loglog

Pay

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.

Sawdust

While I was working in my workshop Poupoune thought she would keep me company. She lay down under my table saw; a nice, cool and above all, soft spot. Sometimes she's a real chameleon.

I had to dust her off, though.

City

We walked a lot, doing a couple of walking tours.

Today we spent exploring Harlem. It was a very strange experience for me to be surrounded by non-white people. I didn't see any Caucasians for over two hours.
I wasn't afraid or felt threatened or something like that. I just felt slightly uneasy. Being the odd one out. It made me understand a bit better how black people must feel when they are surrounded by whites. And I wasn't even oppressed or treated badly.

Alison didn't have any of these feelings. She lived in Africa for 4 years, and simply doesn't notice race.

Playing

We're a couple of days in New York City, visiting friends and visiting the city. We saw an installation by former Talking Heads singer David Byrne, in which he attached a organ to a building. Playing the organ causes all kinds of whistles, clicks, bangs and rumbles.

Just being in that building, an old ferry terminal, was already nice. All these sounds added to the experience and made it even better.

Dog

We went for a picnic with Leanne, her son and her big dog. Alison sometimes babysits Taotao but I have a stronger bond with the dog, Gretchen. There is a reason for that.

Her name was Narda. She weighted around 40 kilo and looked wonderful with her red, white and black coat. She was a pure-bred Saint Bernard which explains her name. Less than a year young, she was very playful and good with kids, especially with me. It was my dog, my parents gave her to me when our previous dog, a boxer, had been stolen from our yard. I petted her a lot, and sometimes I slept with my head on her soft pink belly that made nice and soothing noises. When I told her my secrets she looked at me with her brown eyes and it was as if she completely understood what I said.

We lived in the country. My brother and other sisters already lived on their own, so our family consisted of my parents, my older sister Barbara and me. My parents had bought our house, a small former farm house whose origins dated back to the 17th century, a few years earlier and had, with blood, sweat and tears, converted it into their dream house. It wasn't exactly my dream house however, since living in the countryside was a bit too lonely for me. No other kids to play with and my friends from school didn't come to our house very often because it meant they had to bike 10 kilometres. And 10 kilometres to get back. Living close to nature was very nice though, and I enjoyed that a lot. The birds and other animals and above all the pond in front of our house. It wasn't very big, but also not very small. About 200 by 300 metres and only 4 metres deep. It was the remnant of a dike failure that happened more than 100 years ago. The water was of very good quality and in the summer we swam in it and when we had a cold winter we ice skated on its frozen surface.

Another advantage of living in a rural area with a big yard was that we didn't have to walk the dog. The dog walked herself. Of course we did went on walks with her, along the shores of the Maas river, at the other side of the dike, and in the small forest that surrounded the pond. Narda was a real winter-dog. In her first summer she had suffered from the heat but now, halfway through January, the temperatures around freezing and even with a bit of snow, she really was in her element. She jumped into the river and came out like a moving canine icicle. But she loved it.

That night we were watching television when my father remarked that Narda was still outside. It was her habit to scratch the door with her big paws when she wanted to be let in. I went outside to see how she was doing. The moment I opened the door I knew what was wrong. I couldn't see her but I heard her barking sadly. It sounded very strange and distorted, close and far away at the same time with a sort of Doppler effect. A bit like when you throw a stone on a frozen lake. Narda apparently went onto the thin snow covered ice that had formed on the pond and almost in the middle the ice sheet couldn't support her considerable weight and she fell into the cold water. She was swimming in the hole she had made and tried to warn us with an almost apologetic bark. I called my parents and sister and immediately ran into the shed to get the small play boat I got a few years ago for my birthday. Before my parents could stop me I slid in the boat onto the ice, pushing myself with my bare hands against the layer of snow, towards my dog. A few metres before I reached her the ice cracked so I ended up in the same hole in the ice as Narda, floating in my small boat. The boat was just big enough to hold my weight, but some water had already poored over the edge. I got hold of Narda's collar and tried to drag her into the boat but she was too heavy and the boat too unstable. In retrospect I know what I should have done: use the boat as a sort of icebreaker and make a channel to the shore so Narda could have swam out by herself. But at the time none of us thought of that. I just held her collar and talked to her to calm her down. In the meantime my father and sister dragged a ladder onto the ice and my sister, the lightest of them, crawled onto it. But the ladder was too short and she couldn't reach me.
My mother, now worried about our health, called the fire brigade. Ten minutes later they arrived with a couple of trucks and half the village in tow. They parked their cars at the top of the dike and the car's head lights bathed the whole scene in a flood of light, almost like a movie scene.
The firemen went onto the ice with their long ladders and dragged my sister and me to the shore. We were, slightly hypothermic, put into a lukewarm bath, still fully clothed. The bath was then slowly filled with warmer water to warm us up. Our village doctor came by to check in on our health and he brought us the news: Narda had drowned. The firemen had tried to pull her out of the water with a rope, but they had attached the rope to her collar and it had slid over her head. Shortly after that Narda had given up swimming and had disappeared under the ice. The doctor explained that death by hypothermia was a very quiet way to die but that couldn't ease my pain and sorrow. My sister and I cried all night.

A few days later we bought another dog, again a Saint Bernard. We named her Arolla. She lived a long and happy life and died when she was fourteen, which is ancient for a dog her size.

[This happened in 1977 and was originally written in a Dutch newsgroup in 1999]

After

(Now I have to clean the rest of the house; lots of sawdust there...)

Team

Before we can start using the new bookcases our special test team has to test its integrity. We were slightly worried before they started the rigourous tests but that proved unnecessary: the bookcases passed with very high scores.

So now we have to unpack the boxes of books and put them into the bookcases. I think they're nicer now in their virginal white state, but I don't have a say.

Paint

After a lot of work (and some paid contracts in between for distraction) I can finally start painting the bookcases. But first the ceiling and walls of the living room need a coat of paint. You don't want any splatters on the new bookcases.

When Alison moved in our appartment, the previous tenant had just painted it. "It still needs another coat, shall I do that?," she asked. But Alison hated the drab brown colour so she replied her not to bother. It took her 13 years to find someone to do it for her, but today, at long last, the brown is gone. It's a very light pink now, and it looks great.

Painting the bookcases, the shelves and the mouldings is more work than the ceiling and walls; it is going to be painted white and it will at least take 3 coats.

I hate painting. It's stupid work but you still have to stay concentrated in order to prevent leaving streaks and blobs. And the water based paints dry so quickly that you really need to work fast and still be precise. Ah well, in a few days it will be all done. I can't wait to see the results.

