Steak flambé
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.
I highly recommend dining at Le Champlain.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
girl_tm and I were fortunate enough to get reservations for Valentine’s Day!
But perhaps that is because I’m a sucker for tableside service?
The filet mignon was very, very good.
So was everything else!
The most adorable little bakery is just a few blocks from my place. Cocoa Locale bakes some of the best cupcakes and cakes I’ve ever tasted.
Just look at this! Doesn’t it make you want to go there right now?
Chocolate-mint cake
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.
Before I knew it, summer had hit full swing. June's when stuff really starts happening in Montréal. That streets fill with tourists, people who show up to poke and gawk at how strange and beautiful everything is here. Native Montrealers try to ignore them—you can tell the tourists apart because they aren't half as stylish as the locals.
The beginning of June also marks the beginning of the Fringe Festival. Which is where we start off our little photo journey.
Packed bags
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.
Rachelle performed during the Fringe and I happily volunteered to take some photos of her, and her teddy, for an upcoming play.
We met at cpirate's apartment, where we did a few shots. Then we hijacked an old suitcase and this is what we got.
Bike musician
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.
A few days later, I was walking down the street and ran into a crowd of people riding down Rachel for Clean Air Day. At one intersection, I saw a man with a harp, a panflute, and a bike riding around in circles.
“How novel,” I thought as I pulled out the camera.
Make a wish
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.
The Fringe isn't all about independent theatre, though. You've got people who spin around fire at dusk. That's always particularly exciting. I caught the S. Vestas as they were wrapping up a performance in Parc des Ameriques.
Cameras really love fire poi.
The happy couple
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.
One of the zanier acts is Hanakengo. For the past two years, Hana has had quite the crush on Zack Winters, going to the “prom” with him and then marrying him. Don't they look so cute?
Demolished building
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.
After all this excitement, I needed a brief respite. What better way than to hang out with my fellow Debian developers in Edinburgh? Scotland is a lovely, rainy place that loves their deep-fried cuisine, real ale, and peaty whiskies.
And what do you know? I did too. Well, except for all that fried food. I felt pretty horrible after a week of that.
I returned to Canada only to head off to another geek conference. At OLS, held in Ottawa, I finally got to interact with a real working OLPC.
It's really, really small. And really, really cute. Unfortunately, this one was pretty broken as it was being hacked on.
Viennoiseries
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.
One of the finer points of the geek conferences that I attend is that I manage to attract geeks who are also into fun. This year, a group of us took a break from the various talks on virtualizing machines to enjoy a spot of tea.
I highly recommend it. The Château Laurier is simply gorgeous.
I've done loads and loads of laundry all evening and now it's hanging up to dry. The blues and greens aren't all done yet, but that will have to wait for tomorrow. The ironing will probably get done then, as well.
The apartment is now rather warm so I decided to sit outside for a while. It's gently raining and surprisingly mild. If I close my eyes, I can pretend I'm on the west coast again.
Which reminds me… I should tell you about the food at Google.
It's good.
No, not just good. Amazing!
The first lunch, on Sunday, was catered by an Indian place off campus. The vegetable korma was so savoury it disappeared instantly. And the food kept coming throughout the day, with sandwiches and fruit platters and all.
But the best was yet to come. On the weekdays, the on-campus kitchens are fired up.
They turn out astoundingly good food. Not just excellent cafeteria food, which is what I expected. No, they beat fine restaurants in many respects. Since I've eaten there, I've been completely spoiled.
Here, let me show you some photographs:
Monday's lunch was a roast that was done perfectly rare and served with sweet creamed peas.
Tuesday involved beautifully roasted chicken, a wild-boar coleslaw, and a hearty beefy chilli.
Wednesday, I had lunch with Jim, and enjoyed lovingly soft tacos.
And Thursday greeted me with meltingly good pulled pork sandwiches and a rich creamy chowder.
I was in heaven! How do I get invited to Google lunches more often?
I had a chance to speak with some of the cooks who were serving food. At the Building 44 restaurant, American Table, they've all worked in professional restaurants before coming on board. She had never cooked in a cafeteria before and actually thought the challenge was even harder. Later in the week, I saw the sous-chef who was taking her family on tour. I thanked her profusely and she seemed quite proud of the things her kitchen accomplished.
It's nice to see that kind of respect and passion for food. If only school cafeterias took themselves so seriously.
