BBQ in Gatineau

I took a vacation back in my hometown of Gatineau (Québec) at the end of June this year. We organized a BBQ at my parent's place on my last night there so everyone could get together. It was good times, here's a photo of some of my friends back east.

Where/How I live.

A couple of people have expressed interest in having photos posted of what my appartment looks like. It certainly isn't much, but I didn't know what to do with myself tonight so ... here are the pics ...

Here are two pics of my kitchen, where I make stir-fries and other exciting dishes on a monthly basis.

Here's a pic from inside my kitchen, overlooking the main area of my appartment. Notice the can of maple syrup, I have it out to remember to give to one of my friends who is leaving Canada soon.

Here's a photo of my bathroom (I know, it hasn't been cleaned in a while ...).

Of my "awake" time in my place, I probably spend about 75% of it here. On the couch or at the computer ...

My "dining" table has actually 4 chairs, but I don't think I've ever used more than 2 of them simultaneously ... these things can actually gather lots of dust!

Photo of my balcony, with candles added for dramatic effect.

I hope this was all more interesting to you than it was to me ...

See ya.

Powell Street Festival

It was awesome weather in Vancouver yesterday (Saturday) so I headed down to the 'Powell Street Festival' with a friend of mine. The festival is meant to celebrate Japanese culture here in Canada, it's the biggest of its kind in the country. It was held in Oppenheimer park in Vancouver (yes, we took the park away from the drug addicts for a day).

As with any festival, the food was plentiful. The afternoon pretty much began by having some "mochi" or rice cakes. It's called "cakes" but it's actually not sweet at all. Think of rice being boiled to the point of being in some sort of jell-o texture, garnished with soy sauce and served inside a piece of seaweed paper. This was one of the food areas.

We checked out some Japanese swordfighting after that (called "iaido"). It was interesting but definitely not exciting. Here's a picture from the early stages when they were still using pieces of wood that were picked up in Japan thousands of years ago.

Check out the white dude near the front of the picture. I don't really know why, but I always find it weird to see caucasians taking part in very traditional martial arts (yeah, I'm a horrible person). The guy right to the left of him kicked ass though, he had tatoos all over his neck and arms and was really agile with the katana. It would've been awesome to see the two fight to the death!

Before leaving we saw a group of people raise a "mikoshi" (a small portable shrine).

The idea is that everyone gets really excited (with two people standing on top of the mikoshi to cheer them on) and then they parade around holding the thing on their shoulders. It looked like it was really fun, next time I'll have to try lending a helping hand. Kind of afraid to break my back though, I wouldn't have it as easy as some of the shorter folk (check out two of the girls near the back).

Peace out.

Testing the system

This is just a tiny little test to verify that posting indeed works in blogger.

This is a picture of myself taken last year when we hiked up to Black Tusk mountain in Squamish (near Whistler in British Columbia).