I just came back from the most exciting morning.

Friday afternoon was a lot of tame fun. I had phở at Pho Hung with makemyway and springbird. Then we did some shopping, split an amazing veal sandwich from California Sandwiches, and ate a salad for dinner. That was pretty normal.

So was our trip to Lula Lounge. Makemyway and I went there to see jedward play with Samba Elegua. They're an amazing act! The crowd was dancing and laughing, well some of it, which was great for Toronto.

We left relatively early so that I could swing by Makemyway's house to pick up my camera. I had forgotten it there the night before. As I left her place, I realized that I had left my credit card at the lounge. So I tried to remember how to get back, paid my bill, and stepped outside. The band was packing up their gear, so I was able to say goodbye.

I was walking east when I noticed two people huddled in a bus shelter. I poked my head inside and asked where they were going.

You see, they were waiting at a Dundas stop for a streetcar. After hours. Which meant they would be spending a very long night in freezing weather. I surmised they weren't from Toronto.

Rodrigo and Francesca are actually visiting from Brazil. And they hadn't worn enough layers. I walked with them to College where we waited for a while, ducked into a convenience store to warm up, and caught the blue-night streetcar going east. I asked the driver to let them off at Jarvis, which is where there hotel is.

I bid them farewell as I got off at the Yonge stop. Soon, the bus came north and a group of us boarded. Most of the passengers were a bit unruly because the bars had just let out. When we got to Eglington, a whole bunch of people got on the bus. They had been kicked off the previous bus, which we saw as we drove past. I asked a girl what happened and she explained that a guy got angry at some other guy and punched out a window. There were about four police cars surrounding the abandoned bus.

Since our bus was quite crowded, I did the only thing I could think of: randomly chatting with strangers. This passed the time until my stop came up. A very drunk man said goodbye to his friends and exited with me. I walked with him for a while and we struck up a conversation. It seems that he is doing an anthropology degree at York.

This didn't explain why he had misplaced his hat in one of his friend's pockets. Or why he hit on every girl on our way north. Or why he had difficulty opening his front door, which I passed on the way back home.

Wasn't that an exciting series of adventures? So exciting, in fact, that now I'm wide awake! It's a good thing that I'm good at falling asleep.

November was just a whirlwind of activity. I was so busy that I barely had enough time to sleep, much less sort through photographs and write in my journal.

So here's an executive summary, brought to you by my photographic memory. That is to say, my photo albums.

Manhole cover
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I started the month by flying to Sunnydale, California. I spent a week at the Googleplex working on Ubuntu during the day.

Drinking
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

My nights were filled with activity as well. I saw old friends, like Peter, and made new ones too.

Donations
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

The next week was spent in San Francisco. maradydd took me to a Dorkbot. Fun!

Mark Shuttleworth
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Again, the days were filled with work for Canonical. (I took many wonderfully embarassing photographs of my co-workers.)

Mini camera
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

And again, my evenings were also very adventurous.

Skating
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I managed to meet lovely people like Rachel, and Sorrel, and Erica, and Sophy. It's strange, but not that strange, how they all are connected to ioerror somehow.

Laughing squid
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I finally got introduced to Scott Beale at the Laughing Squid party. I managed to convince Marc and Etienne to come along, and I think they liked it. But really, how could they not? There was a steam car, the Photoboof, kettle corn, robots, dancing girls, columns of fire, strange bicycles, art cars, and LEGO.

Decorations
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I returned to Canada where I attempted to collapse, but failed. gorbash_dragon reminded me just how festive this time of year really is.

Pouring
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

This began a whole lot of socializing with my long lost friends. So I went to a diluvienne's tea party.

Len
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

And callmepavlov's Munchkin party.

5th anniversary party
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Expozine, which isn't a party at all. But they threw one afterwards.

Eric Dorland
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

And ze_dinosaur's farewell party.

Two-dalla party
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

My final event of the month was a blast. denkizero invited me to a launch party, where everything was two dollars, although bad puns cost extra. There was a fashion show, a marching band, an iPod battle (with real iPods), some television interviews, some drinking, some socializing, and a few time-outs.

Whew.

W Montreal
Originally uploaded by bopuc.

The Wunderbar in the W Montréal is one of those spots where people too cool to hang out at trashy bars go to. Trashy bars are fun places, because the people are shameless at having fun. Cool bars are fun places, mostly because the people are just plain shameless.

