Category — Daily Musings

At least if you are a Pearl Jam fan!

Checkout the latest Radio 3 podcast:

http://www.cbc.ca/radio3/podcasts/radio3/CBCR3_2008-10-24.mp3

If you don’t feel like listening to the whole thing skip ahead to about 12 minutes in!

My parents told me to checkout a group of Canadian Geese who were hanging around the golf course. It appears a white goose made some friends with some Canadian Geese and is now living with them. It was really cute seeing them together. I wonder if the white goose knew he was different?

Here are a couple photos of them:

I also made one that works pretty well as a desktop background:

Yesterday I went for a hike with my brother up in Garibaldi Park (inbetween Squamish and Whistler). We got up around 6am, and made it to the parking lot by 8am. Pretty good for having been up the night before at our year end hockey keg party.

It took us roughly 2 hours to get from the parking lot up to Taylor meadows. There was quite a few people up there camping, definitely a nice spot to setup a tent. Anyway we carried on with our hike to the top of the Black Tusk. It probably took us another 2.5 hours to get to the top of it. The very last section, getting up to the very top of the tusk is a bit sketchy as you have to climb up an almost vertical chimney. However after the initial section of it, it really wasn’t so bad. After having lunch from atop to tusk we made our way back down the mountain. We completed our circle by then going down to Garibaldi Lake on our way to the parking lot. Rob went for a quick swim in the glacier lake. I would have too, unfortunately I had no change of clothes. Anyway I doused myself in water instead.

All in all it was a fantastic 11.5 hours of hiking up with my brother. Definitely worth going back to.

Here are a few photos from the hike:

Panorama of the view from atop the Black Tusk:

Rob and me on top of the Tusk:

Me nearly at the top of the Tusk:

So last Saturday I went for a hike up Mount Hilda with my brother Rob, Helmut (a friend of the family) and 2 young Bavarian friends of Helmut’s. Mount Hilda is just behind Fauquier in the Valkyr Mountain range. Here are a few photos from the hike.

Start of the hike, going up the old logging road, before heading up through the cut block and into the alpine:

When we got to the end of the cut block we continued up through the woods, and followed a stream all the way up into the alpine.

Indian paintbrush halfway up to the peak of Hilda:

Me right after I reached the peak of Mount Hilda:

The amazing view from the top:

As if you haven’t had enough of this song, check out the Sesame Street version:

This has been something that has bugged me since I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04. I found the solution here.

After about 4 years of the same theme for my blog I have finally gotten around to updating the look and feel around here. I used the fantastic theme called neoclassical mainly because it was somewhat similar to my previous design, as well featured a very nice typography as well as a clean css tableless layout. Maybe the new design will inspire me to blog more.

During my time recently in Montreal I had a goal to find the best poutine in the city. I had grand ambitions, and thought it would be a simple task. What I found however was:

1) There were far more places that served poutine than I had imagined
2) Everyone seems to have their own favorite place
3) Poutine is best had with a nice cold pint of beer

With that in mind I still went out and tried 3 places. One place was a Montreal chain restaurant, while the other two places were staple poutine shops that had been around for years.

Frite Alors

This chain restaurant can be found all over Montreal. I checked it out with Tatiana and Kelly. I had the beef, mushroom and onion poutine. Overall it was ok, what I would expect from a chain. Not bad, not great.

La Banquise

Known as the ultra hipster joint in Montreal, this place has been around for a while, recently celebrating their 40th anniversary. I took their recommendation and had the bacon, onion and green pepper poutine. To be honest I had high hopes for this place, but unfortunately they didn’t deliver. I found their poutine mildly better than Frite Alors, with some really sub par fries. I think they could do with a change of their deep fry oil, and a lesson in making good fries.

