Thanksgiving in Montreal

I just got back last night from a three-day thanksgiving weekend in Montreal. Me, Meg, and some other colleagues drove there on Thursday morning. In principle, I think the trip should take about six hours. However, your ever-reliable narrator got a little confused --- and ended up going the wrong direction (i.e. south) on I-91 for, oh, about an hour.

Still, the drive was pleasant. I got to see Vermont, the 'green mountain state', which is indeed both green and mountainous.

Montreal was terrific - the food was great. The place we stayed was in little Italy, and the coffee there was amazing. I had a chance to try poutine, a sort of Quebecois version of chili fries, except with gravy instead of chili. Yum. On Saturday night we met Meg's friends at a local sports bar to watch the Canadiens (that's French for 'Canadians') play Philadelphia (that's hockey, by the way).

What else. Oh yeah - Montreal drivers. Wow. I've never seen anything like it. In the span of a single weekend, I saw at least three people driving backwards (in reverse) down crowded, one-way city streets - one guy went straight through an intersection. In reverse.

I'll post pictures in the next few days. Right now I have to catch up on my grading and head to school. Last month of classes before Christmas. I'll be home in less than a month.

適当-ness

I'd like to introduce a new word to everyone's lexicon (everyone who doesn't already speak Japanese, anyway). The word is tekitou, pronounced 'techie-toe', like the toe of a guy who likes technology. In Chinese characters it's written 適当. It's an adjective, hence the '-ness' in this entry's title.

So, what does it mean, and why I am I telling you about it?

It's probably easiest to illustrate what tekitou means with examples, since the whole reason I'm telling you about it is because I can't think of a good way to express it in English.

Example 1: You go to the barber and ask for a buzz cut. The guy takes the clippers, runs them over your head, then barely takes the time to brush you off before charging you and sending you on your way. While you're reaching your hand back to the nape of your neck to brush off some of the hair that the barber didn't bother to clean off, you notice a big patch of hair that he completely missed. You go back, ask for him to redo that spot, and the guy looks at you and says 'Oh, it's no big deal - you can hardly notice.' This is tekitou.

In fact, this example has two instances of tekitou-ness; the guy gave you a tekitou haircut, and then did a tekitou job brushing the hair off. And then when you went back, he gave you some tekitou excuse about not being able to notice the spot he missed (whoops, there were actually three sub-cases of tekitou-ness in that example).

Example 2: This is a real-life example from our Canadian friend Meg. Apparently in Canada, it's standard to write post-dated checks when paying one's rent. Meg recently discovered that we don't do this in the US. This alone does not qualify as tekitou; just a cultural difference. The tekitou-ness occurred when Meg went to the bank and asked the teller about writing post-dated checks. Apparently, the teller couldn't believe that the practice is common in Canada; how, she wondered, would the tellers keep from processing checks before the date they are post-dated for? Meg explained that the teller simply looks at the date on the check (s)he is processing. To which the teller responded, 'you mean to tell me in Canada the tellers check the date on every check they process??'

...

yeah.

That is tekitou.


Example 3: This is one my friend Nhan recently posted on his blog:

Free Internet?

Ha. I laugh at the situation. The cable guy was supposed to come between 8a-11a this morning to pick up the cable modem. The internet was also supposed to be turned off yesterday. As you may have guessed, neither of these things happened. They said the cable guys didn't get the dispatch for some reason and that my billing did in fact stop yesterday. So yippee, I am getting "free" internet and have to drive to the place to go drop off the modem. No wait. I am already paid up through the end of the month anyway! Ha. "Free" indeed.

Indeed. Some free tekitou-ness.

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Why did I write this? Because I think there are a lot of tekitou things in the US. I'm sure you have stories of your own. And now you have a word to describe those situations and those people. Tekitou.

phở

Big news - this weekend I went out to eat in Amherst and I see a sign that says "PHO - VIETNAMESE NOODLES". It was in a lame "oriental" font, so I was a bit suspicious...

For those of you who don't know, I have been phở-less since coming to Massachusetts - a sad situation. So I was filled with a mixture of excitement and fear of disappointment as I walked into the restaurant.

Long story short - I got "the usual" - although the menu didn't have any Vietnamese on it, I went for what would have been called the "pho dac biet" complete with rare steak, tripe, and "Frank" (I assume they meant fatty flank).

Price: $6.75 (about 2 dollars more than a Haltom dac biet)
Portion: plenty of meat, but a little low on noodles. didn't fill the bowl
Complaint: as all of you pho-lovers know, there is a thick "brown sauce" that you put in the soup before eating. It's supposed to be thick, about like barbecue sauce. I start to pour some on my soup, and out comes something the consistency of soy sauce. Alarms go off.

All that said, the pho was actually not bad. Definitely not worth the 6.75 price tag, if I were in Fort Worth. But beggers can't be choosers - it looks like there's now a place to get my phở fix in Amherst. Yeehaw.

Elections - Horses - A new scanner

Its been a busy week. On Saturday I went horse-back riding. I had completely forgotten how to do this (I think I've only done it once or maybe twice before). When the guy leading us down the trail found out I was from Texas, he said "Texas?! Shouldn't you be leading me?" Clearly I need work on my Texas credentials. So I might should get some more practice on the sly before going back with more people from the department - just so they can see what a bona-fide Texan I really am.

Then on Wednesday I participated in our representative democracy . From a state where most offices almost inevitably go to Republicans to one where they almost inevitably go to Democrats - in a way, my vote is probably as meaningless in both cases, but here I get the satisfaction of seeing some people I vote for win.

And speaking of winning, it looks like the government is no longer monopolized. Now we have Pepsi AND Coke. Whoo.

Cynicism aside, I admit to having been pretty excited to hear the results of the election. This time two years ago I was feeling pretty depressed. If I allow myself to think about it, though, I suspect that the reasons leading a lot of people to vote the republicans out of office aren't the really important ones. I wonder why this didn't happen in 2004. Were people just slow to come to their senses? Or are they more concerned with a single Republican senator's pederastic proclivities than with invasion, torture, and domestic spying? I won't complain about the results, but I worry about whether they came about for the right reasons.

Back to more mundane affairs - I now have a scanner. I got it for free from a faculty member in my department. Pictures to come. Maybe.

a personal blog

Since I've resurrected my old blog, I've decided to go ahead and make a separate personal blog. I'll use this space to keep people updated on my activities through words and pictures. The picture to the right of the words you are reading now is of me in front of my apartment in Northampton. I live on the first floor - the window next to my right ear looks into my bedroom.

People in Northampton are fond of altering street signs.