C'est la mode aux "boardwalks"

Que ce soit pour découvrir un petit trésor ou pour éviter des rencontres fâcheuses, il faut toujours marcher sur le boardwalk. Au parc des Hautes Terres du Cap Breton, si on descend du boardwalk, attention! On risque d'assurer le repas d'un ours noir, voire un ours polaire, on sait jamais, faut être prudent! J'exagère, mais vous comprennez le principe. Pourtant, s'il faut en croire notre petite expédition à travers ce domaine si périlleux, nous avons plutôt failli marcher sur une famille orignal - monoparentale, certes, mais pas moins potentiellement dangereuse!



Remarquez la gueule ouverte, menaçante, et le petit derrière qui regrète que ses bois ne sont pas plus imposants.

Mais il ne faut pas s'inquiéter, la photo a été prise avec un zoom 4x. Voici une indication plus réaliste de la distance qui nous séparait des ces bêtes dangereuses, auxquelles nous avons quand même réussi à échapper.



Cela dit, si vous êtes un petit animal, il vous est fort recommandé de ne pas vous approcher du boardwalk.



Plus loin, un autre boardwalk était censé guider nos pas vers une superbe vue de l'océan et du ciel, séparés par une frontière presque invisible. D'où le nom du sentier: Skyline. Abandonnez le boardwalk ici et préparez-vous à une aventure à la Pinocchio dans le fameux Monde Marin (aka "Derrière les Fanons").



Il faut spécifier qu'il y avait un peu de brume ce jour-là, mais vous voyez la frontière invisible, n'est-ce pas?

À Percé, en Gaspésie, nous avons demandé s'il y avait un moyen de se promener sur la plage. On nous a répond "Oui oui, bien sur, voilà, ici sur la carte, vous voyez, il y a un boardwalk..." Nous sommes sortis du centre d'information, très bien informés. Nous avons décidé d'éviter le boardwalk, question de minimiser les risques d'un accrochage avec un maquereau particulièrement intrépide.

Nous nous sommes tout de même hasardés sur le quai de la petite ville, pour observer le trou dont Francis doutait l'existence jusqu'à ce moment-là.



Sur l'île de Bonaventure, quitter le boardwalk équivalait une mort affreuse par coups de becs de fous de Bassan.



Heureusement, notre dernier rendez-vous avec un boardwalk nous a permis d'admirer cette jolie cascade, dans le parc Forillon.



Prochainement sur "Czech Film": les boardwalks favorisent la bonne entente entre randonneurs et plantes carnivores.

2000 images are worth 1000 words

It seems astronomers are also photography enthusiasts. For your viewing pleasure, here are
Krzysztof's pictures
Mariangela's pictures
Karla's pictures
and my pictures.

Today I ran a program that lasted about five minutes. All my previous programs ran for only a few seconds. I'm starting to feel more like a scientist.

Early recovery

Wednesday, 7h30pm it was. I feel much better now although hot and sweaty, so I still wish for scottish rain. I am never satisfied with what I have, am I?
My running shoes have just been washed, and down the drain went the scottish mud. And as I read an article about Iceland this morning, I learned that there are twice as many sheep (shoops) than people in that country. In Quebec we have a similar situation with squirrels, but we don't milk them... Besides, our federal government doesn't offer subsidies for keeping squirrels on one's land.

Return to homebase

After wearing sunglasses, getting a tan, watching rainbows and, let's not forget, modifying the english language for the better in Scotland, I touch base once again. Montreal is sticky and hot whether it's day or night, shade or sun. That was the unpleasant "surprise" upon my arrival (surprise because I sort of refused to think about what I knew to be true). Anyway, it's still livable, but we are only in June, so hell is only a few weeks away. Luckily, I am on vacation on the east coast for the first half of July. Nice and cool, windy yet sunny.

I have (or more like "there are") many more pictures from the summer school on Skye, which I will put up shortly (the ones I have) or whenever I get them (Krys' pictures, ahem! and others).

The truth is, my feelings are a bit on the melancholic side, as always after such experiences. Estimated time of recovery: Thursday, 12pm Montreal time :-)

Our most demanding summer school activity

We go to the pub. Every night. About half of Krys' 500 or so pictures (that's only the first 4 days) are taken at the pub, so it was difficult to choose which precious few to post here.

The first night at the pub, there were mixed reactions.



But after a few drinks



things started to get interesting



Let me illustrate this in a different way. Before drinks:



Cards. Pretty boring right? After drinks:



In Scotland, not even performing can prevent one from drinking:



That was Bonnie, one of the co-organisers.

One night, we had a ceilidh (pronounced "cay-lid") dancing workshop



Look at this. Holding hands and running around in circles. And they call themselves grown people :-)



This one ceilidh was insane



Ceilidh dancing can help enhance cardiovascular endurance and silliness. Perform with caution.

