BT - The Great Escape

I found this remix version of The Great Escape by BT. It is made in expressiong of love by a man to his wife and soon to be born child. The nature scenery of the world and a fetus completely melts in with the song.

la Ronde et les Feux du monde

I didn't have chance to post last night, but I went to La Ronde the amusement park on Île Sainte-Hélène, off Vieux-Montréal with friends from Victoria and Germany.
We had a blast even though it rained for a bit during the day and Fyl, David and I were waiting in it for The Goliath to start back up while Lea waited in shelter. (Lea is mucho afraid of roller-coasters!)

The Montreal Fireworks Festival was on its final night at La Ronde as Great Britain was announced winner of this years international fireworks festival. It was simply magnificent! I should remember to post the photos and videos when my Mac is fixed...

Tiësto ft. BT - Break My Fall

First time I saw a collaboration between Tiësto and BT. I love his voice. The woman featured is BT's life partner and child bearer, Ashley

Chicane - Offshore

I found Chicane while listening to the radio at work. That where I find all my music these days.
I've downloaded a more ambient version of Offshore without the dance, but I have to admit, this trance version would be oh so good for clubbing. Came out in 1996 but still New Age in 2007!

the First Lady

Shinzo Abe, has been the Prime Minister of Japan since September 26, 2006 when the National Diet held an election during a special session. Elected at 52, he is the youngest Prime Minister since Fimimaro Kobe in 1941.

Well, in a recent photo my father sent me, my mother seems to be the Prime Ministers's First Lady! Protected by all the guards behind with the fake Statue of Liberty in Odaiba, Tokyo, I don't know how she got to get so close. Well the guards behind Abe sure don't look happy.

no Juice?

Thankfully our Sun doesn't have "power outages" or we would risk having our days shunned into darkness suddenly as was the case for many people this morning around 9:30 downtown Montreal.

Our boss was yelling from her office this morning, "Did you know something blew up and a whole chunk of downtown doesn't have power?" (Apply a strong british woman accent here)

So far what I can google-up is that the blackout extends from Rue Guy to Bleury (west-east) and Avenue du Pins to Notre-Dame (north-south) which is indeed "a whole chunk downtown" Montreal. Our office building is just a few blocks away from Guy, which is why I can still blog here. But hm...I kind of wished we were included in the outage. It would have been hectic but at least the workday would have been short. The metro seems to be working fine which is a life saver since I practically live on it. By that I mean I can't get anywhere without it.

It reminds me of the massive power outage Tokyo experienced last August while I was back in Japan visiting my parents. We woke up in the morning to hear on the news that the capital city had been crippled by a single craneship passing down Edo river. With the cranes raised, but ship had brushed and shorted a high-voltage power line feeding eastern Tokyo. If that is what a small human error can cause, I cannot imagine what a planned attack could do to the Japan's throbbing core.





I wonder what the skyline will look like tonight in Montreal.

Janet's t**s

So one of my coworkers just set the quote of the day. Janet is this 50 ish old woman, and wobbles between the office and kitchen, but kind and haha sort of out there.

Well just not I saw her go over to the automatic stapler mumbling "Oh, why doesn't this thing work" while bending down, it seemed like she was trying to staple quite an amount of paper.

But as the thing went kaplunk and she got up, she nad nothing in her hands! So I just asked her:
"Janet, did you just staple your clothes?!"

She goes with her crazy smile:
"Why yes I did! I just couldn't stand seeing my tits anymore!

We all burst into laughter as the front of her cardigan was awkwardly stapled shut, now hiding her "tits".

Oh Janet.

office Poly-ticks

When I first started my job here, my first impression of the office environment was that of a warm cosy place. Not blasted with star glaring white Halogen, the atmosphere was what I hadn't imagined from a work place: like home (except with a cleaner kitchen).

Having worked here for nearly 2 months, the view from my work desk has changed quite a bit, for better and for worse.

On a good note, I have become quite aquainted with our big boss much more. At a glance her appearance can be slightly frightening, with streaked dirty blonde hair, a large, british, middle-aged-woman body, her eyebrows are drawn into a curvy V with whatever make-up pen she uses. Quite straight forwardly, I was scared of her my first day.
But how the tables turn! I have come to see her side of honesty, caring heart, and her thrive for the integrity of the business. Also I'm loving how she calls us "children"!

On the other hand, friction within the office has started to surface, revealing the real facade. Everyone has something to complain about, they have someone to blackmouth, and backstab. Basically our office politics is comprised of a lot of poly-ticks. Not that they are all bad people, just that hm...they don't work well together...
One of the girls quite today. There was a whole scandal going on, and she had noticed her resignation a few days ago, and was told to leave this afternoon.

I never knew the real world was this scary. Scary.

There is a word in Japanese: happo-bijin (eight-direction beauty). It describes a person who handles every social group well, putting up a smile with every interaction in all directions.

I think that's what I need to be to survive here.

lucky number Se7en, and all that jazz

On a very random note, I have just realised that 2007/07/07 has passed by a while ago. It's amazing how once-in-a-century ocassions like this can go by invisibly when one doesn't subscribe for cable TV.

I am not a very superstitious person, although I do feel slightly down whenever I happen to check the time at 4:44, as tetraphobia is fairly common in asian cultures. In any case, it would have been nice if someone reminded me of July 7th. I would have kept my radar up for anything remotely lucky and rejoiced with satisfaction. Oh, well. I guess it wasn't very super-wonderful if I didn't notice it passing by.

