In other news today...
We had a surprise weekend of lovely warm weather and absolutely loved it! It's so nice just to be able to wear a t-shirt all day and not shiver once.
Summer is on our doorstep and with it, Montreal comes alive with summer festivals so hopefully this year I should be much more disciplined than last year and actually share some of the fun with you all... especially now that I can post pictures!! That will have to do until I get my act together and create my albums on my site (got sick of dotphoto). Looks like the first of the festivals we will be attending is the yearly fireworks festival. And this year I'm very excited because Australia will be first off the rank! woohoo!!
Now, you will no doubt have noticed that I am making an effort to be less lazy with my blog and I am now starting to add links AS WELL as pictures :D Will wonders never cease?

This is a picture (well, 4 to be exact) I found in my bag today. We were on our way to catching the metro one cold January day and decided to step into a photo booth a la Amelie ;) I think they're really cute, so I scanned them. I'm posting them here to test out my new photo publishing capabilities. POWERRRR!!! hehehe

Today is officially one year to the day that I have been in Canada. It also means it's the end of my [censored] and that now I have to [censored]. Tomorrow we will most probably celebrate. C wants to do some boogying and Remi had planned drinks and pool with F and S so it should be fun. Other than that, am just so excited because today Remi [censored] which means we [censored]. I can't wait!! It's gonna be so cool!! So now we have something extra special to look forward to before we [censored].
Gah! It's so crap not being able to say all this stuff outright on here! But for now everything must be [censored]... you know how it goes... just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you?
In other news, it's been a bit of a lame-o week for me. We've had consistently crap weather for weeks now and it's just not on after a 6 month winter. So last (long thanks to the Queen) weekend was frustratingly spent indoors. Sunday I started coming down with some bad tummy pains that continued into Monday and Tuesday, lucky me, I woke up puking. So I got to spend yet another day indoors, though that one didn't bother me so much since I was too out of it to care and I just slept all day. (sidenote here, Remi worked from home so he could look after me. Stepped out on his bike in the afternoon to check out puter parts at the ecocentre and promptly fell off said bicycle, coming home with gashes all over his face and hands. Poor love). So after Tuesday, guess what happens. Yep, you guessed it. Flare-up. Thank you very mucha. Pain all week so I couldn't go to Pilates on Wednesday and I hope that a good night's sleep tonight will clear the remnants of it all. I constantly have to remind myself just how much better I am now though. Flare-ups discourage you but you have to find the force somehow to rise above it all and just ride the wave until it's over. Sunshine would sure help, dammit :)
Ok, since my one year is up today I will post a list I made a while back of all the stuff that has happened to me in that year:

fell in love
sold all my stuff
left a job i had had for 4.5 years
lost an organ
lost a best friend
left my family, home and friends
travelled in two other countries
moved to a city on the other side of the world
moved umm... a lot of times
visited a hospital 3 times when never before
1st ride in ambulance
1st ride in helicopter
worked in french for the first time
left 2 jobs
applied for permanent residency in canada
my first real winter - 1st experience of -15 to -40
1st experience of lots of snow and ice and frozen lakes and winter that lasts for 6 months

Hmm and actually the list goes on but I think those are pretty big things already. Who would have thought!

I just did an IQ test online (www.tickle.com) and got 129 which is only 4 below Remi and I'm claiming a handicap for the fact that it's 1 am :P hehehe
So here's my result:

Your IQ score is 129

This number is based on a scientific formula that compares how many questions you answered correctly on the Classic IQ Test relative to others. Your Intellectual Type is Insightful Linguist. This means you are highly intelligent and have the natural fluency of a writer and the visual and spatial strengths of an artist. Those skills contribute to your creative and expressive mind. And that's just some of what we know about you from your test results.

Pretty accurate eh!

Lately I've felt the unshakable urge to read. It's been a while since I read a book and honestly the books I got into reading before I left Sydney were hardly literature. ChickLit is a good chuckle but it won't inspire you to great heights. Then I tried to read Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende but found her writing no longer fits me so I didn't finish the book. You could never compare something like "Daughter of Fortune" with "Eva Luna", impossible. Maybe she has lost her passionate rawness and became too formulaic. Since she was always one of my favourite authors I persisted and tried to read her autobiography entitled "My Invented Country". Though I learnt quite a bit about Chile, I didn't finish that one either. Remi's mother read them both while she was here and she really enjoyed them but then she hasn't read any of her other stuff so the bar wasn't set too high.
I went into a bookshop today, half looking for Bill Bryson's "In a Sunburned Country" (in Australia it's called "Down Under" and I urge everyone to read it. In fact if you're curious about the world at all, I recommend any of his books. He is very witty and warm in his accounts) and half looking for anything else that might catch my eye. I ended up with a copy of "Love" by Toni Morrison. This woman is an amazing writer. I guess I'm not the first to think so since she has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (*sigh* Pick me! Pick me!). Seriously. I picked up the book in need of some sweet medicine and boy am I getting it. So it's true, I seem to have a penchant for South American and African American writers, but these people write from the ground in. They have two feet planted firmly on the ground and their head is swimming with the angels. That's the stuff of inspiration. That's the stuff that saves lives and minds and hearts. That's what I'm talking about.