I was supposed to meet dzuunmod there, but I was busy packing for my flight to California.¹ By the time I stepped out of the taxi, they were already gone. But I had consciousness to burn, since I had an early morning flight. And there was no way I'd go to sleep. If I did, I'd sleep right through my boarding call.

I walked up to the door, the doorman got it, and I went inside. After checking my coat, I strode into the club.

The Wunderbar is decked out like a dance club on a Friday night. This seemed appropriate, as it was Friday night. There were lights everywhere, lining on the walls, embedded in the wavy plastic ceiling, illuminating the liquours. They pulsated to the beat of the music, as did the patrons.

They clutched their expensive, yet trendy drinks, as they danced to a mix of popular beats. Mostly R&B or hip-hop, with some pop thrown in for good measure. Most of the songs were about women and their sex appeal, which inspired a group of them to get up on a railing and start dancing. I think a bouncer asked them to get down before they broke their necks. This was surprising as few people looked properly drunk. Like I said, the drinks were expensive.

What I've been noticing when I go out is the incredible sameness of people. But here, the sameness is different. There were obviously business types in attendence on the night I went out. Twenty-somethings for whom off-the-rack suits and little black dresses are de rigeur. That's just like those indie shows I go to, where everyone is wearing their horn-rimmed glasses and black hoodies.

Although the bar was decked out like a posh dance club and sounded like a dance club, very few people were actually dancing. Few of them had any rhythm and the ones that did basically stood in one spot and jiggled. Occassionally, some guy would ask a girl to dance, but they'd shimmy awkwardly before collapsing on a couch again.

The others would stand around and try to talk over the music. This was difficult as the bass was pumped until you could feel the floor thump. The treble was tweaked so it sounded ethereal. Still, the DJ was excellent, transitioning so seemlessly that song flowed right into the next. But you could tell that the DJ was there to do his job. He surveyed the crowd with disinterest, from behind in his eerily-lit booth, protected by his headphones and his MacBook. His outsider status was confirmed with his Come on Feel the Illinoise shirt.

On the opposite side of the bar, there's a sunken VIP lounge lined with couches. Moments before I sat down to write in my notebook, the place was filled with people making out. I have no idea where they went. One couple seems to have migrated in front of the bar, which doesn't have a lot of space. People constantly have to squeeze past them.

In one corner, there were some middle-aged businessmen trying to kick back and relax. This was actually pretty difficult as they were being constantly interrupted by us young ones. They also seemed to be actively not staring at the ladies who walked past, attempting to converse uncomfortably instead. After they finished their beers, they gave up and left. They were the only ones that had suits that fit.

For all the supposed exclusivity of the Wunderbar, the bouncers actually do a terrible job of keeping the riff-raff out. While I was there, I managed to see long-haired students waving around beer bottles, a girl in a grey pullover hoodie swigging from a waterbottle, an awkward balding man in an argyle sweater, a lank boy with an improperly tied tie. Oh yeah, they let me in too. But I had a clever disguise on, since I look good dressed all preppy.

I had to leave in the early morning as I had an errand to run, so I picked up my greatcoat and headed for the door. It was an interesting and glitzy place. I wouldn't mind going back and doing more people watching. It could prove to be interesting for a group of us to sit down and take over.

¹ That was over a month ago, isn't that crazy? I'm so late at writing this up, it's scaring me. It's a good thing I took copious notes at the time.

Cathay Pacific
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Flying out to another city is sometimes a bit stressful, especially if you've been travelling a lot. Here's what happened on the 11th, when I was set to fly to San Francisco.

21:00: Laundry laundry laundry. Blacks, whites, blue-greens, red-browns. No clean clothes and not enough time. I pulled the last load from the washer, hung it up, and ran out.

01:00: I hailed a cab to the W, in the hopes of meeting dzuunmod. They had already left but I was treated to a strange scene of beating music, girls dancing on dividers in precarious heels, and expensive drinks. Everyone else was too clean and sharp to be geeky, though I managed to fit in. Until I pulled out my notebook and started writing.

02:30: Rode the bus up to St. Viateur to buy bagels for my expat friends. The bus is full of drunkards, as the bars had just let out. Some girls got off the same bus and they were weaving around trying to find the bakery. I led the way. Got a dozen sesame seed ones and consumed one greedily while it was still soft and hot. There are hundreds of newspaper clippings lining the walls, you know, and even signed photographs.

