loglog

When I cycled to my doctor yesterday on the Maissoneuve bike path I noticed this sign when I entered the borough of Westmount. Apparently cyclists need to wear a helmet there, I’ve no idea since when.
Now I do think wearing helmets in Montreal’s traffic is generally a good idea. I always wear mine especially since my accident, but I do think it is a good idea to introduce this requirement in all the boroughs on the island of Montreal at once.

In the current situation Westmount is an island, and legally inaccesible by the majority of cyclists that don’t wear a helmet.

Of course I saw a lot of people breaking this by-law and I’ve no idea if it is enforced. But having laws that are just laws is worse than having no laws at all.

(click for bigger version)

After yesterday’s Canadian elections (aiaiai, the Conservatives won a lot of seats) it is now time to pay our full attention to the presidential elections of the United States. The elections are three weeks away and Alison has already received her absentee ballot. Last time (4 years ago) she received her ballot 9 months too late. It had been “mistakenly” sent to St. Thomas, one of the US Virgin Islands and it took a very long while to finally reach us. And it didn’t even arrive in a bottle.

Anyway, Alison is a dual US-Canadian citizen and it’s time to vote. Just as with the Canadian election, her vote doesn’t really matter. I don’t think McCain has much chance winning in the state of New York, but if they’ll ever use the popular vote for statistics it might show up. If they actually open those absentee ballot envelopes. I heard they are only opened and counted if the outcome is too close to call.

Alison always lets me vote since I’m more au courant of the political news than she is. [Okay, that's not true, and she wasn't happy with it. See her comment below.] Not that the choice at hand is particularly difficult this time around.

But filling out the ballot actually is difficult. So maybe my American readers can help me. Let me explain. I’d have expected to find entries for the candidates of the parties on the ballot: Obama for the Democrats, McCain for the Republicans and maybe one or two others that are running as independents. But instead there are 10 choices for president and vice-president. (click on the picture above to read the entries)

McCain & Palin have three entries and Obama & Biden two, and then there are no less than 5 independent candidates, four I’ve never heard of and Ralph Nader.

But why does McCain/Palin have three boxes? So their chances would triple? To confuse the uneducated or first-time voter? I’m well educated and I do find it highly confusing.

Of course I’m going to vote for that one, but which box on the ballot should I check?

Should I choose: Democratic Electors for Obama/Biden or Working Families for Obama/Biden?

What is the difference? Will it affect the outcome of the election?

If you have the answer, please let me know in the comments. Thank you.

I saved a lot of money today.

For over a year I’ve been eying an iPhone, Apple’s hot touchscreen gadget. Recently it was announced that the iPhone would come to Canada and also that developers would be able to write applications for it. I have some ideas for a couple of cool iPhone games so that would be a reason to justify the purchase.

But today Rogers, the only carrier that has a GSM network in Canada, announced their subscription rates. But their 3-year contract and exuberant high monthly fees would mean that an iPhone would cost me 5700 dollars and that without unlimited use of the Internet, my main reason for getting it. There’s no way I’m going to pay that. No iPhone for me.

But I saved even more money. I planned to go to an outdoor concert of one of my favourite bands, Sigur Rós from Iceland. So this morning I called Admission, the Québec Ticketmaster monopolist, to buy some tickets. My ears fell almost off my head when they told me there was a surcharge of 8 dollars per ticket for their services. Eight dollar for picking up the phone! And 5 dollar on top of that as a fee to pick your tickets up at the box office. So I told them that was ridiculous and hung up. No Sigur Rós for me.

If I’ve the time and inclination I might check tomorrow if I can still buy tickets in a brick-and-mortar music store in town. Support your local businesses.

And I might look into buying a hacked phone when/if they come available but for now the deal is off.

I feel so frugal now.

Via illicit channels I stumbled upon a yet unreleased movie about the thesis subject of a fellow web-logger. I downloaded it, burned it onto a CD-ROM and gave it to her. And since I had it on my hard drive I decided to watch it.

“Noise” is about a man (Tim Robbins) who can’t stand the noise in New York, especially the blaring car alarms, and he decides to do something about it. I won’t give away the whole plot here, but it involves breaking car windows and cutting battery cables.

Now is this a subject that lies close to my heart. During my last years in the Netherlands I was kind of obsessed with cars. I didn’t mind their noise that much, but I couldn’t stand them driving through red lights, not giving priority to pedestrians and bicycles on crosswalks and generally breaking traffic rules. So I actually had more of a gripe with their drivers than with the cars themselves. But since they were hiding in the sacred cows it was easier to hate cars, period. This all originated to a few incidents I had where I told (or gestured) some cars that they shouldn’t drive over my toes and was subsequently assaulted and beaten up by the driver. And this, instead of making me more timid and restrained, made me even more vocal and focussed on car’s errors. I once threw my bike in front of a car to stop it from entering the one-way street I lived in from the wrong direction (this happened a lot because it was a huge shortcut between two main streets). And I could get totally worked up when I saw cars jumping red lights, even when they were far away from me. I was a totally self-righteous asshole, stopping for every red pedrestian stop light, even in the middle of the night when there was no traffic at all. If I followed the rules I could critique everybody else who didn’t.

