Another week has passed! I'm almost as bad at blawgin' as SALE. Just kidding, I'm not that bad. ;)

Sooo last Wednesday, Alex and I walked downtown to check out Palais des Congrès, which is like Montréal's convention center, only instead of a big blue bear on the outside, they've got really colorful windows and pink statue things that make you feel really awkward. His brother presented his PhD there. Afterwards we wandered through the Old Port.







Will came over that evening and hung out with me and Taurean, discussing the hilarity behind Lil' Wayne's latest contribution to society (Direct quote, "Tomorrow’s Flavored Cigar Company Is Here Today! Today you can wear hip-hop clothes, wear hip-hop shoes, dance to hip-hop music, attend a night club, eat an upscale eatery, read from an array of hip-hop editorials and even drink a beverage inspired by hip-hop. Hip-hop has become the biggest product endorsers in the world of enterprise. So what is the missing link?? The answer: BOGEY BLUNTS." THX LIL WAYNE) Alex was gone, he spent the evening with one of his friends he didn't realize lives in Montréal. Will and I went to Bassdrive. Jenny had returned from her BC adventure and spun with Tulippe, and they dropped that Marvelettes remix (by my request, lawl) and it was glorious.

Fran and I explored Vieux-Port again on Thursday. The Perseid meteor shower was peaking that night, so Alex met up with us and we made a special trip to Jean-Drapeau, the darkest part of the city, to see some shooting star action. Unfortunately it was still waaaay too bright to see the seventy stars an hour. But I did see two, which is better than none I suppose. Afterwards, Fran and I went back to Nick's to do some doodling. Then I walked homez.







Kyle got back from BC on Friday, so we ended up going to Laurent's to kick it. We hung out and all painted this old, handle-less umbrella with acrylics. It turned out BEAUTIFULLY and I'm really mad I didn't get a photo of it.

Saturday consisted of sitting on the terrasse at Café Depot, then spending the evening at Parc du Mont-Royal with everyone. It was a very melty day, with very melty things in it. The evening concluded roughly, but I made a pretty neat drawing, and the night made for a comparatively awesome Sunday.

I woke up Sunday feeling really content and proactive. I made pasta for Alex and I, and made progress on my art project that I started a looong time ago. Really excited for that. At four, Will and I walked to TamTam, despite the shitty-looking weather. It only sprinkled lightly on us, but it was still enough to make the TamTam people go absolutely crazy. It was QUITE entertaining. After a while, we walked to the HUGE graffiti wall we found behind Foufounes the first week we were here. An annual event called "Under Pressure" was taking place, where a bunch of graffiti artists come in and paint over last year's pieces. There are DJs and a bunch of local semi-pro(?) skaters. It was REALLY cool, but I didn't bring my camera because again, I didn't want it to get rained on. After Under Pressure, we walked to this boulangerie he'd been raving about for the past few weeks called Cheskie's. We got these enormous $2 croissants that have chocolate in each layer... Absolutely amazing. Then we made the long trek from Mile End to Sherbrooke station in the pouring rain that commenced post-croisssant. From Sherbrooke, I walked (as it was still pouring) to Metropolis to see Crystal Castles and Rusko. This concert... God I don't know where to begin. Um, let's see. Well, first of all it was packed, wall to wall. Absolutely no room to dance. On several occasions I almost got fist-pumped to death by big, hairless, tank-top wearing (no offense Paul) bros. I was surrounded by tiny girls who were just bouncing furiously and waving one of their hands in the air at a time, all the while sporting the worst duck-faces I've ever seen, but breaking every so often to scream unintelligibly at the top of their lungs. The place was overrun by hipsters. Glow sticks, pre-pubescent bros, angry people pushing/yelling/spilling beer on each other... And shit, Rusko! Rusko opened his set by yelling, "LET'S HEAR IT FOR ME!" I thought at that point he had out-douched Excision, but that was only the beginning. Before every drop, he'd count down. "ARE YOU READY FOR A BASS SANDWICH? THREE! TWO! ONE!" He played the original versions of Sweet Shop, Swagga, and You Got to Know, the Doctor P version of Sick Tonight-- and then he followed each song by yelling "REEEEEMIIIIIXXXX!" and then, well, playing a remix of it. He played THREE versions total of Sweet Shop, and one of his "hot new singles" he played for us, was definitely a chopped up version of the same song. And he played a remix of Hot n' Cold by Katy Perry? Whaaaat? UGH GOD! RUSKO WAS TERRIBLE. So I was counting on Crystal Castles to save the day... They were awesome, except they had this really bad echo effect on her vocals so it was impossible to distinguish the lyrics or the key in which she was singing. And everyone only played for between 30 and 45 minutes... which in this show's case, was entirely acceptable. At least it had stopped raining by the end. It made for a much warmer walk home.

Anyway. I'm going to go do be productive... or something.

Wow, it's been another week since I've posted. This is going to be a long entry...

