Sacred truth

Almighty church! On Christmas eve we went to the church for the midnight celebration... My first time in such a thing, with maybe 2000 people crowded to hear the blessing from the priest and his message "god is close to you on this holy day, and he says 'I love you'", and hear the message from the church, "love!". Aah what a beautiful momentum, and then he started handing over some pieces of Jesus' body for people to eat, what a lovely thing isn't it?

But how come so many people go there? How come the Church has been so powerful for over 2000 years? How come people all accepted to follow blindly this madness? Even more peculiar, why this need of suffering, perpetual suffering? What's wrong with being happy and experiencing pleasant things? The Martyrs... what a madness! They were all mad like Mr Savage in Huxley's Brave New World! Who was this genius who manage to turn Jesus' love message in hate and fear and hell? Why so much fear? Fear of the after life, fear of the unknown, fear of eternity! It's always about fear. I really can't understand how it could have been possible. 2000 years. And it ain't finished yet! Far from that. Mad Christians are all over the Americas and Africa, Muslims a bit everywhere...

And that's what I have for lunch today. No wonder why people go religious...

Political Chrismass Tree

It's chrismass! Maybe some hadn't realized, but yes it is really chrismass! People are shopping like mad, trying to end the recession maybe, or just trying to forget about it and about all other nasty things happening nowadays, such as the melting terrific artic and everything...
So I added my own touch. My sister and my mum are here with me in Montreal, and it's the first time in four years that we spend chrismass together, so I thought a chrismass tree would be quite suitable. And so we had to decorate it, and I thought that a Tibet flag and a horse from Costa Rica were absolutely unavoidable. And they were, good god!
So here we are, ready to be chrismass all the way!

hurra!

A Heap of Pictures

That's it! IT is decided, approved, motion passed, forward, everywhere, massive, and cool. Since I got my D70 I am of course taking pictures, too much pictures, at least too much to put them here among this Enigmatic Worthlessness. Thus I decided to create another blog, Picturesque Reality, where I can display the result of me having fun with my camera.
So may the obliteration of all sense go on, and let worthlessness be enigmatic, and might makes right, and party in the garden of heaven.

Furthermore, today is a new day for me, for the Hyatt Hotel Montréal choose to employ me as barback, which is great because I desperately need money to buy a tripod, a winter trip to mexico, my carbon offset, my trip to China next summer, and another carbon offset, and so on. Hence I am happy. But first of all I need a bowtie!

Satan Gave me a Taco

Taco Art is not enough recognized around the world I believe; therefore, Today I say, or rather I shall say, that, by all means, and notwithstanding the above, but in any cases, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can promote the Taco comunity. Beck already wrote a song "Satan gave me a Taco". So I am not going to write a song, but I witness witnessess all under heaven, and everywhere, and I shall take action upon my word, delicious word from the mind, but for god's sake, don'T call me a taco! Taco be it.
And here it comes, wraped in its infinite virtue, in a shallow morning, outstreched by dusk, the mighty dusk, and here it goes.

Sutton? Who cares...

Arrêt.

Oh putain de con y gèle!


People are crazy, or is, whether you like it or not. But as one is hunting the moose, the bears dance tropical carioca and spurs oceans of light and snow, all of this mixed by mixed feeling of undecisive kindness and moose hunters and irrational enlightened rationality. But where are we? I am nowhere to be seen, not that I can see neither, but frack! I don't care. But the guy was nice.

Finger Better

Finally things are better; at least for me... My friend just lost his small finger, thingee. The end of the night was so abrupt that I had to look on to Grey's anatomy to get some knowledge about the subject...

Struggle of the infinite Wisdom

The Scrible Tree.
Clockwise Geometry.

I finally got the Nikon D70 from my father!!! Amazing, great, picturesque, unimaginable, incroyable, and above all : cool!
I really missed shooting during this month without my good old SLR, and now that I have a digital one... it is just great. How can people live without camera...

So last week end Sabrina and me joined my father and his girlfriend to a small trip to Sutton to my uncle's house, which is really beautiful by the way. So I could try out my new gift in sunny outdoor conditions, on a sunny Sunday, in sunny Sutton. I shall upload my pictures when my computer will decide to be a bit faster, because I feel some hints of unwillingness from its part right now, I have to say.

May the leaf be the cathedral.

Stuck in Fall

Yes I moved again, fully conscious of the spronklishmint that could follow. But it is nice. There is picture of the view from the living room, with the Mont Royal in the background, and the night stretching its dirty arms toward us all. And my camera is in reparation so I am deprived of one of my favorite sport: taking pictures. So I stole Sabrina's new D80 to picturyks the sky when I came back from class (boring by the way). And fall goes on, as winter gets closer by the day, and that's it, because voilà.
But at least Obama won.

