Initiating status report... please wait.
3...
2...
1...
Location: Ottawa... check.
Company: myself... check.
Lynda and Katrin in Pembroke... check.
High likelyhood of misspellings on previous line... check.
Canada Day tomorrow... check.
Currently in Holiday Inn, 7th floor... check.
Nice hotel room... check.
Amazing river view... check.
Snot-generator functional... check.
Snot-generator working at maximum capacity.... check.
Nasal passages clogged with snot... check.
Out of tissues... check.
Minor head-ache... check.
Sore throat... check.
Fever... negative.
Walked around downtown for 5 hours... check.
Caught in the rain... check.
Again... check.
High likelyhood of fever tomorrow... check.
Lots of skyscrapers in Ottawa... check.
Definition of skyscraper debatable... check.
Beautiful river... check.
Beautiful canal... check.
Lots of bridges... check.
Lots of squirrels... check.
Squirrels black... check.
Squirrels hostile... negative.
Tailless beaver(tm) detected... check.
Spontaneous burst of laughter at tailless beaver(tm)... check.
High likelyhood of bystanders questioning my sanity... check.
Dined at a fine restaurant... negative.
Porked out at Wendy's... check.
Food horrible at Wendy's... check.
Had to try it anyway... check.
I'm an idiot... check.
Katrin even cooler than expected... check.
Katrin goes to LAN-parties... check.
Katrin not ashamed to admit going to LAN-parties... check.
Awesomeness... check.
Toured the parliament building... check.
Funny tour-guide... check.
Guards at parliament building jumpy... check.
Ottawa surprisingly pedestrian friendly... check.
Lots of parks here... check.
Several old fighter jets flying by in formation detected... check.
Pictures of old fighter jets taken... negative.
Old fighter jets too fast... check.
Pictures of tall glass buildings taken... check.
Way too many pictures of tall glass buildings taken... check.
Tall glass buildings in Joensuu... negative.
Uncertainty regarding the use of word 'tall' with buildings... check.
Feeling under the weather... check.
Taking a bath... check.
Ending status report in 3...
2...
1...
End of status report.
keskiviikko 30. kesäkuuta 2010
maanantai 28. kesäkuuta 2010
Churches
Last Friday we visited two of Montreal's biggest churches, or should I say basilicas, the Notre-Dame Basilica and Saint Joseph's Oratory of Mount Royal. The difference between a basilica and a cathedral, I hear, is that basilicas not only have to be huge but also beautiful.
So, remember the picture in my very first blog entry? No of course you don't. However, if you had paid attention back then you would remember a shot of a gargantuan church and a casual mention that Jon lives right next to it. This is what it looks like inside that massive stone building, ie. the Notre-Dame Basilica:
It's pretty cool, eh? Wrong again. Well, it would be if Celine Dion hadn't had her wedding in there. Now the place is tainted with her evil presence and I'm sure it'd take more than a few the power of Christ compels yous to purge the building of her malicious spirit. But yes, if you're filthy rich, you can have your wedding in there. There's room for 4000 of your closest friends and relatives, too. I'm not kidding, four thousand.
However, if you're not filthy rich, but perhaps only moderately loaded, you can have your wedding here:
This is a tiny little chapel in the very same building, and I'm pretty sure then you don't have to worry about getting married in a room polluted by Celine Dion and her posse.
Back to the bigger place soiled by Mrs Dion. This is what their computer controlled organ looks like:
Oh my god, it's so huge it needs to be computer controlled! How awesome is that! It has over 7000 pipes, the biggest of which reach the height of 10 meters, and it's beaten in size only by an organ somewhere in the Bible Belt region of the States with 35000 pipes but let's not talk about that.
My heaaart wiill goooo ooooooooooooooonnn...
Apparently the French actor Gerard Depardieu spent four hours in this pulpit/booth/whatever reading some stuff to people in the church. Don't know what, don't know when, don't know why, but he did. Unless our guide lied to us.
All the windows in the basilica were made out of stained glass:
This one was with a bearded dude, a woman, a kid, and a bunch of dorks gawking at them. I dunno what that was about...
I know this picture features stairs and I know stairs are really cool and all that, but the stairs are not the main thing here. Check out the shiny goodness behind the stairs.
