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July, 2007

  1. Live Music and Korean BBQ Rescued the Weekend

    July 16, 2007 by Gail

    strobed
    Jason rocking out at Clinton’s

    I have to thank James for saving me from squandering a perfectly good weekend on wielding screwdrivers (the non-alcoholic kind), IKEA shelving assembly, and a whole lotta cleaning. All necessary, mind you, but after two days of not doing anything else I was ready to make a break for it. At 8pm Sunday I was wrestling with an Allen key and a stubborn bolt, and I tossed it all aside to get cleaned up and head for a pub called Clinton’s where James said his nephew’s band was playing at 8:30.

    I met up with James and some of his family at the pub, but apparently there was a double-booking of bands that bumped all the starts to later in the evening and shrunk the set times. The band wouldn’t get on stage until 9:30.

    So what do we do? Why eat, of course:

    it hit the spot
    tasty tastiness

    yum!
    yum!

    If you’ve never tried Korean food before, you are sorely missing out. Some of the dishes might be a tad spicy for Western palates, but it’s easy enough to avoid the chili peppers. I don’t know a lick of Korean to read their menus, but I’ve never eaten any Korean food I didn’t like. All you have to do is look at some photos and ask a few questions if you’re not sure, but you really can’t go wrong if you keep an open mind (and mouth). And you can’t go wrong with the price, either: all of our food, two main dishes and all those appetizers, came to less than $20! You just can’t beat that, and it’s not fast food… although, our food arrived incredibly quickly.

    “It’s like they were waiting for us,” James remarked.

    OK, back to the music.

    (more…)

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  2. I Can See Your Soul

    July 15, 2007 by Gail

    I can see your soul
    I can see your soul by javajive

    I’ve pimped Brandon’s photography before but he really deserves the exposure, his Indonesia shots are simply captivating. This picture leaped off the screen and bit me.

    http://www.thejavajive.com/blog

    His blog is an actual weblog, not just a photoblog. Brandon writes about his experiences as a long-term expat, and his post from July 2 titled “When Friends Leave” resonated with me. If you’re an expat or have ever been one, you’ll probably relate to it, too.

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  3. I Miss My Red Couch

    July 14, 2007 by Gail

    I miss my red couch (I left it in Vancouver)
    abandoned in Reykjavik

    I’ve designated this weekend the official CLEAN AND ORGANISE THE APARTMENT EXTRAVAGANZA. I’ve been here a month and a half, but if anyone dropped by unexpectedly, that person would think I moved yesterday. Yes, it’s that bad. But I’m making major headway today — I even hung pictures and installed shelving! How’s that for progress!

    But I question the wisdom of keeping the living room futon couch and paying the movers extra money to hoist it up the side of the house from the fire escape. It’s shape and size is awkward for the current living room and now I’m thinking I should replace it with a loveseat. It got me to thinking how much I miss my red couch, the one I bought second-hand for a song from a neighbour on the sixth floor of my apartment on Beach Avenue in Vancouver. When she moved, her moving guys even delivered the couch to my suite for free! I was reminded of it when I saw the abandoned red couch in Reykjavik (above).

    It’s not quite the same colour or even style, but there’s something about a red couch that always makes me think of mine. Here it is, where it lives now (or, at least it did in December 2004).

    my couch in its new home

    Maybe it’s time to check out Craigslist again.

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  4. The Final Frontier

    July 13, 2007 by Gail

    the final frontier
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    That’s what it felt like, anyway. Like we were the last people on earth, pioneering. Well, except for that ready-made track in front of us.

    Towards Stakkholtsgjá in Þórsmörk (Thorsmork), southern Iceland.

    Þórsmörk is a nature paradise situated in the south of Iceland between three glaciers: Mýrdalsjökull Glacier, Eyjafjallajökull Glacier and Tindfjallajökull Glacier. (Try and get your tongue around those names!)

    There’s a certain beauty in all this emptiness, desolation. On my very first day in Iceland, when I was being driven around the countryside by my expatriated compatriot, I was struck at how eerily silent it was when we went sightseeing on foot. No chirping birds, no aural evidence that there was any other living thing. There was also a conspicuous lack of visible wildlife — there wasn’t even any roadkill!

    “Where are all the animals??” I wondered out loud.

    “They ate them all.”

    take me there
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    the road to nowhere
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    These photos look much better in a larger format. There’s a link under each shot that will take you to the bigger version.

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  5. The Internet Mouth

    July 12, 2007 by Gail

    One thing that can drive me crazy about the internet is how people tend to lambaste, more than they probably would in person. It hasn’t been a major problem on this website — I am proud to say I have deleted only one comment since I began writing online five years ago in July 2002 (four years for comments; I only installed Haloscan commenting in August 2003), which is pretty good for a seasoned weblog.