On Friday, I decided that I needed to visit a fast-food mecca. People have been telling me about In-N-Out Burger for quite a while now. All the Bay Area ex-pats I know long to go there. They rave about it whenever I mention hamburgers. I decided to find out for myself.
First, I convinced sailorfrag to join me for lunch. Then I talked to the Building 44 receptionist at the front desk who recommended I order a cheeseburger, animal-style. We walked there from campus, which she thought was a bit nutty, but it worked up a decent appetite. And was merely a ten-minute walk. I have to admit, that was the best fast-food burger I have ever eaten. And the chips weren't bad either.
These meals, combined with all the sushi I ate, have caused me to put on a bit of weight. But I wouldn't have skipped a single one.
I haven't enjoyed the great outdoors very much this summer. Or it seems like it, at least. So this weekend, I conspired with diluvienne to enjoy the last summer weekend of this year. I invited her over for a sleepover/tea party, which turned out reasonably well. By this, I mean that we went to bed relatively early. Relative to our other tea parties, of course. I reckon that I ought to have more people over. Then we can have a pillow fight, as all proper sleepover parties should involve.
We woke up early Saturday morning to go for 點心 (dim sum) at 富麗華. We didn't go there very directly, as we had both brought our cameras. Rather, we meandered our way down there, taking photographs of various things along the way. The restaurant hadn't yet filled up when we arrived, so we sat by the window and enjoyed a leisurely meal. By the time we left, we had a stack of steamers and very full bellies.
Since dilu had brought her macro lens, we thought to take a few closeups of other brunchers as we strolled back to my place. Then it was time to meet baprime and mricon down in Vieux-Montréal. Their friends
Seth and ejchang were visiting, so they were showing them around.
After walking back and forth along the harbourfront, we were beginning to get hungry. Icon recommended that we go to Le Taj for some Indian food. We took our guests along Ste-Catherine, so they could see the busy bustle of a weekend in Montréal. Seth quite appreciated the gaudy neon signs. And then we arrived.
We had a nice collection of vegetarian dishes, which seemed quite good but I don't exactly remember what they were like. I do recall that the bhindi masala was cooked well, without the okra turning into slimey mush. And the aloo paratha was very savoury. I think this requires another visit, to properly evaluate the place.
We said good night to Seth and ejchang and then I dragged Icon and Barbara back to my place. I offered up a tub of last-year's pesto and then everyone went home. Except for me, since I was already there.
The next day, I invited scjody to a Seth-warming party. Lots of wonderful people were involved, including cpirate, swestrup and taxlady. We had pizza topped with pesto, which was delicious. And there were plenty of photographs to be taken, as dilu and vierge_en_trop can attest to. I'm particularly happy with a delightful one that makes Icon look more russian than he already is. There was plenty of good conversation, tall tales, and tea.
We were just wrapping up as ze_dinosaur returned from Toronto. We got our of our things and walked into the pleasantly warm night. Why, now I'm inspired to through another of my intimate tea parties. Intimate only because my apartment is tiny, of course.
Yesterday was elliptic_curve's last day in Montréal. At least for a good, long while. We had an absolutely delicious brunch at Réservoir, which is still my favourite gastro-pub. Now even more so, I suppose.
She packed while I took a bit of a nap before washing some dishes. I helped her carry her backpack, which was really top-heavy, to the bus-stop. She was getting on the bus when I heard a sudden bang, some pylons flew apart, and people from the tam-tams started running up Parc avenue. Only later did I discover that it was a Cessna performing an emergency landing.
Instead of indulging my curiousity, I just went home and made pizza dough. Because, you know, taking photographs doesn't put dinner on the table.
Update at 15:07: Le Devoir covers this event with a researched article.
Update at 17:11 13-09-2006: The Gazette has an English article.
I must have brought the damp weather with me on my flight to Germany. Ever since I've arrived, it's been raining off and on. The previous night, we had plenty of rain, which we endured by sitting under a canopy. Last night, I was taking photographs of various things when the sky opened up. I ducked into a restaurant, whose virtue was that it was very close.
The restaurant billed itself as a "Vietnam-China-Thai Bistro", but you could tell that the owners were actually Vietnamese. Quán Binh is a small restaurant, surrounded by much larger establishments. And soon after entering, I could see why. Asian food was very popular in this region. I ordered some soup (tom yum gai) and a bowl of phở bò. The soup arrived in a small bowl and looked all right. But it was distinctly lacking any chilis and the broth was not particularly fragrant. They hadn't taken the time to make good, deep chicken stock and they didn't seem to have lemongrass.