This one tells of how the Notre-Dame Basilica was built:
Somehow I think it wasn't that easy. Oh but what's this then:
They didn't forget the indigenous folks! Or the First Nations as they are called here. However, unlike the previous one which said something like 'the construction of Notre-Dame Basilica' this one doesn't have a tag. I wonder what it would have said? "This is how we stole the land from these stupid pagans!"
What about this then? Is it another church?
No of course not! It's a shopping mall/market hall. Geez!
How about this? It's a castle, right?
Why, of course it isn't! It's an old, abandoned railway station! Wake up, these are easy! Apparently it's also completely empty inside.
These are very common, you see them everywhere:
In Kirkland they have spelled 'Kirkland' like that. Shocking, isn't it?
This is what a very typical street in the city of Montreal looks like:
A street, trees on both sides, a sidewalk and houses with 2-3 floors. The curved stairs, which aren't that visible in this pic, are a trademark. There's usually one apartment downstairs and two upstairs. Dunno what's up with that.
That's what the upstairs sometimes looks like. Yes, more stairs, curved stairs.
A random insert:
These folks are the legendary Magical Elves of St Viateur that produce one of the most heavenly food items in the world: BAGELS!!! No, not the bland kind of bagels you're used to, but the super awesome massively delicious Montreal bagels, which people in other parts of Canada bribe airplane pilots for. You know, to get the pilots to bring a couple of dozen to them once they fly back. Yes, they're that good.
Erase the building in the background and it's almost like from... which TV-series?
If you know the answer you're a nerd, if you don't you're an idiot. It's a lose/lose situation, baby. It's Twin Peaks obviously.
Here's a picture of one of Montreal's many parks:
This one is located in the Jewish district. Didn't stop there, but it looked nice what with the water and weirdo art things.
Anyway, after walking for what seemed like months, we arrived at our destination:
It's way bigger than it looks there. It's the Saint Joseph Oratorio of Mount Royal thingy I mentioned earlier. It had a lot of these:
Yes, stairs! So what the cool kids around these parts do is they walk up the stairs on their knees and recite a prayer on each and every step. Now that's dedication! I think the tour guide said there are like 3000 steps here, so it's not for the weak-hearted.
Here's one of the rooms inside:
While this room didn't have stairs, it was still an awesome place. It had like 5000 candles which a) made the room pleasantly warm, b) lit the place up in a really nice way and, c) enhanced the cosy relaxed atmosphere of the area. Some of the nooks and crannies in the area contained ridiculous amounts of candles:
Oh wait, there were stairs after all. The status of the room just changed from 'awesome' to 'totally awesome'.
So here's the grave of the dude who started all this:
...and here's where they keep his heart:
Yes, you heard me: his heart. The dude, Father Andre, was a guy with magical powers of healing and back then the custom was to save the hearts of people like him. Father Andre is going to become a saint soonish, btw. You need three confirmed miracles to get the official stamp of approval from the Vatican and Father Andre had two notches on his belt. However, when they dug him up to make sure it really was him, they noticed that his hands were in such a good condition that it was a miracle in itself and boom, third strike and you're out of here. To become a saint that is.
The place was so huge that you needed escalators to move around in there:
Notice the colossal picture next to the escalator too. I'm sure you would have missed it if I hadn't said anything about it. You'd be just gushing all over the magnificent escalator.
Here's the view from somewhere up there:
This is not the highest point, but still pretty high. Father Andre had his thing going up here on the mountain in a tiny little one-room chapel, but since he was so good at this healing business, more and more people came by every day and he felt he had to expand a bit. So he hired some people and they came up with this:
It kinda makes you wonder how all the sick and injured people managed to get up there on the mountain to see Father Andre, doesn't it? Well, exercise is good for you, right?
They got enough money for another one of those massive organs:
I don't know how many pipes it has. I do know that the guy who plays it has to use four keyboards in order to do so.
The walls inside the church were lined with wooden old men:
I know you can't see it in the picture, but they were like 6-7 metres tall. They also had really cool doors there that looked like the crown of thorns that one dude wore 2000 years ago back when it was still fashionable, but I honestly can't be arsed to drag another picture all the way from up there to down here just to prove it. Maybe later.
