english

Jul 19 2007

& found

tim hortons crew

An hour later the phone rang.
“Um, is this the person who lost his bag?”
My heart skipped two beats. “Yeah?”
“We’ve found it.”
I almost started to sob. I asked her until when she worked (“until ten”), called Alison with the good news and jumped, high on adrenaline, in the car.

First I drove to a cinema and then the whole 35 kilometres back to the Tim Hortons in Pierrefonds.

I gave all people working a cinema gift certificate (Not all of them could pose for this picture). They were happy and surprised about my generosity. I felt good because giving away things is fun. I still don’t know what exactly happened and why it took so long to find a bright red bag in an almost empty Tim Hortons but I don’t really care. Everything is still in the bag, and it doesn’t seem that anybody touched my computer since the same application is still active when I wake it up from sleep-mode.

Having it back saves me a lot of time and stress not having to recover files from backups and re-create stuff that I made today and yesterday on a current project that I hadn’t backed up yet… That is well worth the reward.

It’s funny how happy you can be with something you had a couple of hours ago that wasn’t particular special at that time.

Just losing things makes you realize how much you care about certain things. Maybe I should lose things more often. But I almost never lose things. Fortunately.

I have my camera back so I don’t have to buy a new one. And my bag! And my cigars, water-bottle and my dropjes! O… and my MacBook Pro too of course.

By • english, montréal, story, various •

Jul 15 2007

Developments

lac de la cabane

Our nice tranquil lake, with boats nor cottages, surrounded by pristine forests, dotted with majestic boulders, with its beautiful sandy beaches, its coconut palms…

Okay, I’m carried away a bit. But our very nice secret lake, an hour from Montréal but almost never frequented by any other living creature than deer, moose and otter… Oops, there I go again. Anyway, that lake is going to be spoiled. A developer lay its filthy hands on it and now he’s going to build cottages around it.

We went there today and found big signs with “Domaine Privé” and “Défense de circuler”. We ignored them for now, since it’s construction holiday and also to investigate. The lake is just as pristine as ever, but there was doom in the air. The doom of big trucks, by and builders coming in, to build monstrous houses. (For some reason people who can afford a second home in the Laurentians have no taste.) Followed by loggers on a mission to create lake views for the owners by logging all the trees between the lake and said houses.

It’s only weeks before they put big steel fences around it and declare it a real No-go area.

So I’m going to spill the secret and give you all detailed instructions how to get there. Rent a car and enjoy this really nice lake while you still can get in, albeit by ignoring some signs. If somebody tells you to go away tell them you come here for years and nobody ever told you to go away. They probably tell you that things have changed but I bet you can stay for the day if you tell them you came all the way from Montréal.

How to get there

First locate the lake on this Google Maps map. Follow the included driving instructions from highway 15 North to the parking area in Saint-Adolphe-d’Howard.

From there:

  • Park your car at the parking area on the Chemin de Val de Loire. It’s a rather big parking, for around 20 cars (so all readers of loglog can go at once; plan car-pooling in the comments), at the North side of the street, on the map above at the letter D (of “De-Loire”), just right of Lac Morgan.
  • Get out of the car, pack your things (sunscreen!) and enter the area by going through the big gate at the east side of the parking lot.
  • Turn left (NW) and follow the wide path. At a crossing there is a small cabin for cross-country skiers (there are not many of those around) and an orange plastic barrier.
  • Ignore the signs, walk around the barrier and continue on the narrowing path. Enjoy the nice ferns at both sides of the trail.
  • Cross a almost destroyed bridge (I bet one of those fat builders tried to cross) over a small stream.
  • You now approach an open area, with on your left a pumping station for the municipal water supply of Saint-Adolphe-d’Howard since our lake is their main reservoir. To the right you see the newly constructed road that leads to the new cottages, surrounded by big boulders.
  • Continue straight ahead, ignore another sign and follow the slightly sloping gravel road.
  • We’re almost there now. After a slight bend you’re at the highest point of the road and the magnificent “Lac de la Cabane” is right in front of you.
  • Follow the road 100 metres and there is the beach. Soon it will be a private beach, no longer accessible by us mere mortals, without hundreds of thousands of disposable dollars.
  • If you follow the path that starts at the other side of the beach you can go to a nice private rock.
  • A few hundred metres from the beach there is a large boulder, slightly hidden under the foliage.
  • Just before it is a small path passing on the left side of the boulder, and leading to a magnificent flat boulder that is an excellent starting point for a nice refreshing swim in the crystal clear (the whole village is drinking it) water. Clothes are entirely optional. A pillow or mattress might come handy however, since the rock is quite rough on your bum/back.
  • Enjoy your stay, don’t get sunburned, and please leave only your footprints.

