njósnavélin - undercover

2011: Year in Review

2011-12-30T13:41:00.004-05:00

It's that time of the year once more, and this will be the only other blog post I've made during the entire year! Apparently, the year of the rabbit was supposed to be a good one for us oxen:

"The Chinese Year of the Rabbit will be encouraging for the Ox. For those who wish to change their career or at least change the direction of it, February, March and September will bring exciting offers and progress."

The year feels like it has passed by quickly, but also has been extra long. The beginning of 2011 seems like it was 2 years ago and I could probably say that for me January-June felt like one year, and June-December, another year. The first half was slow and rather glum-it was slow, I was bored and discouraged looking for a job. In June, I got a job and everything moved quickly from then on with lots of subtle changes and some new experiences. So, while 2010 was a year of accepting changes and going with the flow, I guess I'd say 2011 was first, a year of evaluating these changes, determining what the next step is, what to let go of; and second, a year of adjusting to a new way of life. It was a transition between the student and the worker. Though, at work a bunch of us are graduate student refugees, it's still a different pace from student life.

The things I like most about work are:

Once you're done, that's it. You forget about work and you move onto other activities (unless there's overtime)
You make money that is more proportional to the amount of work you put in
It's close to everything (well the place where I work now).

Anyhow, that's my summary of the year and its general feel. Now, I'm going proceed with the usual categorization of the year.

3 activities/events

I got a job

It is a job that is not entirely related to what I studied, but that's ok. Whatever skills I acquire there are certainly transferable to the next job I will have (whenever that will be). But, the place is centrally located, the people are great, and while there are certainly highs and lows with the job, I'd say on average it has kept my interest.

Dance, Dance, Dance

So, in 2009-10 I was a massive percussionist. This year was the year of dance. Around mid-April I started doing coupé-décalé and dancehall at a studio that offers over 20 styles of dance. I found it to be really fun. On top of that, I guess because I memorize movements rather quickly (thank you, karate), they would ask me to help out with little performances now and then if they were lacking personnel. In the summer session, they had a full pass - so I could take as many classes as I wanted for the 5 week period. So, I continued with my 2 and did 2 more (samba and fitness/dance mishmash). Then, in the Fall session, I went absolutely bonkers and did 6 classes. The teacher told me I was crazy, and so did my friends. I managed to do all 6 for the end of session show! So, I learned a lot this year about body movement and it somewhat satisfied the performing urge. I still have a lot to learn and to perfect as I have not been dancing long. I will, however, reduce to 4 next session because 6 demanded a lot of time and energy and produced a lack of chillage with friends.

Everyone's leaving

This is kind of a general trend this year that everyone is moving away/moving on. I've had at least 3-4 friends leave the city for work or to pursue another degree. Naturally, tis a part of life and I am happy for them.

3 food discoveries/chill places

Sabor Latino
Sabor Latino is both a grocery store and restaurant. I have been going there for a while for Latin American food supplies, but never really went to eat there until recently. In October/November, a friend from work and I would go there every Saturday for breakfast (read 1:30 pm...slept in late). It's really comforting and tasty food...*yum* Soup and tamales...

Arepera
This is a Venezuelan arepa place on Duluth just off of St-Laurent. They have so many choices of arepa fillings and they are grilled. Tasty business!

Thé Kiosque
This tea place just opened up this year and is contained in Concordia`s EV building on Mackay. It's small and cute and has quite a nice selection of teas. When they first opened, I was there 3 times in the span of 2 weeks just because I'd always bring a new friend. The staff is also really friendly.

General entertainment - books and TV

A Little Book of Language
This cute book is a really nice introduction to language and the study of linguistics. The author has humor and sarcasm and makes things easy to understand. Basically, it's the linguistics book I've always been looking for. A good introduction/overview, without getting bogged down in the gritty details.

Secret Diary of a Call Girl
This is a UK series that started 4 years ago I think. Anyhow, based on the blog of an actual London call girl, the show explores her life in an amusing way. I've only gotten to season 2 so far, but it's fun and only 22 minutes per episode.

Being Human US and UK
The US series of Being Human just started this year and airs on Showcase. Premise: a ghost, werewolf, and vampire living in a house. Apart from True Blood (which I cannot stand anymore), I don't usually watch vampirey shows. Anyhow, I looked it up online and found out that there was a UK version that started I think 3 years before. So, I watched all of the episodes of that one, too. I like both series for different reasons...though, I like the UK Vampire a lot more :)

Music

3 albums

Zola Jesus - Conatus
I found out about Zola Jesus this year after hearing the M83 track - Intro (feat. Zola Jesus). Apparently, she falls into the category of music called Witchhouse...haunting vocals, creepy/depressing/spaced out music. I really like. Fave song: Collapse

Phantogram - Nightlife EP
I just found out about these peeps on boxing day when I was at Le Chateau. They are kinda new wavey/electro and the lady's vocals sometimes remind me of Bat For Lashes. Fave song: Don't Move

Bon Iver - Bon Iver
It's a really chill/sad sounding album. I supposed Bon Iver is a little folky at times, but it's great for those rainy and grey days. Fave song: Holocene

3 songs

Men At Work - Land down under
This is an old song, but it's damn catchy. I blame the girl at work who made music trivia. So very happy...I imagine little gnomes dancing.

Brick and Lace - Love is Wicked
The year of dancehall? I guess partially so :) I listened to this song a lot - heard it in dance class. However, it appears to be the only song of theirs that I like.

Calle 13 - La Jirafa/Atreve-te-te
So, Atreve-te-te played a bunch in my friends car on the way to a wedding. Could not get it out of my head...! Then I heard la jirafa, which also has an amusing video. Actually, all of Calle13's videos are funny/silly :)

Notable mentions:
Novalima - I saw them at the Jazz Festival this year. They were so amazing! I really enjoy it...Peruvian fusion music. Songs I like: Kuman, Tumbala, Camote, Machete
Lana del Rey - Video Games: really chill and somewhat glum song :) Heard it in September :D

Music on the grooveshark widget!

hello March, I've had enough of this sheetzy weather :D

2011-03-10T03:13:00.001-05:00

In the words of the great Brian Molko, we are indeed having sheetzy weather. I realize as a Montrealer, this is a normal part of the year. But really...please go away snow. I've had enough. Let's get some spring time awesomeness early (ain't gonna happy, unfortunately :( ).

Apart from that, I guess I don't have much to report. Since the last post, I've essentially been tying up loose ends, trying new things and looking for employment, woohoo!

Devotchka and Godspeed are coming to town. A bunch of other concerts have passed and others are coming, but I think these are the only two I'm going to go to.

So, without further ado - the general music front - what have I been listening to?

In the words of Gina Yashere, haha " I wanted to get in touch with my roots!" (well that wasn't exactly the rationale, but close enough). In passing, Gina Yashere is a Nigerian comedian from London (learned about her from my cousin). I've put a sketch below:

So, back to music, I've been listening to some Congolese, Ivorian and Angolan music i.e. Soukous, Coupé décalé and Kuduro. Soukous has been around a lot longer and as mentioned before originates from Congo (from 30s, 40s and originates from the French word for shaking - secouer). Since then, the style has evolved and faster version of it is really popular now called Soukous Ndombolo. There are plenty of artists like Wenge Music, Werrason, Awilo Longomba, Koffi Olomide... Ndombolo is lots of booty shaking :) These songs are also almost aaaalways looooong (like 10 minutes).

Coupé décalé is more recent (2002) and originates from the Ivorian diaspora in France and then the genre spread to the Ivory Coast itself. The late Douk Saga, who was part of the group "Jet set" (in Paris) is often claimed to be the creator of this type of music. What's pretty interesting about this genre of music is that there are many dance steps, called "concepts" that go with it. So with new songs, you get new concepts and they'll usually call them out in songs or the song is named after it. For example there's there original coupé décale, but also décalé chinois, décalé python, fatigué fatigué, fouka fouka, Faro and even the Obama. The French wiki article has the whole list.

As an example, I've heard "Fouka Fouka" being called out in a song by DJ Arsenal - Sheloubouka. This song was actually used for a choreography at my cousins engagement party by the Obaa Sima dance troupe and now, in hindsight realized that they were doing the fouka fouka when it was called out in the song (kinda like a double fist pump). Some popular artists, apart from Douk Saga are Jessy Matador (especially the song Decale Gwada), DJ Arsenal, Meiway, Magic System, etc. I guess you'd have to be really up to date with all the new music to learn all the dance moves :o
I'm currently doing an afropop dance class, which is mostly this dance style (esp since the teacher is from Cote d'Ivoire himself :P).

Kuduro dates from the 1980s in Luanda, Angola from mixing African drum samples with calypso and soca, as well as some electronic stuff. I haven't heard a lot of it yet, but so far I can say it's a lot more electronic then the two previous styles. The dance style is also more like break dancing, I'd say, with very abrupt movements.

Below are some samples of the above mentioned music styles.
Soukous:

Some older Soukous, but absolute classic. I remember hearing it when I was a kid - Pepe Kalle and Nyboma:

Some Nordic ladies dancing to Werrason - Dance Mania Fever (from Techno Malewa) and later Fally Ipupa's Sexy Dance. I really enjoy both songs :D The dancers do a pretty good job, mostly from 2:55 onward :) they've got the detachable butt thing down pretty well :

Coupé décalé:

I'll be cliché and put Jessy Matador's Décalé Gwada (we keep using this song in my dance class):

and an interesting mix of this music with Rai (northern African type of music) - Magic System + 113 - Un gaou a oran ( I believe a gaou means a fool):

Kuduro:

I'm gonna put two songs I really like by Buraka Som Sistema. They're a group of Angolans based in Portugal. This first song, "Sound of Kuduro" features M.I.A and some wacky dancing (just to illustrate my point above). The second song is "Kalemba (Wegue wegue)":

So, escaping from the "roots", there's a few other things I've been listening to such as Colombiafrica, some new Baile funk, the new Radiohead, some PJ harvey, El Guincho, Calle 13 and Chico Science & Nacao Zumbi.

Colombiafrica is essentially a mix of Colombian and African music like Soukous and also some Nigerian (one track in particular samples an older song I know). My favorite song off of the CD is Mama Africa.

I heard about the Baile Funk "Pyaar Baile" song linked above from the music blog Masalacism. It's a collaboration between Indian DJ Rehka and Brazilian DJ Zuzusa Ponderosa, mixing elements of Bhangra/Bollywood and Funk Carioca (which itself is derived from Miami bass/electro funk). I really like it, but then again, I love all the genres it's composed of, so what's not to like? :P

Radiohead came out with their new album "King of the Limbs" a couple weeks ago - the first single being "Lotus Flower" where Thom Yorke sings and dances around by himself in a black and white video.
If you don't like Radiohead post-OK Computer, I doubt you will like King of the Limbs. So far I like the album, though I haven't listened to it super in-depth. It's pleasant to listen to. So far I really like the single and "Little by little".

PJ harvey released "Let England Shake" recently. So far it's nice. I'm not too familiar with her previous work, but I've heard great things, so I figured I'd start investigating her stuff. From this album, I like "The last living Rose".

El Guincho is a Spanish kind of electronic-experimental artist who describes his music as "space-age-exotica". The first track I heard by him was the very catchy song "Bombay" which is off the most recent album "Pop Negro". The video is random and kinda NSFW. It starts off funny in an educational space show kind of way. Another song I like "Polca Mazurca" which is off the album "Alegranza".

Calle13 is a reggaetonish band from Puerto Rico. It's the fault of one of my friend's for infecting me with their music, particularly the song "Atrevete-te", which is super popular. A new single was released recently "Baile de los Pobre", which mixes latin with some middle eastern/indian music and has this amusing video.

Chico Science was (died in a car accident) a Brazilian artist and one of the founders of the style Maingue beat. It's a style which originated in Recife and is kinda like funk rock/punk mixed with Maracatu, Frevo and Coco. I learned about them recently and sooo have been listening to some things here and there. My fave songs so far are A cidade and A praieira.

In passing, Masalacism records released an album "MaSuper Star - Airtime", which is pretty good. It's a band from Botswana and you can sample the music here.

And last but not least, there's always time for some Quantic. I saw him do a DJ set recently at Club Lambi with Andy Williams and it was super super enjoyable. Danced for over 3 hours straight. This dude has a lot of albums and a lot of DJ tracks too which you can peruse on his site. So, I end my mega music post and bid you all farewell with this song:

So, until next time (which may or may not be in less than 3 months, haha). Let's hope the next time it's at least spring and we're all dancing happily under the sun.

2010: Year in Review

2010-12-31T02:08:00.000-05:00

It's that time again, to look back and reflect upon all the events of the past year.
According to Chinese astrology, the year of the Tiger is one of rapid and dramatic changes. Think fast! I would say that it's been a pretty accurate description of the past year for me and for quite a bunch of people I know as well. Lots of ups and downs, sometimes at the same time. For the Ox: " 2010's whirlwind moments and sudden challenges meant the Ox had to adjust his thinking and change direction on a dime!".

2008, was a time of recognition for hard work, 2009 was slow and patience testing in all areas and I would say 2010 was a time of accepting all these changes and just going with the flow. I suppose it's the only way to deal with fast change. So let's see what went down this year. I'll follow the same basic template as the last two years touching on the top activities/events, as well as music and general entertainment of 2010.

3 events

Leaving the continent for a month
I made an entire post on this earlier this year. Paw and I went on a month long trip to Spain, France and Italy. It was a much needed trip on my part where I learned a lot about other cultures, but also about myself.

Finishing my Masters degree

I am most proud of the fact that I wrote my thesis and defended it in French. It was a challenge that I had decided to undertake when I started in 2008, just to see if I could do it. Overall, doing my degree in French university was one of the best decisions I've made, ultimately making it possible for me to work in both languages in my field. :)

Performing throughout the year
So, the Brazilian drumming of last year continued for most of this year (up until the end of August). The difference is this year was filled with a lot more performances, the most eventful of which was the Jazz Festivals closing parade with over 100 000 spectators. It was also special because my dad's choir was performing as well. Other performances: yearly Carnival, Les Bobards, end of summer show w/ another drumming group, Just for Laughs, Nuits d'Afrique, Les Weekends du Monde, as well as some other parades. So, I'd definitely say I satisfied my performer urge, at least where drumming is concerned.

3 Food discoveries/chill places

Avesta
Turkish food on Ste Catherine in between Atwater and Guy metro. I've been there 4 times this year. What attracted me to the place was the lady making fresh flat bread in the window. The food is great, but the service is rather slow. I don't have a huge problem with it as I'm usually not in a hurry when I go. I really like their spicy potato gozleme.

Cafe Tinto
A friend of mine introduced me to this place on Amherst/Ste Catherine. It's a small cafe in the gay village that serves Colombian coffee as well as other delicacies like arepas and Pastel Gloria (a personal favorite). I really like their coffee and the place itself is quite cozy, with reddish walls and comfy seats. It's also rather quiet,tucked away in it's little corner.

Kazu
A small and authentic Japanese restaurant that opened not long ago on Ste Catherine, near Guy metro. When I say small, I mean tiny and always packed, especially during lunch time. I've been there once, but intend to go again to try their ramen. So far, I've had their onigiri and okonomiyaki, and sampled from other people's bowls :P

3 movies

Soul Kitchen
I saw this movie early this Spring after seeing it advertised at Cinema du Parc. It's a German movie about a guy who aspires to be a chef and tells about all his hardships along the way. The movie is really funny and I really enjoyed the soundtrack as well.

5 dias sin Nora
Part of the Latin American film festival at Cinema du Parc, this Mexican movies talks about a lady who has committed suicide and left instructions for her ex husband to execute for her funeral. It's quite funny, but one of those heart warming movies. Unfortunately, I haven't found it here yet on DVD :(

Besouro
This movie was part of the Brazilian Film Festival at Cinema du Parc. It makes my list just because it's a martial arts movie that is not Asian, haha. Finally, we get to see a martial movie with Capoeira. Based on a true story, it takes places I think in the 1920s where even though slavery had been abolished, the Portuguese were still treating the Blacks as slaves. Lots of action and the special effects weren't exaggerated. I also thought it was interesting that it integrated elements of Candomble, touching on the different Orixa's and the powers they are associated with. Exu is particularly fearsome in this movie :P It also had its comedic moments, particularly its transition from strange/experimental/mystical music to hard rock every time some one was about to kick some ass.

New general entertainment

Before, I mainly touched on TV/Comedians, but I actually watched no tv/new shows this year. So I will include books and activities.

Balkan Beats
A new group formed this year called Balkan Beats Montreal East, and about every month they host a night at Divan Orange just to party it up Balkan style. I have gone twice - the second time in particular was a lot of fun. Divan is a rather small place, but in a way, that's what makes it even cooler. You're crammed with a bunch of people, jumping and dancing the night away to eastern European music. I will definitely go back, just not sure when :)

The Taqwacores
I'd seen the documentary "Taqwacores: the birth of punk Islam" last year and was curious about the fictional book written by the author, so I decided to buy it. Basically, it's about a bunch of Islamic students who go to university in Buffalo. The main characters live together in a house. It's a bit slow to get into because of the writing style and because the author makes references to things I am not familiar with because I have never practiced Islam or studied it. But once you do get into it, I'm telling ya - you feel totally grungy and punk rock after. I also enjoyed the spectrum of characters in the book, each having their own interpretation of Islam and each raising different issues surrounding it. Coincidentally, a movie based on the book is supposed to be released soon.

The 100 mile diet
As the title of the book suggests, the authors, who live in Vancouver, challenged themselves to eat locally (anything grown/produced within a 100 mile radius) for a year. I had heard of this book because the authors ran a reality show where 6 families did this for I think 4 months. It reminded me a bit of Sleeping Naked is Green, but the style of writing is different, where the authors alternate writing chapters. It also doesn't cover the day-to-day changes - it summarizes each month. The authors talk about their discoveries, their joys, adventures and difficulties with the challenge. I was tempted to live on a farm (for a short while) after this, haha. Or, at the very least, try to reduce the amount of food I eat that is not local. One other thing I enjoyed about the book was that they spoke about the history of their region (varieties of crops available prior to the arrival of settlers, agricultural techniques, fishing, etc).

Music

3 favorite albums

Beach house - Teen Dream
This album was officially released in Jan. 2010. A slight departure from their previous albums, I find the songs are more polished and slightly less spacey. I think it may be my favorite of the 3 albums, with Silver Soul, Used to be and Take Care being my favorite songs (even though I like all of the songs).

Gorillaz - Plastic Beach
This album definitely is one of the best of this year, hands up and down. The variety of artists and beats/rhythms used is impressive and I can say without hesitation I like all of the songs. It is the perfect balance of electro, pop, hip hop and world music, making it so easy to dance to and incredibly catchy as well. Favorite songs are hard to pick, but I'd have to say White Flag, Empire Ants and Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach (I cannot deny Snoop's awesome attitude).

Massive Attack - heligoland
At the end of last year, I was already hooked on Paradise Circus. Then the rest of the album got me. In this album, Massive Attack recaptures the darkness of Mezzanine (which is my favorite album thus far) with a little extra. These dudes know how to do trip hop :) My favorites of this album are Paradise Circus, Atlas Air and Splitting the Atom.

3 songs that stayed in my head (not included in previously mentioned albums or by same artists)

Broken Social Scene - Sweetest Kill
After seeing "This Movie is Broken" with Pamela, I had this song in my head for a good week or two. In general, BSS is an epic band, but the live rendition with all the artists of the supergroup was awesome.

Arcade Fire - Rococo
I was working on my thesis at school and listening to the Arcade Fire on grooveshark. I hadn't listened much to the new album "the suburbs", so actually didn't know any of the songs. But, once I heard this one, I couldn't stop listening to it. It's got the depressing/cheerful combo that the Arcade Fire masters so well.

Yeasayer - Tightrope
I think I was reading about this band on Pitchfork and just decided to check out their myspace. As soon as Tightrope came on, I was hooked. Even more so when I saw their performance of this song on Blogotheque. It's got bells, clapping and guitars and general yay. Extremely catchy.

3 concerts: all in the Fall
Gorillaz
October 3 at the Bell Centre - I was determined to see this band as it was their first time doing a world tour and they started in Montreal (yay!). I think I posted about it, but either way, it was a total blast. I think they played all the songs I wanted, had guest artists, giant screen with the animated cartoon members and music videos. I also became an even bigger Gorillaz fan after (I wasn't super into Demon Days before and now I really love that album as well).

Massive Attack
Trippy times at the Bell Centre. The opener was Thievery Corporation which was surprisingly good as well, but of course I was there for Massive Attack and they did not disappoint (well except for the fact that they did not play Paradise Circus). I imagine these guys would be even better in a club show, but I definitely had fun dancing to the large concentration of Mezzanine and heligoland tracks :)

Broken Social Scene
Second time seeing this band and as I said, it may have even beaten the first time. It was a giant party on stage with guest artists, 25 songs, brass section and a happy crowd. Broken Social Scene is just so epic, it's almost impossible to not be caught up in the excitement and enjoy yourself.

Adios 2010. You've been an eventful year to say the least. I look forward to the new adventures of 2011 and will carry the lessons of this one into the next. I wish you all the best of luck and generally an excellent year to come!

Broken Social Scene - Take 2 !

2010-12-19T13:46:00.000-05:00

Last night Paw and I went to see Broken Social Scene for the 2nd time @ Metropolis (first time was halloween 2008).
The opening act was "here we go magic" - a band from NY who do kinda indie spacey rock. It was pretty enjoyable.
But, of course, Broken Social Scene was amazing. They played an epic set of 25 songs, over 2.5 hours, with guests like Amy Millan and Andy Kim :D Most of the band was suited up. I particularly liked Kevin Drew's jacket.

Setlist:
1) Pacific Theme
2) KC Accidental
3) Texico bitches
4) 7/4 Shoreline
5) Fire-eyed boy
6) Forced to love
7) All to all
8) Arthouse director (most awesome horns in this part, with a choreography by the brass section!)
9) Sweetest kill (SO happy they played this song)
10) Cause = time
11) hotel
12) Guilty cubicles
13) All the best wooden toys come
14) Superconnected (with some lyrics from Modest mouse's the world at large)
15) World sick
16) Ungrateful little father
17) Lover's spit (new interpretation w/ more instruments, but still quiet)
17) Anthem's for a 17 year old girl
18) Water in hell
19) Almost crimes
20) Meet me in the basement
21) Andy Kim comes on stage and plays how'd we ever get this way with BSS
22) Looks just like the sun
23) Ibi dreams of pavement (instead of the usual scream, it was "Fuck you! I won't do what you tell me to")
24) It's all gonna break
25) Major label debut

They basically played every song I wanted them to play (well except shampoo suicide, but that's fine).
Something about this band is just absolute magic. I guess it's because it's basically a bunch (like over 15) musicians just jamming out on stage and really enjoying making music and sharing it with everyone. I absolutely loved this concert and I think it was the best of the year for me. Even though I have seen them before, the performance was not at all the same. They rearranged songs and breathed new life into songs that were already amazing. It was a great way to end the concert season for 2010 and also to de-stress before my thesis defense! :) I would definitely see them again, without hesitation.

<3 BSS :D

Loose ends

2010-11-06T18:04:00.000-04:00

It's been about a month since I posted anything. I had been meaning to post something after the Massive Attack concert @ the Bell Centre October 18, but alas I did not.
Unfortunately, it's a little fuzzy in my brain, but Paw has a pretty good review on her site.
The opening act, or should I say first headliner was Thievery Corporation. They have a really solid fan base which probably made up about half of the crowd. I had no knowledge of their music a priori, but I really enjoyed it. It's kind of in the same spirit of Massive Attack - trip hop, loungey and extremely chill, though they incorporate a lot of middle eastern sounding rhythms in their music as well. In addition, I find Massive Attack to be quite a bit darker (Fil and I were a little glum post concert). Either way, I liked them enough to further explore their music.

Massive Attack did not disappoint. They had a rather bare stage set up with a large screen behind them displaying various things. I love Robert del Naja (3D) and noticed that he tends to either do one of two dances 1) bending one leg and then the other repeatedly 2) dancing a bit like Thom Yorke from Radiohead - a general bouncy and random dance, sometimes with arms flailing. I like. :)

They had guests with them as well, most notably horace andy who does all the reggae sounding vocals :) Deborah Miller did most of the female vocals I think - also wonderful.

Setlist:
1) United Snakes
2) Psyche
3) Risingson
4) Girl I love you (yay for horace andy - this song is incredibly dancy live)
5) Future Proof (awesome long distortion guitar for this song)- Naja also kept walking in circles around one of the stage props. Sometimes clockwise, sometimes counter clockwise.
6) Splitting the atom (I think...not sure)
7) Mezzanine
8) Teardrop - spooky vocals and wacky lights :)
9) Angel
-------------------------- Encore
10) Inertia Creeps
11) Unfinished sympathy
12) Babel
13) Safe from harm
14) Atlas air

As you can see, there was a huge concentration of Mezzanine tracks. Well I'd say it was kind of equally distributed between heligoland and mezzanine. I love Mezzanine, so I was pleasantly surprised. But I was also kind of sad that they didn't play Paradise Circus (one of my favorite songs from the new album) and Karmacoma. Oh well, you can't get it all. Atlas Air was a great way to end. I really enjoyed that song. By the end of the concert we were all beat though and just made our way home. No pumpkin chai latte this time :P
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Next concert is Broken Social Scene! I'm so happy to be seeing them again and it will land, hopefully just after my thesis defense (concert is December 18. My defense date hasn't been set yet).

I have just under 2 weeks to complete my thesis. I'm pretty stressed about it as new things keep popping up. I do hope everything gets handed in on time as I really don't want to stay another semester! :D

While working on my thesis, I've been using grooveshark on the computer at school to listen to music. I had heard the most recent Arcade Fire album before "The Suburbs", but actually didn't really get into it. Now, I have a new found appreciation for it. My favorite tracks are Rococo, Sprawl II and half light II. This album has a distinctly different feel from Funeral and Neon Bible (though you can certainly tell it's Arcade Fire). I wouldn't say it's more cheerful...in a strange way it's less epic? I'm not really sure how to describe it.

Another potential concert is Girl Talk March 1. Who knows for sure - it's a bit too far to tell. But it certainly looks insane and fun live.

I've put a new playlist for mid-Fall feel to correspond with my mood and what I've currently been listening to :) I return now to thesis hermitage! I shall report back...I don't know when :D

Body Talk

2010-10-07T05:47:00.002-04:00

Paw reminded me of the singer Robyn the other day (she was so popular in high school!). Anyhow, it seems she's back with new music. She's releasing a trilogy called Body talk (pt 1, 2, 3).
So far 1 and 2 are out and I've been listening to them. It's catchy, dancy pop stuff. I have a favorite from each one :D

Also great music for workin at le gym ;)
Coincidently, Gorillaz works super well for the gym (Monday test, haha. I went super fast without really knowing until the machine said "high heart rate" about 4X. I guess it was time to slow down before I give myself a heart attack :P).

Finally, after trying out a hip hop class yesterday, I was reminded of this song which I used to listen to back in high school times. It would be cool to learn an actual choreography for it.

Escape to Plastic Beach tour kicks off in Montreal :D

2010-10-04T13:41:00.001-04:00

Yay! Yesterday, Paw, Captain Wildchild, another friend and I went to see Gorillaz at the Bell Centre. It was their first time on tour :) I did not bring a camera as they said it was not permitted. We did see people with cameras after all though.