So, remember the picture in my very first blog entry? No of course you don't. However, if you had paid attention back then you would remember a shot of a gargantuan church and a casual mention that Jon lives right next to it. This is what it looks like inside that massive stone building, ie. the Notre-Dame Basilica:
It's pretty cool, eh? Wrong again. Well, it would be if Celine Dion hadn't had her wedding in there. Now the place is tainted with her evil presence and I'm sure it'd take more than a few the power of Christ compels yous to purge the building of her malicious spirit. But yes, if you're filthy rich, you can have your wedding in there. There's room for 4000 of your closest friends and relatives, too. I'm not kidding, four thousand.
However, if you're not filthy rich, but perhaps only moderately loaded, you can have your wedding here:
This is a tiny little chapel in the very same building, and I'm pretty sure then you don't have to worry about getting married in a room polluted by Celine Dion and her posse.
Back to the bigger place soiled by Mrs Dion. This is what their computer controlled organ looks like:
Oh my god, it's so huge it needs to be computer controlled! How awesome is that! It has over 7000 pipes, the biggest of which reach the height of 10 meters, and it's beaten in size only by an organ somewhere in the Bible Belt region of the States with 35000 pipes but let's not talk about that.
My heaaart wiill goooo ooooooooooooooonnn...
Apparently the French actor Gerard Depardieu spent four hours in this pulpit/booth/whatever reading some stuff to people in the church. Don't know what, don't know when, don't know why, but he did. Unless our guide lied to us.
All the windows in the basilica were made out of stained glass:
This one was with a bearded dude, a woman, a kid, and a bunch of dorks gawking at them. I dunno what that was about...
I know this picture features stairs and I know stairs are really cool and all that, but the stairs are not the main thing here. Check out the shiny goodness behind the stairs.
This one tells of how the Notre-Dame Basilica was built:
Somehow I think it wasn't that easy. Oh but what's this then:
They didn't forget the indigenous folks! Or the First Nations as they are called here. However, unlike the previous one which said something like 'the construction of Notre-Dame Basilica' this one doesn't have a tag. I wonder what it would have said? "This is how we stole the land from these stupid pagans!"
What about this then? Is it another church?
No of course not! It's a shopping mall/market hall. Geez!
How about this? It's a castle, right?
Why, of course it isn't! It's an old, abandoned railway station! Wake up, these are easy! Apparently it's also completely empty inside.
These are very common, you see them everywhere:
In Kirkland they have spelled 'Kirkland' like that. Shocking, isn't it?
This is what a very typical street in the city of Montreal looks like:
A street, trees on both sides, a sidewalk and houses with 2-3 floors. The curved stairs, which aren't that visible in this pic, are a trademark. There's usually one apartment downstairs and two upstairs. Dunno what's up with that.
That's what the upstairs sometimes looks like. Yes, more stairs, curved stairs.
A random insert:
These folks are the legendary Magical Elves of St Viateur that produce one of the most heavenly food items in the world: BAGELS!!! No, not the bland kind of bagels you're used to, but the super awesome massively delicious Montreal bagels, which people in other parts of Canada bribe airplane pilots for. You know, to get the pilots to bring a couple of dozen to them once they fly back. Yes, they're that good.
Erase the building in the background and it's almost like from... which TV-series?
If you know the answer you're a nerd, if you don't you're an idiot. It's a lose/lose situation, baby. It's Twin Peaks obviously.
Here's a picture of one of Montreal's many parks:
This one is located in the Jewish district. Didn't stop there, but it looked nice what with the water and weirdo art things.
Anyway, after walking for what seemed like months, we arrived at our destination:
It's way bigger than it looks there. It's the Saint Joseph Oratorio of Mount Royal thingy I mentioned earlier. It had a lot of these:
Yes, stairs! So what the cool kids around these parts do is they walk up the stairs on their knees and recite a prayer on each and every step. Now that's dedication! I think the tour guide said there are like 3000 steps here, so it's not for the weak-hearted.
Here's one of the rooms inside:
While this room didn't have stairs, it was still an awesome place. It had like 5000 candles which a) made the room pleasantly warm, b) lit the place up in a really nice way and, c) enhanced the cosy relaxed atmosphere of the area. Some of the nooks and crannies in the area contained ridiculous amounts of candles:
Oh wait, there were stairs after all. The status of the room just changed from 'awesome' to 'totally awesome'.
