Friday, March 23, 2007

Guess who came to Montreal last week?



Yup! Shiling and Jiax came here for the most wintery Spring Break destination imaginable to Duke students. It was great to see both of them again. I really wished I could've spent more time with Shiling though.



St Patrick's Day weekend was spent first queuing for 2 hours to get into Hurley's Pub for Guinness, dancing and Irish music (extremely annoying at first, but actually worth it), waking up at 9am for the Green Mass at St Patrick's Basilica (which is incidentally my church, and my excuse for acting as if I was Irish even though I am clearly Chinese) with Jean Charest and Stephane Dion and the mayor whose name I forgot, then proceeding to the parade down Rue St Catherine (where I bought this stupid hat for C$2 and met this crazy drunk guy in this funny suit and got the green scarf free from Fido in return for letting them take a picture of Letizia and I in them and saw Andre Boisclair (and Jean Charest and Stephane Dion again) up close).

Interestingly, the parade itself was rather lame. The floats in Chingay are so much better. Here, they put some shamrock decals on a truck and have some people in kilts playing bagpipes (??! I attribute that to the same uniquely North-American phenomenon behind Chinese restaurants that serve sushi) at the back, yet somehow it just feels so much cooler. After much thought, I have come up with 2 possible reasons, namely:
1) the weather - no doubt -10 is almost as uncomfortable as 28, but with the sufficient amount of clothes and alcohol it can be done, whereas there is nothing much you can do to ameliorate the effects of Singaporean weather outdoor without risking violating some section of the Penal Code or Miscellaneous Offences Act); and
2) the alcohol - St Patrick's Day is the only time where you can drink on the streets in Montreal, so obviously everyone drinks, and drunk people just instantly make any place more festive, and getting drunk just instantly makes any place seem more festive - now that can be done in Singapore.

And yesterday, they opened my door to paint it and the place was smelly, so I left after the super promised to lock up after me. Of course, I conveniently left my keys in the apartment so when I went back I was locked out and the super would only come back this morning. (Incidentally, I have never actually stepped out of the door without my keys and realised while I was trying to lock up that the keys were inside. How convenient then that the first time I did leave my keys inside was when someone else was locking up after me.) Thankfully Letizia and Marzia took me in, otherwise I would probably have had to join the homeless guy at the lobby (he's been spending an average of 3 nights a week at my lobby since I came back from Cuba; sometimes I feel bad and want to give him a couple of bucks but he just reeks so much of alcohol that I just don't trust him not to spend whatever I give him on booze - what should I do?).

-- tee @ 11:07 am |