whoops.....

Lost my sight for an hour

Definetly an odd experience. Tonight I had the pleasure of eating at O Noir Restuarant on St. Cath's. I beleive there are several restuarants out there like this but you eat in PITCH DARK. 0% light what so ever. Definetly not what i expected because i've never seen dark that dark before. So anyways, you eat in the dark and your server is a person who is blind. The concept is to block everything out and help you concentrate your senses on the food. However, IT WAS very noisy in there, the room had a lot of echo so it was A LOT of background noise. Like a cafeteria at lunch time type of noise. I felt that due to the noise it took a lot away from the experience as it was hard to concentrate on the food and soon became blind poking at the plate. Also, I guess for safety measures the food came warm and not hot (like how food is normally servered). I ordered a grilled squid dish for appetizers. It was really good because it had a nice charcholly taste (and i've been starved of good bbq for a while). But what i didn't understand was that i came with garnish. Whats the point when you can't see. Then for my entree i got a filet mignon (medium). VERY succulent, and prepared medium rare which was even better. But i didn't like the potatoes it came with, not a very good consistency,and you never know whats going in your mouth. Is it potato or is it meat? And for dessert a delicious dark chocolate rasbery mousse. It was like heaven! probably my favourite part of that meal. another thing was that i could never quite tell whether or not i was done my dish, lets just say that there was a lot of feeling with my fingers. Quite the experience. But i dont' think i'd go back. I guess sight is a big part for me when i enjoy my food, it adds to the taste. But the experience was very enlightening, to live in a blind person's shoes for a little while. As well, after a while you start imagining what you see even though if you can't see anything. ALSO, it made me appreciate having the gift of sight so much more.

fat naked guy and magnum condoms

MUCH more tame than it sounds. Fat naked guy, i suppose me and lillian have taken people watching to the next level, we were just innocently people watching people in the tower facing us and BAM some guy suddenly walks into his room with a girl and BAM takes off all his clothes, (full frontal nudity!) did a little dance for the girl and like put it back on quickly... weeeeeiiirrrd! A little traumatized. So, as for the magnum condoms, they were handing it out at the club, but my question is. How can you assume that all guys can fit a "magnum" sized condom, what if you hypothetically hook up with a guy with a small wee wee and then the condom doesn't fit, but that is the ONLY thing you have and it ends up not working? then that totally DEFATES the purpose of handing out condoms in the first place! Huh, trojan, perhaps you should work on your marketing! hahaha

I think the site seeing chapter of montreal is done, still have a couple of museums to go to. Ottawa was SO amazing, i must say WAY better than the trip to Quebec City. We wandered into a mall and SAW artizia, so starved of it, we ran in (I was screaming with joy)! Mmmmm... i guess its the whole "the food looks better on someone else's plate" paradox. I don't think i've ever been so excited for Aritizia! Also visited the bakery that Obama went too. Its quite funny to see how they worship Obama SO much even though he has only briefly visited Canada for a couple hours that day a while back. They have an "Obama" cookie. If there were a Stephen Harper cookie, that bakery would probably be bankrupt.

As well, we made a trip to the casino today. mmmm verdict... nice. BUT i must say the main attraction was this horse race game. A quarter to play, powered by Sega and you watch these little plastic horses race. Its FUN! We might go back, we only played $.50 each, because there were too many addictive qualities. I hope it doesn't get to the point where we gamble our plane ticket home. Ah, now i see why people in Hong Kong are so ADDICTED to horse racing. If the plastic mechanical version is so fun, imagine the REAL thing!

So tommorrow is the start of week 4, 2nd to last week, the animateurs are already saying bye. But thank goodness there aren't a lot of activities this week because we still have a lot to do! I'm kinda sad i'm gonna have to go home, i miss the lifestyle in montreal, always having something to do, the liveliness. But I can't wait to have my own washroom that's attached to the rest of "my room". Ah yes, and the washroom on my floor is flooded. UGH. o well. O yes and I WILL NOT MISS THE CLASSES! grr i hate class.

Contemporary art, bowling, and mugging

So mardi.

Went bowling, it was supposed to be for 3 games, but totally gave up after 2, partially cause it got boring and our lane kept fucking up! damn ghetto bowling lanes. o well it was $4 after all, shoe rental included. :D Lillian had a beer and once again went crazy, trying to act like an emoticon of some sort? hahaha

Aujourd'hui .. Mecredi.