So here's the grave of the dude who started all this:
...and here's where they keep his heart:
Yes, you heard me: his heart. The dude, Father Andre, was a guy with magical powers of healing and back then the custom was to save the hearts of people like him. Father Andre is going to become a saint soonish, btw. You need three confirmed miracles to get the official stamp of approval from the Vatican and Father Andre had two notches on his belt. However, when they dug him up to make sure it really was him, they noticed that his hands were in such a good condition that it was a miracle in itself and boom, third strike and you're out of here. To become a saint that is.
The place was so huge that you needed escalators to move around in there:
Notice the colossal picture next to the escalator too. I'm sure you would have missed it if I hadn't said anything about it. You'd be just gushing all over the magnificent escalator.
Here's the view from somewhere up there:
This is not the highest point, but still pretty high. Father Andre had his thing going up here on the mountain in a tiny little one-room chapel, but since he was so good at this healing business, more and more people came by every day and he felt he had to expand a bit. So he hired some people and they came up with this:
It kinda makes you wonder how all the sick and injured people managed to get up there on the mountain to see Father Andre, doesn't it? Well, exercise is good for you, right?
They got enough money for another one of those massive organs:
I don't know how many pipes it has. I do know that the guy who plays it has to use four keyboards in order to do so.
The walls inside the church were lined with wooden old men:
I know you can't see it in the picture, but they were like 6-7 metres tall. They also had really cool doors there that looked like the crown of thorns that one dude wore 2000 years ago back when it was still fashionable, but I honestly can't be arsed to drag another picture all the way from up there to down here just to prove it. Maybe later.
sunnuntai 27. kesäkuuta 2010
A couple of updates coming up
Been away from keyboard for a couple of days now. I've mostly been seeing the sights with Chick's cousin Lynda and Katrin, who's an exchange student from Austria. I think I've never walked this much in my life, my feet are still groaning 'the horror, the horror'.
During the last couple of days, I've been brutally beaten by a Japanese zen-monk, witnessed 60-70 duct tape warriors fight each other for guts and glory, seen hundreds of people listen/dance/nod their heads as a bunch of 20-30 hippies jammed away playing every single type of drum known to man, been scared to death of giant spiders in the Olympic Stadium's observation tower's lift, visited two gigantic churches, walked around in the second biggest Botanical Garden in the world, eaten pizza in Little Italy and chinese in Chinatown, listened to Brian Setzer in a crowd of 200000 people, and about two trillion other things I can't remember right now. Saying that I've been busy would be a massive understatement.
I don't know where I'd start so I'll do this in chronological order, starting from last Thursday when my temporary parents and their friends took me down to Kahnawake, a nearby indian reservation. We went to a restaurant before exploring the reservation and I thought 'hey, this looks kinda familiar'.
Wait, what, am I in Lapland? And what's this?
Hang on a second... wolves, eagles, bears! I have to be in Lapland! No wait, what's this then?
I'm by no means an expert, but that doesn't look like Saami to me!
There weren't enough mosquitos either and everyone was driving around in pick-up trucks. Oh yes, apparently the Mohawk really love pick-up trucks.
They don't have to pay certain taxes so the reservation was full of cigarette shops. Their stop signs were also approximately 6090 times cooler than regular Quebec ones:
I like how someone had seen it necessary to spray a little "now" in there too. I also like how 'stop' in Mohawk is almost the same as 'testing' in Finnish. They also have a very cool flag:
Nice and purple. The reservation itself obviously wasn't one of the richest areas in here, but I liked it somehow because it reminded me of a small Finnish town. Most of the houses were made of wood and there was simply more green than in most parts of Montreal. And their graffitis were way cooler than anywhere else:
I apologize for the overuse of the word 'cool' in this blog entry, but the Mohawk are pretty cool. Mr. T approves of this statement.
During the last couple of days, I've been brutally beaten by a Japanese zen-monk, witnessed 60-70 duct tape warriors fight each other for guts and glory, seen hundreds of people listen/dance/nod their heads as a bunch of 20-30 hippies jammed away playing every single type of drum known to man, been scared to death of giant spiders in the Olympic Stadium's observation tower's lift, visited two gigantic churches, walked around in the second biggest Botanical Garden in the world, eaten pizza in Little Italy and chinese in Chinatown, listened to Brian Setzer in a crowd of 200000 people, and about two trillion other things I can't remember right now. Saying that I've been busy would be a massive understatement.
