IIIIIIIbehind barsIIIIIII

Yeah...another great night in Banff...Did I say it was time for me to leave?

Ended up in jail on Sunday night. I had a warrant that dated back to August when I got a ticket for drinking in the public domain (I took a sip of a beer I was holding for a pal who was peeing...he didn'g get anything). I've been dumb, I forgot or decided to ignore the ticket and, well, they got me almost litterally with my pants down, while I was pissing in a backstreet, while waiting for my poutine to be ready(It sucks, I already paid for it, even asked the officer if I could bring it in...of course the answer was negative...so I let it to a couple standing in the alley)

Anyway, the RCMP officer was pretty nice (I guess, because I was too) but he had to handcuff me and bring me to the station because of my warrant. There, they stripped me of everything that could be helpful in hanging myself, with the exception of my pants (There is a cord at the bottom of my army pants, I had to swear I wouldn't kill myself. As my friend J-S joked, I should have tried just for kicks...).

So, about the cell. Well, it's huge, far too lit, cold and obviously the most boring place you can be in. There also is no toilet paper for, well, the toilet. And they don't want to supply you with anything, even napkins!

At least I realized how practical my weight-free workout is, since I used the time to do it a second time that day. The only problem is, it's fucking hard to do those exercices when drunk.

Two or three hours later, they let me go after I promised to appear in court in the morning at 10:00AM. It allowed me about 4 hours of sleep before getting to the courtroom, hungover. For an hour, I had to listen to extremely boring bureaucratic shit whitout falling asleep or puking (They delay most of the cases to later weeks). Hard task, I survived, plaided guilty and got out of there for a nice day off sleeping.

So here I am now, last day of work, doing exactly what I planned to do today: Absolutely nothing and waste time on the web.

Tomorrow, off to Lake Louise for my first take at snowboarding ever. It promises to be very interesting, pictures assured! The day after...gone, 3 days of bus!

Time to go waste it!

Tupperfan's days off

Called sick for the last three days. I'm not really sick though, the first day I woke up late while I was supposed to open. Got in the street and realized I was far too drunk to work, so I came back home and puked for most of the day. You see, we all drank mostly hard liquor for Rémi's last night before going back to Montréal. Here's a few pics from that night:



Okay, let's name them all, from left to right, first row: Marie-Michelle, Tania, me and Valérie. Second row: Mélissa, Rémi, Alexander(Zan), Marc, Xavier and Stéphane.



Marie-Michelle and Rémi. For once, Rémi doesn't look the most wasted on a pic. Here's an exemple:



But others got completely wasted quite early, the time of this pic is 11:39PM. Oh, and warning: It's gross:



Quite the party, I was too drunk to take further pictures. Got a pretty nice massage by two girls that they owed me since I did the all the dishes for the whole front part of the staff residence. It didn't go too far, but it was still great.

So, the next day, I didn't feel like going to work, so I called sick again. Had a good time doing nothing, getting high and writing a song about the hotel with Derek. Then, the night came and it was Australia Day! So to honour them, I got wasted! But I was a little disappointed by the Aussies' "infamous" party habits...Anyway, thanks to my friend Matt, I was able to stay in Hoodoo's night club well after closing time, watching staff cleaning while we were still getting drunk.

Then back home, we kept on drinking, decided to crash an after-party, but there was none, just like a private party or someting and they didn't want us there...I thought, because I was so wasted drunk, that they wanted to kick my friend Matt out, so I went back home, woke people up and gave them golf clubs. When we got to the street (the party was accross the street), I realized it might be a little extreme so I gave my club and decided to go look for Matt alone. He got out of the house at that moment, unscathered...of course!!!I was totally freaking out because of my drunken dumbness.

Anyway, it was funny but a further proof that it is time for me to get out of here. Today, I called sick again, just because I was still hungover, but mostly because I didn't feel like working. So, procrastination is the word of the day. Will try to go play hockey tonight.

What's the plan for tomorrow? Well, it's the last day of work of the week, and my penultimate one, so I'll go, but to keep this week's tradition going, I plan to do as little work as possible. Punk yeah!