Lakes should be public and not private. They’re part of the land that our ancestors stole from the natives. Well, maybe not my ancestors exactly, but you get my point.

If you don’t get my point you can always go to the developer’s site and buy one of the lots and have your dream house built. Be quick, they’re going fast. If you do, please invite me over once in a while. In return I can do some maintenance, I’m quite good at that. Then at least I can lay my eyes on “our” lake once in a while.

If you have access to other lakes please do not hesitate to email me.

By • canada, english, outdoors, rant, travel •

Jul 10 2007

Joint

joint

Invariably one of the first things people ask me when I tell them I’m from the Netherlands is if I smoke. I tell them I smoke cigars, but that wasn’t what they were interested in. They wanted to know if I smoked marijuana or hashish.

Well, I did. But not very often, and ever after I was kicked out of art school I smoked maybe 2 joints (and that was in the strict sense of the word, with others) a year. And I didn’t inhale. Okay that’s a lie, but when I inhaled I started to cough loudly, and that never went away, not even when I blowed (that’s the term used in the Netherlands for smoking softdrugs) regularly at art school. It always made people laugh, but I hated it since it prevented me from keeping the smoke in and getting high. Maybe I should have built a water pipe but that was just too much of a hassle.
So no, I’m not a pothead exactly. And I don’t know many people in the Netherlands that are, even though you can buy the stuff at almost every corner “coffee shop”.

To give an example, this joint we recived from Alison’s brother (the other brother, not the one that has pot-induced schizophrenia) as a Christmas gift, has still not been smoked, a year-and-a-halve later.

I figured I’m still not yet assimilated to Canada, when I read the following:

Marijuana use in Canada is the highest in the industrialized world, far higher than in the Netherlands where it’s legal, and more than four times the global rate, a report by the United Nations has found.

So it’s about time we smoke that joint.

By • canada, english, health, netherlands •

Jul 7 2007

Run

adidas

Hushhush. We’ve started running. Alison and I follow this “couch-potatoe to 5K”-schedule and so far it goes pretty well.

I’ll let you know when we’re going to run a marathon. Alison’s father just did that and also her cousin Lucy, who had never ran before, managed to finish the New York City Marathon after only a couple of months of preparation.

But it’s not our intention to run that far, it’s just to get us a bit into shape. Doing it together helps, we’re less likely to skip a scheduled run. Okay, we’re a bit behind the schedule already, but that’s not a big problem. Is it?

By • A., english, health, montréal •

Jul 5 2007

Crack

cracked marble

Sometimes, fortunately not very often, I get so mad that I break things. I rather break things than people so it could be worse. But it’s not exactly something I’m proud of.

This time it was a marble slab, used in our kitchen as a counter top. This piece was very old, older than I am, because it was the top of my baby dressing table.
I, and maybe all of my brothers and sisters, lay bare-bottomed on this marble when my diapers were changed. It was well cleaned before its new use as a kitchen table, don’t worry.

I also used it as a prop in “Musca“, the animation film I made nearly twenty years ago, and that I’ve recently put online.