The phở was not spectacular at all. I got a sad little plate of thai basil with a small bowl of hoisin and sriracha. Those two sauces usually come in big squeeze bottles, so you can administer as much as you like. The noodles weren't the fresh kind, but the thin dry ones which were rather disappointing. And there wasn't any lime, but a lemon wedge instead.
On the whole, the service was very, very pleasant. But the food was mediocre, and looking at the area around them, I can see that other forays into oriental cuisine are going to be equally disappointing. Ah well, I guess I'll have to find something else.
It's been a very long time since I've sat up all night, hacking away with other people, all staring at the same code projected on a whiteboard.
Not only that, we ordered chinese takeaway from the Wok Café. It's a greasy spoon that does delivery late at night. Perfect for the discerning hacker.
Oh yes. I've once again justified my job title while bashing on the corporate Subversion server.
In the past week, there have been two farewell parties at NITI. This is sad because I really enjoyed working with Peter and Allison. It's a little sad that Peter isn't here any more, and a little sad that Allison won't be around for much longer. But every cloud has a silver lining.
Which is why I can write two new restaurant reviews.
We were seated at the back of Chao Phraya, a Thai restaurant that's fairly close to my place. We've been put at a strange L-shaped table, enclosed on three sides by bright red walls and fancy oil paintings. We had to straighten one of them, as it was quite crooked.
A group of us, sitting at one leg of the table, decided to pool our resources and share some dishes. I find that at Asian restaurants, this is always the optimal way to eat. You get little samples of everything, making the dining experience that much more exciting.
We started with a mango salad and dumplings in peanut satay. The dumplings were savoury, which matched well with the sweet peanut sauce. The salad was refreshingly spicy, and piqued our appetites. For mains, we ordered duck in red curry, chicken stir-fried with aubergine, frog-legs stir-fried with chiles, and a mixed seafood platter. All of this came on a variety of plates and platters, and looked as good as they tasted. I abstained from puddings, but the wise chose the fried bananas à la mode.
It's a very upscale restaurant, with a fancy decor and attentive wait-staff. By the time we left, the place was quite packed with people waiting for tables up front. So it seems that the high prices don't scare off the customers. It's certainly the best Thai food I've eaten in Montréal.
I've actually gone to Philinos twice now. I was organising the second party, you see, and one has to vet the food beforehand. So I took gorbash_dragon on a dining adventure, all while we pretended to be food critics.
We split spanakopita which were flakey, rich, and golden. I tucked into a plate of kalamarakia tiganita which were tender and crisp. There was a salt shaker on the table, which was necessary because the squid lacked seasoning.
For mains, I had a lamb moussaka while Gorbash ate chicken souvlaki. My dish was firm and well cooked. Her souvlaki was grilled well, but still tender. And the tsatsiki was quite tasty. I was pleased with our meal, so I put down a reservation for our party.
When I returned, I shared a starter of skordalia, which was bursting with garlic and good olive oil. This did not prepare me for what I was to do. We ordered a seafood platter, to share between two of us. What first arrived was a small plate of grilled octopus with capers and pickled chiles. Seeing the look of disappointment on our faces, the waiter reassured us that we would not leave hungry. "This is a Greek restaurant," he exclaimed.
The octopus was some of the best I have ever eaten. Next came a huge platter which was overflowing with squid and shrimps and mussels. We worked our way through the squid, deep-fried wonderfully as before. Then the massive shrimps which were grilled lightly to heighten their sweetness. Then the mussels! We ate and ate and ate until they were all gone. Their flesh was so sweet that I reached for the breadbasket and started dunking bread into the liquor.
It was about this time when our waiter came up and expressed joy at our empty dishes. "I don't care what nationality you are," he cried, "you ate everything and now you're dunking your bread. You are truly European." I had never been so happy nor so stuffed in one sitting before.
I had to get up very slowly. But I shook hands with the cooks before I left.
Last Thursday, I met up with dcoombs after work. We met up with France and we drove to Souvenirs de Bangkok. We had the most difficult time finding parking, but in the end, we prevailed.
We sat down in a table by the back, away from the howling winds buffeting the front door. We tucked into bowls of soup which were quite flavourful. But our meal of beef curry and satay chicken and noodles was not as exciting as it could have been. It was tasty and filling, but didn't have that explosive Thai flavour.
