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Sunday:
Grey Cup party at Martine’s with a spectacular victory by the Edmonton Eskimos. What an incdedible game! Half the people cheered for Edmonton and half the people cheered for Montreal, so every time one team took the lead the interaction between the two sides was very funny. Dave was totally tense about the game and said he liked the overtime rules (he is American so it was the first time he saw CFL overtime). Go Esks go! In other news: Paul Martin was booed by the crowd during the coin toss and the half time show sucked (more on that below).

Monday:
Long day, Dan got home at 7 and we ate at 7:30. Tired.

Tuesday:
Laundry at Dave and Sanan’s with yummy squash soup and a good move (A Day Without a Mexican).

Wednesday:
Supper from Pushap, Dan had a masterclass at school (where the voice students sing in front of the voice teacher and the other students), then everyone went out to the nearby Lebanese restro for supper (Dan and I just had something to drink as we were still full from curry goodness).

Thursday:
Finally a night off, time to slow down. I decided to cook a roast chicken and get some groceries. Kitchen is a diaster zone due to not being home for two days but I got it under control while the chicken was cooking. Dan studied for a test on Friday which he later found out is postponed. Dan was also sick with the flu and had a fever.

Friday:
We’re so tired we ate ramen noodles for supper! Dan worked on OpenMusic and made a chord randomizer.

Saturday:
Dan is studying for crazy week full of exams next week. I’m procrastinating on finishing the Christmas presents and doing the ironing. We went out to get groceries and found Dan’s mysteriously missing mittens frozen to the ground in front of our apartment! I hate having to go to malls, and malls on a Saturday before Christmas are even worse. Groups of slowly and aimlessly wantering people get in the way and blather about nothing either to themselves or their cohort, while someone plays fricking Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer on the flute, live. For goodness sakes! Its enough to trigger a psychotic episode!

So, about the grey cup halftime show…
A jorb not well done.
I have heard some of the songs by the Black Eyed Peas (BEP) on the radio and I haven’t really liked any of them. The “Don’t phuck with my heart” song was just annoying, but the “Lady lumps” one is in another category altogether. The worst part was that I didn’t quite get the context of the “lumps” before seeing the halftime show, during which a very clear and graphic demonstration of exactly what they are was done over, over and over again. BEP girl, I don’t want to see you shake any of your humps or lumps! O my virgin eyes!

If that wasn’t bad enough, it became very clear that these people have no talent. They can’t dance, they can’t sing, (no, they can’t walk either, those who remember Genesis) and they have no stage presence. I have seen high school choirs and garage punk bands who are more talented and less clumsy than these people. And the lyrics for that hump song are absolutely inane. Whoever wrote that song should be forcibly exiled to Nunavut to clear out his or her brain from all that “junk in his trunk”. Wretched.

So my question is, when did we lose the whole female empowerment thing in popular music? I remember being in high school and listening to Lisa Loeb (and yes, I admit it, Alanis Morisette) and the Lillith Fair album was out. Now its all about sex and bling and I have to wonder why the whole “objectifying women” thing is back. Have we actually regressed culturally in 10 years?

My guess is that it is due to a combination of so-called “urban” youth culture and the stupid marketing people in record comapnies. Urban kids want cool music with a good beat and recording companies find people like BEP who have just enough talent and so few standards that they can be put in a sound studio with a crew of sound engineers who bust their asses mixing the music to make them sound good. The group comes up with “edgy” lyrics that are supposed to be all about “urban” culture and then the kids are like “I wanna be a gangsta” and “gimme yo’ bling” and buy the album. The whole thing is artificial! So somewhere along the line, the idea that women are only sex objects gets re-introduced (maybe it was always there; I don’t claim to be very aware of popular music). I guess people like BEP would say they are just telling it like it is, but they are also contributing to the way it is because all those 13 year old girls and boys are hearing this message. I’m sure at least half the kids in Montreal would like the BEP, and I have to say this worries me a bit. What kind of culture will the children of my generation be facing when they grow up? Wait, who am I kidding, people from my generation are not having kids.