Other news: Applied to university again! Third time will hopefully be a charm. I surprised myself, I was the first one who thought he was done with school, as recently as 2 weeks ago. But visiting basically every university website in Canada to post jobs for the hotel made me rethink of the thing. Yes, I have plans for the future that don't involve studies for me, but what if they fail? I need a backup plan, just in case. It's not a pessimist point of view, just a realist one.

So I applied in teaching at the Université de Montréal. First choice: French as a second language. Second: Social universe in secondary school (geography, history, economics in High School). Third: French in High School. So it's cool, following my mom and maternal grandmother on the teaching path, something I know I'll love doing and a pretty good backup to a writing career. And the two months off in the summer are pretty cool too!

Did I tell you I am not staff accomodation manager anymore? Yeah, I told the security guy to fuck off because he got into my room to take my Trek pipe...again! He opened the door while knocking, which I never allowed him to do and then he said the pipe was coming with him. I basically yelled at him without standing up for ten minutes while he was standing in the door frame, not daring to get in. Then I told him I was sick of those endless deaf discussions and told him to leave and close the door behing him. He didn't get my pipe nor my pot, he closed the door but he wrote a report. My boss removed my responsibilities. Cool! I'm leaving anyway! The General Manager of the hotel, Bernd, actually asked me "How was the smoke?" My answer: "Pretty good, thanks!"

So enough rambling for a day, time to go do nothing!

Distant Voices

So it was election night in Canada yesterday. The Conservatives won, sadly. But I'm not as disappointed as a lot of my friends are:

First, it's a minority governement, so they'll need the support of other parties to stay in office. The other parties usually being more centered or left-leaning, they'll have to move their ideology toward the center.

Second, Stephen Harper, the Tory leader, said he won't send troops to Iraq, despite previous support to the war while in the official opposition. He actually said not long ago that he was "extremely disappointed" the US couldn't proove there was WMDs in Iraq.

Same thing with abortion; Despite personal views that seem to lean toward pro-life, Harper promised not to change Canada's abortion laws. Good thing.

Of course, it happened before that election promises were not fulfilled, think of Jean Chretien's Liberal promise in 1993 of eliminating the GST (The Conservatives, who created the tax in the first place now want to reduce it from 7% to 6%, then later to 5% and the Liberals, who fought it and got elected partly due to their word of eliminating the sales tax are now strong defendants...Strange world), but the new government being a minority one, it leads me to believe that they won't be allowed to mess up too much, either by going extreme or by not fullfiling the promise on which they were elected.

Personally, I don't mind the GST, reducing income tax sounds more interesting, mostly because it favours saving instead of spending(And I spend a lot!). It just sucks to add the amount to whatever you buy, but we got used to it by now.

I like the Tories project to give more autonomy to Quebec on the international scene, mostly on the cultural and linguistic questions. Lets just see where it will lead. The topic might be important if they want to keep power, the Bloc Quebecois being extremely sensitive on those questions (and every other social aspect, usually being left-wing), they might play the fact that they hold the balance of power, a very interesting position in a federal parliament for a sovereignist (or separatist as English-Canadians say) party.

On the bad side, the Conservatives are thinking of bringing the same-sex marriage debate back on. I mean, come on, the law was adopted, most of Canadians either support or don't mind the law and honestly, the stupid "tradition and family" argument is getting old. It will never stop heterosexuals from getting married and besides, heteros screwed up big time with marriage as an institution anyway.

I also don't like Harper's plan of re-thinking Canada's position in the US anti-missile shield plan...Why? Honestly! But I have to agree on beefing up Canada's military. Canada always had a huge role on peacekeeping missions and we now have limited and exhausted ressources streching all over the world. Here, it's not a question of aggressive military presence, but helpful peacekeeping and assistance, which is for me, the way an armed force should be designed in the first place: Defensive and Peacekeeping force with strong natural disaster/humanitarian relief training and skills home and abroad.

