Chapka löper

"Dogs come when they're called. Cats take a message and get back to you."

- Mary Bly

Vad finns det för koppling mellan dessa två bilder?

Något fruktansvärt har hänt de senaste veckorna... vår katt Chapka löper. Vi killar jämför hennes löpande med tjejers "dåliga" dagar - något som inte uppskattas av tjejerna för de tycker, likt oss, att hennes jamande och allmäna attityd är förjäääävligt jobbig!

Om nätterna jamar hon högt flera timmar i rad, något som förstör min, Gwendals och Sandrines sömn. Theresa lyckas dock bättre och är alltid lika pigg om morgonerna - något som inte säger särskilt mycket. Men hon får sömn i alla fall och jag tror att det beror på en väsentlig skillnad - Chapka väljer nämligen att tillbringa sina jamande nätter precis utanför min dörr. Numera består mina mardrömar av väckarklockor som jamar, mp3spelor som bara spelar jamande musik, konversationer i ett främmande (men jamande) språk... ja det gick så långt att vi var tvungna att börja använda öronproppar. Det funkar bättre nu men det är inte särskilt bekvämt.

Det som är extra jobbigt är att om man lyckas ta sig hem från skolan vid lunchtid och har tråkigt och vill leka med katten så kan man inte. Då sover hon. Vi har alla lämnat grova, men seriösa, förslag på åtgärder. Sandrine ville låsa in henne i toaletten om nätterna - jag sa nej. Jag föreslog att blanda hennes vatten med kaffe om dagarna så att hon håller sig vaken och däckar på kvällarna, men Sandrine sa nej. Gwendal återvände nyss från Japan och har inte anpassat sig ännu men har ändå lyckats visa lite frustration genom att "råka" trampa på hennes svans en gång och "råka" klämma henne i kylskåpet. Haha - egentligen var det misstag på riktigt men vi andra skyller på att han hatar henne. Theresa är den enda som inte klagar och sussar gott om nätterna. Fy.

När hon inte jamar och inte sover gör hon dock en annan jobbig grej. Hon håller sig väldigt nära mig och Gwendal och tja, "bjuder på sig själv." Det är galet irriterande och så håller hon på med snusk med våra ben ibland också.... argh.

En katt löper vanligtvis 1-2 veckor tar uppehåll i 1 vecka och sedan fortsätter det i strax över en vecka till och tar sedan uppehåll i några månader. Vi är inne i sista veckan nu och jag längtar till slutet...

The Big Apple

New York was pandemonium with a big grin on.

- Tom Wolfe

1. Greyhound

I'm not at all looking forward to writing about my trip to New York. So much happened and with so many experiences it kinda sucks that I embarked on the blogging-boat a couple of months ago. We were 7 people who traveled down where I before-hand only new Johannes, a German from my French class. The others were mostly from Polytechnique as well and of French, Brazilian and Swiss origin - where the only two girls of the company were from the two latter named nationalities. 

We took the Greyhound night-bus down, estimated to a 9-hour ride, we were hoping to get some sleep on the bus. Boy were we wrong. After 2 hours we hit the border and everybody were forced to get off the bus, stand in line, and later get back on the bus. After 3 hours we were awakened again because we had hit Albany, the capital of the state of New York, where our bus was to be serviced for half n hour so we just stood around waiting for the bus to finish getting serviced. After that it was another 3 hours down to New York. Geez, next time I'm gonna carpool with somebody.

2. Katz's Delicatessen

Unlike the others, I had made big-ass baguette, with two different types of meat, Swiss cheese, cucumber, tomatoes etc. for the trip down and man it was good! But upon our arrival the others were starving so they started to look for this one particular Jewish-Deli called Katz's Delicatessen, supposedly renowned. Upon entering, it did seem familiar and even if it didn't, the large number of famous people on the wall with pictures with the owner in front of Katz would have convinced you. The interiors were arrayed with celebrities and politicians alike including former president Bill Clinton.

Don't be too surprised if you recognize the place yourself. It does star in a classic - namely, When Harry met Sally. The sign outside the doors says, "Katz's - Where Harry met Sally - have what she had!"

Moreover, they did make the most amazing pastrami-sandwhiches and even though I wasn't the slightest bit hungry I'm glad I engulfed one of those bad boys. How tempted aren't you?

You don't have to look all that hard to see it's the same place!