03:00: Rode the bus back home. Ironed a few shirts and packed the suitcase. Tried fitfully to stay awake.

04:30: Cleaned the kitchen.

05:30: Bagged up the bagels.

08:50: Got to Dorval airport bleary-eyed and confused. Tipped the cab driver well for driving like a madman. Then I stood in line forever at security, got through the TSA, and arrived at the gate. There I discovered that I had no seat.

No smoking
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

11:00: Kurt von Finck and Jeff Bailey showed up to keep me company. They boarded the plane before me while two other passengers waited to see if they could free up seats. One was really upset, since he had to make it for his daughter's birthday. I was remarkably calm about the whole thing, finding it even amusing. The ladies at the gate shook their heads when they realized my suitcase was on the flight.

11:20: The handlers rearranged some cargo so that we could fly. Seats were made available and we boarded. I sat in one that had been vacated three times. We got briefed about emergency procedures, where I claimed to know how to open the emergency exit. There's a lot of legroom in those spots. Kurt sat in front of me chatting with a guy the whole flight. I passed out happily.

14:45: Awoke in San Francisco. It was bright, sunny, and warm. I was still tired, even though I gained three hours of sleep. We met Jim Morrison, got our bags, and headed out the door. With our local guide, we got on the BART, then the CalTrain and were off to Sunnyvale.

Luggage
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

15:30: On the train, we shared the car with some kids from USC. They were all in football uniforms, swapping beers, and being rowdy. Their coach told me they were going to play Stanford at 16:00. The conductor, grumpy man he was, shouted at them to get out of the hallways. Kurt and I went to the second level where he chatted with some guy from Vancouver. I watched the guys below do the college football thing: talk about girls, make out with girls, and crack open cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

15:40: They got off at the Stanford Stadium stop, which was basically a hole in the fence. It's a stop solely used for football games. Isn't it odd how football is so important that the train would make a special stop? Calm returned to the train.

16:10: We got off at Lawrence and tried to walk to the hotel. We commandeered a shopping cart, one of those huge Costco numbers. That didn't work out so well with all our baggage, so we found a petrol station and got the attendant to call a taxi for us. She had trouble understanding us at first. While we waited, I bought a map. Then I juggled.

17:00: The cab brought us to the hotel. We dropped off our stuff and I took a bath. Then it was dinner at a local Japanese restaurant, which looked pretty empty. They shouted irasshaimase at us as we entered, so it couldn't have been that bad. I asked for a tatami room, we sat down, and I pigged out on otoro. Mmm, it was good to be back in California.

Otoro
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

19:00: I was supposed to go to SuperHappyDevHouse, but I thought it was on the other side of the city, instead of a half-hour away. Whoops. Instead, I attended a party with Jim. We walked from Sunnyvale to Palo Alto. It was a good walk, except for the fact that I was in constant pain from my bruised foot.

19:45: We arrived to a group of people playing some form of game. I no longer recall what it was. It eventually devolved into people just sitting around talking. I met Mike, who was the host of the party. And I forgot-her-name, who was the cute girl that all the guys wanted to talk to. And Will Chan, who would show up in my later adventures. Everyone else got introduced to me, and I forgot all of their names too. But I do remember that they all worked for Google.

22:30: There was a lot of partying, which involved excessive drinking on most people's part. I'm glad that Jim has brought alcoholism to his co-workers, although slightly disturbed at their tastes. They bayed at the moon on the balcony, which ended up in the cops arriving. Nicest cops I'd ever seen. They thought the party was cool, since we were quiet by then, but had to show up because of a neighbour's call.

00:15: The Token Hot Guy at the party had hooked up with the Cute Girl, so I made people promise not to let them drive off drunk. This failed because everyone else was having a "good time" and didn't notice them putting on their shoes. This meant that I had to trail them to a parking lot, in a dark neighbourhood, and I am bad with directions. She wanted to drive herself home in her car, but the guy seemed reasonably sober, so I let him drive. I hope they didn't get into trouble.

00:25: I walked back in the warm Californian night, slightly lost, until I found Jim getting into Will's car. Will drove us to the hotel, where I collapsed instantly of exhaustion.

Courtyard
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

23 June 2006

Our last night in Paris involved a trip to Au Pied de Cochon in the heart of Paris. Claire organized the trip and I couldn't believe my ears when I heard where we were going. My eyes must have gone as wide as saucers.