Pruning

Pruning the maple so our tenants can use their washing lines. It's a yearly ritual, but this time I used a tall ladder to be able to saw off a branch that was very high up. I attached the top of the ladder to the tree with a sling, so it wouldn't slide off the tree and fall down. It was windy so the branches were moving and I got a little seasick.

This is of course part of the master plan to be a good landlord. I'm sure the tenants won't even notice that the tree has been pruned. But who knows, maybe next year they won't refuse the rent increase. There is some improvement on that front; this year only 2 out of 4 refused.

Watch

Watch him get special food. It's not fair.

Finger

You really have to entice Pepe to start eating the special low protein food he gets to prevent his kidneys to deteriorate . Mix the food with peanut butter and water. Heat it up in the microwave. Dip your finger in it, put it in front of him. He looks elsewhere. Try again. Wipe some food on his lips so he licks it off. Sometimes he start eating then, sometimes he doesn't. If not, try harder. Often we present two kinds of food so he has another choice and can decide that food A is worse than food B so he'll eat some of food A, gets into it and then also tries food B.
If after that he still doesn't want to eat we put the food away so Poupoune doesn't eat it and try again in a few hours.

All in all he's doing quite well on the new regime. He gained some weight and in general seems to be happy and in good health.

Logs

Because the name of this log I really had to link to the work of Canadian artist Alastair Heseltine.

Play

The blocks were a huge success!

Susan's son Hugh proved not at all too young for the blocks as I had thought but what do I know about babies. He immediately started to play with them and was particulairly interested in the round ones, that rolled back and forth. He took them out of the box himself, threw them on the floor, put them in his mouth and often had one in each hand. He was happy and I was happy too.

He's an easy going baby, with very big ears. I called them Budda ears and Susan said they called hem like that in the orphanage as well.

He didn't build a tower yet, but I'm sure that'll come with time. However destroying the tower we tried to build gave him great pleasure. He learns new things every day. Since a few days he can stand without support of a chair or a leg and he showed it to me and I snapped the first photo of it. Alison (she knows a lot about babies) told me him standing like that was very early for a baby of not even 9 months. Susan must be proud of him.

Blocks

A friend of mine, one of the group I watch ER with, recently adopted a boy. Tomorrow I'm going to see him for the first time and I went a bit overboard with the welcome gift.

I made a set of wooden building blocks for him, enough to build a big tower or castle. It was a bit more work than I had calculated but the result is quite nice. Not perfect, but made with love.

He's a bit too young for building towers, but for now he can throw them around the room or at his mother. To prevent major damage I didn't use heavy hardwood but just used pine. Well, actually it was a request by Alison who, as a kid, preferred pine blocks over their more solid counterparts.

We'll see what little Hugh thinks of them. I for one, almost couldn't stop playing with them. I made another set for another friend, also from ER, who also adopted a baby. But those blocks aren't sanded yet, I'll finish them later.

Final

The final patch of snow, bravely holding out against the warm weather of the past two weeks. Thanks to the eternal shade of the neighbour's garage and being part of a huge pile of compacted snow it was able to survive until today. Tomorrow it will be gone.

The humongous piles of compacted snow did quite some damage to Alison her dogwood shrubs. I can't wait to see all the plants turn green and the many firns we planted last year to unroll their heads. Very soon it will be summer.

Stretch

The results of the MRI are in:

• A Baker's cyst 3 x 2 x 4 cm
• Old minor tear at the lateral meniscus
• Grade I-II patellar chondrosis
• Osteophytosis at the medial trochlea

If you're interested you can Google what this all means. Basically I have fluid in my knee, and the cartilage behind my knee cap is damaged. There is also a small bone spur, a bone that the body makes to make up for a lack of cartilage. Unfortunately that is not a good plan and over time this can get very painful when that bone hits other bone.

I'm going to have physiotherapy and have to do a lot of stretching and strengthen exercises. They hurt.

And my doctor referred me to an orthopaedist. He'll probably see me in 6 to 9 months.

Walk

Everything is brown and grey now the snow has melted and the trees and shrub are still leafless. Everything except Alison!

Before

I finally started building built-in bookcases in our living room. It was long overdue but I was just too busy with other things to make something for ourselves.

Here's an artist impression of how it will look like in a few weeks.

Apart from the bookcases there will be drawers for CDs and a big shelf for Alison to put plants on. After the bookcases, one in every corner, are finished, my books can finally leave the boxes that they inhabited for the past four and a half years. I don't even remember which books I brought to Canada and which I left behind.

While temporarily putting Alison's books and the books I collected over the past years into boxes I felt very sad. It somehow seemed I was moving out, instead of building something new. Fortunately that feeling didn't last long, but I surely hope I didn't suddenly became clairvoyant...

Knee

My knee hurts.

Since quite a while now but it got worse after a fall while cross-country skiing a few weeks ago. So my doctor made me have another MRI. The technician was so kind to make this photo. As you can see I didn't have to go into the machine head-first so the whole experience was not at all claustrophobic. I even managed, despite the loud noise, to nearly fall asleep at the end.

I paid an additional fee, on top of the $650 that will hopefully be reimbursed by my health insurance, to get the results on a CD-ROM.

If you are an orthopaedist you might see exactly what is wrong, if you're not, just enjoy the little movie. I think it's really cool to look into your own knee sliced like it is a loaf of bread.

[Click to play; click circle button on bottom right to play full screen]

Candles

44 candles, and I managed to blow them all out at once but one.

Alison baked this cake, a Gugelhupf or something. It turned out to be very bready, so I suggested to top it with icing. That worked well and the result was delicious. A really sweet birthday cake.

My mood has lifted today (Yay!), so Alison invited (and instructed me to invite) some friends to come and eat the cake. Of course it was very last minute, she had to see if I was feeling well enough to cope with visitors. On top of that it is beautiful, almost-spring weather so we just left a lot of messages on answering machines, hoping that at least somebody would show up. Two people did and we had a good time.

Passage

The snow is covered with a crusty layer because it's thawing and Poupoune has found out she can now use the mountain of snow as a secret passage to the neighbour's garden, and subsequently, to the cats in the alley.

Note to self: make the fence two metres taller.

Black

It's my birthday today but I'm totally not in the mood for a party. Alison is in Toronto, and I'm invited by friends to celebrate my birthday with them. Even though i didn't feel like it I reluctantly went. It costs a lot of energy to appear human.

The supper was great, the cake was lovely, the company pleasant, but nevertheless I wasn't able to really enjoy it.

This depressive episode lasts a couple of weeks now and I'm want it to be over. I can only see the negative side of things, the house that needs lot of maintenance, the tenants that refuse the rent increase, my lack of friends, clients that didn't pay my invoices etc. I even shout to the dogs.