^ This should give you a little idea of what it was like.
The opening band was We are Wolves - a band from Montreal. It seems half punk, half electro. Paw and I both preferred the electro stuff. Wildchild hated the band all together :P
The concert started off with an intro by Murdoc talking about the opening band and "when are they gonna finish!!!", whilst Noodle and 2D were hanging out in the back.
I wrote down the setlist:

1. Orchestral intro
2. Welcome to the world of the plastic beach
Snoop Dogg appeared on the giant screen (as in the youtube video). Twas very amusing because Snoop Dogg is generally funny and there were parts where he's like "yea, I'm awesome and I know it".
3. 19-2000
4. Last living souls
5. Oh green world
6. Stylo
7. Melancholy hill
8. Rhinestone eyes
9. Superfast jellyfish
10. Tomorrow comes today
11. Kids with guns
12. Empire ants
13. Dirty harry
14. El manana
15. White flag
16. To binge
17. DARE
18. Glitter Freeze
19. Plastic beach
----------Encore------------
20. Cloud of unknowing
21. Feel Good Inc.
22. Clint Eastwood
23. Don’t get lost in heaven
24. Demon days

There were quite a few guest artists on tour w/ em - Little Dragon, Bobby Womack, Bashy, De La Soul, Arabic music ensemble (just for White Flag :D) and a few more. I was a general fan of the outfits of the band, too. The only thing that was too bad was there wasn't much space for us to move around. It would've been so cool in a way to have it in a club and then you could really dance around. I wasn't a super huge fan of Demon Days before, but often enough, once you see a band live, you get a new appreciation for their music. Now, I can probably say I like all Gorillaz songs. It was definitely worth the ticket price :)

Fall spirit and old faves

2010-09-26T22:27:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned on Tasty hot water, Fall is among us in Montreal. Leaves are starting to change and definitely falling. The fall spirit has definitely set in with the distinct smell of burnt leaves. With that brings the desire to go into blankets, drink tea, walk around town listening to music and general mellow chillage *salutes*
I can safely say I don't feel one bit tropical and I'm on break from all things Brazilian for an indefinite amount of time (at least percussions) due to lack of practice space.
In the meantime, I went apple picking and got quite a loot of McIntosh and Cortland apples. I am also revisiting some old and not so old music. On September 8 I saw Vampire Weekend and Beach house (w/ Dum Dum Girls). While I do love Vampire Weekend, the highlight was definitely Beach house. I love vocalists haunting voice and funky hair. It was positively awesome and they played the songs I wanted them to play. In fact, both Beach house and Vampire Weekend played quite a bit of music from their repertoire.
Paw and I also saw "This Movie is Broken" - the movie featuring Broken Social Scene. The story is rather poor, but it was expected. What was great was the concert footage and it made me want to go see them again (which I plan to do December 18!).
So here's some music - new and revisited that i'm currently listening to in my fall spirit :) (check on the right)

It has been a very long while since I listened to the Postal Service or Death Cab for Cutie.
Anyhow, enjoy!
Until next time :) !

Stayin' Alive

2010-08-18T03:28:00.001-04:00

Needless to say, it has been an extremely long time since I've posted on this blog (or blogs in general). Since the last post, quite a bit has happened!

To sum up, Paw and I went on a European adventure (of which food was one of the main themes), I worked on (and am still working on) my thesis, I played a bunch of drum shows and went to no concerts (as there were none of interest), started going to Balkan Beats at Divan Orange and naturally, changed my hair again.

Paw and I went to Spain, France and Italy and definitely came back with an expanded repertoire of recipes and food knowledge, as well as generally great experiences. We took two cooking classes - one in Barcelona (thanks to Paw) and one in Rome (as we were so inspired by the awesomeness of Barcelona's, we looked for one in Rome).

If you're ever in either city, check out Cook and Taste (for Barcelona) and Cooking Classes in Rome. Both are 50 euros for the preparation and degustation of a wonderful four course meal.

The highlights for me were Spanish Tortilla and home made gnocchi. But, everything was great overall.

Taste Florence is an amazing food tour. For 70 euros, you galavant around Florence for four hours with a tour guide tasting all kinds of food at different establishments. I can now say I had the 2nd best ice cream in the world at Gelateria Perche non (apparently the first is in PEI, say what?). The day after we went on a tour of Chianti by bike, which was also wonderful and quite epic (not to mention terrifying going down that steep hill).

In France, we had no cooking classes or food tours, so I bought a little cook book on Provencale cooking and we ate pretty well in Paris as well.

My favorite experiences in France were making my own perfume (which in passing smells great and I actually do wear it), sitting by the sea on any given day and getting to eat at some fancy places (Chez Clement and La Duree).

Overall, I guess to no one's surprise, my favorite country was Spain, with Barcelona being my favorite city. Why? It is filled with a long, rich and often tumultuous history, rented palm trees and imported sand, quirky and seemingly carefree vibe and a wide variety of food stuffs. I guess you could say it's like Montreal + + + (more history, nicer weather and a beach), haha. If you are ever in Barcelona, it's totally worth it to take one of the free tours through the Gothic quarter and also, if you're looking for a hostel - Backpackers BCN Disputacio was a total win. Great staff and quiet and friendly people (advertised as a non party hostel).

So yea, after getting back, the rest of the summer was spent thesis writing and partaking in general chillage with friends. I had the great opportunity to partake in the closing Mardi Gras style parade for the Montreal International Jazz Festival (my dad did, too, with his choir - haha, it was family day!), as well as Les Weekends du Monde, Nuits d'Afrique and Just for Laughs. We experienced some of the hottest weather (42 degrees C + humidity) and crazy torrential jungle rain (when did Montreal become a tropical climate?!). I also finally got to partake in a Newmindspace activity ! - the light saber battle in Toronto.

So now, I prepare for another show and continue writing with the hopes of finishing in the fall semester and never returning to school again (but hey, you never know. Maybe I'll be inspired to do a PhD one day...).

Once the school year restarts, we can always expect lots of shows to pop up. So far, I have three tickets!

1) Vampire Weekend w/ Dum Dum girls and Beach house (I've been wanting to see VW and Beach house for a while and Beach house was sold out earlier this year!)

2) Gorillaz - Say what? Gorillaz and the boss dogg, planet of the apes, they be going on a world tour and stopping in Montreal October 2010 (first world tour eva)

3) Massive Attack w/ Thievery Corporation. Again, dude man! I've been wanting to see Massive Attack for ages. Last time they were here, they played at Metropolis, but I was unable to go. They also played in Toronto earlier this year, but I was overseas. So, this is alltogether quite amazing.

Potentials:

Broken Social Scene in December. Yea, I've seen them before. But, they're really amazing live. Screaming during Ibi dreams of pavement is an experience I will never forget and one can only imagine that their next show will only be more epic (as the new record is quite epic itself).

Emilie Autumn. I have never seen her, but Paw has and says her shows are quite cool, with many props and theatrical elements.

So we shall see indeed. So, I bid yee good night on this early august morning. Njosnavelin is indeed, stayin' alive.

Walkscore

2010-04-13T13:18:00.001-04:00

Someone on facebook posted this cool link. It measures the walkability of your house in the city :)
I got a score of 87% :D

Keep your boots clean

2010-03-29T03:38:00.002-04:00

I spared a couple hours to make the sequel to Winter Part 1!

This ends the winter 2010 videos :)

La Primavera!

2010-03-22T23:24:00.001-04:00

So, it's officially spring in Montreal (well it has been for the last two days). The weather gnomes decided to be screwy with us though by granting us amazing weather in these past two weeks...and now going back to what we call "normal" Montreal weather i.e. snow, cold, general greyness. I protest and demand sunshine. In order to counteract the glumness, we should listen to happy music! So, I'm taking a break from thesis writing to share some of what I've been listening to lately (been a while since I posted, too):

La Pegatina - Despierto

I found out about this Barcelona music group yesterday on facebook. Despierto is a very happy song. Some of the others are equally as happy. One of my other favorites is Petrolero. So far, I really like their music. You can also download their 2 albums on their site free of charge. Unfortunately, they won't be playing when I visit Barcelona in May :(

Manu Chao - Le P'tit Jardin

This song is from Manu's album Siberie, also available on his site for free download (yay!). This song is incredibly catchy and super cute!
I have generally been in a Manu Chao mood, listening to the albums Esperanza and Clandestino on repeat :)

Jimmy Cliff - Samba Reggae

So, today I was reminded about the existence of the annual Osheaga Music and Arts Festival. When checking out the pretty awesome line up (at least for Saturday, July 31), I noticed Jimmy Cliff is playing. I have heard of him before and some music, but decided to look more into it and so far this is my favorite tune (though most stuff on the best of is really good - if you're into reggae that is :P). It's really summery :) As for Osheaga, I'm seriously considering going as there will be the Arcade Fire, Stars, Gaslight Anthem, Beach house, Jimmy Cliff, Keane, as well as some other artists I don't know too well yet, but seem promising. In addition, more artists always get added as the festival approaches.

The Gorillaz - White Flag (feat. Bashy, Kano and the National Orchestra for Arabic Music)

The Gorillaz came out with a new album called "Plastic Beach". In the past, I have been a fan of some of their songs (I think most people like Clint Eastwood and 19-2000). Their previous album, Demon Dayz didn't sit too well with me (at least on first listening and I didn't really give it another chance). I started listening to Plastic Beach a little while ago and what I really like about it is the mix of sounds/genres. A perfect example is the song White Flag - it opens with arabic orchestral music and then meshes into some rap/hip hop beats, but with electronic noises. I also like how rap sounds w/ a British accent, hah. It's also very dancy. So, this isn't the stuff I typically listen to, but hey, yay variety. I blame Jay-Z and Alicia Keys. But, in all honesty, this album is good stuff.

Kisses - Bermuda

I can only describe this as soft pop, indie, electro dance from the 70s/80s or something. I'm really not sure how to classify. The guys voice is smooth, the music is catchy and easy to listen to. It is off of the album "The heart of the nightlife".

MGMT - Congratulations

MGMT have a new album called Congratulations and I like the title track :) Apart from that, so far, there's not a bunch that I like (maybe it needs to grow on me?). I liked Oracular Spectacular more. This track reminds me a bit of Bowie/Velvet Goldmine soundtrack. I generally like the mood of the song :) Unfortunately, youtube only has a live version. Flash Delerium is the first single, it is oooook.

As an aside, here's a clip of Weezer covering "Kids" by MGMT and "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga

Hot Chip - Sexual Healing

I heard about this covered from Newton about a month ago at a friend's birthday. I generally like the song "Sexual healing" by Marvin Gaye because the lyrics amuse me to no end and well the video is also really cheesy. In anycase, Newton was kind enough to let me listen to the cover on his music player. It's really good :) electronic-ish. These dudes also have an album out - "One life stand" and so far so good.

I've also been listening to some more funkero type stuff that I stumbled upon. There's one particular track by MC Katia - De cabeca pra baixo, that is catchy. Apparently she's classified as funk putaria. I'll take their word for it.

I also found some mixes of different types of music over at "Soundsgood". My fave so far is La Villa Cumbiera Mixtape. What's great is that you can download all the mixes/stuff that is posted :)

Finally, I was in a Massive Attack mood for a while, mostly listening to "Man Next Door" on repeat, a most excellent song :D So chill.

That ends my musical update. According to pitchfork, we should expect new Arcade Fire and M.I.A. this year!

No man's land

2010-02-27T01:26:00.001-05:00

I was bored tonight and ended up making a quick video for the Winter. I suppose this shall be part 1, as I have plenty of winter clips left.

Music: Radiohead - I will (no man's land). This is the "los angeles version", as opposed to the original on the album Hail to the Thief.
This time I used sepia (instead of black and white :P)

Freshlyground, It's Blitz and other bits

2010-02-20T01:42:00.006-05:00

So, I'm still on an Alicia Keys trip and that song Empire State of Mind refuses to leave my mind - including the version with Jay-Z. Like seriously, dude man - I had a dream last night that I was in New York. I feel like I'm reverting back to grade 11 where I used to listen to more hip hop/rap.

However! I did manage to listen to some other music despite my extremely Keysing week.
Thanks to Oficeandashes, I've been listening to Mt. Eden dubstep (a most premium DJ). My favorite track of the ones he showed me was "Sierra Leone" which features samples from the song "I'd like" by Freshlyground.

Other remixes I like by Mt. Eden are "Daniel" (Bat for lashes) and "Hide and Seek" (Imogen Heap).

Freshlyground is a group from South Africa. The vocalist has a very particular voice, which I can only describe as cheerful/slightly childlike at times, but very smooth. Some songs sound really spacy (like, I'd like from the album Nomvula) and others are very upbeat like Ma cherie, which is also closer to what I know South African music to be.

For the moment, Ma cherie (from the album ma cherie) is my favorite song. I love the beat, how energetic she is and absolutely love the horns and tingy guitar. I just can't resist that sound - it's so cheerful and summery. There's also some dancing in this live video. This music just makes me want summer sooner! :D

Here's one of my fave South African songs by Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens. The video is kinda amusing.

Now, as for the next on the list of things I'm listening to - the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I was at Cafe Santropol today with a couple friends and some music was playing that I didn't recognize, but liked. When I asked the waitress what it was, she said the new "Yeah Yeah Yeahs" album. It surprised me just because I didn't recognize Karen O's voice (though I had seen them live in 2004 - shame on me...or maybe it was just too echoey in the restaurant?). But, generally, it didn't sound like their usual stuff, which is a good thing.

So, I had downloaded "It's Blitz" last year when it came out, but never gave it a good listen. Now that I have, I do like it quite a bit. The track that I had heard was "Skeleton" and it was very spacy :D

Now, who's coming?!

Feb 20 - Owen Pallett (Not going, but Paw is :D)
Feb. 25 - Vitalic @ SAT (yes!!! Ticket purchased)
March 29 - Beach House @ Sala Rosa (didn't get ticket yet, but hoping to go :D)
April 18 - Gogol Bordello + Devotchka @ Metropolis (k, dude man, this is absolutely epic gypsyness and I already got my ticket).
May (middle of) - Kinetik Festival. Paw and I haven't decided which date for sure, but would like to go.

Apart from that, there is the Montreal Highlights Festival which ends Feb. 27 with the annual Nuit Blanche. This year I'm supposed to be participating in one of the events as a performer (rather than just a spectator, haha). But that means I won't be doing much of the Nuit Blanche activities this year. So, my friends, you must enjoy it for me! :D

Finally, my new favorite soup of the moment - Carrot, ginger + sesame. I tried it at Aux Vivres on Wednesday - so awesome. I hate carrot soup and juice usually...but the ginger gave it the required bite and the sesame oil added a nice flavor to it. Today at Santropol, their soup of the day was carrot, ginger and orange. It was okay, but required the addition of salt and pepper (whereas AV's needed nothing :o). At the health food store, I found a box of carrot, ginger and cashew - so I guess that will be my final carrot & ginger trial before making it myself and making it more awesome than all the others (of course).

Also, check this out - Adobe Photoshop Cook (thanks to Cindy!)

That's it for now.
Until next time!

PS: If you haven't seen Alicia Keys singing "Empire State of Mind" with Colbert, go check it out on youtube (video quality aint' so great though). It's really funny (thanks to paw for this).

Elements of Freedom

2010-02-16T14:32:00.002-05:00

Hey peeps,

Well this is my first post of the New Year (both Western and Chinese, huzzuh!).
So, I haven't actually been checking out that much new music...just sometimes borrowing some of those "Rough Guide to..." music compilation CD's from the library.
Anyways, I don't really listen to the radio (so I never know what's going on), but one of my good friends does and apparently Alicia Keys came out with a new album called "Elements of Freedom". Typically, I just like one or two songs on her albums (for example, "No One" on the last album). Her voice is amazing, but I just don't care much for the super R&B songs. So, my friend really likes this new album and let me listen to a few songs in the car. And seriously, dude man...I think for the first time, I can say I like almost the entire album. I guess she changed her style slightly and it just works very well (this coming from someone who doesn't usually listen to this type of music...but there is no doubt, he voice is just aaaamaaazing :D).

So here are my favorite songs so far:

Doesn't mean anything

Try sleeping with a broken heart

Empire state of mind

Distance and Time

Until next time!

2009: Year in Review

2009-12-22T22:21:00.003-05:00

Every year is eventful in its own right. Last year was a time where I finally felt rewarded for my hard work. This year, without going into too much detail, has tested my patience in every area of my life. So, I can safely say that I am happy that 2009 is ending and I can only hope that 2010 is better; not only for me, but for many others that I know that have also had quite a trying year.

I know there's still over a week until 2009 comes to an end, but I figured I'd do this now (I have nothing to do right now anyways :P).

So I'll try and include some of last years categories...but we'll see what I come up with.

3 activities:
Apple Picking - Quinn Farm: I would have to say that this was probably the funnest group activity of the year. Twelve people assembled to go and hunt for apples. This was followed by group cooking at a friend's place and soccer in the park. Definitely will do again (or so I hope).
As a runner up: Laser Tag - this was also a lot of fun. I managed to assemble 22 people for my birthday. It's just too bad that the game is only 20 minutes :)

Skating: I befriended a french exchange student this semester and she suggested we go skating (CEPSUM has free hours). I haven't gone skating regularly since I was about 9. Once I got the hang of it again, I really enjoyed it. So I shall continue this activity :)

Brazilian Percussions: This was an entirely random occurence - In mid-march, a girl in my biomechanics class asked if I wanted to try a free drumming class. I said ok. She and her 2 other friends decided to join, so I joined and have continued since then. I always thought if I played an instrument it would be the drums. I just didn't know I'd be playing samba :P Overall, an interesting experience.

3 Best Food Discoveries:
Cafe Byblos – Metro Laurier
Apart from trying Iranian food at my friend's place back in grade 9, this is the first time I've had any. As per the suggestion of a school friend, a troupe of 6-7 went to try their dish called "Le dizzy", made only on Sunday's. So, the food you get is enough for 2 (or 1 very hungry person) and it is also very fun to eat.
You have a stew that comes in a a big gourd. You strain out the liquid, which you eat with dried pita bread. The remaining food is mashed and then poured onto a plate. With your new mush, you take fresh pita bread and spoon some on with picked eggplant and other fresh herbs. It's realllllly tasty and I definitely suggest it.

Mazurka - Metro Sherbrooke
I generally love perogies. But dude man, this place is awesome. Maybe my judgement was skewed by the fact that I was starving (so was my friend) after a 4 hour long walk. But starvation alone cannot skew my food judgement!
Appetizer: marinated herring with some potato salad, beet salad, onions, etc. Usually, fish flakes apart. This fish was still chewy and just completely absorbed the marinade flavor. It was just *insert speechless, yummy, happy sound here* and my friend agreed. The soup that came with our combo was Dill Pickle soup. Sounds strange, I know. But this was also mouthgasm. I am determined to make it one day. As for the main, it was the vegetarian combo: 2 perogies, 1 potato pancake, 2 cheese blintzes and lots of sour cream on the side (this is not a meal for dislikers of creamy/dairy things). To end, we got tea. Haaaaaa. We left there completely satisfied, not too full and just generally happy (the waitress probably thought we hadn't eaten for days, since we finished every single thing, including the lettuce). Then decided we should make an eastern european feast (hasn't happened yet, but it will!).

Ramen - Metro Place d'Armes:
I like noodles in broth and I love Tampopo. Anytime I think of ramen, I think of Tampopo. So when I ate at Ramen (2X now), I was very pleased to find that the consistensy and texture of their noodles was exactly how the movie described it should be. Soft enough, but still retains enough structural integrity such that it's not mushy. In addition, the broth is tasty (Well, I had the soy broth. Miso is the other option) and they have vegetarian options. It was also a total mind warp to hear a chinese waiter with a french (from france) accent. Hoorah.

3 Best Tea/Chill Places:

David's Tea - Metro Mont Royal
There are actually 2 locations in Montreal, but I haven't been to the Pare one yet. In terms of chilling, probably not the best place. It has that kind of cold, ikea/deco/modern feel (it's painted all white). On the other hand, their tea selection is quite premium. In addition to traditional teas, they have a lot of flavored teas. I am a fan of Pumpkin chai, Creme caramel rooibos and coffee puerh (there's still so much to try though!)

Cha Guan - Metro Villa Maria:
The first time I went there, it was for a free workshop/tea tasting in the summer time. They had excellent iced teas and the workshop was also very interesting/educational (but I don't have the supplies to reproduce that :P). I went back later with a friend and decided to actually have tea and chill there. It was fun to sit on the floor and they're also very generous with their boiling water refills. It's rather small, but it has a nice quaint/homey feel. I haven't bought any tea there (though, I just received a very nice gift from a friend from there, with a choice of 4 teas). But, from what I can see, it is a bit pricy.

Cafe Dervish - Metro Berri-UQAM:
These dudes specialize in chai (I realize chai means tea, but I'm thinking of masala chai-ish types). They have many different kinds, spanning from traditional masala, to some kind of ethiopian blend. Their teas are made fresh, on the spot - with the choice of moo milk or soy milk. Each mug is about 5-6$, so it's not something you'd have often, but it's certainly tasty and comforting for those cold autumn and winter nights. As a side note, they have some quite premium food (all vegetarian, with the choice of veganizing your order). I particularly enjoyed their jamaican sandwich, which had faux turkey with jerk spices, lettuce and plantains and it was served on naan bread (yes, naan!).

3 Best Movie Discoveries

Cidade de Deus
I had heard about this movie before from a few people, but never saw it till this year. It is indeed a very good movie - definitely violent, a tad grim. Excellent soundtrack and it was fun for me to hear the brazilian portuguese accent.

Sin Nombre
I went to see this with 3 friends in the spring. Takes place in Honduras + Mexico. Another one of those violent and grim movies (do I see a trend...? nah, it just happened). Also a good soundtrack.

Taqwacore - The Birth of Punk Islam:
This here be a documentary on the beginnings and evolution of punk islam. Some of the groups were inspired by the book called the Taqwacores. It showed the islamic punk scene in the United States, as well as their travels from state to state. It also showed the reaction to punk islam in Pakistan (one of the groups went there). There were definitely some very funny parts. Overall, a very good documentary.

New General Entertainment:

The Big Bang Theory:
One of my friends suggested that I watch it. One thing that's good about this show is that you don't need to see all the previous episodes to understand what's going on. Each episide is kind of a single unit by itself (or what you need to know is easy to follow/determine). It basically follows the lives of 4 nerdy graduate students working at a university. So naturally, the humor is quite nerdy, but also very entertaining.

30 Rock
Paw sugguested I watch this show. So I started watching and then watched all the seasons within the span of 1-2 weeks. The humor is very quirky/off beat. That's the only way I can describe it.

True Blood:
This is the only other series I started watching this year. It's really cheesey, like really stinky winky cheese (talking bout some kinda 10 year old blue cheese). But that's what makes it entertaining. Most of the people on the show are stupid (as in making stupid decisions, getting themselves into stupid situations, and saying some of the cheesiest lines :P). There are 2 characters I like however - Eric and Lafayette (they are both badass). So this is the kinda show that you can watch when you don't want to expend too much brain power.

Music:

So here's the thing with music this year...I haven't listened to a lot of new bands. I either listened to stuff I already had or listened to some really old music or complilations (like Putumayo). I can't really suggest much off the top of my head, even in terms of new releases from bands I know. Generally ok, but nothing really mind blasting as far as I can remember. Maybe my 2009 mood is dampening my musical excitement :P

3 songs that happened to stay in my head

Massive Attack - Paradise Circus:

I found out about this new release while reading pitchfork. This song has been playing almost consistently for the last 2 days (itunes says 105 times. It was on loop while I was cleaning today...). Suffice to say, I'm very excited about the new Massive Attack album in general (and would be very happy if they toured around here). What I love about this song?
1) The beat - very chill, but layered. I really like the sound of the bass, though i'm also fond of the clapping.
2) The vocals - soft and smooth
It took 354 days, but I think I found my favorite song of the year.

Vampire Weekend - Horchata
Another pitchfork discovery. This song is hells catchy. One of my friends said it sounds like a christmas song, except they're talking about horchata (an excellent drink, I might add). I am also excited about their new album 'Contra' coming out Jan. 12 :) They've been very good at preventing leaks.

MC Serginho - Pocotocopo: (actually scratch that, most of the songs from the Rio Baile Funk : Favela booty album):
So this year, I've been to what...about 3 brazilianish parties and at all of them, some baile funk was present. I never knew what the songs were, just that they were catchy. Recently, my friend downloaded the stuff (how she found it, I dunno). In anycase, this stuff is incredibly catchy and also very very dancy :).

Despite the general crapitosness of this year (that's not to say there was no good stuff whatsoever), I am intent on ending it well i.e.: I shall try my best to be christmassy and in general good spirits and resolve as many things as possible, so as to not transport 2009 grimness into 2010.

So here's to the end of 2009! Merry Christmas and may 2010 bring health and happiness to you all, as well as success in all your endeavors.

Paradise Circus

2009-12-21T04:30:00.002-05:00

Haven't blogged much in a while, but I thought I'd pop in for a bit to express my love for the new track "Paradise Circus" by my fave trip-hoppy dudes Massive Attack. It will be on the upcoming album "Heligoland" in Feb. 2010.
Now I just hope they tour :D

The actual video is NSFW. But you can look it up.

Ibi dreams of pavement

2009-11-18T10:37:00.003-05:00

I was looking through some of my video faves on youtube and was reminded of how much I loved this song + this concert last Halloween :)

1...2...3....scream, GO! :D

Probably one of the best concert moments of all time (for me at least).
That's it :P

It's all nonsensical

2009-11-09T14:21:00.003-05:00

Made a new video last night with the song Zina Marina by Gogol Bordello. Not at all what I had initially intended to use as a song, but I think it's more appropriate :)

I think this video has more appearances than any of the others ones. It is also the longest.

Enjoy :)

Horchata

2009-10-10T14:08:00.002-04:00

Yeah, I'm on some kinda blog roll today. But this is short!!

Vampire Weekend released a new song called 'Horchata'. Now, the drink (which is a type of mexican rice drink w/ spices), is AWESOME.
The song is pretty catchy too :D

On a side note, I finally had some time to make another apple dessert (up to now i've only made pancakes and bread). It's a type of German Apple cake called Einfacher ApfelKuchen, the recipe for which I got here
Though, I used rice milk instead of milk and reduced the sugar to 3/4 cup from 1 cup.

Dude man, I can only describe this as a combination of egg tarts and apples in taste (both of which I love :o).

Mine turned out like this (I think you have to flip it, but I didn't, haha. I think it's good either way):

Good Hair

2009-10-10T01:11:00.009-04:00

Also, on an entirely different note, I would like to see this movie:

I heard about it while watching Oprah (my mom called me from my room to see) and I understand why she did :) I have done many of the processes that he talks about in the movie (or at least from what I can see in the trailer). Some of which are really damaging to your hair and scalp (degrees of which depend on your hair type). So, for those of you who don't know much about how people with curly hair style their hair...here's a bit of info.

Here's a timeline of what I've done and I've included photos of all the corresponding hair pictures I could find:

Braid extensions total (since 2001): 14

Weave total = 4

Relaxed hair periods total = 4
Total treatments (virgin hair + touch ups) = 10

What follows is the explanations for some of them.

RELAXERS: a creamy product used to permanently straight your hair; its active ingredient is usually a strong alkali (like Sodium Hydroxide, pH of about 10-14). Sometimes a weaker alkali is used, such as Ammonium Thyoglicolate (I think a pH of 8-9). The natural pH of your hair is about 4.5-5.5, which means it's slightly acidic. So, the base a relaxer penetrates the cortex layer of your hair and breaks the bonds that give your hair is curly pattern. The relaxer stays on your hair for a certain amount of time (usually 20 minutes from the time of application), then it is rinsed and neutralized.
There is also something called a texturizer, which is a weakened version of a relaxer. So it just loosens your curls rather than straighten them completely. But, I think it contains the same basic ingredients.

Some problems:
1) People often leave the relaxer on for longer than 20 minutes (i.e. after all of it has been applied, then they count 20 minutes). This can result in chemical burns (it's very important to protect your scalp as much as possible when doing a relaxer, especially with a more alkaline relaxer). In fact, relaxers can generally lead to hair loss due to the application of such harsh chemicals.

2)Improper care of your hair after relaxing: As your hair is a weakened state (its bond have been broken), you have to continuously maintain it by always moisturizing and applying deep conditioning treatments. You also can't tie your hair too tightly as it will promote breakage of your hair. Without proper care, your hair will dry out and break. Hair breakage happens especially at the temples and around the nape area of the neck (at least in my experience - though it can be generally widespread).
In fact, hair breakage often occurs at the junction between your relaxed hair and new growth because the textures are so different. You try to detangle your natural hair and then reach the bone straight hair, and snap. That usually means you need a touch up on your new growth.

4) Your hair texture might not be suitable for relaxing: This is my case. My mom's hair is fine and wavy. My dad's hair is coarse and very tightly curled. My brother got coarse + big curls. I got fine + very tightly curled hair. So, after trying relaxers of various strengths a number of times , I've determined they never work for me. My hair breaks without fail, despite my attempts to properly maintain it.

5) Relaxers stink: When you're having the process done, dude man, it stinks...like 100 stink bombs. That's probably enough to deter me from doing it again, too.

Also, by the way, if you want to go back to your natural hair after relaxing...you have to grow it all back again :P Which means, grow out the relaxer and chop off the straight stuff (or just let your hair progressively break off...which is what usually happens to me. Except the first time, my mom chopped it off...not so cool for an 8 year old to have 2-3 inches of strangely styled hair).

Other ways to straighten curly hair: Blow dry + flat iron. The problem with doing this on a regular basis is that after a while, your hair will eventually either i) lose it's ability to curl in the same way ii) have general heat damage, leading to extreme dryness and breakage.

Non-chemical styling methods:

EXTENSIONS
1) Braiding: Braided extensions can be a great way to add length and color to your hair without the need for any chemicals. The stylist will basically add pieces of hair (whether fake or human) by braiding it with your own hair. You can have either single braids or cornrows (or combo of the two). I've had both done and generally liked them.