3. Hostel 99

I learnt quite a bit of New York geography on our way to our hostel. New York consist of 5 burrows, each of which is basically on its own but since we were only here for a weekend we'd stick to Manhatten (although we did end up visiting Brooklyn and Staten Island for short trips). Our hostel was located at the upper-eastern end, in Harlem, a hoody area that resembled downtown in no way and where white people were a definite minority. It was pretty alright though, people seemed straight, and our hostel was very clean and well-worth the 14 bucks/night but the biggest disadvantage was the location - that it wasn't in downtown - but it was only a 20-30-minute metro ride down.

4. Guggenheim Museum

We hit the town after having settled in and we had, like the rest of the East Coast this weekend, crap weather. Our first stop at Central Park didn't last too long due to the cold and grey so I'll have to swing by there during spring or something instead. One thing we did have on our To-do list was located nearby, the Guggenheim Museum - or as I like to call it, the bloody shooting scene from The International. 

 

 We must have spent around 3 hours there and I got all into the art of Kandinsky that were being exhibited. The reason the Guggenheim is circular and contains no steps is because they usually portray the art of one artist at a time, with his or hers earliest pieces of art to the later ones. Therefore you basically follow a painter's life through their paintings and life is continuous!

5. Greenwich village


By now it had already turned 6-ish and seeing it was a Friday night it was time to start to experience New York nightlife. We hit up Greenwich village which was supposed to have a long chain of bars somewhere in cozy quarters. It turned out we got off the wrong metro station and we'd have to walk for like 20mins, no problem, we started to walk. After 20mins somebody else told us that it was an additional 20mins away and we got a little frustrated and decided to go into the nearest bar and have a beer and then continue towards the "bar-hub" and that is what we did. We found one and head inside...

I go up to the bar and ask for a pint of Blue Moon... they have no pints of beer, only bottles. Weird. I ask for a bottled one then and while he's reaching for the beer in a cupboard I notice the very colorful shirt he's sporting -  I guess it looked good. He was extremely kind and wished me a good night and I thanked him and turned around looking for my company. I notice that my company  stands out pretty well since as far as my eyes see, they're only macho black guys all over. I head over to my gang and while I'm heading over I also notice that there is not a single girl in-sight. Woah. That's strange! By the time I reach my gang they're all staring at the wall and I slowly turn to see a wall full of portraits of naked black men. That's when it hits me - I'm in a black gay bar. We start to chuckle and some guys around us start to chuckle since they realize that we just realized where we were. I got a look around once more and saw the strangest sights ever - big buff black guys standing 2 and 2 all over the place sipping on bright yellow mangotinis. A weekend highlight indeed! The initial shock passed and we enjoyed the rest of the beer and talked about how we had shattered some of our personal prejudices within 2 minutes.

We did continue on later to where we were supposed to go and did hit up several bars. One of which was very Coyote Ugly-like where the bartenders would from time to time get up on the bar and stepdance for a minute or two. Neat!

6. The NBC Experience

The following day I decided to part from my crowd who were on their way down to Times Square and Ground Zero. Don't get me wrong, I wanted to visit those two places too but I had something much higher up on my agenda. The Apple Store in New York City and Rockefeller Plaza. I actually needed to purchase a thing or two for my Ipod so I thought it opportune to do so while in New York. The Apple Store consisted of a glass cube above ground with a large hanging apple and tourists were taking pictures of it simply due to it's beauty and simplicity. Once you entered you were taken by a flight of stairs down to the large underground store with swarms of people all over the place. It was so large I couldn't bother looking for the specific items I was looking for so I went up to a salesman..
"How can I help you?"
"I'm looking for a wall charger and headphones with inbuilt mic for my Ipod."
"Alright, follow me." 
We walk like 20m.
"Here you go."
"Thanks, where's the counter?"
"You can buy it through me, it'll be 60 dollars."
"Oh ok."
I give him my Visa. He runs off screaming "Mike! I got a card let's bounce!!!" ... no I'm just kidding. He takes out his deluxe-Ipod and swipes my card on the back of his.
"Raoul Joshi?"
"That's right."
"Is this your email adress?"
"That's right."
"Alright thanks. I just emailed you your receipt."
"So I'm set?"
"You're all set. Have a nice day"
Two minutes after having entering the Apple Store I'm standing in front of it thinking, "What the duce just happened?" By far the most efficient purchase I've ever made.