It would also be a good thing to get a stronger presence in our Arctic territories, mostly since those few incursions by US subs and those claims by the US that the Northwest passage is actually "international waters". In those times of global warming where this passage might become a year-long commercial route , it's important to show up there to back up our claims and control traffic through our territory. And then, there is that minor dispute with Denmark over that small island between Canada and Greenland. A war between Denmark and Canada over that small rock is simply impossible (Can you imagine? It would almost be funny, more absurd than that UK/Argentina clash over the Falklands in 1982). But it kind of sucks when our politicians say it always was part of our country, cancel a military flight to the island in order to avoid upsetting Danish sensibilities, and then find themselves with a big Danish army show on the same island a week later...Nice one!

So, yeah, being a minority government, I think we'll be back at the polls in the next 2 years, and hopefully I'll be able to vote this time. Last year, I couldn't vote because I was in the middle of the woods, planting trees when the election happened. This time, I could have voted here in Alberta, but honestly, my vote wouldn't have made a difference, all the ridings here elected a Tory by huge margins. I didn't want to vote Tory, my vote could have made a little bit of a difference in my Quebec riding, mostly since I was not sure between the Bloc Quebecois and the NDP. I tried getting on the list up there and it was too complicated and long for the time remaining before the election. Here in Banff, you always lose count of the date!

Okay, enough politics for a while, I love it but I usually find myself alone in a room when the subject arise.

Remi is leaving to Montreal tomorrow. He's been here since April and tonight, there probably will be a memorable party. Will post on that tomorrow.

I am working early tomorrow and I plan to have a blast tonight, so time for a nap!

LOL!

Pretty nice night yesterday! We had a great time in Calgary for a NHL hockey game between the Habs and the Flames. The Canadiens lost, 3-2, but it was still a blast. Drunk as hell, we got kicked out of the Pengrowth Saddledome after the game for trying to get on the ice for a pic. Here's the only pic security didn't erase from the encounter:



You honestly should have seen Steti getting expelled from the stadium, it was great! I took a pic and yelled that I did, so security came to me and 4 of those guys fought with me to take my camera and erase the stuff...Man, when 12 of those guys are on you, you can argue, but they'll win.

So, since I don't have that much time, I'll just post a pot-pourri of pics with basic comments:



Bleu-Blanc-Rouge. Canadiens colours. We didn't have jersey, but yet, we had the colours!



How high we were...



How high we were...part deux.



There was a lot of Habs fans.



Steph enjoying his over-priced nachos.



Drunken pic of Steti's $20 he gave me to pay for our 3 beers...It wasn't enough!



Back in the bus, proud of our exploits...



Steph drunken sleep...



Well, you know, he does taste good!



Hey, he looks like Doc Mailloux!!!



A completely awake Steti and a quite not Steph...



A completely awake Steti and a little bit more Steph...



Enjoying my Cadbury easter egg...

We then went to the Aurora nightclub to keep the fun coming. My big thing that night was to dance closely and lascively with the guys who believe in themselves a little too much in order to intimidate them. It was great, but you grow tired of their reaction. So at closing time, I started to talk with a French-Canadian hater from Manitoba and after destroying all her poor argumentation, I decided to go look for my departed friends. I ended up there:





How? Good question...

The party continued back home, but I didn't take any pics. Last thing I did was to take a shower at 4:30AM, quite a bad time to shave your head...There was a shitload of blood on my pillow this morning...Who wants to sleep with me?

Okay, time to go watch a few movies. Just before leaving, I just want to plug my new blog, Treeplanting screefs. I plan to get a lot of treeplanters to post on their experience, feelings and ramblings about the job. So if interested, just email me!

Allright, time to go drink some water.

Tupperfan's guide to fixing your iPod

A few days ago, my iPod died. It just stopped working, probably from the numerous times I dropped it on various grounds, at various speeds. Here's the infamous "Tamagochi" image (the expression came from Stephane, the image from somewhere on the web...) my iPod was giving me because I didn't give it enough love and attention (I'm cynical here):



I know what you all want to ask at the same time: How can you fix that? Here's the solution:

Step 1: Throw iPod on the ground, not too strongly, you'll break it definitely, not too weakly, it won't do anything and you'll think it is broken definitely.