The problems:
i) You can't exactly wash your hair properly. Washing your scalp is entirely possible. But your hair is trapped in more hair and it's hard to completely wash. Though, i've had better experience washing hair with cornrows.
ii) Traction alopecia: more hair loss! The reason is that when you add extensions to your hair, especially if the stylist braids tightly, stress is applied to your scalp. Over time, with continual use of braided extension styles, your hair starts to thin in that area.
I'm trying to remedy that problem!

2) Weaves
In this process, the stylist cornrows your hair either in concentric circles or just in horizontal or vertical rows, then sews on tracks of hair (either fake or human - human looks nicer and lasts longer/has less of a tendency to tangle). You can either have a full weave (covering your entire head) or a partial one while integrating parts of your own hair (usually the front). So, here you can have wavy, straight, super curly hair. Whatever you like and it's not braided.

Problems:
i) The hair washing thing again. Though this time, you have an even harder time accessing your scalp since it's all covered by hair. It also take a while to dry.
ii) Hair loss!: the first time I had a weave done was in fall 2004, by the suggestion if a stylist after she noticed I had some thinning in the front due to doing single braids many times. She said it would give my hair a break. My initial impression of weaves was not so great - I felt that it made me look strange, as if I were wearing a helmet and then hair attached on top of it. But anyways, at the time, it did help my hair - I noticed less thinning following that style. My latest weave style was noticeably less helmetty (done by a different lady) but, I've experienced more thinning - which is rather upsetting :( So weaves = hair loss too.

There are a number of other natural styles people can do, like twists, afros, dreadlocks (though be careful with stress too...kind of like the single braids). You can also add clip on hair pieces to your hair.

Through all my hair experiments, I've definitely had regrets (that last relaxer in 2005-06 shouldn't have been done :P), but I've learned something from each of them. I would like to try to work with my own hair (so as to minimize hair and scalp damage), but I've found it hard to find something that's relatively simple to do and that looks nice. So the quest continues.

Anyways, following that lengthy text about hair styling - all this to say, I think the documentary would be interesting to see :D

Voggubarnsins Mál and other new listenings

2009-10-10T00:39:00.004-04:00

I stumbled upon some new music in the last week and a half or so. While I haven't had a change to listen to everything, some songs have really stuck in my head.

The one that really stands out is "Voggubarnsins Mál" by Smárakvartettinn Á Akureyri. It was included on a compilation disc by Jonsi (from Sigur Ros) & Alex (Jonsi's boyfriend) called "Raindown My Favorite Songs".

It appears to be an icelandic hymn. I find it very soothing and peaceful - perfect for this weather (which happens to be cold and damp). I wish I could find a clip on the internet for it, but it seems to be rather obscure...

The rest of the CD is alright. There are some nice songs on it, though the above is still my favorite. Not all the songs are like this. In fact, I find the mood changes from one song to the next. Some are really old, like "Moon River" by Audrey Hepburn, "I can't believe you're in love with me" by Billie Holiday and "Parlez-moi d'amour" by Lucienne Boyer. I really like the Lucienne Boyer song as well...very old style french music :)

Other things that I have listened to recently:

Vitalic - Flashmob: yay! Vitalic has a new album out. I don't find that it sounds like their previous album, but still good electronic/electroclash music :D

Memory Tapes - Seek Magic: I've been listening to this one a lot lately. It falls into the same category as "Washed Out" for me - mellow electronic with some vocals. I like the CD on the whole, but I think my favorite song is "Run Out" (which I can't find a clip for either :( ).

Anyhow, as the rainy, autumn days are here, I think listening to Type O Negative's "October Rust" would be fitting. Here's ending my post with my two favorite songs "Love you to death" (I particularly like the ending where he repeats "am I good enough"):

and "Green Man":

Until next time :)

Good Morning, It's Fall

2009-09-25T11:59:00.004-04:00

It has been a while since I posted and the time for pretty leaves has come.
Fall is one of my favorite seasons as it's the time for premium sweater weather, nostalgic music listenings, the smell of burning (around halloween, it always smells like that), and crunchy leaves to play in.

I'm also pretty happy that classes have started because the summer was pretty boring (nothing much to do at school w/ it being so empty and all). Hopefully things shall continue to improve :)
I have signed up for Portuguese lessons as well. It's a pretty convenient time to learn it, as it coincides with my Brazilian drumming. Perhaps I'll actually understand what the wednesday teacher says to some of the Brazilians sometimes :) But, I'm just generally excited about learning another language and I'm hoping i'll catch on easily as I know french and some spanish.

Speaking of things related to Brazil, I'd like to share this Capoeira video with you guys. I have seen Capoeira being done before, but I like this song and I rarely see people moving this fast + check out the head slide.

I'm not nearly bouncy enough for it though. I shall just observe :D

On a similar note - a friend of mine posted a cool karate video on Facebook about the style of Karate I practiced. Now I only wish my classes were that cool. It's pretty inspiring how they seem to move so easily with such sharp techniques.

Now it has come to my attention (whilst walking around downtown a few weeks ago) that Montreal has a cheesecake restaurant. This is exciting! I haven't been there yet, but I have been to the cheesecake factory in Boston. So one day I will venture there and explore their various selections of confectionary goodness.

In terms of music stuff, I haven't been to a concert since Osheaga and probably won't be at one in the forseeable future. There is not much coming around and nothing I particularly want to see. Kind of a musical low time you could say.
I haven't been listening to much new stuff either, but I will list a few things I have been listening to lately.

Brazilian stuff:
Putumayo Presents: Brasileiro
I particularly like the songs "Canto das Tres Racas", "Danca de Solidao", "Visgo de Jaca"
Cartola - Cartola (1974)
Alvorada, Preciso me Encontrar, Minha
I found out about this dude because of the Cidade de Deus soundtrack (which is also quite good. The movie is excellent)
Here's a song from the movie:

Os Partideiros de Pla - Metem Bronca
Arengueiro, Tem capoeira, E poeiro E po

Compilations:
Putumayo Presents (in general - been trying out a lot of the Putumayo Compilations lately):
French Caribbean
Ayiti Bang Bang (that's the song that plays with the capoeira video), Mandolin, Rete
Mexico This one is awesome because it's totally old style Ranchero music:
El Tecolote (you can't help but love the laugh at the beginning), La Bruja, Ranchu Gubina

Gypsy Caravan
Diri Diri so kerdjan, Movi Shej sabina
Actually, Gypsy Beats and Balkan Bangers Vol 1 and 2 are also great Gypsy CD Compilations :)

For non-compilations:
Lately, I've been listening the new Placebo (Battle for the Sun), Muse(The Resistance) and Islands (Vapours) CD's. I really like the first track from Vapours.

There's a band I just discovered called "Washed Out" and I really like the feel of their music. Kinda 80s lo-fi/mellow electronic or so.

He has a cassette called "High Times", but for the moment it's sold out and it's not on the internet either as far as I know...hopefully it'll pop up some time. I would like to hear it :)

And now to end, a blast from the past that I just heard recently:

Until next time

In times before fall

2009-07-23T23:54:00.003-04:00

While listening to "Sunflowers" from the Everything is Illuminated soundtrack, I started fiddling with some clips I have and ended up making an impromptu video.
So here it is:

I do enjoy the old film look...probably a bit too much :P

A Scenic World, where the sunsets are all breathtaking...

2009-07-15T10:53:00.011-04:00

I went to see Beirut on Saturday, July 11 with Paw and another friend as part of the indoor Jazz Fest line up. It took place at the Metropolis and was a sold out show (when they played 2 years ago at Sala Rossa, it was also sold out. However, Sala has a 250 person capacity, whereas Metropolis has almost 10X that capacity. Way to go Beirut). Apparently, we were also in the company of Win Butler of the Arcade Fire.

The opening band was the Dodo's and I didn't know anything about them and hadn't bothered to look up any of their music prior to attending the show. They did not disappoint though - very good band! During one of the songs, they were joined by Zach and one other person from Beirut to play horns. Also, major props to the drummer who was sick and feverish (the singer said he was shivering in the morning).

Later, Beirut came on stage. As expected, they played a great show. Two things that make me really happy are accordions and horns and they were there in abundance :) The ukelele is also pretty cute :P I don't recall the entire setlist and I am also having some difficult tracking one down...but from what I remember, they played (in no particular order):
Nantes
The Shrew
Elephant Gun
La Javanaise from Serge Gainsbourg
A song in Italian
Postcards from Italy
A Sunday Smile
Scenic World
After the Curtain
Mount Wroclai
Cherbourg
Guyamas Sonara
My Night with the Prostitute from Marseille
La Llorona (for the encore)

I'm sure I'm missing some, but I probably should've written this right after the show and so my memory is a tad fuzzy. In anycase, I loved the entire show - but the highlights for me were "My night with the prostitute from Marseille", "Cherbourg" and "The Shrew". The first and last one, because they're from the new split EP. In addition, the first one, on the EP is largely electronic, but when they played it live, they managed to arrange it so that it could be played on the accordion and it was just a really cool arrangement.

The Shrew is my favorite on the "March of the Zapotec" side and I really enjoyed how in the second half of the song, everyone was clapping. It made it really festive.
As for Cherbourg, it's the song I've been playing most by them lately. So yay. I was also happy for Scenic World, as it's one of my favorite songs in general :)

The crowd was generally funny. At one point, someone held up a sign saying "Marry my Zach!" and he was playing the trumpet and tried not to smile. But he quirked his brows. In addition, someone in the crowd yelled "You're so sexy when you sweat!!!"

Here are some pics from the show, courtesy of Paw :D :

The only bummer about the night was the fact that it finished so early. This is due to the Jazz Fest programming, because another act was scheduled to play at midnight (Artist of the Year). So, they couldn't really stay and play more (their set was only about 1.5 hours at most).
Hopefully next time they come they'll be able to play longer. All in all though, it was a great show, we had great spots and I now have a new band tee-shirt :P

Greenifying and Live Mocha

2009-06-21T01:11:00.002-04:00

I recently finished reading a book called "Sleeping Naked is Green" by Vanessa Farquharson. Basically, a journalist for the National Post living in Toronto embarked ona 366 day mission to make one "green" change each day. The book is about 270 pages and is quite cleverly written, making it quite an enjoyable and easy read. For each month, she lists all the changes she made and goes in detail about some of them, as well as the accompanying experiences.

While doing the challenge, she kept a blog called Green as a Thistle, which she still runs today. While some of the changes are definitely hard to do (unplugging your fridge and not using your oven, especially if you're not living alone and the rest of the inhabitants refuse to play along :P), others are quite do-able. There were also things I didn't know about at all, such as this great site called Free Rice. You basically play a word game and for each answer you get right, 10 grains of rice are donated to countries in need. I linked you to the FAQ, so you see how it works :)

What was also great about the book is after ending her challenge, she decided to see how many changes she kept - which was about 75% of them. This means that it may not be so hard to incorporate some of these into everyday life (which is quite inspiring :D at least to me). While I already make some effort to greenify myself/surroundings, I definitely think I can do more. So, I'll try and use some ideas from her book to see what else I can do.
Here is the total list of things she did.
Of them, I currently do (some of hers don't apply though - for example: I do not have an electric heating pad o_O): 64 which is about 18%
Though, I'm thinking of the applicable ones, I probably do at least 30% :P Anyways, we'll see what can be incorporated :D Should be fun :)

Onto LiveMocha: It's a site that provides 21 free language courses (and other courses you have to pay for). In addition, for the writing and speaking exercises, they are peer reviewed by other users from around the world. You can do the same.
So, since signing up yesterday, I've greatly enjoyed helping people out with their English and French. I also enrolled in a Spanish, German, Russian and Portuguese (Brazilian) course. The first 3, I've had some exposure to. The last, none at all - which explains why I suck in it :) I've also noticed that the Brazilians really like correcting people (or at least me), because my audio submission received 53 comments (of mixed rating :P). I had to turn off the comment notification because my inbox was being massively flooded. I do thank them for their eagerness in helping. The other language submissions received on average 3-4 corrections (though, I got no help from the German speakers :P).

You can also add friends and check others' profiles n such. Oh yeah, and do live chats, if you so wish (I haven't yet).

The site can be rather addictive (well, if you like languages and helping people out). So make sure not to spend too much time on it :P

So, that's it for today. If nothing else, I encourage you guys to play Free Rice :)

Tic Tic Tac

2009-06-10T11:37:00.003-04:00

While matlab does some optimization for me, I figured it'd be a good time to do a little update, as it has been a while.

About 3 weeks ago, the drum school I joined in March had a show celebrating the 4th anniversary of its existence. I'm really happy I went because prior to that I hadn't really heard how all the instruments sound together (well, when the people are playing well. In class, everyone is learning, so you're not so sure...haha).
They were joined by other artists who either played with them (guitar, singing, etc), or played when they were taking a break. I only recall Isaac Neto. It was very enjoyable. Everyone at Club Lambi was dancing (and very well I might add). Definitely a good way to get into the festive summer spirit (eventhough it's not summer just yet...)

There were two songs they played that I recognized, as did two friends that joined me that night. So, out of curiosity, I searched for them when I got home.

1) Sergio Mendes - Magalenha

2) Mas que Nada which was done originally by Jorge Ben Jor and later covered by Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66', and later by Sergio Mendes with the Black Eyed Peas quite recently.

The original and the brasil 66' one are like of loungy/slow, so I'm linking to the BEP one because it's more upbeat and resembles the speed that they played at the most I believe. But as far as I remember, at the show they did not sing in english :P

The following week, I participated in a 4 km walk with them supporting the Societe d'Alzeimer's in the South Shore. It was my first time ever performing with them, but I'm also really happy I went (despite being quite nervous). I was able to follow for the most part, though there were some things I hadn't learned yet. My teacher was really cool about it, showing me some things along the way, or just saying not to play something when we clearly hadn't covered it (everyone else there had started before me...at least in august, or before).

The only thing about walking and playing is the drum tends to bump your knees and produce bruises :P but it's ok, they go away and I've had worse injuries, bahaha. I was also happy to meet other people in the group that practice on different days :D Also, the walkers seemed to really enjoy the music. So, good news all around.

One thing that I was told not to play, but that I found cool - I later found out was also done by Sergio Mendes and brasil 66' in a song called Batucada (Batucada = a drum troupe):

Only the part before 1:00 was done, or at least part of it...where basically the head teacher did a beat and then the drummers had to respond. The crowd also had to respond by clapping. :D

Another interesting thing about this song -> I tried out this class on Sunday called Zumba - it's a mix of aerobics and many dances, such as salsa, merengue and a bunch more(I'm trying to get back into physical activity, eventhough the doctor said it'll take a total of 10-12 weeks for my ankle to heal -> 5-6 weeks left or so. But anyways, this isn't too high impact. I tried to do some karate stuff at home...and yeah, not such a good idea >_< it hurts quite a bit, lol :P)

During the class, the girl happened to play the Carnaval Batucada song, but the part after the drums :P Actually, the website lists all the songs that they use during the work out, which is awesome!
So one other song I have in my head because of it (I'd heard it back in the 90s, but had no idea what it was - super catchy):

Carrapicho - Tic Tic Tac

The class itself is pretty fun. I wonder if she'll ever do the dance they do in that video though, haha.

My final music related thing - I've been listening to this song for a little while now: Passion Pit - Little Secrets. It's really dancy :D
I learned about them while browsing one of the music blogs. It said if you like MGMT and a few other bands (i forgot), you should like them. And I definitely like MGMT, so I gave it a shot. This song has some elements that remind me of nintendo games.
It's definitely upbeat. I see where the MGMT reference comes from, but they don't sound as disco (at least not as disco as Electric Feel). :)

The rest of the CD "Manners" is not bad, but Little Secrets is definitely my favorite song.

Apart from drumming, optimizing and music listening, I've also been watching "30 Rock" - my new favorite show. Now I have nothing left to watch because I finished season 3. So I'll have to start watching something else, haha. It's awesomely quirky. I just love Kenneth and the dynamic between Liz Lemon and Jack.

Here's are some of my favorite parts from the show:
"Midnight train to Georgia" (yes, Gladys Night happened to appear on that show)

Midnight Train To Georgia - 30 ROCK - watch more funny videos

"Night Cheese"

"The Best of Liz Lemon" (Paw showed this to me just before I started watching the show)

And some stuff from Kenneth:

and last but not least, I saw "Sin Nombre" last Thursday. It's a great movie, albeit depressing.

Here's the trailer:

The music in there is quite good. However, the soundtrack only corresponds to the instrumental stuff...and I'm looking for the non-instrumental (it had accordions!!).
Hopefully a song list will appear soon.

I think that's it :)

Actors sipping tasty hot water

2009-05-11T13:13:00.004-04:00

Thanks to Paw's suggestion, I've finally decided to start a sort of tea blog/review. The link is above with all the other blog links - it's called "Tasty Hot Water". The first post describes more or less what I feel like doing with it :)

As for "Actors" - it is the name of the new album by St. Vincent. Paw and I had seen them open for The Arcade Fire on may 13, 2007. The singer used to be part of the Polyphonic Spree (another good band, albeit incredibly cheerful). Anyways, they were really good and I also very much enjoyed their first album, so decided to check this one out.
It is different from the first album in some ways. She still has the same kind of mellow, haunting voice and nice beats. Anyways, definitely an album to check out.

Here is the single and probably my favorite song so far, called "Actor out of work"

I must commend those people for their awesome anger and crying skills. I wonder if the used onions to make them cry...

I recently heard this song (friend sent it to me). It's by Lisa Mitchell - Neopolitan Dreams. It's soooo cute :O the twinkles and her voice.

While looking for a different song, I stumbled upon an Armin van Buuren remix of "Human" by The Killers. It's quite good :D

Apparently there's a CD with a bunch of remixes of "Human". I guess I'll check it out sometime and see if they are as good as this one.

Also, I'm in a little bit of a reggae mood thanks to hearing a Bob Marley song on Saturday (I was at a Philipino Youth Fundraiser. One of the local acts covered "Zimbabwe"). As usual, it's groovy and quite summery. So here you go.

Twilight, Fixies and the incoming Elekronaut

2009-05-09T03:42:00.005-04:00

It's been a while. Almost a month. My classes are over for the semester and much to my delight I passed all of them (even the pesky math class I thought I kerplonked!).

Fixies:
I had intended to restart karate and join a dancing class, but unfortunately that did not happen. Last wednesday I sprained my ankle while testing a fixed gear bike. Long story short - my pants got stuck in the gear, my foot was still in the toe clip, and since the pedals were still turning, my foot bent forward.

This is how my foot looked that day:

It kinda looks like I have a tumor on my ankle :P

And this is the bruising that appeared two days after (it got even darker the day after):

Luckily nothing is broken. It is still somewhat swollen, some bruising remains and it is quite sensitive to touch. I can walk! but I probably won't be able to do any karate or that dance class for a few weeks. *shakes fist for foiled plans*

Twilight:
On Sunday (May 3), I saw Mogwai at the Metropolis with Paw. It is my 3rd time seeing them and I think her 4th. Mogwai never disappoint. This time we sat on the balcony due to my foot and we also thought it would be interesting to see the concert from that angle as we usually stand right up front and experience of the seizurific lights.

The opening band was called "The Twilight Sad". They're somewhat hard indie rock with a thick scottish accent. I was pleasantly surprised by how great they were. I can without a doubt say I liked every song. My current favorite is "That summer, at home I had become the invisible boy".
Here is a music video someone made with the song and moments between Humprey Bogart and Lauren Bacall:

The drumming reminds me a bit of the drumming in "Maps" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Very nice :)

One cool thing about sitting on the balcony is you get to do people watching. At one point a fight broke out (which I really didn't expect at a Mogwai show). Though I didn't hear anything, the events seemed to transpire as follows:
A tall, buff dude made his way through the crowd dancing around halfway through mogwai's set. People were annoyed because they were there first and he was moving a lot. So they asked him to move/tone it down. He got upset and started arguing with them. He later proceeding to take off his giant ear plugs, his hat and then he took off his shirt and pushed one of the small dudes. Crowd commotion follows. Metropolis security came and tried to tame the large man. He started pushing them too. I think they managed to handle it though, because things toned down after. It was just really bizarre o_O.

Apart from that, the concert was really great. Though they did not play "My Father, My King", they did play "Two rights make one wrong" and "Like Herod" which are always a pleasure to hear. :D

Incoming Elektronaut
Paw and I decided that we will not be going to the Kinetik Festival after all this year. But all is not lost! We shall still have our industrial music, for VNV Nation is coming in July :D Time to get glowsticks!

Things I've been listening to lately:
Extra Musica - Etat Major - A band from the DRC. The genre of music is called Soukous. It has lots of guitar and nice beats. People can do a very wiggly dance called Ndombolo to this. If you check on youtube, the first video that appears has this song with the very wiggly people.

The Twilight Sad - Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters

Patrick Wolf - The Bachelor - The music video for the song "Vulture" is quite different from his other ones. Kinda on the BDSM side :P

Camera Obscura - Let's get out of this country Kind of reminds me of "Stars". I like the song "Lloyd, I'm ready to be heartbroken"

Kino - Sorok Shest (46), Noch (night) and Eto ne lyubov(It's not love) Russian rock band from the 80's. From the three albums, my favorite songs are "Sasha", "Film" and "It's not love".

Asobi Seksu - Citrus, Hush Dream pop/rock with unintelligible lyrics. I like "Lions and Tigers" and "Layers" (I really like the drumming in layers).

I'll leave it at that for music :)

Finally, two recipes I tried recently that were awesome (but I made some modifications due to missing ingredients. Still turned out great though).

Mango Coconut Muffins
Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of these ones. I made them for a picnic with some friends.

Vegan Chocolate Muffins with Coconut Icing
I made these for a friends birthday.

Oh and if you're interested in composting (but without dealing with the worms/making the thing yourself), there's a great service called Compost Montreal. They serve quite a few areas and are trying to expand. Basically it's 20$/month - they provide a bucket, the bag and collect every tuesday. In addition, you can have as much compost as you like :) So far, I'm quite pleased and am happy to be reducing my garbage even more :D

That ends my long post.
Until next time!

Bunnies...everywhere!

2009-04-12T21:37:00.004-04:00

Happy Easter people's. This is the 9th Easter that I've had Sir Bunny Lapin in my company.

My mom put him in the washing machine yesterday, and as such he's slightly disoriented/queasy, but he is slowly regaining composure and will soon be back to his good old self. :P

On to other things!

So, my mom was watching CSI:NY the other day and I heard a song that sound super good, but had no idea what it was. So today I finally found out what it was.
"Until we bleed" - Kleerup ft. Lykke Li

It's electronic music by Kleerup w/ Lykke's voice. Both of them are from Sweden. I decided to check out more of their music in general.
I really like Kleerup's self titled album. It features various artists, including Robyn (remember her hits back in 95/96 :P). It's generally chill - not intense techno electro. Think more of "The Knife".
Another really good song on the album is "Hero".

As for Lykke Li herself, I find each song has a more or less different sound. Her voice is cute and it's not as electronic as Kleerup. Some is more popish. It's nice :)

Another band I've recently started listening to is Trentemoller. This dude is from Denmark (this is looking to be a scandanavian music post it seems).
Anyways, also minimal electro, not many vocals - in fact I think most of the tracks are instrumental.
But this one has vocals :P

This video has a dog in space (like Laika!)

Rediscoveries:
Alright, so leaving scandanavia -> England: After watching "Billy Elliot" the other day, I rekindled my interest in T-Rex. I had heard of them first from Paw, and then got into them again after watching "Breakfast on Pluto". Both of those movies have my fave song by them "Children of the Revolution" on the soundtrack. In fact...it seems they played a lot of songs in movies I like :)

Here's an interesting performance with Elton John and Ringo Star:

Finally -> Mexico! As summer is coming, festive music is appropriate. I had listened to Celso Pina before, but only about 3 songs (Cumbia sobre el Rio, Cumbia Poder, Cumbia Colombiana). I really like the style because it mixes a bunch of stuff - including accordions, which I love :)
I first found out of about them because of the movie "Babel" - cumbia sobre el rio was playing. It was the scene where the dude played by Gael Garcia Bernal is driving everyone across the border and you see parts of Mexico.

As I love all 3 of those tracks, I decided to listen to more. I got the albums Mundo Colombia y Barrio Bravo. I can't really say which tracks I like best, but it's a general festive feel and appropriate for the approaching of summer time :D
One of my friends has also decided to listen to something festive - she's started listening to older Santana...so I might do the same too :) It sounded pretty good, har har har.

Anyways, that ends my long easter music post recap thing.
Until next time *salutes*

Sand Fantasy

2009-03-28T23:46:00.000-04:00

I forgot to say earlier - I saw something really cool today. Enjoy :)

Dinosaur on the ark

2009-03-28T18:19:00.002-04:00

After coming out of quarantine this week, I decided to look up peruse Pitchfork (which actually doesn't happen that often). I decided to check out their "Best new albums" section and saw an interesting name: The Very Best (Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit) - The Very Best Mixtape.

It immediately caught my attention...because well, Mwamwaya is definitely an african name (which part? I would soon find out).
So it seems that Esau Mwamwaya (a dude from Malawi, but I believe lives in London) and Radioclit teamed up, took current songs and remixed them. Some songs are still very recognizable, some aren't.

Mwamwaya sings in Chichewa for the most part, though there is some english in there. The songs end up being a mix of tropical/happy/sometimes rockish - it's actually pretty hard to describe, but I generally like it. I think it's pretty cool that african music is making its way again into I guess you could say popular music to some extent? (I just remember it was everywhere in the 80s - Paul Simon, Johnny Clegg, Peter Gabriel, even Public Image Ltd (with their song 'Rise') had africany elements). I just really like the guitar, haha...and well the beat in general :)

Here is the tracklist and in bold my faves at the moment:
1) Kamphopo (vocals: Esau Mwamwaya, music: Architecture In Helsinki - Heart It Races)
2) Wena (vocals: Esau Mwamwaya & Bleksem, music: DJ Cleo - Wena)
3) Tengazako (vocals: Esau Mwamwaya, music: M.I.A - Paper Planes)
4) Chikondi (vocals: Esau Mwamwaya, music: Hans Zimmer - True Romance Theme)
5) Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa (The Very Best Remix) (vocals: Esau Mwamwaya, music: Radioclit & Vampire Weekend)
6) Hide And Seek (vocals: Esau Mwamwaya & Teki Latex, music: TTC - Batards Sensibles)
7) Salota (vocals: Esau Mwamwaya and Blk Jks, music: Cannibal Ox - Life’s Ill)
8] Boyz (vocals: Esau Mwamwaya, Akon & M.I.A, music: M.I.A -Boyz)
9) Sister Betina (vocals: Esau Mwamwaya & Mgarimbe, music: Mgarimbe - Sister Betina)
10) Birthday (vocals: Esau Mwamwaya & The Ruby Suns, music: The Ruby Suns)
11) Funa Funa (vocals: Esau Mwamwaya, music: Radioclit)
12) Kada Manja (classic version) (vocals: Esau Mwamwaya, music: Radioclit)
13) Dinosaur Of The Lost Ark (The Very Best remix) (vocals: Esau Mwamwaya & Ben Brewer, music: Bermuda)
14) Get it Up (The Very Best Remix) (vocals : Esau Mwamwaya, Santogold, M.I.A & Northern Cree, music: Radioclit)
15) Will You Be There (vocals: Esau Mwamwaya & Michael Jackson, music: Michael Jackson - Will You Be There)

So far the most looped track is definitely 13 though...I absolutely love the guitar in it and I guess just everything about it, haha (after the 30 second intro).

Here are a couple of the songs:
Kamphopo (this one is shot in Malawi. The happy kids are cool :D)

Cape Cod

Dinosaur on the ark

Anyways, back to post-flu catch up! :D

Yes!

2009-03-18T01:05:00.002-04:00

Happy happy joy joy, Paw told me Beirut is coming (July 11)!!!!. I got my ticket yesterday!

I celebrate with three songs of theirs:

An oldie one : Postcards from Italy (live @ Spin)

One in the middle: A sunday smile

A new one: La llorona

aaah how I love accordions and horns :D
I can't wait (also because that will mean this semester will be over. woot!)

PS: Happy St Patrick's Day to all. I was not able to sport my awesome neon green wig today...but I think I shall do so during the parade, muahahaha :P

Things are lookin up...(at least in the music domain)

2009-03-06T19:01:00.003-05:00

Finally, concerts are starting to appear. This winter has been rather dreary in terms of concerts. In fact I haven't gone to any since seeing 'Stars' last year.
Now, it seems bands are making their rounds in Montreal. Hurrah!

So what's coming up for spring time?

