Who knew I would be so bad at this?
(I DID! I DID!)
Ok so, I've FINALLY settled down somewhere and have time to write a lot of drivel about this and that that happened months ago (I can't believe it's September already!) although really I should be doing washing... See how much I have to sacrifice? Heh.
Right so! For the next 5 months or so I have my own room in a basement apt, which is actually pretty cozy. I moved in on Monday, though really quite late since the previous tenant is a giant procrastinator and didn't get everything out of there til about 6pm, and then we still had to vacuum and clean it out, and rearrange furniture before I could unpack! So it was quite late by the time I had emptied my bag out, but it felt really good. Now I feel like I should accumulate more things just to fill shelves though (I've already started buying more clothes from Value Village, it's pretty similar to Savemart except they donate most of their earnings to charity, they had a huge 50% off sale the other day, it was soooo busy, but I got quite a bit of stuff for $30), and I have a windowsill to put things on! I may buy a plant or something, hehe. But yes, now my backpack is sitting in the corner of my wardrobe looking sad and emo.
The apt itself kind of reminds me of home. It's a bit cluttered but I like it. The whole place is wired for sound too which is awesome. So if I want I can hook up my iriver or laptop, or play a cd or radio in the lounge, and it'll play throughout the whole house if I want it to, or I can selectively play it where ever. Karen, my housemate, she's similar to me, she's a big music person, always going out to gigs and festivals, talks a lot though! But she's cool. She hosts a radio show too and was thinking of getting me to guest on one of them to talk about music in NZ etc, so that could be interesting!
On top of finding a place to settle down in, I have also acquired a job to fund it! Who knew my first interview upon arriving would go so well? It's this cute little cafe in the middle of the arts/fashion district called Niche. When I went in there for the interview I instantly felt comfortable. It's a proper espresso cafe, and by the sounds of it they make really good coffee, much like they do at home, none of this chain drip coffee shit. She even roasts her own beans! Amazing. We even had this talk about how in North America it's so difficult to find a place like that, and she was telling me about how in most places she won't order a coffee but just watch them and cringe when they steam the milk because obviously they're burning it, and she finds it amazing and sad that people still drink it because they don't know any better. I do the same thing, or I just end up scoping out their machine, haha. Apparently they've had travellers discover the place and be like FINALLY! Haha. I'm really excited about starting, they sound like they know what they're doing and talking about. I'm not sure exactly when I start yet, she has yet to get back to me on that, hopefully by tonight, because she still had to hire one or two more and sort out schedules etc (she offered me the job on the spot! Crazy.). But what she proposed in the interview was that I could (if I wanted longer hours and less days, which I did) do roughly 35-40 hours in 4 days and have 3 days off, which is great! It means I'm free to go out of town if I want to.
Like I mentioned, after the interview she said "well, I'm not trying to be indecisive, but I don't usually do this... if you'd like the position it's yours" to which I replied "oh wow." haha. I told her I had another interview at 4pm that I thought I should check out because, well, first interview ever and being offered the job straight away, is a bit overwhelming. She was cool about it though, said she would hold off offering the spot to anyone else until about 8pm since she would feel better if I were completely sure about my decision. The second place, well, they were interviewing for a new branch they were opening up that hadn't started yet. It wasn't a chain or anything though, apparently some projects of some really famous TO chef. The idea behind the place was similar to Sky Lounge, where it was a cafe during the day (aiming to do fantastic espresso coffee, hence the woman hiring said she was excited by me because I was a barista from NZ and I guess we have good reps for coffee, well, Gail said that too (the owner of Niche)) and a tapas bar at night. It sounded interesting at least, they were aiming to have all these specialty cheeses and meats from the Ontario region, good wine selection etc, aiming for something casual. Only problem was that they hadn't finalised much of it so it was mostly all up in the air still. She wasn't sure on the hours I would have, and her system for hiring was a bit flimsy. Pretty much, if I was interested, I could attend this training thing, get paid for it, but it was more of a "we may or may not hire you depending on how you go on these" or at least that was my impression. I think they aimed to be open by mid Sept anyway which was a bit too long for me to wait. So yes. It may have been interesting, but oh well. So I called Gail back and accepted the Niche position and she said "I'm glad you made that decision." and I crossed my fingers.
Ok so now stuff I should have told you about months ago!
Where to start...
(Let's start from the very beginning... what a very good place to start...)
Montreal!
So I booked for 2 weeks in this small little hostel that had it's ups and downs. My aim was to use that time to figure out work and a flat etc (to no avail.) but instead spent the first week going out and not sleeping until 4am every night (bars closed at 3am) tsk tsk!
