The Road Warrior

Late in September we were lucky enough to tag along with my cousin Jen, and her husband Josh on pilgrimage from Ottawa to Niagara Falls. An auntie had warned me that it was too much driving for one weekend; she overlooked one fact. Jen is genetically one quarter road warrior.

We pretty much sleep-walked to the car early Friday morning and woke up ready for an early lunch in Toronto. In Toronto we went to the top of the world's second tallest free-standing structure:





On from Toronto we headed down to Grimsby and Niagara. When I went to the falls 10 years ago, I remember it being nice; this time around we went at night time which accentuated the change that has happened in the town. It is like Canada's Vegas. The falls glow in the dark with the neon reflections of casinos:



We hit the casino and I walked away 50 cents. As a bit of oneupmanship Josh pocketed close to $300, but that was cool, I knew he was just showing off.

We got to enjoy some wineries the next day:

But we must be getting old as we bought more wine than we tested. At the end of all of this Jen drove us all the way back to Montreal via Ottawa again to catch up with Dad's side of the family (watch this space for a photo).

Lunchables

Poutine:


Poutine: chips with gravy and cheese curds!!

Smoked meat sandwich:

Smoked meat sandwich is self-explanatory. What the photo doesn't show is that they cram a whole cow into each sandwich and it is the most succulent and juicy meat you'll ever eat. You know those mythical cows you hear about that are only fed beer and spend their days being massaged by virgins? I heard that's the kind of cow they use. Only they feed it smoke.

Montreal is famous for its smoked meat -- the most famous place to get it is Schwartz's, where they use the same smoker they used back in the 20s. There's always a queue outside and once you're in they try to get you out as soon as possible. Apparently this is all part of it's charm.

Innherently lazy noise filters

I've been working my new job for about a month now and it turns out "prospecting" is just a synonym for telemarketing. This is not all bad news though. The company I work for is young and small, as far as companies go, and everyone seems to be under 30. This makes for a nice environment, even if the work is not Christmas.

My job concists of tracking down phone numbers of people who have ugly or old websites, working out who is in charge of the website, calling them, convincing them try a demo of our cheaper better system (I make my job easier by only calling people if I genuinly think we can makes their lives better). So I don't actually sell anything myself per se.

It is amazing how hard it is to give away free websites.

As you can probably guess, people are numb to strangers on the phone. To them, I am the equivalent of a billboard on the side of the road that they glance at and quickly ignore, except I'm talking to them, so they have to work out how to hang up on me as quickly as possible. This is exactly why humans do so well; we are noise filtering machines, we don't have energy to pay attention to everything. Most stuff we run into is irrelevant to us. Also, most of us are inherently lazy, and subconsciously run on the knowledge that avoiding new things seldom leads to trouble. I counter these obstacles by cunningly only asking "how" questions (you can't give a one word answer to a "how" question). Also, I find out there name, and use it a lot like we're old friends. Also I get their email address before I propose anything. My boss says "you'd only give your email to someone if they were your friend". Once we have established the friendship, I let them know I'm going to do a favour in the form of setting up a free website for them. I make 6 friends each day, who I never speak to again.

It turns out people from the auto industry are generally the friendliest to talk to. People who own pet stores are generally the rudest and the most hostile to "them internets".

It has taken me about 3 weeks to stop taking no for an answer. I was so timid and took everything so personally at the start, but lately it feels more like a game.

Squirrel-fish fishin'

Hook, line and sinker? More like peanut, shoelace and awesome.

ZOMG new apartment!

The first week in our new apartment has been great. We had previously spent the longest 2 weeks of our lives living in le ghetto, in a Mexican family’s basement. We never really met Jose, our "landlord", but he reassuringly let us know he was home by stomping around his house from 3-5am every morning. The place was in the suburbs of the suburbs, and it took an hour to get to town. We didn’t take any photos there but here’s an artist’s impression:
















Now we’re in our real apartment and it’s pretty sweet. Mostly because of the amazing view of Montreal from our balcony. We’re on the 25th floor of a huge apartment building beside Parc Lafontaine:

























From the outside, the apartment building is not much to blog home about, in fact it's pretty ugly:
















But it has a gym:

and a swimming pool:

and saunas:


Parc La Fontaine is one of the nicest places in town. In winter the lake freezes over and people go ice skating. We can watch tennis, football and baseball games from our balcony, and go squirrel-fish fishing (you'll see).

We are good. Matt is still prospecting. I got a similar job but it turned out it would take at least a month and a half to process my work permit. So now I'm going to have to find a job where a work permit is not essential.

Montreal is a wicked city, there's always some festival or something exciting or weird going on. Our current hobby is going to watch our 10-year-old friend, Thomas, fight in medieval battles in a park alongside a horde of hippy drummers and tightrope walkers.