Hooray for friends

I am having a ball in Europe!

My flight out from Montreal was delayed for 3 hours due to it being super cold (minus 30 or so) which played up with some electronics on the plane, and then there was a dodgy Russian!!! We were finally allowed to board the plane, and then they started asking over the PA for a certain passenger to identify themselves. This message was then repeated in Russian as apparently the passenger only spoke Russian, and then we were told that a passenger (the mystery Russian man) had checked in but failed to board the flight. This meant we had to wait for his luggage to be removed from the plane, which took ages as the cold weather was holding the ground crew up elsewhere in the airport. During this time the nice man next to me decided that we should pass the time talking to each other, despite the fact that I did not speak Farsi and his grasp of English was minimal.

My first few days in the UK were spent catching up with family, and of course enjoying some excellent curries and a lovely lamb roast. When I left my uncle's place he had come down with some sort of terrible cold (or laryngitis or something...not sure as he couldn't remember what it was called when I phoned a few days later!) and I had visions of a repeat of my last trip to London when I caught a nasty cold (after just having recovered from pharyngitis) and had to fly home to Perth with a head full of snot. I think my ears finally popped a week after arriving home. Anyway luck was on my side this time and I remained illness-free, hurrah!

The next few days were spent with the lovely Kate and her lad Simon, whom I had not met before but happily I can say I am happy with her choice of future-husband! Spent my days shopping around olde London towne (though not buying much as converting from pounds to dollars is terrifying) and my nights eating and drinking and playing games with them. Good times which were over far too quickly!

Last Thursday left the UK and am now in Sweden, having not been back since my exchange period 3 years ago. Nothing seems to have changed and meeting my friends here seems like we were only saying goodbye to each other a few days ago. It's so good to catch up with everyone and I am sad that I will be leaving tomorrow. Saturday involved heading to Stockholm IKEA with Stella and Tomas, as they needed to buy a desk and some shelves for the guest room (my room!) and so we spent the rest of the day driving around doing more chores with Stella driving, Tomas squeezed in the front passenger seat with his knees around his ears, and me in the back pressed up against the window as the rest of the space was filled with boxes.

Anyway I have to think about packing for tomorrow (when I am off to Munchen) and a roast chicken to prepare for dinner so until next time..

Madness

Sorry, too busy to write. New York was awesome, Ottawa was another lesson in how nice the Chateau Fairmont hotels can be, and suddenly I find myself with one day left before leaving Canada. Eek!

Walking in a winter wonderland is actually quite fun if you are rugged up, have decent boots on and keep your wits about you. Watching people trying to get their cars over the snowbanks also provides endless amusement, and can be a good way to get some community spirit if you help push a car on its slippery way. It really makes me wonder why people living in this city would have a car without the luxury of a garage, it seems far more trouble than it is worth. Sure, I have to walk to the metro station, pretty much strip naked when I venture down as the temperature is so much warmer in there, pay through the nose for the privilege of using public transport (at 26 I am too old to be considered a student) and endure some terrible busking but anything has got to be better than scraping tonnes of ice of your car before trying for ages to bust over the snowbank, only to get stuck in more snow at the next corner.

Prior to clearing the streets of snow here, a vehicle goes down the street with a loud siren to warn people the snow clearing machines are coming and they need to move their cars. Any cars not moved are then towed to the nearest cleared street, so it's like a game of hide and seek when you need to use your car again if you didn't hear the siren. Just hope it's not when you are having to rush to the pharmacy for immodium or something.

Um yes well to use that segue, I have fully recovered from my stomach bug and am back to my full eating prowess and gym regime. Just as well, as the first of many Christmas dinners/lunches is tomorrow night. It's actually at a restaurant famous for its amazing steaks, but luckily they also have a "salmon slab" on the set menu so I won't be stuck eating bread and vegies. I'm curious to see just how large a slab of salmon is. It better not be more 'slice' in nature.

Speaking of food, what a surprise, my pudding seems to be doing just fine. Well, at least I assume it is and Oli hasn't actually eaten it and covered the bowl back up again. I told him in very clear terms what I would do to him if anything untoward were to happen to the pudding, so I think this is unlikely. He told me my language was more becoming of the prostitutes down on St-Catherines than a young lady like myself.