Its very strange to be my age. There are various demographic theories and groupings you may or may not subscribe to, but here’s my take on it. I was born just after or on the trailing end of genX during a time when fewer people where having children (some call it “Generation Y” which is so lame I just can’t use it). In the mid to late 1990′s however, lots of so-called baby boomers were having children, leading to a large cohort of children with lots of purchasing power (the so-called echos or perhaps the iGeneration). As is always the case, these children grow up in a different environment and have different values from their parents and precdeeding generations. The end result of all this is I can’t for the life of me understand what is so funny about Spongebob and I can’t tolerate bands like the BEP. When I’m on the bus I feel like an grumpy old fart compared to the kids who wear Juicy or Sean John and are constantly yapping on their cellphones, and who almost never are even aware of the people around them, partly because they’re all listening to BEP on their MP3 players.

So, my grouchy old-person response is to listen to MagnaTune and sometimes Club977 and to not own a TV.

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Yes, I’m a bit grouchy this weekend.

Living in Montreal has been interesting, challenging, frightening and exciting. Never dull. But sometimes there are some things that really bother me. Here they are in order of annoying-ness (the lower the number, the more said item bothers me).

1. Pretentious attitude. Montreal is a city of intelligent, talented, chic and artsy people and sometimes this results in a “better than thou” attitude. I guess this should not be surprising, I think it is a common feature to large cities everywhere. But in Montreal it seems to be a local sport to make fun of Alberta or people from Alberta. I can’t even recall the number of times I have heard people say “Who would want to live in Alberta?” or “those people from Alberta” or “Rednecks from Alberta”. Sometimes this is said directly to me, as if I am expected to jump up and say “oh yes I hate the place where I lived for 25 years and where my closest family lives”. Yeah. Well guess what, not everyone in the world is born in Montreal. Surprising isn’t it? People have to come from somehwere. Some of them come from Edmonton, some from Winnepeg, some from Vancouver, some from Liverpool, some from Munich, some from Shanghai, some from St. Jean-sur-Richelieu, some from Tehran. It happens. Yes, there are vegetarians, artists, and intellectuals and farmers in Alberta, just like Ontario and Quebec. The thing that bothers me about this is that if I were from another country I would be justified in calling this discrimination, but I doubt it would be taken seriously since being from Alberta is just one big joke here. Its not funny to me.

2. I don’t exist. When I got married, I took Dan’s last name, as is the common practice in most of the rest of the country. It was a choice that I had the freedom and right to make. The Government of Canada knows me as Karen X. I have published articles as Karen X. My friends and family know me as Karen X. My passport is issued to Karen X. My co-workers & employer know me as Karen X. My bank, my landlord, and the utility companies I pay know me as Karen X. But almost all of my ID now bears the name Karen Y. Why? Apparently it is (or was) illegal for married women to take their husband’s names in Quebec, the result being that I must use my maiden name for my health card, driver’s licence, student ID cards etc. So whenever I have to sign up for something I have a very hard time proving who I am. Given Montreal’s obsession with having a telephone or hydro bill with your name on it at all times so that you can get library cards and vote makes it particularly difficult, as these are issued to an imaginary person, Karen X, who has no ID bearing her name. Also, a person’s name is what identifies them. It isn’t a nice feeling to be constantly called by a name that is not yours.

3. Leases. Somebody had the brilliant idea that all rental accomodations in Montreal should require leases and they all should expire on the same day. The result? You must plan your life in 12-month intervals and should you need to move (let’s say you finish university and get a job in Toronto), you are responsible for finding another tenant or paying the outstanding rent. So our hypothetical tenant could end up paying 11 months in rent if (s)he cannot find a subletter. I’m not saying that all landlords are evil and that all tenants are victimized by this, but it does leave the poorest members of society in a very akward and expensive bind. It also makes the competition for getting the nicest apartments very fierce. In Alberta leases are optional (the landlord chooses to have one or not) and if one has not signed a lease a month’s notice is sufficient.

