building bridges

Found this at Andrea’s blog.

* Four jobs I’ve had: Clerk at a video rental, assistant at a Law office, freelance desktop publisher, webdesigner.

* Four movies I watch every time they are on TV: Star Wars (any of the original three), Pride and Prejudice (the BBC version), The Life of Brian, and In Search of the Holy Grail,

* Four places where I have lived: Rio, Barcelona, Fort Lewis (WA), Montreal.

* Four TV shows I enjoy: These will probably be terribly outdated since I haven’t had a TV for over a year but… In Spain I was a fan of Aqui no hay quien viva, and here in Canada, Lost and House, and since I got TV back, I’ve been enjoying The Agenda, with Steve Paikin on TVO.

* Four people who send me emails regularly: friends Jaj & Dana, hubby, and blog friends.

* Four things I do every single day: tell Alan I love him, access the internet, eat at least 3 meals, and for the past month I’ve been drinking a glass of warm water with lemon before breakfast

* Four favourite foods: Thai red curry, bobó de camarão, any fresh melt-in-your-mouth fish fillet, Palak Paneer.

* Four places I would like to be: Montreal, Paris, Girona, Ilha Grande.

Anybody else?

I’m still at the run-and-walk stage but I made good progress today. Last week I ran 2 1/2 laps at Hart House and walked 1 so this week I planned to run at least 3, possibly 3 1/2. The day didn’t start well - I went to bed past midnight last night, which made getting out of bed at 6 AM really hard. It is still warm and humid and since I had to meet a friend at Hart House, I decided to run inside. The first few strides felt awful, my legs weighed a ton. But then I got to the end of the 3 1/2 laps still feeling ok - or at least not dying yet - so I kept going. I ended up doing 7 1/2 laps before I started feeling a little bit of a stitch. I then walked for 2 laps and then run again for a full five minutes (something around 5 laps maybe). It felt really good!

One of the sports I really enjoy watching when I can is diving. I didn’t know anything about it or had ever seen it before until I came to Canada. My stepdaughter was an international level diver and Alan and I spent many an afternoon watching diving competitions in Montreal. I soon learned to appreciate the sport and the level of fitness of its athletes and met many of them personally, including Anne Montminy and Alexandre Despatie. Alexandre is simply adored in Quebec for not only his amazing skills but also for his super personality.

Here’s Alexandre teaching Rick Mercer how to dive:

I can’t wait to see it!! I loved the play and the movie has Colin Firth, Meryl Streep and Julie Walters. Can’t miss it. Click on the pictures to watch the trailer.

Update: Just got back from the movie theatre. Alan and I LOVED the movie. I was afraid it wouldn’t be as funny as the play but I’m happy to say that I was wrong. It was quite entertaining and there were many moments when the audience clapped, sniffled, and clapped again. Meryl Streep’s performance of the The Winner Takes it All was one of the most emotionally-charged scenes I’ve seen in a long time. I had tears in my eyes and when I looked at the woman sitting beside me, she was sobbing. Now I’m seating on the couch listening to ABBA at full volume. Good thing I live in the gay village… I really want to see the movie again! The mission now is to try to convince a friend who doesn’t like ABBA that she has to see it… Such a feel-good movie.

Dercy Gonçalves was a Brazilian comedienne famous for her humorous use of foul language and improvisation. I remember being fascinated by her as a child since I couldn’t conceive of a woman older than my grandmother cursing like a sailor. The truth is that Dercy was quite a conservative woman but she discovered quite early on that if she said a curse word, people would laugh. So she made it her trademark. She died yesterday at the age of 101 (although she claimed to be 103).

Here’s Dercy at a talkshow in Brazil:

And a scene from a soap opera set in a fictitious 18th-century kingdom, in which Dercy played the mother of the ruling queen. The soap was broadcast at the 7 pm time slot so couldn’t really contain much coarse language but she was very funny nonetheless:

So, Quebec City is celebrating its 400th this year. Among the highlights of events to mark the date, is a free outdoor concent by Paul McCartney on the Plains of Abraham. While some people were looking forward to the festivities, a group of prominent Quebec artists and politicians penned an open letter to Paul McCartney criticizing his role in the celebrations, saying it reminded them of their oppression by the English. The whole event would probably have been relegated to the annals of bizarre Quebec sovereigntist moments if Sir Paul hadn’t answered saying it was about time Quebecers “smoke the pipes of peace” and the local population didn’t turn out to be Beatles’ fans. Soon, the artists and politicians were back-pedalling like mad, claiming they were “misunderstood”. Last I heard, the sovereigntists were receiving hate mail. From francophones.

According to a report released yesterday by Statistics Canada, Toronto’s overall crime rate fell 11% last year making it the lowest crime rate among cities with over 500,000 people in Canada. The total number of homicides has increased, however, to a total of 111 last year, making it 2/100,000 which is still below the national average of 3.5. Unfortunately, the perception in the rest of the country is still that Toronto is somehow more violent - yesterday, the Montreal Gazette published the same report by concluding that “Toronto is the murder capital of Canada.”

So, this is what the new hair look like if dried naturally with the help of some live-in hair cream to help define the curls a bit.This was at the wedding we attended this past weekend in Montreal.

PS: I’m laughing inside a bit because we were standing at our friend’s front porch and Alan went up one step (or I went down one, I don’t remember) so we could be the same height. I was wearing high heels but he didn’t care; Alan loves the fact that I’m taller…

I’ve posted this before but I like it so much I decided to publish it again to remind ourselves of some perspective…

We’ve lived without a TV for the past 17 months without a problem. It wasn’t a major sacrifice - we perhaps watched only about 4-5 hours of TV/week. I did miss watching the news and the odd documentary  and have tried to keep up by watching videos on the internet. Unfortunately, internet tv is not quite up there yet in quality and after missing the Wimbledon final and with the Olympics just around the corner (yes, I do like to watch international level sports), we finally gave in and bought a tv set. I won’t be subscribing to cable or satellite service though - the channels we get through the open cable seem good enough and the plan is to get free over-the-air HD channels buying a simple antenna.

The only downside is not being able to say we don’t have a TV anymore. The expression on people’s face was priceless ;)