Ok, here's some crazy shit for you right here. Remember when I talked about a game Remi and I went through a phase of playing? called World of Warcraft? Well we stopped playing in January because it was becoming a real problem for him especially... he was completely addicted. One day one of the guys at work, who also went through a phase of playing the game, told me he sold his level 40 hunter (there are 60 available levels currently) on e-bay for about 130 bucks. So I went home and told Remi since his character was at level 39 at the time and it was a warrior, so a lot better than a hunter. He kept the idea in the back of his mind for a while and a couple of weeks ago decided to play his character up to level 40 so he could sell it on e-bay. Well he did... and he sold it today... for a 155 Canadian Dollars. How insane is that?? people will buy anything. So now he has made the money back that he paid for both our games in the first place, plus a little pocket change :D

In other news, my mother is a lot better this week apparently so I can breathe easy again. Last week was very VERY tough on me. A real emotional rollercoaster.
Also, the emails are pouring in... everyone back home is either engaged, getting married, buying a house, or pregnant!!!
Off to the movies now to see Unleashed...

Flippa came to stay with us for the weekend. She has left Vancouver to head off to London for a couple of years and on the way she took time out to do the East coast of Canada and fly out from Toronto. She flew to Toronto from Van, spent a few days there then headed to Ottawa and Quebec City, then to see here in Montreal. It was good to see her and good for Remi to experience the New-Zealand accent. It was a little odd for me though to be thrown back into a world where the main topic of conversation is celebrity gossip, clothes, shoes and all things that really have nothing to do with my life now.
She arrived in the afternoon on the Thursday and I was picked her up from the via rail station. I was actually late because my boss decided to have a last minute crisis and I ended up just having to leave him to have it alone. As it was, when I got to the station Flippa had already been to the info desk to ask about hostels in the area :/
So we found each other and came back home to dump all her stuff then went out for Japanese. Yum. Remi met us at the restaurant after his game of squash. The next day I had to work so Flip did some touring around the city by herself and I met her after work to go do some ... shopping. Well we didn't find anything for ourselves but we bought Remi a shirt and a polo neck which he looks very handsome in :)
We got home too tired to cook or go out for drinks as was planned so we decided to go try the Jamaican restaurant Remi had once seen not far from our place. That was quite the experience! We were the only whities in the place and the menu boasted such tasty selections as cow hoof and oxtail :/ I was scared since I don't really like meat that has skin or bones with it, but I ended up ordering a chicken stew and it was very very delicious indeed. Served with plantain and rice cooked with beans and coconut milk and some vegetables on the side. When my dish came, these two Jamaican ladies who were sitting at a table near us said 'good choice' and when Remi and Flippa's jerk chicken dishes arrived the ladies said 'i hope you got your water ready'. hehehe
I think they were amused by the white people. The lady who owns the restaurant was very friendly and really took the time to walk us through the menu. After our meals she brought us a bowl of food to sample: dumplings of bread and saltfish and ackee which is a fruit that they eat all the time in Jamaica and they have it for breakfast instead of eggs. Everything they eat has a LOT of pepper in it. All in all it was a great experience that we waddled home from. A couple of days later we bumped into a 'friend' who lives near us and we mentioned we went there for dinner... he told us that a few months ago someone got shot right outside of there. Ha.
Saturday we all walked down to Atwater market, grabbed some croissants and coffee from the bakery and went and had a picnic breakfast by the edge of the canal. After eating we walked along the canal to the Old Port so that Flippa could do the touristy thing and see all the old buildings etc. Remi left us around 2 to go meet up with the guys for a game of soccer in the park. Flip and I walked around some more then went home to put on some warmer clothes before heading off again to meet up with everyone at the park. We all hung out for a few hours then we went to have some Butter chicken at our favourite butter chicken place on St-Denis.
Since one of THE things to do in Montreal is taste the yummiest bagels in the world, we couldn't let Flippa pass that up. So, on Sunday we headed off to the Bagel Cafe on Mont-Royal and umm yum yum YUM :). We then headed off to the top of the Mont-Royal so Flippa could see the view of Montreal from above, then we trecked for a bit and ended up at the Tam-Tams which she really enjoyed. The Tam-Tams happen every Sunday of the summer months on the side of the Mont-Royal. A whole bunch of people bring their drums and various instruments and form drumming groups and everyone comes along to dance, sell jewellery, lounge on the grass, etc.
At the end of all that we were so tired and went to do some grocery shopping so Flip could cook us dinner. That was delicious too... we had chicken and spinach and cream cheese filo pastries and salad. Flippa left us on the Monday to head off to Halifax where she was joining a tour to check out Cape Breton, Bay of Fundi, Prince Edward Island etc. Lucky cow :/