Chinese Funeral Ceremony

Yesterday I found this small video that I had taken during my bicycle trip in Shanxi province, China. So I put it here because I think the music is very cool, even though it was a very sad moment for others. It's also interesting to see the different habits for funeral ceremony.
For example the previous night night fireworks had been blowing up everywhere in the town, right in the middle of the streets... So I first thought that it was for a party of something the like, but no. It was the friend and brothers of the former who were making noise so everyone would be aware of what had happened. Yet it seems that people take death differently in the Chinese countryside, since poor working condition (specially with coal handling) make it happen quite more often that what we are used to.

Yellow Bicycle!

Yesterday I went mad again. My tire exploded while I was going through McGill University, and I then had to spend my whole Friday night at the Concordia Uni bike coop to get the stuff fixed. So as I was saying (or more accurately writing) I went mad at the damn bike and almost went to a bike shop ready to spend 500$ on a new 2 wheels machine. But then I though that 5and 00$ might be a lot of money, so I bought paint instead, along with a new hippo bell and handlebar band. And I painted. And now my bike is the most beautiful thing in the world, after my girlfriend and I, of course. And my new apartment to which I'm moving the 1st of November.
Yeah, that's how fascinating is my life nowadays. School work and yellow colour. Amazingly fascinating would be more appropriate as a matter of fact. Or factual matter, which combined with anti-matter and robust hippos can be very nice.
Cshniliaksnoopounsk.


Yes I painted the balcony floor. But it''s ok, because my bicycle is so beautiful anyways...

Fall is Falling into the wise wisdom of darkness...

Last week end my girlfriend and I went on a bicycle stroll qround Montréal, trying to fight a bit the depression of mid-terms and nasty autumn. So we followed the bike paths of Le Plateau, equiped with our respective camera, ready to take pictures of everything pretending to be photographs. But I saw quite a lot of people doing the same so at least we are not the only one. Then I realized that every films is kind of blurred, and the pictures have a strange grain on them... sad, terrible, and agnostic.

Indeed, we biked! Beyond dead leaves and crooked sidewalks, we biked. What an amazing experience! The way pedals go round and round will always fascinate me. Yet for the conservative mind who may soon loose an election, things don't go that round! Ha.

So, appart my metaphoric experiences, I also took useless pictures. Above is the Boulangerie Mr Pinchot, where the masses gather on dirty evenings of afternoons. The kind suddenness of things rencently over-spured me in such a fashion that I nearly lost my senses, but in fact no. The Bell of the Lilliput is ringing, and we all know what it means.

ciao.



The Laurier/St Laurent firemen station !!!

Back to Beijing! In dreams only...

Factory 798 in Beijing. A huge, enormous and gigantic complex of old factories not in use anymore were artists have settled themselves. Cafes, art galleries, relax ambiance... A very nice and interesting place. Instead, I am now sitting in my kitchen, it is raining outside, grey, so autumnish... And I have tons of homework to do... What a depressing thought.

But I have to say it is also nice to be back. For instance I am still coughing from the pollution in Beijing, that can easily be observed by the greyness of my pictures... On the one bellow, right behind the workers, it is already possible to observe the ambient midst, even if this was maybe 15 meters away from me when I took the picture. Indeed these pictures are from end of June 2008, when the pollution had reached its peak right before all cars and factories were turned off for the Olympics.

Lunch break for the workers who arr renovating Sanlitum street, end of June 2008. A month later it was crowded with drunk tourists all nights of the week...



Be careful the safe!


7:00 a.m in a Hutong, the dumplings are smoking outside every little restaurants...




Dazhalan street where our hostel was. The pollution was not as bad as in the picture with the workers.


Factory 798.





People always have birds in cages everywhere...




Wall painting in factory 798.

Welcome to Fall

So it is now Fall. I am done with travelling for a while... at least untill chrismass. Semester all started from the starting blocks, and there is a lot to do. But after 4 months being here and there, it's good to be back home. Last night Sabrina and me went to a school funded party with free beer at the key. Pretty nice. I never got drunk for that cheap.

Also since Sabrina bought herself a new digital SLR, big and expenseive, I decided to use my own camera and finish the film that was on since Beijing... So I went out with my bike and pretended to be a photograph for a while. I felt good.

What else? Today I went to get my pictures and so I saw some pictures of Beijing... Makes me want to go back! I thus feel good about taking a 6 credits course of Chinese right now, even if I'm already late. I definitely want to go back as soon as possible and travel again in this Empire now that I can speak some Chinese... It's such a different experience! And there is so much to learn from these people, since they are so different! Anyways, our little dinner at Chinatown yesterday was nice enough.

Maisonneuve street, looking toward downtown.


Loyola's main building, were we had our pizza lunch without pizza...


Some mad statue, sun bathing tranquillo..

