There’s no way for me to really explain the protracted sectarian strife in Lebanon except to call it the strange by-product of internal dissatisfactions and external pressures. The narrative of Lebanese history has, at its locus, a fear that the bonds tying the Lebanese people together won’t withstand the inevitable interplay of domestic and international power shifts. When the communal identity is as important as–if not more important than–the national identity, peace is both precious and fragile. The people of Beirut, at least, seem to have an understanding of life unlike anything I’ve ever encountered: They’re simultaneously connected to and separated from everyone around them; open, yet cautious; lighthearted, yet oddly burdened. There’s a shared experience that can’t be duplicated–the experience of 15 years of civil war, 30 years of military occupation by Syria, an assassinated prime minister, and a devastating invasion in 2006. Largely because foreign powers in the early 20th century adopted local groups–with the Russians protecting the Orthodox Christians, the Brits protecting the Jews, the French protecting the Maronites and the Ottomans protecting the Sunnis–many of the ethnic groups today create alliances outside of Lebanon. They view each other as different states inhabiting the same system. Then, too, there are the altogether common problems of mandate territories: arbitrary political boundaries, lack of a larger identity that can withstand factionalism, and a rapidly changing socioeconomic landscape that forces exchange on a world stage. There’s also the question of who the Lebanese are–whether they’re ancestrally Arab and Syrian, Phoenician, African, or Asian–and how feasible the political structure will prove to be, with the constitution mandating that the president be Maronite, the speaker of the house Sunni, and the Cabinet and House seats split 50-50 between Christians and Muslims. 

Interesting things to come, with Lebanon. The calm is young, yet, and the nation’s foreign policy is an enormous point of contention between local groups. The domestic balance of power changes with international alliances, and Lebanon’s political and historic position in the Middle East, as well as the personal beliefs of its citizens, are very much at odds with its desire to remain both (arguably) the most open economy in the region and a modernizing force in the eyes of the “West.”

Yesterday I saw Mamma Mia! in theaters. It wasn’t especially well-made, and the younger actors were obnoxious and–well, bad, honestly. But Pierce Brosnan and Meryl Streep were good, and the music was lovely. I was surrounded by single old women in the theater, which I suppose put into perspective life as a whole. After all, whether you’re 20 or 80, you’re on your own at the end of the day.

What has happened to society’s men? What has happened to the notion of courtship, of working to woo the affections of a woman? — Or have so advanced as a society that men feel that since women are always griping about equal rights, why bother with flowers, letters, general romance and effort? I’m deeply offended by this idea, held by so many men I encounter, that if they deign to express interest in a woman and she doesn’t come running, they’ve no business courting her. Some of the greatest love stories of our parents’ generation took place when women were allowed to play the coquette and men were permitted to pursue. Now I, for one, am a tremendous feminist, and I make well known my view that a woman’s place is wherever she wants to be; however, I don’t feel as though remembering the de facto rules of pursuit and courtship and love conflict at all with women’s rights. The vast majority of women I’ve met enjoy being pursued, whereas the vast majority of men I’ve met feel they’re above pursuit, and that if they order her a beer and pay for it they can continue watching the game in peace and expect to get some later that night. I would never dare attribute the failed relationship rate to something as flighty as this, but I can’t help but wonder whether the new-age stigma attached to gender roles — viewing them as outdated and unaccepting, on the whole — has caused us to drop those that give us potentially useful operating guidelines with respect to the other sex. Perhaps I should have been born in a different century, but is it so unviable that we women, for all of our desire to be seen as equals in the economic, political, and other arenas, still wish to be treated as women in issues of love?

I’ve acquired an obsession with shoes. Not even wearing them, really — just owning them, looking at them lovingly, caressing them.

I went to Caffe ArtJava yesterday for breakfast. I curled up with my book, my iced mocha and my incredibly sweet, chewy, perfectly-toasted-and-buttered Montreal bagel with cheddar.

When I walk down the street in the sunlight, staring at everything around me, I feel like I’m in some sort of movie and that there should be an Ingrid Michaelson soundtrack in the background. Coming here has been the best thing I’ve ever done for myself.

