Qu’est-ce que tu fais?

That’s what my French teacher would ask us every Monday.

So Saturday!

One of the largest, if not THE largest market in Montreal!

The way the fruits and vegetables are arranged are super neat. Whenever someone buys something, the store vendors immediately fill up that ‘hole’ with another basket of vegetables/cup of berries so everything’s aesthetically pleasing

This stall didn’t display it that way, but for many stores, they label their strawberries as ‘très sucre’, which means very sweet. We bought strawberries from one stall that said ‘très très sucre’, but when we ate them at home that night they weren’t all that sweet… o.o

Lots of stalls let you sample their fruits too!

Lots of flowers for sale

Quite a few vegetables I’d never seen before too…

The florists sell cool plants like this furry baby

And gigantic pitcher plants!

Happily shopping for things (oh there’s the très très sucre strawberries!)

Have I mentioned before that the people who play instruments along the street are really good?

Hungry when we were finished, and there were food stalls just outside and around the market. The food is not cheap… but really really good!

Not very presentable, but they taste a lot better than they look

I like the carparks, they’ve got nice decorations along the walls

The last Sunday of May each year is ‘Montreal Museum Day’, where all 29 Museums in Montreal open for free!

As much as I dislike history, I decided to go to a museum of Montreal history and archeology.

Pointe-a-Calliere:

It’s strange because they’re currently having an exhibition on a Japanese thing: Samourais. If I were a tourist coming to Montreal for its Museum day I wouldn’t want to visit their Japanese exhibit… (the temporary exhibits are not free).

The queue was mad long! But actually the reaaaally long one was for the Samourai exhibit, so thank goodness.

Pics from the museum will bore you, so I’ll just post one. The museum itself is like an excavation site, so it’s pretty cool when you walk through the structures and look at the artifacts on display.

Some bistros and cafes near Old Montreal

Notre-Dame Church. This is a gigantic church not far from my place. The interior is really really really really magnificent, totally 金碧辉煌with its gilded walls, intricate statues and gorgeous stained-glass windows.

I was going lament about not having a picture of its interior because they disallow photography, but then I realized there’s a thing called google image search. So here’s the interior for you:

Credit goes to christianworldtraveler.wordpress.com

Statue of Monsieur Maisonneuve and four other significant figures

Second museum of the day: the Biodome! Yes, it’s my second time visiting it within less than a week, the first time being with my French class. It’s quite a small place; you could finish walking through and seeing everything within one to two hours. But it’s nice because I saw a lot of new stuff I didn’t notice before on my first trip, and some of the animals decided to be more photogenic too. Like the lynx!

Penguin chop! Penguins always remind me of NUSHS and Prof Lai.

The queue for Pointe-a-Calliere would be considered nothing compared to that of the Biodome. Biodome’s queue was snaking around the building, it’s almost amazing to see so many people in Canada XD except for the protests where there are a lot of people like:

Yeah so except for protests, there seem to be very little people everywhere. I live near what’s supposed to be the Orchard road equivalent, but even on weekends the streets are… not crowded at all? And department stores have more employees than customers, I wonder how they even last.

Anyway back to the Biodome. It’s amazing how so many people manage with their kids in that place. It is so crowded, and when you have to push a pram along it’s just quite difficult to maneuver. For almost the entire journey through the Biodome, the level of crowded-ness was the shoulder-to-shoulder kind.

aaaaaand the Montreal Olympic Stadium! I shall go visit some day (but pricey D: )

French class was fun today!

(I should stop saying that because it’s fun everyday)

We learned the names of various fruits and vegetables today, and played that memory game where there are many cards laid out, face down, and you’re supposed to play by flipping over the cards two at a time, and if it’s a right pair, you take them. We played in random groups of four, and I got paired up (fourpeople-ed up?) with three classmates who knew spanish. Halfway through the game an unspoken consensus was made that those three should teamed up because I was getting too many cards (although it wasn’t actually that much different…), and they started exchanging in Spanish the card positions etc. And I sit there like, ‘okay… thanks a lot…” Super hilarious XD And of course the Spanish guys won XD

Wait they aren’t actually from Spain I think. But many people in the class can speak Spanish, and I can never sort out all the different countries in South America and Europe.

