Finally uploaded my video!

I finally managed to upload my video on the internet!!!! It is my very first amateur video, made with Windows Movie Maker. It is a compilation of my experiences in Groningen and my travels through Holland and Europe, compressed into a 13-minute video, so that you don't have to spend hours watching me browse through my gazillion photos from my stay.

A couple of things I want to mention :

* I know that the video is not perfect, that the captions are hard to read, that I may have forgetten a person or an event, but I lost the original project file so I can no longer make any modifications! My sincerest apologies if I didn't live up to someone's expectations! You are welcome to rant about this as much as you want in my comments.

* The resolution of the video was somewhat destroyed when it was processed by Google Video (Beta), so I suggest that you watch it in its original size and click the "smooth video" option (click on the small upside-down triangle on the bottom left-hand corner).

* For your interest, the soundtrack consists of :
1. boten anna by basshunter
2. altijd wel iemand by i.o.s.
3. boten anna (reprise) by basshunter
4. rood by marco borsato.
The last one is a personal favourite of mine - this song made the Dutch charts for weeks!

I look forward to getting your feedback! I hope that you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed making it!

Pêle-Mêle

I received a number of comments (public and private) about my last blog entry (Tragedy in Montreal). Thank you to everybody who took the time out to read it and respond to it. I am very appreciative of your feedback and contributions.

Since my entry, the impact of the Dawson College shooting continues to reverberate through the community. They have arrested a 15-year-old Québecer for threatening to do a similar shoot-out on his internet blog, published on the same site that the Dawson murderer used. Also, a journalist for the Globe and Mail published a hypothesis that killers executing shoot-outs in Montreal colleges and universities (3 since 1989) were "marginalized" by a community dominated by Québec francophone seperatists. This caused an uproar and stimulated responses from the whole nation, including from our conservatist prime minister, who basically accused the journalist (an anglophone Chinese Montrealer) of being prejudice against Québec culture.

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These past few weeks have passed by very quickly. I've been deliberately keeping myself busy with work, hobbies, and friends so that I don't spend too much time sitting at home alone driving myself crazy. This is also part of my process of rebuilding my Canadian life.

I met up with Sania a few times. I wanted to post her pic so that you all know who I'm referring to in my future stories. We've been sticking together for years now, since I first came to Montreal. We first got to know eachother when we worked on class projects together ("les polymères naturels", I still remember!). Last year, though, she abandoned Polytechnique to pursue her PhD at McGill, the top-notch University in Canada. Now we work in the same field! Sania is doing really great - her fiancé is coming back to Canada after a year of being abroad. She is as gorgeous as ever! Thanks, Sania, for saving me from the brink of insanity this past while!

Cam and I have been trying to have some fun together in the evenings. We don't actually see eachother very much since his work schedule at the Italian restaurant is exactly opposite to my own. We did manage to eat delicious sushi one evening and go bowling another evening. I missed bowling - haven't done that in a long while! Apparently they disourage throwing the balls around in the hall.

I made a resolution a while ago to start up my hobbies again when I returned to Canada. I realised when I was away that I've been neglecting my passions and hobbies for two years now. I like to say that the reason for this was to concentrate really hard on my research, but I'm not sure to what extent this is true. Maaike (in Holland) had a particular impact on me, by encouraging me to start singing again and being a role model for me as I witness her taking piano lessons and take cycling adventures across Vietnam.

So, last weekend, I enthusiastically auditioned for three different a cappella vocal groups associated with McGill University (the cream of the crop for music!). I thought that I did really well, and got a lot of positive feedback from the "judging panels" (I had to improvise Happy Birthday and Itsy Bitsy Spider, which brought me back to my singing telegram days!). But, in the end, I learned that I didn't even make it to callbacks - apparently almost 200 people auditioned for each group, and only about a dozen made it to callbacks. I was super disappointed to learn that I wasn't as good as I hoped I was, and I literally felt my bubble of confidence burst.

On the other hand, I am in two other groups this semester, both of which I'm paying to be members of so they can't really reject me. One is the Choeur en Jazz Montréal, an amateur vocal jazz group whose core is comprised of ex-members of SacaJazz, a group that I was in a few years ago but no longer exists. I am by far the youngest member and one of the only two anglophones, so I get to teach the francophones how to pronounce lyrics in English. The conductor that we hired this year, Philippe Bourque, is fantastic and I really enjoy working with him. The other group is an improvisation course, where we will be put into combos of 4 to 6, instruments and voice together. Our director, Jacques Carrier, is willing to work with me, not only with my singing skills, but also my piano! I've always wanted to learn jazz piano properly, and this is much more economical than taking private lessons! A real bonus there!

