Posted: January 30th, 2010 | Author: Shawn | Filed under: week sauce | 4 Comments »
Well kids, after 13 months in Montréal, I fly out on Tuesday. The apartment is almost completely empty, and everything I own (now) is crammed into my backpack. In a day and a half I’ll be officially, and intentionally, homeless. I enjoy how my achievements sound quite a bit like failures; It keeps my naysayers on their toes.
I summed up what I know of my plan previously, and I think that’s still accurate so far. From here I’m off for a night in Vancouver, then over to Victoria for the rest of February. I can hardly wait! I’m also going to make a point of getting down to good old Seattle while I’m in the area. The big unknown is what group I’ll be able to sign up with in order to volunteer in Haiti. I guess we’ll see how it all plays out.
As usual this week’s summary is a compilation of good articles from around the web, plus whatever other random crap I have on hand.
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Posted: January 26th, 2010 | Author: Shawn | Filed under: language | 3 Comments »
Of the 6912 recognized languages in the world I bet none of their “hello” and “thanks” sound as true to meaning as French. I’m big on listening to how people speak, how they sound and what they say. Bonjour and merci seem to be two words that even if you don’t know a word of French, you would know what they mean.
Comparatively speaking, “Hello” and “Thanks” just don’t cut it. Hello sounds like a kids cartoon character and thanks sounds like an itchy sore.
“Um.. are you okay there, Janet? You’re sure itching a lot.”
“Oh dude, I know. I have the worst case of thanks on my bum. It’s driving me mad! The itching totally distracted me while I was trying to watch the new episode of Hello & Tinkles Go To PooPoo Town.”
See what I mean? As I wrap up my last few days in Montreal I know I’m really going to be sad to go from bonjour and merci to hello and thanks.
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// shawn
Posted: January 23rd, 2010 | Author: Shawn | Filed under: week sauce | 7 Comments »
In this week’s wrap up I’ll share some of the usual good travel article finds and maybe a new blog or what not. You know how it is, a bit of this, a bit of that. I also have my first HD video to share. This new camera I bought a couple months ago has this little “video” button on it. I figure if I paid for the button I’m hella pushing it. So I pushed it. On the bright side, since a video must surely be worth a thousand pictures, there’s no crappy phonetography pics this week. You’re welcome.
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Posted: January 16th, 2010 | Author: Shawn | Filed under: week sauce | 12 Comments »
It’s less than two weeks before I finish flushing my worldly possessions and leave for an open ended life of travel. So naturally I had a cup of tea last night and entirely scratched my travel plans. Now I have all brand new travel plans! Why? Meh, who knows, I have issues probably. You have to be versatile as a traveller so it’s good to mix things up once in a while. Keeps your scrotum taut, or some such.
This week in the Sauce™ I’d like to share a few sweet new travel blogs that I found. Plus great articles from some familiar favourites, some good phonetography shots, and I’ll sum up my new travel plans. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: December 7th, 2009 | Author: Shawn | Filed under: blah blah blah | 2 Comments »
I moved to Montreal one year ago, and thought I would share my observations. I’m originally from British Columbia, but directly prior to Montreal I was living in San Francisco. Montreal was a perfect destination for my move as I was keen to return to Canada, but also wanted to try somewhere new. I quickly found that Quebec has some interesting differences from the rest of Canada. I considered writing a thought provoking essay on the cultural nuances of the various regions of Canada. However, I instead figured I should show some respect to the fifth graders of the world. So I made a simple like/dislike list.
Some of these would be true in general for most folks, and others are very specific to my preferences. Here is just one man’s opinion of living in Montreal for one year.
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