Got a new TV, and have been watching many movies The Netflix collection in Canada is not very good though, I heard :\ but still enough to last a long time!

Time to get a new piano soon!!

Parts of me

I sorted my stuff today and was feeling nostalgic, so I thought I’d take pictures of all my little memorabilia! I have a bad memory for events so I like to keep everthing

Gifts from all the different countries during IBO

Collection from primary school times.

Cards from dear friends C:

Movie/concert/etc tickets

Various keychains and small gift from friends and places C:

The smaller cards

Various thingummy-bobs from school

Oh, gosh

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/the-most-horrifying-car-crash-ever-caught-on-film-dash-camera-captures-moment-ferrari-hits-taxi-at-high-speed-killing-three/story-e6frf7lf-1226363484965

How many people does it take to change the law?

Take all the people in the Singapore indoor stadium seated at full capacity, put all of them in one street, give them whistles, tambourines, placards, flags, red shirts, red bandanas, red pieces of felt, red face paint and infuse in them a massive amount of energy and you get what downtown Montreal is like for the past 28 days.

As I’m typing this right now, even though all my windows are closed, I am a few streets away and several levels above the ground, I can hear the people cheering and chanting. Today marks the 100th day of student protests, and daily+nightly marches have been going on consecutively for almost a month.

It started off with the government announcing a tuition hike in the next five years, which will bring tuition fees up 70% at the end of these five years. Loads of students were furious, and started boycotting classes, and many also blocked the entrances to several colleges and universities to prevent students from attending lectures. The uproar wasn’t going anywhere, so the government decided, rather hastily (since little negotiation was made) and urgently, to pass an emergency bill restricting protests. That seemed to make people even more angry, so now the protests have ballooned to protesting about tuition hikes, a slew of other social issues and protesting about protests.

The tuition, after the hike, would be some S$4k a year. It’s still the cheapest out of all the provinces in the country, and I all the more can’t feel it since I just saved my family cough USD50k cough a year with my decision three weeks ago… But I guess it’s really important to many people here, and what’s also important is that the student unions and organizations feel that the government pass bills and does things without first discussing with students.

Montreal just passed a law over the weekend prohibiting masks in protests, but many flout it and wear masks anyway. The bill putting restrictions on protests (Bill 78) also requires that the itinerary, venue, time and route of a march be presented 8 hours in advance to the police if the march involves more than 50 people. But the people deliberately mocked this by flooding the police lines (I found this part quite funny :p it’s like ‘you want to know my march plans? FINE LET’S ALL GIVE THEM OUR MARCH PLANS” ).

The bill originally stated 10 people instead of 50, but I guess it was changed in an attempt to compromise? I don’t see that the crowd’s appeased in any way, the marches are still as fierce today. I was on my way to McGill after class today around 3.30pm and woah, the ENTIRE street was filled with people. By street I mean the street meant for cars, so no vehicles can pass the affected streets these days all the way up to late into the night. And it’s so packed with people, it’s even hard for a person to cross the street! The people seem to be relishing in their protests, and even did a few kallang waves down the entire stretch.

Personally, I don’t really understand the protesters’ woes. The tuition hike is put in place, I presume, to help universities stifled of funds (I know that McGill, at least, is quite broke). The universities need their money, and as for the students who won’t be able to afford an education due to the tuition hike, the government should provide aid specifically to these families. I would rather the majority have a better education and use better facilities albeit paying more for tuition (an amount that is still of the lowest in NA) than have everyone studying in a school suffocating from lack of funds.

As for Bill 78, it makes it illegal for people to prevent others from attending classes. To me this just makes sense. A bunch of people are unhappy with tuition hikes and want to protest. Another bunch of people, affected by the same tuition hike, still want to study anyway. Why should the former bunch manifest its protest in a way that takes away the latter bunch’s right to study? Some unhappy students criticize the bill for even talking about ‘the right to study’ since the tuition hikes makes education out of reach for some students. However I don’t think the comparison is quite apt here. Blocking entrances to lecture halls, storming auditoriums and threatening students and professors to leave is directly stripping students of a means to learn. Making something too expensive to buy for a few is quite different from blocking the entrance to a department store such that no one can buy anything.