April 7 - Ladytron w/ the Faint @ Theatre Telus
April 17/18 - Yann Tiersen w/ Coeur de Pirate @ Club Soda (absolutely can't wait for this :D)
April 19 - Bell Orchestre @ La Tulipe
April 20 - The Walkmen - La Sala Rosa
May 3 - Mogwai w/ The Twilight Sad
May 15 - Animal Collective @ Metropolis
May 15 - Kinetik Festival Phase 2 - Harsh Industrial(!!!)
May 17 - Kinetik Festival Phase 4 EBM
May 18 - Peaches @ Club Soda
June 2 - NIN w/ Jane's Addiction @ Molson Amphitheatre in Toronto

Now, I certainly won't go to all of these. D: too expensive. But there are some that I'm pretty sure i'm gonna see.
Yann Tiersen - The guy who did the music for Amelie and Goodbye Lenin, among other things. He really makes some magical music :) Coeur de Pirate is also really cute. So I have no doubt it'll be a great show.
I'm considering seeing Bell Orchestre. Some of its members are from the Arcade Fire. I've known about them since 2005 and generally enjoy their music and the price isn't too expensive.
I'm also considering seeing the Walkmen. I've known about them since about 2004 :)
Mogwai finally rescheduled their date here. So Paw and I will be able to see them!
We are also planning to see Phase 2 of the Kinetik Festival as Grendel will be performing.
I don't know Peaches that well. But some of her songs are catchy. So perhaps, if for some reason I have extra cash lying aroung :P
NIN - I have seen 2X before, but word has it that NIN is retiring after this tour. So I think it may deserve a trip to Toronto (hey I've done it once before :P) to see their final gig! At the same time, I can fit in some Toronto perusing or so.
I really like Ladytron, so I'm still not sure if I'm gonna go. I'll see how much work I have at the time. In addition, if I actually do go to Yann- Bell-Walkmen, 3 concerts in a row. My ears will need to prepare :P

In addition to concerts, I've been listening to a bunch of stuff.
One of my favorite releases of the year so far is by Beirut - March of the Zapotec/ Real People Holland. It's a split EP. The first part is similar to his previous work, whereas Real People Holland is a bit more on the electronic side and you can see how Alaskainwinter ended up being the opening act back in September 2007. I enjoy both halves immensely. If I had choose 2 songs on each split:
Zapotec = La Llorona and The Schrew
Real People = My wife, lost in the wild and My night with the prostitute from Marseilles

I only hope this means Beirut will be touring soon in support of this new release :) Seeing them was so much fun.

I've also just recently discovered an artist called Matryoshka. She is from Japan and sometimes her voice reminds me a bit of the vocals of Icelandic band "Mum". The music isn't the same though. Some tracks have really nice piano :)
My favorite tracks from the album "Zatracenie" are "Evening gleam between clouds" and "Tyrant's miniature garden".

Another good listen is M83 - Saturday's = Youth. M83 is kind of ambient/mellow electronic music in some albums. Other times feel like nostalgic alternative music (a la Smashing Pumpkins? kinda 80s/90s alternative feel). This is the most recent album I believe. I also enjoyed Digital Shades Vol 1.
From Saturday's, I generally like the whole album, but I think "Too Late" and "Graveyard Girl" are my favorite. The alt feel is really noticeable in Graveyard Girl.

Miss Kittin and the Hacker came out with a new album - 2. So far it's alright. But i find with Miss Kittin it always takes me a while to like the whole album :) Still a good listen. For the moment, Batbox is still my fave though.

I've also been listening to the Greatest Hits of "Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers".
This happened in a funny way - I heard from a friend that Alice in Wonderland was being made into a live action movie. She said that Johnny Depp is playing the Mad Hatter and he looks quite crazy. So I decided to look up the picture and ended up finding the video for Tom Petty's song "Don't come around here no more". In the video he is dressed as the Mad hatter and well the general theme is of Alice in Wonderland. So I decided to listen to the best of.
There are some pretty good songs there. :) easy listening you could say.

Finally, I've revisted A Perfect Circle and Tool after a long non-listening hiatus. I'm glad I still like them - some really awesome songs :D
It is kinda funny relistening though, because the time when I was super into them was 2003 and a bit in 2004. So I've revisited my moods at the time as well...
In anycase, Aenima and Mer de Noms are probably my fave albums from the two, but I still like all the other ones! :D

I guess that ends my music post for the month :P

In other news, I epicly failed at making pupusa's today. Corn flour is kind of hard to work with for it crumbles :P I think I'm going to hunt for a tortilla press...
At least my filling tasted like awesome (refried beans and smoked gouda cheese).

anyways, before I make your eyes bleed further, I bid thee farewell.

B=F/(LxI)

2009-01-31T16:20:00.002-05:00

Howdy!

I decided to make a post about my favorite band of this month - The Magnetic Fields. I had never really heard of them before...but I was perusing an mp3 blog and saw that they had their album "69 love songs". I was intrigued and downloaded it along with their album "Distortion". It took a little while to get into it...I mean it's hard to like 69 songs all at once, on first listen. However, on both albums there are some really stand out tunes and I've been listening to them on repeat for a while.

Wiki says The Magnetic Fields is a band led by New York City singer-songwriter Stephin Merritt. Albums released by Merritt under the name "Magnetic Fields" often make extensive use of synthesizers underlying clever lyrics, often about love, that are by turns ironic, bitter, and humorous.

So the synth's really remind me of the 80s new wave/synth stuff. Think New Order and some of The Cure. The main vocalist Stephen Merritt has a kinda deepish voice too (though not *quite* as doom as Ian Curtis' of Joy Division). But I really like the deep voice.

Anyways, this is not to say that all the music is like that. Distortion follows the synth trend quite well, but on 69 love songs there's more variety. Some is folky, some is synthy and others are just strange.

My favorites from 69 Love songs : Long forgotten fairy tale (reminds me a bit of New Order's - Temptation), The book of love, world love, time enough for rocking when we're old, grand canyon, the way you said goodnight.
From Distortion : Old Fools, the Nun's Litany and Till the bitter end.
But there really is a lot of great stuff in general.

I leave you with two songs, one from each. I'll have to listen to the rest of their albums now :)

Jigsaw Falling into Place - The music shuffle shuffle

2009-01-26T21:54:00.002-05:00

So, I'm having more problems with Matlab and decided to take a break. I was perusing Angelo's facebook and he did one of those song shuffle things, so I'm gonna do the same :P

1) Put your music playlist on shuffle.
2) For each question below press the next button on your media player to get your answer.
3) You must write that song name down no matter how silly it sounds.

1. IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY?
My Night with the prostitute from Marseille - Beirut

2. WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
City Girl - Tegan and Sara

3. WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Boys - The Dandy Warhols

4. HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
Auf Gott steht meine Zuversicht - Bach (Cantatas 138-140)
In english means "In God is my confidence"

5. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
Green Man - Type O Negative

6. WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Machine Joy - Miss Kittin

7. WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Untitled 8 (The Pop Song) - Sigur Ros

8. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Lets pretend we're bunny rabbits - The Magnetic Fields

9. WHAT IS 2+2?
Boundaries are open - After Forever

10. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
nevesyelaya pesnya - Kino
(in english means "unhappy/joyless song")

11. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
All I want is you - Barry Louis Polisar

12. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Breaking Away - Ratatat

13. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Velvet Revolution - Tori Amos

14. WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
The Cydonia Complex - Memmaker

15. WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Small Children in the background - Mogwai

16. WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?.
Modern Romance - The Yeah Yeah Yeahs (I do like this song very much :D)

17. WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
The God that Failed - Metallica

18. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Untitled 4 (Njosnavelin) - Sigur Ros

19. WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
Long Distance Drunk - Modest Mouse (HAH)

20. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Fix the Sky A little - 65daysofstatic

21. WHAT'S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
Summer of 69 - Bryan Adams

22. HOW WILL YOU DIE?
Sinkin' Soon - Norah Jones (I guess I'm gonna drown...)

23. WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
There There - Radiohead

24. WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
Old Flame - The Arcade Fire

25. WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
Summerhead - Cocteau Twins

26. WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
Underwater - Architecture in Helsinki

27. WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?
On the Tower - Sondre Lerche

28. DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
Grass - Animal Collective

29. IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
Open Arms - Journey

30. WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
Sacred Darling - Gogol Bordello

31. WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
Jigsaw Falling into Place - Radiohead

Miroir Noir

2009-01-07T00:09:00.003-05:00

I just finished watching the Miroir Noir: Neon Bible Archives - a DVD by the Arcade Fire documenting their 2006-2007 tour.
I actually just found out about it yesterday while killing time on the net.
The clip is shown on the site dedicated to the dvd
It is also on youtube:

In addition, there's a new track called Burning Bridges which is entirely instrumental. It's a pretty interesting song - in some parts it reminds me a bit of Black Waves/Bad Vibrations but at the same time it sounds very epic. In anycase, I like it a lot.

As for the DVD, on the whole, I really enjoyed it. It's not really just footage of a concert - it's many concerts, backstage/acoustic recordings, them perusing in the streets and just doing various shenanigans. There are also tape recordings of people giving their testimonies of the Neon Bible. What I also liked was the quality of the film - it's kind of an old, grainy, sepiaish texture. So, generally liked the effect.
For the most part, the songs are not played in their entirety (except for Neighborhood #3 (power out) and Rebellion) which appear at the end of the DVD. It reminds me of when I saw them with Paw at Arena Maurice Richard. Despite having seats, their performance was truly electrifying. They all have so much energy, which can be seen here too. When I showed Paw the clip, she said it looked pretty "Destroy", which I agree.

My favorite parts include:
The "destroy" part of the DVD where Cold Wind is playing. I really do enjoy on stage chaos :P
Neon Bible in the elevator (which was released as a clip previously)
The Intervention singalong
The Ocean of Noise dance

If they came again, I would definitely go. Hopefully they'll play a smaller venue and I'll get spots in the front :D
It might prove to be difficult though, for I remember when they played 5 nights at the Ukrainian Federation - all nights sold out and when there were 50 ticket added for each night, there were overnight line ups to get those tickets - In the middle of Febuary!

In anycase, we shall see. So far there are no concerts I particularly want to see. Seems like this Winter might be a calm concert season.

2008 : Year in Review

2008-12-29T20:18:00.004-05:00

This year has probably been one of the most eventful years of my life, whether in terms of achievements, activities or music. Rather than narrow my list to musical discoveries and just a few other categories I did last year, I’d like to expand it to include some other things.

Top Achievements/Life Changing events:

I really feel like this year has been the one where you say “My hard work has finally paid off”. And all the doubt and tiredness you felt before was suddenly worth it. I won't go into detail about it, but I'll just list what was important in chronological order: Finishing Capstone, Graduation, Moving (we had been at the old place for 13 years), being accepted at and attending Polytechnique, being on the Dean's List, getting a scholarship and being considered for another and doing well in my first semester especially considering everything is in french.

3 Top Activities:

Treetop Trekking – I had heard about Treetop Trekking in 2007, but never managed to organize the event until this year. We were 5 (including myself) and went to Arbraska in Rigaud which is about 50 mins from Montreal. I’m terrified of heights, so it was a really interesting experience. I managed to do all the courses (which the exception of Extreme, because we had no time). It was totally awesome, really fun and I’m glad that the people I went with liked it too (and that they came )

Kinnetik Festival - While this is technically a music event, I don’t exactly consider it a concert because it’s a kind of prolonged thing. Thanks to Ryan and Paw for letting me know about it – we went to one of the nights. It was from 5 pm- 3 am – practically non-stop industrial/hard core music and dancing. I saw some very interesting fashions – cyber goth and such with all the neon hair falls. There were also the usual black PVC clothed people. I also saw interesting dance moves, which inspired me to look up industrial dance on youtube and find this video
If possible, I’d like to go to Kinnetik again next year.

Divers Cite – This is probably one of the most fun festivals I’ve been to. Nobody cares what anyone is doing as long as they’re having fun. A group of us went on the Saturday to check out what was going on and danced in the rain and then later when it was not raining anymore danced again to DJ Ana Paula (who btw, is awesome).

3 Best Food Discoveries:

Le Coin Mexicain – Metro Iberville
We all know that 3 Amigos and Carlos and Pepes are “Mexican” food (just like the vast majority of places are “chinese” food). So I was on the hunt for real Mexican food. A friend of mine told me about Le Coin Mexicain and so I decided to mobilize some troupes to test this place out. Holy crap, this place is great. They have sopes, Horchata, salsa verde (I much prefer green salsa to red salsa. It’s made with tomatillos and has a kinda tangy flavour), tamales, arroz con leche, tortilla soup, queso fresco!!! and more that I was not able to taste (I didn’t order those all myself :P I sampled friends plates). I will have to go back for sure to try their guacamole among other things. Another Mexican thing I really like (which I’m not sure they have but I tried at the Mexican Independence Day celebration) was Elote. It’s corn on the cob, with mayonnaise, queso fresco or parmesan and cayenne pepper. It sounds kind of sinister, but it is so tasty, woosh.
Anyways, you all need to have Mexican food.

Sushi Moushi – Decarie in between Isabella and Queen Mary
In the world of all you can eat sushi, sushi moushi is pretty darn good. It is also kind of eccentric in that it serves flavours that you typically do not see in Sushi restaurants. My favourite was Yasai Tempura Maki, which is onion, cucumber, zucchini, sweet potato and all fried. Like dude man, this was amazing. They also have one flavour with lychee in it. Kanda is still good (I’m fond of their deep fried scallops with the sauce on the side), but sushi moushi is very original and they’re also close by. Hah!

Spirite Lounge - 1205 Ontario
You need to go to this place, even if it's just for the decor. It's the strange restaurant I've ever been in, which christmas lights, hindu pictures, pictures of Jesus and Buddha, playing cards on the ceiling, rugs everywhere. In addition, you pay 15$ for soup, main and dessert with tea and you must finish your food. Though shall not waste. I finished everything - which is vegan and amazingly tasty. I would love to go back.

Notable Mentions: Sala Rosa – especially for their curried pumpkin and coconut soup, 5000 years - different from all the other korean resto's I've been to, La Faim du Monde - best coleslaw I've ever had

3 Best Places to Chill:

L’Escalier – Ste Catherine near Berri metro
This place is located, surprise surprise, up the stairs. Imagine someone took a flat, removed all the doors, painted the rooms strange colors and generally everything is made for floor seating level. They frequently have musical performances and also serve food for rather inexpensive prices. They also have quite a selection of tea. It’s a great place to get lost in time, because the times I went, we often freaked out when we found out how much time had passed.

Casa del Popolo – St Laurent near St Joseph
Really inexpensive, frequent concerts, wide selection of food and beverages and overall super chill.

Café Sarajevo – St Laurent near Beaubien
Though we didn’t get to stay here very long (we had to catch the metro), this place is really cool. They have Bosnian coffee, which is served in these really tiny cups. Every night they are open, jazz or gypsy bands play. Frequent performers are Soleil Tzigane and Les Gitans de Sarajevo. Hopefully I’ll be able to go back again and fully enjoy without racing for the metro. Also, hopefully more people will be dancing around to such wonderful music :)

I'd also like to mention Parc Rene Levesque. I biked there once and I love it. I spent a few hours there just hanging about on the rocks staring at the water. So definitely a great place to chill, though outdoors and so it depends on the weather.

3 Best Teas

Garden of Eden
I had this tea when I went to visit a friend in Toronto. As she knows I'm a huge tea freak, she took me to the tea emporium. It smells like you crushed a bunch of berries and made some kinda perfume out of it. Incredibly fruity, more than any other tea I've had. It's based on green tea and flavored with all the berries. It's absolutely wonderful. I bought some and brought it back. Too bad there's not much left :P

White Peony Mint Tea
I got this at a tea store on St Denis. I'm a big fan of Moroccan Mint Tea (that you have at...well Moroccan Restos :)). This tea was a pleasant surprise though. Its mintyness is less pronounced than in Moroccan mint, but still there. It feels very cleansingv(like after you've eaten). One of my favorite in terms of minty teas.

Sencha Kyoto Cherry Rose Festival Tea
Got it at the same tea store as Mr. Mint. I had tried this tea at L'Escalier and at Cafein a while back. I liked it quite a bit because again, based on green tea with a hint of fruit (I typically despise pure fruit herbal teas). What's great is that when I bought a package of it, the cherry was even more present than I remember. Hoorah for fresh tea!

3 Best Movie Discoveries

Let the Right One In
I saw this movie just recently. I heard about it after reading a message board connected with a music blog I frequent from time to time. I never actively sought out vampire movies, but after seeing the trailer, I was intruiged. The movie takes place in Sweden and generally deals with a 12 year old girl named Eli who's a vampire and she befriends a 12 year old boy who is being bullied. The atmosphere is very somber and doom, but the movie is also very sweet. I cannot recommened it enough. I've seen it 3 times already. I absolutely love it.

Wristcutters: A Love Story
The spirit of this movie reminds me a bit of Everything is Illuminated for two reasons : the music and the mass amounts of driving. The movie is about the afterlife of suiciders. However, it's not depressing, it's really wacky and has a great soundtrack. Tom Waits also make an appearance.

Time of the Gypsiess
Three of us decided to go to Cinema du parc to check out some gypsy movies. Now, the description they had on the site made it seem like it was a comedy. That was the most misleading description ever. Initially it was kind of funny. But dude man, this is one of the most depressing movies I've seen - we all agreed. We left completely blahed out. This is not to say however that it's a bad movie. It's very good and very well acted, just not happy. Essentially dealing with a boy who leaves his home with good intentions, but gets corrupted by crime.

New General Entertainment:

Gad ElMaleh
I found out about this comedian while trying to show a friend from Houston an example of the difference between a quebecois and french accent. It was entirely random, but then I started watching his sketches and found out he was really funny. Now he is one of my favorite comedians :)

How I met your mother
I heard about this show from 2 friends and while not studying for finals, I decided to check it out on surfthechannel. Not a good idea because it's really funny and incredibly addictive. Barney has more catch phrases than I've ever heard, but it's ok, because he's awesome. :P

Queer as Folk
Another show I heard about in passing and decided to look up. Showcase started streaming episodes off of their site (once a week) and then I discovered that it was all on surf the channel (except episode 410, which paw passed to me). The show was really witty, it had its funny moments, sad moments...typically drama I guess, but also had great music (the babylon club mix is great - thanks to paw again for passing that to me).

3 Best Musical Discoveries of the Year (with suggested songs):

Beach House – Heart and Lungs and You Came to me
This band is extremely spaced out. The lady’s voice is rather soft and deep. To me at least, it feels like you’re floating. It’s great music to just sit there and space out to, which I’ve done a number of times.

MGMT – Electric Feel and Time to Pretend
It’s hard to exactly describe what genre this band belongs to. I’ll play it safe and say some kind of alternative psychedelic rock. Electric Feel was the first song I really liked and they sound like the beegees. It’s extremely funky and dancy. Time to Pretend is a little bit more standard rock, but still has that 70s feel to it. Either way, love em.

Vampire Weekend – One (Blake’s Got a new face)/ A-Punk
I discovered this band randomly on Nodata I think. They’re like dancy punkish rock in a way, but the guy has a softer voice than most punk bands as far as I know. Very enjoyable.

3 songs that happened to stay in my head

The Killers – This is your life
When I say that this song stayed in my head, I’m not kidding. I heard it while Christmas shopping at HMV two days before a final. I don’t listen to the Killers really, so I had no idea who it was, just that it was damn catchy. I asked one of the store clerks and she told me the track. I went home and downloaded it. I kinda lost track of how often it played on loop (I was too lazy to switch it while studying for said final). Play count till now 127 (on itunes). 105/127 of those plays were done in one day. Since then it has played on winamp too. So total is probably close to 160 times since December 10. It really is a great song though. I love the beat so much :) And I’m somehow still not tired by it.

TV on the Radio – Halfway Home
Another HMV gem – I was perusing the store to kill time sometime in September when I was in the area. Thought it sounded good, so asked a clerk. I had heard TV on the Radio in 2004 as openers for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and wasn’t crazy about them. This song pleasantly surprised me though.

Architecture in Helsinki – Heart it Races
This song was probably the song of the year that I decided I had to spread around in some way (much like Gogol last year). These dudes are from Australia and the band is generally wacky (just my style). The song is very festive. It has steel pans in it and chirpy voices. One particular friend of mine is a fan of this song and so we often break into song and dance around. The video is also pretty cool, oh neon awesomeness!

3 Best Concerts:
This is an extremely hard category because; I can say without hesitation that every concert I saw this year was amazing. I have seen bands this year that I have been waiting years to see and others that though I haven’t, were just as great for different reasons. To make my decision easier, I’ll pick one for spring, summer and fall.

Spring: The Cure – Bell Centre – May 14, 2008
The Cure is pretty legendary as far as I can tell. I was with Ryan and Paw and we were sitting in the 200 section. This was Paw’s first Bell Centre show and so we were uncertain as to whether it would still be good considering our seating position. Luckily, the band had lots of visuals and on top of that they played for about 3 hours. It was probably the longest show I’ve been to and I don’t feel that his voice suffered while singing. It was really top notch. They also played all the songs I wanted them to play – most importantly Disintegration.

Summer: Radiohead – Parc Jean Drapeau – August 6, 2008
I have been waiting since 2003 to see them. I tried to get tickets in 2006 (I left my final early to go to Place des Arts to try and get tickets, but they sold out). In addition, none of my friends wanted to go see them for various reasons. Still, on April 9, I bought 2 presale tickets, because I did not want to miss them again. Luckily, my PT friend was awesome and came to see them with me even though she really didn’t know them. I arrived at PJD at 3 pm, gates scheduled to open at 5, but opened at 5:30. There was a forecast for rain, so I bought 2 ponchos at the dollar store. When the gates opened, I saw people running, so I started running too and half way through thought to myself “dude man, I’m out of shape, I’m a terrible sprinter, but I have to keep going”. I got a spot on the leftish center side of the gate right up front. This is amazing considering over 35000 people attended the concert. My friend arrived around 6 and found me. Then it started raining for about 30 minutes. Eventually it stopped and the opening band, Grizzly Bear came on and there was a rainbow (ironic considering Radiohead’s latest album is called in Rainbows). Radiohead came on around 8 or so. Once it was dark basically because their stage setup was magnificent. LED light columns changing colors in unison with the songs they were playing and screens visible to crowds far back. In addition, unbeknownst to Radiohead themselves, it was the last day of the International Fireworks Festival and so, there were Fireworks during the show. All this combined, and them playing most of the songs I wanted, made this show nothing short of epic and made all the rain and waiting and running entirely worth it. If they came again, I would so go.

PS, though I cannot put two for summer – I must mention that I saw Sigur Ros on September 20. I have also been waiting for them for a long time and they are one of my favourite bands. Their show was also amazing. Confetti wins!

Fall: Broken Social Scene – Metropolis – October 31, 2008
I’ve known about BSS for quite some time, but was never a huge fan. After watching QAF this year, I grew very fond of the song “Lover’s Spit”. When I heard they were coming, I thought why not see them, could be fun and also bought Paw the ticket for her birthday. I went in with no expectations and left entirely blown away. First of all, it being Halloween, the band wore costumes and as with previous experiences seeing bands comprised of more than 6 people, stage energy is way up there. My favourite part of the show, was hands down, during “Ibi Dreams of Pavement”. During the part of the song where there is no singing and just instruments playing, Kevin Drew told everyone to scream, basically for everything that you want and everything that’s going wrong. So, a type of group therapy
The room filled with everyone screaming (luckily had my earplugs :)). But it was such a great experience, everyone in unison. I also really enjoyed the song “It’s all gonna break” which has become of my favourite songs by them for these lyrics in particular “you all want the lovely music to save your lives” and “you want what you can't and you can't cause of fear we've got to get out of here”
Suffice to say, after this concert, I became a bigger BSSer than before.

I can generally say I have very few complaints about this year. Naturally all years have their ups and downs and this one did require much work. But like I said, I feel like it's actually paid off.

I do wonder what 2009 will bring. Cuz hey, next year is my year, the year of the Ox :P Let's hope it's full of pure elemental awesomeness :)! (even if you're not an Ox).

Cheers to you all and I wish you a Happy New Year with lots of luck, happiness and all that stuff that people wish each other :)

Gah! The Insanity

2008-12-12T18:40:00.003-05:00

I finished my biology class today and decided to work on Part 3 of what I suspect is 4 (haven't figured out what to do for it yet though). Sorry the quality is quite unpremium on youtube this time even though I upped the encoding for this one...might just be because it's faster. It plays fine on my computer :P In anycase, here it is.

I would say it's whackier than the others. The music is "The Deutsch Mark is coming" by Yann Tiersen. If you've seen "Goodbye Lenin" you might remember this song :)

The Dream Sequence

2008-12-08T22:28:00.003-05:00

While taking a break from Stats, I thought I'd do the second installment of the Fall series. I called this one the dream sequence because it seems kinda surreal/eerie (at least to me and my mom :P). It's also random...and I consider dreams to be pretty random.

Music is "Mk2" by Radiohead. It's on "In Rainbows" Disc 2.

Fall Overture

2008-12-04T19:46:00.002-05:00

I have a bunch of clips from the fall season (perhaps more will appear since fall is not over). They kind of differ this time in that it's somewhat hard to put them all together + with the fall spirit. So, I think this time i've decided to make a series of short videos, approximately 1-2 minutes in length. In addition, while I think Fall was generally cheerful, the videos will not be.

So, here is the first installment in what I suspect will be 2-3 more videos for the fall season.

The music for this video is Pinion by Nine Inch Nails

Back to studying the Central Nervous System!

Rainbow to the Stars - Newmindspace and the urban playground movement

2008-11-26T17:56:00.003-05:00

Newmindspace is interactive public art, creative cultural interventions and urban bliss dissemination based in New York and Toronto. "

"All over the world, groups like Newmindspace organize free, fun, all ages, non-commercial public events. From a massive Mobile Clubbing event in a London train station to a giant pillow fight near the Eiffel Tower in Paris to a subway party beneath the streets of Toronto, it is clear that the urban playground is growing around the world, leaving more public and more social cities in its wake. This is the urban playground movement, a playful part of the larger public space movement.

One of our goals at Newmindspace is to make these unique happenings in public space become a significant part of popular culture, partially replacing passive, non-social, branded consumption experiences like watching television. The result, we hope, will be a global community of participants in a world where people are constantly organizing and attending these happenings in every major city in the world."

Their latest event was Night Lights: Higher
Tomorrow night, we will attempt to create an art installation that is higher than the CN Tower. Over the course of four hours, we will slowly raise a glowing string by balloons, attaching brightly coloured LEDs every foot or so. Throughout the event, the dazzling string will reach dizzying heights and drift gently in the wind.

Below is a video:

I wish something like that would happen in Montreal. There some events that happen, and I have attended quite a few (scavenger hunts, pillow fights, metro parties and manhunt), but these dudes manage to assemble A LOT more people (I'm talking about hundreds, for their pillow fights, light sabre battles and capture the flag for example) to their events than anything that happens here.
I'm not sure why it is exactly that, at least so far, in Montreal we are unable to mobilize as many people. There was one time (unforuntately I wasn't there), the first metro party, which happened to be organized by newmindspace in March 30, 2007. The car was absolutely packed and they managed to go from Henri Bourrassa to Cote Vertu and back to Cote-Ste-Catherine.

For the most part, attendance ranges from about 25-40 people, sometimes more if lucky (like at the pillow fight ~ 85). Hopefully it'll change in the future. If not, I guess I'll try coincide my Toronto visits with their events :P

Unpremium desserts

2008-11-26T14:22:00.005-05:00

Today I decided what my next culinary challenge will be, but the recipe calls for raisins and I've decided to omit them. Then it got me thinking about desserts I don't like (which is strange, because usually I talk about food I like :P).

Anyways, yeah.

1)Desserts with raisins in them - it doesn't matter what it is, even if they try to conceal them! You eventually find it, chew on and it, and bleeeeh. Dessert is ruined. This is especially the case for Oatmeal Raisin cookies (or any other cookies that have raisins in them) and cinnamon buns with raisins hidden in between each successive rolled layer.
The texture of the raisin is different in both cases:
a) in the Oatmeal Raisin cookie

the raisin has shrivels, dries up (more than it was before, if that's even possible) and so is this hard thing that you bite into...and tastes terrible.
b) in the Cinnamon bun,

the raisin soaks up lots of juice. It's like the raisin is trying to revert back to grape form, but it fails. So it's just kinda unpleasant and gross. If I wanted grapes, I would eat grapes.
Retrieving them is not so fun either...for your hands get really sticky.
I feel the same way about dried cranberries. :P

2) Liquer Filled Chocolate
I probably shouldn't generalize this one, but some liquer taste really gross inside the chocolate. Like unless it's really fruity and festive, imo it gives a really peculiar taste. Please refer to Gad Elmaleh's sketch at around 1:10 to 1:50

3)Jello and its gelatinous friends
As a child, Jello was my last resort dessert. If it was the only thing left at the buffet, that's what i'd have. I even had difficulty eating it when the doctor told me (in the event of stomach illnesses). It's not really the taste (which is for the most part sugar and artificial fruit flavoring), it's the texture.
And that leads me to the friends of Jello. Not that they necessarily have gelatin in them, but they have a similar texture.

a) Bibingka Cassava (Cassava cake)

apart from ground cassava used in west african food (which I really like), this was my only other exposure to cassava. I had it 5 years ago while visiting a person's place. Perhaps it's because it didn't have a cakey texture at all. I can't even really describe the taste...I just know eating it wasn't fun.

b) These little glutinous rice cupcakes?

