No music

I miss my harmon cardon sound sticks. They used to be hooked on my computer in canada and delivered the most amazing sound ever. And it could be loud. REALLY LOUD. And with the bass and everything....

The whole installation was too big for me to travel to Australia, so my sister has borrowed them until I have room in my luggage to bring them back.

Now, I am stuck with my powerbook speakers. They are nothing like the harmon cardons....I have trouble listening to my music like this...
Hope you are enjoying them, Steph, cause I miss them heaps.

Mon autre gros morceau.

Oh oui!!!
Mercredi matin, Allen s'en va me la chercher. Ma première voiture à moi. Yéééé!!!
Ok, c'est pas une ferrari, mais c'est la mienne. Une Saab. 1991, deux portes, hatchback, toute équipée, grise foncé. Manuelle. Pas beaucoup de Km dessus, en super belle condition.

On a eu le deal du siècle.
J'ai hâte. Parce que à pied, c'est long en titi se rendre au travail...

Avec un peu de chance...

L'été sera enfin terminé.

Il faisait 21 hier. Ahh. Frais, venteux, pluvieux. Que ça fait du bien, pis pas juste aux plantes. Ça me fait du bien à moi aussi. Je sais, ô Montréalais que vous êtes (pour la plupart...) vous, ne faisez qu'attendre ça, l'été. Même le printemps, ça ferait pas de mal, non?

Mais ici, quand le peak de la semaine c'est 29 degrés, on respire mieux.

On espère juste que ce n'est pas passager, qu'on ne verra plus les journées de plus de 30 degrés avant le printemps prochain. Et le printemps prochain, devinez qui aura enfin l'air climatisé??? Oh oui. Notre nouvelle maison est bien équipée...

Y-a-t-il encore de la neige à Montréal?

You win some, you lose some.

This week has been quite stressful, hectic and emotional.

We got the house. Allen and I purchased our first home.
I am so happy. It's a bit far from the city, but it's cute as a button and exacly what we were looking for. Not too big, but still 3 bedrooms, a nice little back yard with a lock up shed and even a veggie patch built in!! And a compost. And a rainwater tank. Two parking places in an electronic door garage, and a nice big kitchen, and a BATH!!! Oh yeah. I have missed my bathes so much these past few years, I will be soaking big time once winter finally arrives... So the settlement is in a few weeks, so we have to start packing soon. I am a bit sad to leave the house we are in, it's pretty cool and unusual and most importantly, in the city. I will miss living in the city. I've always been so close to it. All my life. So now, I definitely need a car to get around.

Yeah. Cause believe it or not, my bike got stolen tonight. It was pouring rain and I had to ride it to work anyway, because it is my only mode of transportation except my two legs. So not only did I arrived completely soaked at work, but on my way out after an absolutely exhausting night, my bike was gone. They didn't even leave the lock.

The thing is, it was not a nice bike at all. It was a bit of a piece of shit, to tell yout he truth. It was a bad purple color and it was rusty and made a really annoying high pitch squeek when you rode it. So I am thinking some guy just thought that he would get less wet if he was riding a crappy bike than if he continued walking.

So there. This week, got a house, lost a bike.
Although I am really annoyed that I lost my only mode of transport to go to work, I still think I got the better end of the deal.

Vive Stéphane Laporte

Je ne me souviens plus comment je suis arrivée là, mais j'ai découvert le Blog de Stéphane Laporte. J'aimais tant le lire dans La Presse quand j'habitais à Montréal. Eh que c'est bien, l'internet, non?

Monsieur Laporte est maintenant une de mes fenêtres favorites sur le Québec. Moi, j'ai de la difficulté à aller sur les sites d'info et lire des articles sur la politique et l'état économique du Québec. Je ne suis plus dans la vague, je ne reconnais pas beaucoup de noms, alors, je me fatigue vite. Mais en lisant Stéphane, non seulement je me bidonne (parce que vraiment, son humour m'a beaucoup manqué dernièrement) mais en même temps, ça me tient un peu au courant des choses qui se passent à Montréal.

Et j'aime ça, lire en français. Mon papa m'a apporté beaucoup de livres bien québécois lors de sa visite, comme le dernier Michel Tremblay et la collection complète des comptes de Fred Pellerin. Ça fait du bien.

Grâce à Monsieur Laporte, j'ai un petit bout le fun a lire tous les jours. Yé!
Son dernier post, en particulier, j'ai bien aimé...

http://www.cyberpresse.ca/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=CPBLOGUES08

The big one.

People say that your first house is the most stressful and important thing you will ever purchase. Boy, were they right. It's not only finding the house that is difficult, but it's all the gibberish of percentages and insurances and conveyors and brokers and interest rates and variables and stuff like that that makes everything like a big blurr with a huge price tag.

Every first home owner will tell you, they thought they just signed their life off when they put their autograph on the final contract. It's so stressful, you wonder if you are going to make it financially, but more so, you wonder if you will ever have the means to own a house AND have a life at the same time.
But of course, most of them do just fine. They find ways to pull through, and still have a hint of their previous life (aka, life before a mortgage). But right now, I understand their first reaction. I feel this is the hugest step ever and I am quite scared, to tell you the truth. It's terrifying.

We sat down with our lovely mortgage broker today for 3 hours. We made an offer on a house yesterday, and we needed to fill out about a ton a half of paperwork to get the ball rolling if our offer is accepted.

We should know by tonight if we offered enough to actually get the cute little brick maisonnette. I love it, but trying not to get attached to it. If we don't get it, there will be others. And all the paperwork will be done for our next try.

I have to say I feel very young to buy a house. No one in my age group in Canada is even thinking about aquiring property. But here, we are almost late to do so. Pretty much all the couples we know have owned their first house for at least a year. So it was time for us.

