Thursday, December 28, 2006

Green X-mas, white boxing day

Bugger, bugger, bugger .... we had a green X-mas. For the first time in 4 years, again a green X-mas in MTL.

So I spent the weekend before X-mas cooking and on X-mas eve our friend Eric from Trois-Rivières came over to take us to IKEA for a first shopping spree (we bought lots of nice kitchen stuff, especially my pots .... they proudly wear the name "Favorit") and at night Brigitte came to have dinner all together. The menu: gravad lax (Swedish cured salmon), marinated herring and fish roe with sour cream, chives and dill. A savoury Finnish fish broth with star anice. Main course: red deer with potato cake, wild mushrooms and cranberry sauce. And finally creme brulee made with my brandnew mini torch. A nice Highland Park whiskey topped a perfect evening.

But next day ..... SNOW SNOW SNOW!!! 15cm of cold, fluffy delight .... too bad it turns to sludge so quickly ... we had to jump over a lot of puddles when buying a new winter coat for Tinneke on Boxing Day's Sales.

So here's the snowy pics ....


Ice stars on our window


Avenue du snow!


Black cat <-> white snow


Parc Mont-Royal


Jump! Tiedatateudie-dateuteudaaaaah! (VAN HALEN)


Who said white men can't jump?


Snowballfight!

And now one more day at work and then .... WEEKEND!! Still figuring out what to cook for New Year's Eve ... since I am a bit of a wild swine myself maybe "Boar Asterixstyle"??

Oh and my New Year's resolution for 2007? (Or at least one of them) Take more pictures!
And to make this happen ...
My new photoblog: A Snapshot of Montreal!!

Monday, December 18, 2006

The End

The end is drawing near .... at least the end of this year. And what a year it has been for us. This year was the year of the big move, the big chance, the big everything! Looking back, I can only say and feel that we've worked very hard to get to this point and that all is well.
I dunno what the future might bring ... (ok, that's a huge cliche, but I mean, I don't even know what I'll be doing in 3 months ... usually people have some idea ... but I really don't.) It will depend on what's happening the next couple of 4 weeks. It'll determine what I'll be doing jobwise, when we'll be visiting Belgium and when our visitors are coming.
For now it seems that 3 couple of visitors are more or less confirmed (a part for the set dates). That will be Aunt Magd & Uncle Dick, Tinneke's parents and Sarah & Sven. And it seems they'll all be coming early summer. But we'll work something out ...

So what news??? Read the soundbites below.

  • I am mentally preparing myself for Christmas dinner and finding caribou (at a reasonable price). Before dinner we might go to IKEA and buy new kitchen equipment. Buy everything all over again.
  • Heard on Gilles Peterson Worldwide (BBC radio 1): the new Cinematic Orchestra single of the upcoming album "Ma Fleur". And no one less than fellow Montrealer Patrick Watson (yeah I know, I keep on mentioning him) on vocals and piano. I you haven't checked out Patrick Watson: SHAME ON YOU!!
  • I am confronted again by bureaucracy ... it was a long time since my last encounter, but it's back! I went down to the Provincial Quebec Insurance office to change my Belgian License to a Quebec one (for the car sharing thing). When I got there and didn't have an appointment (why do you need an appointment?), I had to pick up a phone, wait for an operator and make one. The first possible date was 29th of January!! And then the funny part, I need to have my Belgian License translated into French. Even though I have an international license as well, I need it officially translated and approved. And every year I will have to renew my license and pay about 100 dollars for it.
    And then something else: before you're admitted to the car sharing, they do a credit check. But the way it works here, we have no history yet . Kenny, my bank guy, called me once to say we could have a VISA card with 500 dollars maximum amount (ghee, what a load of money, can't even go out on a CD shopping spree with that!) and he advised me to do payments with it and pay the invoice rightaway (VISA always is revolving credit, meaning you can postpone your VISA payments), so we can build a credit history and get confidence and so get higher amounts on the VISA. But without the VISA, no credit history and without the credit history no car sharing. So I guess we need to think it through once more.
  • Tinneke and I went X-mas shopping. And we decided to buy gifts for ourselves. I bought CDs I wanted for a very longtime. And Tinneke bought naughty undergarments (don't you like that word, it has an old-fashioned retro sway to it, much better than lingerie, unless said with a very French accent :-). But in fact, Tinneke listens to my CDs as well and of course the undergarments are eye-candy to me. So they really are gifts for the both of us. True Christmas spirit that is.
  • And since I am higher up the payscale now (going from no income to a real salary), we went down to China Town to buy some nice, sometimes kitschy stuff for the house. And we went to buy peking duck as well and togheter with plum sauce rolled with some chopped spring onions in mini-pancakes they make a true savoury delight. I serve boiled jasmin rice with them and sauteed bok-choi with garlic and soy sauce and sesame seeds. And ice cold beer of course!
  • Tried eggnog for the first time this weekend. The readymade stuff you buy in supermarkets is kinda like liquid ice cream to which you add a dram of brandy (Canadian Club Grand Reserve in my case) and some ground nutmeg sprinkled on top.For Tinneke it was a mini-revelation as well coz she never had it with booze. And it's supposed to be a spiked drink :-)) But the home-made eggnog is supposed to be kinda fluffy. It really is like a kind of creme anglaise with booze.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Go Sens, go!

In case you were wondering why there was no post this weekend: we were in Ottawa!! (Canadian anglophones pronouce this as "Oddewa").