Now I wonder if 2006/06/06 was publisized as the day of the devil or something. Well at least we don't see any devils lingering around any more. I guess their fame blew away uneventful too.

Let's see...8 is the lucky number in China. Will make a whole fuss about 2008/08/08 next year? I'm syre it would be perfect for the Beijing 2008 Olymic Games.

wherever You are, don't come out

Yesterday night I was over at Philip's grandmother's place on Nun's Island with David.

The view from her condo there was breathtaking, facing the entire downtown Montreal spread at the foot of Mont-Royale on one side, and looking over the St. Lawrence river on the other. On a side note, Michelle (Philip's grandmother) is the kindest (and cute) old lady I have met so far in Montreal.

Between Philip, David,and I, we had never really had any serious discussions until then, y'know, the type of friends that just fooled around and joked about pointless things together.Yesterday night however, after watching the Skeleton Key, we fell into a discussion while sitting on the kitchen counter, debating religion, spirituality, and the existance of collective conciousness.It was a very interesting time with them, talking about slightly disturbing (for me at least) spirituality happenings, and out personal ideas. I had never realised they had gone through the experiences they told me, of many gave me shivering goosebumps last night. But there was one topic that Phil metioned which gave me such a scare because of its relevance to my personal experiences.

During our conversation, Philip mentioned how a Japanese girl told him how at times when people sleep, they will suddenly become aware of a sense of immobility. I remember we called this kanashibari (golden-binding). She told him that in Japan, it is told to never open your eyes during this, for you may see in front of you, what is holding you down. The moment he mentioned this, I instantly thought of the two times I have ever had the same experience. Thankfully I was never able to open my eyes during them.

I have never seen ghosts or any supernatural phenomena’s, but the kanashibari is the most horrifying experience I have ever been through. Suddenly coming to consciousness in my sleep, my mind was swirling, being pulled back into the depths of my pillow. It was impossible to breathe, and I remember the heart-racing terror as I tried to concentrate on fighting back for my life. With my eyes unable to open, I would strain to regain control of my mind and body, terrified that if I let go, it would suck me in. "I need to wake up or I'll die." was the one thought rushing through me.
In the end I don't remember how they went away, but those were the scariest moments of my life.

I wasn't exactly crying afterwards yesterday but I did have some tears, and boy was I unnerved just by being reminded of them. I've only had two kanashibaris in my life. I haven't had any for quite a while now...

the Scientist

I realized I am one of those people that sit in the library with all their books open, all ready to get some work done, but end up staring at people and noticing random things, redefining the concept of Library Research. I should start jotting down notes of my discoveries, like that girl in the corner half asleep by her computer.

Despite having an assignement deadline straight ahead, I take slight pride in my ability to keep this calamity. Although I am aware that my clinging on to the hope that "everything will work out in the end" provides this false sense of leisure.

Yet, sooner or later the realization will dawn, and as the oh-my-god-I-don't-have-time hormones are released from my brain, I am sure I wont be here blogging my current thoughts.

Ok, I think I'll go back to work.

Hedgelings

Right at the beginning of July, I arrived home one day and heard little chirping sounds somewhere in the room. (Boy do I get lots of surprises coming home.) Wondering how a bird could have flown in, I searched the living room...the last place I looked was Harry, my fat girl (Yes, I named her Harry.) hedghog's aquarium...and to my horror I saw a lump of something under her belly!

"She's a he!?"

Yet to my further horror, I spotted 3 more of these pink lumps lying around her!

The realization soon hit me that Harry was, to my dissapointment(?), indeed a girl, but the whole time I was calling her "fat Harry" she was carrying 4 babies, and that day when I came home, Harry had just given birth!

Since then it has been 3 weeks and three of the babies are growing very well. Unfortunately the fourth didn't make it after a week or so. He had been smaller than the others and wasn't growing like his siblings. Even in an aquarium, nature is harsh.

Today while changing their pine shavings, I noticed that the little hedgelings had finally opened their eyes! They are getting plumper every day and now, barely squinting, they are able to see the blurry world around them. I pick them up often, much to the mother's discontent, just to let them become accustomed to human touch. They are never scared (brave babies, considering being kidnapped by a giant!), but just start licking around before they puke out white foam onto their fur. I learned this is how they get accustomed to new smell. Phew.

Well, now with a fresh smelling home, they should be able to huddle together comfortably.

the Fridge: an unlikely source of Terrorism

I came home a few days ago after work, just to pick up my school books to run back into town for class. To my surprise I was greeted by something that almost blew me back out the door.

I don't know if you've had milk in the fridge for too long in one of those plastic cartons. Well, our fridge has had one for about as long as China has been around, and I have just been too lazy these days to throw it out.

I didn't consider if as any threat since those screw on caps are pretty tight.

Well I found out the hard way that day that even tight caps can't hold forever... The milk carton was so full with the fermented gasses that it exploded in the fridge and had leaked through the gap for the fridge door to form a puddle in the kitchen.

The welcoming stench of aging milk was what greeted me home.

Now a few days after, I am doing a massive cleaning of the wreck of my apartment before I move out. I've finished the dishes and am about the tackle the exploded milk. Dare I open that fridge door...the source of terrorism in our house.

I just thought I would write something here beforehand since it could be my first and last post.

I'm going in. Wish me luck.