Given the cold weather we've been having lately and the fact our apartment is old and draughty, all our windows are now covered in insulating plastic. I did mine tonight, which basically involves putting double sided tape around the window frame, sticking the plastic to that, and then using a hair dryer to shrink the plastic so it is taut. My bedroom window faces the street, and as I was drying the plastic I wondered what it must look like from down there, watching some crazy girl blow drying her window. We'll see how effective it is when I need to get out of bed tomorrow morning I guess. It is getting a little more difficult now to will myself out of bed and to the gym, but with the power of my morning banana, good tracky dacks and some interesting podcasts, anything is possible.

Before I go, I must give an honourable mention to my fabulous sister for cutting all the "Matthew Pavlich Pre-Season Diary" clippings out of the paper and posting them to me (along with some amazing disappearing chocolates). I can now stick them up on the wall to help launch me out of bed in the morning - with banana, trackies, podcasts and Pav I can achieve anything. Even in minus 25 degrees.

The sun is shining

Oh yes it is, in more ways than one! Not only have the clouds buggered off for at least the next 5 minutes, I also seem to finally be almost over the disgusting stomach bug that has laid me low since Tuesday. I actually ate a grownup size breakfast this morning, and hopefully I can continue this exciting trend throughout the day.

I also seem to have finally finished the next round of edits for my paper and once I find somewhere in town I can scan the copyright form, I'll be able to submit it. The tradition in the lab I'm in at UdeM is to bring in a bottle of wine to share at lunch when you get a paper published (which actually means we drink wine at lunch more often than not) but given my lack of publishing prowess at this stage of my career I may need to bring one in just to celebrate submitting one. I shared one of my precious packets of Tim Tams with the lab last week, educating everyone in the joys of doing a Tim Tam Slam.


My big super expensive to post parcel arrived in Geraldton - MINUS ONE PRESENT!!! Damn quarantine stole Dave's birthday present. He's not very impressed. They let him keep the wrapping though, so he can still pretend he's got something to open :(

Yes well, less than a month to go until Christmas now, it has snuck up on us yet again. I may get around to making the Christmas pudding this weekend, now that I've kinda sorta managed to source all the things I need for it. Finding a pudding basin proved impossible! Apparently puddings just aren't really done in North America. Anas even took me to this crazy restaurant supply shop that is a massive warehouse filled with anything you could possibly think of needing in a restaurant. From the teeny tiniest pan to a gigantic pot you could cook up a few quarantine officers in. So I am making do with a stainless steel mixing bowl for a pudding basin, should do the trick.

He lives!

For all you non-believers out there, prepare to have your world rocked. And rolled.

A few weeks ago Oli contacted Bell as our internet speed was a bit dismal, and so they sent someone around to sort it out. The guy mainly dealt with Oli but after a while they came into my room to get me to test the connection after they'd done some magic with the line.

The Bell guy used my laptop to go to Youtube, found the following clip, and told me to watch it and we would discuss it after he'd returned from his van.



So I watched it, then waited with bated breath for the impending conversation. Apparently the Bell guy's brother in law was in Acapulco years ago, and met a guy that they got to talking to pretty regularly. He started to suspect that this guy was Elvis, and so he sent a photo of him to a facial analysis professional, asking him to draw what he would look like 40 years ago. The facial analysis guy did so, and contacted him back saying "I drew Elvis Presley!" and thus the suspicion was confirmed! Elvis was apparently hanging out in Acapulco with a girlfriend, and so the brother in law also asked the facial analysis guy to draw what the girlfriend would have looked like 40 years ago, and he ended up drawing Elvis' secretary from 40 years ago!

So this guy ended up making a documentary about all of this, which was shown at a film festival in Canada, but then Elvis' estate basically put a stop to it being shown anymore. They got silenced!

The whole time this guy was telling me this story (which I have given you the abridged version of) his stomach was grumbling terribly. Grumbling with injustice perhaps?