On the ban on masks… I don’t see any harm done? People should wear what they like b:

As for the part of the Bill addressing protests 50 people and above… Shrugs. I come from a small country where a party of five is deemed as an ‘illegal gathering’. If you’re unhappy with this party’s laws, elect someone else next season.

Bon! Take everything I’ve said with a pinch of salt. I’m one of the most ignorant eighteen-year-olds out there, I had never been concerned with politics of any kind and I was never in the habit of reading about current affairs, except for a little newspaper flipping in the hostel pantry two years back. Everything is said from the limited understanding I gathered from staying in Montreal for exactly a month.

this is quite scary..

$5K reward in dirty needles in clothing mystery in Quebec
CBC News
Last Updated: May 17, 2012 9:25 AM ET

Patrick Beaudet is one of eight people who have been pricked by dirty needles in Sherbrooke, Que., in recent months. Radio-Canada

The City of Sherbrooke, Que. and its police force are offering a $5,000 reward for information in the dirty needle case that has clothing retailers and consumers on edge.

Several blood-tainted syringes have been found, needle up, in clothing items for sale in various retail stores over the last few months.

At least eight people have been accidentally pricked.

The most recent discoveries were on Sunday, when a store employee found three needles hidden in clothing pockets.

Since January, 23 dirty needles have been reported to authorities.

Police and city officials hope a monetary reward will yield new clues in their investigation.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Sherbrooke police at 1-819-821-5555.

Jeudi le 17 mai 2012

I’ve left Singapore for a month now.

Today’s the founding day of Montréal! Madam Ginette spent the first 15 minutes of class talking about history. I basically spent that 15 minutes stared uncomprehendingly at her speaking because 1. my French is not good enough to understand many many things and 2. my history is just as bad. I was so tired this morning too because I just only activated Facebook on my phone, and didn’t turn it off, so it kept beeping last night from all the notification. Beep and beep and beep and I finally summoned enough energy to pull myself out of bed to turn the device off.

For the activities half of the day today, we played like an amazing race around the town, searching for answers to a list of questions we were given and the school is going to sponsor us for an outing too!! We got to choose between ice-skating, the biodome and the botanical gardens, and biodome had the highest number of votes. I wanted ice-skating though… But biodome is nice too

Happy sad happy sad happy sad

Dad bought three roses for my parents’ anniversary few days back, one red, one white, one pink (think hybridization involving incomplete dominance). Went to buy a vase specially for it, it’s still standing pretty after 4 days C:

The metro here is quite problematic. It had temporarily ceased operation for… Three times already? For the time that I’m here. To avoid having to wait in a train for 5 minutes for nothing, or to wait for a train that wouldn’t come, I walk to school now -_- I think the train problem was reported in the Singapore news as well? Something to do with smoke bombs and students on strike.

I really really 佩服 people who can speak multiple languages now. I can’t even add much words to the English vocab bank in my head, and now I have to double the amount of words I know, one French word for each English word. Cake? Gâteau. Church? Église. Car? Voiture. And our French friends were really cute and imaginative to think that a chair looks nice as a girl (C’est une belle chaise!), while a desk looks nice as a guy (C’est un beau bureau!).

My table mate is immensely helpful, he knows loads more French than I do. Apparently Spanish is much more similar to French than english is to French. But I’m so thankful I know English, if not I cannot imagine how much effort I need to take to understand stuff like the little nuances in grammar. I could make a word for word translation and roughly understand the meaning.. By that won’t work at all if I try to understand it with Chinese.

I feel so lucky to know two contrasting languages, English and Chinese C:

In Montreal, it is very common to see people performing within the train stations, the kind who hope you’ll throw them a dollar. But oh my, they’re REALLY good! Guitarist, cellist, a Capella groups, accordion-ists, string quartets, er-hu players etc etc, most, if not all, are very impressive! The instrument players would be at a pretty high level, singers would have really powerful voices! They do make me WANT to donate in appreciation.