I had them at a karate bake sale. The kid who brought them was really excited, gave me one. I tried it - mouth full "It's great! :D"...*disappears and disposes of it* I did feel bad though :)

There are three instances that I eat Jello/jello friends - Fruit jellies (they have actual fruit in the center!), in vietnamese drink Three Colors (it has green jello worms) and as a glaze on cakes (typically cheesecake or mousse cake)

4) Licorice

All types, but especially black licorice. Apart from the dessert I will name next, it's the nastiest thing I've ever tasted.

5) Fruit Cake - I'm not talking about cake that has actual fresh fruit on it,
I'm talking about that one that plagues grocery stores at Christmas and for some strange reason is often part of wedding cakes (I've been told it's for stability purposes, especially when it has columns supporting each layer).

Whatever fruit is in there does not resemble fruit anymore - in shape, taste or texture. Even the surrounding cake tastes like pure elemental nastiness. The only one that's even slightly tolerable is the one that only has cherries in it or the jamaican fruit cake (it also doesn't have those yucky alien fruit in them).

But ok, I've asked many friends if they like fruit cake and they all don't. Clearly, there's a market for it...I've noticed that it's always parents that like them. My parents do, my friends parents. So I'm wondering: is there a point in time where people suddendly like fruit cake? Like, do you have kids and then like it? I'd like to know and try to prevent this from happening.

I think that's all I can think of for now. If you have any other gross desserts, please name em :) I'm curious.

"Where would you like to go?"

2008-11-20T16:00:00.003-05:00

Hiya!

I'm procrastinating:
I'm supposed to be writing a research proposal - well actually first, reading articles to be able to produce the aforementioned piece of work.
So I'm transferring data to a portable hard drive to copy to my new laptop and I've decided to address this question.
It's something that comes up in conversations with people often enough, whether you've known them for a long time or not. I'm usually not sure what to answer. I've had ideas...but never really settled on anything.

In the past I've thought about Japan (when I was watching anime lots - over 6 years ago), then Iceland (I still think it's cool - but was more into it 1-2 years ago), Greece (after I saw Mama Mia...it looked really pretty), Spain (just dude man) and Brazil (but the crime rate is a little frightening). I've also thought about Europe in general (people who I know have gone there to visit/take tours...seems cool enough).

Yesterday, while in my Biology class, my project partner (he's from Ecuador) decided to ask me that very question. I said I wasn't sure. Then he said "What about in South America?" So, out of nowhere I said Chile.
He asked why? I said because it's long and has volcanoes. He started laughing. But then I decided to look up stuff about Chile. Now, I probably shouldn't base my opinion about a country on a couple articles, but there's one in particular that makes it sound like pure awesomeness!

Check it out:
Santiago, Chile is a city with well over 5 million people. It’s one of the most advanced cities I’ve ever lived in. It’s also one of the cleanest cities I have ever observed.

The doctors here take the practice of medicine extremely serious, like being an artist taking art to an almost spiritual level, and no they don’t play golf. If you wind up in the hospital for something here, you’ll be in good hands. Again, I know from first hand experience. Here, they’re not concerned about your Medical card and all that red tape crap you would face in the states, here they put the patients’ health first, money matters later.

Chileans are a nocturnal people. Once you make a few friends, it’s not uncommon for people to come by your house late at night and stay late. This was something I had to get used to. Fridays are usually the days that you’ll have an unexpected guest. They may just drop over for a cup of tea…………at 11pm and stay till 2am. This is considered normal so if you are not a nightowl, develop the habit.

It’s easy to find a place to live, with a little persistence, an apartment was secured with a rent of approximately $200 dollars monthly. It’s an older building but very clean and well maintained.

If you don’t own a car, no problem the public transportation is absolutely the best. Buses run in all directions very frequently and all night. If you miss a bus to downtown, not to worry, your wait time for the next one will be about ten minutes max. They begin to run a bit slower after about 2am though. The fare: 330 Pesos, again, less than 50 cents. There is a subway system, and it is rivaled only by the English Tube. The trains are on time, speedy and very clean. You’ll find no graffiti on them. They’ll take you just about anywhere you want to go. I’ll tell you now, the buses and subways are always crowded. Expect close quarters on public transportation at all times.

Those are just a few of the things that seem really cool about it. It's clean, has public transportation, people seem laid back (and they like tea!), the scenery look amazing! Nice doctors, the police are generally not corrupt, so many different climates to visit, phone/internet/rent are not terrible and amaaaaazing food (or so he says) :P

Perhaps I'll settle on another place for my "Where would you like to go?" answer, but for the moment I'm feeling very Chilean.
I also found a blog where someone shows pics from there/adventures. It's pretty new...but still cool.

So, now I have to try Chilean food (apart from empanadas).

The Cemetery, Sushi and Smoke – Halloween: The Conclusion

2008-11-06T03:06:00.000-05:00

Following her adventure the previous night, Anti-Rocks set out on another adventure. She had not gone on her bike in a while and decided to take in the premium fall air and scenery on wheels. She made her way to the institution known for its steep hills, colorful interiors and mastery of technology. She determined at that this point that she requires more practice, for it took her a while to climb the hills. As a short cut to the famous mountain of the Village of Montreal, she rode through the Cemetery. It was a generally nice ride and she was undisturbed by visitors and the dead. She, in return, did not disturb them. After her nice ride, she arrived at the Pirate’s and Western Redhead’s dwelling for Sushi making. They were successful in their task and were incredibly full. Anti-Rocks thought that the Halloween spirit had finally left and did not expect any more strangeness to come.

She continued her week as planned, visiting the previously mentioned institution and also to the Heart Institute for a field trip. In the middle of the week, Anti-Rocks once again met with the Free-Spirited Zoologist for tea at a new place suggested by another one of her friends. Paw and the Zoologist’s friend were unable to attend due to other engagements. They made their way to the place known as “Potion du Shaman”, or so they thought. Anti-Rocks had written down the address “1699 St-Denis”, but in that spot was Café Houkha – a place which that had tried before. If Anti-Rocks did not know better, she would’ve assumed that Mercury was retrograde. The Zoologist called her friend to confirm and indeed that was the spot and her friend theorized that the place she was talking about was perhaps only the bottom part. In any case, as they had tried the place before, they decided to set off to try another. The Free-Spirited Zoologist was curious about a Café run by Gypsies (Café Gitana) and naturally it was not well lit. They sat down and observed the menu for about 5 minutes and concluded that they were hungry, but all that the place served was dessert. So they left, initially going to a Tibetan place, but they got distracted by the Korean Food place beside it called 5000 ans. Anti-Rocks was excited – she would be able to compare all the Korean Restaurants she had tried. Upon reading the menu, she was surprised to find many dishes she did not know, ones she had not heard of. In addition, they were served a drink that tasted like coffee, but looked like tea and it was cold – Wheat Tea. They asked the waitress where it could be acquired, but she did not know.

Unlike other Korean places, they did not serve you the traditional appetizers of Kimchi, sprouts and potatoes. We got Miso soup and then our dishes, which were nothing short of delicious. In addition their décor was cute (there were goji berries in a bowl, which I’m certain customers where not allowed to eat for they are quite expensive). They left this spot and returned to the gypsies. They were pleased to find their old spot vacant and stole it. They ordered Mint tea (the way Anti-Rocks likes it – in the glass cups with little spoons and the metal tea pot. It had a very strong minty flavor and little cubes of brown sugar on the side). In addition, the Zoologist ordered a double apple flavored dose of Shisha and let Anti-Rocks try. She had never done so before, and so agreed. They sat there for a while and by the end of the night became somewhat drowsy. More specifically, the Free-Spirited Zoologist said “I’m floating on clouds” and Anti-Rocks was generally incoherent, sometimes mixing her words or just being slow. Apparently that’s what happens when you don’t smoke and the whole room is smoking too. After our tea, we decided we needed air and set out on another adventure. We decided to investigate if the misty fountain was still functioning. The walk went well – they made a short stop for the Zoologist to buy ice cream and Anti-Rocks a bottle of water. Following that, the two had damn tea alerts and decided to go into the Congress Palace which is clearly distinguishable by its colorful exterior. Upon entering the building, Anti-Rox was overcome with glee to find herself in the presence of the Magical Pink Forest, as foretold in the Great Scavenger Hunt in February passed. She had only heard of it, but not witnessed herself. The travelers were curious and so the Zoologist ran through the pink trees and hugged one. At one point though, they decided to continue their hunt for damn tea facilities. They found one – and as in the past, it was locked. Anti-Rocks was sad and they decided to come up with another plan. At that moment, they heard a loud scream, as if someone was being tortured. The Free-Spirited Zoologist set off running, but rammed into a nearby water fountain. It is possible she will be bruised – only time will tell. Anti-Rocks determined that they were cursed, for this is the second time this has happened (locked bathrooms and scary noises). Would there be a third time? Perhaps. But until then, it seems the spirits of Halloween have finally left.

Spaniards, the Folk and Strange Locations - Halloween: Day 2

2008-11-06T02:17:00.001-05:00

The day after, Anti-Rocks and Paw along with others (The Cheerful Healer, Manna the Calm, Indifferent Duc and The Free-spirited Zoologist) congregated at the Pink Room (La Sala Rosa) for the degustation of food from the Spaniards and the celebrating of Paw’s birth. Unfortunately, the Tall Economist was unable to attend due to illness. During the degustation, the congregation made a point of embarrassing Paw by singing the traditional birth song. The food was well liked by all – it consisted of a curried pumpkin and coconut soup, various types of Paella (rice dishes), tortillas (but here they are essentially omelets), a steak, melt-in-your-mouth salmon and finally Flan for all. What was particularly premium about this Flan was the fact that it did not have the consistency of silken tofu throughout. It had certain firmness on the surface and the inside was nice and melty. In addition, the caramel infiltrated the structure well, making for the best Flan they have ever tried (or at least for some of them).

After they ended their food adventure, Anti-Rocks and the Free-Spirited Zoologist had another adventure to set out on. They left the Pink room wearing Green hair and a one eared Fox headdress. Their mission: to go to a secluded music hall (that they were invited to) and amuse the cousin of the Free-Spirited Zoologist: The Torontonian Manager (the person who invited them). The music hall is in an area of the village known to the villagers for its unsafeness due to roaming gremlins, abandoned buildings and lack of light. However, this did not seem to phase the brave travelers. Hopefully the Fox would scare off any gremlins. Upon arrival to the transfer station, they boarded the bus. To ensure their proper arrival, the Free-Spirited Zoologist asked the bus driver to inform us of the stop. He replied affirmatively – saying that the stop is less than 5 minutes away and is before the tunnels. He also said that he hopes we are not scared of the dark. This slightly worried Anti-Rocks, for she had never ventured into the area and certainly not at night. However, they arrived safely at their destination. Anti-Rocks’ first impression was that it was generally badly vegetated – mostly barren land. She had not noticed the Music Hall until the Zoologist pointed it out.

They entered and noticed two somewhat laid-back money guardians (which we later found out were musicians as well). The Free-spirited one inquired as to whether her dear cousin was there and they invited us to search for ourselves. As they entered the room where music was to be played, they were noticed by a familiar musician – The Wandering Spirit. He greeted them warmly and asked of their news, past and present. It appears however, much to their dismay that the Torontonian Manager was not there. It seems that the creator of the event must say they are attending even if they are not. And so, their mission to amuse the cousin was no more. And so, they sat down as the first act was to start (there were to be three). The general tone of the evening was warm and folky. Anti-Rocks had brought sweet provisions with her in the form of chocolate covered marzipan and little mars bars. So, they ate them (with the exception of 2 mars bars).

At one point, Anti-Rocks had a damn tea moment. In fact, she had had it during the journey to the secluded music hall, but was not able to do anything about it prior to the intermission following the first act. So, after paying for the show, she made her way to the women’s outhouse. Much to her dismay it was locked. So she waited. And waited. And waited. She then caught a look of the men’s outhouse and noticed stalls (unless her eyes betrayed her) and wondered “If there are stalls in the washroom, why would the door be locked?” This slightly angered her, for she had damn tea and also wanted to get rid of her gum. She decided to explain her case to the Zoologist who accompanied her to investigate the situation. Naturally, once Anti-Rocks brought her to the scene, the door was unlocked. With glee, she sped to the door of the washroom. At that point, the Wandering Spirit inquired if there was an outhouse party. Anti-rocks tried to explain, but was generally incoherent:

“Well, I went to the outhouse and the door was locked and I didn’t understand why…”.
”Well, sometimes it appears locked, but is just slightly jammed”
”I tried really hard, and it wouldn’t open and yeah…eeee” And Anti-Rocks dashed in while the Zoologist, the Wandering Spirit and the guardians of money chuckled. Following that, Anti-Rocks made her way back to her table in time for the next act, which was the Wandering Spirit. He arrived on stage (with his other band mates) with a truly terrifying mask (like a sinister yoda with lots of gray hair and a beard). However, this was extremely amusing as the voice behind the terrifying mask was singing very sweetly – which doesn’t match very well. The crowd was greatly amused and could not contain their laughter. As such, the Wandering Spirit gave up and threw the mask off because he could not concentrate. After that song, he asked why no one was dressed up for Halloween, except for Anti-Rocks who had green hair. The crowd answered that it was yesterday. He concurred, but still believed that the spirit of Halloween should continue.

In between the 2nd and 3rd act, Anti-Rocks and the Free-Sprited Zoologist, now infused with lots of sucrose, decided to play a game known as Table Hockey with the beer coasters. They did this with much glee, spouting random phrases in Spanish (possibly inspired by their previous meal) and cheering for their goals. Sometimes the coasters flew off the table and in some occasions flew into fellow music listeners. They were generally amused though and did not protest. Anti-Rocks’ incoherency continued, as the first musician asked what we were doing, and she replied “Hockey Table!...coasters…”. It seems that he got the general idea. The final act was also nice, but generally more subdued and somewhat sleepy. The concert ended and The Free-Spirited Zoologist decided to greet a friend she randomly encountered there – a violinist who was playing that night. As Anti-Rocks and the Zoologist were incapable of consuming more sucrose infused provisions, Anti-Rocks offered a Mars bar (yes, Mars indeed made of chocolate) to her. She was quite pleased. The remaining planetary treat would go to the Wandering Spirit. So, we found him and informed him of our incoming departure. As usual, he embraced us warmly. Anti-Rocks then presented him with the candy. He thanked her, but then professed that he felt ill the night before. The Zoologist inquired as to whether it was candy related and he confirmed. As such, Anti-Rocks with the most serious face she could muster said “Well, if you don’t want it, you can always give it back” and held her right arm out. She smiled shortly after to indicate her sarcasm. The Wandering Spirit chuckled and said “No! I’ll eat it right away” and then he wished the brave travelers a safe trip home (he had gotten lost earlier that evening).

So, they set out. The Free-Spirited one had an idea – let us walk back to the transportation station known as Place St-Henri rather than take the bus! (Even though it was 11:35 pm. Naturally, they are not scared of the dark). Under normal circumstances Anti-Rocks would not have done this, but she figured “I suppose we are two. So it’s not so bad and you’re a fox and I have green hair. Clearly mutants of some sort”. She had drawn a make-shift map earlier in the evening in the event that she would have to walk. So she was confident that they’d find their way. However, it seems that the Halloween Spirits had different plans for them. They arrived at the cross section of St Remi and Notre Dame as indicated on the map. They then walked forward on Notre Dame and continued on for some time. Anti-Rocks was a little worried and thought maybe they missed the street they were supposed to turn on (Ste Marguerite). So, they reasoned that if they were indeed going in the right direction, if they continued, they would end up at the next transport station: Lionel-Groulx. So onward they went – on small side walks, under underpasses…until they found themselves on the side road of the highway 20 – there is not much there: mostly industries and barren land. They found out at that time that they had turned in the wrong direction on Notre Dame. Now, it is not unusual (rather frequent) that the Free-Spirited Zoologist loses her way. This doesn’t usually happen to Anti-Rocks though. They figured though, that they’ll find their way somehow. They continued walking leisurely while Anti-Rocks told the Zoologist about a sad film she had seen not long ago with the Cheerful Healer. In the midst of her story though, a loud noise was heard – something akin to a creature (man or beast) being slammed against a metal door. Anti-Rocks was startled and let out a little scream, while the Zoologist ran off. Anti-Rocks followed soon after attempting to catch up. They ran for about 2 minutes and determined that they had escaped peril. In the distance, they spotted a bus stop and decided to see what time it would arrive. Luckily, they only had 8 minutes to wait. The hid themselves in the bus shelter and awaited the vehicle. It arrived as predicted at 12:08 am. On board was a strange looking driver and two people – apart from that, entirely empty. Anti-Rocks determined that it must be a ghost bus. The bus arrived at Place St-Henri but did not stop. However, fear not, the travelers were not kidnapped. Instead the bus brought them to Lionel-Groulx, which proved convenient for the Free-Spirited Zoologist. Following their arrival to the transportation station, they made their way home safely and unharmed – at least for now.

The Screams of Emotional Civilians - Halloween: Day 1

2008-11-06T02:11:00.001-05:00

On the night of Halloween, a troupe of four set out on a journey to hear magical sounds in the building known to people for its proximity to a sketchy transportation station surrounding by gravel and other such rocks. They assembled in front of the Metropolis approximately two hours before the start of the performance – they being Anti-Rocks, Paw, the Western Redhead and Steel-toed Pirate. That night Anti-Rocks had green hair and was almost unnoticed by the Steel-toed Pirate and the Western Redhead until she caught their attention by means of savage poking. Much to their delight, they entered the line with Paw and Anti-Rocks. During this time, they discussed strategies for fending off unwelcome crowd annoyances and the upcoming sushi creations two days later.

Upon entry, they raced to the front gate and assured their places from premium viewing of the musical groups that would appear in the near future on that night. While waiting they purchased various provisions in the form of water, tee-shirts and compact discs. Much to their excitement, the first group appeared – of course not in normal attire. Two were in space suits (one having two heads, which slightly unnerved Paw) and the drummer appeared as a Giraffe. It appears that the other two did not know that he would do that. So, The Land of Talk played their music for about 45 minutes and during that time a rabbit hopped on to the stage to play saxophone for one song. Not long after Land of Talk disappeared into the darkness, Broken Social Scene made their way onto the elevated platform in front of the brave troopers. Being that they were the main act, the troupe held onto the gate for dear life in case of sinister annoyances.

They arrived disguised. Of course the Bunny was there, as was a man dressed as a woman (Mrs. Brendan Canning), with her “asshole drunken husband” (Kevin Drew). In their company – a mummy, a man in a toga and various other costumes. Without delving too far into details, suffice to say the musical group played extremely well. The night was filled with magic. A particularly magical part of the performance was during the song “Ibi dreams of pavement (a better day)”. During the middle of the song (where the band typically plays and no one sings), the sinister husband addressed the crowd and asked us to scream, but for a particular reason – for ourselves:

"All right, it's therapy time everybody. This little bit we do for everybody, every human being in the house tonight. For everything you've lost, for everything you didn't get, for everything you hurt, for everyone that hurt you, everything you want to become, everything you never became, you're gonna scream. All right? You're gonna let it all out, you're gonna be as loud as you can...On the count of three, you gotta scream your guts out. You ready? Therapy. One. Two. Three. Scream. Go”

After his cue, the entire building was filled with the screams of joy and sorrow, general pure emotion of the crowd – not once, but twice. Anti-Rocks and Paw both had the same reaction: which was to bend over the rail and scream into the ground in front until they had no voice left. However, the night was not without its annoyances. The Steel-Toed pirate was generally the protector of all, but mostly the Western Redhead. At one point, there was a particularly annoying person who kept savagely kicking and bumping into the Steel-Toed pirate. As such, she did what naturally came to mind – to wrap her leg around the annoyance and pull forward so that they fell to the ground. It appears the person was incredibly confused and had no idea what had happened – much to the Pirate’s delight. On the side of Anti-Rocks and Paw, there was a strangely dressed female who also kept bumping into them, and her handbag would continuously whack the face of Paw. At one point the female asked if she could stand in between us at the gate for a while, to which Paw replied “well, I am with my comrade” and so the female went on the other side, but still dancing with the annoying handbag action. The pirate was tempted to take action, but she refrained.

The concert ended when Halloween ended, thereby ending our night of magic, happiness and wonder (it lasted about 4 hours in total, including the Land of Talk). And so, the tired troupe headed home. However, this does not end this Halloween tale. It appears that the spirit of Halloween would not leave our fearless travelers just yet.

Space-Time

2008-10-17T00:35:00.005-04:00

I randomly found out about this band called Beach House the other day. The guy at this blog said:

Because I feel a need to promote the shit out of this band. It's downtempo kind of indie folk I guess, though that doesn't begin to touch the depths they reach. No one else out really does what Beach House does, and even if they did, they couldn't do as well. It's sparse, almost like a faded memory of playing house with your kindergarden girlfriend in a faded blue concrete basement. MC Eiht would say ggggggeeeeeah.

I was intruiged, so downloaded both albums. So today was Beach House test day. Now, there have been a few cds/bands that have been able to make me space out under certain conditions...but they had a different space out feeling from this band. Like the guy said It's sparse, almost like a faded memory - almost as if it completely stopped time and pulled you in - you can't concentrate on anything else. It makes you smile and close your eyes.
I just know that it's awesome. So, if you feel like completely zoning out, I would suggest these two albums.

Here are two of their songs on youtube:

From the first album (self titled):

and from Devotion:

Red and Yellow Days

2008-10-15T21:06:00.002-04:00

I took some pictures while on my way home from premium poutine and general perusing.
yay leaves!

From Red and Yellow Days

The landlady's cat:

From Red and Yellow Days

La Faim du Monde

2008-10-03T22:13:00.002-04:00

So, my quest to try all the vegetarian restaurants in Montreal continues. On Saturday, my friend and I had planned to go to Chuch (or Chuchai, either one). We went in and...I dunno if they don't serve people at 4 pm or something? but nothing was happening. We went to the counter to see if maybe we could pick something, but the counter dude was not paying attention, so we left. Not even 30 seconds away is La Faim du Monde. This is awesome because it's on the veg-list.

La Faim du Monde is pretty cool, at least in terms of decor. It's small, has some indoor and outdoor seating. You can see the kitchen from where you're sitting. Their menu has things from all over - india, mexico and general asian foodies.
Both my friend and I ordered a small Dahl soup for starters and then she got the Greek Feta sandwich and I got the Inca Pate (beet, quinoa, cashew nuts, onions, tahini and sunflower seeds - yes it tasted healthy :P good too).
The Dahl was huge. Small for them is like medium at least - 2-3 cups of liquid. It wasn't the best dahl ever - I prefer it a bit thicker. But it tasted good.
When our food came - our faces were both like @_@ how are we going to finish this?!
Each half of the sandwich is about 6 inches long and 4 inches wide and 2-3 inches thick - stuffed to the brim. On top of that, it comes with coleslaw.

Most people don't know this, but I absolutely hate coleslaw. It is my salad nemesis. The one at Kentucky Fried Chicken looks radioactive - I have no idea what they did to it. The ones at the grocery stores look yellow and gross. Taste just as bad. This extreme vinegary taste that maybe was used to hide the fact that the cabbage is decomposing?...yeah, you get the idea. So I was hesitant.
People, this coleslaw they have is legendary. I took a bite and told my friend "DUDE MAN, this thing is awesome!". She took a bite and agreed. It is the best coleslaw I've had in my life - hands up an down.
It had purple cabbage, carrots, sunflower seeds, some form of green thing which I suspect was sprouts and a dressing that I cannot describe other than jesus came down in his awesome white shoes did a dance, stirred the dressing himself and blessed it 10 000 times. I must somehow reproduce this creation...and so it shall be my next cabbage mission.
Now, back to the sandwiches in general. They are so huge that we could not finish them. We only ate 1/2 and took the other 1/2 to go. I was still full 5 hours later...but ate it anyways because I was not near a fridge and didn't know how long it would keep.
The soup (4$) and sandwich (10$) + tx = 16$. Now I typically consider that expensiveish dining...but being that the sandwich lasted me 2 meals and it still would've been that way even without the soup...it's like 5$ for a meal. Which isn't bad at all :)
I'll definitely go back again, if only for the blessed coleslaw.

PS: Plantains taste awesome in thai green curry :D

Summer Shenanigans

2008-09-25T22:17:00.002-04:00

So, I've been meaning to make this little compilation for a while...and acquired the very last of my videos just before fall started. So, today instead of doing my statistics homework, I did this with one of my favorite songs off of the new Sigur Ros album, Inni mer syngur vitleysingur :)

The lyrics are here - in both Icelandic and English :D
Enjoy!

Now I should probably do some homework...hah :P

All Things Epic

2008-09-24T23:19:00.003-04:00

This post shall consist of something that was of primary epic importance and then a few side bits of mini epic importance.

That which is incredibly epic and important is not surprisingly, the Sigur Ros concert on September 20, 2008 (which I attended). I've been waiting to see them for at least 3 years because their music is great - possibly the most shiver inducing music I've ever listened to (I think my shiver record was exceeded at that concert, or maybe on par with Radiohead).

I have uploaded a few videos of the concert here. Youtube is doing maintenance right now and so I can't upload it there.

It took place at Quai Jacques Cartier. Twas a bit chilly, but not terribly so...I got a shirt. A splurge on my part, but dude man, it was destiny :P I didn't have enough cash on me for a shirt, but then while perusing the area, there was an ATM. So the shirt was meant to be mine. Anyways, enough of this and onto the show.
I was on the leftish side, in front of the speaker, right at the front against the gate (usual location it seems). So I had a good view of the stage.

The opening act was an Icelandic band called Parachutes. Apparently the vocalist of that band is the boyfriend of the Sigur Ros vocalist. So they're touring together - how sweet :P. They were pretty good. I generally find (or at least with a good part of the Icelandic bands that I've heard) that the music always has some kind of magical vibe about it. Also, it was the bassists birthday; so the violinist summoned the crowd participation in singing the Happy Birthday song...and so it was sung, all at once in English, French and Icelandic.

About 30 minutes after the opening band finished Sigur Ros came on. First of all, they have nice uniforms. They're all black, except for the drummer. He had a white shirt with his happy colorful hat/crown on. My friend explained Jonsi's outfit quite well - like a pseudo cowboy. Here's the setlist ( I'm a lamer and knew which songs were which from the first note >_> I also sang along (silently, lol)...in icelandic & hopelandic):

01 svefn-g-englar
02 glósóli (the scream at the end is shiver inducing!)
03 ný batterí (I was surprised that they played this...it's an incredibly depressing song, but awesome. I used to loop it often in fall 2005. Lyrics here w/ translation)
04 fljótavík (there was colorful snow-like confetti falling from the top of the stage :D)
05 við spilum endalaust
06 hoppípolla (haha, joyful song!)
07 með blóðnasir (at this point, Jonsi asked us to sing along by going Ooooooooo Ooooooooo. Created that happy together crowd atmosphere thing).
08 festival
09 heysátan (This was really pretty - the four of them gathered around the same general area to play their instruments. It started dark, but every time they played something, these little electric candles would light up and the dim again when there was no music).
10 viðrar vel til loftárása
11 inní mér syngur vitleysingur (my favorite song from the new album so far because it's so cheerful, especially the build up near the end. It does make me laugh though, because during that fast part at the end, it sounds like he sings "you kinky towlie" at one point :P makes for an interesting insult. "you suck!" ...."well you're a kinky towlie").
12 sæglópur (aha! this was initially my favorite song off of "Takk" along with "Andvari". This explains my old fb name :D)
13 hafsól (dude man! this is the revamped version of the song from "Von", and it came out on the Hoppipolla single (I think?, if I remember correctly) Anyways, it's top notch. I'm really pleased they played this. It starts off all quaint, with the bassist tapping a drum stick on his guitar and Jonsi doing his bow on the guitar thing. The end builds up really nicely and it goes all chaotic with the recorder and the drummer going mad and ending with Jonsi banging the bow against the guitar until it is destroyed...then he threw it into the crowd).
14 popplagið (YES! That's all I could say. First note, bang, I was like no way! Untitled 8. The most EPIC song on ( ) and possibly one of their most epic. I didn't take any pictures during this song because I was completely into it :o and many shivers, oh yes. What a great way to "end")

encore:
15 gobbledigook (I knew they were gonna play this song because it's their first single off of the new CD and also they came out with acoustic guitars. Also, some people from Parachutes came to help with more drums. Jonsi said, ok, I'm gonna ask you guys to help, it's really difficult. I'm gonna ask you to clap...but on beat!
It's different from their other stuff, if only for the use of the acoustic. The concert ended perfectly with colorful blasts of confetti from each end of the stage. The only other concert that I've been to that had confetti blasts was the Polyphonic Spree. So, like at that concert, I naturally jumped around like a happy bunny).