4.The health care system. As bad as I found it in AB, I have to say its worse here, at least in metro Montreal. The concept of preventative medicine does not exist here and one may find oneself with a doctor who does not speak sufficient English to obtain reliable health advice. Also it is assumed the paitent wants to know nothing about why or how they may have fallen ill and such information is never supplied, even when requested. Forget Alberta’s attempt to allow private health care. Its alive and well here in Quebec.

5. The aforementioned issue of inaccessible French lessons for Canadians not from Quebec.

6. Rudeness. Holy crap people (by this I mean strangers one interacts with on a daily basis) are rude here. I haven’t been bumped, pushed, talked down to, ignored and insulted like I have been here. I guess this is normal for big cities but still, I’m a believer in the friendliness of Canadians and it has been a bit disapponting here.

7. Pollution. The air quality here is quite bad. Again, not a surprise for a major urban centre. Air conditioning is really a requirement. Its bloody hot here in the summer and if you don’t have AC its enough to make one ill or exhausted after a simple commute home and cooking during the summer is out of the question.

8. The centralized automobile agency (SAAQ). There are 3 (count them, 3) places on the entire island of Montreal where you can get your liscence renewed. None of them are easily accessible to public transit, so if you happen to be someone who doesn’t own a car but wants to have a driver’s liscence (to rent a car for a trip or perhaps to rent a truck to move you stuff on July 1st when you lease expires) it means a long trek and a long wait.

9. The provincial sales tax. I’m just being whiny, but I’m not used to this at all. It makes the cost of living a lot higher. Also the amount of tax taken off one’s salary. Its simply ridicuolous.

10. Ghettos. Again, not a surprising thing to find in a major urban centre but nonetheless disappointing to see. Usually these don’t have good public services (poor transit links, few grocery options) which make things worse for those who can’t afford to live elsewhere. They are usually dismal, have few or no clean parks, and the streets and small patches of half-dead grass covered with garbage (oops I mean nighbourhood parks) are rarely cleaned by the city.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m definately not saying Alberta is the best place in the world to live and everything is perfect there. Far from it! There are some good things about living in Alberta (yes, its true!) and some bad things. Some of the bad include:

1. Premier Ralph Klein. Nothing more needs to be said.

2. The now defunct Alberta Report aka the Report Newsmagazine (now morphed into the CCFD). I was given a yearly subscription to this by a well-meaning friend several years ago. All I can say is wow. To be honest, it was not all bad. Sometimes there were some well-thought out and balanced articles, but unfortunately they were few and far between. The rest of the magazine was filled with crap like “Women love big government” and “The Charter of Freedoms makes Canada a country of Whiners” (This one was a real gem. It described how the female gender never shuts up about how they have supposedly been “abused since the beginning of time” – yeah ok…).

3. The cost of heating and electricity. Electricity was deregulated , as was natural gas, resulting in bills twice their usual size. We paid up to $260 per month to heat the house we rented in Edmonton, on top of ther $120 for water, sweage, electricity, garbage and recycling and the $80 per month for phone and internet. That doesn’t include food and rent – expect another $1000 or so for that. Its simply not affordable … even with the rebates!

4. The weather. Alberta (aside from the chinook-y areas in the south) has 2 seasons: winter and not winter. Not the standard 4. Fall is about a week long. Boo.

5. Urban sprawl. There’s lots of space, so why not use it? Forget that we are turning some of North America’s best topsoil into back yard lawns, or that it makes it impossible to travel without a car.

6. The government continues to mortgage the future of its most vulnerable citizens for businesses. Getting by there in a low salary is hard. When I was in high school the minumum wage was $5 an hour. All those extra sources of income that people get here in Quebec, such as the monthly stipend for each child, doesn’t exist in Alberta. Being poor in AB (yes it happens!) is tough because there is so little funding from the province.

7. Education (& other) funding. You would think that the richest province in the country could afford to spend a little on some cultural events, maybe some on health care, and a bit in education. Wrong. That’s partly how they paid off the debt – by cancelling physical education, music, art and drama classes in many schools across the province. Woe betide students who happened to attend public school in the 1990s.