    When I took on the daunting task of migrating 1,526 Haloscan comments and 1,113 Blogspot posts to WordPress on my current domain in December 2005, it was just before my very last Haloscan comment was posted, this little beauty — comment #1,527 (last entry). She took offense to the fact that I said pink was horrendous and obviously thought I was referring to her website. Not true at all — I liked the way her website looked, which is why I also use the Falbum plugin. It’s a well-known fact I don’t like pink, because I mention it plenty here. She called me an idiot, but the comment never showed up because she wrote it days after I moved and consolidated all the posts and comments to the domain. She probably thought I deleted her comment, but I didn’t. In fact, she wrote it the day David died and I could not have cared less if she’d driven to my house and burned down my garage.

    Which brings me back to my original rant: that people spout off before they read everything. When I was in Paris a few weeks ago I showed Claude a comment someone had written under my wedding anniversary YouTube video of David carving our initials into the magnolia tree beside the house:

    (more…)

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  6. My Tongue Seized Up

    July 12, 2007 by Gail

    my tongue seized up

    Insurance company building, Reykjavik

    It’s the same problem I have with German: my mind tries to parse the individual word segments and syllables and gives up. It took me ages to learn to pronounce Hafnarfjörður.

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  7. It’s All About the Light

    July 12, 2007 by Gail

    Photography enthusiasts seem go on and on about light, but it really is what makes the picture. If the lighting isn’t good, even vivid colours go flat. I prefer natural light, but I also like to take photos at night because it’s an entirely different atmosphere to the same scene during the day.

    Some pics from Beaver Lake, on Mount Royal (Montreal):

    Beaver Lake
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    As you probably guessed, there are no beavers here. And it’s hardly a lake, more like a pond… just like the similarly beaver-less Beaver Lake in Vancouver’s Stanley Park — which is more like a bog.

    The Chalet
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    My cousin Wagner, who took us up here, just called it “The Chalet”, which is more in keeping with a winter theme and not difficult to imagine as a buzzing hive of activity when Beaver Lake turns into a skating rink.

    For natural lighting, nothing beats the drama of a mix of brilliant summer sunshine and charcoal grey pending rainstorm:

    it's all about the light
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    it's all about the light
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    Both of these were taken off St. Catherine Street during the Jazz Festival.

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  8. Swing Dancing at the Montreal International Jazz Festival

    July 11, 2007 by Gail

    Dancing with Swing Connexion at the Montreal Jazz Festival from Alain Wong and Vimeo.

    Check this out: Zack Richard, Maryse Lebeau, Mélanie Huot-Lavoie and Alain Wong swinging it up to Swing Tonique at the Montreal International Jazz Festival as part of the Louisiana Parade.

    I was back in the crowd, so the most I got of the Louisiana Parade was the alligator above everyone’s heads. At least I can post this video to show how lively it really was!

    TechnoratiTechnorati tags: , , , ,

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  9. Bat Spotting at High Park

    July 10, 2007 by Gail

    firefly kids
    firefly kids at Grenadier Pond

    I managed to squeeze in two loads of laundry before racing over to High Park for “Bat Night”, an educational nature walk sponsored by various community recreation groups. There were plenty of vocal kids in attendance, enough to flush out most of the native bat colonies to the other side of Lake Ontario, but somehow we spotted a few deaf bats in the dwindling light.

    lights from the Queensway over Grenadier Pond
    lights from the Queensway over Grenadier Pond

    If anything, what everyone learned about bats tonight should dispel most — if not all — bat myths and make everyone sleep a little easier at night. For one thing, only three of the 800-1,000 species live on blood and they get it from cows, not people. And the cows wouldn’t even feel it since the bat injects an anti-coagulant agent (rather than suck), lets one teaspoon drain away, and is full enough to take off again.

    The other tidbit of information that may surprise people is that the megabats (the group which include the fruit bats or flying foxes) are not colour-blind — they see in full colour and hunt with their eyes and sense of smell… like humans.

    When I lived in Australia, I first spotted fruit bats in the palm trees in Sydney, but I couldn’t make out what they were. My Aussie friend Neville told me they were bats and I stopped in my tracks because they were SO BIG. That’s also when I learned that fruit bats and flying foxes were the same creatures.

    About a year later I was living in northern Queensland, in Cairns, and there I got up close and personal with Hayley, a tame flying fox. Somewhere in my stuff is a picture I took of her on someone’s arm, after she climbed over my arm. If I can locate the picture, I’ll scan it and post it. I remember thinking how bizarre it was to see bat wings on what looked to be a small fox — she had big eyes and big ears… and big wings!

    light the way
    light the way

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  10. I Blame It On the Weather

    July 10, 2007 by Gail

    The weather in Toronto has been really humid lately, which makes me fall asleep as soon as I get home and then I wake up in the middle of the night in my big comfy chair, wondering what time it is. At this rate I’m going to need a lot of daytime coffee to get me through this summer.

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