Other hobbies lined up for me are more career-related, though I consider them tp be fun since I actually like what I'm doing for a living. Throughout the school year, I'll be volunteering in a program called Éclair de Sciences. I'll be working as a consultant for elementary school teachers to help them with research and project themes in Science and Technology. During my training session, I learned that, since 2001, Québec has been completely reforming the school system. Instead of teaching the kids subjects like math, grammar, etc, the class works on a 2-year project that integrates all subjects in a practical, hands-on manner. They threw away traditional grading systems and replaced them with evaluations of their general competency (vs skills). When I intially learned this, I was frankly surprised. Then I realised how daring and exciting this approach is (a typical avant-garde yet positive step forward for Québec). I think it can really work in a world of kids saturated with facts from the internet. After all, I sailed through elementary and high school without learning any long-lasting skills, yet I always got top grades, if only because I learned to beat the school system with a sort of ape-like attitude (memorizing stuff, conforming to traditional writing patterns, etc).

I'll also be running for vice-president of the Biomedical Engineering Student Committee at school (I'll let you know if I get elected) and I'm considering getting involved in Engineering Without Borders, doing fundraising or something in order to reduce world poverty. How noble...

Work is keeping me busy during the weekdays (and evenings and weekends...). I'm simultaneously creating a powerpoint presentation, a poster presentation, writing an article, and pulling together a progress report. It's all supposed to be finished before I leave for Europe at the beginning of October, and I'm working like a dog to make sure I reach this goal.

Most recently, I went to a goodbye party for Caroline, a post-doc from France who's been in our lab for almost 2 years. It was fun to go out with the lab people for a social event, as this is a rare occurence in our group. Caroline was very sad, and I understand why. I warned her about reverse culture shock, speaking from experience. The morning after the party, I was the only one (among those who went out) that made it to work. I felt very hardcore! I guess my 24-hour energy training in Groningen came in handy after all!

Tragedy in Montreal

I was intending to write some stories about my life over the past few weeks but after the incident that happened this afternoon, I've decided to put aside the details of my own humble life for more pressing issue this entry.

As many of you, even around the globe, may have already heard, a gunman open fired at Dawson's College this afternoon. A little bit to my surprise, this event has affected me quite profoundly.

I was in a computer lab course when I got a call from my Aunt on my cell phone. Of course I could not answer in the middle of a lecture but I called her back during the 10 minute break. The first thing she asked me after 'hello' was 'where are you?'. 'A strange question', I thought, but I said that I was at school in the middle of class, to the relief of my Aunt and Grandmother. My Aunt then proceeded to tell me what happened. I didn't quite understand what she was talking about and went back to the lecture, wondering what this clip of news was all about. I noticed that during the second half of class, my colleagues were googling up the newsradio sites instead of following the lecture. After class, one student explained to the teacher what had happened. She googled up some news to see herself, and then I saw the headlines on the big projector screen connected to the teacher's computer. That's when it sunk in.

Once I learned what the situation was, I got feelings in the pit of my stomach that were similar to the time when I heard about 9/11 (I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news). Feelings of pain and sympathy for those directly affected by the tragedy, and feelings of vulnerability that this sort of terrible thing can victimize innocent people in a random fashion. I could have easily been in the Atwater area this afternoon, as I pass through there all the time. Cameron could have been there, since Dawson's is right next to his own school, Concordia University. My friends and family, people I'm close to, could have been there. The gunman opened fire outside of the college, inside the busy cafeteria, as well as at the Alexis Nihon mall across the street (a favourite hangout of my Aunt's).

The next thing that hit me was how this was so similar to the Ecole Polytechnique massacre that occured in 1989. The news reporters apparently don't want us to forget this parallel tragedy either. This historic massacre happened at my school. A guy decided that he hated feminists because he believed he wasn't admitted into our school due to reverse sexism. He ended up killing 14 people on school grounds, all females, in 20 minutes (don't quote me on the stats). I'm forced to remember the stories that my director told me once. He was there when it happened. He, a grown man, locked himself in his office, alone, for 4 hours (read his story firsthand in the comments). I couldn't say I know how it felt but I can just imagine. The students and teachers at Dawson's college apparently did the same, shutting themselves in classrooms and pushing desks against the doors to block the entryway.

My colleagues were affected to different degrees. Some took the news quite lightly and continued with their day. Others were in tears, particularly one colleague who has a daughter in another CEGEP (college) in Montreal. Her daughter has a friend at Dawson's who was right next to the gunman. She also witnessed her classmates burst into tears when they heard the news, those that had friends and family at Dawson's, some that they couldn't contact. I can only imagine.

The one question that's been pressing on my mind all afternoon and evening is why ?!?. What motive could he have had to randomly open fire a semi-automatic in a room full of 16 to 19 year-olds? He didn't yell out "I hate feminists!" like the Ecole Polytechnique gunman did. He only said "get the fuck away!" when the cops approached him with their own fingers on the trigger. It just seems so random. That just plain scares me.

This story is all over the news right now, making international news as well as local. I'm glad (well, moreso relieved) to see that I am not the only one affected by this event. Apparently it takes a sad and tragic event for people to support eachother, but I appreciate seeing that the rest of the world cares, too.

Old city, new life

This past week has been about adapting to my Montreal life again, emotionally and practically. While some things are the same as always, giving me the feeling that I'm home again, I've come to notice other things have changed. I'm also seeing the city and the people around me with a new pair of eyes, noticing things that I took for granted before or never noticed at all until now. This has led to a number of new realisations about my Montreal life.