SO. Last Wednesday was laundry day again, needless to say it was rainy. Once the rain calmed, I hiked Mont Royal with Will. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera, as I didn't want to risk it getting drenched... A fog had settled into the forest as we took a shortcut to the top via a series of sketchy pathways. Whenever we reached a point where we could see above the trees, we could see that everything within a quarter mile radius looked like either Costa Rica or Jurassic Park (wherever that was filmed), and beyond that, just CITY. For miles and miles and miles. Mont Royal is a quaint little (in reality, gargantuan) rainforest-esque mountain tucked away in the middle of an even more enormous, highly-developed urban area. We reached a lookout with a parking lot, and it was teeming with guidos and raccoons. Okay, there were only like seven raccoons, but there were definitely a lot of guidos. The animals congregated around these benches where some people sat to admire the city, begging obnoxiously for food and attention. The raccoons however, were really cute and friendly! Okay, no more making fun of guidos. Lol. But really, there were seven raccoons (I counted), and they were running RIGHT up to people. All I could think about was rabies. We continued onward. The sun was setting as we finally made it to the Chalet. The Chalet is a big, regal-looking building at the top of the mountain with a beautifully decorated courtyard out front. Standing outside it, you can see all of Southwest Montréal (don't quote me on that, cardinal directions in this city don't make sense). Inside, you will find some vending machines. About six of them actually. That's about it. It sounds totally lame, but how much worse would it be if you just walked up to a few standalone Coke machines after conquering this giant fucking mountain? The fancy building is a façade to make people feel accomplished. And it works. Anyway, it was getting dark, and as we began our descent back into the city, we found that every road either took us back UP the mountain, or in the complete opposite direction of where we needed to go. After four months' worth of walking in circles, we went against what we'd learned from every horror movie in existence, and we trekked blindly through dense, pitch-black forest, kind of in the general direction of where we thought we started. We found our way back to Pointe au Guido, which signified some accuracy in our nighttime jungle-wandering. This time though, the parking lot was completely full, with more cars, a bus, and a limo parked on the side of the road. It seemed that the lookout had a nocturnal tourist infestation. And if THAT wasn't off-putting and potentially dangerous enough, the raccoon count had grown by four or five times. Parents watched in awe as their children toddled among the thirty-some raccoons, HAND-FEEDING them Ritz crackers. At what point do you decide this is acceptable? You freak out and tell your kid to back away when the creatures try to stand up using Jimmy's pant leg as support, and yet you struggle to get the camera out in time to snap a photo of his or her little fingers waving a cracker centimeters in front of rabies, West Nile, the plague, or otherwise. Whatever. It was really random, and quite entertaining at the time... AAAAND later that night, Li and I went to Bassdrive as we usually do on Wednesdays, and it was great fun, as it usually is on Wednesdays.





Thursday night, I went to Blizzarts to see Capital J and Bankai, but I left early due to extreme, uh, fatigue. LONG story.

Friday was the Massive Beach Party, the epic all-day dubstep/dnb festival. The guy who organized it all, Dave, recruited Li and I to work at the door to sign people in and take tickets. The whole thing was supposed to take place at St-Jean Drapeau (where Piknic was), but for some reason they denied us the venue at the last minute. SO, it was held at HΩ from 2pm-10pm, and then the late evening portion was held at this indoor volleyball court called 365. Li and I were only asked to work the daytime part, which was... well, it was kind of a joke, because virtually NOBODY showed up. Well like 25 people showed up...but all except two of them were either DJs or they were on the VIP list, so we only made $40, ALL DAY. So basically Li and I got paid to hang out at a desk and listen to music and play with the giant dog that belonged to the owner of the club. Once 10pm rolled around, we went home to recuperate from the long day of rigorous work for a minute before heading to 365 to enjoy the rest of the music.




Saturday I took a train up to Québec City. It was delayed almost an hour due to electric issues, but once we took off, it took about three hours to get to our final destination. Once we pulled up to Gare du Palais in Québec City, I went into the main hall to use the courtesy wi-fi, to sort out accommodations. I found a guy named Simon on CouchSurfing who offered to help me out, he said he was hosting someone else that night as well. He said he could pick me up at 10, when he was picking up the other CouchSurfer. So I walked around taking photos for a few hours. Québec City is absolutely beautiful. In Montréal, about 85% of people you interact with on the street speak French. In QC, it's closer to 99%. Most all of the streets are newer-looking cobblestone, all the buildings, both old and new, look like they were shipped in from France. Everything's on really steep hills, so walking around completely destroyed my legs... I've never been to San Francisco, but I'd imagine the roads being similar.

This is Gare du Palais, where my train came in.
















At 10pm, I went and stood outside Gare du Palais to wait for Simon to pick me up. While I was waiting, this dude strolled up and asked if I was waiting for Simon too. My fellow CouchSurfer's name is Alex, and he's from Adelaide, Australia. He'd just flown in from Mexico, and before that he'd been traveling through Central America. Apparently this was his first CouchSurfing experience as well, we discovered as Simon pulled up. Simon's a Québecois computer programmer who, while vacationing, hosts CouchSurfers. After he picked us up, we parked and did some more walking around downtown, grabbed dinner at Subway (hahahaha), and went to this really busy pub for a beer. The pub played really interesting music that night, such as the Juno Soundtrack, Bloc Party, ACDC, Tokyo Police Club, and Arctic Monkeys. Anyway, we all talked about our homelands and music and families and whatnot. Then we left to Simon's house a little bit outside the city, where he provided us with our own beds and towels, and once morning came, a big breakfast of fruit and cereal and juice and bread. In the morning, he dropped us back off in the city. He was a wonderful host overall, definitely made mine and Alex's first CouchSurfing experience an incredibly awesome one.

Simon, Me, and Alex, all looking as awkward as possible.


My first Couch house!


Alex's next destination happened to be Montréal. He couldn't find a Rideshare, so we ended up taking a bus back together on Sunday night. Before we left Québec City though, we did a lot more walking around and photo-taking.


All these chairs have poetry engraved on the seats, they're all arranged kind of outseide Gare du Palais.











Alex is staying in the extra room in our apartment for a couple days. Yesterday we sat at home and watched Extras, and then Taurean had a friend over and cooked us all an amazing seafood curry. Relaxing day.

Then today I made Alex try poutine, and afterwards we climbed Mont Royal. I brought my camera this time!

MMMMMPOUTINE