Once we had paid up, we drove to the Centaur where we took in Hellfire Pass. Normally, you'll find me enthusiastic about the show, but this one seemed a little weak. There was an understudy on stage, who faltered a bit on her lines. Although the rest of the cast was quite good, they struggled with the script. The play was paced strangely and too many conflicts seemed contrived.
Perhaps it works well as the introduction to a trilogy of plays. But it stands poorly alone.
Reflecting on this entry, I think I should have been disappointed with the evening. But no, the companionship of good friends made it excellent.
It is easy to have a good time in Waterloo, if you try. Especially if you import people like pphaneuf, whom I don't get enough time to hang out with in Montréal. The humour is not lost on me, I assure you.
holdenk hung out with math_foo for a while, whom he hadn't seen in forever. Where forever was last Wednesday. I made friends with Timin, who seems to have forgiven me. But he has retained mricon's training and still bites the hand that feeds him. Playfully, of course.
We played some games at ayria's place, after I wrote a small random number generator to substitute for a lack of dice. But then I realised that I used too many characters:
perl -pe 's/.*/rand(6)%6+1/e'
I made dinner reservations, which are mostly unnecessary in Waterloo. And then eight of us showed up at Ellison's Bistro and had a wonderful time. I must admit that I had to resort to bribery to get some people to join us. But in the end it was worth it, even though both of them would have been procrastinating anyway.
There was a slideshow we watched of party photographs that azrhey had taken. Boy, does that girl have a two-track mind. It is interesting to note that Holden and Pierre are set up to be arch-enemies. One is pantsalicious while the other isn't. One day, one of them will grow up to be Evil and the other will have the moral obligation to thwart him.
After driving some people around, I went over to musicdieu's place where we trashtalked a bit, just like I did the last time I visited him. Then I passed out. Without the assistance of Zubrówka. When I awoke, it was 5:00 and I drove morethanreal home.
I found myself on one of her three couches at 9:30 and made a couple of kettles of hot water, because I was quite cold. I sat in the kitchen for a couple of hours, hoping she'd wake up so we could get some breakfast. But that didn't happen. So I drove back to Math's place and the three of us went on a quest to get brunch.
Nobody is open for lunch on Sundays in Waterloo. Nobody except Bánh mì Givral Deli which serves cheap and delicious submarine sandwiches. We filled up on these and headed back. Whereupon Holden tried to give me more relationship advice.
Holden and I drove back and along the way I took a five-minute nap that stretched into an hour. No worries though, I dropped him off at Sheppard station and headed downtown. I needn't have rushed since the train was very, very late.
Each morning, CodeCon started later and later. This is not just because us volunteers couldn't get there in time, but also because the attendees would show up more hungover and sleep-deprived as well. Thankfully, it's a hacker conference so we started at about noon. Or 12:30. Which is "morning" for some.
We kicked off the day with a talk on Dido which is meant to help you write voice-menu systems. Quinn did a neat demonstration involving a real telephone, which was quite novel. However, since I despise voice-menu systems, I have to hate his project on principle.
In the Q&A period, I nipped over to Bill Pollock's booth. He runs No Starch Press which is absolutely fabulous. He gave me a free mug, some tea, a book, and a T-shirt. In exchange, I had to buy a few books as well. I'm afraid that my book buying habit is starting to get uncontrollable. Every time I return from a trip, I bring five or ten books back. Now I have a copy of madduck's book which I will get him to sign at DebConf 6.
I completely zoned out on the Deme presentation. I think I was talking to someone who wanted to convert me to Evil, after hearing that I was a hacker. I'm afraid that I'm too noble for that. But what I did glean from the presentation is that deme is an actual English word.
My presentation on UniConf came up next, so I put on my red "Speaker" badge and hopped on to stage. You see, I was at CodeCon as a backup speaker, in case one of the others missed a flight or fell down some stairs. I had to resist doing any of them bodily harm. For my altruism, I gave a talk about how UniConf glues configuration systems together, and why people should use it instead of writing their own. I got a lot of questions afterwards, which was pretty cool.
At lunch, wealhtheow and Bill came by to ask me what I'd like on my pizza. Wow! I said that it didn't matter, and thought little of it. Then they showed up with boxes and boxes from the local Costco. Bill had just bought everyone lunch! We organised a queue that would have made the British proud and everyone got a slice to eat.