Listening to french songs is not a bad way to learn C: I can almost sing ‘je veux y croire’ now That’s ‘I see the light’ for you C:

Superheroes live up to their name :D

I dislike the original, but this…

is so good!
(Not that I approve of the lyrics)

Okays this post is to CONGRATULATE 4 awesome superheroes on their accomplishments!!!

\o\ |o| \o/ |o| /o/

It’s so amazing, four! One third of the superheroes!! Really proud of all of you

J’aime ma classe Français!

(that might have been grammatically wrong)

It’s a full time class, so 6 hours a day, but it’s easy to stay awake since the classes are fun! it’s basically lecture in the morning with a teacher (la professeure) and activities in the afternoon with a teaching assistant. The professeure (sorry, so used to calling her professeure that ‘teacher’ sounds weird, although she is not a professor) is really good, and she has a sense of humor too. I think I mentioned previously the class is conducted entirely in French, but she explains stuff surprisingly well! Even if you start out not knowing any French (my case) you’ll somehow get it after a while.

I think it takes a lot of patience to explain such basic things like ‘this is’ or ‘what’ to a group of adults while resisting to just translate it into English, which makes things much easier. I like the ‘all French’ approach though! We’re just completely immersed in it the entire day, and things get picked up little by little. On my first day what the professeure was saying just sounded like a string of jumbled sounds to me, but now I can pick out words here and there are roughly understand the sentences C:

We played snakes and ladders in groups of four in our activities session yesterday. Each square contains a question that we have to answer, like ‘describe your family’. It’s gets really funny when we get so frustrated because we know what to say and have the sentence formulated in our mind already, but it’s in english (or whichever mother tongue) and we just can’t get it out in French. Good thing there was this guy in my group who was really really really good in French (how is he even in the beginners’ class?!) who could explain everything to the other three of us C:

The teaching assistant brought her kid (adorable much!) to class yesterday too, and we played hide and seek with an orignal plushie the seeker had to ask questions like ‘est-ce que dans une table?’ (is it under a table?), the rest answers and to lead the seeker to the hiding place.

Had sort of like a welcome session for the new students of this learning center yesterday, and we got briefed on the regulations of the school. It’s apparently quite strict on late-coming… If we exceed 30 demerit points, we could be ‘expelled’. 10min late or leaving 10min early = 1 demerit, and not coming for a day = 5 demerit points. I heard that even if you have a decent excuse… Like if your child is sick, they let you not come to class but still record the demerit points anyway :/

Oh and the briefing was conducted in 100% French too… The 60 or so of us were segregated based on our mother tongue, and a level-3 student would serve as a translator if we weren’t sure of what was being said :/

AND AND AND I found out that we actually get PAID for taking classes! $100+ a week! Plus they give you.. I think $7 hour a day to put your child in daycare too, and I think travel expenses are covered too. The Quebec government must be really keen on teaching it’s residents French heh. They call it ‘francisation’.

My family went to Costco the day before, and boy that place is HUGE and the things they sell are equally HUGE. Its basically a warehouse selling things in bulk. Like cereal coming in triple the normal size and juice in 8L packs… Loads of variety too.. From clothes to furniture to healthcare products to groceries to books to electronics to etc etc etc.

Everyone leaves with a big trunk-full of items, and we did too b: It’s a good strategy I think… Everything is cheaper than normal retail price so you’ll end up buying a lot more… Like I’ll never buy three cereal boxes at a go at a normal supermarket but since they don’t have anything smaller and it’s rather cheap, I ended up buying that equivalent amount of cereal b:

Ooh two things I noticed:
#1 they don’t really sell rice here. There isn’t a section of sacs and sacs of rice piled up in the supermarkets here like there is in Singapore
#2 roasted chicken is cheaper than raw chicken

…. ?

I feel like my brain is undergoing a rewiring process… Earlier on when i was browsing a costco catalogue when I saw the word ‘tire’. What immediately came to mind was the ‘pulling’ action instead of the circular rubber things that make cars move. Also when I typed the word ‘electronic’ previously in this post, i wanted to spell it as ‘electronique’…

I want to learn French, but don’t mess with my English!!