One shoop, two sheep

The challenge on Skye is to take a picture without any sheep in it. It's not so easy.







Beheheheheh.

Good Morning, Skye!

The rain has gone, the sun has come. Skye is showing her rare colors.

False alarm

Well, despite yesterday's forecast, we did not see the sun today either. So relaxing is the sound of the rain drizzling on the roof. I'm surprised I still notice it. My new polish friends are very optimistic though: they believe that although it is distressing now, once the school ends and we all return to our respective homes we will miss it. Perhaps they are thinking of the scenario in which we become stranded on Skye longer than expected... But there is hope in the bridge, and I believe it can be reached by foot in a couple of days.

Despite the weather four of us intrepid explorers hit the road today and walked the 4 kilometers to Armadale. Here is a map of Sleat (pronounced "slate" in gaelic), the southern part of Skye. Roughly 3 km separate the college from Armadale castle, and another 1 km brought us to the pier. Nearby there were two pottery shops, two gift shops, the ferry to Mallaig (not for sale) on the mainland, and a tiny petrol station shop where we found a variety (three) of chocolate bars and some postcards.
The "general store" (we made bets on its size) conveniently closes for lunch around the time we take lunch, and opens half an hour before our lectures start again (not enough time to walk back to the college).
We haven't visited it.

I forgot my camera this time, but I sense we will have several more opportunities to walk to Armadale, so pictures should follow shortly. I should mention that while walking along the coast, we met a few of these



It is an oystercatcher. They don't like Krystof.

We might see the sun

Our arrival at Sabhal Mor Ostaig, Scotland's only gaelic college, on Monday took place in somewhat cold weather (8 Celsius). Today, I believe we have reached 15 Celsius. The rain has also been incredibly cooperative: it has only stopped about 4 times, for 2 to 5 minutes each time.

We were each assigned a room with a bathroom





Here is the view from my window (north-ish). My room is located on the main campus of Sabhal Mor Ostaig. There is another campus a five-minute walk down the road. The tower in the picture also contains guests. Doesn't it look like a lighthouse? In fact that really helps it fit in the decor, when seen from far away. Just before it is the main building where we eat and where the lectures take place.



And the view from the room at the end of the hallway (east, towards the mainland)




We get fed decently, and I must say that the seafood is delicious. There was some confusion at first about what we need to pay for and what is included in the school fee. It turns out we only need to pay for canned or bottled drinks. They do provide water pitchers though. And lots and lots of coffee and tea.

Addendum

Here are the actual faces of my wonderful hosts in Uppsala. Aren't they cute?

Idol

- Hi, I'm Diana.
- I'm Eric.

.........
[bla bla bla]
.........

- Wait, what's your last name?
- Ford.
- Eric Ford? Oh my God, I read all your papers!

[embarrassed smile from Eric]

Later on, frisbee game on Skye with Eric, Alex and Peter.

Uppsalalalala

I'm in love with a city! Pretty yet modern Uppsala overflows with greenery, old beautiful buildings and a happening "downtown". Camille and Kimmo have been impeccable hosts (oh, those crepes!).
Here they are.



Thank you Kimmo for trying to keep me up and drinking all night :-) Cam, it was great seeing you, friends like you don't come by very often. Oh, why are my best friends all in cities other than mine? Thankfully, Agnes always comes to the rescue. Please don't move to France, Ag. Actually, people who know you at the duty free at Trudeau were asking me if you live in Paris now (???) ...
And of course, my darling, my one and only, he knows who he is.

While visiting a market in Stockholm, we found these (wasabi flavored rice puffs) among other sample baskets:



The Vasa, a ship that sank near Stockholm in the 1600's, shortly after being launched. Why is it loved by Swedes and tourists alike? Because despite its one fatal flaw, the Vasa was one of the largest warships at the time, and an incredible piece of engineering. It sank because there was not enough ballast in her belly to counterbalance the weight of the huge guns and cannons on the upper decks. Since it was top-heavy, any small breeze could make it lean on its side to the point of taking water through the gunholes, and eventually (quite quickly) sinking.



This one's for Aaron, who should perhaps start reading this blog. Give him a hint, Francis (if you still read it...). Walking to Camille's workplace, we encountered some high-road bandits. We had to make way for some, for fear of being speared alive on those hard little horns.



A view of the Uppsala cathedral, with a bit of surrounding ambience.



And finally... One wheel, two wheels, three wheels, ten thousand wheels! The bike "parking lot" near the train station. Not exactly unique in Uppsala.



In Uppsala, we have both gone to a party and left from the party while there was still light outside. Cheers to the north!

Long weekend

And a glorious weekend it was. Lots of hiking and some cold cold water canoeing/kayaking in Mauricie National Park. With wonderful company and great weather, we made the best of those three days, topped with a victorious return to Montreal, involving blasting Beatles songs and singing along at the top of our lungs. Below, the camping.