This happened only when I was riding my bike or was a pedestrian. When I drove a car myself I could stand traffic violations much better. So for a while I drove to my studio, even though that actually took more time and was a hassle with parking.

During the worst period I couldn’t even watch out of my window, in fear of getting totally worked up over cars running in the wrong direction. There were days I couldn’t leave the house. I suffered from a special case of agoraphobia. During the nights I was plotting evil plans involving setting cars ablaze that were parked illegally and acquiring a rocket launcher to, as in Doom, blow cars into pieces. Just the thought that I couldn’t afford being apprehended because it would affect my immigration process, withheld me from actually doing these things in reality.

When I was visiting Montréal I had none of these symptoms, probably because I didn’t have to “defend” my territory, because I was a visitor. But even now, when I’m not a visitor anymore, I only rarely have the urge to fight cars. I even jaywalk sometimes!

Anyway, the movie wasn’t a masterpiece but watching it brought back a lot of not so nice memories. Not so much that I started to hyperventilate, but enough to cause a slightly elevated heartbeat. But I was also relieved that this period was over, that I was “normal” again.

When we paused the movie we heard the neighbours dogs barking very loudly and we started to laugh about the coincidence.

It became even more hilarious when two of our tenants came down and rang our doorbell complaining about our dogs. I pointed them to the neighbours house and had to close the door fast because I couldn’t hold in my laughter.

Just got a call from Bell. Not an actual person but one of those automated calling machines. The voice tells me it has a message about my phone number, and to please call this toll-free number to talk to us. Bell wants to sell us something? We’re not spending enough time on the phone? We’re using Jajah too much?

So I called said number. Turns out that someone stole our phone number. And since it is an unlisted number they were giving us the option to get a new unlisted number, free of charge. Of course they wouldn’t pay for new stationary, messages to notice all our friends, relatives and other contacts and all the time it would cost.

So I declined.

After I hung up I did a search on Google for this story and found out that we weren’t the only “victim”, but that someone got hold of 3.4 million telephone numbers, 5% of which are unlisted. That’s a lot of new phone numbers to give away, more numbers than are currently “free” in our area code. So the likelihood we get an unlisted number that was recently used by someone else is very high. And then you get all these people calling and asking for Jean-Marie, Claude or Sophie. No thanks. I previously had that with my cell phone which is of course far worse because it costs me 40 cents each time I pick up the phone.

I’m not too worried about the fact that our number is now in the wild. We mainly have an unlisted (strangely enough it cost money to have an unlisted phone number; you’d think that it would cost less because they don’t have to list it) phone number because we don’t get as much unsolicited direct marketing calls around supper time. If they will increase now, I can finally play out this anti-telemarketing script.

Let’s start with a joke:

A man in Chicago calls his son in New York the day before Christmas and says, “I hate to ruin Christmas this year, but I have to tell you that your mother and I are divorcing; forty-five years of misery is enough.”

“Pop, what are you talking about?” the son screams. “We can’t stand the sight of each other any longer,” the father says. “We’re sick of each other, and I’m sick of talking about this, so you call your sister in Atlanta and tell her.”

Frantic, the son calls his sister, who explodes on the phone. “Like hell they’re getting divorced,” she shouts, “I’ll take care of this.”

She calls Chicago immediately, and screams at her father, “You are NOT getting divorced. Don’t do a single thing until I get there. I’m calling my brother back and we’ll both be there tomorrow. Until then, don’t do a thing, DO YOU HEAR ME?” and hangs up.

The old man hangs up his phone and turns to his wife. “Okay,” he says, “they’re coming for Christmas and paying their own way.” Via.

It sounded vaguely familiar.

The funeral was Saturday and it went well except for the hot air balloon that we tried to launch as a ritual but that nearly went up in flames, ripped open and finally ended being buried with my mother’s coffin instead of flying. I read a poem, and didn’t choke nor stutter. I almost started to cry when I made eye-contact with my best friend in the audience, but I changed my aim and it went away. It’s not that I’m afraid to cry in public, but I don’t like to do it in plain view. I also cry at funerals of people I don’t know, I even cry when there are funerals in movies. In short, I don’t like funerals.