Many of my recent events involve going out for dinner. I love the Dutch but I don't miss their food. Realisation #1 : Montreal is the best place for good, cheap food in the world. Boy, did I take that one for granted! Unfortunately this realisation is not going to help me lose the extra pounds I put on over the past few months!

My sister Lisa looks as adorable as always, with new WonderWoman boots and a porcelain doll face. She doesn't like her new haircut (which looks like mine!) but I think she looks great. We bonded over dinner at Casa Grecque, the restaurant where my family used to dine when my parents would visit. Realisation #2 : Lisa is my best friend in Montreal. It took us over 20 years to start clicking, but we're finally acting like sisters now.

I saw Odie, my anglo friend and also my #1 blog fan. We caught up with our gossip one evening in Chinatown. I wanted to take her to my favourite congee restaurant but it appears that they have closed - how sad! Odie is now officially a Canadian resident (congratulations!) and is seeking a way to continue her engineering career in Montreal.

Cameron and I went out for Indian dinner downtown. I insisted that we walk along rue Ste. Catherine, the main strip along downtown, so that I could check out the old and the new. Realisation #3 : At least 50% of the Montreal (downtown) population consists of freaks. There are people talking to themselves, people with their shirts on backwards, people with piercings on every body part, people horking on the sidewalk, people pissing on the buildings, and many people begging on the streets. I'm not too sure whether this eccentricity charming or just plain scary.

Lisa and I went to visit our grandmother and aunt the other day. I shared with them a video that I produced using photos and clips of my experiences in Europe (coming soon on the internet!). Grandma and Aunty Pat seemed to like it OK, but in the end they just asked for printed pictures of me with the tulips. I guess anything high-tech is just not interesting for them. They are doing well, though, as both of them seem healthy and happy enough. Lisa asked them about our family history for some research she's doing on the internet for fun. Realization #4 : I barely know anything about my family tree. This is something that I should learn by the time my kids are grown. I also realised just how old my grandmother is. I won't publish just how old, but darn, she's doing well for her age!

Since I've really gotten into my blog hobby, I take my camera everywhere. So, taking advantage of this fact, I took pictures of Aunty Pat with their neighbour Jenny's dog, named Diamond (the dog's name, that is). Aunty Pat looks so young and happy when she's playing with animals!

I bought a brand spanking new mobile phone this week. I felt a serious need to get one after constantly using a mobile in Holland (my lifelines were my phone and my laptop). It's a kind of toyota truck phone (Samsung) that Mike, the Fido rep, called a gangsta phone. That about describes it (the default wallpaper was a cruising car). It has so many features on it (voice recorder, video, camera, bluetooth, internet, games, task manager, world phone,..) that, to be honest, I'm kind of scared of it. I wanted a simple phone when I went in the store but somehow came out with this. I think it will grow on me and soon be indispensable. The downfall is that owning a mobile is soooo much more expensive in Canada than in Europe! We are so behind the times!

I took pictures with my phone camera this evening. I decided to visit some people of the neighbourhood. I ran into the "crazy old man" (long story) that lives in my building on the way out. He was bleaching the hall floors (he is also our "concierge") and bitching about 3 specific people abusing the floors with spilled coffee and such. He said that he hasn't seen me on my bike lately. This made me laugh... I've been on a bike everyday for the past half year, just not in Montreal!

I went to visit the local dépanneur (a.k.a. Québecois convenient store), seen here in a camera phone pic. The owner from Korea has built himself into being character in the lives of me, Cameron and Lisa (Lisa used to live in my apartment building across the hall). Often he talks and talks about his new exercise regime or about politics involving Korea. This time he didn't talk long but he did recognize me despite that it's been months since I've been there.

Tonight I also went to get a pepperoni pizza from Deno's, which is conveniently located around the corner (also a camera phone pic). They have the best pizza in Montreal (according to votes casted by myself, Cameron, Lisa, and Mom). George, the owner, recognized me as well. Realization #5 : I must have bought a lot of pizza in my day. He asked me if I worked in broadcasting because I have the face and voice of someone who should be on television. That was very flattering.

Oh yeah, and I've just discovered that sending myself pictures from my phone to my email address is, I believe, expensive. So don't count on seeing too many more in my blogs.


For your general interest, I am compiling a summary of
the things I missed about Montreal :

* The food (Deno's pizza, Chinatown, authentic Indian, Greek, Portugese, etc.)
* The hustle and bustle (real sirens, police, crowds, shopping, bars, festivals)
* Chuckling at tourists and giving them directions
* The freaks
* The local news show in the morning (CTVam!)
* The metro (though way expensive now because student discounts apply only to kids up to 25 yrs old)
* The variety and multiculturism (how cliché!)
* The mix of old buildings (relative to the rest of Canada, not Europe) and new
* Walking to/from school (up and down the hill)
* The gay village (particularly cross-dressers)
* My family and friends