Maamm Bolduc

Our final stop of our poutine tour took us to Maamm Bolduc. This bohemian place has a very extensive menu that makes it look like it would a fantastic place to have breakfast. However they do have at the back of the menu a good list of poutine. We decided to go with the ground steak with onions and mushrooms in a red wine sauce. Let me just say we saved the best for last. Not only was the meat sauce absolutely delicious, the fries were also cooked to perfection, and clean and fresh, unlike those from La Banquise. Next time I am in Montreal I will be sure to be back at Maamm Bolduc.

Conclusion

Montreal has a lot of poutine places, and I am sure I only just scratched the surface. However I think I did get to experience one of their better places in Maamm Bolduc. I would have tried more after that, however my brother had had enough at that point. So for now, Maamm Bolduc takes the price, until next time I am in Montreal I suppose.

Jason, Lester and Stefan enter Flanagan’s Pub looking for breakfast.

Stefan: “Do you serve breakfast here?”

Bartender: “This is a bar with a kitchen.”

Stefan: “So uh do you serve breakfast?”

Bartender: “I said this is a bar with a kitchen. So what’ll ya have to drink?”

Stefan: “So you serve like a proper breakfast then?”

Bartender: “You guys look real confused, why don’t you sit down.”

Jason Lester and Stefan consult each other “Does this place server breakfast???”

They sit down. Bartender hands them each a menu.

Bartender: “So what are you drinking?”

Stefan: “Do you have lemonade?”

Bartender: “No, this is a bar.”

Jason: “Can I have a hot chocolate please.”

Bartender rolls his eyes.

Bartender: “Maybe you don’t understand, but this here is a bar with a kitchen. How about a high life.”

Jason: “Alright that is fine.”

Stefan: “Can I get a Corona?”

Lester: “Yeah I will have one of those too.”

End Story. Picture of awesome bartender to follow.

He later goes on to ask if we are stoned because of how confused we look. We ask him where to get good Cajun food, he almost throws us out of the bar. “Guys, this is New Orleans, we were founded by Europeans, we eat Creole food here. Cajun is about 200 miles West in Lafayette. If you see any restaurant here ‘claiming’ to have a Cajun kitchen don’t go there.”

Anyway great bartender who inadvertently started us on a chain of events that found us eating some really amazing Creole food, and catching some fantastic Jazz.

Fantastic new song from the Islands new album. I am loving this song, have listened to it too many times already.

http://radio3.cbc.ca/play/band/Islands/The-Arm/

What happens when these ponds accidentally leak into our drinking water?

http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=1f6b1f26-f2d3-4c76-85b7-ade44fd699ce&k=29815

Just watched Harold and Maude, good movie. First thing to come to mind when watching this film is how similar Paul Dano played his character in There Will Be Blood, to Bud Cort in Harold and Maude. If I only heard the audio of the movie I would have sworn it was Paul Dano. Granted I doubt Dano was born when Harold and Maude was made.

Today I had a bit of a lazy Sunday, and decided to write a simple facebook application. Basically it displays your last.fm events in your profile. So if you have a last.fm account, I would appreciate it if you tried out the application and could give me some feedback on whether you like it or not. Anyway you can add the application by going to:

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=11182832263

Also I need at least 5 people to add this application or else I cannot submit it to facebook to be showcased.

Last summer a bear was in a plum tree at the neighbors of my parents. The neighbors tried to get him to go away by spraying him in the face with water, but he wouldn’t budge. Another neighbor had to fire a gun in the air a few times to finally get the bear to leave. Anyway checkout this little video my dad made:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdRk7sBLKuA

So I got a little bored this afternoon, and well a little frustrated with the fact the Arrow Lakes News (read: news from the small valley where I grew up) did not have an RSS feed. Well since I consider myself to be somewhat of a master screen scraper these days (just wait for the launch of Get Out Of This City!), I decided I would invest the 20 minutes and write a feed for them. So here they are broken up into the different section of the paper:

Arrow Lakes News – News RSS Feed

Arrow Lakes News – Sports RSS Feed

Arrow Lakes News – Community RSS Feed

Arrow Lakes News – Opinion RSS Feed