There were a lot of people, considering my mother’s age and quite a few family members that I hadn’t seen in decades and probably never will see again. Not much to say that the usual “So you live in Canada now?” phrase. Many people asked me when I’ll come back and I honestly can’t say. I don’t envision attending the funerals of my brother and sisters and their spouses and offspring but maybe I’ll change my mind when that time will come. But the frequency of my visits will definitely go down. And the death of my mother will make me more Canadian, since there is one link less that ties me to the Netherlands. I will make less trips to Europe and spend the time and money on other trips. Hopefully I can explore the rest of Canada a bit. But I’m also a bit afraid of doing that; I might like it and secretly wish I had moved to Vancouver or Calgary instead of Montréal.

While in the Netherlands I can’t stop comparing: this is better, that is better, that is worse and OMG! this is really awful. I should compile the definite list someday. Seeing signs on the street like in the photo above doesn’t make this country more appealing. This was just after I wandered through a 99% Muslim neighbourhood where every apartment had their own satellite dish to watch Turkish or Moroccan television. In Québec there are currently discussions about integration of minorities, but that sight proved for me that in the Netherlands that integration clearly has failed. Or am I just watching the Netherlands through really dark sunglasses so everything looks dark and gloom? I honestly don’t know. What does suck is that my bike, borrowed from a friend, was stolen yesterday, probably because it had a very bad lock, but maybe also because I parked it in the wrong place. But Alison’s bike, also loaned to somebody, was also stolen in Montréal recently, so I can’t really claim Rotterdam is worse in that respect. The weather is far worse however, it rained every day last week and now it is dry but extremely cold. Only minus 1 degrees Celsius but it feels colder than -10 in Montréal because it is very humid and it is always windy here.

I’ll stop now, sorry for all the complaining. It is about time I do something constructive again. A few more days and I’ll fly home again, as a free man. I miss the dogs and Alison, and I want to see if I’m still able to ski.

I probably should post something here but it looks like I’m taking a little break from logging. I hardly take photos anymore and I’m tired of writing the same things over and over, illustrated by a lousy point-and-shoot photo.

My life is pretty boring at the moment, I’m not progressing much with the projects that I should have finished some time ago, there are some health issues but for the rest it’s pretty much the same as it was last year or the year before that.

L’histoire se repète.

Nine months ago, in January, I was finally eligible to apply for Canadian citizenship. To be able to apply you need to have been exactly 3 years (1,095 days) physically in Canada, and since I was quite often in the Netherlands and the US after my immigration, it took some months after my 3 year anniversary for me to be eligible.

I filled out all the forms, paid a fee, made special pictures and wanted to send it off. The forms included a checklist and I duly checked all the items before putting them in the envelope.

Everything was there.

But wait, one of the items on the checklist said AND not OR.
So I needed two items of paperwork for that checkbox and I only had one.

The paper I was missing was my Record of Landing, a big, legal sized, piece of paper that they stapled into my passport when I arrived in Canada. They told me that I didn’t need that paper anymore because it was going to be replaced by a new, wallet-sized, Permanent Resident Card, that I had to buy for $100. That card indeed was sent to me a couple of months later and I removed the crumpled Record of Landing from my passport. I now was officially in Canada I thought, with a shiny ID-card with my photo on it.

But it turned out I really need that piece of paper, and that the Permanent Resident Card replacement is only for travel purposes, even though it is issued by the same organization that does the citizenship procedure, and there is no way I could have received that Permanent Resident Card without a Record of Landing.

So I paid another 30$ to get a duplicate Record of Landing. I filled out an application form and mailed it to the Citizenship and Immigration office in Montréal that handles duplicate forms.

And then the waiting began. After 2 months, in March, I thought it was taking an awful long time to make me a copy of a form so I call. They tell me that the processing time for duplicate forms is now 4 months, so I just have to wait.

After 5 months I get a letter. Ah, finally, my Record of Landing has arrived!
Nope, it is only a letter saying that my file has been sent to another office in Ottawa and the processing time will be 5 months.

I must say, they are quite fast in Ottawa, because it only took them 4 months to make me a photocopy of my Record of Landing and mail it to me. Tomorrow I’m going to make a photocopy of the photocopy and then I can finally sent my application to become a citizen of this fine country. A country were all official documents/applications/forms seems to be done on paper, and everything has to be processed by humans because none of the forms is machine readable. I fill out the forms on my computer and then I have to print them (and of course Adobe Acrobat spits out 5 copies) and someone on the other end has to enter all my info into another computer. This whole thing can be so much more efficient. It would save so much time and money. Why is Canada a third world country when it comes to bureaucracy?

When I looked first into this procedure, when I just had arrived in Canada, the processing time to become a Canadian citizen was 10 months. By the time I was eligible it was already 12 months, and now it is 15 months. So maybe in March 2009 I will become a Canadian citizen. And maybe not. Watch this space. Patiently.