Lake Louise lived up to its reputation

Oh yes, it was good. Nay, superb. The lake, the glacier, the chateau, the snow, the conference, the people, all fantastic and energising and positive! And possibly a little cold, but you can't have everything. Days were filled with talks and eating far too many pastries, and nights were filled with drinking and eating and talking and socialising. We soon learned however that there was only one restaurant in the hotel that was even slightly affordable, The Saloon, which apparently has the "best dang burgers in town" but also seemed quite capable of churning out a tasty pizza and beer.

My big day was Thursday, as I had my presentation, and then had to dash up to my room to get changed for the "Clean Lakes Classic" 5km run around the lake (well, up one side and then back again). I'd been training for the run but was a little concerned about slipping over in the snow and tumbling into the lake, but it seems I should have actually been more concerned about being over 1700m above sea level. My lungs were pretty buggered by the end of it, and actually still felt a bit weird the next day. It was a good thing they had hot chocolate and granola waiting for us at the finish line!


We also had a banquet on Thursday night, which was quite good until the Parks Canada theatre group got on stage. Admittedly they came on following the World Champion Hoop Dancer who was incredible and a hard act to follow, but man they were bad. We suspect they were brought on to clear out the room, although it's unclear why they'd need to do that as they weren't actually putting on booze for us. We managed to hang on for a few of their skits but when the puppets came out and Shakespeare was being performed by a stuffed beaver we decided it was time to cut our losses.

The following night we went up (or down or whatever) to Banff to the hot springs, which was actually just like a heated (39 degrees) outside pool. It was kind of strange hanging out with a big pile of people in a hot pool in the middle of the cold cold night.


The next day was another organised excursion involving a tour up to the Columbia Icefields. Our bus driver was a bit of a legend, with many an entertaining tale to tell and he knew the area really well, but he managed to stick Cold Chisel in my head for the whole day as he kept mentioning Bow Lake and Bow River. We made it possibly half way to the icefields before the bus seemed to be having difficulties (the onboard computer said something was wrong) so we had to pull over so the driver could contact the mechanic. We ended up staying there for a couple of hours, waiting for a replacement bus to arrive, but this actually ended up working in our favour as we saw a big horny woolly sheep running on the road, and some beavers swimming around their dam which apparently is quite a rare site. We didn't get to spend enough time at the icefields to go up to the toe of the glacier but got to check it out from afar and not freeze too much.


Oh I also managed to pick up second place for best student presentation of the conference, yay me. Well, to be honest, apparently the prize was won by Connie Mills from UWA which is what my name turns into when a man with glasses is reading the slightly messy handwriting of another man who has also confusingly written "(female)" next to my name to prevent the first man from referring to me as male.

So now I'm back home in Montreal which has been enjoying maximums below zero lately and giving me an incentive to get my act together and buy a decent jacket. It is proving difficult however as I seem to have a preference for ridiculously expensive ones, so the quest continues as does my wearing of many layers of clothing which have to be taken off and put back on multiple times a day. I haven't been homesick yet (apart from one Friday night I found myself alone and got a bit forlorn) but I think that perhaps by the end of the year I'll be ready to head for warmer climes.

In simultaneously great and crap news, I posted the family Christmas presents off today and they should arrive in plenty of time seeing as the only possible posting option (apart from super slow surface yak delivery) for large parcels to Australia is ExpressPost which guarantees it will arrive in one week for the low low price of your first born and your spare kidney.

Coming up next time, you will hear the somewhat startling tale of the crazy internet repairman whose brother in law met Elvis...........in 1991!!!

It has been an action packed couple o' weeks, starting with seeing Madonna last last (22nd) Wednesday night!! That woman is 100% muscle, it's incredible what exercising 20 hours a day and refusing to eat anything tasty can do for you. The show started off very well with our ebay-purchased-tickets actually being proper legitimate tickets, and we were lucky enough to be quite close to the front (row H) although we were quite far around the side. We managed to get a few photos (although I appear to be very very bad at taking decent photos at gigs) despite the fact that we saw a few people getting into strife with security for taking photos (why can't we have strapping security guards at UT?). One of the guys sitting in front of us was dancing his absolute heart out, much to the dismay of his girlfriend who tended to sit down for the slower parts of the show and couldn't see anything when he continued to sway and thrust into her line of vision. I think however that her sadness really stemmed from the fact that she was beginning to realise neither of them could continue to deny the fact he would rather be going home with the guy sitting next to him.