Lights... drumroll... sparkle!

Magic... music... movement... magnificence. My first time. Tonight I joined the ever-growing crowd of awestruck Cirque du Soleil spectators. If you've attempted a front flip over your crouching partner, springing from and attempting to land on a tight rope, missed, and "barely" caught yourself by the hands, would you get right back up and try it again? If you were sprung from a see saw, flipping backwards and attempting to land with your feet on the shoulders of a man standing on the shoulders of another man, and failed three times, would you try it a fourth? If you were performing one-handed acrobatics on the back of a chair below which 9 others are piled up, would you be able to do it under the scrutiny of the audience, the lights and the clapping, without any safety device?

They would. They do. They don't give up. They are made of sheer strength, concentration and especially perseverence. The circus is out to inspire and the Cirque du Soleil in particular has yet to fail in this mission.

Tonight they painted a grin on my face that lasted throughout the show and for some time afterward. I felt like a six-year-old child again. I gasped and exclaimed. I cannot remember the last time I was in such a sustained state of awe.

There are still some tickets left since Kooza runs until the third week of June, so if you can, make time to watch a perfomance.

Learning grace at 24

Tap tap tap tap ... If I don't tap my heels very loudly, no one in my flamenco class will notice that I am entirely out of rythm. Yes, I thought 24 was a good age to learn to be graceful. I bravely wore a 2'' heel for about 5 out of 10 flamenco classes. I tripped only twice. I never fell. There is good reason to feel pride. But did I learn grace? This is an important question that the author prefers to leave to future work.

What I did learn is how to play drums with my feet. I got a chance to tap my heels in and out of rythm for 1.5 hours every week. You try this at home and see what happens. I didn't. I prefer to say "Beluuuuuugah! Beluuuuuuugah! Ppppffffffbbbbttttt! Ppppffffffffbbbbttttt!" as many times in a row as necessary to either get sick of it or get kicked out, whichever comes first. Feel free to take guesses.

Well, besides the tapping, I have also acquired a pair of shoes which fit wonderfully compared to other shoes I've tried. They are classy and have a thin strap with LOTS of holes. I don't know why it didn't occur to me to look for shoes in dance stores until now.

I hoped that by the end of the class I could look and perform something like this




Perhaps, if I stick to it, one day there will be such a picture of me posted.

Monologue

Hey, listen, I think Diana is coming... You hear the "vrsht, vrsht" of the snow as she plows through?

Hey look! There she is, in the light blue suit! Did you see those moves? And I think I'm going to buy myself a suit in that color...

Bus Symphony

Reasons for which every year I pay $1 or $2 more for my monthly Montreal metro/bus pass:

1. so that the bus driver can brake and accelerate at least twice as often as needed and in the process cause sometimes numerous bumps and even falls among people who are standing, spills of grocery bags, escapes of strollers.
1.1. for example: bus drivers often accelerate over the 10 feet that separate the bus station from the nearest intersection, only to brake abruptly at the white line because the light is still red.
1.2. or, once the light has turned green, to accelerate over the remaining few feet that separate the bus from the next station where it must again brake abruptly, sometimes causing the person that stands patiently in front of the back door waiting to get off to lose balance to the point of not managing to recover in time to get off the bus.

2. so that the bus driver can simply skip a stop because Oh! he didn't realise a passenger has ringed the bell and wishes to get off; sometimes they even blame the passenger for ringing the bell too late for the driver to decelerate (this often happens together with 1.2).
2.1. so that the driver can see you running to catch the bus and takes off as soon as the light turns green and before you managed to reach it, even if you only had a few more feet to go.

3.(one of my favorites, and which actually happened to me) so that the driver, instead of taking the turn which separates the #171 trajectory from the #121 trajectory, continues straight ahead for about 1 km, until I walk up to her and ask why she hasn't turned at the right spot so that I could get home as usual. At which point she exclaims that I'm right, and that she's so sorry and that she usually drives the #121 and that she is tired (it was around 10pm) and forgot she was now driving the #171 and just continued along the #121 trajectory. Oh my, and now she has to find a place to turn back and oh boy she will fall behind on the schedule and people will be waiting at the stops and she is so sorry once again. This is how it came about that on an otherwise normal evening, the people living immediately on the south side of Cote-Vertu bvd., between Marcel-Laurin bvd. and Cavendish bvd., saw for the first time a #171 STM bus pass in front of their houses.

4. so the drivers can drive through Montreal as if on a race track, sometimes doing 80 km/h, because, well, I don't know why. The underground bus racing scene in Montreal, secretely run by the Italian mafia.
4.1. sometimes drivers take dangerous turns, often cross intersections on yellow (especially at night) and I have seen some almost run over pedestrians (admittedly, pedestrians do give a lot of points).