I suddenly feel like such a grown up.

When you hate waking up

I woke up this morning in a panic. It was 9h30 and I was going to be late for the airport. Yeah. Not really. I had just dreamt that Vanou's flights back from Manilla were like this: Manilla to Sydney, Sydney to Vancouver, Vancouver to Montréal, and that she had convinced her boss to get a few days off and come to Adelaide, cause really, it was too stupid to pass through Sydney and not take that one hour and a half flight to come and see me.

She had emailed me to tell me everything, and we spoke on msn to organise everything. I had arranged to borrow my friend's car to go and pick her up. It was all so real.

So when I woke up and I realized it was all a very deceiving dream, it sucked.
Sucks even more when I don't know when I'll see my bestie again.

When everything seems to suck.

So we didn't get the beetle. We were all ready to go see it, and just as we were leaving the house, my friend called me up telling me he had changed his mind and wasn't selling it anymore. Yeah. That sucks. I can understand why he wouldn't want to let it go, but I was really hagning to get it. And I tried looking for another one online and in the papers, and they are all too expensive for me to buy.
So that's one dream crushed.

Oh, and the house won't work out either. There was a million and a half people at the open house. But that's not the problem. The problem happens when you see guys in Armani suits asking the agent how much they could lease the house for. That's when you know there is no way you will get the place. Those guys are investors who are impossible to outbid because they are absolutely loaded with cash. And it's not the first time this happens to us. I have the feeling that anything relatively decent and in our price range will be taken from us by one of those Armani-Hugo-Boss-investor-guys. Call me negative, but I am just being realisitic. Nowadays, trying to get into the property market when you are not swimming in cash is harder than you can imagine.
And the longer you wait, the harder it will be. I am trying to stay positive, but with every property we lose, I am also losing hope, a little bit, to tell you the truth.
So when everything seems to suck and you feel like shit, what do you do?

1- Go for a long walk. Check.
2- Do some retail therapy. (cheap retail therapy for me right now, check.)
3- Have a drink. Check.
4- Get a new haircut, almost check. I am giving myself a colour and a cut tonight.

Before and after shots to come....

15 1/2 hours

This is one of those times when I really wish I could call Canada but I can't because it's about 2am in Montréal.....

I am excited. Lots of things are happening.
Tomorrow might be a big, important day for Allen and me.

I might be buying an 1971 Volkwagen Beetle. My friend is selling the one he took me to my wedding with. He's selling it for peanuts because he bought another bigger car cause he and his wife are having a baby next month.

It's in great condition, and Allen's dad is coming with us to check it out tomorrow. You guys have no idea how long I have wanted an old Beetle. They are impossible to find in Montréal, or if you do, you'll really over pay for them. Here, there are many on the road still, cause the dry weather is much easier on them than our winters and snow and chemicals to melt the ice and stuff.

So that's one thing.

The second one is that Allen and I are visiting what might potentially be our first home. There is a semi-détaché in Magill, a really nice suburb in the east of the city that would be in our price range, and I have to admit, I have fallen in love with it while watching the pictures. It doesn't look huge, but we have always lived in pretty quaint places. It has two bedrooms, air conditionning, a nice open kitchen, cathedral high ceilings, big windows, lots of light, hard wood floors and a nice big bath. Seems perfect. Close to the city and a really nice commercial street called the Parade. I am really excited about it, and I am a bit afraid I will get my hopes up and then get either disappointed when I see it, or devestated if we make an offer and don't get it.

Man, I need to talk to my mom!! But she is sound asleep.....

J'en reviens pas.

Aujourd'hui était la dernière journée de tournage pour un commercial. Je travaillais pour un monsieur que je n'avais jamais rencontré, mais de qui j'avais longuement entendu parler. Il est dans le métier depuis 40 ans. Il a enseigné ou 'entraîné' les plus grands focus puller de la province. Nous avons tourné avec son équipement, dont une caméra 35mm tellement vieille que j'avais pas réussi à trouver un manuel d'instruction sur internet. Mais une belle caméra qui fonctionne parfaitement depuis plus de 30 ans.

Mais bon. Ce n'est pas tout cela qui m'a le plus étonné de ce tournage. Hier, j'ai appris que c'était la première fois que ce monsieur travaillait avec une femme assistante caméra. La première fois! Et ça fait 40 ans qu'il travaille dans ce domaine?!?!Vous imaginez?? Je ne vous raconte pas comment il était surpris de me voir me promener avec la grosse caméra pesante dans les bras. Ou deux caisses d'équipement en même temps. 'Wow, t'es pas mal forte pour une fille!' Pas mal forte pour une fille? Hum. Je ne savais pas si je devais prendre cette remarque de sa part comme un compliment...

Mais la première femme en 40 ans, vraiment, c'est incroyable.
C'est pour dire comment on est si peu à exercer ce métier.

The best week ever

Maman and Papa visited last week.
They left exactly 8 days after their arrival. But it was pretty good, considering that Papa est à l'école et que Maman travaille tout le temps...I cannot begin to tell you how happy I was to see them.

I had the best time ever. I hope they did too. We did lots of stuff, went to the zoo (they patted a kangaroo) went down to the McLaren Vale wineries, a few beaches, a few pubs, and a few shops downtown. Went out to a few nice restaurants and ate lots and drank lots.

But I think the best part for me was just having them in my house. To cook dinner and sit at our dinner table. To hear them talk. Yeah. In the morning, just hearing them talk and stuff in the backround, that was my favorite part. We had fun as you can see on this picture I took of them one evening on Christies Beach. There was a nice breeze and suddenly their hair went up and they just started laughing. So I clicked. Mom, don't worry about how your hair looks, just look at how happy you two look together.


I might just frame that one.
I miss them already.

So who's going to be our next guest?