I don't know where I'd start so I'll do this in chronological order, starting from last Thursday when my temporary parents and their friends took me down to Kahnawake, a nearby indian reservation. We went to a restaurant before exploring the reservation and I thought 'hey, this looks kinda familiar'.
Wait, what, am I in Lapland? And what's this?
Hang on a second... wolves, eagles, bears! I have to be in Lapland! No wait, what's this then?
I'm by no means an expert, but that doesn't look like Saami to me!
There weren't enough mosquitos either and everyone was driving around in pick-up trucks. Oh yes, apparently the Mohawk really love pick-up trucks.
They don't have to pay certain taxes so the reservation was full of cigarette shops. Their stop signs were also approximately 6090 times cooler than regular Quebec ones:
I like how someone had seen it necessary to spray a little "now" in there too. I also like how 'stop' in Mohawk is almost the same as 'testing' in Finnish. They also have a very cool flag:
Nice and purple. The reservation itself obviously wasn't one of the richest areas in here, but I liked it somehow because it reminded me of a small Finnish town. Most of the houses were made of wood and there was simply more green than in most parts of Montreal. And their graffitis were way cooler than anywhere else:
I apologize for the overuse of the word 'cool' in this blog entry, but the Mohawk are pretty cool. Mr. T approves of this statement.
torstai 24. kesäkuuta 2010
keskiviikko 23. kesäkuuta 2010
Nooooooooo!
There was an earthquake here today and I missed it. God****it!!!
I was on the metro heading to see Jon and didn't notice a thing. The quake was 5.5 on the Richter Scale, the epicenter was relatively close and it lasted for around 30 seconds. But nooooooo, I was in the subway missing out on all this awesomeness.
Now that I think about it there was a woman on the metro telling her child (who was obviously in the subway for the first time) that it'll be a bit noisy and it'll shake a little. She must have been a psychic.
I was on the metro heading to see Jon and didn't notice a thing. The quake was 5.5 on the Richter Scale, the epicenter was relatively close and it lasted for around 30 seconds. But nooooooo, I was in the subway missing out on all this awesomeness.
Now that I think about it there was a woman on the metro telling her child (who was obviously in the subway for the first time) that it'll be a bit noisy and it'll shake a little. She must have been a psychic.
tiistai 22. kesäkuuta 2010
Movie day!
Right, today was movie day. On Tuesdays some theatres let you in with -50%, so I ended up checking out two movies for a total cost of $10.5.
I decided to bike down to a local theatre to see Toy Story 3, but the plan didn't exactly pan out. It was the first time I have used the bike I got from Jon (thanks Jon btw!) and it's truly an awesome bike, gears, brakes, everything top notch. However, I underestimated how much time it'd take me to get used to it, figure out how to take out the tires etc, that I missed Toy Story. 'Well, that's OK, I'll just go see Prince of Persia then, it starts 15 minutes later,' I thought.
Umm, no. When I finally found my way to the theatre, I realized there was no place to park your bike. Honestly. Just a huge parking lot and that was it. No designated area for bikes, no nothing. So not wanting to take my chances with locking the bike on a traffic sign, I decided to go back home. Around half way there, I ran into Carole who told me it was totally fine to lock it on a traffic sign, so back again I go.
By now it was already too late for PoP, so I figured I'd go see The A-Team, a remake of the 'classic' TV-show. I expected it to be trash and trash it was. However, having never seen the TV-series (or maybe because of it?) it was somehow great to finally get to know what these characters, or dare I say pop culture icons, were like. Finns, imagine never seeing McGyver on TV and then going to watch a Hollywood movie adaptation of the series with a completely new cast and you might understand how I felt. The movie was brainless mayhem but I'd still say just hearing the legendary theme song in a movie theatre was worth the price of admission.
Later on back at home Chick was lamenting the fact that he had missed Splice, a Canadian film I hadn't heard anything about, and it was now pretty much the last chance to see the film. So when he asked if I wanted to go driving down to another theatre a bit further away to see it, I said yes. It was a sci-fi film that, as the name suggests, focused on genetic engineering. The subject matter being what it was, I kinda felt they had had to cut a few corners and decided to avoid getting too 'deep' but it was no doubt about two dozen notches above The A-Team in terms of the quality of the film-making. I had already forgotten how much I like Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley.