I remember first hearing about Monotone from Graydon, back at GCC Summit. So I was a little surprised to see Graydon sitting on stage looking pretty while Nathaniel was presenting. Monotone has inspired a couple of version control systems but it's never really gotten popular. But one thing it hasn't passed on is its use of Merkle trees to express differences.
All throughout the conference, I had been selling drinks from behind the bar. Standing for all that time really hurts the feet, so I was sadden to discover that my shoes were not good for this. Still, I had a good time there. I've definitely found a calling in the service industry, if the computer bubble bursts again, I'd make a great bartender. I never knew! You make eye contact, smile and say something friendly. Then you chat as you pour a drink, take an interest in someone, and just be nice. If you give a little extra, smile and wink, like it's secret just between you.
I was busy chatting to my customers for the Rhizome presentation. Reading its description, I'm not really sure that I could tell you what it is. And I work with computers!
As I was selling drinks, I was also selling CodeCon T-shirts. Very snazzy T-shirts. Every time I sold a drink, I tried to sell a T-shirt along with it. Show off the front, show off the back, offer an appropriately sized shirt. Flattery seems to work very well, as does smiling when the person looks at it. You know they're sold when they're holding a shirt, so you offer to fold it for them and name the price. It was so easy!
Daniel came up again to do his Cqual++ presentation. Not only was this piece of software more difficult to write than delta, it's also less popular. Alas! He does some very impressive static dataflow analysis on C++ to find nasty, horrible bugs. But parsing out C++ is scarily difficult!
After the presentations were over, we had a very nice set of closing remarks which made all of us blush. And then we tore down all the stuff we put up and packed everything away. This is where I packed my own T-shirt in a box by accident. Jonathan's going to send it to me by post, which is very nice of him. Then I bid sad farewells to gorgeous Wealhþeow and charming akashayi who went off to dinner without me.
Six of us climbed into a taxi and we went to a sushi restaurant called Osaka, where we met up with breezip. Bree was the friend that the lovely and indefatigable spider88 kept trying to meet, but failed to. We were all quite exhausted from socialising with people since, after all, we are a group of introverts. So we enjoyed an excellent dinner with subdued, but fascinating, conversation. I was treated to the best uni I have tasted in my entire life. I think Bree was quite amused at my sea-urchin ecstacy. After dinner, Len paid with a thick wad of cash, which in conjunction with his suit, made him look like a mob boss.
I had a very good night.
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.
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.
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.
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!
After a long week of working in Toronto and being friendly to new faces, I got on a jet plane and left for San Francisco. That was on the 9th. I did this so that I could be friendly to new faces. Why do I do this to myself? I have no idea. But it is fun!
I waited around in a part of Terminal 3 that looked like it was still under construction. There were people in hard-hats walking around and rivetting beams to pillars. I chatted with a woman who was flying to Fort Lauderdale for business meetings and then she had to leave for her flight.
It was very odd getting on to mine. I had to walk out an emergency exit, on to the tarmac, back inside, out another door, on the tarmac again, and on to the plane. It was quite cold that day and rather windy too. So windy, in fact, that we encountered turbluence when we took off. Luckily, the pilot was able to keep the plane under control so we didn't go smashing into the earth in a fiery ball. That would have been unpleasant.
I had a short layover in Philidelphia again, which was very nice as usual. I watched one man sell parlour tricks to some tourists: he had an LED light that would levitate in his hands and spin. They were quite mesmerised and bought one.
I managed to get some sleep on the flight in to San Francisco, and woke up in time to see the lights below. It's a very pretty city from above, glittering and glowing in the night. I got off the aeroplane and headed for the baggage check. Once again, spider88 was waiting there for me. She is my aeroport guardian angel. This time, she had brought along kineticphoenix and riseorbleed.
Since I was famished, we quickly left to find some food. We tried to eat at Mikado Sushi, which is run by their friends, but it was closed for a private party. With this plan ruined, we walked about in confusion before we went into We Be Sushi, which had an awesome sign out front.
After a very tasty dinner with some astounding hamachi, we waddled out and were in danger of collapsing from a food coma. So Spider and I were dropped off with our luggage at the W San Francisco. Now this hotel is slightly different than the W Seattle; of course, it shares the exorbitant prices but it's the details that are significant. Like an Etch-a-Sketch in every room!