We took the Greyhound bus friday afternoon (next time we should book online coz the 75% discount for the 2nd companion could only be granted online, much to my astonishment. Despite my complaining at the bus station I had to pay full price). 120 dollars and 2,5h later we arrived in Ottawa, where Craig picked us up at the busstop. We went to Craig's & Nathalie's place and got first row entertainment by their kids Petra & Anna. When the kid's went to bed, we had a lovely mushroom lasagna and enough wine and Scotch (check out Highland Park single malt, it has the nice smokey peaty flavour that you can expect from an Islay Whiskey, no wonder coz it's from the Corkney Islands, but it surprisingly has this warm, velvety, vanilla and bourbonish taste ) to keep us warm. We went to bed past midnight and that was not bad considering I was awake without sleep for 30hours non-stop.

Next day, Corey picked us up to meet up with his wife Bonny and his 2 kids Carson & Jordana and their dog Denver. After a hearty lunch we (Corey, Bonny, Craig, Tinneke and I) went to the Scotia Bank Place, the home of the Ottawa Senators to watch the Sens' hockey battle against the Rangers (from New York). Corey is a sportsjournalist for CTV and as many Canadians very much into hockey. First, he showed us the luxurious CTV lounge in the stadium and then we went to our seats, high up. People who know me, know that I'm not really fond of sports, but I do like hockey now. 20.000 outrageous fans, boy what a feeling!
Unfortunately the game was pretty lame, the Sens lost 3-1, and no real fighting (usually they let the players fight a little before breaking them up). After the game we ordered some take-away pizza (and chicken wings and hot sauce :-) and when everybody went home and the kids went to bed, we were challenged to a game of Trivial Pursuit Pop Culture, and sorry Corey & Bonny but we kicked your ass!!

After sleeping late, we hung out a little bit longer with the kids before finally taking the Greyhound back to Montreal. Since we had been pampered and taken care of during a whole weekend, we just continued our little holiday by having some take-out Sechewan Chinese and a DVD (BTW: Roman Polanski's "The Pianist" is really good).

So what's up for this week? Besides me still doing nightshifts and being grumpy because lack of sleep? (Got my first salary and it feels good knowing that we're back to the same amount of money we first had when we arrived):

  • I gotta get our driving licenses converted to Quebec licenses so we can subscribe to Communauto, a car sharing program in Montreal so we can have access to a car when we need one.
  • X-mas shopping (this year Tinneke and I are going together and buying gifts for ourselves but we will try and restrain ourselves from opening them up before Christmas) and buying a X-mas tree for the first time in our life. Maybe it's because being far away from friends and families, maybe because of the snow, but I am getting in a real Christmas mood and nothing better than an authentic pine fragrant Christmas tree to give in to the spirit. I still have to figure out what to eat at Christmas and New Year's Eve, but Caribou will be on somemmenu for sure. Eric will be joining us for Christmas. And hopefully Brigitte will be joining us for New Year's.
  • And Tinneke will try to see all Christmas films on CBC. I was amazed to hear she saw "The Sound of Music" only once! But as "Metal Molly" sings: doesn't everybody love Julie Andrews?!

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Santa Claus = Sinterklaas

Ok, it's not really Santa Claus, but it is in Belgium. And of course Santa Claus is based on "Sinterklaas". But did you know that Santa Claus as we know him (fat fellow, white beard, red costume) was in fact invented by Coca Cola? If you wanna know all about it, check out this site: www.stnicholascenter.org.

I hope u've been all good kids this year and that you will get a lot of loot down your chimney. I know I've been good coz Sinterklaas from A'pen brought met lots of yummie stuff. For which I am very grateful for.

So this one goes out to the peeps of the A-crew

Respect, we appreciate it, you know how we do!!

Sunday, December 03, 2006

16h without heating & electricity

As if Mr. Season knew it was first of December. Winter suddenly came and showed us what it can do. Friday morning when I went home from work I was facing some ice rain. But soon enough I was in the warm metro and the bus. I went grocery shopping right away and since I didn't feel like carrying my shopping bags through ice rain I had them home delivered (it only costs a dollar more). Later that day the ice rain was replaced by regular rain, but the temperature outside dropped below zero causing freezing rain, black ice (ijzel). This phenomenom is known in Canada as an ice storm. In the warmth of indoors it quite magical to see ... everything is transformed to ice sculptures. (see the picture of the tree in our back alley).

But then it happened, suddenly the electricity was gone. So we got some candles out and looked across the street and they still seemed to have power. So we decided to go to a new pub just around corner and wait until the electricity problem was being sorted out. Since only half the block was out of power, I was convinced that in 1-2 hours the problem would be fixed. The pub Helm was warm and cozy, and all power was still running. They have a wide selection of beers, an organic interior and they server chique tapas (like mushrooms stuffed with foi gras, stew of elk, etc). Helm likes to call itself a "Brasseur Gourmand" and it rather fits that description. After 5min sipping my red ale and T. enjoying her cider, the power went out as well. so we finished our drinks and went home. But once outside we discovered that many more blocks were out of power. So then we started to realise that it might take a little bit longer.

Without electricity we had no heating as well (because the central heating is hooked up to an electrical thermostate). So I managed to make some croques (luckily we have a gas cooking stoves), we had candlelight dinner and an early rather frisky nigt in. Power was only restored, 16 hours later the next morning around 10am. Later on we learned that 200.000 families in the Montreal area were cut of.

We've been seeing ads on TV of getting prepared for major outages and floods, but we always kinda laughed at them. After this experience, I guess now we start making our emergency kit.

Early sunday morning it started snowing ... small snowflakes they were ... but snowing it did, so there's about 4-5cm snow outside. So finally winter is really kicking of. Maybe after 4 months of winter we'll get tired of it, but for the time being: it's GREAT!!