The A-Team!
I decided to bike down to a local theatre to see Toy Story 3, but the plan didn't exactly pan out. It was the first time I have used the bike I got from Jon (thanks Jon btw!) and it's truly an awesome bike, gears, brakes, everything top notch. However, I underestimated how much time it'd take me to get used to it, figure out how to take out the tires etc, that I missed Toy Story. 'Well, that's OK, I'll just go see Prince of Persia then, it starts 15 minutes later,' I thought.
Umm, no. When I finally found my way to the theatre, I realized there was no place to park your bike. Honestly. Just a huge parking lot and that was it. No designated area for bikes, no nothing. So not wanting to take my chances with locking the bike on a traffic sign, I decided to go back home. Around half way there, I ran into Carole who told me it was totally fine to lock it on a traffic sign, so back again I go.
By now it was already too late for PoP, so I figured I'd go see The A-Team, a remake of the 'classic' TV-show. I expected it to be trash and trash it was. However, having never seen the TV-series (or maybe because of it?) it was somehow great to finally get to know what these characters, or dare I say pop culture icons, were like. Finns, imagine never seeing McGyver on TV and then going to watch a Hollywood movie adaptation of the series with a completely new cast and you might understand how I felt. The movie was brainless mayhem but I'd still say just hearing the legendary theme song in a movie theatre was worth the price of admission.
Later on back at home Chick was lamenting the fact that he had missed Splice, a Canadian film I hadn't heard anything about, and it was now pretty much the last chance to see the film. So when he asked if I wanted to go driving down to another theatre a bit further away to see it, I said yes. It was a sci-fi film that, as the name suggests, focused on genetic engineering. The subject matter being what it was, I kinda felt they had had to cut a few corners and decided to avoid getting too 'deep' but it was no doubt about two dozen notches above The A-Team in terms of the quality of the film-making. I had already forgotten how much I like Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley.
The A-Team!
maanantai 21. kesäkuuta 2010
I took a hike
I seem to excel at both forgetting to take my camera with me and forgetting to reload the battery when I do remember to take it with me. Today I went to Jean-Talon Market, which is a pretty big outside marketplace, but as I pulled out my camera and switched it on, it just went BEEP BEEP BEEP and switched itself off. So I just sighed and put the camera away.
Instead of pics of today's adventure, you get older pictures. A few days ago Carole had some business in Fairview, which is a rather large shopping area about three kilometres away from where I stay, so I decided to go with her and then walk back. Brunswick Boulevard goes all the way up there, so I could just backtrack on foot and get back here in about 30 minutes.
Somewhere along this road is the house I'm staying at. Anyway, so get up to Fairview and much to my surprise, there's hardly any traffic there at all:
Yep, no cars at all:
So I start to walk back and I'm kinda stuck at a crossing trying to figure out how to get across. No street lights, don't see any crosswalk stripes or anything, so I figure this probably counts as a crosswalk:
And apparently it does. Check out how narrow the sidewalks are btw:
A kid, some 12 years old maybe, walked past me around here and there was hardly enough room for the both of us. And the sidewalks elsewhere don't seem to be any wider either.
I suppose this is the magic button you're supposed to push or touch or something to get a green light when you want to cross a road, but after 2 minutes of flailing my hands around like an idiot I gave up. No beep, no lights flashing, no nothing, I bet I was the laughingstock of all the passing drivers. Then finally one of the two dozen lights at the crossing turned green, so I figured, hey, that's gotta be for me! Honestly though, I don't know, I probably jaywalked. Luckily enough they mostly have the regular 'push-me-and-the-lights-will-change' buttons here.
Another thing I found rather puzzling:
Fire hydrants everywhere! I swear to god, they have them like every 50 metres, it's like clockwork. I suppose folks walking here get so dehydrated in the heat that they need a place to drink every 30 seconds. Also worth noticing in the picture: trees! You'd think that's a forest over there, but I'm pretty sure it's actually just a piece of cloth with trees painted on it that they just pulled over a building or cars or something.