We try to find access to the west side of “our” lake. This view is from a neighbouring hill, but steep cliffs prevent us from descending. Later I (and Poupoune) manage to bushwack around the hill, but it certainly isn’t an easy approach. I think I’ll hack a path towards the lake next year and put up a sign “lake access”, so the path gets really defined when many people are using it.

All the shoreline on the right of this photo will soon be developed for rich people. For the land alone the developer asks already around 300,000 dollars per plot, and your architectural plans have to be okayed by a commission before you can buy. Not for us mere mortals. And even if we had the money we wouldn’t want to live in an enclave of rich people. Why can’t they make cheap apartments near lakes?

I should be in the Netherlands today, but I’m not. I had a ticket for a flight to Europe last night, but I didn’t use it.

During the past 6 years, I always bought return tickets from the Netherlands to Montréal. In the beginning because I just went for several weeks to several months to visit Alison. And when I finally immigrated to Canada, 4 years ago exactly, I didn’t buy a single ticket. The reason is that a single ticket is actually more expensive than a return ticket. To give you an example, I can fly next week from Amsterdam to Montréal and back two weeks later for EUR 403. If I book a single ticket however, the cheapest flight will cost me EUR 1049. That’s more than twice the price for half of the product. Explain that to me. It’s like if you go to the grocery store and 1 loaf of bread is more expensive than two loaves of bread. It’s absurd and some economic watchdog should take measures to correct this, but that’s a whole different rant.

So I always, during the past years, bought return tickets. Usually with British Airways and those tickets were valid for a year and you had to pay a certain
fee (100 USD) if you wanted to change the return date. But, I discovered a loophole. Those tickets are valid for a year, but you can’t actually book your return a year ahead. The computer only “knows” about dates 10 months in the future. So I had my travel agent call BA and ask if I could change my return date for free because I couldn’t book it yet. That was very convenient, an open ticket for a low price. Later they closed that loophole and I could only change the date to a date after those initial 10 months but then I just paid the fee. Which I did a couple of times, when my mother was severely ill and I decided on short notice to visit her.

Last December, after such a surprise visit, all flights back to Montréal were fully booked and the remaining seats very expensive. So, suggested by my sister, I booked my flight from a city in Germany that is actually closer to my mother’s home that the airport of Amsterdam. There was room on that plane, I could just be on time here for Christmas evening and the price, although high was not unreasonable. As a return date I put 11 September 2007, because that was the last date the computer would let me, and easy to remember. I actually feared I would have to go back much earlier, because my mother’s health situation at the time was very precarious. (She seems to be doing much better now, thanks for asking.)

So a couple of weeks ago I foresaw that I couldn’t make it on 11 September because I was just too busy with all those projects here, that needed to be finished. So I called Air France to change the return date on my ticket and fell from one surprise into another. The first person told me I couldn’t change my ticket at all. I looked at the ticket and there it was clearly marked that I could change the date for a fee of EUR 150 (yes, those penalties did increase over the past years). Yes sir, but I see here that your ticket is only valid for 9 months. What? They now sell tickets for 9 months. And they don’t advertise that in any way when you book it. She then transferred me to another person who said that OK, even though I couldn’t officially change my ticket they would make an exception. My heart rated lowered instantly. Because the new ticket was more expensive I only had to pay a surcharge. A surcharge of 3400 EUR. Yes, you read that correctly, thirty! four! hundred! fucking Euros. That’s almost 5000 Canadian (or American) dollars. My hearth rate went up a couple of notches and I started laughing uncontrollably. “Vous faites un blague madame, n’est pas?”, but no, she wasn’t the type of person that made jokes, probably never had. The only thing I could do was hang up and stare at my computer screen in disbelief.

Just to put the absurdity of that amount in perspective: A return ticket Montréal-Dusseldorf with Air France on December 4th to December 24th would cost me EUR 3,245.64. Of course that would be a Business class ticket, since a normal economy ticket would only cost EUR 717. That is with Air France, I could have a direct flight with KLM to Amsterdam on the same dates for only EUR 578…

And these prices are for flights from Canada to Europe and those flights are always more expensive than if you fly from Europe to Canada. Don’t ask me why, I have no idea.

So now you know why there was an empty seat on flight AF 347 last night.

I had to restrain myself from going to the the airport yesterday, checking in an old suitcase, and then just leave the airport and let them have to remove the suitcase from the cargo bay after they found out I wasn’t showing up. That would have caused a nice delay. But with all the no-fly lists these days I figured out that was probably not a smart thing to do. Even though I actually was in the neighbourhood of the airport at the time.

Just hearing my name (that nobody can pronounce here, neither English nor French speakers) over the intercom would have been worth it.

“Last call for Mr. …. Rash-n-ders on flight Air France 347.
Mr. Rash-n-ders, please head to gate B34 immediately or your luggage will be offloaded.”