Ice

Not very smart to park a bike under the spout of a gutter. You have to de-ice it before you can use it. Or get a cold ass.

It's thawing rapidly now, but at night it's still below zero, so the mountains of snow will be present for at least a couple of weeks. Especially the ones in our garden, that aren't warmed up by the sun.

Chaos

They had snow in the Netherlands this morning. Chaos everywhere, 880 km of traffic jam, hundreds of accidents, trains stuck in the middle of nowhere etc.

The amount? 4 cm.

Bin

Poupoune is surprised to find the 1 metre high bins in the park reduced to 'holes in the ground' she only knows from her visits to the hair dresser.

[Made with the new camera, but I'm not blown away by the 'snow' preset. O wait, I had another setting wrong. Too many options...]

Covering

Pepe often covers his bowl of food so he can eat it later when he doesn't feel nauseated. He does this by using his nose to move sand over his food. Since we are in short supply of sand in our kitchen, the dishtowel that we put his bowl on has to do. And it does.

Now he only needs to find a solution to that pesky creature called Poupoune, that keeps eating his food the moment he leaves the kitchen. Even when he covered it.

Record

347 cm and counting.

Camera

My camera, after almost 7 years, gave up the ghost. It fails intermittently, sometimes with beautiful results but this wasn't exactly the photo I wanted to make.

We were at the yearly Nuit Blanche, an all-night event during which a lot of places like museums, cinemas and other venues are opened for free until 05h00. There are also many special events like almost free wine tasting (one glass Chianti for me, water for Alison) and this dance show by students of the UQAM.

It was very busy and for almost all events there were big lines of people waiting. We are not so big on waiting so we just left the lines as they were and went only to a small number of events but walked a lot through the snow. Unfortunately I had made a terrible shoe choice, having spent mostly indoors for a week working on a computer application. So my low sneakers were soaked quite fast by the puddles of melting snow.

The spectators for the dance performance were located in a courtyard and most of the dancing took place behind the windows of the university building surrounded the courtyard. Very nice, even though I was standing in deep snow with soaked shoes.

The dance show appeared to both of us as a homage to the dancing lady that was on display a couple of blocks away from the dance show venue. It was a perpetually projection of the silhouette of a naked dancing woman, as an advertisement for a strip club. That building is recently razed, and the seedy projection will be missed by many.

We didn't stay that long, after 23h00 Alison was tired and wanted to go home. I begrudgingly complied.

A new camera is ordered, my birthday present. Alison bought it at Amazon in the US where it was almost half the price of a very discounted model at Future Shop. Plus free shipping and no taxes. I'll pick it up at a forwarding service just over the US-Canadian border.

No, I didn't go for the DP1, but for a Panasonic Lumix with a 10x Leica zoom lens. It will be a huge improvement compared to my current Canon camera with 3 seconds shutter lag and 1 inch screen. You'll see the results here soon, I hope you will notice the improvement.

Lazarus

What a difference a day or two makes. Yesterday I brought Pepe to the vet, who was very concerned and wanted me to take him to the animal hospital (the same place where I spent 1500 dollar for Poupoune a couple of years ago) to stay on an IV for the weekend to get some fluids and nutrients into him. She feared he had an ulcer and wanted to do lots of tests to come to a diagnose. I decided to only treat his symptoms, so she gave him an antacid and some subcutaneous saline. After paying 100 bucks I went home, with him wrapped in a blanket under my coat in the softly falling snow.

He slept all day, but then ate a little bit, and didn't vomit. By the time Alison came home from the airport after midnight he was already feeling much better. He greeted her with his signature dance and she was very happy to see him alive. Today he's even feeling better and eats and drinks, although not in very big quantities. But he is still frail. He lost almost a pound in body weight mostly of a lack of fluids. That is not healthy and we really have to fatten him up over the next weeks. He is very low on reserves.

I suspect him from pulling these stunts just to make us bond stronger to him. That and to be on the front-page of loglog every day.

I still need to record his dance for posterity; fortunately it seems he gave me a chance to do it. Now I only have to make him dance on camera. So far when I point the camera at him he immediately stops dancing and just stares at me and barks. His bark is just loud and annoying and not nearly as cute as him dancing in circles.

Blood

I might have been way too optimistic about Pepe's longevity. He has hardly eaten during the last few days, and when he eats he starts to vomit soon thereafter. He sleeps all day, and when not he's very frail and trembles a lot. He still wags his tail though, so there is some liveness in him, but he's definitely not feeling well.

I just found a big puddle of watery vomit with blood in it.

Not good. Tomorrow to the vet, I hope she can keep him alive until the weekend when Alison comes back from a business-trip out West.

Kidney

Pepe is ill. His kidneys don't work very well, he's drinking and peeing a lot, and he slowly loses weight. Getting the diagnose of kidney failure took a while because the vet wanted to check his blood and urine a couple of times to make sure it wasn't a temporary illness that could be cured with some anti-biotic. She prescribed him antibiotics for a month —which made him feel nauseated causing even more weight loss— but it didn't help.

So he is going to die. Not in a couple of months, but probably in a year of two. There is no cure but we can stretch his life a little, and improve his quality of life by giving him magical kidney powder. In order to make sure the medication is not having bad side-effects he also needs blood-tests every 3 months.

All this is not going to break the bank (it'll cost slightly more than dollar a day) but during the last few months we thought long and hard what our limits are. Not only financial, but also moral. Should one really spend thousands of dollars to prolong the life of a dog (who had a good 12 years on earth) while for the same amount of money you could keep some people alive? It starts with a few dollars but since you have started, when and where do you stop? We've decided to treat him until the treatment stops working or until he has pain and isn't happy anymore. But no big interventions.

Just thinking about our boundaries makes us feel guilty. Who are we to decide about life and death? But in reality we do. Our pets won't survive without us. They need us for food and shelter and in return they keep us company and give us affection. But all these questions and doubts come up with Pepe, a dog we don't have such a tight bond with compared to Poupoune. If Poupoune was ill we probably would go much further in extending her life.

Sure, Pepe is always good humoured, dances adorably (although not on camera) when he is excited and is very snugly and likes to be under your sweater and peep out his head like a joey. He sleeps 20 hours a day, preferably under a blanket, can't go out for walks in the winter, sometimes poops and pees in places he's not supposed to and, above all, he is not very bright.

Even though he's ill he still does all of that. He's not suffering as far as we can tell, and we give him special canned dog food specially formulated for dogs with kidney failure. Unfortunately Poupoune is very jealous he's getting special treatment and she's even grumpier than before.