On another note, I wrote another article for altmuslim.com, this time about the recent capture of war criminal Radovan Karadzic and whether it’s really “justice” for the Bosnian people, as the international community seems to be claiming.

People keep asking me whether weed is legal up here. To my understanding, Canada’s marijuana laws are under dispute. It hasn’t been wiped off the criminal code or the controlled substances statutes, but most police officers don’t seem to prosecute for it. This I gathered from a mixture of online sources and my daily discussions with the Haitian cab drivers who loiter around my gym, all of them high as kites at any given hour. Apparently, over half of the Canadian population maintains that marijuana should be legalized altogether, rather than simply decriminalized as it may well be. The percentage of people who echo that sentiment has actually risen since the new administration took over, trying to enforce anti-drug laws and imposing higher fines on public smokers and private cultivators. These criminal charges are still relatively tame, as they put marijuana dealers behind bars for up to a year if they sell as part of organized crime or if they’re involved in violence; and up to two years if they sell to youth or frequent schools. That seems fair. Basically, it seems the only reason all of these marijuana laws don’t hold up in Canada is because the Canadian government will never take away the right to use marijuana medicinally, as did the U.S. under Attorney General John Ashcroft around 2000. So in an effort to protect the right to use medicinal marijuana, the government has to have some licensed dealers or allow people to grow their own weed. The federal government certainly won’t provide it, but it needs to be readily accessible, so they can’t stringently regulate it, either.

On a side note, the medicinal uses of marijuana span from treatment of epilepsy to Crohn’s disease to multiple sclerosis.

And by the way, there’s actually a political party called The Marijuana Party of Canada. Wild guesses as to what its platform consists of?

http://www.altmuslim.com/a/a/a/2769/

Last Tuesday, my train hit a truck and de-railed. I was on my way back to Montreal from Toronto. This is the stuff movies are made of. It was supposed to be a 5-and-a-half hour train ride, but about half way there was a truck stalled on the tracks. Apparently the truck driver got out and tried to flag down our train, and then jumped off the tracks when he realized we were paying no heed and were going to charge into his truck full-speed. Besides suffering from a bit of whiplash, I was okay after the initial hit. The old woman in front of me was not so lucky; nor were the passengers in the first couple of cabins, who got hit pretty hard. The train stopped in a cloud of smoke and debris, and we were told that the engine was smoking and that some of our cars had de-railed. The power was gone, so there was no air conditioning. And the paramedics were on their way.

Six hours later, the woman in front of me had had the gash in her head tended to and we were still waiting in the unbearable, stagnant heat. So many people, so little water. And the toilets were malfunctioning, so no one could go to the restroom. Felt like a railroad version of the Titanic, honestly. People were angry and hungry and it was getting dark outside. Our train was obviously not in working order, so a terrible half hour later, we were being pushed backward by another train coming from the opposite direction on the tracks. We ended up in Gananoque about forty minutes later. There were coach buses in a makeshift parking lot, and then we waited another forty-five minutes or so while the first class passengers comfortably disembarked and got on their appropriate buses. Only then were the rest of us cattle-herded onto buses. My big polka-dotted suitcase and I had no problems pushing through the masses. I had to pee, damn it.

Once on the bus, we realized that our bus driver didn’t actually know how to get to Montreal. A little bit of seat-changing later, we had knowledgeable guides stationed up in the first row, yelling directions in the driver’s ear. I, meanwhile, had taken to my Sex and the City DVD, much to the shock of the old women caddy corner from me. Sex and the City is as R-rated as daytime HBO shows come, and the nudity isn’t anything to scoff at. The women behind me, however, were pursing their lips and making small bird noises in astonishment. I entertained the idea of putting away my laptop, but these weren’t normal circumstances and I didn’t particularly care who I was offending. I had checked the area to make sure there were no children, and I figured everyone else there was over the age of 30 and had probably had sex enough times to watch it on television. Or they could look away from my 15-inch screen. I did notice, though, that the old biddies sat riveted during the especially graphic scenes, and only sniffed their disapproval when the scenes were over.