I had walked pas the restaurant many times while in town. And it's always open, so you can duck in for a late-night bowl of onion soup. This time, however, we would be having a table d'hôte. After all, we were feeding a huge group of very hungry people.

I gathered a group into one of the hotel shuttle buses and managed to get us all into the city. Along the way, I chatted with Andreas, who had managed to come along with us. We talked about the anthropological implications of studying hackers, who are some of the most introspective people on the planet. He admitted that it was different but he was glad that he didn't have to explain what an antropologist does.

We got out of the huge underground complex and found ourselves steps from the restaurant. We went up the richly decorated staircase until we arrived at our dining room. There were a few people milling about inside, and I started taking photographs while the light was still out.

Cheers!
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

We started with a tender hunk of buffalo mozzarella on a plate of beautiful tomatoes. Then we had a perfectly grilled steak, which came out consistently good, on so many plates. I'm just in awe at their grill station. We did, however, have one hitch in the meal.

Michael Vogt was sitting at our table, and he's vegetarian. His plate arrived with wonderfully cooked vegetables plated beautifully. But in the corner were caramelized onions rich with bacon. Now, I love onions sautéed in bacon fat, but poor Michael just stared at it. I got up, found the maître d' and pointed out that this was completely unacceptable. In as best indignant French as I could muster. After convincing her that there really was meat in that dish, she apologized profusely, and her waiters quickly removed the offending dish.

They returned with new dishes that were missing the offending garnish.

For the rest of the meal, she kept on checking with me to make sure everything was fine. It turns out that her husband is vegetarian as well, so she was quite aware of the problem. And she was so apologetic because she hadn't caught the mistake. We left on very amiable terms, and I promised to return the next time I was in Paris. After all, I really do want to eat random things off their menu.

Notre Dame
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

After dinner, a group of us decided to go exploring. The others, I'm afraid, were too tired and headed back to the hotel. We walked past Notre Dame, sat on some chairs, and chatted with some French girls who wanted to practise their English. Then it was off to David's favourite pub.

We crowded our bunch into the upstairs, which was more like a hallway than a room. We sat on some benches and chatted for a while, and then I was accused of impropriety. This amused me greatly. A few drinks were had among our group, which supplemented the ample quantities of wine and champagne served at dinner. This caused some people, names omitted, to become quite entertaining. When the bar closed, I had to prop some of them up as we staggered out.

The vast majority of our group opted to take taxis back home. But the hardcore among us went to a small alleyway outside Corcoran's Irish Pub. There, we entered and ordered some drinks. Well, actually, I opted to stay outside because the heat and pressure within were just suffocating. I watched as a bakery closed and vast groups of American tourists wandered drunkly down the street.

Flaming poi
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

A group of girls from Vermont was asking the doorman of Corcoran's to take a picture of them. They were hanging out with Mexican boys with reasonable English. They saw me writing in my notebook and asked where I was from. "Canada," I replied, which sent them into a gleeful fit. They insisted that I join them in a photograph. How could I refuse? They left with one of the girls leading the way, she had been staying in Paris for a while, and they were here to be shown around.

My friends left the bar with plastic glasses of beer in each hand. I proposed that we head to somewhere quiet where we could sit down, so David decided that we needed to walk along the banks of la Seine. There, we found some small amphitheatres, set in the concrete overlooking the river. It was just like a small version of Tam Tam Jam. There were drummers and people sitting on the steps drinking beer and smoking pot. Homeless people would come by and beg for money, but everyone sitting down seemed to be poor students, so nobody had spare change. I asked some poi spinners if I could photograph them. Nobody refused.

After appreciating the night air for too long, we got up and hailed a taxicab. Good night, Paris. I'll return, I promise.

I had a busy, busy weekend.

There was the show I went to on Friday night, which was good beyond compare. I shall have to write about it soon, after I get the photographs off my camera.

On Saturday, I showed up to the Ile-Perrot Community Centre where I cooked for a small group of 50 people. It was the first anniversary of the Baronial Investiture. There were lots of people that I had met last year, and had to meet again. I need to show up more often, if I'm to remember their names. I did, however, remember Anoriel who is still incredibly adorable. Unlike last year, though, she's also incredibly mobile!