A La Playa

Yesterday Tristan, Carlotta and me went to the beach. But we set up our mind quite late, so we had to take the night train... going from Beijing at 12 p.m and arriving in Shanhaiguan at 3:30 a.m... So it was slightly tiring, but we managed. Arriving at Shanhaiguan we decided to rest a bit in a gloomy restaurant... but after having a fight with a fat rat to go to the toilet we took of to the beach. And to our surprise there was lots of people in the water, even in the middle of the night, who where fishing crabs. So we watched the sun rise over the Great Wall, which has its foot in the water. And we spend the whole day at the beach, swimming and evensuntanning.

Yet as the day rose we realized that the mist wasn't mist but pollution, for we couldn't further that 200m. At least the factories were out of sight... But the water was reasonably clean, and it was extremely nice to get out of Beijing and swim...
However on the way back we forgot to ask how long was the train ride, and it took 6 hours instead of 3 because the damn train was stopping in every train station possible, and it also took a rather long detour by Tianjin. So we got back in Beijing at 11h30p.m, or 24h after hours after going to the beach, without sleeping. Tiring, but nice.




The nice beach... in the background a gigantic harbor building is hidden by the haze, as well as a couple of factory pipes..


People fishing crabs at 4 a.m.


Sunrise on the beach...

On the way back: people playing strange game where they stick toilet paper to their face when they lose, and Tristan sleeping on the comfy hard sits...

Let's get high

Today I went to the hospital for a bad cough probably due to sweet pollution and ice cold air conditioned in our classroom. And I got an incredible amount of drugs both traditional Chinese and western style. The red stuff is Dragon's Blood, and all the other I have no idea, but it's all good. Very Nice! Must be fun to study Chinese medicine...

Beijing...

The Forbidden City Entrance...

This week end I went sight seeing (again) some Beijing places, in order to get out of BLCU for a stroll... So Tristan and I went to some Hutong and to the Tian'anmen square. Wowowewaw. We got lots of Chinese taking picture of us, of course, and a good bath in the crowds hanging around.

Some military trying to walk with the army pace, but they usually aren't so successful...

Washing the Tian'anmen square by hand...

Some nice communist train driving by Wudakou, the happening street near by our university.

Yeah. An amazing day. This morning I went for an excursion in the Hospital next to the campus, for my shoulder hurts beyond crazy cranes. Interesting. First you have to pay 2 kuai (30 cents of dollar..) to get a small piece of paper (after having fought fiercely in the queue) with which you can go see the doctor. Then the waiting line is in the doctor office, so everyone is coughing and spitting and sneezing and avian flu in the small office while the doctor was examining me... And then he gave me a prescription for some pain killer and dragon blood capsules. I'm looking forward for the dragon blood ones... I'm sure that that's exactly what I need... some good'old dragon blood. Yeah. I like China.

Zee Duck...

Zee Duck... Eh oui. Yesterday night I went to the Quebecois Dinner Peking Duck and guess what? I had some Peking duck. During this interesting evening a guy nicely tried hard to make me understand that Quebecois people are in fact more French than French people. That was fascinating. And long. Luckily the subject of conversation changed after a while. Sorry to exist...

Else it was funny to see all these black sedan Audi cars parked in front of this 7 floors roast duck restaurant... Meaning that half the customers were officials being invited to eat in exchange of nice favours. That's the way it works in here... It's hard to be an official: eating and drinking all the way from noon to the end of the night! I would become sick of ducks. What a kind of a life, he? Yeah, I like.

Anything else interesting? I'm spending 3 to 4 hours every afternoon working on my 4 hours morning class, and it's going fast. Faster that a express train with burning wheels and rapid raw raptors or RRR. That the stuff. But I think this week end it's going to be party time, if the night clubs aren't closed... Indeed some rumors circulate saying that all clubs in Beijing are to close down during the Olympics, and bars close earlier....................................................
We'll see I guess.

University life in Beijing

Beijing...

Since my recent adventure I have settled down in my University room, at BLCU (Beijing Language and Culture University). Very nice, small and air cond. equiped room. And so I started to live the university life in Beijing... It is quite pleasant I have to say. I now play tennis every second day, the weather is hot, food is cheap, beer is cheap, and there is lot of nice people in the huge campus. At night everyone is out playing basketball, running, playing badminton or tennis or doing whatever kind of sport, or having beers in one of the numerous cafe on campus. It's a very nice atmosphere. I already met some nice fellow and have a language partner to practice my Chinese with. Everything is great. And I think I will improve a lot my level in Chinese through these 6 weeks coming...
Today I went to the Great Wall for the second time, but this time the sky was pollution-clear... something quite exceptional in here!!! So I was very lucky to be actually able to see the damn Wall. It was nice. These past days I also explored the bustling neighborhood around the University. I went on a pilgrimage to Carrefour, the French giant supermarket, and I brought back some Nutella and baguette... very important for breakfast.
And that's it. I haven't really started the courses yet, so Monday I'll see what's going on here... yeah.

The damn Great Wall...
My roommate being illegal on top of one of the towers...

he he... Also being illegal on the non-restored piece of Wall...