8. Along the same lines – a rather small arts community. Yes, AB does have one and I know some very talented artists who actually “do art” for a living, but it could definately use more funding, publicity and support. I have to say Montreal has this in the bag.

9. Clothing. There are some good clothing stores (my favourite is Nokomis on Whyte Ave – thanks Amanda!) but not as many as one would hope, especially for men’s clothing.

10. You can’t really grow a garden. At least not like you can in the East. I think the soil is different and of course the humidity & temp as well, so tomatoes are out. Potatoes and squash work ok.

Bonus: The big cowboy boot.

Well I should end on a positive note after all this complaining. Summers in Alberta are lovely, especially a BBQ in someone’s tree-filled back yard. Winters are beautiful because of all the frost that forms on the trees. Fall in Montreal is incredible – right now our street looks like a tunnel of gold from the Maple leaves. The variety and quality of food in Montreal is excellent. I love the hardwood floors in our apartment. Overall, life in Canada is excellent and I can’t believe how fortnate and blessed we are in this country. Now, somebody give me my name back!

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http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/06/10/yourmoney/mparis.php
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/11/04/news/paris.php
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/17/news/housing.php
Note the date on the last article (thanks Dan for the link)…

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I’ve said it before and I will say it again. I hate doing the laundry. Today I went downstairs to do the laundry and for the second time in three weeks, the dryer was broken. What the hell is that about exactly? How can this keep happening…doesn’t our landlord get it? The dryer is a piece of crap and needs REPLACING. I washed the laundry (towels etc) and they are air drying right now (and will probably not be dry until Tuesday). I was going to do the bedsheets as well but I would prefer to sleep on them tonight so I guess I will wait until the dryer is working again. This is so frustrating. What exactly does he think we should do with out clothes – wear them until they get dirty and then buy new ones? I’m hoping this time it actually results in us getting a new dryer that actually works.

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Image from here

We went out to get a few things at Zellers today and ended up doing a whole bunch of errands. It went something like this: Dan needed a new mechanical pencil since his broke, so we went to Zellers and get that and a few other things we need (cleaning gloves, oven drip catching tray, etc). Then Dan realised that he wanted to print up some quicke business cards because he is going to a video game conference (seriously! there’s a session on music for games that he is interested in) so we added a trip to Bureau en Gros to that. Then I had finished my library books and decided to take those back and of course while we were there we got some more books. The lineup to take out a book was massive and it took like 15 minutes just to check them out. Then we had to stop at a bank machine and the one at Chinatown was the easiest one to get to, and since we were there we got some much needed grocery items (shitake mushrooms, rice noodles, dumpling wrappers). By this point everything was closing so we gave up on our foolhardy plan to get coffee at Atwater and just go straight home. It was roasting hot in the metro. Ack! What an exhausting afternoon.

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If there is one thing that really pisses me off about Montreal, it is the lack of inexpensive/free French classes for Canadians who come from outside Quebec.

Fortunately for us, my work will pay (and has paid) for any French courses I take (must enroll for winter session soon!) and Dan is taking it in college, so we are ok. But it is not so easy for the average Canadian anglo. When we first moved to Mtl in 2004 Dan enrolled in the first of five levels of French at the U de M. The course lasted about 12 weeks and cost $400. So if he were to complete the entire program it would have taken over a year and cost $2000. When we registered for the course I was waiting for the cashier to come back from her break and a guy came in to register and was speaking with the receiptionist/registrar. It was too late for the course he wanted (I guess all the classes were full) and he was very distressed. He said he needed to take a course because he couldn’t get a job otherwise – his French was not good enough. The lady working there said “they can’t turn you down for a job based on what languages you speak”. Oh, really?

There is a general sentiment (and often justified resentment) among Quebecers that the resident anglo population of Montreal doesn’t want to learn their language, and unfortunately this is true of some. However, many who move to Quebec do want to learn. Given this, you would think the government and/or city would make it as easy as possible for anglos to learn French, but you would be wrong, wrong wrong. Most of the courses at universities and colleges cost quite a bit, and for someone who is unable to pay the fees, the remaining options are limited. The English school board offers some during the day for people who are currently not working and want to take an intensive course, but one of my friends tried to sign up and eventually gave up due to the limited number of places available and the red tape.