Noise

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.

Number

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.

Hair

Composition in yellow (Montreal, 2008)

Freshly cut and bleached.

Head

Don't worry, my ear is still attached.

Six

The tagging virus is doing the rounds again and Frank tried to infect me. Since I've not much else to write here I happily tag along.

According to the rule-book:

• Link to the person that tagged you.
• Post the rules on your blog.
• Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
• Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
• Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.

Okay, now we've got that out of the way, here we go, in no particular order:

1. I generally don't eat meat, but I'll sometimes make exceptions for lamb or venison. I did however eat dog once. I was in a market in rural Vietnam and taking pictures of two tied-up dogs. Someone came to me and gestured to come with him, intermittently pointing to the dogs. We ended up at a stall on the market with a big boiling pot of soup with chucks of meat in it. He took a big spoon, fished out some meat and held it in front of my face. How could I refuse somebody who offered me a part of his feast meal? It was quite tasty and tasted like wild pig. I do eat fish but will spare you a gruesome story.
   
2. I hate the fact that men's clothes are almost all in subdued, dark colours. I like to wear bright colours, the world is already grey enough. (There was a period in my life that I only had grey clothes, but that was when I was in art school...)
   
3. I almost always sleep with a something in my mouth. A plastic mouth guard, because I grind and clench my teeth during my sleep; a Dutch "dropje" (liquorice) in order to keep my saliva going thus preventing a dry mouth and a resulting sore throat; and sometimes also my right index finger to be able to breathe because my nose often clogs up completely. However, and maybe the result of the above, I do not snore.
   
4. I am not circumcised, but I did have a vasectomy. I had some complications after doing that procedure so I'm not sure if I can recommend it. Even though it's good for bringing down the growth of the human population, so maybe we can have another generation before the resource wars will start.
   
5. I learn very fast but I'm also easily bored. So I never become a real expert in something because when the learning curve flattens at the top, and improving things costs too much time, I tend to move my attention to something else. As a result I'm good in doing many things, but don't excel in anything particular.
   
6. I've never knowingly slept with a Mac user.
   

O, and now for the hard part. Find six blogs that haven't been tagged. Of course that is impossible, like with every pyramid scheme. The number of bloggers that already have been tagged goes up quite a bit with every iteration.

Six, forty-two, 258 (more people than I know that have a blog), 1554, 9330, 55986, 335922, 2015538 (more people than there are living on the island of Montréal), 12093234 (more people than in Québec), 72559410 (more people than living in the Netherlands and Canada combined), 435356466, 2612138802 (almost half of the earth's human population), 15672832818 (we really have to teach animals to blog now)...

This whole tagging thing is totally unsustainable. All I can do is break the rules. Either by tagging less than six people or by tagging people that have already been tagged, but haven't written a "6 random things about me"-post.

I just tag one person, and I'll force her to write something so the chain isn't broken because we all know that means bad luck. Without further ado I hereby tag Alison, who writes much better than I do on her Transparency blog.

(I'm so going to regret this.)

Garçon !

Seeing a Dutch film in our neighbourhood cinema with French subtitles is a strange experience. Hearing people around you laugh about jokes that you thought were typical Dutch was even stranger.

The movie was "Garçon !" ("Ober") written, directed and played by Alex van Warmerdam, a Dutch multi-talent (he also designed the poster and drew the storyboard) who's work I really like. His humour is quite absurd and harsh, and for Canadian viewers sometimes even misogynist and racist. I myself? I laughed a lot.

Dig

A combination of being away during a major snowstorm, a lazy and ill Alison and neighbours with snowblowers blowing their snow in our garden caused a backbreaking amount of snow in our backyard.

Two hours later.

Ramble

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.

loot

Christmas comes early this year. After I came back from a day in Rotterdam to Nijmegen, where my mother and sister live she handed me my inheritance. All of the art my mother owned was described in a long notarized list and my brothers and sisters decided that it was better to give me my part now, because shipping would be too complicated. I thought the timing was a bit awkward, the night before the funeral, but I had no say in this. So now I have a suitcase filled with a couple of drawings and a water colour, an old Arab book illustration, an African sculpture, a tiny mexican sculpture (probably fake,) the snuff box of my father, a ring that belonged to my mother's father and a collier made of rock crystal beads destined for Alison.

I hope it will fit all in my suitcase, because I also bought a couple of bottles red grapefruit sirup and lots of dropjes, since I have to stock up.

Obit

[This necrology I wrote while sitting next to my dying mother. It is rather factual probably because I'm not ready yet to become personal. It's still too close, too recent. But I want to tell my mother's story now as a way to distract myself and at the same time getting closer to her. There are certainly a lot of factual errors in it. I will talk to Amadou, her Mauritanian friend who considers her his second mother, to fill in some details and make additions and changes. It's telling that he knows more about her life than her own children.]

Margrit was born in a upper middle class family in Sankt Gallen, Switzerland. Her father was head of the bleu collar civil servants, and amongst others responsible for hiring labourers for snow removal. He had a lot of friends when visiting a bar. She was the youngest of 4 children, two girls and one boy. Her mother became very ill when she was a toddler and spent her last years in bed. Because little Margrit was still at home she got a lot of attention from her mother, who told and read her a lot of stories. Her love of books and reading must have been originated at that age. The blow for her when her best companion died when she was 6 must have been quite fierce. Her father immediately started an affair with the live-in house keeper which surely didn't help.

During her teens she got a major traffic accident that scarred her face and caused major damage in other areas.

Margrit went to university to study physical education. However after a year and a half she herself fell ill with tuberculosis. She spent two years in a sanatorium in the Southern Alps where she read a lot and had extensive conversations about religion with patients and staff. During this time she decided to change her religion from Protestant to Roman Catholic, much to the dismay of her family.

When she was cured she wanted to change subject and start to study medicine to pursue a career as a doctor but her father told her that her study funds had been depleted by the sanatorium dispenses and that instead she should get a job. And thus she started to work as a doctor's assistant. She didn't have any diplomas but soon she did many medical procedures because she was better at them than the doctor she worked for and he was not afraid to acknowledge that. She really liked her job but one night she found out that her boss also carried out (illegal) abortions which totally conflicted with her moral and religious beliefs. She quit her job and after some other small jobs managed to become a sports instructor and landed a position as a group leader and sports instructor at a boarding school for Dutch asthma patients and children of diplomats (the latter financed the other, poorer students) located on a steep cliff near Montreux overlooking Lake Geneva. There she met Karel, a Dutch Language teacher from the Netherlands who proposed to her shortly after they met. She hesitantly accepted. Soon thereafter the school was closing its doors because of a lack of funds and the pair got married in a ceremony in the school's auditorium followed by a short honeymoon in a hotel at the other side of the lake to where they travelled in exotic modes of transportation like a funicular and a Mississippi paddle boat.