As people continued clapping, the band came out once more to bow and thank us.

Here are some pictures:

Now the little tidbits:

I was roaming around HMV yesterday to use up a gift certificate a friend gave me for my birthday and a song started playing that I thought was pretty good. So I asked what it was. HMV dude says "It's from the new TV on the Radio" album - Dear Science.
Now, I'd seen them open for The Yeah Yeah Yeahs early in 2004 and I thought they were "ok", but not super into them. I guess they were still developing their style or so. So I decided to download the album and give it a try. It's actually pretty good. So far the tracks that I like are "Halfway Home" (the one I heard in HMV), "DLZ" and "Lover's Day". In a way they're like MGMT, but more rocking (less discoey :P).

Also, there are many things happening at Cinema du Parc these days...but I haven't been able to check them out yet.
I completely missed the Eastern European Film Festival. The last day is tomorrow, but I doubt I'll be able to check anything out. So perhaps next year :( (eurofest.ca I think it is).
Starting Friday is the Bollywood Film Festival. I already have Devdas, but I may be checking out two of the movies. Om Shanti Om was recommended.
Also, Pop Montreal has some things showing to. Of particular interest is the Oct 5 stuff - talking about Nollywood (the Nigerian Film industry), which is like #3 in movie production in the world ~ 2400 films/year. Crazy peoples :P (including meself, woot). Also, they will be showing a 63 min film of a road trip through Ukraine with Eugene Hutz - the vocalist of Gogol Bordello - a most awesome gypsy punk band. So I may check that out as well, for he is an all around premium dude.

Now, for something truly epic - Cinema du Parc is gonna be showing "War and Peace/
Voyna i mir (in russian)) - based on the huge ass novel by Leo Tolstoi. I have yet to read that...I'm still stuck on Anna Karenina and War and Peace is longer :P By the time I finish that i'll probably be 30 something.
In anycase, such an epic book deserves and epic movie. It's over 7 hours long and so they must show it in 4 parts. Like dude man...imagine being at the cinema for that long. Yeah, there are intermissions, but I'd leave the place "whoaaaa, my eyes >_<".
I was tempted to embark on such an adventure, but then I found the movie on youtube.
So if any of you feel like subjecting yourselves to 7 hours of russian epicness, start here

That ends my long post,
So Until next time,
Happy Fall!

Poly after the rain

2008-09-09T07:53:00.003-04:00

After class yesterday evening, I happened to have my camera and took a few pics for fun :D

From poly

Walking from the main building of Poly down their many outdoor stairs

From poly

The main building of Universite de Montreal

From poly

Some more outdoor stairs that lead to a little scenic pathway of sorts :)

From poly

Pavillon Mackay-Lassonde - the one that's all colorful inside

From poly

Light!

From poly

Walking along that scenic path

From poly

Here you can see part of the ramp I try to bike up. It's long, inclined and curvy. I usually get 3/4 up, so maybe next time I'll make it :P

From poly

treeeees

From poly

more light in the sky

From poly

That's it :)
PS: It's getting to premium sweater weather! How wonderful. Soon it'll be time for crunchy leaves, halloween, and apple picking :D

Bienvenue à Poly

2008-09-04T21:57:00.005-04:00

I started the Masters Research Program in Biomedical Engineering on Tuesday (officially...I only had class on Wednesday). Tuesday consisted largely of administrative things.

So far, here's what I can say:
1) Compared to the English universities in Montreal, Poly's administration is a whole lot more efficient and polite. Every time I've gone to inquire about things or drop things off, I've been greeted nicely and everything is done quickly. They also don't charge you for attestations of full-time study.
They also try really hard to be welcoming. For orientation they organized a kind of info session about biomed with free beverages and pastries. Then we got a free lunch that consisted of salads and meat and also dessert. For veg's they gave pizza. Granted, it wasn't a very good tasting pizza...but hey they tried!

ETS also seems to be pretty efficient...but I was only there for 20 minutes today. So I'll have to gather more observational data while I'm there taking my class.

In contrast, Concordia charged me 10$ each time for attestations and they're also incredibly slow. They also seem generally grouchy. There are some really awesome profs there though.

But, this doesn't even compare to McGill. They are THE SLOWEST university EVER. They still haven't given me a letter saying whether or not I can do a masters there :P Oh, well McGill. It's too late! I would say it's only their administration that's slow, but no, at least some of their profs are equally slow.

2) The campus of University of Montreal encourages physical fitness - the entire thing, is uphill and Poly is on the highest part of the hill. Biking up there is quite a challenge and so is walking (to some extent). Even if you take the subway, you have to go through the ramp and then walk up 10 flights of outdoor stairs to get to the main building. Luckily the other building, Pavillon Lassonde is not that high. One advantage of the height is the nice view of the city though.

3) Pavillon Lassonde the most colorful university building I've ever laid my eyes on. Each floor is a different color - there's red, green, blue, orange, though bathrooms are grey. The bathrooms are entirely automatic - automatic flushing, automatic tap, automatic paper towels and the super high power hand dryers that deform your hand so that it looks like you have moon craters forming in them. There are escalators going up, but none going down. It was built to be ecological, which brings me to my next point.

4) Poly is really trying hard to be ecological. They have lots of bike racks and there are bikes you can borrow for free to ride around campus to get from building to building. There are recycling bins everywhere, clearly indicating what type of material goes in what. There's an entire website dedicated to being ecological.
In the Graduate Student handbook it says you can borrow a set of reusable containers while you're there. There's also a coop there. And if you use reusable containers/cups, I hear that whatever you ordered is of reduced price. I have yet to investigate all their enviro stuff, but it seems really awesome that they're so dedicated to it.

5) Poly is as multicultural as Concordia but in a different way that makes sense. Concordia has a large arab, indian and chinese population. Poly has lots of quebecois, vietnamese, french speaking arabs, french speaking africans and then a few other groups scattered around.

6) I've only had one class so far, but the teacher is reaaaaaaaally queb. It amuses me because I'm so used to being taught in English that it's something new. I'm used to I guess what you'd call international French and though I live in Montreal, I'm pretty unfamiliar with the slang and expressions used by the French speaking population here. Some things go over my head. Some things I knew they said before, but it's still fun :) I'll see how the other teachers are. I haven't made any friends yet, so I haven't been able to assess my comprehension in a conversation really. I mean, I spoke to one person during orientation, but then when I didn't know how to say one word in French, he completely switched to English and so my experiment was over. I've spoken to administration, but they usually don't use much slang...so yeah.

That's it for now. I should take some pics of the campus at some point I guess. But then I'll look like an uber-tourist. I'm quite pleased about taking a course at ETS. I'll get to try out two universities at once :D Once I finish my Masters, I will have tried 3/4 Montreal Uni's :D!

The Capital

2008-09-04T20:34:00.004-04:00

Last Friday I went to Washington, D.C. with some of my family members.

It took us 14 hours to get there (typically a 10 hour journey), as there were some snags on the way. While we got lost in Washington trying to find the hotel, we stumbled upon some areas that really remind me of Little Burgundy/Place-St-Henri/Georges-Vanier area. It just looks really sketchy and it seems theres more of the general sketchyness there than here. From what I understand Washington is really close to Baltimore and Richmond. Apparently Baltimore has lots of violence. So that could be one of the reasons for the sketchy feel.

On Sunday, my cousin, her boyfriend and I ventured into the city for a short sightseeing excursion in the touristy areas. It's a standard capital city (though keep in mind, my only references are Ottawa and Quebec City). But, they look generally pretty, nice to check out once and then there's not much to do after. We saw the White House, Capital Hill, the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial as they're all in the same area. We passed by an FBI building too.

Their subway - also called the metro, is probably one of the best subway experiences I've had in North America apart from Montreal's. Their fare is inexpensive (1 round trip ticket was 1.38$), it's clean and doesn't require going outside to switch train directions. You simply, either walk across (like at lionel groulx) or you go up the stairs and go on the other side (like other stations). Their trains are air conditioned, which is always a plus (we don't have that yet) and there's not much noise. My only complaints are that the stations are open (the weather can get in) and the seating arrangements on the train don't provide much standing space/maneuverability (remember when the low platform buses first arrived and it was just rows of double seats? yeah, like that. Then everyone complained and we changed it).

People seem generally friendly. People in the US seem to really practice premium customer service because everyone always asks "how's your day", and room service knows your name when you call. The accent is interesting...I would say, from this, I can see the progression of accents from Northern US to Southern US. I've been to New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Oklahoma and now Washington. It seems that the further south you go, the more twang there is in words and the longer the syllables get. The only addition I have to make is to Boston, where yeah, they do that, but they also add r's at the end of words and remove r's where they're supposed to stay.
e.g. "Brenda put the sofa in the car" becomes "Brender put the sofer in the cah"

The best part of Washington was probably my 3 minute carousel ride and generally chilling with my cousin. I was the only adult on the carousel that was not a parent. It was still fun though :)

Welcome to the Monkey House

2008-08-23T01:50:00.002-04:00

Or at least you'd think that if you came to my house in the last week. For some reason my mom bought an EPIC amount of bananas...and had the impression that we'd consume them all before they ripen. I kid you not, there were at least 15. I mean they're awesome and have lots of potassium in them...also a source of magnesium. But there's only so much you can eat all at once. So, I had to get creative with my bananas. Wasting bananas is no good :O

First, on Tuesday I decided to make some Vegan banana bread. Now, I didn't post about this, but the week before I tried making some vegan zucchini bread (I love zucchini bread, but never made it vegan...actually haven't had it in general in like 10 years...dunno why). Anyways, it was an failure of catastrophic proportions and I didn't understand why. I *never* fail at baking :P or until then. It formed a very well defined crust, but the innards were not cooked. It was this kinda strange pudding consistency.

So, I was like "If this banana bread screws up...I dunno what to do".
So, it smells like happy awesome home baking...and comes out like mr. zucchini. Sadness...I mean, it tasted good. I kinda ate it all in one day with the help of a friend...cuz I dunno how long not exactly cooked banana bread lasts.

I was discussing my predicament with another friend. Her immediate reaction was "YOUR OVEN IS TOO HOT!!!!!!". So, now, I've been at this place since June 1 and since then, the only things I've baked until Mr. Zucchini the fallen and Internally mashed banana bread was Baklava and Mango Cheesecake. Those two things don't really screw up much in baking (at least in my experience). So, it makes sense that I didn't notice an oven temperature bias. HAHA! It's not me! I'm no longer the failed baker. Only problem is I don't have an oven thermometer.

So, for my next banana recipe, I said "Screw bread, I'm making cookies". So I did. The temperature called for was 350, I put it to 300. I'd say that the offset is probably about that, because the cookies came out all cooked n what not. But the real test will be a cake in the future. Like actual cakey cake, not cheesecake.
They kinda look like amoeba pseudo cookies muffins though. I say this because they're not round...just funky shaped and super soft. About the consistency of a muffin.
For some reason I didn't save this recipe to favorites...otherwise I would've posted it.

Another thing I did with the last 2 remaining bananas was make a cold banana treat.
All you do is you slice your bananas and then put them in a ziploc bag for the day or overnight. After that you put it in the blender...it has a very melted ice cream consistency and then you can freeze it again. So you kinda make banana ice cream.
I didn't freeze it for long, so it was like banana "yogurt".
So, I cut some mangoes and put them on top of a banana cookie and topped it with that banana yogurt and sprinkled a bit of Fry's cocoa on it. Twas not bad :)
There are still cookies left. But I *hope* my mom doesn't buy any bananas for a while.

Another thing I made yesterday was Fennel and leek soup. At Casa del Popolo I tried their soup of the day, which was Fennel and Green onion soup. Now, I've tried Fennel tea and had fennel in samosas and basmati rice, but never in soup...as what I know as Fennel is fennel seeds and had no idea that fennel looked like an onion with celeri attached to it with leaves that look like dill leaves.
So twas an experiment. I found this recipe: http://www.recipezaar.com/120393 and veganized it (because if I can avoid lactaid I will :p)

All I did was replace the 1/3 cup of sour cream with 1/4 cup of soy milk and decided I shall not put parmesan (plus I don't have it :P). You also cut a lot of the calories and fat from the recipe by doing that and it tasted super awesome! Though I think I overdosed on the black pepper/spice a bit. Next time it'll be perfect :D and I can bake some rosemary bread with garlic margarine on top or something coolio like that.

On a side note - I was organizing my bookmarks today. I never realized how many resto reviews and recipes I collected (there's also lotsa music bookmarks mind you :P).

Anyways, I found one review about an El Salvadorian dish or snack? called Pupusas. They tested them at 3 different restos and determined the best one. They're basically like thick corn flour tortillas filled with a variety of stuff. I love stuffed bread! haha.

The review is here: http://hour.ca/food/food.aspx?iIDArticle=13026

So dude man! I gotta go there some time D:

That ends my food post! wheeeeeeeeee

Here comes the Circus - Montreal Gay Pride Parade 2008

2008-08-18T20:34:00.007-04:00

So, since my trip was canceled this weekend, I decided to peruse around the city and enjoy the premium summer time weather (finally!). On Sunday, Montreal was having its annual Gay Pride Parade on Rene Levesque, starting at De Lorimier and heading west ward. It was my first pride parade (I generally don't attend many parades...haha). But hey, why not.

Anyways, it was actually pretty fun. The theme for this year, or at least according to the Pride website was "Here comes the Circus". There were quite a few floats with that theme - Sky, Mado, BDSM (I dunno the official name, but they seemed like some kinda sinister circus...probably one of the coolest actually). There were also people doing choreographed dances...Cowboys, men with pompoms, social dance group and to a certain extent the Lebanese gay/lesbian/bi/trans association.

TD had their own float and IBM made an appearance. They also gave out stickers saying "Smile if you're gay!". Marching around were also gay parents with kids, topless lesbians and general randomness all around. Oh yeah, Stephane Dion was there (he waved to us), as well as some members of the NDP. :P

I took quite a few pictures (I'll post a few :D) and also made a video about it (rather than loading all the videos I took, I figured a little compilation would be kinda cool).

Here's the video:

Waving goodbye to Babylon

2008-08-14T23:46:00.005-04:00

Today I officially finished watching Queer as Folk (with the exception of episode 410 - I saw snippets since it wasn't on surfthechannel, but i'll watch it later). I also went treetop trekking (which was super awesome :D). So that is 2 off of my list of 11 things for this summer :)

In any case, more about the end. I'm glad I didn't watch it over 5 years - I think the suspense would've killed me. Even though I knew the ending (more or less), it was still a really good finale :) Mr. Kinney will surely be missed, as well as all the other characters in general. I also must thank this show to introducing me to some premium music (dance and others).

First I'll post links to some of my favorite scenes:

Stockwell loses the election
Ted's erection problem - hard on for 18 hours

Ted had plastic surgery and Emmett finally got him to come outside - fave part is towards the end - "Ted you look fabulous"

Justin and Michael go to China town to get some meds to help Brian
Brian and Michael chillin and then Michael breaks down. Sad but very good scene
This is an actual scene - Justin/Brian's reunion with my favorite Broken Social Scene song - Lover's Spit
Debbie (Mikey's mom) and Brian chilling
Debbie and Vic - technically a fanvid, but has the scene I wanted to put - their fight

Emmett wants a new butt

Hunter meets Brian

Michael accepts Ben's Proposal
Lindsay and Melanie's Wedding Panic

I better stop there...otherwise I'll keep finding more.

Here are links to some of my favorite fan made videos:

1) Summary of the whole show - Mogwai - 2 rights make 1 wrong (probably one of, if not my fave mogwai song :D)

2) One that kinda a pride video? with a remix of a "Shine" by Cyndi Lauper

3) Brian being his usual sarcastic/funny self

4) Forever Young

5) Brian and Michael - seems they are very affectionate best friends :P

Well so long QAF...though I'm sure I will probably revisit scenes now and then ;)

In Rainbows

2008-08-07T11:04:00.004-04:00

I went to see Radiohead yesterday at Parc Jean Drapeau. The opening band was Grizzly Bear (I saw them open for Final Fantasy a couple years back with Paw).

The doors were to open at 5:00 pm and the show to commence at 7:00 pm. I got to JD at 3:45 pm and waited in line. While in line, you could hear them rehearsing some songs (which I later found out they would not play, with the exception of Optimistic, Bangers and Mash and Like Spinning Plates). They were playing Kid A, I might be wrong, Myxomatosis, and Go slowly, in addition to the others mentioned.

My friend came after work and got in line at about 5:00 pm, so I didn't see her until later. They opened the "gates" at 5:30 pm and then everyone started running. So I was like "holy shit, I have to run too!". I'm a terrible sprinter, but I think the love of Radiohead propelled me to run to the stage and I got an awesome view against the barricade slightly leftish. So I had a view of Thom, Colin, the drummer and one of the guitarists. The other guitarist, Johnny, was more on the right, and he's generally always in hiding. Even when he's not, he has long hair that covers his face.

By the way, there were A LOT of people there. My ticket number was 34 000 something...like, I've never seen such a sea of people in person. Or at least for a concert.

I bought 2 dollar store raincoats before arriving because I knew it was gonna rain :(
They served us well, for it did rain quite a bit, but not so much during the show...just before.

Grizzly Bear came on at 7:30 pm (these shows never start on time do they :P). They were pretty good, but their music isn't very upbeat so I was getting a little sleepy. During the set though, there was a rainbow :D So the singer said "A rainbow for Radiohead". Their latest CD is called In Rainbows - so that's particularly awesome!

They ended their set and at about 8:45 pm Radiohead came on. Now, their stage setup is something amazing...there were looooong vertical tube lights hanging from the stage and screens in the background and honeycomb looking lights on the ceiling. There were cameras, I suspect on the long lights and at other places on the stage, because that's what was showing up on the screens. I know why they waited till it was darker to start playing because you really don't get the full benefit of the fantastic lighting until it's dark.

I did not take my camera with me because they said no cameras allowed, except disposable...and I wasn't sure I'd be close enough to get decent pics, so I didn't buy one. Turns out, quite a few people were able to sneak some in and I was indeed close enough :P But, hey! I can always leech other people's pics :P

Anyways, here's the set list (some of them are links to youtube videos, so just hover over the titles with your mouse if you wanna see):
01. 15 Step
02. There There (Thom “Sorry about the rain it follows us around”)
03. Morning Bell
04. All I Need
05. My Iron Lung
06. Nude
07. Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
08. The Gloaming (Thom did his awesome dancing - I absolutely love his wackyness You can see a little clip here)
09. The National Anthem (the international fireworks competition is going on - and so it started at about this time)
10. Reckoner (awesome drumming goin on here :D)
11. Like Spinning Plates
12. Jigsaw falling into Place (Thom :If you’re feeling cold you can always grab someone next to you. Then Phil went to hug Colin)
13. Fake Plastic Trees With the fireworks and unison singing, it was just so magical :D
14. Lucky
15. Optimistic
16. Idioteque (more of Thom's wacky dancing)
17. Bodysnatchers

Encore 1
18. Faust Arp (Before Johnny and Thom started singing, I think I saw Thom ask him if he knew about the fireworks and Johnny shook his head. So Thom said "this city is fucked up". Then while singing, he screwed up because he started laughing while looking at the fire works)
19. Videotape (Thom: “”There’s always money for fireworks, the least they could do is put them at the fucking end and on timing! Honestly, daaaaarling”)
20. Paranoid Android (people singing "raaaaaain doooowwwwn, raaaaain down....that's it sir you're leaving, the crackle of pig skin...etc, was awesome - I got chills :D!)
21. Bangers and Mash
22. Karma Police (as Thom left the stage, the was playing this acoustic, the end notes of Karma Police, and everyone was singing "For a minute there I lost myself, I lost myself, I lost myseeeelf", he smiled, like yay, I have over 30 000 people singing in unison. Later he said "That's a lot of people")

Encore 2
23. House of Cards (it's such a lovely song...haha)
24. You And Whose Army? (The camera was inside the piano this time, so you could see his eye quirkin when he was saying...he's like "Come on...come oooooon")
25. Everything In Its Right Place (it was actually an awesome way to end. It reminded me of the first time I saw Mogwai. They ended with the epic song "My Father, My King" and as they left the stage put on white noise. This was the same, but more electronic like in a way. He said thanks for comin out. All the band members saluted us. Johnny was the last to leave).

So yeah, I'm not sure I can say much more about the show. It was one of the best concerts I've ever seen and I have been waiting to see them for over 5 years. So even though my shoes and pants got a little muddy (not from standing there, but from leaving lol), it was well worth it :) I would definitely see them again, no doubt about it.

It took over an hour to get to the metro though...as there was a line up. Try evacuating that many people off the island. woosh mang :P

You can see more youtube videos here: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=radiohead+montreal+2008&search_type=&aq=f
I'm sure more will appear over the next few days!

Yay :D

The Great Vege-Adventure

2008-08-04T22:05:00.002-04:00

Today was a momentous day - it did not rain, which permitted cycling. Twas a most excellent adventure. I was accompanied by Paw and the Hyper one.
So at one point we decided to make a food stop at a restaurant called Crudessence (on Rachel near St Urbain). It's a raw vegan place (they don't cook anything - sounded interesting) that I've been meaning to try for a little while. So we decided to go.
I had a lasagna which used layers of marinated zucchini with some kinda tomato sauce. It was accompanied by a bit of salad. Paw had a spring roll (vietnamese style) with a sauce she said was quite tasty. The Hyper one snacked on her energy balls and purchased a smoothie.

Overall the food was pretty good, though I would say a little expensive (especially their smoothies). My meal was 7$ - Plat Solo. If I upgraded to a choice of salads, it'd be 11$. Smoothies are about 4.50$ for a small (250 ml cup) and 7 for a large. Granted everything is organic and fresh, but I can make smoothie for cheaper and in larger quantities. I wouldn't mind going back though :) the place is rather cozy, with a soothing green color.

Anyways, the point of this whole story - we stumbled upon a little pamphlet called Restos - Petit Guide des Restaurants Vegetariens a Montreal - 2008.
It lists most of the restos and their locations. Not surprisingly a good chunk of them are in the plateau/mile-end region. But what's also pretty interesting is I've been to half of those listed. So now I must embark on the great vege-adventure. I am determined to try them all! The time span however, is unknown :P

Here's the list (and I will say whether I've been there, along with whether it's good or poopy and pricey):

Aux Vivres: Been there at least 5 times. Entirely Vegan and tasty. It has a mix of all cuisines (Indian, Thai-ish, etc) and really tasty desserts. If you just get a main, it'll cost you 10$. Add dessert/appetizers/juice - 15-20$. Favorite - Mumbai

Bonny's: Been there 3 times (2X old location, 1 X new). Food is alright and people are friendly. About 10-15$. Favorite - their Dish of that day - Rice with peanut butter sauce and some other things...it was a while ago >_>.

Burritoville: Quest required!

Cafe Dervish: Quest required!

Cafe le Cagibi: Quest Required!

Cafe Lola Rosa: Quest Required!

Casa del Popolo: Okay, dude man. This is a premium chill place. You can hang around for hours and not notice the time go by, while listening to sometimes strange music. Their food is really inexpensive. Tea/coffee is 1.50$. Tortilla chips with home made salsa is $2.00. Sandwiches are $7.00, but they are not tiny things and come with a hefty portion of tortilla chips with salsa. Their soups are also quite good. My favorite sandwich is the Spicy Tofu one.

Chuch(less formal)/Chuchai(more formal): So far, this is probably the best "meat imitation" place I've been to. It simulates the flavor as well as the texture of the thing to be imitated haha. I've been there 3 times. Their chicken is quite chickeny, as is their shrimp. I'm a fan of their peanut butter chicken with crispy spinach. I also like their tapioca pudding because it's warm and makes small kittens happy. Budget 15-20$ ish

Le Commensal: I have tried le Commensal on Cote des Neiges (now closed :( ), McGill College and in Toronto. Haven't tried the St-Denis one yet. Out of all of them, CDN tasted the best, in my opinion. But since it is no more, McGil college wins. Vegetarian buffet and they weigh your food. Go there when you're not dying of hunger :P 10-15$ ish I like their poppyseed cake :o

Cuisines Tibet Libre: Quest Required!

Crudessence: See above :D

Le Divan Orange: Quest Required! - They have shows there from what I hear :D

L'escalier: Another premium chill place with strange paintings all over the place. It looks like an apartment with I guess 6 rooms. They took the doors off and painted funky colors on the walls. People are super friendly...they'll usually walk around and say Hi. A teapot is $3.00 (lucky dragon tea is awesome). Their sandwiches are also alright (though Casa's are better I think). Another place where you could just pass the time. There are performances on occasion :)

La Faim du Monde: Quest required!

Fuschia: Quest Required!

Ming Tao Xuan: Quest Required!

Paradis Vegetarien: Quest Required!

Pushap: Yummy, awesome indian food and cheap! You can get full of off 7$ and roll home. I love eggplant.

Spirite Lounge: It's an entirely Vegan restaurant with ultra funky decor, which serves a fixed menu everyday. It costs 15$ for soup, main, dessert + tea and their rule is no wasting of food, so you must eat it all. (He didn't tell me what happens if you don't...). In anycase, there are two portion sizes - reduced and regular. The food was delicious! They combine things that I wouldn't normally think of combining, but they make it work :) I would go back again for sure.

Tiende et Sante Vegetarien: I haven't eaten here, but I went to buy things here. I got their "tuna" roll and made a lemon, ginger and black pepper "fish". It tasted pretty good, though the texture wasn't too fishy. It cost about 10$ for it I think...in anycase, I haven't been back there, but I might at some time. I stumbled there by accident anyways haha.

Yuan: Another resto that has "fake meat" stuff. It tastes pretty good and they give you LARGE portions. Paw's vegetable tempura looked like a mountain. Table d'hote is about 16-17$. You get an entree of soup, salad, dumplings or sushi, a main, dessert and tea. I had bbq "eel"...and the sauce was sooo good. I'll have to go back to try some more things and some more of their tea. They also have a little store in the back with all kindsa goodies.

So that's 11/21. 10 more to go! (At least for vegetarian restos :P)

PS: Kettle's Death Valley Chipotle Chips are awesome if only for their description:
We had to go out into the hottest, driest desert in North America to have a vision of the ultimate chip in the quest for hot pepper perfection. A smoky blend of chili pepper, cayenne, chipotle, habanero and jalapeno, with subtle spice accents, this chip will have you seeing visions and leave you thirsty for more. With heat that’s slow to burn and full of flavor, you’ll feel like you’ve been transported to the sweltering, expansive plains of the desert.

1 bag of 240 g is 2.49$ and it's a bright orange bag!

Time of the Gypsies

2008-08-01T01:11:00.002-04:00

I went to see this movie at Cinema du Parc today.
Here's the trailer : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cyBXPMurJY

It's a 1988 Yugoslav film by Bosnian Serb director Emir Kusturica. Filmed in Romani, Time of the Gypsies tells the story of a young Romani man with magical powers who is tricked into engaging in petty crime. It is widely considered to be one of Kusturica's best films.

The film revolves around Perhan, a Gypsy teenager with telekinetic powers and his passage from boy to man that starts in a little village in Yugoslavia and that ends in the criminal underworld of Milan.

The movie's soundtrack was composed by Goran Bregović.

So, for some reason, the film listing here: http://www.cinemamontreal.com/aw/crva.aw/que/Montreal/e/14737/Le_Temps_Des_Gitans.html
said it was a comedy. There were a few funny parts, but dude man...I haven't seen such a depressing movie in a while. I won't ruin the ending, but I mean at one point you think it's the worst it can get, and then it just got worse and worse in the movie.

Also, I just learned from looking up the cast that the main actor (dude who played Perhan) died in 1999 - he committed suicide by hanging :\ So, this just makes the movie even more depressing. It is a good movie though! And the main theme is sure to stay in your head...but I don't think I'd categorize it as a comedy...

All good things are eleven

2008-07-31T02:58:00.002-04:00

Or at least according to Sopor Aeternus and that is how many things I wanted to accomplish this summer. I am not working this summer (except one day I was working at an ice cream store in the south shore to help out a friend...that was fun). So I figured it'd be a good time to have premium chillage, but also try and get some things done too.