Speaking of buildings, I wandered off from Fairview and arrived to the residential area, and... well, you must understand that I use the term 'residential area' very loosely here. I mean I'm pretty sure I hit a time-warp and arrived in the middle ages because THIS IS WHERE KINGS AND QUEENS ARE SUPPOSED TO LIVE:
In the words of everyone on the interwebs: WAT? I mean seriously, both sides of the road were lined up with houses like this, and, I kid you not, this went on for ages.
"Here lives a person with too much money."
I don't know if it's just me, but I found this very funny:
Monsieur Propane, how awesome is that? See the little dude there in the logo? Cute. I wonder if they sell it to kids. I'd have played with Monsieur Propane.
I like this building a lot even though it's the headquarters of an evil contractor determined to wipe out the last remaining green areas in the island. Or was there a bank? Not sure. I like the building anyway. There are actually quite a lot of big business buildings with glass walls here. Maybe I like them only because you don't get them in Finland, but they do look nice in the sunshine, even better when the sun's going down.
Now, after all the castles and mansions, I arrived to a more human(e) part of town. The houses here are really nice, but not overkill. There are quite a bit of old trees everywhere and it doesn't look so fake and artificial like in the previous areas. Jon calls this place The Wasteland, but I kind of like it here. What's that, Chick? Oh I mean I love it here!
This is a bus stop. I plan to unravel its secrets later.
Instead of pics of today's adventure, you get older pictures. A few days ago Carole had some business in Fairview, which is a rather large shopping area about three kilometres away from where I stay, so I decided to go with her and then walk back. Brunswick Boulevard goes all the way up there, so I could just backtrack on foot and get back here in about 30 minutes.
Somewhere along this road is the house I'm staying at. Anyway, so get up to Fairview and much to my surprise, there's hardly any traffic there at all:
Yep, no cars at all:
So I start to walk back and I'm kinda stuck at a crossing trying to figure out how to get across. No street lights, don't see any crosswalk stripes or anything, so I figure this probably counts as a crosswalk:
And apparently it does. Check out how narrow the sidewalks are btw:
A kid, some 12 years old maybe, walked past me around here and there was hardly enough room for the both of us. And the sidewalks elsewhere don't seem to be any wider either.
I suppose this is the magic button you're supposed to push or touch or something to get a green light when you want to cross a road, but after 2 minutes of flailing my hands around like an idiot I gave up. No beep, no lights flashing, no nothing, I bet I was the laughingstock of all the passing drivers. Then finally one of the two dozen lights at the crossing turned green, so I figured, hey, that's gotta be for me! Honestly though, I don't know, I probably jaywalked. Luckily enough they mostly have the regular 'push-me-and-the-lights-will-change' buttons here.
Another thing I found rather puzzling:
Fire hydrants everywhere! I swear to god, they have them like every 50 metres, it's like clockwork. I suppose folks walking here get so dehydrated in the heat that they need a place to drink every 30 seconds. Also worth noticing in the picture: trees! You'd think that's a forest over there, but I'm pretty sure it's actually just a piece of cloth with trees painted on it that they just pulled over a building or cars or something.
Speaking of buildings, I wandered off from Fairview and arrived to the residential area, and... well, you must understand that I use the term 'residential area' very loosely here. I mean I'm pretty sure I hit a time-warp and arrived in the middle ages because THIS IS WHERE KINGS AND QUEENS ARE SUPPOSED TO LIVE:
In the words of everyone on the interwebs: WAT? I mean seriously, both sides of the road were lined up with houses like this, and, I kid you not, this went on for ages.
"Here lives a person with too much money."
I don't know if it's just me, but I found this very funny:
Monsieur Propane, how awesome is that? See the little dude there in the logo? Cute. I wonder if they sell it to kids. I'd have played with Monsieur Propane.
I like this building a lot even though it's the headquarters of an evil contractor determined to wipe out the last remaining green areas in the island. Or was there a bank? Not sure. I like the building anyway. There are actually quite a lot of big business buildings with glass walls here. Maybe I like them only because you don't get them in Finland, but they do look nice in the sunshine, even better when the sun's going down.
Now, after all the castles and mansions, I arrived to a more human(e) part of town. The houses here are really nice, but not overkill. There are quite a bit of old trees everywhere and it doesn't look so fake and artificial like in the previous areas. Jon calls this place The Wasteland, but I kind of like it here. What's that, Chick? Oh I mean I love it here!
This is a bus stop. I plan to unravel its secrets later.
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