This weekend we experienced Northern Ontario. Sudbury, Ontario to be exact. Home of the world's biggest smokestack and also of the giant 5 cent coin.
We had to go to the wedding of a old university friend of Remi's... Rick. I left work at 2 in the afternoon on Friday and we (Remi, me, Jeff (another friend of Rick's who was the designated driver) and Jeff's girlfriend Sarita) set off on the 7.5 hour drive. Actually we didn't do the whole 7.5 hours on Friday but after stopping off for dinner and a couple of wee stops we arrived at the Travelodge in North Bay at 10.45 pm. I was completely buggered. I had had a pretty bad week painwise, a flare-up that made me forego my pilates class on the Wednesday also, so the car trip was torture to some extent. At least I could spread my legs out over Remi when it got really bad and I jumped into a hot shower as soon as we got to the hotel. Saturday I was still pretty bad but we got up at 9 for breakfast then went for a stroll across the road to the lake which was pretty nice. The thing that amazes me about Canada is that most of the beautiful lake spots are private property. After the lake it was back to the hotel to beautify ourselves and then we set off to Sudbury which was another 1.5 hours away. On the way we passed Lake Nipissing which is actually very beautiful and somewhere we talked about going back to one day - a chalet there would be just perfect!
Sudbury is a nickel mining town and honestly, it's pretty ugly overall. Most of the trees are dead and the landscape is dominated by rocks and the giant smokestack. Every second front yard seemed to be decorated with a randomly placed delapidated old yellow school bus.
The wedding ceremony was held at the 'Round Chapel' at Sudbury University, which is also pretty ugly. It was interesting to note however that this part of Ontario also catered for the francophone part of the population, with all the signs in English and in French. The people we met throughout the weekend were all bilingual which I believe is pretty rare outside of Quebec.
Rick says 'abo-oot' instead of 'about'. What Canadians are supposed to all speak like, but this is not true. I have narrowed it down to Albertans. With other Canadians it's much more subtle... although, that's somewhat of a generalisation: in Vancouver they sound American, in Alberta they sound umm... Canadian, in Sask well so far I can only judge by one person but I couldn't stand to hear her speak. That may be because she was so loud and obnoxious though and nothing to do with coming from Sask (I'm sure maci will back me up on that one). In Ontario from what I've seen so far - and I've only been to Ottawa and Northern Ontario - well it's hard to say. I guess it's more of the subtler Canadian accent that has that North American sound but that is more subtle than the American. Make sense? :/
In Quebec most of them obviously have a bit of the French influence in their English but sometimes you could honestly hardly tell. Newfies have a bit of an Irish lilt to their Canadian. I hear in Moncton they speak a strange mix of Frenglish.
So anyway, back to the wedding. The ceremony was held in the Round Chapel, it was somewhat unusual. They had a girl bring a keyboard and sing "Sea of Love". She sang a few other songs too but no wonder she's a struggling artist (emphasis on struggling) since she sang off-key most of the time. She had however invited another singer friend of hers. A First Nation, I believe from the Mohawk people. She had a beautiful voice and presence and at the end of the ceremony she sang and drummed a Mohawk lovesong. It was really beautiful and to me it was the most touching part of the ceremony. Otherwise, it was all a bit odd.
The reception was pretty odd too. It was held at Rick's parents' place which is a big house on the edge of a pretty lake. Most of the guests were old(er) people for some reason, possibly long-time friends of the parents. There was no music, no dancing, everything to make me feel out of place in my citified little black dress. Lucky for me it was cold and that was a good excuse to not take my coat off all night ;) So basically the night comprised of a lot of food, a lot of talking and a Japanese tea ceremony to tie in Rick's time spent in Japan and Erika's heritage (she is Japanese born in Brazil). We left their place around midnight and set out to find a hotel. We finally got a room looking on to the famous smokestack, the giant 5 cent coin and of course... a rundown school bus. The next morning it was back to Rick's parents who had invited everyone back over for breakfast. I really really enjoyed the breakfast. Rick's dad is a real character and the whole family is very friendly and welcoming so breakfast was a whole different feel. We ended up staying about 3 hours and having some very good laughs before setting off on our trip back to Montreal. I have to say it was very nice to get out of the city!!