Luckily I got myself back into some sort of Aussie frame of mind with both Ross and Jona visiting Montreal that week, because it was Aussie to the Maxxx on the Friday night at the 'Aussies in Montreal' event. There were flags, framed photos of our beloved historical figures (Bob Hawke, Scott & Charlene) and of course classic Oz rock. They had also organised a choice selection of Australian meals including an Aussie burger (with beetroot and egg and pineapple), fish & chips and even a good old pavlova. Unfortunately the pub seemed to think that noone in their right mind would eat any of this because during the course of the night they ran out of pretty much everything. Firstly the guys sitting at our table were told they had to wait 20 minutes for their burgers because the kitchen had run out of meat, only to be told later that in fact there would be no more burgers at all. Jona and I decided to go for the fish and chips, and after complaining about the stinginess of only getting about 5 chips each with our $14 meals we were told they had run out of chips. Jesus, it was the disappointment of no stuffed spuds at half time at Subi all over again. However we were told not to fear, we would receive some pavlova to make up for the chip shortage. Hurrah we cried! Pavlova! During our wait for dessert we heard that they had also run out of batter for the fish. I'm sure it will come as a surprise to read that in fact we did not enjoy some delicious pavlova, oh no, it had run out. We were however given some "apple dessert" which was some baked apples served with icecream, apparently the only two things left in the kitchen apart from a frazzled chef and a few tumbleweeds. A round of shots was also brought to our table to make up for the palaver (and pavlova). Oh, they also managed somehow to run out of beer glasses, and had to serve it in plastic cups.

Whilst all of this was going on, there was a trivia competition!!! Given my penchant for trivia and the fact I'm a big geek with a competitive streak I found time during the week to brush up on the state emblems and numberplate slogans etc. Of course as it always the case, nothing that I brushed up on came up in the quiz but........ we won!!! Decisively too I might add, despite the fact that the only Aussie know-how at our table were myself, Jona, and a Sydneysider (by the way, did you know the emblems of NSW are the Waratah, Kookaburra, Platypus and Blue Groper?). After divying up the loot I scored some timtams and a plush kangaroo stubby holder (made in China) and Jona got some vegemite and a Chokito (the rest included aeroplane jelly, another stubby holder, Cadbury animal choccies and some other stuff I can't remember). There was also a mighty fine Aussie care pack hamper up for grabs in a raffle, but I think the guy who spent $60 on raffle tickets ended up winning it.

Many beers later we somehow found ourselves eating poutine, before home to get some sleep in preparation for the train trip to Quebec City the next day.

Continuing in the great tradition of Jona and I madly dashing to catch some form of transport, the next day saw us running late for the train due to his phone dying in the arse and the wall clock at his hostel being an hour or two slow. We got there in in time though, and soon enough were on our way to Quebec City. When we arrived it was pissing with rain but we braved it to follow the culinary suggestions of the Lonely Planet and had a wonderful meal for our troubles.

Upon awaking the next day I was very happy to see the rain had stopped, given that we would be doing the tourist thing all day. After getting downstairs we were lucky enough to meet who we could only assume is the mother of the woman who runs the 'hotel' we were staying in. We were stuck talking to her for a while before the hotel woman came out and told her to bugger off (well, she said it in French but some things don't need translating) but the old woman insisted on opening the door for us first. A lovely gesture, if she hadn't closed it immediately after Jona had walked through it, trapping me in the door frame in the process. I think perhaps she was a few croissants short of a picnic.

The next couple of days saw us being very good tourists, seeing the sights recommended by my trusty Lonely Planet (including "one of the most interesting streets in the city" which was a shitty alleyway that used to be the red light district. Sadly these days it is home to some weeds and garages and a particularly fluffy white cat, we were somewhat disappointed by the lack of ladies of the night swinging their feather boas suggestively.

Our final morning in Quebec City was quite leasurely, and included enjoying a lovely four course lunch overlooking the St Lawrence River. Unfortunately, though not surprising, it was a tad too leisurely and we once again found ourselves madly dashing to catch our train. Thank god taxis are more plentiful in Quebec City than in our home town because otherwise we would have been stuck there eating escargot and pheasant legs for another day.