I had a shower to wash off seven hours of travel grime before I changed into something less comfortable and more stylish. Then I felt civilised enough to head down to the XYZ where the CodeCon Speakers and Organizers Reception was being held. I chatted with some people who would be presenting, read Creatures in My Head on a Michelle's laptop, met John who maintains kernel.org, was introduced to bramcohen, and talked a lot about UniConf.
Then I went upstairs to sleep. Man, fancy hotels sure have comfortable beds.
Last Wednesday was my last day in the Markham office, and also a day full of meetings. I have never been in so many meetings, in one day, in my entire life.
But enough with the whinging. I want to tell you about Wednesday because it was also a day of regrettable food.
My morning started off with a breakfast of leftover birthday cake. I had baked it for my mom on Sunday, and it was quite large, so there was plenty of it left over. This was the start of a nutritionally poor day.
When I got to the office, I was forced to eat a "pizza pocket". This wasn't very tasty at all. There was some bland processed cheese and a very sweet tomato sauce inside a chewy, fatty bread wrapper. Apparently, the co-ops eat this pretty often, which could explain why they all look malnourished.
Then, I drove to a McDonald's that was purported to sell the best Big Macs ever. A co-worker had raved that they looked like those hamburgers they put in the advertisments. dwiseman had raved at how they were put together with care by old Chinese ladies, right when you order them, and that they actually tasted good.
Well, since it was my last day, we resolved to go there. I gathered up the co-ops and we bundled into the car. Then we drove to Pacific Mall where we scrabbled for parking.
We ordered some food, and I realised that I had no cash. I ran to an automated teller machine and back, just in time to pay for our order. We shuffled about some tables, sat down, and opened some boxes up. I have to say that although the hamburgers do not look like squashed messes, they are also not as pleasant looking as photographs done by food stylists.
I managed to actually eat the entire thing, although I was really full afterwards. It tasted pretty good in the beginning, but by the end I was feeling sort of sick. Dee marvelled at how inexpensive eating out at McDonald's was, and we had a discussion about how difficult it was to eat cheaply and well.
After we cleaned up, I had to hurry them back to the office so that the co-ops didn't miss their team meeting. I gave them plenty of time to spare, so I didn't feel bad at all. And they seemed happy that they just ate hundreds of useless calories!
I, on the other hand, had a second lunch meeting to look forward to.
Normally, on Wednesdays, I noodle around doing creative stuff. Not yesterday at the Markham office. Instead, I went around trying to convince people that they should be happier. This has been my overriding goal when I am here.
Since I have also been talking to people who are considering giving us money, one of my sub-goals is to make them understand that they'll be happier by handing it over, instead of hoarding it. So far, they seem to be quite pleased with this whole happiness thing.
One of the nice things that happened was the drumming. See, some teenagers dressed up as dragons decided to dance around in the front lobby to some drumming. Lots of people left the office to see what the ruckus was all about. Then, they got into the elevator and swung by the office. They even posed for photo-ops! The drummers were pretty loud and disruptive, so I'm sure we'll have good fortune this year.
So after this noon-hour excitement, dwiseman and I decided it would be a good time to go out for lunch. We had organised an expedition to return to Phở Viêt with some co-ops. I managed to convince two out of three to come along, which isn't so bad.
We hopped into the Cadillac and drove two blocks down to Warden and Steeles. As we pulled into the parking lot, we noticed a bunch of shady characters milling about the front door.
I had a large bowl of tasty phở while other people contented themselves with dishes that did not involve soup nor creepy meat. Boy did the miss out. We forgot, however, to order the iced coffee until the end of the meal. So we had to wait for the coffee to drip and what could we possibly do but chat. Once the coffee was done, we dropped ice cubes into it from a $6 ice bucket. With only one tong.
I didn't leave my camera at the restaurant this time.
I tried to show up to the office at 9:00, like normal people show up to work. So there I was, motoring along, making good time. Then there's this big traffic jam. Oh no. Someone wrecked a car outside the office.
That explains all the ambulances and firetrucks that passed me. I drove around it and got into the office a couple of minutes late. That's because I couldn't find the front door.
I lunched with Dee at Pacific Mall, where we ate lots of cheap Asian food. I ordered a 돌솥 비빔밥 (dolsot bibimbap) which came in a big, hot stone bowl. It was actually pretty good, and could have been improved with more crispy rice. But life isn't perfect in food courts. I also had a proper bubble tea, which I haven't had in a long time.