And now I broke it, and not even by having wild sex on it. If only, then at least I had some fun while doing it.

I’m going to try to glue it, it’s a very clean crack.

By • english, home, montréal, movie, netherlands •

Jul 4 2007

Adirondacks

newt
Red-spotted Newt (Notophthalmus viridescens)

We both thought this was a salamander, that crossed our hiking trail in the Adirondacks, but after some research (thank you Google images) I found out it was actually a newt. I had never heard of newts, which is not so strange since names of animals in English usually don’t resemble the ones in Dutch. I often have no idea what to call the little and big creatures we encounter during our hikes. or so I looked for more information.

Newts are small, usually bright-coloured semi-aquatic salamanders of North America, Europe and Asia, distinguished from other salamanders by the lack of rib or costal grooves along the sides of the body.

So it was salamander after all. By googling the Linnaean name I found out the Dutch name is “Canadese watersalamander” which you can probably figure out without a translation. So this newt was in the wrong country. As many people are right now, but I digres.

Newts have the ability to regenerate limbs, eyes, spinal cords, hearts, intestines, and upper and lower jaws. The cells at the site of the injury have the ability to de-differentiate, reproduce rapidly, and differentiate again to create a new limb or organ. One theory is that the de-differentiated cells are related to tumour cells since chemicals which produce tumours in other animals will produce additional limbs in newts.

That would be so practical, especially for woodworkers. If you’ve seen Sicko you know why.

Many newts produce toxins in their skin secretions as a defence mechanism against predators. Taricha newts of western North America are particularly toxic; the Rough-skinned Newt (Taricha granulosa) of the Pacific Northwest produces more than enough tetrodotoxin to kill an adult human foolish enough to swallow a newt.

Mmm, a good thing Poupoune is not here, but is staying with the dog sitter.

This was the first time we went backpacking since a loooong time. We had the lean-to (a hut that is open on one side) for ourselves, even though it was the night before the 4th of July, American Independance Day.
We were afraid that all the nice spots would have been taken by Americans but we didn’t see a living soul (apart from the Newt) for two days.
Which was nice. Away from the busy job, the overdose of family the last couple of days and generally from it all. Relax a bit, even when that means hauling a heavy pack over hills. We should do this more often.

But with all Alison’s travel she’s glad to be at home once in a while. And we have to plan these things well in advance so we can reserve a spot at the dog lady.

Excuses, excuses, excuses…

By • A., english, outdoors, travel •

Jun 30 2007

Crossing

flat battery

If you ever need to cross the Canadian-USA border with ten kilos of drugs, a couple of guns or a dead body in the trunk, I have a tip for you.

Do as we did.

There was a long line for the border crossing, apparently we weren’t the only Canadians who thought that spending the Canada Day long weekend in the US was an excellent plan. The line in front of the customs stretched out all the way to the toll bridge. So since the road was on an incline I turned off the engine and when the cars in front of us moved I just pressed the clutch down and let the car move by gravity. This went on for more than an hour, but the final part of the line was on flat terrain so I had to start the engine in between the long periods of waiting.
Just when we were the first in line and it was finally our turn to approach the booth I tried starting the engine but it didn’t do a thing. The battery was completely flat. O shit, I forgot to turn off the lights and we were listening to the iPod so the lights had completely drained the battery.
I stepped out of the car, and started pushing. Immediately four US Immigration officers ran towards me. O shit, I though again. But they didn’t jump on me but instead went to the back of the car and started pushing until it was in front of the little booth. Four officers! No wonder those lines are so long.

Arrived at the booth the immigration officer refrained from all the questioning and the “trying-to-make-you-nervous”-spiel (that usually works with me) and just asked us where we were going and after we answered we could go. The same four officers gave us a push to a parking space a bit further along the road, I went inside to get my visa and to be fingerprinted (foreigners are all criminals) and that was it. That was by far my easiest border crossing ever.