I was in the kitchen with Amrey, who provided lunch, and Diane, who was Head Cook. My contribution to the meal was tweaking all of the dishes as they came out. This is a good way of getting fed while everyone else is waiting. I had a lot of fun in the kitchen, which convinced me that I should organise a feast of my own some day. Plus, I'd get to control a kitchen, which would be a novel experience.

Afterwards, the ever-resourceful Alix swept in and started cleaning up. She was the most awesome and prepared cleanup crew, ever. Not only did she have equipment, she also brought containers and bags for people to pack up leftovers. I cleaned up my knife and cutting board, packed away my things, and bid everyone thanks and goodnight.

Then I went to the grocery store. After all, I had a car. I bought as many things as I could remember to and got most of them upstairs to the apartment. My fridge was very full, after that.

Happy 25.0825
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

On Sunday morning, I returned the car and made a little detour to the liquor store. With my loot, I returned home and started cleaning. It was at this time that joenotcharles and vierge_en_trop showed up. I left the broom in a corner, gave them hugs, and dashed into the kitchen to put out some snacks.

People arrived fast and frequently after that. My apartment saw apenwarr, azrhey, auzure_skies, baprime, cloquewerk, cpirate, Christine, drkeys, evildrgo, gorbash_dragon, grimmwire, kyotto, messiahdivine, mricon, mynatt, peaceful_dragon, pphaneuf, ppatters, swestrup, taxlady, wlach, ze_dinosaur, and zkzkz. You see, not everyone I know is on LiveJournal. But I'm sure it's just a matter of time.

The place was so full of good cheer that we must have kept the neighbours up. I was wondering if the party would spill into the bedrooms, but no. It appears that my living-dining room is good high-density parties. Which reminds me, Avery brought the most geeky cake ever. He had "Happy 25.0825" written on it which was very awesome. What was more awesome is that the lady writing this message knew what he meant. She had done some actuarial science.

Pesto Pizza
Originally uploaded by mricon.

Kyotto got to work out some of her frustrations by punching down some dough. Which I made into pizzas, until I ran out of flour. But no matter, they seemed to turn out reasonably well. Except for the last one, which had to be made into a deformed calzone.

Before they left, Gorbash and Konstantin did an excellent job with the dishes. And since everyone had to get up in the morning, people left at quite a reasonable hour. I was happily tired after that, so I just went to sleep.

This morning, I surveyed the damage and swept all the corn meal off the floor. Then I walked around watering my plants, as I do in the mornings, and noticed a new one. Hurray for surprise gifts!

House
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I woke up to a breakfast of pancakes, cooked by the wonderful riseorbleed. I don't know about you but waking up to a hot breakfast is heavenly. After some morning ablutions, we hailed a cab and along the way we chatted with the cabbie as I looked out the window. Luxor cabbies are really nice, every time I travelled with them, they had some interesting story to tell and big, broad smiles. Smiling is the way to fatter tips!

The weather in San Francisco is supposed to be rather variable. You know how that is, rain one minute and then sun the next. Well, the entire time I was there, it was bright and sunny and gorgeous. San Francisco really put on her best to charm me and she really succeeded. I didn't think that postcard-perfect pictures were possible, but I saw them everywhere.

I was happy to walk around without needing a winter coat. And everyone else smirked at how happy I was.

Daniel seemed to have recovered from the previous night's revelry. His talk on delta was excellent because he's a very good public speaker. Which is good, because he gave two presentations at CodeCon. When I talked to him on Thursday night, he seemed a little embarassed at how successful delta had become since it such a simple piece of software. But people like GCC use it to fare down their bug reports to the lines of code that reproduce its bugs.

Rob and Tristan sidled up to my bar and asked me if I could get them some juice. For their laptops. They were working on their presentation all the way until the last minute, which involved a drunken Tristan stumbling around on stage. Except that Tristan doesn't drink, so his imitation was quite poor. They were presenting Djinni, which is their implementation of a fast simulated-annealing algorithm that takes also pressure into account. Sadly, they didn't explain their algorithm but their talk was entertaining nevertheless.

Shoes
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

At lunch, Spider snuck me out of the building and she showed me around San Francisco. She pointed out the Eagle Tavern with a glimmer in her eye. I think she's trying to corrupt me. Or she's trying to pimp me out. Then we went to Stompers where she tried on some boots. We were stymied, however, by the fact that a very annoying woman and her husband were trying on every single pair of boots in the entire store.

iGlance is a real-world video-conferencing and screen-sharing application that has some fairly good usability built into it. It also has a fairly sensible privacy model and does some NAT punching to boot. Although it's only got a Win32 port for now, it's free software so someone will fix it up.