1) Pack
Done! I moved, so things were successfully packed

2) Unpack
Done for the most part, but still in the process of arranging some things

3) Decorate my room
Done! But one thing is missing which will only arrive in mid-august

4) Plant things
Done! with moderate. There are plenty of herbs - especially all kinds of basil :) Garlic is kinda greens are sprouting everywhere. My zucchini's died early in the season due to too much rain. The tomatoes ripened...and were tasty, but no more are growing. I suspect the tomato plants drowned. Hopefully more will come. Cucumbers are showing promise...one is maturing quite well. One of the plants is 64 inches tall! My Cubanelle and Jalapeno plants grew and began flowering not too long ago, which hopefully means that they will start growing some peppers soon.

5) Learn MATLAB and the past tense of spanish
I've completely failed at this task. I started in May, and did one day. Then I never went back. The only reason I need to learn it is because I need it for my Masters. So I was thinking it'd be a good idea to learn it before I start in fall and am like holy shit, I dunno what to do. There's still time till August 27...but still :(

As for Spanish - I can only speak in the present...which I guess means I live in the moment. But, in all the other languages i know, I do know the past tense. So I thought it'd be a good idea.
I haven't done this yet.

6) Finish Anna Karenina
As I said below, I suspect it will continue on to next year.

7) Go Treetop trekking
I've been wanting to go tree top trekking for at least a year. So assuming nothing bad happens between now and August 10, all should be ok. I am scared of heights, but I'm thinking that since I'll be doing something in the trees and not just standing there looking down, it should be ok.

8) Learn to cook more international things
I consider myself to be a pretty decent cook and I've tried making a many things. Since I had almost 4 months off though, I figured, DUDE MAN! I can test lotsa stuff.

So far I've just done a wee bit of Lebanese and quite a bit of Mexican.
Lebanese - Baklava and Kafta (essentially fried meatballs with parsley and various herbs in them). I've never made either of these before, but they turned out really well and are pretty easy to do.

Mexican - I experimented with corn flour. It has an entirely different consistency from wheat flour. The good thing about it is it doesn't require any rise time/yeast. But it is tricky to work with.
Thanks to my awesome friend Cindy telling me how to make traditional mexican foodies, I was able to try out a bunch of things.
I made salsa the right way haha...but I am not a spice champion like Cindy (she has made salsa entirely with jalapenos, no tomatoes :o )
I made Cactus Quesadillas (dude man, zomg, happy drool face), Picaditas, Sopes, Pico de Gallo, Refried beans and Potato soup.
However, my hunt for queso fresco continues. I've just learned of a mexican epicerie around Marche Jean Talon, so I will have to hunt there.
There's still time to do more though :O !!! I must!

9) Bike around Montreal and check out as many places/parks as I can.
So I've done this with moderate success.
I've gone on a few rides but my biggest obstacles have been the weather (it's raining a lot lately and the weather network is kinda wonky sometimes :P) and injuring myself in June (limping around/general soreness for a while. Though I got my bike checked the week after, I didn't do a long ride till the week after that).
In terms of parks, I've been to Pratt Park (my fave little park), Parc Maisonneueve (premium bike path in there), Parc Lafontaine (it's big), Jarry Park (nice pond with duckies) and Parc Rene Levesque (at the end of the Canal Bike path westish. Awesome chill spot and view of the water).
I'm hoping the weather will be on my side and I get to go around more. I would at least like to go completely West (Cap st Jacques and also to Ste-Anne de Bellevue)and completely East (Pointe-Aux-Trembles). It'd also be cool to ride to Laval (possibly more North? haha) and to the South Shore :)
I also have to train to ride to school. I'm ok for long distance biking to some extent, but uphill kills me. I tried riding to Ecole Poly the other day and I was like a dead donkey in the desert. From my place to there, it's 3 km, but it's all freaking uphill. The entrance of Universite de Montreal to the actual Main building is comparable to going up Guy to the Montreal General Hospital :P
Coming home will be a breeze though!

10) Finish watching Queer as Folk
I started watching it during my Midterm break in winter. The show aired on Showcase from 2000-2005, but I never really knew about it. Somehow I found out about it and started watching it (showcase posts 1 episode every week - which started sometime in January). I watched all of the epis there, but then found out surfthechannel had all of them. However, I was a good student and limited myself to once a week till classes were over. I'm currently on Season 4 ep. 2. So I have about 26 episodes left. I figure I better watch it all now, otherwise I'll use it as a procrastination technique in the new semester.
What I like about it: Funny/witty characters (especially Brian Kinney), good music (apart from music shown on the show, their Club Babylon CD is quite good and dancy) and while a lot of the characters are homosexual, not all of them are and it focuses on not only the relationships, but other issues each character is having and issues of the community in general.

11) Try to go to random/interesting places & events in the city.
So far:
-Manhunt (only once though :( )
-Montreal Silent Disco
Running in the streets like a maniac (not really an event, but it was fun nonetheless - I was joined by an equally if not more hyper friend of mine, haha).
-Tam tams - I got to see the medieval fights too! I want to participate, but haven't gotten around to yet. We decided we'd be the Kitchenware Army with styrofoam frying pans/cauldrons and spatulas.
-Kinetik Festival - This is an industrial/electronic/hardcore festival. It lasted 3 days, but we (Paw, Oficeandashes and I) just went for the more electronic night. It lasted from 6pm to 3 am...and I think there were 9 or so bands. In anycase, it was really funny. I'd say it's a mix of electro and metal, easily dancable. I saw really interesting fashions and dancing too. I also got a shirt from there because it said E = 1/2mv^2 - I'm such a mecchy :P
- Jazz Fest/Canada Day stuff
- Festival Nuits D'Afrique (I got to see a band from Congo and Tribo de Jah :))
- Pow wow in Kahnawahke - So, it was a VERY rainy day. We were entirely soaked...but I did get some nice soap there. One of them smells like Sweet Tarts (yes, the halloween candy :D) I also got to ride on a dog scooter for the first time...post pow wow though.
- David Usher at the new Apple Store downtown - He decided to play a free concert there 2 days ago.
- Tried out Spirite Lounge (this place is whacky!, but awesome), L'escalier (general chillage). I have yet to try out Crudessence, Yuan, Cagibi and Le coin Mexican. Also, i'm intruiged by Ramen-Ya.

What's comin? - Divers/Cite, Highland games, Salsafolie...probably more that I forgot.
In addition I will be seeing Radiohead next week! (yay !!!)

So that pretty much ends my list. I hope I'm able to finish it...but I guess if I'm not...that probably means I got some rest, and after all that's probably what I need most before I tackle another degree.

That ends my late night posting. Perhaps I'll put up some pictures of the parks and make a review of the strange/interesting restos I've tried out.

I salute you, especially if you actually read all this.

The relation of the people to the soil

2008-07-31T02:32:00.002-04:00

Anna Karenina is one of the books I wanted to finish reading this summer. It's quite an epic book (800 pages or so) - a classic, written by Leo Tolstoy. I started reading it last summer while doing research in the basement, but only got about 1/4th of the way. So far, I've done another 1/4th and a bit. I don't find it in any way boring, it's just a lot to take in at once. This leads me to believe that I will not finish the book until next year (I don't tend to read much during the year just because of school/other things I'm doing).

The title of this post is probably one of the lines that stands out the most, just because it sounds amusing to me. It comes from this paragraph:

"In order to work out the whole subject theoretically and to complete his book, which, in Levin’s day-dreams, was not merely to effect a revolution in political economy, but to annihilate that science entirely and to lay the foundation of a new science of the relation of the people to the soil, all that was left to do was to make a tour abroad, and to study on the spot all that had been done in the same direction, and to collect conclusive evidence that all that had been done there was not what was wanted."

In the book, Levin is a wealthy landowner from the provinces who could move in aristocratic circles, but who prefers to work on his estate in the country. So that's where his interest about the economy and farming comes in.

In any case, I think what I really enjoy about the book is Tolstoy's style of writing. Apparently it's called stream of consciousness - tis a literary technique that seeks to portray an individual's point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character's thought processes, either in a loose interior monologue, or in connection to his or her sensory reactions to external occurrences.
Usually what bores me in books is detailed descriptions of scenery/battles. On the other hand, I really enjoy looking into/analyzing people's thoughts...so this really works in my favor :P It's also not very hard to pick up after a lengthy hiatus.

Another thing I like is that is Tolstoy's mixing of real and fictional events throughout.

Wiki explains it better than I do:

Characters in Anna Karenina debate significant sociopolitical issues affecting Russia in the latter half of the nineteenth century, such as the proper role of the serfs in society, education reform, and women's rights. Tolstoy's depiction of the characters in these debates, and of their arguments, allows him to anonymously communicate his own political beliefs to his audience.
Characters often attend social functions that Tolstoy attended, and he includes in these passages his own observations of the ideologies, behaviors, and ideas running through contemporary Russia through the thoughts of Konstantin Levin. The broad array of situations and ideas depicted in Anna Karenina allows Tolstoy to present a treatise on his era's Russia, and, by virtue of its very breadth and depth, all of human society. This stylistic technique, as well as the novel's use of perspective, greatly contributes to the thematic structure of Anna Karenina.

Although I am for the most part quite the sciency person, I did enjoy my CEGEP classes on Political Science (What is Justice? / Ethics and Democracy) and my only complementary at University, POLI 202 (Intro to Polisci). I particularly enjoyed the 1st half of the material dealing with the beginnings of certain theories (liberalism, conservatism, socialism, etc and how they developed over time). So, Tolstoy's thoughts portrayed through Levin about Russia and its political system really interest me too :)

Another wiki excerpt about the themes:

The novel, set among the highest circles of Russian society, is generally thought by the casual reader to be nothing more than the story of a tragic romance. However, Tolstoy was both a moralist and severe critic of the excesses of his aristocratic peers, and Anna Karenina is often interpreted overall as a parable on the difficulty of being honest to oneself when the rest of society accepts falseness.

A common way to interpret Anna's tragedy, then, is that she could neither be completely honest nor completely false.

The novel also contains the parallel and contrasting love story of Konstantin Levin. Levin is a wealthy landowner from the provinces who could move in aristocratic circles, but who prefers to work on his estate in the country. Levin tries unsuccessfully to fit into high society when wooing the young Kitty Shcherbatsky in Moscow; he wins her only when he allows himself to be himself.

The joyous, honest and solid relationship of Levin and Kitty is continually contrasted in the novel with that of Anna and Vronsky, which is tainted by its uncertain status (marriage) resulting in constant upheaval, backbiting, and suspicion. Tolstoy supposedly did not want readers to sympathise with her supposed mistreatment, but rather to recognize that it was her inability to truly commit to her own happiness or self-truth which led to her demise.

I will probably see one of the movie's once I finish it, and it doesn't bother me so much that I know the ending already. Given that I really like it so far, I think I might try and tackle more Tolstoy in the future (perhaps War and Peace), but who knows. I could also try out some Dostoyevsky. I'm not sure why I'm interested in these Russian authors...it might just be that they sounded really cool on the Biography Channel.

On a side note, taking the title of this blog literally - The relation of the people to the soil is that it hurts :P Especially if the soil is in the form of asphalt (somehow many people I know are falling off their bikes this summer, including myself).

C'est naturel

2008-06-16T00:54:00.002-04:00

I was checking through some videos my friend's murder mystery bday party from saturday - this is the video I keep replaying. I just lurve lurve luuurve the way she says "C'est Naturel".

PS. Coldplay sold out :P

A Pyroclastic Invasion of Music :D

2008-06-13T11:12:00.003-04:00

Okay, so dude man! Awesome news :D This year proves to be a year of concert dreams :) (At least in terms of bands I've wanted to see in a long time).
I have waited 5 years for Radiohead (they're coming August 6 - Jean Drapeau)
And now, I find out that Sigur Ros (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) is coming September 20 - Quai Jacques Cartier. I have waited for them for 3.5 years and just absolutely love them.
In addition, Mogwai is coming September 23. I've seen them twice before...but they're really a pleasure to see. So I'm thinking of hitting that up.
And last but not least, Coldplay is coming July 29. :o This will probably be the most expensive of the lot. But it's ok. The last time I saw them, they were amazing and I really enjoyed it.

The new Sigur Ros album is með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust (comes out June 23) and it means "with a buzz in our ears we play endlessly". So far, my favorite song from there is track 2 - inní mér syngur vitleysingur" ("within me a lunatic sings"). It's soooo cheerful. The build up and everything just swells your heart. Overall, the feel of the cd is different from their previous efforts, but in no way is it subpar. I cannot say which album is my favorite, because I think I like them all equally for different things. But, I'd say that this album suits my current mood :).
you can listen to the album streaming here: http://www.sigur-ros.co.uk/band/disco/medsud-dot.php (or download it from nodata.tv).
The video for their song "Gobbledigook" is also on the sigur ros website.

I really cannot wait for the concert. As Radiohead and Sigur Ros are both outdoor shows, I'm gonna have to run to the front. No one is gonna stop me from receiving my pyroclastic invasion of music :D *runs around happily*

Contemporary and the Cure

2008-05-16T15:16:00.002-04:00

It's safe to say that I'm not the artsiest person in the world, at least when it comes to dance and musicals. I'm usually a fan of more structured dances (salsa, chacha, swing, etc) instead of Contemporary. To me contemporary is kind of the equivalent to musicals. It's always looked like people running around the stage, hopping in random spots and twirling...trying to convey the deep emotion of their performance. So, just like I don't usually sing my conversations on a regular basis, I don't twirl in the streets to tell someone I'm angry with them. However, there are a few times where I bite my words, and accept defeat for performances that I think deserve it (in the case of musicals, I really like Moulin Rouge).

So, who gets my first "cool contemporary" performance? Well, I was watching some youtube videos with a friend the other day and she showed me a performance from the show "So you think you can dance" where Lacey and Kameron were doing a dance to the song "Dancing" by Elise.

Here it is:

What I like:
1) The song is pretty nice
2) The general atmosphere
3) That jump. Like dude man, not everyone can pull that off. It's like an almost scissor take down of sorts. If I tried, the guy would probably lose balance and fall down...then get a concussion. Either that, or I'd be too scared to jump and run around him. :P It's also pretty cool how fast it is. She jumps, latches, then releases.
4) She's supposed to be playing a doll or a dead person (i forgot what my friend said exactly), so that's why she's kinda floppy. So that's pretty cool too.

But, to quote "Cool Runnings" - "This doesn't mean I like you!". I just like this little part :P

Now, for the second part of my post: I saw the Cure on Wednesday night with paw and of ice and ashes :D
It was an excellent show. I've never seen a band play for 3 hours (36 songs). It was definitely worth the ticket price, hands down and up!
For a detailed review, you can check paw's blog (it has photos too).

Concert Log Update and the Concordia Playlist

2008-05-09T02:22:00.003-04:00

If you haven't noticed already, I'm a big fan of lists. I like putting things in lists and categorizing things, either for fun or to see if there's some strange pattern. In any case, the last time I updated my concert log was last august and as such I'm going to add the shows :) The beginning of concertdom happened to coincide with my first year of University education.
In addition, I'm going to write my my Concordia Playlist. This is basically my current favorite song of the bands I saw and maybe some other things slipped in. I kinda feel that the shows I saw in each year more or less defined my mood or vibe for that year, but I think I will limit to 50 songs (the way I decorated my agendas kinda reflects that too, but that's for another post). I guess you could call it mental spring cleaning...quite fitting as I'm moving and I'm leaving Concordia (or at least that's the plan).

So here we go - Concert Log where the last one left off:

2007

August 27 - The Birthday Massacre - Petit Cafe Campus (Pamela, Fil and I - We met them again, quite a friendly bunch they are)
September 30 - Beirut - Sala Rosa (w/ Pamela. It was her bday gift to me - honestly one of the best shows I've been to)
October 9 - Matthew Good - Club Soda (It was a great show, but I was really tired and near the end I was leaning on the stage. Apparently it looked like I was moved by the music. I'm glad it didn't look like I was falling asleep).
October 10 - Gogol Bordello - Club Soda (Laurel, Pamela and I went to the show. There were LOTS of people...one particularly annoying troll girl was behind me. I think this show gets #2 spot for worst crowd. The actual show was good though. Eugene Hutz and the rest do not disappoint)
November 3 - Mum - Le National (My second time seeing them and it was a completely new experience. The reason for this...the two girls singing were different, and it gave quite a different vibe to the performance. I'd say I preferred the first show more).
November 30 - Stars - Le National (Pamela and I went - This show was awesome. It was a great way to end the fall - they're music is quite magical and simultaneously mushy :P but in a good way. Only thing was, Pamela and I appeared to be some of the older people there...which was a strange sensation indeed)

2008

January 4 - The Dresden Dolls - Le National (Pamela and I went - This was one of the most diverse shows I've been to. There was 1 opening band, 1 acrobat and them. Awesome thing - they opened with a cover of In the Flesh by Pink Floyd. I got chills :D Great way to start the year!)
February 9 - The Barber of Seville - Salle Wilfred Pelletier - ( I went with Gloria. This is my first going to an actual opera. The other time it was a dress rehearsal and it was free. I actually paid for this. We were sitting on the top top floor of the balcony area, but we could still see. Though it did feel rather steep, which made me feel strange...in anycase, it was quite nice. The singers were pretty good and the story is funny :) )
March 17 - The Gypsy Kings - Metropolis - (I went with my mommy - twas my Christmas gift to her. We were sitting on the balcony stools. This is my first time going to a show at the metro and sitting. It was still really enjoyable - no opening band and about 2 hours of the Gypsy Kings. Naturally the ended with bamboleo and Volare. My mom loved it - which was the best part of the night).

I haven't been to a concert since then, but what's coming up?
May 14 - The Cure at the Bell Centre. This is a reschedule of the date in september (going with Pamela and Ryan).
May 16 - The Kinetix Industrial Festival (going with Pamela and Ryan)
May 24 - Madame Butterfly (going with mommy and Gloria)
June 6 - Death Cab for Cutie - Old Port (w/ Gloria)
August 6 - Radiohead at Parc Jean Drapeau (accompaniment - TBA :P)

The Concordia Playlist

2003 - A Sense of Impending Doom

1. Mogwai - 2 Rights make 1 Wrong
2. A Perfect Circle - Vanishing
3. Placebo - Teenage Angst
4. Clint Mansell & The Kronos Quartet - Party
5. Radiohead - Let down

2004 - What's left to do but to buy some glue?

6. The Stills - Yesterday never tomorrow
7. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps
8. Muse - Blackout
9. Sondre Lerche - You know so well
10. Mum - Green Grass of Tunnel
11. Jimmy Gnecco - Here is the Light
12. Explosions in the Sky - The Only Moment we were alone
13. Adem - Ringing in my ear
14. Marilyn Manson - Deformography

2005 - So what does it mean?

15. Nine Inch Nails - Eraser
16. Mindless Self Indulgence - Shut me Up
17. The Birthday Massacre - Red Star
18. Coldplay - Fix You
19. Sigur Ros - Untitled 4
20. Wolf Parade - Shine a Light
21. The Cure - Disintegration
22. Cocteau Twins - Cherry Colored Funk
23. Imogen Heap - Hide and Seek

2006 - Things are a changin'

24. Final Fantasy - This Modern Love (cover)
25. Les Ogres de Barback - La Femme du Guerrier
26. Les Tetes Raides - Ginette
27. Indochine - Starlight
28. Ladytron - International Dateline
29. Massive Attack - Future Proof
30. Death Cab for Cutie - Transatlaticism

2007 - I think I've found the magic formula!

31. Amiina - Seoul
32. The Polyphonic Spree - Running Away
33. Devotchka - Queen of the Surface Streets
34. Journey - Don't Stop Believing
35. Matthew Good - 99% of Us is Failure
36. Alicia Keys - No One
37. Stars - Reunion

2008 - Yeah, I did...finally.

38. The Dresden Dolls - Half Jack
39. Broken Social Scene - Lovers Spit
40. Temperance - Forever Young
41. Cyndi Lauper - Shine (Babylon Mix)
42. Manu Chao - Clandestino
43. Johnny Clegg and Savuka - Dela
44. Architecture in Helsinki - Heart it Races
45. Patrick Wolf - The Magic Position
46. Gogol Bordello - Tribal Connection
47. Beirut - Forks and Knives (La Fete)
48. Arcade Fire - Rebellion

A couple memorable things in my mind:

The Beginning - Waiting at Second Cup w/ Pamela outside, slightly chilly, but feeling awesome because Mogwai played My Father, My King - also my first indoor show ever. Actually, the first time I heard about the band was when Pamela and I went on a tour of Nortel in Cegep, and she let me hear on the bus ride there.

The End: Even though I saw the Arcade Fire in 2007 and I listened to them a lot in 2005. I believe they belong in this year. They have quite the nostalgic but triumphant feel to them...at least to me.

In any case, that's it. :)
Late night list making ends now.

It's Monday

2008-04-14T19:00:00.002-04:00

And somehow i'm feeling optimistic (this doesn't happen often :P).

I could also be that i'm procrastinating...it's finals time. But I'm really excited about a few things:
1) End of B.Eng. - I'm still going for more school, but at least I'll have one thing!

2) I'm moving - finally! I get my own room and I will try my best to get a cactus.

3) I'm not doing anything this summer (that I know of...except bumming around). I think I will use this to learn matlab, finish anna karenina and learn to cook more cool things. I also want to plant tomatoes, garlic and basil. I also wanna bike around more :) I wanna try out these new bike paths!

4) I'm going to see The Cure and Radiohead (there are other concerts this summer, but I'm most excited about these ones). They are both bands that in my mind fit the "epicly awesome" category.

Who knows...oh well. I should stop stalling my studying...*runs in circles*

Physics doesn't exist, it's all gnomes

2008-02-24T11:58:00.002-05:00

While perusing the interweb (on fb), I found this group which explains Gnome Theory. It's pretty cute/funny. I enjoyed it, so here it is:

We believe that all the main physics principles can be explained away by the existence of tiny gnomes.

Electricity:
Inside cables there are hundreds of tiny gnomes 'high-fiving' each other and running around swapping messages. This transfer of messages allows things to work, e.g. the gnomes in a plug socket tell the gnomes in the wire, who eventually tell the gnomes in (say) a kettle to fart in the water allowing it to boil.

Computers:
Computers are run by tiny gnomes. They do all the work sat at tiny desks inside your PC. When you turn it off they can all go home and have a rest before they are needed again. The screen is in fact an arrangement of gnomes wearing different colour hats.

Atoms:
Atoms are infact miniscule gnomes, all holding hands and feet etc together to form an intricate web from which nearly everything in this universe is comprised of. Radioactivity occurs when a rebel gnome is catapaulted by his freinds from their structure. Should this gnome come into contact with the gnomes from our body, he will offer them beer, thus making the local area benign or 'cancerous'.

States:
A solid is a closely compacted arrangement of gnomes, all holding hands, hats and legs. Heating (see Energy) causes the gnomes to becoming exited (or 'tickled'). This means they start to lose a grip on their neighbours; thus becoming a liquid. When the gnomes become tickled 'pink' they just can no longer hold on and float away (in groups upwards of one) becoming a 'Gas'.

Gravity:
As we are all well aware gnomes like the ground. They all strive to be in the ground, and this is where the basic theory for gravity comes from. Gnomes throw tiny (obviously unseen to the human eye) ropes to the ground. These ropes attach to unseen hooks allowing the gnomes to pull themsleves towards the ground. There is minimal gravity away from bodies (e.g. in space) because very few gnomes have long enough ropes. All bodies have a gravitional attraction to each other because gnomes are sociable creatures and enjoy large gatherings.

Light:
If you think about it, its quite obvious really. The gnomes that make up our eyes can see what colour other gnomes making up, say a table, are wearing. They then hi-five gnomes in our 'optical nerve' who run to tell the brain gnomes what has been seen. This makes us think we are seeing things when infact it is all gnomes.

Anti-matter:
Now this is a little more complicated. There are evil gnomes. These make up anti-matter. Done.

Energy:
All types of energy are trasferred through gnomes. Heat is just gnomes rubbing other gnomes. Potential energy is when gnomes dont want to be seperated (see 'Gravity'). Kinetic energy is the movement of gnomes. Energy is allways conserved so fundamental gnomes (see below) are only ever transfered and never made or destroyed.

Gnomes:
So what are gnomes made up of themselves? They are surely not fundamental? They are comprised of billions of even smaller gnomes. These smaller gnomes are known as 'Super-gnomes'. Super-gnomes are made up of billions of even smaller gnomes known as 'Hyper-Gnomes'. Hyper-gnomes are the fundamental building block of everything.

Now that we have covered the basics of gnome theory we are going to discuss and 'explain away' certain physical phenomena.

Aurora Borealis/Australis (Northern/Southern Lights):
Having seen the principles concerning light in gnome theory this northern spectacle can now be explained. Gnomes become blind when they stay too long with the gnomes in the sun (because their clothing is really bright). They thus tend to get lost when the sun gnomes let go of them. Some of these blind gnomes accidently attach their ropes to earth, and are thus pulled towards it (see Gravity). When they reach the gnomes in the upper 'atmosphere' of the earth they realise that they're not the only gnomes in the universe and so have a tiny party/celebration. During this festive time the gatherings round the north and south of the earth have access to changes of clothes (e.g. from Santa). They take advantage of this wardrobe and the changing of clothes makes us perceive a colourful oscillating light in the sky.

Mobile Phones:
'Scientists' may try and fool you with talk of 'waves', but please dont believe these distacting and frankly stupid theories. Mobile phones are built (by gnomes) to incorporate a gnome catapault. These devices are worked by gnomes in your mobile phone (which coincidently is made up of gnomes) to fire their gnome freinds upwards when you place a call. The gnomes are fired into space where they land on 'satellites' (also made of gnomes). The gnome satillites then catapault seperate gnomes to the mobile you are trying to contact (if you are attempting to 'connect' with a land line the gnomes are fired at a landing station where they run and hi-five down wires to the other phone reciever). When the gnomes reach the reciever you are connecting with there is an exchange of messages, hi-fives and presents (the unwrapping is the crackle you hear). More catapaulting occurs back to the satilite and then to your phone. This process continues so that what you say is 'transmitted' to the other phone and vice-versa (the process is VERY quick, as these gnomes travel at the speed of light-gnomes). A call 'breaks up' or has no 'signal' when the presents exchanged are so good the gnomes dont bother coming back, but just sit and play.

Food:
Gnomes make up everything, including food. When we eat, say, a sandwich the gnomes making up the sandwich are digested and travel to our stomach. The stomach gnomes are so pleased to see other gnomes that a party soon gets underway (when you eat too quickly the party gets out of hand very quickly thus causing indigestion). The party is of course a wild affair, and the beer flows free while the gnomes party hard. The morning after (which in human time is only like 4-6 hours) the clean up begins. The stomach gnomes collect up the rubbish in bin bags. Intestine gnomes (the bin-men of the human body) collect up these bags and take them through the intestine to the... well im sure you can guess. The bum gnomes then drop these bags of rubbish out of the body (known as a landfill). Different varieties of foods are of course different nationalities of gnomes. Spicy food are Asian gnomes. These gnomes party particularly hard and thus the morning after is particularly bad. They also like to smoke, which is why humans feel 'gaseous effects' after a rather spicy meal.

Gnome food:
Gnomes also need to eat and drink and it can be easily extrapolated from gnomes theory how this occurs. The gnome digestion process occurs as described above but their food is made up of super-gnomes, who party in their stomachs. Of course, super-gnomes are also hungry entities and eat food made up of hyper-gnomes. Due to the fact thay hyper-gnomes are fundamental and can't be broken down into anything smaller they do not need to eat or drink.

Alcohol:
As all things are made of gnomes, it follows that even alcohol is made of gnomes. These are without doubt the rowdiest of all gnomes (except anti-gnomes). Alcohol gnomes divide into several groups. The first type look kindly and loving (which they indeed are) but have a stupendous sense of humour and love to play practical jokes. They will quickly travel to the brain gnomes upon arrival in the body and will wreak havoc with the head region; taking other gnomes clothes while they are in the shower, throwing eggs at nearby gnomes and the like. This causes the brain gnomes to become distracted, so the body doesnt work as efficiently as normal running. The senses become distorted (e.g. vision) and the human seems to think they are invincible, and the other sex is more attractive. Wine is mostly made up of these gnomes and Females are particularly succeptable to this type. The next type are Beer (subdivided into Ale and lager subspecies) gnomes. These gnomes produce similar effets to the wine gnomes (especially if mixed - gnomes love to party) but through different methods. These gnomes (instead of being fun loving) are dangerous and enjoy getting in fights. They will provoke and cause violence against the gnomes in your brain, and swear loudly. They will push over desks and generally cause havoc. This is again why your senses become distorted etc. The last type of alcahol gnomes are 'spirit' gnomes (who are NOT supernatural). These type of gnomes are really sneaky and cunning. They can very quickly (for they are quite strong and obviously quick) infiltrate the gnome office of the brain and begin to sneakily alter the brain gnomes work. They will send fake emails (to the amusmant of the wine gnomes), cause brain gnomes to work on useless tasks and generally ensure the brain gnomes cannot do there job. These again cause ill effects to your bodies ability to work (normally).