After I received my visa, Alison single-handedly pushed the car (Okay, it helped that the road went down a little), I kick-started it into gear and we went on with our journey.

Please take advantage of this tip while you still can. I’m sure that when the US authorities read this loglog entry they will close this loophole immediately.

By • canada, english, travel, usa •

Jun 30 2007

iPhone

hello

What do you do when you are in the U.S. and Apple just introduced a new gadget?

You head to the Apple store and let your inner geek out. This photo was taken with an iPhone by myself so it’s a bit wide-anglish. I then mailed it to myself because that is the only way to get stuff of the phone.

iPhone itself is quite impressive. If I was into cell phones, had money to burn and lived in God’s own country, I might have been seriously tempted to buy one. But neither of these pre-requisites are met so I’m safe. But still it was nice to play with the thing for half an hour.

In the store there was a big table with 15 iPhones all logged in to the Wifi network so the connections were fast. The internet browser is absolutely fantastic and I can see you can actually read whole web pages. You can easily zoom in and out and scroll over any webpage just with your finger tip.

By • english, iPhone, tech, usa •

Jun 28 2007

Wii

wii

Christmas came early here. No, actually it came very late. Alison gave me a Wii as a birthday present on April Fools. For the uninitiated, a Wii is a game console; a box you attach to your TV and play games on.
These boxes however are really in short supply and it took us a couple of months to acquire one. Unlike in Europe, were friends of my, just put their name on a list and received their Wii [link in Dutch] six weeks later, here you have to visit the shops every day and ask if they have Wii’s. Or buy one on eBay or Craigslist for 100 dollars above the normal price.

We didn’t do that, because we are cheap, patient and not very close to a electronics stores. So we scoured the Internet, put the Wii product-pages of a couple of internet shops in our browser’s bookmarks and reloaded them every day a couple of times. And lo-and-behold, after many, many weeks, Tuesday one of the shops (I’m reluctant to tell you it was Futureshop, since I try to avoid them as the plague) had Wii’s in stock. Sixty of them when I started my order and nervously punched in my credit card number, and they had only 15 left after I received my order confirmation.

This morning the letter carrier (I can’t use the word “postman”, Alison will flog me) rang twice and handed me a big box. Inside was a much smaller box and I’m dying to open it but I’m going to wait until Alison returns from Toronto tonight.

After all, it’s my birthday present from her.

Update: she came home, tried to wrap the box, I stopped her because I knew that access to the wrapping paper was kind of blocked (that part of the basement is still a mess) and then she sang me Happy Birthday and the French equivalent.

And then we played boxing, bowling and tennis for a couple of hours. It was fun! Even though Alison beat me at bowling.

Can you believe it that this is the first game console I ever owned in my life? And that I used to make all my money making games?

By • A., english, home, montréal, tech •

Jun 27 2007

Hearing

briefcase

This day a year ago we bought our house. Today is also the hearing in our rent-increase-case at the Régie du Logement. I amassed all the paperwork I needed to proof that the rent increase is justified and even dug up my dusty briefcase from a moving box in the basement. I was prepared.

The meeting was a disaster. One of our tenants showed up in person and started a litany on how bad the shape of their apartment was. She forgot to mention that I actually spend the most time fixing their apartment. Even though the judge told her to shut up since this hearing was not about that it set the tone. I was the evil landlord and the judge was clearly against me. She didn’t buy my argument that we should be able to include the cost we made installing an alarm system, since it lowered our insurance premium. She also didn’t want to look at the amount we actually pay for the insurance but copied the amount from the policy, which didn’t include 250 dollars tax and service charges.

I also needed additional documentation on the amount of taxes the previous owner paid, and gave me two weeks to cough up those documents.

One positive point: Our tenants probably have to to pay the cost of the review by the Régie.

I left quite discouraged but fortunately after a while that feeling went away. We’ll see what the outcome will be, and how much we can actually raise the rents.

By • english, home, montréal, paper, rant •

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