5. so that, no matter when I get off the metro after 9pm (when the buses run less often), there can never be a bus waiting or arriving soon. Even if I run up the stairs, I look at the schedules to see that a bus has just passed 1 or 2 minutes before, sometimes a little longer. Why can't the STM time those buses that do run by Cote-Vertu metro (be it even every 30 minutes) with a metro arrival? Why is that so hard? They do it at Sauve metro (although even there you have to dash up the stairs at top speed and even then you only have about 2 out of 3 to catch the bus that was "timed" to that metro), so why don't they do it at the Cote-Vertu station, where it is even more needed as there are more passengers.

6. so that, within a two weeks of the implementation of the new electronic ticket machines on buses, I already see two broken ones. And naturally, whether the machine is broken or not, neither the driver nor the machine can ever give change; always got to have exact change, to the penny (except it doesn't accept pennies of course; pennies are meant to forever live and reproduce in people's wallets). And you can't cheat anymore like with the old glass boxes: the machine weighs and counts the coins you slide in. Except when the machine is broken :)

7. so that you can wait 2 hours for a bus that was supposed to come every 30 minutes, because there is too much snow in the street and none of the buses can climb the little hill just before the turn that would finally bring one of them to you. And then you finally decide to take a taxi, the cost of which the STM does not reimburse.

8. let's not leave out the metro; the metro is so very tempting to suicidal souls; I take the metro roughly twice a day and last fall, either a suicide, an accident or some technical difficulties (some parts of the Montreal metro are over 40 years old) has caused service interruptions during my travels about once a week, sometimes more. When the service resumes, the recorded message thanks the clients for their understanding, but never ever apologises, not even for the technical problems; why? whose fault are they? Interestingly, there seem to be less problems in winter.

And if we believe the rumors:

9. so that the STM mechanics can work as little as half the hours they are paid for, thus hugely increasing STM costs. Enough said.

Finally, I wish to show my appreciation for some (very few) drivers, like the one who used to sometimes drive the #165 bus down Cote-des-Neiges and who always said hi, smiled and had a little bowl with candy for passengers.

Note: STM = Societe de transport de Montreal.

original version:

"Il fait presque chaud. Je me taille les ongles sur le perron. Une fourmi fonce sur une rognure, tourne autour, la ramasse, l'abandonne, la reprend et part avec. Je me sens volée."

translation:
"The weather is almost warm. I am trimming my nails on the porch. An ant rushes towards a clipping, walks around it, picks it up, drops it, picks it up again and leaves with it. I feel robbed."

by Carmen Lalonde; text published in the La Presse newspaper.

The four minutes before bedtime

Today Google failed me. I called my friend who has recently graduated with a B.Sc. in psychology. I said to her:
- Anna, Google failed me. I don't know what to do.
There was a short silence. Then:
- Honey, you realise Google is just a search engine, don't you? Oh, nevermind. Just tell me what happened.
I hesitated and then layed out the difficult words:
- All right, so, I googled 'What am I going to do with my life', and...
- And what happened then?
- Well, it crashed.

Timmy learns about sex

Timmy is five years old and yesterday he witnessed something strange. Today he goes to his mother and asks shyly:
- Mommy, what were you and Daddy doing yesterday?
- Well, Timmy, mommy was about to have a... Timmy, you love ice cream don't you?
- Oh yeah!
- All right. Now imagine you were standing in front of the window of the ice cream truck, and the ice cream man holds out an ice cream cone for you...
Timmy interrupts:
- For free?
- Uh... yes Timmy, for free. Now imagine that ten other kids are eating their ice cream cones near you. It makes you really want to have your own too, doesn't it?
- Yeah, I want ice cream too!
- All right. Now the ice cream man holds your cone very close to you, you can almost touch it. You reach out to grab it, but he pulls it away just a little bit so that you cannot grab it. Meanwhile the other kids standing nearby are licking their ice cream, saying "Hmmmm!" and looking very happy about licking their ice cream. Now you really really want your ice cream cone so you can eat some too. But the ice cream man just moves it in front of you, a little too far, so you can't touch it. The kids are really loving their ice cream, the man keeps your cone too far and you hold out your hand but you can't have it. The kids really love their ice cream and are saying "Hmmm!". The man brings the cone closer to you and you can almost touch it. In fact you can touch the cone with your fingertips! But then he pulls his hand and the ice cream cone back inside the truck, sits at the steering wheel and drives away. That's what was happening to mommy yesterday, and it was when Timmy walked in the room that the ice cream man drove away.
Timmy frowns and thinks about this for a few seconds. Then, in a shaky voice:
- Mommy, did...
- Yes Timmy.
- Did... did Timmmy scare the ice cream man away?
Mommy sighs and says:
- Yes. Yes honey, you did.