Immediately after the honeymoon, Margrit and Karel moved to the Netherlands where Karel, being a Dutch Language teacher, had more chance of landing a job. She never worked in the Netherlands, lacking the required certificates.

Even though it was a couple of years after the German occupation and the Second World War the Netherlands was still lacking resources and there were big housing shortages. So the pair moved in with Karel's mother and youngest sister in Nijmegen, a university town in the East of the Netherlands. Margrit was shocked, being used to the rich Swiss circumstances where they gained from the war instead of suffered from it. Living in with her mother-in-law also caused a great deal of tension.

To their great joy Margrit became pregnant, even though the doctors had told her that conceiving a child would be impossible after her accident.

Their first child was a girl they named Aagje, and soon after her birth Margrit got pregnant again and a boy, Peter-Jan, was born. After a few months he suddenly died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome leaving the young couple devastated. Soon thereafter, when Aagje was 2 and a half, they adopted Ronald.

Margrit got pregnant two more times and with Maaike and Barbara the family now consisted of 6 people.

They moved to another house, located opposite from the care facility that she lived in during the last year of her life and where she also died.

There, seven years after Barbara, Mark was born. Karel and Margrit tried to conceive another child as a playmate for him but after a late miscarriage their doctor strongly advised against getting pregnant again.

Even though she had many children Margrit never was a very warm and dedicated mother. The marriage with Karel was also not always easy as he often retired in his office to work on his dissertation, that he finally finished after 13 years, leaving most of the care for the 5 children to her.

She did the best she could but also tried to get as much away-time as she could by reading large quantities of books in as many as four languages. She wasn't very happy in the Netherlands, but also didn't feel welcome in Switzerland anymore when she visited there, but at least the books gave her an escape to live far more interesting lives in far more interesting places.

She was often plagued with health problems, had chronic and recurring bronchitis, a misdiagnosed herniated disk that was much later diagnosed as an inoperable cyst in her spinal column, causing a lot of back pain and painful pressure on certain nerves in her leg. She also suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, especially in the morning when she hadn't moved for a while.

In 1970 they bought a house in the country near Nijmegen that belonged to their maid's mother. The house was in terrible shape, basically a shack, but it was very nicely located near a pond and a forest, just on the other side of the dike along the Maas river. They saw the potential in this house and worked for many years to improve it and make it their Garden of Eden.

Then Karel's aging mother moved in with the pair and their two youngest children who still lived with their parents. This caused a lot of tension in the family when Karel had to decide where his loyalties lied, with his wife or his mother. It culminated in Karel getting a major stroke that, although it didn't cause physical damage, made him less capable to do his work and after a short while led to his early retirement.

A few years later, Karel developed a major manic episode during which Margrit didn't feel save anymore so she left the house that she loved so much to live alone which eventually led to a divorce.

The divorce turned out to be very positive for Margrit. Instead of relying on his circle of friends she had to make her own now. She started to do volunteer work for the refugee aid organization "Vluchtelingenwerk" that made good use of her strong language skills, and became really good friends with a couple of refugees. She also went on long and adventurous organized hiking journeys to faraway countries where she often was the oldest participant, but nevertheless connected with some like-minded people. During these travels she also made strong connections.

After Karel finally acknowledged he was ill and received successful treatment for his mental problems they became good friends again, maybe better friends than before. But she didn't want to give up her newly found independence by moving in with him again.

Karel's death a few years later caused quite a stir in the relationship with a few of her children. Accusations were made back and forth and only after many years they came on speaking terms again.

Over the years Margrit's health also began to deteriorate. She suffered from a series of Transient Ischemic Attacks (TIA) and then a major stroke on the day she bought a ticket to visit her emigrated son Mark in Canada. That stroke paralyzed the left side of her body which turned her suddenly from a very active hiker to a wheelchair bound. She had to leave her own house, had to get rid of a lot of her art and her beloved dog.

[I was writing this story while I was sitting beside Margrit's deathbed. After writing the previous line my mother coughed twice and then stopped breathing and died.]

She was moved into a care facility where she spent her days reading and watching television. Her paralyzed leg became very painful and she required a lot of pain medication which in turn made her very drowsy. She couldn't concentrate on complicated tasks and only pretended to read the books her friends brought her. Her friends played along, not wanting to make her feel more miserable as she already felt.

During a heat wave she developed serious pulmonary problems which resulted in yet another hospital visit. But her body wasn't ready yet so her heart fully recovered. She also survived a double pneumonia combined with heart problems a year later.

In December 2007 her lungs started to deteriorate and she was often out of breath. When the nursing home doctor wanted to admit her to the hospital she refused and said she was tired of hospitals. They administered pain medication and she died peacefully after a couple of days, in company of her son Mark, who was coincidentally just visiting the Netherlands.

[photo: Goedele Monnens]

Over

This afternoon, 11 December 2007 at 17h14, my mother passed away. I was the only one sitting beside her, my sister just left and another sister that was going to replace me so I could grab a bite hadn't showed up yet. I was writing her life story while listening to her breathing. Writing gave me something to do, and gave me a way to connect to her even though she was in a deep morphine sleep and fighting for every breath.
Suddenly she coughed twice. I looked at her, there was not much change, but she had stopped breathing. I checked it by holding a hand in front of her mouth and then called the nurse. She also checked her breathing, her pulse and then stopped the loud oxygen ventilator and removed the breathing tube from her nose. I phoned my sisters and then spend some time with my mother alone. I cried but wasn't sad. Her ordeal is over.

Tears

The soon to be demolished railway station of Rotterdam is temporarily renamed from "CENTRAAL STATION". The current shuffle of neon sign letters means "shedding a tear" in Dutch.

I'm sitting here in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, next to my mother. She's trying to fight off another pneumonia. Yesterday she indicated that she didn't want to be transported from the nursing home to a hospital. They are administering morphine in increasingly higher doses. She doesn't talk anymore, just sleeps while breathing heavily. I hope she has nice dreams.

No, I didn't go to the Netherlands for an emergency visit. This visit was planned a long time ago and I saw her two days ago, when she was still lively and alert. Things go fast sometimes. Coincidence? I don't know.

Moosed

There were two of them. Two very big moose, right there in our backyard!