Sometime in the afternoon, the beautiful and fair wealhtheow came behind the bar and surprised me with a hug and a sandwich! I was happy with the random hug from a new friend, but the sandwich was wonderful. I had not eaten lunch on Friday so I was very grateful. She put a huge smile on my face.

I munched on the sandwich while listening to the OASIS talk. This technology is a locality-aware server-selection resolver, which is pretty good for distributing servers around the world and finding the fastest one. They implement this as a DNS redirector so that lookups are transparent to normal Internet software. This made me feel a little bad for holdenk, whose SelfDirectedProject happens to be on a very similar topic. It does, however, validate his approach.

maradydd's presentation about Query by Example was up next. She did a very good introduction to data-mining, which segued into her hack on PostgreSQL where you can specify examples of things you want to search for. That is not how SQL normally works, where you specify constraints. With QBE, you just specify things similiar to what you want, and things similar to what you don't want.

Proposal
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I was chatting with Rob Pascual when I noticed Len lining up in the Q&A queue. Suddenly, my ears perked up as I sensed something important was going to happen. So I pulled out my camera, stepped on some toes, and got into position. When it was his turn at the microphone, he started saying random stuff that wasn't question at all! Something cheesy like how Meredith had changed his life and how he wanted to be with her. Then he got up on stage and asked The Question.

It was beautiful. The audience broke out into cheers and applause, except for the heartless bastards beside me. But who cares about them? This was such an awesome occurance that an interview was taped.

After teardown, some people were going to head to a franchise Mexican restaurant. Spider insisted that I get real food, so we walked down to the Mission. We made a detour to Good Vibrations which is a San Francisco landmark if ever there was one. I swear that she's trying to corrupt me. Anyway, as we were walking out, I must have mentioned that I was from Canada. Because Cohen, a Torontonian, came out of nowhere and introduced himself to us.

Well, what was I to do but to invite my fellow countryman to dinner? So we set off to find a Taqueria that served nopales. This failed since Californians don't seem to like eating cactus. Instead, we went to Pancho Villa where I ate enchiladas and salsa verde and guacamole and churros and I was so very happy!

We bid farewell to Cohen after exchanging contact information and tried to find everyone else. Unfortunately, we couldn't reach anyone by cellphone, so we sat around dejected for a while. Then we realised that we could go to Annie's Social Club where an event was happening. This turned out to be a good and a bad idea.

Taqueria
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

It was a good idea because we found everyone at CodeCon. It was a bad idea because Annie's Social Club double-booked us with bad karaoke! And then were quite rude when we complained. And then kicked out John Gilmore. So I just want to say that Annie's Social Club hates geeks and freedom. So Len hailed a black stretch limousine, we all climbed into it, invited some reporters along and moved the entire party to the XYZ bar.

The XYZ staff were very awesome, accommodating an extra hundred patrons and getting an extra bartender. And they were very nice about it. Unfortunately, the bar was full, so I had to lead a bunch of introverts in the fine art of taking over an establishment. We walked in, started talking, I encouraged people to sit down in empty spots on the couches. They did a very admirable job of taking over the back.

I got the stunningly adorable akashayi a seat and a drink, before I taked to the people sitting with us. They were a couple who had moved from Florida to San Francisco, and a man from New York who was quite the boor. The man in the couple knew the New Yorker and seemed quite embarassed about him. After twenty minutes of conversation, they excused themselves and bid us good night. This gave us plenty of seating space to talk about geeky things until the manager kindly kicked us out.

I made sure Akasha got safely to her hostel and then took a taxi back to the guest room. It was quite the challenge to direct the cab driver, since I had lost the directions back, but I managed!

Coming back to Montréal has been good for the soul.

Last night, I had a fun evening with jbailey and auzure_skies and Lithuanian mead. As the night wore on, they were finding it more and more difficult to play Settlers of Catan properly. But we shall have to do it again because (a) it was their first time playing, and (b) they were getting quite tipsy on 50% alcohol-by-volume.

I managed to get up bright and early this morning to go to Lotte Furama for 點心 with kyotto. We were there before most everyone else, so we had the pick of the freshest things as they came from the kitchen. We spent a good two hours eating breakfast, drinking tea, and chatting about life. We finally kicked ourselves out as the restaurant filled up.

