Busy week

Well, in case you were worried about me no need to fret.  This week was quite busy and I didn't have time to blog.

Let's see, where did I leave off.  Oh yes, got to Peterborough.  Meeting went well, our customer is looking at some pretty major projects next year which will keep us very busy.  It sounds like I'm going back in November to do some process mapping exercises with them.

The drive home was as eventful as the drive there.  I arrived back in Montreal at about 9:45pm and then proceeded to unpack my car and get settled into the apartment.

Overall, apartment living isn't too bad.  It is taking some getting used to the noises (with hardwood floors there is lots of noise from the neighbours above).  I still need to figure out where everything is but for the most part I think I have found what I need, at least for right now.

On Thursday, Warren and Ashley came to Montreal.  Warren is a family friend of Gwen's and new addition to the Winnipeg Flyers hockey team in my absence; Ashley is Warren's fiancee who is taking Optometry in Chicago and is righting her Canadian accreditation exams in Montreal on Monday and Tuesday next week.

Warren brought my hockey equipment with him so that I can play hockey on Monday night (and sounds like if I can prove myself on Monday, they might have a full time position for me).  I picked them up from the airport and they stayed with me Thursday until today (Saturday).

Thursday, we went for dinner to a Vietnamese restaurant called Pho Hoa.  It was a pretty decent restaurant, you could tell because most of the clientele was of Oriental descent.  I thought I had ordered a chicken stirfy; what I got was a seafood stir fry with scallops, crab, shrimp and something else which I am assuming was squid or octopus.  I figured it wasn't worth my effort to send it back so I ate it, and it wasn't that bad.

Afterwards, I did my best to take Warren and Ashley on the "Romance Tour".  Almost every time I would come to Montreal with my co-worker, Doug, he would take me on what he called the "romance tour" - starts with dinner, then get bagels from Fairmount Bagel and drive over Mount Royal.  So, my version consisted of dinner, drive over Mount Royal get bagels and then drive back over Mount Royal.

As we are driving over Mount Royal, we stopped at a lookout point so that Warren and Ashley could see the Montreal skyline at night.  As we pull up, we notice that there are "some" raccoons at the lookout point.  As we get out of the car, we notice that there isn't just "some" rather "lots" - probably 15 or more raccoons were there, wandering among the various people.  Some people were actually petting the raccoons, something I would never do, even though they may look pretty cute.

Friday was a fairly typical Friday.  At work for 8:30 and finished work at 7:30...

For dinner, Ashley found a place called "Amelio's" which apparently is a pretty good pizza place.  The restauarant is towards downtown so we took the metro.  The restaurant is a pretty small, quaint pizza joint that you would probably walk past if you weren't aware that the place was there.  We got there at about 8:30 and the lineup was quite long so we stood outside.  Most restaurants in Montreal are BYOB so Warren and I went to a Depanneur (convenience store) just down the street to grab some beer.  We got back and were standing in line for maybe 2 mins and then the busboy came and put up the closed sign - the restaurant closes at 8:45.  But, before the busboy left, he opened the door and told us and the party of 5 (ha, no not the show...) not to worry and that we would get in.

We got in ahead of the party of 5 as there was table for 3 that was ready.  The pizza was terrific.  When they brought out the pizza, they brought us two spoons.  We couldn't figure out what they were for, but after asking the waitress we learned that the spoons were to be used for dishing out the pizza (like a spatula).  Pretty smart - so we each used our spoons to dish out our pizza.

Afterwards, we came back to the apartment and proceeded to play a game of  "Settlers of Catan".  I've heard many people talk about this game but for some reason thought it was like a combination of Risk and Pokemon - I don't know why...  The game was actually quite fun, you roll dice and build settlements and roads based on the resources that you gather from the roll of the die and where you have placed settlements.  I had the classic case of beginners luck and almost won the game, if it were not for Warren having an "extra point" card that he drew.  Otherwise, I stood a good chance of winning...

As for Saturday, well, I will blog that tomorrow with some pictures.

Hope all is well back home.