Time is slipping away

With only a week and a couple of days before I leave Montreal for sunny climes of Vancouver, I am wracking my brains to make sure I have been to each and every place I can go in this great city.

So this afternoon I took a little trip down to where they held Expo '67 and the home of the Canadian GP- Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. For the circuit, there wasn't that much to see, just a layer of snow, but the architecture and pieces of work that littered the area were pretty interesting.

Plus the sun was just setting which glazed everything in a peaceful brilliance. Great pictures to be had! I'll be damned if I leave Montreal and then find out there is some amazing place that I need to go to!

More titbits of stuff I done (not to be mistaken for TimBits, the beautiful multipack of donuts from Tim Hortons)

Had a little goosey-gander at the Winter Festival yesterday. It helped to take up some of my time on my day off, it got me into clothes that weren't the ones I slept in, and got me breathing air that wasn't stagnant and smelly.

It was actually a recce to see if it would be worth Kate and I having a look down in Vieux-Montreal next week, and I am pleased I went! I got to cook my own 'saucisse' over an open log fire, and I have big ideas for next weekend's outing.

There was a massive ice-slide! I don't care if it was mostly seven-to-twelve-year-olds queuing up for the chance to race down the 150m shoot, next week I'll be there as excited as the rest of them! Not least because it will be two days before America too!!

Here's a picture:

Criminal record?

Paid my fine on Wednesday. And I won't pretend for one minute I'm happy about it. That's Empire State, Liberty Island, Boston Red Sox, White House, Niagara Falls, CN Tower money!

Commission, commission, commission!....errr, not that much yet actually

A week of taking calls as part of the new job, booking the cosmetic surgery consultations, was full of promise. The dollar signs were in my eyes as I added up how many millions of bucks I would be making from a billions of sales- I have the silky English accent, how could it go wrong?

Well, it turns out you still need to be good at sales to make sales, you can't just rely on regurgitating the script and wait for the money to roll in. By Wednesday I had picked up on some better sales patter, mainly by copying Ashley 'Sales Machine' Ma on the computer next to me! So I got some credit scores under my belt ($5), some post dates (potentially $15 each) and then got that elusive 'Full Down' booking today ($20, with all the money down TODAY)!

So there will hopefully be a semi-sizable cheque coming my way when the commissions are paid out. This will be needed to cover my expenses next weekend when we celebrate Allie's birthday, and my leaving!

There is a Winter festival this weekend and next in the Old Port, which will be good, honest, cheap fun! Up until then, the weekly highlights have been few and far between. Lots of book reading, giving poor advice, and fumbled attempts at sales. Although I did find someone (Tonii) who has the same birthday as me!!!!! I'll tell you the full excited story over dinner sometime.....(naaat).

A week in the life of...

This week resembled more of a normal week in the life of Graham Reid. For the most part, it consisted of catching the metro to work and back, and then to save my own sanity I made sure a spattering of fun was put in there.

I started training for my 'promotion' this week. So from being a lowly Customer Service Representative, I am now a consultation scheduler for cosmetic surgeons all over the United States.

It was a fun training- just a small group of five, and we had fun learning all the new software and about all the procedures we would be selling! Plus we managed to have plenty of unscheduled breaks thanks to set-up problems and the way the chips fell.

I was also lucky for prizes this week. Earlier in the week, I had won the work version of the gameshow Jeoperdy (questions about the job, obviously), which earnt me an extra break (on top of all the other extra breaks). Then on Thursday, I won the Valentine's day draw and won myself a cutlery set and $40 vouchers for a restaurant downtown! I was considering purchasing a lotto ticket, to see if this week of luck continues.

On Tuesday, the metro was so full, and it was going to take so long going back, that I decided to give myself an evening of entertainment. So I went to see Golden Compass at the IMAX cinema. It was cheap Tuesday, so I spent next to nothing, and the film was pretty good actually! There is a more complete review of my thoughts on http://grahamreid.blogspot.com/.

Then on Wednesday, I needed another break from the mundane, so Mark and I got ourselves out on the town for a few beers with the hockey on (this was after a few vodkas with lychee liquor at his apartment!). In the end it was a quiet affair but still good to get out of the house!

Lastly, I received a proper freelance journalist pay cheque this week for the first time in Canada! It was quite random really, but late on Thursday night I got an email from a bloke I had been talking to back in November, who wanted some copy editing and fast. It was a relatively easy task, and some easy money (which I desperately need!).

So here I am, Saturday morning(ish). I had got up early because I knew that Premiership football is on at 10am on Saturdays. But it's only the bloody FA cup weekend isn't it....

The BioDome and the Pancake Day from Hell!!

I haven't been too busy recently, but when I get visitors (a recurring one, from Mont Tremblant, actually) I have to make sure we can do something fun, even on the shoe-string budget we both have!

So this time when Kate came back to the city, we took as visit to the last touristy place that I think I needed to see- the old Olympic stadium complex and BioDome. The Olympic stadium wasn't much to look at to be honest, just a garish 1970s architectural masterpiece, with an observation tower that wasn't much higher than the third-story apartment I live in.



The BioDome was fun, though. It was cheap, just $13, and we got plenty of good times out of it! There were four different climates, in four different rooms. In the first room, there was a rainforest awash with parrots, monkeys, crocodiles, fish and lush greenery. The small monkeys dangled down from the branches just above our heads, and some of the exotic birds invaded our walkway!

Room two took us into the forests of Northern Canada, where the Otters were the stars of the show. They glided through the water with brilliant grace, and then curled up in their hole and were like 'ikkle cuddly kittens!

Room three was a water one, which we soon got through because there were seagulls circling over our heads, and they looked like they were pretty full and might need to offload something pretty soon! So we moved onto room four in the Arctic where the penguins were brilliant! There was one which had gone mental because of the captivity we think, but once it stopped whacking its head on the glass it got to swimming and was awesome!



So we had a very busy afternoon! Back home in the house, Kate and I inspected the melted lino in the kitchen, which I had actually created the day before. Shrove Tuesday meant pancakes, and Kate bought all the ingredients in.....our mix was PERFECT, I promise! I blame the pan, but the mix just stuck to the hot surface and became a gooey pile. It still tasted good, but I am the only one that can vouch for that now.

So when I went to flip the gooey pile, the handle of the pan decided to make a break for freedom, and the pan when flying! After getting over the initial shock of the pan breaking, the secondary shock was that the blistering hot metal frying pan had stuck itself to the linoium floor!


Needless to say, I had some apologising to do when the others got back. Is that the thanks I get for trying to be a whizz in the kitchen? I'll stick to my beans and cheese on toast from now on.