The part that makes me angry is that someone who comes from another country can not only take French courses for free, but in some cases, get paid for it. So why is there no similar policy for Canadians who do not speak (sufficient) French? Theoretically all Canadians have recieved French language education in school, but this is often taught by people who do not speak the language and many students only recieve such education during a few years of junior high or high school; hardly sufficient for working where French is used on a daily basis, and in fact barely enough to do the grocery shopping. I know many people in Mtl and in other places in Canada who speak as little French as people from a foreign country where French is not spoken. So perhaps the message is that the Quebec government is not interested in Canadians from the rest of the country coming to Quebec, which kind of sucks if that is what you happen to be.

I want to learn French and I am trying my best, but it takes longer than I want it to. Thankfully the Grand Biblithèque has a good selection of French language books and bandes desinées which I enjoy and can learn from. I am reading Les Chevaux Célestes and I just finished one of the Lapinot BD. Earlier this year Dan and I read a kid’s BD called Monstreux Bazzar by the same author. And my dear Quebecois friends speak French with me whenever possible, which is absolutely wonderful. And my generous workplace pays for my formation, which I am currently taking through McGill. But I don’t think the “national immigrants” should be treated any different from the “international immigrants”… it borders on discrimination.

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For a large portion of my married life with Dan we have not had Saturday mornings together. When we were in Edmonton and he was working at the computer store that shall not be named, he always had to work Saturday mornings since it was the major sales day. Not only that but he had to catch the bus at 6:30 in the morning to get there by 8:00. When I was finishing my Master’s degree I ended up going into the lab on Saturdays on quite a few occasions. When Dan started going to Vanier college last winter he had 6 hour French classes on Saturdays from 9 until 3:30 (half an hour break for lunch). So we have probably had Saturdays off together for less than half our time together and when we do, I enjoy it very much. Today we made crepes and coffee for breakfast. Dan made us some cheese crepes like the ones we had in Paris. We used to make waffles more in Edmonton, but our kitchen here is not very condusive to making waffles and as it turns out, crepes are easier!

Our neighbours below us are a bit strange. They got a dog a few weeks ago and it hasn’t really been barking too much since the first weekend but today it was barking from about 6 AM until 7 or so. We heard it, so we kind of wonder why they didn’t. Then the installed a wall unit at about 9:30 (lots of drilling sounds) and then just now it sounded like they were having a skateboarding competition in their living room. Sometimes I wonder just what they DO in their apartment. But, they are still better than the people who lived there before – the single mother of two children who were CONSTANTLY running and screaming. She would put them in the hallway to play (a good safe choice as there was a large concrete stairway leading to each floor) and they would throw their toys down the stairs and cry and yell.

The heat wasn’t working in 2 of the 3 radiators in our apartment and the concierge for our building came in and got one of them working while we were out yesterday. However when we did the dishes we noticed the tips of one of the knives from our brand new cultery set (incredibly nice birthday gift from my mom) was chipped off. So we are not certain if this was like that when we got it, if we bumped it against something, or if she ended up using it as a screwdriver on the radiator (it looks like it took quite a bit of force to break it, it is stainless stell after all). I don’t really know what to do about it because I don’t know how it happened. But she or someone else will be coming back to work on the radiatior that isn’t working again (probably when we will be at work/school) and I would really don’t want them to use and chip another knife. It makes me a bit angry, really, especially since we just got it.