Slowly, silently, they stepped over the low fence into the garden. They were huge. Pepe started yapping at them. One moose stepped forward and crushed Pepe under its gigantic foot. It then bowed down and started with ripping Pepe's hind leg from his body. It was a rather bloody affair, and Pepe, still conscious, cried as he used to do when Alison cut his nails, but then louder.
From the porch I watched the things unfold in absolute shock and horror but at the same time I couldn't stop looking. I just stood there, frozen. Didn't, couldn't interfere and totally forgot to take pictures. Strange thoughts went through my mind like "at least he won't pee on the floors anymore" and "finally I'll get uninterrupted nights sleep". Both guilt for my horrible thoughts and relief over Pepe's sudden demise filled my mind. In the meantime the moose had finished eating the final bits of Pepe, and he and his mate slowly stepped away, back into the lane-way. A bloody patch in the snow was all that was left of the dog.

Poupoune, when asked for comments, thought it was an excellent dream.

Cones

Pepe & Poupoune (and Alison) make their first appearance on another website.

The context of these cones can be had here and here from the archives.

Hiatus

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.

Citizenship

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.

Polyester

With the plywood in place and screwed down, I cover it with a fibreglass weave saturated with polyester resin. After it has cured I cut of the "skirt", and caulk the edges with the wall.

And now, repeat this for the next balcony hoping the weather will stay nice and we won't get a snowstorm.

[No snow, but it did rain...]

Ply

Then I put a new plywood floor and screw it to the beams. Getting the plywood sheets in place wasn't very easy since the sheets are wider than the clearance between the wall and the railing, but I devised a cunning system that worked pretty well.
I attached two ropes to the front of the balcony, just under the place where the new floor will be. I attached the other ends of the ropes to the poles that hold up the roof. Then I carried the sheet of plywood upstairs and slid it into the coils of rope. By loosening the ropes I could then lower the sheet so it was oriented horizontally. Then it was fairly easy to slide it under the posts of the railing and slide it into its final place. Of course this description doesn't include the swearing when things got temporarily stuck, or the near misses when I lost my balance and almost fell down three stories. Well, that last thing didn't happen, it was actually quite straightforward. Screwing the sheets down took longer that getting them in place.

Balcony

The bathroom project is finished (will post pictures after the client has painted it) and I have my tools back at home. So I can tackle some other projects. The weather is extremely warm lately and the forecast is so good that I decide to replace the back balconies. Last year I did that with our own porch and that worked pretty well. So now I'm going to do the same on the second and third floor. That makes think a lot harder because I don't have as easy access. First I remove the old balcony planks. Then I have to reinforce the beams that are missing or are severely affected by rot.

Escape

Instead of resting on our laurels and enjoying the nice fall weather we're spending most of our weekends lately scraping and painting our fire escape stairs. There is a lot of rust, but on the whole its metal is in better state than I had feared. Still there are a lot of nooks and crannies to scrape the rust out and a lot of it is only accessible on high ladders. I strapped myself into my climbing harness (so it gets some use after all) and work all day with my arms in the air until they are really sore. Wearing goggles so I don't get rust chips into my eye. Or paint.
Of course Alison is also scraping and painting but to her dismay I shield her from the "hanging-upside-down-under-stair-experience". She doesn't know anything about ropes and carabiners and I don't want to worry if she's going to fall of the ladder and break her neck. "But teach her the ropes!", I hear you thinking, but I can't do that without spending a lot of time supervising her. And she is kind of allergic to supervision. And there is so much work ahead.

West

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 lot, 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?

Portrait

[...]

Test

Passed.

Splash

I admit, it wasn't a long swim, but I did swim. Not long enough to remove all the paint from my arms and legs (Note to self: don't paint fire escape stairs in shorts and a T-shirt) but it was lovely. Sitting near the water at "our" lake on this gorgous day with the trees almost in full fall-colour mode.

Much nicer than painting the fire escape, our activity yesterday and the last couple of weekends... But that job is fortunately also progressing.

Progress

The bathroom project is nearing its final stage. The client is enjoying his daily showers and baths and I just have to do the finishing touches. Unfortunately a lot of finishing touches, because I almost changed the whole house to make this bathroom. I moved two doors and two walls and so there is a lot to plaster, a couple of doors and their mouldings and thresholds need to be re-installed and a lot of other small things need to be done as well. So I won't be finished in a week or so, and after that I still have to built some custom furniture (a vanity, mirror cabinet and doors and drawers above the washer/dryer combination) to complete the project. But it looks pretty nice and the client is very happy. It even sounds nice because I installed speakers above the bath tub and while I work I now listen to music in genuine bathroom acoustics.

Flight

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."

Four

image source

Today I'm four years in Montréal. The events on 11 September 2001 had a lot to do with the fact that I ended up here. That's a long story however and I'll save that for a time when I'm not so busy.

Scrape

Scraping and painting the fire escape. My arms hurt from working above my head. It's a lot of work, but we're making progress. A couple more weekends and the job will be done.

Eye

Poupoune met a cat. Cat was not pleased but just missed her eye. Poupoune was unaware of the fact how lucky she had been and hadn't learned a thing, because on the way back she checked out the cat again... Fortunately the cat had left.

Hospital

A whole group of bloggers visited Jonas, who had major cancer surgery last week. He is making a fast recovery. I wish him well.

Squirrel

I know these little critters are considered a pest, and are regularly classified as rats, but at least they are busy and beautiful rats.

This one literally dropped dead in front of our house. She didn't seem to be ill and had a gorgeous coat and tail. Since I found her straight under a transformer in the electricity pole my guess is that she was electrocuted while touching the high voltage while grounded. Or maybe she just missed when she jumped from one tree to another. Even circus trapeze artists sometimes miss.

I picked her up, put her in a bag ("See, Buy, Fly", from the Dutch airport tax free shops; I thought that was appropriate) and walked towards the passing garbage truck and put her in there myself. She was very stiff, and heavier than I expected.

Mud

Where are adults allowed to play with mud, and, on top of it, getting paid as well? Only in the bathroom and shower construction trade.

I'm doing a so-called "Mud job". It involves shaping a lot of mortar —a mix of cement, sand and water— into a shallow bowl so when you take a shower all the water flows toward the drain. The client has chosen fairly irregular slate tiles, so the pitch has to be more pronounced than normal. After the cement dries, I'll apply a waterproof membrane, so the shower isn't going to leak, and on top of that the tiles will be laid. An convoluted process, but it will result in a shower that last a long time. Unlike many Québec tunnels and bridges these days, whose concrete starts to crack and crumble.

Crime

The last couple of days I told Linde that there is not much crime here — after which she promptly forgot to close the guestroom window when she went away.

But I spoke too soon, because last night someone smashed in my car window. He (let's assume it wasn't a she) only stole a $40 iPod charger, and cut the cord that went into the cassette player, but the damage done was much bigger. The back window is also scratched, and is loose in it's fitting, so I might need to replace that as well.

I made a tour along the alley and at least three more cars had smashed windows. I talked to one of the owners and she had 10 CDs stolen. It looks very much like a junkie who needed easy money.

So now I have to go to the police to file a report, and to the car window company to ask for a quote. I have a deductible for the insurance, so it probably won't be worth it to claim the damage. Grrrr.

Update: Police rapport filed (they even helped me 10 minutes before their official opening time). Window will be replaced today. Total replacement cost 550$.

Update 2: I just noticed that the thief also stole a packet of dropjes (Dutch liquorice) that I kept in the car. And the window replacement guys found a ring, that isn't mine nor Alison's so might have been of the thief. He has big fingers and a bad taste in jewellery.

Visitors

We're having a lot of Dutch visitors lately. Last week my sister Aagje and brother-in-law Steven came by to have supper with me, before they continued their "Eastern North America in 3 weeks"-tour. We sat in the garden, listened to the crickets and my sister told me that they had visited Montréal's highlights by luxury coach that day but both the driver and the tour guide got lost in the "no left turns" Montréal traffic situation. If your map says to turn left and the traffic signs forbid it, navigating our city can be quite hard. The next day they were heading for Ottawa (half a day) and Toronto and so forth. I couldn't travel that way, it would be too superficial, but they like it. They've seen a lot of the world this way over the past ten years.

And yesterday Linde arrived. She'll stay a bit longer in Montréal, about 4 months. She's going to be an exchange student at McGill University, and is the daughter of one of my readers. Through a comments on loglog she ended up in our guestroom. (So if you want to be our guest, you know what to do next.) Linde won't stay for 4 months in our guestroom, she's looking for a room to rent. Today, her first day in Montréal, she went out and already saw several rooms. She even said yes to one of them. But now she has buyer's remorse and is in doubt if she shouldn't look at a couple more rooms in shared apartments.

It's difficult for Dutch people to do these things: in the Netherlands finding a room (or a house for that matter) is really hard, so if you find something you immediately take it. Here you can be a bit more picky.

The dogs like her, and she's an excellent guest. Alison suggested, over the phone, that we should adopt her.

Welding

During the week I'm working on clients' projects and in the weekend on our own house. The joys of homeownership!
Our neighbour, a fellow woodworker, also knows his metalwork. So I hired him to fix our metal fire escape in the back. He braces the undersized pole that holds up the whole structure (that needs to be replaced with a bigger one in a year or two) and welds some holes here and there.

It feels strange to see somebody else working hard, and not being able to help. My tools aren't here, and I would just be in his way. So while I hear the sound of his grinder I'm writing this post. My hands itch but I have to contain myself.

When he's done we can start scraping the stairs and balconies, and then painting them. That'll be a major job, involving many, many weekends.

Feeds

For all readers who wants to read loglog in their RSS reader I've now enabled full feeds. You now not only get the photos but also the words, so you don't have to click through anymore. If there are any problems please let me know.

Plumbing

The bathroom renovation is going fine, albeit slow. Along the way we found a lot of things that also need to be changed or updated. Like the plumbing that had so many turns in them that it would be very easy to get clogged (and really hard to unclog). So I replumbed the toilet, the shower, the bath, the washing machine and the wash basin.

All of this will be under a slate tile floor, so it better be good. I hope I didn't make any mistakes. That's what I don't like about plumbing, you're never 100% sure if it won't start to leak after a couple of weeks/months/years. The only way to fix it then is through the ceiling of the downstairs neighbours. They usually don't like that.

The nice thing of bathroom (and kitchen) renovations is that you have to wear so many hats. Some days I demolish something, frame a wall, fish electricity cables, plumb a bathtub and lay a floor. Very varied work indeed.

Toys

The real reason for my presence in Toronto is that Alison has a team building meeting with all the members of her team. And the partners were expressly requested to come as well, and dogs and children also. I left Poupoune and Pepe at home though, since they're not allowed in the train and I didn't want to drive that far after a busy week at work.

The meeting was held in one of Alison's colleagues' cottage in the Muskokas, a two hour drive north of Toronto. We rented a car and upon arrival we found that everybody brought their toddlers, so there were enough small creatures. And they all swam, canoed, kayaked, barbecued, tanned, and chatted. So now I can put faces to names when Alison mentions her colleagues. Halfway I started to order the huge amount of toys that belonged to the son of our hosts. All cars and bulldozers (O, I wish I had those Tonka trucks when I was a kid) in a row, all the spades together. And the balls, the buckets, the fishes, the rings et cetera, et cetera. In the end I made a huge and very unstable tower of a few toys that were hard to categorize. It stood upright for a couple of minutes, until a breath of wind cased it to tumble down... People enquired if I suffered from OCD, and that made me laugh. They should see the mess in my office.

Toronto

The first time I arrived in Montréal was by train from Toronto. And now, almost 6 years later I took the train to Toronto. I hadn't been there in the past six years and since Alison was already staying there in the Royal York hotel, it was not that expensive. Through Alison I also got a free upgrade to VIA 1, so I travelled first class, with free wine and a meal. Nice. It's so nice to be able to stare out the window and watch the landscape going by. When I drive I can never do that, since I'm never a passenger, and always have to watch the road. Maybe it's time that Alison gets a drivers license.

(O, and on the way back I forgot my laptop again. But two days later, when the Lost & Found office opened on Monday, I had it back again. I'm so lucky. And stupid to keep testing the honesty of Canadians...)

Sirup

When I immigrated to Canada I put only a few food items in my shipping container. Lots of dropjes (Dutch Liquorice) of course but also a box with twelve tin bottles of this sirup. It is grapefruit flavour (100% concentrated juice and sugar) and it's the best sirup I've ever tasted. And I can't get it here. Sure I can buy various sirups in the import stores but they're all the regular flavours like lemon, berries and mint. But no grapefruit. And this sirup, with some water or soda water makes a perfect drink. Not too sweet and with just a hint of bitterness.

Over time the stash was used up but some visitors brought new bottles and I also brought back a few bottles myself every-time I went back to the Netherlands to visit my mother. My suitcase was usually quite heavy.

Today, when I opened a new bottle I was in for a bad surprise. It stank. And the reddish liquid had turned all brown and gooey. I checked the "best before" date and it said July 2004. Oops. I checked all five bottles I still had in stock and they all had the same date. Quintuple oops.

Apparently I had put all the newer bottles in front of the original batch of 2003 so those bottles had plenty of time to go bad. Darn. Now I have to go back to the Netherlands soon, I only have one bottle left. And my suitcase will be very heavy.

Tiles

I'm currently working on a big bathroom renovation and the client has a hard time deciding what tiles he wants on the floor. So he keeps going to the tile stores and buying more and more samples. His living room now looks like a tile showroom.

He still has some time to decide, I'm not in the tiling stage yet...
First I have to do lots ofplumbing, a new subfloor, bath podium, shower pan, running some electricity wires and more...

Cart

A client asked me to make a cart. She's handicapped and her caretaker has to carry her twice a week from her bed to her bathroom for her to take a bath. Her caretaker, however gets older and suffers from arthritis so hauling somebody is getting harder and harder for her.

So I made this cart to make the trek to the bathtub a bit easier.

Lost

[no picture]

I went with a client on a hunt today for a bathtub. He's quite tall and wants me to make a new, larger bathroom for him, but he has a hard time finding a bathtub that fits his frame, one that is actually big enough for him to lie in.

After visiting a number of stores we both have to pee. But asking "Do you have a bathroom?" in a bathroom store is kind of awkward, and pissing in the showroom toilets is generally frowned upon (apparently it does happen though, at least that's what I heard). So we head to a Tim Hortons nearby and have a muffin and an orange juice. Coincidentally we order exactly the same muffin and the same kind of juice.

Afterwards we drive the long way home and even though a lot of people are on vacation, there is still a lot of traffic and it takes quite a while. I drop of my client, and when I arrive at home I can't find my bag. I search the car, but it's a big red bag and not easily overlooked.

The dogs are barking around me while I try to concentrate and think where I remember I had my bag the last time. I think it was at the Tim Hortons. I get the Yellow Pages, but can't find them. Wait, the internet! But on the Tim Hortons website there is no restaurant finder. Canada411.ca. No Tim Hortons in Montreal on that street. O wait, Pierrefonds is de-merged and is a separate municipality now. Yes, there it is, in the long list of telephone numbers. I call the number and start talking to the woman who picks up in English. They all speak English in the West-Island so I'm surprised when she asks "French, please?". I repeat my question ("Have you found my bag?") in French, she goes to look in the place I tell her I was seating and then she comes back: "Non monsieur, votre sac n'est pas là..."

Fuck.

It now really dawns to me. I lost my bag. My really nice red bag. With my camera in it, and my cigars. And my brand new MacBook Pro laptop.
I thank the woman for watching and give her my phone number just in case. Just before I hang up I ask if there are any other Tim Hortons in Pierrefonds? She answers me that she's not in Pierrefonds but in Côte de Lièsse. OMG. I called the wrong restaurant! Yes, it is the telephone number just below the one we visited looking for. I get new hope. It's not even an hour ago since we left. I call again, making sure to call the right number this time.

Unfortunately my hope proved futile. My bag hadn't been found. I call all the bathroom stores we went to, one at the time. No luck.

Shit.

I call Alison and she has no idea what to say to cheer me up.

I hang up, and I don't know what to do. I haven't even paid off my credit card bill of the new laptop and I already lost it. Visa will be happy. Then I remember that my bank just recently upgraded me to a new credit card that included an extended warranty or something. I frantically try to find the leaflet that came with it. Yeah, there it says: "The Purchase Security Plan protects most purchases made with the card for ninety (90) days from purchase." I quickly try to find the line that says what is meant with that word most. I'm sure I will find a line saying that "computers are excluded". But there is no such line. I call the toll-free number, and someone takes my card number, address and the value of the item I lost. Thanks to Apple's online invoices I can still find that information. She'll send me a form that I'll have to complete. Wow.

For the first time in an hour I can sit and calm down a bit. There is a possibility I didn't lose a huge pile of money, but just some.

I eat a cracker with cheese and try to recall what I've lost, what haven't I backed up yet.
Some photos, obviously. But for the rest I just lost the changes I made today and last night to the drawings of my client's bathroom. Just a couple of hours to re-create those, so that's not too bad. A good thing I worked on woodworking projects the past week and that I make regular backups. But not daily, even though I bought a new hard drive just for that purpose. But I haven't had time to set it up yet.

I even manage to look at it from the bright side: I now have an excuse to replace my 6 year old camera.

& found

An hour later the phone rang.
"Um, is this the person who lost his bag?"
My heart skipped two beats. "Yeah?"
"We've found it."
I almost started to sob. I asked her until when she worked ("until ten"), called Alison with the good news and jumped, high on adrenaline, in the car.

First I drove to a cinema and then the whole 35 kilometres back to the Tim Hortons in Pierrefonds.

I gave all people working a cinema gift certificate (Not all of them could pose for this picture). They were happy and surprised about my generosity. I felt good because giving away things is fun. I still don't know what exactly happened and why it took so long to find a bright red bag in an almost empty Tim Hortons but I don't really care. Everything is still in the bag, and it doesn't seem that anybody touched my computer since the same application is still active when I wake it up from sleep-mode.

Having it back saves me a lot of time and stress not having to recover files from backups and re-create stuff that I made today and yesterday on a current project that I hadn't backed up yet... That is well worth the reward.

It's funny how happy you can be with something you had a couple of hours ago that wasn't particular special at that time.

Just losing things makes you realize how much you care about certain things. Maybe I should lose things more often. But I almost never lose things. Fortunately.

I have my camera back so I don't have to buy a new one. And my bag! And my cigars, water-bottle and my dropjes! O... and my MacBook Pro too of course.

Developments

Our nice tranquil lake, with boats nor cottages, surrounded by pristine forests, dotted with majestic boulders, with its beautiful sandy beaches, its coconut palms...

Okay, I'm carried away a bit. But our very nice secret lake, an hour from Montréal but almost never frequented by any other living creature than deer, moose and otter... Oops, there I go again. Anyway, that lake is going to be spoiled. A developer lay its filthy hands on it and now he's going to build cottages around it.

We went there today and found big signs with "Domaine Privé" and "Defense de circuler". We ignored them for now, since it's construction holiday and also to investigate. The lake is just as pristine as ever, but there was doom in the air. The doom of big trucks, by and builders coming in, to build monstrous houses. (For some reason people who can afford a second home in the Laurentians have no taste.) Followed by loggers on a mission to create lake views for the owners by logging all the trees between the lake and said houses.

It's only weeks before they put big steel fences around it and declare it a real No-go area.

So I'm going to spill the secret and give you all detailed instructions how to get there. Rent a car and enjoy this really nice lake while you still can get in, albeit by ignoring some signs. If somebody