Step 2: Repeat step 1.

Step 3: Look at your iPod. Wow, it works!

Step 4: Appreciate your good work, go brag about it to everybody around and think of how bad it would have been to cross Canada in a bus again without music. Of course, there would be books, but you grow tired of reading after 56 hours...

That's it, didn't have any other choice, I tried everything else that didn't involve sending it for repair. Besides, Apple being the kind of company that will make you spend a buttload of bucks on their shit when they got their hook on you, I'm glad it's fixed without any money spent to repair or buy a new one (I know, I'm addicted to a gadget. Just one thing to say: There is no way I'll plant trees again without music, can't stand those noisy bugs anymore. And housekeeping without music is...repetitive to say the least).

But Charlotte made me feel bad with her recent rant about men playing with their iPods while women are working like bees (I guess the comparison is accurate, male bees are known to be the best procrastinators ever, living just to get laid...once). So here's my official statement: I never "play" with my iPod at work, except when duty calls me to the washroom (I'm fucking good at "Parachute"!). I listen to it (like right now), but that's it. When I want to waste time at work, I blog. But again, I will always make sure every work-related job is done before doing so. The hotel is dead right now, everything is taken care of and I'm gone in 2 weeks. Guilty? No. Needs to justify my behaviour? Apparently so. Care? Nah.

So, yeah, taking the bus again, the 6th time and probably not even the last time I'll cross Canada that way. I don't really have the choice though, as said previously; Too much stuff, some illegal drug-related paraphernalia, a lot of time to waste and I'm cheap.

Had fun yesterday night, nothing worth writing about, it was the usual, but better than usual.

Time to go be clearer...and keep the procrastination going!

Blogging rant

Don't give your blog address to everybody, just because they want to see your pics (I'll give them my MAJ.com picture folder instead...). If not, you might end up with people questionning what you wrote months ago...

Exemple, Valerie read this post yesterday and came back home with a shitload of questions. Nothing serious, she just thought she was putting on my nerves and stuff. It was not the case and I had to justify my musings. I post on a blog to express my thoughts, but also to update friends abroad on my life. Yes, I am probably exhibitionist a little, and a personal diary wouldn't do it for me. When posting, I am trying to stay as true to myself as possible, but most of the time, I'll try not to offend people or go to far into the details.

That post was quite spontaneous and was expressing frustrations I was feeling at that very moment. Yes I might have went far and some of my fears have proven to be unfounded since then.

So what should I do, censor myself? No. Stop giving my blog address? No. Be careful? No. I'll keep on doing what I do, keep on being myself. If you don't like it, well, ask me like Val did and I guess it will be clearer. If you hate it, well, you just have to leave I guess...

Anyways. Didn't post a lot in the last weeks. It will probably change when I'll be back in Montreal. I'll go buy my bus ticket tonight (Yes, bus again...I have far too much stuff for the plane, mostly giving the fact that I have quite a lot of illegal stuff...) and I'll give my two weeks notice tomorrow. I can't wait to leave. I still have a blast here, it would probably never change, but I don't want to live here anymore.

Time for a pic or two? Here's a little stupid parody of an infomercial I did while I was high a few days ago:













Time to go _____________________

Journey's end

Well, for now.

Yep, decided to leave Banff to go back home for a period of time between a month and three, depending if on whether I'll do one or two planting contracts.

One thing for sure, I can't wait to leave Banff. I'm done here. Hey, I still have to post pics from part two of the Christmas party and some from New Year's. No time for that today, I would have to upload them and the Internet Café people seems to be enjoying themselves in tropical temperature...Too warm for me and my clothes...

Here's some pics from a toy gun fight we had a few weeks ago.



The Gangsters.



Stéphane, seconds before killing the photograph



Duel. I won, Étienne is dead now.

Okay, too hot in here, it snows big flakes outside and it's quite nice so I'll get back there.

By the way, playing hockey on a pond with the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel, the Spray river and mountains in the background is incredible. Mostly with the little fire by the pond, it makes it magical. My new favourite place. Thanks mom for sending my skates!

I'm out. Time to go call friends in Montréal!