The second point on the agenda was Rockefeller Plaza. As a TV nerd, following NBC shows such as House, Heroes, 30 Rock, Friends, and Conan O'Brien I had to visit this place, home to NBC headquarters (Rockefeller Center).

I went into the NBC Experience Store and did all of my New York shopping there. Amongst other things, I bought a Central Perk (coffee place in Friends) mug and a Conan O'Brien shaker. I was lucky enough to get a place on the 3 o'clock NBC Studio Tour which was a lot of fun. The start was intense while we were waiting for the elevator and no other than Tina Fey appeared with her daughter. Coming into work on a Saturday? That's gotta suck. We saw the News studios where Brian Williams broadcasts his show, and the film tricks they use. Also we visited the Today Show studio. The best by far was the visit to the Saturday Night Live studio where the entire cast was actually rehearsing for the Saturday Night show! I recognized some of them but the one that stood out he most was Jason Sudeikis. Awesome!

7. Peaches

I was running late. I was to meet the others for a couple of drinks before we head off to a Peaches concert. A band I had never heard of and wasn't too sure if I'd enjoy the music. They told me 49th and 7th at Times Square (crossing of 49th street and 7th Avenue) and I thought a good start was to head over to the station Times Square. Big mistake. Times Square is insanely huge and While I may have been on 7th, I was on 42nd street. 7 blocks would be do-able in no-time anywhere else but in the middle of Times Square on a Saturday evening was friggin impossible. I'm gonna be there for New Years and already dreading the crowd...

I managed to down a drink with everybody else before we continued to Terminal 5, the concert venue. Strangely enough it turned out that 50% of the Peaches' fan-base were the homosexual crowd so it was Friday night all over again. The show was awesome though and I had a really good time. You really don't expect to be at a concert where somebody's yelling, "How you doing New Yoooork?!" and that you'd find yourself yelling back!


I stumbled into another Swede, from Gällivare, after the show and she, her German friend and I went out for a beer after the show before heading home. We took a cab with an Indian driver and with a couple of drinks in me I felt confident enough to speak Hindi with him. So for 20 minutes I spoke Hindi with the driver, Swedish with the Swede, English with the German and French with my friends over the phone letting them know I had ditched them. (Yes, don't party with me, it's very likely I'll ditch you :p). At this point they all stared at me and were like, "any more?"

8. Broadway

I wish I could say that we did go and watch a Broadway show on Sunday but unfortunately, after all the cuing at Times Square for last-minute tickets they turned out to be a tad too expensive for some people in the group. I'm definitely gonna watch one when I go down next time though! Sunday turned out to have wonderful weather and to hang out in Times Square was pretty comfortable. Even though Times Square by night is something to experience, I preferred its lax ambiance during daytime. The two shows I really wanna see are Billy Elliot and Rock of Ages but I think I can only afford one...

 
9. Staten Island

Since there were people who hadn't been to New York before, they really wanted to see the Statue of Liberty. I tagged along Sunday afternoon not to keen since if you've seen it once, you don't burn to see it again. It's like when our family took the sightseeing tour last time around and we passed the Empire State building. Once you've seen it, you don't go longing back to see it again. But I guess it's good to have done it once. However, I was delightfully surprised by our ferry to Staten Island (which is free) passing the Statue of Liberty. We had a stunning sunset to observe from the deck and made it into quite the experience.

10. Brooklyn

When we got back we found a nice Italian restaurant and real good food. Just thinking of the food is making me hungry now. It was a pleasant dinner on the south side and after that we head up to Brooklyn for another pub crawl. I was however, exhausted and head home around 2-ish, the earliest time I had returned that entire weekend. All of Sunday consisted of our bus ride back to Montréal, where absolutely nothing worth mentioning happened unless I can indulge you with 9 hours of intermittent sleep.

Poly-HABS

Friggatriskaidekaphobia
- fear of Friday the 13th.

Hockey is insanely huge in Canada, especially in Québec, and even more especially in Montréal!

The hockey team of Montréal is called the Montréal Canadiens and the entire city becomes alive of red/white colors on game nights. Their nickname is HABS which is probably the stupidiest nickname French-speaking people could have chosen. Firstly, I'm not even sure it's a real word and I have no idea how Montréal Canadiens is abbreviated to Habs and furthermore they chant GO HABS, GO! constantly. No problem there except when you have French-speaking yelling it out... you do know that the H is silent in French? so it all comes down to GO ABS, GO!

