Montreal since at least 2006 (see my two posts). Ultimately, I prepared my own noodles from frozen goods.
I don't know if they also make their own noodles, but a brand-new Chinese restaurant in Chinatown does, although I am not going to be reviewing it today - I'm in La Presse, btw. The chef at Ramen-Ya spoke Cantonese, so I assume that the owners might also be Chinese, very unsurprisingly.
Homemade or not, it was absolutely fantastic. As good as it gets from Montreal. I had the Cha-shu, sort of roasted pork, on ramen, in a spicy miso broth. I'm not sure if they've the names right, as another "tonkotsu" is with a fried pork cutlet, whereas "tonkotsu"... isn't that for pork bone broth? I got an extra serving of noodles for 75 cents and did not regret it (a bowl of noodles might not fill everyone).
Dessert was fried banana - two generous bananas split in halves, served with ice cream. Service was a little slow. The place is tiny, furnished in Ikea, and you should bring the address with you: 4274 St-Laurent, between Rachel and Marie-Anne.
A bowl of noodles is somewhere between 8 and 10$ without the taxes and tips.
Émilie Heymans was at the top of the rankings before the last round, posts a 90... until Chinese diver CHEN Ruolin posts a monstrous 100! Heymans gets a satisfactory silver (en français).
It may have happened before the medal, but Heymans' website is down because of bandwidth limit exceeded.
I just moved in to my new apartment last weekend. I got a nice bed at Ikea, and some cheap furniture from Wal-Mart. I now need a sofa and maybe a computer desk.
Speaking of computer, I am experiencing the terrible delays, innuendos of signing up to a high-speed Internet service. I chose Bell Sympatico (total performance, at 7 Mbit/s), of course not because of their recent rebranding. I signed up to get my service activated on August 16th (five days, from Aug 11, the day I placed my order on Bell's website). Then, come the 16th, my phone is active, but I don't get my modem! What happened to it? I call 310-BELL, and 310-SURF, don't get what has happened. The lady was just saying that it would be delivered again.
On Monday night, I don't find the modem in my mail, throw a tantrum on the customers' service line. The next morning (this morning), I call the high-speed Internet hotline, and find out that Purolator tried to deliver, but didn't have a buzz code (I did not provide them with one, since I did not know it!), so kept it in their depot in Ville St-Pierre without even leaving a paper saying that they came by! So, I go all the way to Ville St-Pierre (320 Norman), get the modem. Tonight, I try it, and find out that the phone line's "capacity to do PPPOE" is somehow not active on my side...
But my account is definitely active, because I am using my dial-up access! So there I am, using my phone modem for the first time. Can you imagine that? Gmail takes time to load, and I need to use its HTML-only version... Even a terminal over SSH is painful.
Now, the Bell technician is supposed to come "within the next three days". Was my phone line mis-activated? Did rats gnaw on a part of the phone cable that was critical for my Internet? To be continued...
Update: They just forgot to activate my line... I'm now back to the 21st century.
One of the most interesting features of Radio-Canada's Beijing 2008 website (the official national broadcaster for the Games) is the twelve live streams on its audio-video zone. They were splitted from the broadcasting centre, and directly re-transmitted on the web, geo-localized for Canada. The "wall" of video previews below the video embed allows you to browse between the channels.
Perhaps what's cool about these steams is the total absence of commenting on the eleven other feeds not currently being used for traditional television broadcast. For instance, on Sunday, I watched 3/4 of the USA-China game on channel #5, without hearing any of the commentators, emphasizing on the crowd's reaction, and even what the players were saying/cursing (and the bad Chinese pop too).
Eh ben si, j'ai passé à la télé de Radio-Canada, pour parler de mon blogue Comme les Chinois. En prime, Mitsou!