Since we were at the mall and I noticed that people were suffering from Monday-morning doldrums, I resolved to get a cake. We walked around until we found a bakery where a little girl was tending the store. I talked to her about the various merits of cakes and she was very pushy with the ones that contained alcohol. If she isn't careful, she'll grow up to be an enthusiastic dipsomaniac.
She sold me on a tiramisu cake which looked pretty good. Then she asked me if I wanted something written on it, so I agreed to have "HAPPY BIRTHDAY SIMON" put on. It was then that her mother came in and finished the sale. But I was very glad to have done business with the girl, she was just so adorable! Later, Dee and I wondered why she wasn't in school, but we realised that there were a lot of children out today. Maybe it's a school holiday?
I e-mailed everyone in the Markham office about my cake purchase, which caused a mass of people to slowly converge on the kitchen. Ha ha! I single-handedly brought laughter and mirth to the office, whilst simultaneously destroying productivity. Mission accomplished!
When I awoke in the morning, I noticed two things. The first was that the bed I was sleeping in was absolutely ginormous. It had six pillows upon it and was as wide as it was long—which was very. You could comfortably fit a family of four in it. The second thing I noticed was that the light switches were about 10cm below where I expected them to be.
You may ask why I couldn't locate them the night before. You see, I have discovered that the W Seattle not only has an annoying Flash website, but also caters to a very specific demographic. Namely twenty-something men who have too much money and too few morals. And to accomodate this, the hallways were very poorly lit so that girls coming up from the bar downstairs wouldn't be recognised. In the room, there was plenty of alcohol, the furnishings oozed luxury, and everything cost boatloads of money. A morning glass of orange juice would set you back $5 USD.
I went with spider88 to a supermarket, called QFC. Which stands for Quality Food Centers. So I may not be a marketting genius, but that's a really dumb name. We walked through this store, with the biggest frozen food section I have ever seen, to pick up some things. As we were about to walk out, I noted that they were running a sale on artesian water. If you thought the spring water fad was yuppie, this is even worse. When I got back to my hotel room, I discovered a small bottle of the stuff costs $8.
I walked about Seattle with only a T-shirt underneath my coat. It was wonderfully warm and the sky even humoured me with a couple of sunny breaks. A man driving a van labelled "Seattle Express" kept on accosting me, probably because I looked like a tourist.
"You need a taxi? Where are you going?"
"Twelve dollars!"
"I swear to my god, it is twelve dollars!"
"Ten dollars! Ten dollars, sir."
I decided to walk.
That night, stolen_tea came by my room with a pair of movies in hand. Both Spider and Stolen had planned to inflict these movies upon each other, and I was merely providing the appropriate venue for this perversion. What could be better than a swanky hotel room to screen movies about piercings, rape, drugs, and violence? We had a ball.
Spider and I went on an exciting roadtrip on Saturday. It rained and we were stuck in traffic. As we were locating the Portland Art Museum, we managed to see the best clothing sale ever! We figured that if you got a new coat, the protesters would spraypaint you as you walked out.
The art museum was great. There was a brass sculpture that looked like a girl's back. I saw Hessian silverware that I would die to serve dinner upon. I marvelled at an armoire made in the early 1900s that looked like IKEA designed it. And I read a sign, in orange neon, that proclaimed FIVE WORDS IN ORANGE NEON. I wanted to take a photograph of it, but a security guard stopped me.
We all went to dinner at a fancy Thai restaurant called Typhoon! I started with ส้มตำ, a green papaya salad, which was absolutely fabulous. Then I got to indulge in a big bowl of duck curry with pineapple and cherry tomatoes and grapes. It was less savoury and more sweet, which was a pleasantly sticky surprise. A little more tart and a little less coconut cream and it would have been perfect!
I hung out with wealhtheow at a record store that was going out of business. Wealhþeow's theory is that their vinyl cost too much. But everything was on sale so I picked up two CDs, while she picked up one. Then we crossed the street to Powells, where I was doomed to buy too many books. I sat in the travel section for a while, when a couple came and asked to get to books on Canada. They pulled out a map and told me they were going to Victoria.
"It's on an island," he said.
"I know," I replied, "I'm Canadian."
They're going to get married there. I warned them about the rain.