Tea!

2008-02-03T20:31:00.000-05:00

I got a new tea set today (actually my first one - all I have is a glass tea pot) from Melange Magique. It's quite pretty. I also indulged in a few flowering teas (they have astrological ones, so I figured "what do virgo, scorpio and cancer taste like ? :P " I haven't tried em yet...but I hope they taste good!

Here's the set:

I really like the flower petals on it - so pretty.

In other news, I'm very excited - Devotchka and Ours are coming out with albums in the very near future. This means they will tour (well at least one of them, Ours came in the summer...maybe they'll bless us with their presence again?). Hopefully both of them will come!
Both have posted new songs from their albums online and they're excellent.

Devotchka's Transliteration can be found here
Ours' songs can be found on their myspace, and the new video here

Enjoy! :D

Old Cheesy Video - Awesomeness!

2008-01-28T12:22:00.000-05:00

Not too long ago, a German fellow told me of this song called Moskau. Apparently everyone in Germany knows it and when it comes on, they break into song and dance.
I decided, "I must find this wonderful song and see it for myself".

It is indeed very cheesy, but daaamn catchy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD3lPGcvtpE

and of course I have to show you the "phonetic english translation" of this song: http://youtube.com/watch?v=jH8gtrD4_C4

These are the actual lyrics: http://texasdex.com:1234/adexter/moskau.html (english + german there)

Enjoy :P

The Demise of Nodatta and Goomba's Domination

2008-01-21T19:48:00.000-05:00

Much to my dismay, I learned that Nodatta got shut down this week. it was a premium website for discovering new kinds of music from all over the place. It shall be missed :(

I was doing some German homework today. It asked us to write a letter to a friend describing a Ski Holiday and how we were very unlucky and had an accident. Since it's not an in class assignment, I can check to see if my text makes some form of sense on a translator.
My translator of choice is at translation2.paralink.com

So anyways...here's how some of my story goes (in english):

Dear Kiwi,

I've already been in Linggries for two weeks. It's fantastic here, but yesterday was very unlucky. I woke up at 7 am and then had breakfast. In the afternoon I went skiing. It was very fun, but I wasn't careful. Suddenly, I fell near a tree.....(blah blah blah, the rest goes on)

Now, I wrote that in german and then translated back, and "Suddenly, I fell near a tree" turned into "Suddenly, I liked with a tree".
Oh! Wonderful, beautiful tree, how I love you so.
I really enjoy back translations :)

Anyways, it's been a while since I spoke about languages on this blog. So here's a bit of an update, as shown on Goomba's Map of Linguistic Domination (goomba was a nickname I had on the net before).
So, Goomba's show what countries I've conquered, at least beginners level.
Toad's are the ones that I want to conquer but haven't been able to yet. Also, klicken Sie das Bild!

Toad and Goomba are both in China. Toad can't speak Mandarin, he can only count. Goomba however, knows a bit of Cantonese. Not a heaping lot, but still some.
Also, Toad appears to be floating around in ocean's (like near Iceland). But, it's just that he was too big to go in the country he wanted to learn the language of (he would've covered the title). So he's just hanging out on the beach.

Toad also forgot to leave his mushroom hat's in the Middle East. Fear not! He does want to learn Arabic! He cannot keep smuggling Falafel's without learning some.

I should actually visit some of these places one day though :( otherwise I won't be able to practice anything.

Well, now back to homework. I shall now go on a quest for Exotic Blackholes in my Astronomy class.

P.S. Blackholes used to freak the hell out of me as a little'un. I'd dream that they'd appear in my room and suck everything in. That's what you get for watching space shows when you're 5!

I forgot to add

2008-01-12T14:12:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year and all that :)

I made a purchase at the beginning of the December and it was a most excellent purchase at that. It was the deluxe edition of the Heima DVD by Sigur Ros. This edition consists of 2 Discs and a photo album that has many photos of Iceland. It's really cool packaging.

The idea being Heima is the following (As taken from the site)

"Last year, in the endless magic hour of the Icelandic summer, Sigur Rós played a series of concerts around their homeland. Combining both the biggest and smallest shows of their career, the entire tour was filmed, and now provides a unique insight into one of the world’s shyest and least understood bands captured live in their natural habitat.

The culmination of more than a year spent promoting their hugely successful ‘Takk…’ album around the world, the Icelandic tour was free to all-comers and went largely unannounced. Playing in deserted fish factories, outsider art follies, far-flung community halls, sylvan fields, darkened caves and the hoofprint of Odin’s horse, Sleipnir*, the band reached an entirely new spectrum of the Icelandic population; young and old, ardent and merely quizzical, entirely by word-of-mouth."

The first disc basically shows their tour around Iceland. The quality of the images are amaaazing...Iceland looks so pretty and magical. The music is also awesome (I really like Sigur Ros if you haven't guessed by now :P).

So I'd say that's one of my best purchases of 2007.
Here are some clips from the movie:
The Trailer (with the song I Gaer playing in the background. Purely epic song!)

Heima (on disc 2)

Part of Von

That's it :)

Also, I went to one concert this year - The Dresden Dolls. It was great! You can read a review on Paw's blog. I never been to a show where there have been 2 opening bands, 1 acrobat and then the headliner. On top of that, the Dresden Dolls opened their part of the show with "In the Flesh" - Pink Floyd cover. What a great way to start a show. I love that song :D Youtube has a clip of them doing it on new years eve.

Until Next Time!

Late Night Year in Review

2007-12-27T02:06:00.000-05:00

Tis 2:06 am and Christmas festivities are over (they were fun though).
Inspired by Paw's blog post about her favorite songs of year, I decided "why not? i'll do some kinda year in review thinggy". So, let's see what I can list...

3 Best Musical Discoveries of the Year (with suggested songs):

Gogol Bordello - Not a Crime/Star Wearing Purple/Wanderlust King
I was at a murder mystery party, and after the murderer was revealed, a friend blasted the music and we all had a merry time.

Beirut - Postcards from Italy/Nantes/Scenic World
Paw introduced me to them and they were awesome. So I saw them live, and they were even cooler. And I learned of "Alaska in Winter" which is another awesome band (they were the openers)

The Knife - Heartbeats
They're a band from Sweden with a few good songs here and there. Heartbeats is especially catchy. I found out about them from a blog...but only heard that catchy song when I was eating a sandwich at Santropol with a friend (on July 31, 2007).

3 songs that happened to stay in my head

Ivan Kupala - Kanareika
This is possibly one of the catchiest songs ever. Everytime I listened to it, I imagined little gnomes appearing and dancing around. That then made me smile while walking down the street and getting curious looks. It's all good though. This stayed in my head for about a month...I believe it was mid march to mid april.

Journey - Don't Stop Believing
I was perusing a friends' boombox on Facebook and that song was there. I had heard it before, but never knew who sang it. And well...I looped that song for a while. This was a 2 week disease lasting from sept 4 - 15 (it ended after I was forced to sing it :) )

Alicia Keys - No One
I'm not a huge RnB person, but this lady can sing and this song is very catchy. I looped that too...for about a week and a half. This was mid november.

3 coolest concerts (not including any of the bands mentioned above or that I've seen before)

The Polyphonic Spree
This is the HAPPIEST band I've ever seen live and they give a kick ass show. They played for about 2.5 hours. There are something like 22 people on stage, many instruments...the band director/main singer came into the crowd many times and best of all they had confetti guns. It's really fun to jump around when confetti is flying. So I'd say it was pretty magical.

The Arcade Fire
Even though they played in an arena, they managed to put on a really good show. They had neon sticks and played many songs...sound was good too :) best of all paw and I had good seats.
As a side note, there's really nothing around Pie IX/Viau metro stations.

Stars
I've been wanting to see these guys for a while. I wanted to see them at Osheaga, but it's bloody expensive. So I was really happy to learn they were coming to mtl. They put on a most wonderful show :)

3 Most Entertaining Activities

Manhunt
Playing a combo of hide and seek and tag in Montreal. Games are every other saturday and the location changes every time. Many a fun hunt were had...it's not often you are chased by people wearing orange armbands.

Pillow Fight
Early May, about 90 or so people congregated outside of Place des Arts to have a 10 minute pillow fight. Little did we know that there was a police convention happening that same day. There were tanks and horses and officers all over. So when the whistle blew at 3:00 pm, they were quite confused. But it was alllll good in the end. :)

Halloween Metro Party
It was short lived! (cote vertu - berri uqam) but it was ultra fun while it lasted. We filled up most of the last car, and everyone in costume...with some good industrialesque music playing. I hope it happens again :D!

3 Best Food Discoveries

Tiendes et Sante Vegetarienne
I'm not a big mock meat person, but this place has a big selection of fake meat stuff. My friend and I bought some "tuna" and made some premium food. Twas an improvised lemon, ginger black pepper fish, with a radish/cucumber sesame salad and these stewed green beans. Most awesome. I must go there again.

Bayou Brasil
This happened last week :) We originally planned to go to La Sala Rosa...but it appears that we had to make reservations and did not know. So we hunted along St Denis for a place to eat and stumbled upon this place. Their food is pretty good, though I should warn you alligator tastes bad (or so one of my friend's said). So if you don't eat that, everything should be A-Ok!

Kam Fung
I've had Dim Sum before, but May was the first time I went to Kam Fung. I've been to Furama and this other place who's name I don't recall (It was at the end of finals in my 2nd year of cegep...with Paw and some others). In anycase, the first time I had no idea what I was eating, so it was more of a learning experience. Furama is alright, but I think Kam Fung has more variety (though I could be wrong). Anyways, sooo goooood!!! They have the shrimp dudes in rice paper with sauce on top, shrimp/scallop dumplings, crab claw, CONGEE! and ooooh that tofu fah dessert o_o

3 Best Movie Discoveries

Little Miss Sunshine
I saw it with a friend after a day of Tea tasting and general chillage...we rented it and went to his place...at pita chips with hummus and enjoyed the awesomeness of this movie. I love that van.

Everything is Illuminated
I like this movie so much, I show it to everyone I can show it to...and therefore have seen it about 6 times in the span of 4 months. It is a most Premium movie :P that's all I'm gonna say.

Quills
It has been recommended before, but I never got around to watching it. After renting it, I got it at HMV for 12$ haha. Marquis, although a very dirty man is kinda charming in this movie...and Michael Cain does a good job of making you hate him.

Biggest Surprise of the Year
Having over a metre of snow and -20 C weather in December. This hasn't happened in a looong ass time. I could've made igloos and snowman armies if not for the fact that I had finals to study for. Right now a lot of it has melted, but it'll come back I predict. I'll get to make my snowmen!

That about concludes my year in review I think...
What do I look forward to for 2008? Graduation, heeeeellls yeah!

:D

2007-12-24T00:46:00.000-05:00

Hoi hoi!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year people's. I hope you have a most relaxing and enjoyable holiday. As I am feeling somewhat festive, enjoy these two videos:

One dancy happy one by Caspian Hat Dance (a cover of Amari szi, Amari)

and one Christmas song by Sufjan Stevens - Put the lights on the tree

And now I shall go back to the annual baking/food prep and gift wrapping :P

PS. Sweeney Todd is gruesome, yet strangely charming (and I don't really like musicals) and Mr. Beans' Christmas Special never gets old (tis on youtube also wheee!)

Shooting Teddy Bears

2007-12-09T11:34:00.000-05:00

My mom told me about this story she heard on the news the other day of a person shooting teddy bears. She's like wow, they have nothing else to do...but what I imagined was not shooting actual teddy bears, but teddy bears being fired out of a cannon.

Procrastination is good...yes :P
Happy Sunday!

Kronk the Lonely Fish Ball

2007-12-07T20:52:00.000-05:00

Inspired by a night of Tampopo watching, ramen eating (to commemorate the event) and general craziness...we have the lonely fishball- Kronk:

It all started in a kitchen
With many fish, spices and dough
A grinder, a pounder, and then a set of hands
Would soon make me the fish ball I am today.
Oh...it's a sad tale as you'll see.

Yes, I am Kronk the lonely fish ball
Of round and compact shape.
I was once in a oniony, curry sauce with my friends
and then suddenly left to face life alone, all alone.

I got into the fridge
And stayed there for a while
Hung out with my friends in a plastic bag
Until it was opened and we were poured into a bowl
Soon to face our doom in the black, rectangular food agitator

Soon enough, the flying bowl was set on a table
Next to long green things and shrimp suffocated by bean curd
In the distance, you could see noodles submerged in hot broth
My friends were taken one by one
I thought I'd be next, but by the time I knew it everyone was gone

Yes, I am Kronk the lonely fish ball
Of round and compact shape.
I was once in a oniony, curry sauce with my friends
and then suddenly left to face life alone, all alone.

I stood there, all alone, waiting in the cold
Why was I not taken?
Am I a defective fish ball, not worthy of disintegration?
I was made fun of, stared at. They stared at me affectionately...
but they did not eat me, not me

A long wait...a distant thought
while they laughed and danced and cut things beside me
A dark liquid entered the agitator
and even the fruit got preference over me
But then...

I was no longer Kronk the lonely fish ball, with no friends
Because I heard my name and the cheerful one took me in
"We should dip him in the chocolate"
And now I am with my fishy friends
In a sea of curry and sweetly dark happiness.

P.S. Tampopo is awesome, muahahahahaha!

Dance Party in the Balkans!

2007-10-01T01:39:00.000-04:00

Alriiiiiighty! So, today was the first concert of the Fall season for me. It was especially awesome because the ticket was a gift from my awesome friend Pamela .

I've only known of Beirut for a few months...but they're like pure awesomeness in a can. We got to Sala Rossa at about 7:45 pm and waited for about 30 mins until they let us in. We were one of the first few people to be let in...and as such we got places right up in front of stage...which rocks considering it was a sold out show.

At this point, one of the openings acts was playing. He was called "Alaska in Winter" and I later found out that his cd is called "Dance Party in the Balkans" - but on the screen behind him it was written as "dance parti in ze balkans".
De toute façon, he was great! It's basically one guy that loops different sounds that he recorded. While that's happening he sings and the screen behind has little squares...in each square is him doing something different. So, picture one dude playing keyboards, drums, banjo, guitar while doing the running man dance, or just plain singing. His costumes also matched those in the video. In the first song, he was wearing his full outfit or pants and red sweater with a tie and his furry hat. And that's how he was dressed in the video. later he took off his tie, and then his shirt and pants...only to find another pair of pants and shirt under...but they were white instead.
He was also pretty funny :) at one point he was singing and said " I dunno what I'm supposed to say right now, but I'll keep saying something anyways"
and later "The song is nooot overrr...but if you want to get a drink you can, just ask the bartender".
Another time, he went to a little corridor off the side while dancing...we're like o_O what's he doing. He comes back. Then we see an arm stretched out from said corridor with a Corona. Anyways, lotsa fun. If he came to play, I'd go :D
http://www.myspace.com/alaskainwinter

Next was Colleen. She had a quiet set...played Cello and Clarinet and sometimes wind chimes. They asked us to sit on the floor for this...which was kinda cool, except my foot was falling asleep. One song gave me slight shivers...so that's good stuff there.

So Beirut comes onto this small stage. They are 8 people playing all kinds of instruments - ukelele, horns/trumpets, violin, drums, keyboards, xylophones. It's great :D

Here's the setlist (I stole it after the show, muahahaha!)
Elephant Gun
Brandenburg
Nantes
La Fête
Sunday Smile
Cherbourg
Scenic World
Mt. Wroclai
In the mausoleum
Cucek
Le Moribond
After the curtain
Carousels
Penalty

----
Encore:
Postcards from Italy - this was absolutely epic...all the instruments together :)
Closing Song/Gulag Orkestar

and theeen, he did a surprise cover of "Hallelujah" on the ukelele :D

I don't really know what to say other than the show was reaaaally good. I wasn't really expecting anything...so I was pleasantly surprised. Pamela and I paid tribute to Laurel and her awesome finger dance during "After the Curtain". There was a part where it was just really fitting, bwahaha.
The singer was kinda funny too. He was like "i need some more cognac up here :)!
And people would scream things of course. So one time, someone goes "WOOOOOOOO" and he goes "AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!"
So people tried to woo again to make him ahh! but he said "Yeah, it ain't happenin again".
Then, another crowd person said "more accordion!", he said "Everything...all the time. I'm just going to repeat what you guys say".
I was only sad that they didn't play Guyamas Sonora. That's my favorite song off of the new album.

So yeah, awesome night :)

Concert Log

2007-08-24T14:03:00.000-04:00

I figured it'd be a good idea to keep a list of the concerts I've attended. I remember most of them...except for some reason 2006 was a blur and I had to consult my Pamela's list (she is my concert buddy extraordinaire...and I went to most of these with her) D:
So here it is:

2003 - The beginning of concertdom (before that I'd only ever been to my dad's christmas concerts/other choir concerts - as such, they don't count):

August 1 - The Vans Warped Tour - Parc Jean Drapeau
September 3 - Mogwai - Spectrum
September 6 - A Perfect Circle - Metropolis
December 14 - Placebo - Metropolis

Total = 4

2004

February 14 - The Stills - La Tulipe
February 26 - The Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Metropolis
April 16 - Muse - Metropolis (worst crowd)
May 9 - Sondre Lerche - Cabaret Music Hall
May 16 - Orgy - Club Soda
June 6 - Katatonia - Foufounes Electriques (worst ear damage ever - had ear ringing for like 3 days)
June 24 - Mum - Cabaret Music Hall
August 8 - Mogwai - Spectrum
August 13 - Vans Warped Tour - Parc Jean Drapeau (muddy :P)
September 17 - Jimmy Gnecco (Ours) - O Patro Vys (w/ Fil)
October 9 - Explosions in the Sky w/ the frequency + Adem - La Sala Rosa (awesoooome)
November 17 - Marilyn Manson - Metropolis (w/ Fil, Gina, Mave - so much fun! - including the weird electrocution dance during irresponsible hate anthem)

Total = 12

2005

January 5 - My dad vs yours - Casa del Popola
January 22 - Bright Eyes (+ Coco Rosie) - Spectrum
May 9 - Nine Inch Nails - Kool Haus (Toronto - w/ Erin!)
June 6 - Mindless Self Indulgence + Birthday Massacre (Amanda + Fil - awesome, we met Bday and I taught chibi how to say pantalons :D - also the first time I met Amanda!)
August 3 - Coldplay - Bell Centre (for Gloria's birthday - shivers during the scientist, woosh :o)
October 6 - KMFDM + Birthday Massacre (for Melissa's birthday! met bday again and this time got pics)
November 11 - Nine Inch Nails - Bell Centre (w/ Erin!)

Total = 7

2006

March 9 - La Clemenza di Tito - Opera de Montreal (it was free :) and I went with Melissa, Paul, Nick, Will, Gloria, Leilani and Harley)
April 18 - Final Fantasy - Club Lambi
May 29 - Imogen Heap - La Tulipe (w/ Kris, Jess, Louis, Pamela and two of Skrud's friends...from Vancouver -- soooo good)
June 11 - Les Ogres de Barback - Theatre Maisonneuve
June 18 - Indochine - Metropolis
October 1 - Ladytron - Metropolis
November 1 - Death Cab for Cutie - Metropolis
November 6 - Imogen Heap - Spectrum (w/ Kris, yay :) )

Total = 8

2007

March 25 - Explosions in the Sky w/ Eluvium - Le National
March 28 - Amiina w/ Tom Brosseau - Le National (the cutest band ever :P)
May 13 - Arcade Fire w/ St. Vincent - Arena Maurice Richard (HAHAHA I was like yes! finally I get to see them. Pamela and I were not disappointed)
July 3 - The Polyphonic Spree - Spectrum (w/ Fil - we left that concert feeling like the happiest people on the face of the planet...covered with confetti)
July 14 - Ours - Le Gymnase (w/ Fil and Pamela - Jimmy's voice is just amazing, never ceases to impress all of us)

Total so far = 5

Coming up

August 27 - The Birthday Massacre - Petit Cafe Campus (Fil + Pamela, who else?...I'll find out)
September 8/9 - Osheaga Music and Arts Festival (not sure about this yet...there are a bunch I wanna see on both days, but it's quite $$)
September 26 - The Cure - Bell Centre
October 9 - Matthew Good - Club Soda
October 10 - Gogol Bordello - Club Soda (Start wearing purple, the gypsy punks are comin to town and we (Laurel, Pamela, Fil, Vlad? and I) are gonna see em!)
November 3 - Mum - Le National (eeeee!!!!!)

5 for sure!

Between the click of the light and the start of the dream

2007-05-13T23:56:00.000-04:00

I only really started listening to the Arcade Fire after they came at the end of feb in 2005 and I missed their 3 shows at the end of April because of finals. They were introduced to me by Paw who saw them open for Hawksley Workman a while back. She sent me the song "Headlights look like Diamonds"...and thought this is not bad. but ehh...lets see what else they have :)
So fastforward to two years later. ZOMG they're playing 5 shows in feb...and didn't get any tickets because they were playing at a tiny venue called the Ukrainian Federation. People lined up all night in the cold to get their hands on those cardboardy tickets and savour the sound of this band for about 1 and a half hours. I decided it was my turn...and the next time they came I would not miss it! And so today...I finally got to see them.

They played at Arena Maurice Richard...never been there before. In fact, I don't usually trek out to Viau. East side of Montreal is like unknown territory to me. I've been there before, but I don't hang out there. I have only been to Point Perdue (Pointe-aux-Trembles) once. So, Paw and I arrive at 4:15 pm. Doors open at 6:30. We're searching for these epic long Arcade Fire fan lines...and WHAT? we're one of the first ones there. There was a small group of people who did camp out overnight, or so I assume...because they had blankets and themoses n such...oh, I felt bad for them :P. While waiting in line we ate apples and crackers. Paw's most awesome for providing snack food. I also ran into my grade 8 Math teacher.

Fastforward once more...we get awesome seats. Off the side to the left first row. Seats are great in arena shows because you can go potty without losing your spot. The show started at 8...opening band was called the St Vincents. Actually, it just started off with the vocalist singing by herself with an electric guitar. It sounded very gritty and almost industrial. Her dress was a nice shade of blue, but looked like a potato bag with straps.
When the band came on, the sound changed slightly to some form of dancy rock indie something music which was just plain awesome. I picked up their EP and hope to hear more from this texan band.
The floor started getting really packed, tons of people cheering, hopping around in anticipation for the band to come on.
At about 9:00, they took the stage...all 9 or so of them. The stage had 6 long poles in the front and 4 circles screens on posts on each corner of the stage. I found out later that the 6 long poles were giant glowsticks. There was also a large screen in the background...and a pipe organ.

The following is an approximate setlist...I know the first 6 are absolutely right and the last 3 as well as the encore. It's the shady in between...

Keep the Car Running
No Cars Go - this song is awesome if only for the line "between the click of the light and the start of the dream". Regine's voice goes up high and cute. So sweet :)
Haiti - *happy jumping ensues* This is a great dancy song. Regine always goes crazy near the middle doing somewhat robotic movements. Then at the end, the band goes crazy.
After the song she said that 1$ from each ticket is going to a charity, and that there were many branches of that charity in haiti.
Black Waves/Bad Vibrations - initially I wasn't super fond of this song...and never heard it in its entirety. Big booboo. But now I have and I've learned the error of my ways. This song rocks, nuff said.
Neighborhood #2 (Laika) - I wasn't expecting this song, and boy am I happy they did it. The highlight has to be Win's brother going off to the side and banging one of the posts with his drumstick like a madman.
Intervention - "I don't think the arena is gonna let rock bands play here anymore...but we took it while we saw an opening". Then they started playing. Good stuff once again.
Ocean of Noise - a little quieter than the rest but very nice...joined in the ooo's
My Body is a Cage - such a dramatic song. you cannot beat the doom and power of the organ in this song.
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)- One of my favorite of the night..absolutely love this song. I generally sang along to the songs in the concert, but this one was particularly fun to sing to, especially this part " Then we think of our parents, well what the hell ever happened to them?!"
Antichrist Television Blues- Regine went kinda nuts again with her tambourine , shouting at the crowd :)
The Well and the Lighthouse - nice ending. reminds me of old school dances from like the 60s :P
Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) - "Thank you for coming out. I've always thought montreal was a very (something along the lines of nice and curteous forgot the exact words) city." Then they burst into song, the crowd goes wild dancing like crazy monkeys. They even did a prolonged ending.
Rebellion (Lies) - This gave me shivers of happiness. Everyone was clapping and singing along. When the band walked off, everyone in the crowd was still singing "Oooo ooo ooooooooo" until they came back out.

Encore

Black Mirror - I like this song, but the sound was a little strange for it. A little hard on the ears. But still very good.
Crown of Love - someone in the crowd had a sign saying "Crown of Love". Win's like, change of plans. Someone made a sign and I'm a sucker for signs, so we're gonna play this song. Lighter moment.
Wake up - just before playing this song, someone in the front had a sign saying I need a drumstick. They held it up for the whole time too. Win was like AHH YOU IN THE FRONT! PUT DOWN THE FUCKING SIGN! I'll give you a drumstick, just put it down! stop it!
Anyways, wake up is an epic ending for a concert. Naturally, everyone was into it :)

I don't know if I can say anything else about the concert. I just kept saying how great everything was. It's great dance music! Great music to forget your troubles! Or to just scream it out!

As I was on my way home, I spotted two concert goers. They were twin brothers, both wearing arcade fire tee's. As the got off at Vendome, the yelled into the car "ARCADE FIRE IS AWESOME!" and a passenger nodded. I couldn't agree more.

So it ended up being

2007-04-01T14:35:00.000-04:00

Carrots in roasted garlic hummus...also had some corn on the cob.
That's good enough for me. I don't think I've ever devoured corn on the cob like that.
Food shopping was extra fun. I was in the vegetable aisle like AHAH I WANT THAT AND THAT AND THAT! Also got these mini melba toast rounds - multigran to be exact. They're awesome.
So yes. Tooth freedom rocks.

Also, it's 13 degrees C today and Sunny. Most awesome.

Carrots in Babaghanoush

2007-03-01T00:44:00.000-05:00

I went to the orthodontist today. He says that in one month (March 28 to be precise), I will have my braces taken off. I started my treatment april 13, 2005 and it was supposed to last a total of 18 months. It's been almost 2 years (grumbles!).
During that time I've had wires poking in my cheek and the usual friction that people experience on their cheeks with the brackets. But I think I've had a record number of brackets falling off...and always in strange ways.

To name a few:
- eating sushi, a front bracket fell off. I consider rice to be soft, so I don't get it.
- eating fish at a resto in st-laurent. I had to find it and wrap it in kleenex and bring it to them.

- I'd say the weirdest happened while flossing. I passed through the wire, next thing I knew the bracket was gone. It completely disappeared from this planet. I did not see it come out of my mouth, I did not feel it either. I didn't hear it fall into the sink. I took a flashlight and searched the bathroom. Nowhere to be seen. Even if I did find it, say on the floor...I don't think I'd want it back in my mouth anyways. But yes, strange bracket disappearance.
I was afraid that they'd be peeved that I didn't have the bracket and accuse me of being a Forceful Flosser...but no...didn't really care how it disappeared, just that it did and they had replacements!
While replacing that one, they found another loose one. But, with this one, the metal completely unglued itself from the composite backing...and the backing was still on my tooth. The lady had to remove it all then replace it with a completely metal one.

They've had to replace at least 10 of them and some of them more than once. I guess the cement was not strong enough (or perhaps it's due to my acidic saliva :P one dentist told me I might have that and may be the reason I have so many cavities...since I have pretty good hygiene and don't really eat many sweets on a regular basis, certainly not due to that).

So yeah, once the braces come off, I can get my 1 million cavities filled which is good.

After they take my braces off, they're gonna take an imprint of my teeth and send it to the Damon laboratories for them to make "The Positioner". During that waiting period, I'll have to wear some kinda light clear retainer. woo.

Then when the positioner comes (the next week), I'll have to wear it 24 hours a day for a week, unless I'm eating or brushing my teeth. He says it resembles a mouth guard and I'm not allowed to talk...for the whole week...otherwise the thing will fall out.

I found a picture of this positioner thing:
It's meant to fix little things/bring all my teeth together in that "perfect" position or something like that.
It's going to be interesting to be mute for a week. I can use thumbs up/thumbs down and so-so waving hands, shoulder shrugging and head nods! If asked to explain something, I'll let out a mrar type grumble with a corresponding facial expression of unhappiness.

Once it's all over, I can eat carrots :O in their raw form :O dipped in hummus :O or maybe even babaghanoush :O