14 Juin 2008

Jump to Comments

Bonjour, mes amis!
Yesterday, my friend from the 16th floor and I (I’ll call her MCAT because she’s spending the summer studying for her MCAT and may not appreciate being mentioned repeatedly in my blog, despite it being in all niceness and only in reference to her hospitality) went to the McGill IT desk to see if we could trick them into letting me onto the secure McGill network. It worked, and I now receive service on campus.
As I was wandering about, I noticed that the women around here are astoundingly French – by which I mean graceful, elegant, chipper, and classy. They’re little slips of things, really; shadows of the elephantine females they’d no doubt be were they to continue their habits without the protection of their inimitably sophisticated nationality (see: Americans).  They walk around sipping their chais with cigarettes in hand; tiny strapless pencil dresses snugly leading to peep-toed kitten heels. They sit in the grass, huddled in a circle so that you can only see a rainbow of straw sun hats tipping back and forth as they speak animatedly in that most romantic of languages.
I want to spit on them.
Yesterday, I wandered along Rue St. Laurent, the equivalent of Austin’s 6th Street. I was searching for cheap, delicious pizza, and I found it at a place called “Madonna’s” on Prince Arthur and St. Laurent. It was a long walk, but it was worth it. I like the open-air cafés here, the constant buzz and the traffic. Even when you’re alone, it’s not really a lonely city.
I also managed to run right into the thick of a strike on the outskirts of campus. Amusingly, it was a strike by the McGill TAs. They’d been on strike since right before finals, at which point professors had hurriedly changed the formatting of their exams from essay to multiple-choice. Upon talking to the ringleader, I gathered that the TAs major grievances were the lack of professional recognition for the teaching part of the job (they want to be on-par with high school teachers) and the inadequacy of overtime pay. So I now sport my highlighter-yellow “I support the McGill TA strike!” button. Oh, the joys of unionization.
I must say, I felt quite proud of my ability to navigate the Metro stations this morning. I took the Metro to La Grande Bibliotheque Nationale du Quebec, which literally translates into “The big national library of Quebec.” The language barrier became slightly obnoxious when I was trying to figure out how to get a library card, merely because my limited French vocabulary does not include the necessary library words, nor does it include the words required to explain that I am in fact a resident of Quebec…but I don’t have bills, or anything else, to prove it. So tomorrow I go to the bank to try to get them to print a statement with my Montreal address on it. C’est intelligente, non? Because I don’t have a mail key right now, so I actually need the proof of residency in my hand.
On to the domestic: I figured out how to use a coffee brewer yesterday, mostly with Maggie’s phone help. She told me that the water goes in the back of the machine, not in the catcher, which explains why nothing was brewing even after I’d put in the coffee powder, or whatever they call it (they weren’t beans, so I can’t very well call them that). Also, I set off the smoke alarm a few days ago when I tried to pop a small bag of popcorn for three minutes (as the instructions said, I swear). So I wasn’t paying attention until the smoke alarm went off and the insanely nationalistic (more later) neighbors starting banging on the wall as though I’d done it on purpose. I was just bored, right, and so I thought ‘oh, what the hell’ and set off the smoke alarm to piss them off. What’s amazing is that smoke alarms usually indicate a fire, and they were just banging on the wall as though that would’ve helped any had there been a real problem.
Which there was, because now the apartment smells like burned popcorn even though the windows have been open all day and night.
Oh, but yes, the crazy-nationalist neighbors: our frighteningly tiny decks are adjoined, so I see their big blue Quebecois flag flapping in the wind. I find it amusing that the Quebecois are so fiercely nationalistic whereas the rest of Canada only becomes nationalistic when they leave the country (and even then only to differentiate themselves from Americans so as not to get scammed or stabbed). It’s like they’re not Canadian – they’re Quebecois, and don’t you forget it. So I found Neesha’s Canadian flag in the closet and have set to work attaching it to the railing outside, directly opposite the big blue Quebecois flag hoisted by the crazy-nationalist neighbors.
Yesterday I succumbed to the goodness that is timbits. For those of you who don’t know, timbits are Tim Horton’s doughnut holes. They are a reason to live unto themselves. The end.
There are some wicked things happening around the city in the next few weeks: The International Jazz Festival, obviously, and the Comedy Festival, both of which I plan to attend. But also smaller festivals – Eureka! Science Festival this weekend, where admission to the Science Museum is free (www.eurekafestival.ca); The Fringe Festival, an independent theatre festival all over the city (www.montrealfringe.ca); and this environmental festival with outdoor booths about sustainable energy sources (www.sne2008.com). Also, the Musee des Beax Arts is the first to have the Yves St. Laurent (post-mortem) exhibition, chronicling Mr. St. Laurent’s vast contributions to fashion (which I will go into another time).

I also went clubbing last night. It was nice to leave without the incriminating “X”s on my hands.
A plus tard.

2 Comments

Filed under Montreal

Tags: French, Fringe Festival, Jazz Festival, Montreal, Quebec, strike, Tim Hortons