For dessert, we headed over to Voodoo Doughnut which was nestled in a nook between two clubs. I tried to get someone to marry me there, but nobody accepted my proposals. However, the night was enlivened by some grunge punks who came in from a show to buy some snacks. There was a brash lass who proudly displayed her cock and balls. I got her e-mail address.
Spider and I went to Wealhþeow's place, where we were supposed to watch I ♥ Huckabees. Instead, the two girls posted to LiveJournal. After they had their fix, we shared music with each other and I was the lucky recipient of a copy of How We Quit the Forest.
On the way back to Seattle, we stopped to have a cheap, tasty hamburger. Spider stopped at a real American diner by the side of the road, where we got out and each ordered deluxe burgers. They're deluxe because they have lettuce and tomato. I also got to say "small chocolate malt" which I haven't done in years. It came in a large cup.
I got back in the air on Monday morning, where I was seated beside a husband and wife. This was vaguely unpleasant, as the wife was sitting in third-class when normally she flew first. Her husband seemed very nice and apologied for her brattiness. I expressed concern with my thirty-minute layover in Chicago, but he assured me that it was possible to run from one end of O'Hare to the other in six minutes. Then his wife mocked him.
I managed to run to my seat and sat beside a grandmother who seemed quite out of breath. It seems like she also ran to make her connecting flight from Denver. She flew a lot, so I asked her to help me clear customs, which she did. You know what the best thing about coming in Canada is? Seeing welcome signs that read "Arrivées/Arrivals".
It's nice to be home.
I hailed a cab from the office which drove me to the gates of the aeroport. Unfortunately, the cabbie took me to the wrong end, which meant that I had to walk a long while before I could get where I needed to be. Also unfortunate is that you have to use a lousy kiosk in order to get your boarding passes. It's lousy because it has a terrible user interface. But it can't tell if you lie to it, so there is some advantage.
When I went through U.S. Customs in Montréal, I had to declare the things I was bringing through. Just as I was about to leave, the lady asked me if I was bringing any food.
"Well, I have some sandwiches for the flight," I admitted.
"What kind of sandwiches?"
"Smoked meat."
"Uh oh."
We went and saw the Department of Agriculture officer, who was a very nice person with a southern drawl. She was very nice, you see, because she let me eat half a sandwich before throwing the rest of them out. She had also gone native, which I noticed because she said that "Japan imports our beef now, it's stupid that they're still banning it."
Waiting to board was very boring, so I did things like walk around and take photographs. I tried to use the Internet, but these Opti-Fi people are everywhere. And I still can't convince them to take my money in exchange for Internet access.
The aeroplane I embarked was a Bombardier CRJ-100 which was really quite small. I'm glad that I'm not very tall, because one gentleman sat with his head bent all flight long. I managed to crink my head out the window to take some photographs. I also managed to convince my seatmate to find another seat, so I could put my feet up.
As the plane took off, I couldn't help but look out the window. Although I used to have a fear of heights, I didn't panic this time. Maybe things aren't so bad any more? As we climbed out of the city, I couldn't help but recite "Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth." I didn't know it was so beautiful up there! The sun is so crisp and the sky is so clean and you can see forever and ever. I didn't know the world was blurry, until I saw the clarity myself.
There was a layover in Philadelphia where I got lost trying to find my gate. But after a bit of running around in circles, I managed to locate it. There, I sat beside a woman who watched home movies on her mobile phone. Since I was bored, I started talking to her and discovered that she was visiting her grandchildren. I also discovered that her name is Joyce and she's a Seattle realtor who specialises in condominiums.
I arrived in Seattle both lost and absolutely famished. I was incapable of finding the right luggage belt, but I found Joyce who pointed out that there were more belts further down. There, I found spider88 whom I had never seen before, but was a terribly welcome sight. I hugged her enthusiastically and double-kissed her, which shocked her a bit. Then she remembered that I'm from Montréal. After I picked up my luggage, I demanded (uncharacteristically) that we grab a bite to eat. This is how we ended up at an unauthentic Thai restaurant that was very good and open very late. I ate some "number four" chicken curry, which really wasn't that hot.
After dinner, I went to Spider's flat where I met thewronghands. Irony of ironies, as I arrived in the States, she heads off to Canada. After some chatting, Spider drove me to my hotel which was very difficult to find. But we eventually did and I collapsed on the bed without even turning on the lights. This is because I couldn't find the light switches.
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