On wednesday the contemporary art museum is free.! whoot whoot, well i guess it should be free cause there IS only one floor. Took the tour and was quite enlightened, well its contemporary art after all, it think i need someone to explain. Wonderful photography exhibit by Polidori. And also a excentric exhibit by Spring Hurlbut, with a dimly lit room of wire vintage baby cribs. Quite eeerie. Then we made our way down to the music video exhibit. Watched some videos, left for DINNER. I've been wanting to go La Banquise for quite some time. They boast 30 different flavours of poutine. (but like Pho, its 30 different combinations, similar ingredients). BUT NONE THE LESS quite intriguing. So we head there around 9 ish. Its still kinda bright outside. And we had to walk a bit from the Mont-Royal Metro station. BUT i see a store and SPEND a long time in there ( i suppose its my fault). hahaha but by the time we were done it was late. But we still proceed to try and find the place. So we reach the corner of Rue Rachel and Christopher Colum rue. No sight of where La Banquis is supposed to be. So we ask someone, "excuse me, can you tell me where La Ban-quis is?" the guy says .. la Ban-quis??? you mean BONKIES. k.. bonkies. :P who knew.. quis=kies. hahahhah i'm been pronouncing it ban-kwis. hahahah o well.. so we find bonkies "banquis" and low and behold 30 saveurs! ... yummm.... i got the T-REX. 4 types of meat! bacon, sausage, steak stuff, ham i think.. CHEESE CURDS AND O SO YUMMY gravy :D IT was really GOOD. mmm better or worse than frites alore? ... i would say.. i dunno.. i think i didn't order the wrong thing! So after a fine meal we head back to the station.. BUT now its pitch dark, AND we decide to plan an alternate route, as on our way to bonkies we pass by this homeless shelter and this meals on wheels van parked outside. WHICH Nairi decides to yell out , "street meat! FINALLY" she apparently confused the meals on wheels for a hot dog stand... NOPE... wrong.. so anyways. i guess that was our first hint that we were in a bad neighbourhood. So we tuff it out. sing S club and found a street where 2 people were already walking on.. walking walking, and these two people go into a house, k.... just a couple more blocks, keep walking..... then all of a sudden we hear from accross the street "AY !! AY!!!" k.. keep walking... then he crosses the street, yelling "can i have your food", lillian then replies, "no, sorry" politely.. bum goes (well i dont' even know if he was a bum or not, he was not dressed too shabby;perhaps first day on the streets) "common i need it, you don't need it that badly, give me the food" ... Lillian is a much tuffer cookie than i thought, we stood strong and refused to give up the food, ME.. i was in complete panic MODE, in my mind.. i was like "lillian give him the food and no one gets hurt. JUST GIVE IT TO HIM! its dark and scary, and no one can hear us scream"..... well as that confrontation got increasingly heated, bum wanted food, lillian wanted food. she stood strong and the bum cursed her, and we ran as fast as we could back to the station, yelling for our mothers. AH. i felt like i was going to get murdered! over an omelette!

I guess montreal isn't half bad. It turns only one street was rather dirty. But the rest of the city is so full of history and the architeture is just amazing. And Montreal does live up to its name, "the city of festivals". There are so many great festivals, so far we've been to the just for laughs festival twice. Which i would say is far superior than the jazz fest!!! Tons of games and some stand up comedy acts, only if i understood :D. But there were so many different acts. O yes and there were more man made beaches. A man made beach on the side of the road and a metro train turned magarita bar. How weird is that. Everything needs to be festival like. Even this side walk sale at St Catherines. Its not your ordinary metrotown sidewalk sale. Its like pandamonenium, tons of people, live DJ's on the street. Tons of cheap deals (not just the crappy shit put out on tables in front of stores to lure you in). I scored a pair of Sam Edelman sandals for $35 (orig. $86) and some LaSenza body cream for $2!!!! I definetly want to go back and squish my way through the Joshua Perets table (i don't care if its just for girly pre-teens)!!!!

After that, today we went to check out another man made wonder of nature, Beaver Lake, a man made lake. Thanks travel advisor, it sucked. But o well now i know. Also, I am SUPER excited to try this poutine place that has 30 flavours. Haha, no way i can try all of them before my month is up. I should've started when i first came. But so far, we've come to the consensus that the hidden specialty of montreal that is not as recognized is PHO! Mmmm delicious, whereever you go, i haven't been dissappointed yet! Pho Lien, which was highly rated on urban spoons and had a long line was good, But we went to chinatown to a place called Pho Vietnam, it was very GOOD! BON! But speaking of poutine, I had an amazing one yesterday at a place called Frites, Alors! I had their Frites Alors flavour. WHOA so good. I still have the leftovers in my fridge. I take it back that montreal doesn't have good food. Good pho, good bagels, good smoked meat sandwiches GRRRREEAT poutine. and i've also heard great poutain ;). But that will forever be a mystery to me. O yes. and wandered to the Beaudry area last night ("the village" as the locals call it). Hm... let's say it make Davie St. look like Fort McMurray (a small town). It was very festive. If i could describe it, i would say it looks like commercial drive and Davie rolled up together and endless assortment of gay clubs complete with Mr. Buff-muffins in the front to lure horny gay men in :D.... or whatever they are there for? shirtless buff bouncers perhaps? well word on the street is that these gay clubs are so exclusive that they don't let girls in whatsoever at certain clubs. But i can't wait to go back to the village when all the shops are open!!! I love those crazy knick-knack stores! I LOVE KNICK KNACKS.

I guess i'm not that upset that i'm missing the festival of lights or watever its called now (the fireworks) cause apparently montreal has a similar weekly/weekend fireworks show which showcases firework shows from around the world. tonight we saw argentina, a lot of fireworks that i've never seen before. Usually i'm not a big fan of fireworks, but its cool here, no large roundy douchebaggy teenage crowds and a really good show. As well I had a delicious cookie today from Monsieur Felix&Mr. Norton. Delicish!.. better than blue chip........ ???? nooo comment :P.