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I consider myself a bit of a couch vegetarian (ou végéterian de salle) because I try not to eat meat with every meal. Also, I have a bit of an ethical problem about where it comes from, if you know what I mean. I tried being a vegeratrian for a while during the early 90′s, but my poor mom found it a very difficult switch, and after about two weeks I was pretty hungry and tired of eating quiche. I haven’t ever tried again for a lot of reasons. I don’t know enough about vegetarian diets to ensure that I get enough essential amino acids and vitamins from meat replacements, and frankly, I do enjoy the taste of meat. But I have tried to be very careful about not consuming too much meat in the past few years. One of our roomates in Edmonton was on a reduced-red meat diet and this helped me to learn about alternatives to red meat and to start cooking more fish. I think there a lot of arguments for reduced meat consumption and here they are …

• First, in our overconsumptive culture, we are probably eating much more meat than is necessary. In many (but not all) traditional cultures, meat tended to be scarce and except during hunting times, no meat or small portions were consumed. The average person can probably reduce our meat consumption by half and still obtain the necessary amino acids & vitamins. Certain kinds of meat, particularly ground beef, contain a lot of fat and this causes obvious health problems such as obesity and cardiovascular disease.
• Second, the high density production of livestock has led to a number of health and environmental problems. Manure runoff from feedlots contaminates local drinking water. Animals kept under such close conditions can easily spread diseases and bacteria harmful to humans which may not make the animals sick but can cause serious disease for the end-consumer. Hamburger disease (E. coli O157:H7), mad cow disease/BSE, Salmonella & Listeria are perfect examples of this. For both disease prevention and increased muscle growth, antibiotics are heavily used in the livestock industry, and this is contributing to antibiotic resistance in human and animal pathogens. Again, by reducing meat consumption, we could decrease the need for high-density livestock farming and prevent some of the problems described above.
• Third, there is a good correlation between frequent consumption of red meat and cancer. Apparently this is new data out of a long-term very large scale study presented at one of the conferences I attended recently (I was in another presentation but one of the physicians I know described the presentation to me after).

So…I think there are some very good reasons for reducing or controlling one’s meat consumption. One does not have to be a strict vegetarian to make a difference in both health and the conditions animals are raised in.

Ironically, I had shepherd’s pie for supper tonight, but I have to say it was the first ground beef I have probably had in 2 months…

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I have been trying to create a website over the past few days, with relatively little success. Dan bought me a domain name and server space as a welcome-home present. I’ve never had my own domain name before, so this is really cool. However…we are trying to use drupal to manage the site content. This is a very cool and powerful site administration and content management system, but it seems a little too over my head. So far, I can’t get the image gallery, the blog or the delicious links to work properly, which are really the three things I want from a website. So I am getting a bit frustrated here…well, if I ever do get this to work, you will see a link here….

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If anyone ever creates a “scariest trash can” award, Montreal should definately be the winner. Especially the garbage cans on St. Catherine St in downtown Montreal. I don’t exactly know what it is that causes them to be in the state they are – perhaps some combination of strange union policies, the fact that none of them have plastic liners in them, or the heat & humidity of the summer – but they are truly terrifying. As one appropaches a garbage can, one cannot help but notice the sickly black ichor that has drained from the bottom of the can (as they do not have bags) in the opposite direction as the mountain. It is not (usually) wet, but has dried to form a thin, sticky crust on the sidewalk. Then, as one actually approaches the can, one may be rewarded with a glance inside which looks about as clean as the inside of a garbage truck. It is spashed with the aforementioned ichor and very likely brimming full of all sorts of garbage from a disposable society – fast food containers, coffee cups, and newspapers (despite the fact that there are places to recycle all over downtown and inside the metro …finally). And let’s not forget the smell – well, we all know what garbage smells like and I don’t think Montreal garbage is much different from that anywhere else in that aspect. I suspect most of the ichor is from remains of soft drinks, but the way it looks brings to mind horrifying images of dismembered bodies being disposed in them, at least to me.

The garbage can at the bus stop where I catch the bus every morning went for nearly 2 weeks before it was emptied in the middle of July. Despite the fact that it was full after about 4 days, people continued to place garbage on top of it, as if placing it in a concentric heap so that it will be knocked off or blown off by the feeblest of breezes does not count as littering. One time I saw a guy come to clean the bus shelter (not the garbage can, though, that must belong to another union) and that helped a little, as he swept up the stray trash that had fallen out (or maybe it was just thrown in the bus shelter to start with, who can tell?).

The solutions seem simple to me – put in liners, empty them regularly, and wash them once in a while!

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