Then, I went on a fruitless search for lunchtime sushi. Sushi bars are just not open on Sunday afternoons. Despite this, I met up with posixeleni and we had a pleasant lunch at Soup and Noodles. I then took her to Nicholas Hoare where we browsed the stacks and chatted some more.

My life now seems to centre around dining and chatting with lovely people! I am not complaining one bit.

Amy and Adam
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Because Waterloo students are often out in far corners of the world when they are on work-terms, there are efforts to get them to meet. These culminate in social gatherings called WatPubs, which are an excuse to get together and talk. In fact, years ago, apenwarr organised some of the Montréal gatherings.

Anyway, on Thursday, holdenk swung by my desk late after work and invited me to the Markham meeting. "What time does it start," I asked. "At about seven," came the reply. So we were already ten minutes late. But it was fine to be tardy because Holden is one of the organisers.

I drove into Unionville, which seems to have turned itself into a tourist town. When a municipality's website has a big Valentine's Day heart on the front page, you know they're up to something. We found the bar at which to meet.

Inside, we looked around until we found a large group of young, geeky people sitting in a corner. "Aha," I thought, "that must be them." And I was right! Nothing says University of Waterloo like a bunch of dorky boys talking about computers. I sat down beside Tim, Graham, and John and introduced myself.

When they got around to asking what year I was in, I had to admit that I was an imposter. That caused a small ruckus around the table, and Amy declared that I had to leave. But I eventually convinced them that I wasn't so bad and that I should stay. After a bit of conversation, I started moving around the table in order to converse with everyone. This seemed to strike the girls as a good idea, so we all eventually talked to each other.

Some people had more technical discussions than others. For instance, three of the computer science students griped about their courses. Meanwhile, Adam in actuarial science stole a heart-shaped decoration for his girlfriend. Because nothing says "I love you" like purloined goods.

Some photographs were taken, all of which are horrible, because of the magical powers of flash photography. Still, it gives that charming, tipsy-in-a-bar feel that is so valued these days.

With any luck, none of our descendents will ever discover them.

 ____       _     _               __  __           _               
|  _ \  ___| |__ (_) __ _ _ __   |  \/  | ___  ___| |_ _   _ _ __  
| | | |/ _ \ '_ \| |/ _` | '_ \  | |\/| |/ _ \/ _ \ __| | | | '_ \ 
| |_| |  __/ |_) | | (_| | | | | | |  | |  __/  __/ |_| |_| | |_) |
|____/ \___|_.__/|_|\__,_|_| |_| |_|  |_|\___|\___|\__|\__,_| .__/ 
                                                            |_|    

So what does a Debian beer stein have to do with this gathering?

Debian stein

Absolutely everything!

We're getting together a bunch of Debian Developers in Montréal to drink and chat. There are rumours that you can even get your GnuPG key signed, if you buy enough rounds. What a great deal!

Thusly, the beer goes down and the trust scores rise!

The relevant details:

Who:

The Debian community.

Where:

Hurley's Irish Pub

Date:

Saturday, 7 January 2006.

Time:

17:00 or 5 PM.

Adam Zey
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

On Friday, I discovered that elliptic_curve was heading down here by train. I knew she was coming for a month, but the day had never really firmed up, until a couple hours before she was due to leave. She told me that she'd be arriving around midnight, so there was plenty of time to take Adam out for a celebratory meal.

He's off to Concordia, you see. Out into the wide world of higher education, and frustrating bureaucracy. He had gone to an orientation session earlier in the afternoon, where they stuffed him with bad free beer. I was going to clean his palate with excellent free beer.

I took him to Brasserie Reservoir, which is not only a very nice microbrewery near my place, but it also has a splendid kitchen that turns out very nice meals. We both tucked into plates of salmon tartare, and enjoyed them very much.

After saying goodnight to Adam, I realised that there were a couple of hours left to while away before Julie showed up. I planned to take a nap, so I head home. There, I found six messages waiting for me on the answering machine, so I called Julie's telephone and was informed that she had managed to catch the 17:00 train.

I went down to the station as quickly as possible, where I found a slight impatient, but mostly gleeful, Julie. We tried to find some dinner, which involved getting sandwiches at Schwartz's. Then it was back to my place, where we pulled out the guest bed (for me), and set up the bedroom for Julie. This was so she could close the door to keep Timin out. Poor kitty, his mistress is now allergic to him.