The first night was a Saturday in which I went out trolling with a group from New York, Chicago and one annoying kid from Boston who fortunately got kicked out the next day (more later). It wasn't too exciting, went out looking for a good bar/club something, lead by this know it all Boston kid who had been staying a while already in Montreal. We wound up in this 50s themed place with kids all dressed up and a ska band who were just finishing. That was kinda fun, I remember marvelling at this chicks hair that defied gravity, it was almost cone shaped and pretty much amazing. I could imagine birds nesting in it. Anyway, then we wandered around some more, and the group from NY decided they wanted to go to a strip club so we split up and our group started back to the hostel after finding something to eat. Upon arriving back we find some guys from Manchester and a chick from TO zoned out on the couches on the porch coming down from their afternoon on mushrooms, and we also find out that the kid from Boston is an aspiring musician who calls himself Scooter Rocket ( I dare you to look him up on youtube, if you do, I know it's long, and 9 mins is way too much to handle, but skip to the last minute, it's so retarded. Apparently he either tried for idol, or is going to, maybe he makes it into the bloopers cut.) and we find this out because he starts playing his guitar and singing while we're all chilling out on the porch. This ultimately gets him kicked out of the hostel for being too loud so late at night (also used as an excuse for the owner to get rid of him for other various reasons) but this is not the last we see of him!
Sunday we find out the boys from Manchester are also in a band (Eskimo Cowboy. JP, the singer has an amazing voice, so melodic), spend some of the morning at the Jean Talon markets and see an amazing jazz show. The group was called Kalmunity Kollective and they're pretty much amazing. It's a group of musicians that get together every Sunday and Tuesday and just jam, it's all improv' so it's never the same song twice, and it's always good, so who would mind paying a $5 cover charge? Guess! Our aspiring musician scooter joins the group of us about 20 mins after they start and after being asked for the cover he says "I don't think I'm happy to pay $5 for this" How embarrassing! Mind you, this is after he's been sitting at the table for about 10 mins with his video camera and laptop out. After that we all went outside for some "air" (mostly to ditch him and bitch) and one of the dudes went and apologised to the door girl and made it clear that he wasn't with us. I mean, you'd think that as a musician he'd appreciate how tough it is to make any kind of living playing gigs, and I mean, $5 is nothing really for such quality. Though I suppose it's more than what anyone would pay to see him, if anything!
The rest of the 1st week was a bit of a blur, but I did manage to go to the first night of Francofolie, the everything French music festival and see the Canadian fireworks show as part of the international competition they hold over the summer. Pretty much every Weds and Sun there's fireworks, each day is a different country who does a 30 min show to music of their choice/theme. This first time I wasn't in a position to hear the music very well (I think they broadcasted it on some radio station too), but the show was still pretty neat. The second time I went it was the USA show, I was in a much better spot this time around and could hear their music very well. They did a rock and roll theme and a few songs they did worked really well! They did Yellow by Coldplay and some of the timing for that was perfect! Same with Tonight Tonight by the Pumpkins. Other times it was just messy and full of loud bangs.
The same night I saw the second round of fireworks I was with an Australian dude and we went and hit up the Casino! It was way fun. Should have skipped the slots and roulette that we started on first though and went straight to blackjack, next time...hehe. Broke fairly even, so it worked out. Good thing we were bound by time to catch the last train back to the hostel! Before we left we were watching a game of craps, completely confused by it, and a nice man who was playing bought me a bottle of water, yay! We decided the following day we were going to look up how to play it for next time, though I would still be too scared to jump in.
God this post is going to be a novel. Well... once I stop getting distracted and actually finish it.
Here are some fun facts for this post:
Started 2pm Thursday 4th Sept.
Wrote the above in between doing laundry, making dinner, reading trex comics (http://www.qwantz.com/) and other comics suggested by http://xkcd.com, general web surfing and making fun of Kris on facebook.
Went to sleep at roughly 3am, left the blog tab open, still with no extentions to the above written.
Woke up 11:30am.
Checked email, checked timetable for V-Fest on Saturday. Had a soy milo, talked to Karen about politics and religion among other things until about 2pm.
Called Gail back about the job, start training on Monday! Probably free for the rest of the week. Start thinking I should sort out what films to see at TIFF, but then stop myself. Shifts would be Mon/Tue/Wed 9-7 and 8 hours on Sun. Now I can start planning things to do thurs/fri/sat.
Get distracted trying to figure out if I can go to any of the dcfc shows that are on next month within that timeframe. Possibly Boston. Look up bus ticket ($170) concert ticket ($35) hostels ($45 per night in a dorm?! wtf. 2 nights:$90) total approx $300, start researching alternatives.
Karen sends me her myspace to look at. Says it's good for finding music so I start looking around, stumble upon the "Halifax Pop Explosion" fest in late Oct. Then start playing around on Deezer.com.
It's now 5:30pm Friday 5th Sept.
I'm being good and not looking up films yet! But I am hungry and might make something to eat...
You probably want a break anyway.
So when we come back... (which we will...promise)
Gay Pride weekend!
and
Dodgy hostel owner!