For you not too high on your English - Abs is the word given to a person's abdominal area. So basically, during hockey-nights at Polytechnique (organized by the student organization Poly-HABS), you have hundreds of students yelling, "GO ABS, GO!" and I'm sitting there thinking that we may as well be watching an Arnold Schwarznegger excercise video...

But the Poly-HABS nights are beyong amazing. Fantastic ambience, cheap beer and pizza! It's all I want out of life. During the period intermissions they run various competitions and lotteries and one thing they do is go around taking pictures of groups of people and during the next Poly-HABS event, the students get to vote for their faviroute picture and the winning group gets a free pitcher of beer. So since the students decide (based on a yell-factor - the more you yell for a picture the higher the vote), you basically have to go nuts on the picture. Now our group did win this week but hadn't it been for the French it would have been a really boring pic - solely the Swedes look normal on the wining photo!

From top-left: Victor, Godefroy's censured rear, Raoul, Elin, Thierry, Isabel

 

Have a great weekend and I'll get back to you at the beginning of next week - I'm going to New York tonight and I'll be there until Monday so I'll be sure to have something fun to report about!

108,453

Hands, touching hands, reaching out
Touching me, touching you
Oh, sweet Caroline
Good times never seem so good
I've been inclined to believe it never would.

- Neil Diamond

108,453 spectators. That was the attendance of Saturday's college football game between Michigan Wolverines and Purdue. I've never experienced anything quite like it except at the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground) back in 1999. To give you an idea of the capacity we're talking about, compare it with these numbers:

Råsunda Football Stadium: 36,000
Ullevi: 43,000
Globen: 16,000
MCG: 100,000 (definitely worth visiting too! Sweden's a joke!)

One good thing about Rickey is that I see a lot of myself in him - mainly procrastination. Maybe it's a gene thing. Even though it was t-shirt weather in the month of November (both in Montréal and Ann Arbor) on Saturday, he had to do his Marketing crap and I got to take his ticket and his Student-ID and went with his friend Padrig to watch the game. The entire city was alive and the fraternities across the road from had started pumping their music sets to max at 10am and beer was flying all over the place not too long after that. Tailgating is the pre-game event where you drink beer and eat hotdogs till the point that you become either very aggressive or indifferent to what takes place on the field during the game. In other words, it's a whole lot of beer consumption! Everywhere you looked you saw yellow or blue Michigan shirts or jerseys. There was a nervous wreck for the 30 seconds when we were standing in line for ID and ticket checks. But I guess all Indians look alike and I was let through without even the slightest flinch on the Event Staff member.

It's pretty insane; up until 11:59 I couldn't have cared less of the sport that is American Football but well into the first quarter I found myself yelling and cursing at the ref and all that. The weather was fantastic and the ambience was even better! Another funny thing was how the referees have a hand signal /body gesture for like every imaginable referee-call. In hockey there's more or less only a hand signal for the different types of penalties but these refs had so many different gestures that it wouldn't have surprised me if some of them were for "Too much commercial time!" or "Fat white man dancing on the field!"

I can't even compare it to the McGill-game we saw back in Montréal since the atmosphere consisted of families, students and people travelling in from all over the state of Michigan to watch the game. There was even a section outside the stadium for labelled, "Parents' Tailgate" - even though it looked kinda dull. A typcal game lasts about 3.5hrs and since Michigan lost I heard quite a few younger folks saying, "I'm so depressed I just wanna go home and start drinking right now." Now this is a sport I could definitely pick up but I still find NHL way more exciting. It's as if all the marching bands, cheerleaders and all the hullabaloo is a necessity for the entertainment of the crowd. Hockey as absolutely nothing of the sort and solely relies on the game itself and the occasional fights. If I recall correctly the last 5 minutes of the game took about half n hour to play because both teams were challenging every single play and the referee had to review a play for like 10 mins and it got kinda dull.

My, by far, golden moment was towards the end of the game when a quarterback kicked the ball down-field so that a defense man of Purdue caught it. Before he had any time to react with the ball he realized that 7 Wolverines had already surrounded him and was charging him and he had absolutely no time get make a pass to a teammate. He had to take the hit and boy did he. 7 buff guys smothered this guy head on and I turn to my left to see this grandma, 75+, cheering and yelling, "Yeah! Bring him down! Wohoo!"