The International Fireworks Festival ended yesterday. It was Australia’s turn to orchestrate their fireworks to music, and they went out with a bang. Har. I watched the festivities from my balcony, alternatively paying attention to the splendor of the fireworks and the antics of the drunk young folk singing Nelly’s “It Wasn’t Me” in the street.

In as short a time as six weeks, I’ve made this city my own. Yesterday I took the bus and chatted to the bus driver, who only spoke French. She dropped me off by a mall called the Rockland Centre, which boasts two H&M stores. Sadly and predictably, I’ve stylistically outgrown H&M. I found some cute things, but I wasn’t bowled over by the overwhelming variety like I was a few years ago.

I’ve taken to warily combing over my bathtub before getting in to shower. I have no idea where these spiders come from, but there must be a colony of them somewhere because they keep ending up on my ceiling. And then I feel really bad when I kill them, though frankly, they shouldn’t continue scaring me like this. Well, I’ve gotten used to them — at least to the point where I can let them live as long as they don’t interfere with my soaping process.

Has anyone seen the cover cartoon of Obama on last week’s The New Yorker? Does anyone besides me think it’s a completely ineffective satire? For goodness sake, it required a post-publication press release. Good satire does not require explanation after it’s been published.

Wait — pause. I was talking to Malcolm last night and he said something (well, a couple of somethings) that rang pretty true. First, he said that I “feel a lot.” This is incredibly perceptive. I’m a person of much feeling. I feel sad, happy, angry — the things that others feel — but I feel them intensely. So it’s not just sad, happy, and angry; it’s despondent, jubilant, and furious. And then, I tend to act on my feelings more than others. I analyze them, ponder them, worry about them. Damn, it’s exhausting. I need to figure out what to do about all these feelings that overwhelm me. And secondly, he said that I’m the kind of person to whom you could say “shoes” or “trees” or a general noun of that variety, and I would immediately begin vocalizing my complete and utter awe for it. Which is also true, and, amusingly, is something Ravi suggested I do in his last email. Not in quite the same way, but with the same end result: that of truly appreciating and understanding the object or concept at hand. [Let me pause within my pause and say that I'm always flattered when people point out non-insulting quirks of mine because it gives me a warm fuzzy akin to that of feeling loved].

Which brings me to emails, and how much I love and appreciate them. I don’t ever really feel inarticulate, but in emails (and in writing of any sort, really) I feel immeasurably more eloquent, and can thus express the small intricacies of my day with ease. There I go with the “feel”s again. Also, writing an email has the added benefit of speaking exclusively to a single person, and in a manner you might not feel comfortable speaking face-to-face.

I’ve been in Toronto since Friday morning, thus the title of this post. All of my family is in Toronto, so I get taken care of and have company for a few days (I leave Tuesday). Since I took Coach Canada here for my last trip to Toronto, I took Via Rail here on Friday, thinking that I might as well try the train this time. MCAT girl had just taken her MCAT the previous day (and I had packed her a little exam care package that I was quite proud of) and she walked me to the train station, ate a pastry-and-Tim Hortons breakfast with me, and waited in line for the train to come. She headed to Lisbon on Friday, and it was the last time I’d see her for a long while (probably until I re-visit Montreal). It was really quite sad, actually. She was my best friend in this city and, in the span of a month, actually became a closer friend to me than so many of the people I’ve known for so much longer. When speaking to one another, we divulged emotions with worrisome ease. Or maybe it was just worrisome for me. In any case, I’m going to miss her. She was one of the best things to come out of this trip.

So apparently I look like a nice person, which is why no matter how hard I try to avoid the gaze of a new passenger on a train or bus, she zeroes in on my face and then the empty seat next to me. And then my trip always takes a turn for the worse. This particular six-hour train ride was doomed from the start because of the two teenage boys sitting caddy corner to me. They were of the wannabe-adult variety, which means they were complaining and speaking loudly. A telltale sign of attempted and failed maturity, in my opinion. The most amusing lines were undoubtedly, “Dude, you look so much like Voldemort,” “I think if you pay 200 bucks for a train ride you should at least get a blow job,” “What do you mean, I couldn’t work at Chippendales?” and “Don’t think too hard, you might shit yourself.”

And then I found out that they were, of course, American.

I visited little baby Daanial on Saturday. This is interesting because people who know me know that I hate ill-behaved children (which happens to be most of them…perhaps all those not related to me, in fact). I spent the entire hour-and-a-half prayer ceremony in mosque on Friday night cursing the children surrounding me because I couldn’t hear anything going on thanks to their incessant whining and screaming and pouting. I will whack my kid upside the head if he dares to pull that crap in public. But that’s besides the point. These kids were throwing tantrums during prayers, throwing their toys in other people’s laps, and just generally being nuisances. In any case, I went to see Daanial and his parents (my aunt and uncle) on Saturday.

And I’m pretty sure I started crying — the silent tear kind of crying – at least twice. Because I loved him. I loved him because he was my cousin, yes, but also because I picked him up and rocked him and felt his fragility, his malleability, through his little blanket and tiny wrinkly body. It was one of the most incredible experiences of my life, I kid you not. And of course most people have had this experience before. How was I so completely unaware of the joy that babies inspire? This was so new to me, this fresh, unadulterated creature. He was so pure and so frog-like. So alien to me. I wasn’t sure what to do with him, so I sanitized my hands very, very well and then picked him up and didn’t move for fear I’d break the spell that was keeping him asleep in my altogether untrained and embarrassingly inexperienced arms. And I started thinking about how this little thing was so loved by everyone around him — so, so loved. And how his mother fed him and his father burped him and they stayed up all night with him and kissed him and held him closely to them. And how they had already begun prioritizing their lives around him, this little 5-pound-14-ounce boy who wouldn’t remember their astonishing, powerful love when he befriended popular kids and started saying and doing the multitude of things children do with reckless abandon for their parents’ feelings. Children are heartbreaking. Why didn’t I know this before?

I am absolutely obsessed with Boston Legal. Usually, when I try to eat healthfully I get really cranky. But this time I have Alan Shore and his brilliant closing statements at trial. So I’m good. Until I finish the season (so probably Wednesday).

I’ve noticed this blog is become less about what I do and more about — who’s got it? — how I feel. That’s okay, I think.

On Sunday I went to the Toronto International Centre with my other aunt and uncle and their three kids. And then my aunt’s sister’s kids were there too, and that made seven kids between the ages of six and 13. I played babysitter for a while and got to eat biriyani and see Janu, so that was nice. I haven’t been to the International Centre for a long, long while — it was basically an annual celebration put on by and for the Ismailis in Toronto. I remember being there a lot as a child, and riding the spinning apple ride. It attracts about 15,000 people that single day, and it was really  warming to see a community I had left and yet was still so much a part of.

I’m overwhelmed at night. Last night I had a dream that I was in both law school and med school at the same time, and so I literally never slept and was driving myself insane.

Which brought me to the belief that I should have a poetic death, whenever it happens. A bit random, but still appropriate, since I sometimes feel as though I toe the fine line between sanity and insanity.

Oh, but back to the words! I love them — the way they sound and the way I feel when I read them somewhere. “Rhapsodies” and “abject” and “duplicitous” and “insouciant” and “eschelon” and “behoove” and “circumspect.” They’re so unique in meaning and sound, and they make my brain spin and my mouth stretch in an attempt to own and contain them.

Not sure how this is at all relevant to anything, so it’s going under “Miscellaneous Musings.”

So I would say that I’ve grown, in the last month here, but if I didn’t explain what I mean I  would be doing a great disservice to the few of you who read this and actually care.

I’ve come to believe that sometimes, the best way to understand people is to remove yourself from them. Which is, incidentally, what I’ve done here. I see MCAT girl occasionally, and I see some of the other people I know here once every three days or so, but it’s a couple of hours at most. The rest of the time I’m left with myself, and that, my friends, is a frightening thing. I don’t know a lot of people who spend considerable chunks of time alone, who carve out pieces of the day because they love themselves enough to say “no, actually I can’t go to dinner tonight, I’m going to be [insert reading, bubble bath, painting nails, writing in journal, meditating, etc.] – by myself.” And I wasn’t sure I wanted to be anything like the few people I know who do say that.

But I plan to. Because at the end of the day, I like myself more than I like most of the people who surround me — and I doubt I’m alone when I say that [har. pun]. The scary part, right now — the part that’s making me uncomfortable when I sit at work for seven hours a day, and take the bus and the metro, and walk to the gym, and make dinner and eat it alone — is fighting all of the thoughts that I’ve kept simmering just below the surface of my conscious mind for the last six months. Allowing myself to think without reigning in my thoughts, without suffocating them all with constant activity, is simultaneously liberating and horrifying, depressing and uplifting. But imagine! Imagine going through life and being okay wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, because you’re so comfortable with yourself. Never feeling lonely, never allowing external influences to leave you bereft, never allowing anything to destroy your sense of worth.

I’m being friendly to my thoughts. I’m letting them come and go as they please, and I’m greeting them when they enter and sending them off with little gifts when they leave. I’m dealing with all of the injustices and the hurts and the ugly, ugly feelings, and smiling and saying “Hello, friends! I’ll give you all a chance to voice your opinions, just as long as you promise not to rip my soul in half. Great. Thanks.”

Learning to live with myself, by myself, has been growth. The whole thing reminds me suspiciously of Thoreau’s experience at Walden Woods, save for the small issue of my inability to produce philosophy of that caliber. But I suppose I am trying to “live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

When I came to Montreal I had huge expectations — of partying, and meeting people, and lying in bed exhausted each night from the fun and adventure of it all. But I’ve found that things are no less adventurous when they’re calm, and that living isn’t necessarily measured in the accumulation of major experiences. It sounds terribly trite, here on paper: kind of a pathetic summary of my findings so far. That’s okay. There’s more that I haven’t quite placed yet.

I’ve managed to come up with several resolutions for the fall, and I’m looking forward to testing them out once things get under way.

On a less introspective note, yesterday I went to Schwartz’s for an early dinner. Schwartz’s is incredibly famous and actually has a money exchange counter inside it because so many Americans cross the border just to eat here. Which isn’t surprising, given the American affinity for meat. Because that’s what Schwartz’s is — a tiny smoked meat place, a “Montreal Hebrew delicatessen” with the best meat I’ve tasted in a long time. And I’m not even very fond of meat.

So I highly recommend it, if you’re ever up here. A hole-in-the-wall, but everyone knows where it is, and the line of people waiting falls out the door and against the neighboring stores.

Several things happened this week.

Let me just pause to say that the more time I spend alone, the more I enjoy spending time alone. This may mean either or both that I’m naturally reclusive and/or that I like myself more than I used to. I’m going to go with the latter because it makes me feel good. I find myself making up stories in my head, speaking as though I would to a really close friend. It’s really very nice, and I can’t believe I never realized how much enjoyment I got out if it. (Well that just makes me sound like a schitzo, doesn’t it?).

People I don’t know seem to feel the need to divulge life secrets to me. Sure, I’ve only been stopped for directions six or seven times since I got here, but yesterday morning it was pouring rain on my way to work and I was standing the intersection of Sherbrooke and Aylmer with an umbrella above my head, shielding my new leather purse like it was my baby — er, scratch that, like it was a new leather purse. I probably wouldn’t shield a baby, if we’re being honest here. Anyway, the man standing across from me was miserably hanging his head and letting the rain get into his glasses and just not caring a bit, so I asked him if he was okay. That’s all, just “are you okay?”

And I swear to you, he looked up at me for a second and said, “my wife left me this morning.”

So it took me a second to realize he wasn’t going to follow up with “…to get some eggs and milk,” or anything, and he seemed to expect me to say something more than the requisite “I’m so sorry!” (which, of course, I said the minute I realized she’d left him, left him. As opposed to leaving him). In an unsurprising display of my ineptitude for dealing with awkwardness, I said, “Is she coming back?” and was instantly mortified that that had escaped my mouth. I am such an inconsiderate bitch when I’m caught off guard, seriously. But he sort of glazed over and said, “I don’t know. I hope so.” To which I wanted to reply, “GO GET HER, MAN! NOTTING-HILL STYLE!” But didn’t want to add insult to injury. A good choice, in retrospect.

From July 3rd to the 13th, there are sidewalk sales everywhere. I learned that in the mall, “sidewalk sale” just means that the cheap things are put on a table somewhere, and they’re not that cheap, either. I’ve also learned that despite making a decent hourly wage here, I spend it quickly. And not on fun things, sadly. More like milk, eggs, stamps…that sort of thing.

Speaking of stamps, I got my first letter today, from the lovely Adriane! And I was infinitely grateful to her.

Last Monday I went to my first salsa lesson at Club 6/49, where I’m also going this Sunday night to watch the So You Think You Can Dance? – Montreal competition. Salsa consisted of an hour-and-a-half class after a $1.50 donation at the door. Women and men lined up across from each other and learned basic steps, and then partnered up and practiced as the men were forced to rotate ’round the circle like wind-up monkeys. I was hit on by a couple of creepy middle-aged men, one of whom is from Cuba and has apparently been dancing since he had feet (that’s what he said. Not the “since I could walk” that most people would use, but “since I had feet”). Jorge says I have potential. By which he probably means the potential to hook up with him, since he is, as I said, a rather creepy, tall Cuban man whose voice sounds like that of an evil count. Too bad I’m not into that kind of thing. So that was salsa. Why I was the youngest person at a beginners’ salsa lesson is beyond me, but I suppose old people, too, are entitled to dance lessons and fun and that sort of frivolity. I’ll be returning next Monday because, creepy men aside, it was actually great fun to learn.

On Wednesday I went to the Ladytron concert at La Metropolis, and it was AMAZING. I was surprised because I’m not a huge fan of electro-pop and I’ve only heard a couple of their songs, but I loved it. Datarock opened for them, which was less amazing, but still okay. Datarock kind of skirts the border between really hoppin’ rock (and I mean hoppin’ in the literal sense, since all they do is hop up and down in a style we South-Asian folk like to call “bhangra”) and noise pollution. The first single off their new CD is excellent, though. And then of course, Ladytron was a trippy, wonderful experience that had my whole body vibrating and feeling oddly liberated. I’m a big fan.

On Thursday I was way exhausted at work, so I ducked out early and stopped at the library on my way home. I love the library. It’s connected to the Berri UQAM metro station, the only station in Montreal where all of the various lines meet in a hub of chaos and missed connections, with people frantically shoving old ladies out of the way to get to the next destination, running down escalators in herds and taking unkindly to any disturbance. Oh, and the central bus station is attached to the metro station, so that makes it all the more insane. But you enter the double doors of the library and oh — peace. Calm. And I can breathe again, I kid you not. I take deep breaths and my heart is infinitely happier, just thinking of the books I have on hold and the very concept of borrowing books to read. And I love seeing people sitting in the aisles, sifting through titles and smiling. I love the aura of the library, and the smell of the books, and the five floors — FIVE floors! — available to me. So many unread books, a life can’t even contain them all. I love the simple process of searching a book in the online catalogue, and then the feeling in my chest as I near the author’s name, closer and closer, my eyes darting around the area where the book should be until finally they land on it, little gem in a cluster of rocks, waiting to be slipped out from amongst friends. God. The library is the highlight of my week, anywhere in the world. If I have books, I’m fine. I’m at home.

So I found a cheap threading place close to work. It’s shady, of course. Why are they always shady? You walk in and they lead you into a dimly lit back room, where you lie on a plastic-covered hospital cot wondering whether you’re in the right place or whether they’ll actually remove the hair from your eyebrows before they cut you up and feed you to the homeless in the back alley. I, personally, would like to go out clean and hairless. Furthermore, threading is the oddest thing: a piece of thread, normally associated with pleasant sewing sounds and moms and, ok, maybe Indonesian children in sweat shops, ripping the hair out of you. It’s like how eye drops give you diarrhea. Sort of. Well, in the sense that they have a better use…nevermind.

Way too much walking in this city. We went clubbing last night, a place called Fou-Foun’s that had a giant spider above it and was filled with young people. I couldn’t really feel my feet after the thirty-minute walk there, but it’s all in the name of fun. Ha.

Since I started taking the bus to and from work, I get off, immediately sanitize my hands, and rush home to take my vitamins. Paranoid? No. Because you have not seen the people with whom I ride. You have not witnessed the woman whose fungus-infested toenails grate across the back of the seat in front of her as she sits, legs open, crotch easily accessible to her gnarled fingers. You have not stood next to the Germ Man, who babbles every morning to the person nearest him and coughs an average of three times per sentence, never closing his mouth, so that you want to tap him on the shoulder and explain that, see, in bio class, they taught you that the proper way to cough is into your sleeve, so that the germs travel at 128 mph into the fabric instead of onto the poor girl next to you. You have not witnessed the Dandruff Guy, who pulls his iPod ear phones out and shakes his head only to cover everyone around him with — and this is disgusting — flakes of his scalp.

I hope your sympathies are with me.

There were fireworks down at Old Port as part of the fireworks festival that’s been going on for the last few days. The fireworks are set to music and countries compete to see whose orchestration and presentation is most pleasing. Garlic Bread Guy and I headed down to meet some friends at Old Port; unfortunately, we walked about an hour until we reached the base of the fireworks (just in time for the finale) and then realized that our friends were far closer to home than we were. So we threw ourselves into vats of chicken corn soup and general tsao’s chicken in Chinatown.

Today I bought my tickets for the Ladytron concert on Wednesday! WOOOO! Also exciting: Spain won the Euro Cup! MORE WOOOO! I love soccer fans. They’re insane, streaking down the streets, waving their shirts and screaming “Ole! Ole!” and stumbling over things in their drunken ecstasy.

Everything is absurdly expensive here, in case I haven’t mentioned it enough times. Droves of jazz-fest tourists are shuffling down Cote Ste. Catherine, sucked into sales that aren’t really sales at all, ooh-ing and aah-ing over street vendors’ jewelry and clogging up major traffic arteries as they peer over each other to see robot mimes on milk crates and men jiggling a couple of spoons together. It’s appealing, if kitsch.

I’d like to take a second to thank everyone who’s kept in touch with me while I’m here. It’s my lifeline to security and familiarity, and it’s much-needed in a new city.

In less sentimental news, I’ve managed to start holding full conversations in French without premeditation. That’s a feat.

I’ve been reading a local paper called “Mirror,” and I’ve decided to post a sampling of the more amusing things I read:

There’s a queer-themed dance fundraiser called “Faggity-Ass Fridays.” It promotes a secure, respectful environment for the queer community to receive sex education whilst partying their asses off.

And, on the open city bulletin:

Club Anonymous: Support for women who are alone. Info: ppfwy@yahoo.com

Co-Dependent Social Group: If you are a co-dependent wanting to meet other people who are co-dependent for mutual support and to make new friends, email us at whybelonely@hotmail.com (I swear I’m not making these up).

Fathers 4 Justice Montreal West: A support group for fathers who are feeling abandoned, betrayed and persecuted by the system. You are not alone. We can help and we will listen. (What’s amusing and slightly disturbing is that the mere existence of this group means there’s at least a tiny market for it).

Quebec Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Foundation

Recovering Couples Anonymous (RCA): 12-step program that teaches you how to have a committed, intimate relationship.

Women Who Dare: Rejoice and celebrate the female body. It’s all about open-minded and independent women who dare to express and explore their passionate side. The Passion Club will include book reviews, attending workshops, the latest craze in sex toys, guest sexuality speakers and more.

Tall Club of Montreal: Social club for men (+6’2″) and women (+5’10″) of above-average height. Meet for diverse activities throughout Montreal and the region.

The Sidewalk Chalk Art Brigade: Sidewalk chalk art as art education and self expression. An intergenerational project open to all.

Rustic Branch Building Courses: Rather than sending your branches to the dump, learn how to recycle them by creating chairs, bird baths, side tables and living fences.

Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous: 12-step groups for those wishing to stop living out a pattern of sex and love addiction. Includes Sexual Anorexia and (Re)Building Partnerships. (Why is everything always in 12 steps?)

The Prisoner Correspondence Project: Seeking penpals to correspond with queer and trans prisoners for friendship and support.

A sampling, if you will.