I don't know if it's something typical for Michigan or football in general but at one point 108,452 fans (everybody but me) burst into singing Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline (only the chorus though). It's one of those times you do get a better feeling for what the American Spirit may be all about. It may just make this week's song on the blog...

Avfärd!

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
- Andre Gide

Häng med mig och dagens resa från Montreal till Ann Arbor där jag ska besöka Ricky över helgen!

6:30 - Vi har precis börjat rulla från tågstationen och jag har fått världens skönaste plats i Classe comfort! Jäkligt bekväms utan tvekan! Skönt med gratis internet... dessutom var jag smart nog att köpa mig en fet baguette och en 1L apelsin juice igår kväll - hur gott som helst! Det blev bara ca 4 timmars sömn inatt så det lär bli en fet tupplur snart. Vi ses om ett tag!

6:38 - Okay, innan jag lägger mig får det bli några Scrubs-avsnitt. Det var bra att jag tankade hem säsong 4 innan jag la mig igår =)

9:50 - Jag måste ha slumrat till efter nåt Scrubs avsnitt för nu vaknade jag och insåg hur trött jag egentligen är. Den underbara soluppgången över Québecs åkrar har nu bytts ut till gråa moln i Ontario. Åter till sömns!

10:00 - Nä, nu kan jag inte sova längre, får bli några Scrubs avsnitt till.

10:09 - Jag blev precis sugen på en öl. Lite för tidigt dock...

12:12 - Nu har jag hunnit anlända till Toronto, köpa lite lunch, och hoppa på tåget till Windsor som precis lämnade stationen. Stolarna på det här tåget va inte lika sköna :p.

12:47 - Värst vilken fart det här tåget hade. Jag köpte en grön te - konduktören frågade, 
"And what else?"
"Just the green tea will be fine, thanks."
"Would you like anything else with that?"
"?!?!?!?!?! Uh. Just the green tea will be fine, thanks....?"
"Oh ok."

14:27 - Har hunnit med en hel del nu. Jag kom till final i en DN-tävling och behövde skicka in ett kreativt svar på vad jag vill läsa om i DN Resor. Tyvärr nog är inte en tågresa en källa för inspiration - oavsett hur länge man stirrar ut genom fönstrer så ser man bara fält och träd. Scrubs avsnitten fortsätter jag bocka av men jag hinner göra annat samtidigt!
Just nu håller jag på med en uppsats (Significant Coding at Sandvik Coromant) som jag för tillfället skriver på engelska men om det visar sig att den ska skrivas på franska kör jag bara en Google Translate på den senare och läser igenom och rättar felen...


16:15 - Nu är jag strax framme i Windsor och ska ta mig över gränsen till USA. Får se om de ställer några roliga frågor denna gång... jag har lite mer tid i Detroit denna gång innan jag ger mig ut mot Ann Arbor så jag ska försöka få lite sightseeing gjord denna gång. Jag uppskattar att jag har köttat igenom 12 avsnitt av Scrubs sedan imorse! Det motsvarar ca 4 timmar av Scrubs...

00:31 - Dags o sova. Det tog längre tid än vad jag trodde vid gränsen igen och tåget till Ann Arbor vad någon kvart försenad så jag va hemma hos Ricky vid 10 i 8. Det va inte alls så farligt o resa hit och det trevligt att få lite tid till sig själv! Nu väntar en intensiv helg med fest och fotboll! Ska se till att ta bilder!

Homemade pasta

"Life is a combination of magic and pasta."

- Federico Fellini

Gwendal har nu åkt iväg till Japan och från bilderna jag har sett så stortrivs han där nere. Han var den enda icke-asiaten som tog emot ett pris och det syntes klart och tydligt på bilderna! Han är borta i 4 månader och kvällen innan han åkte körde vi en liten myskväll ihop med hemlagad lasagne... alltså från scratch! Hemlagad lasagneplattor blev det och det var något Gwendal var riktigt duktig på att göra - jag å andra sidan hade lite svårigheter med pastapressaren!

In other news så har vi precis avklarat våra midterm-exams. En tenta-period fylld med plugg och isolering. Polytechnique ska få tummen ut för deras bibliotek med tysta, ljusa salar där varje plats har en elkontakt och individuella platser. Här kommer en bild på någon som inte likt många andra lyckades hålla humöret uppe konstant: