The Debate Rages On

The debate wages on, at the moment. In one corner, we have those that believe that this little Montreal experiment has run its course. In the other, we have a small faction that believes there’s a world of opportunity waiting for me to find it. As per usual, I’m on the fence. If I had the slightest idea what to do right now, I could move forward with confidence—even if moving forward meant moving back to the city I fought so hard to escape.

So for my own sanity, I’m going to try and go through the two arguments and hopefully come up with some sort of profound decision by the end. Let’s start with the arguments for staying in Montreal:

1) My love of the French language and Quebecois culture. Though I haven’t done nearly as much exploring in recent months as I would have liked, I’m still intrigued by this place. There’s still so much to explore here.
2) The festivals. If I make the long trek home, I would be doing so JUST before the festival season starts. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that summers in Montreal are one helluva good time.
3) The cost of Education. Though I can’t presently afford to keep taking courses, I’m now a Quebec resident and, as such, get the in-province rate. For those unfamiliar with the difference between in-province and out-of-province rates in Quebec, it can come out to approximately 60% difference in tuition rates. And since I’ve already experienced firsthand my need for additional education, it makes more sense to do it where it’s cheaper.
4) The nagging sense of unfinished business. I’ve felt this before, actually… when I was in the Kinesiology department. I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve got things to do and goals to accomplish here. Mind you, the KIN adventure was a less than stellar experience by the end, so my gut feelings really shouldn’t be trusted at this point.

So now to balance things off, I should look at London and the merits of heading back to the Forest City:

1) My whole support system is there. My family and my closest friends all live in London (at least for the time being). As much as they’ve driven me crazy over the years, I definitely miss having them around. I miss talking to people. Truth be told, if I don’t have a class or something, then I don’t talk to another person after I leave work. That takes its toll on a person after a while. Part of the reason I haven’t gone out to do more in this city is I’ve gotten tired of doing everything alone.
2) Lack of a language barrier. Here, I’m an Anglophone who speaks French with a clearly anglo accent. Back home, I would be considered an asset as I’m (by Ontario standards) fully bilingual. Regardless of what people say, the truth is that Anglophones are at a disadvantage when trying to find work in Quebec. They hold us to different standards in French than we do for English. So be it.
3) Cost cutting. By moving back in with my parents for a bit (God help me), I could cut my costs in half while I try and get debts under control.

There are obviously no guarantees that either choice is the “right” one. In looking at the two arguments, I see a conflict between my head and my heart. My heart tells me to stay and fight it out, but my head tells me not to put any more obstacles in my path than necessary. The job market in London still sucks, but if I’m being screened out of the majority of jobs in Montreal anyway, then it’s probably an equal playing field in either city.

So now I’ll open the floor up for discussion. Should you wish to chime in with your opinion, I encourage you to do so. Also, if anyone has any job leads in either city (London or Montreal), I would appreciate hearing about them. Til next time…

Bye Izabelle!!

The landscape of Musique Plus changed last night as the folks at Plus Sur Commande bid a fond farewell to longtime VJ, Izabelle Desjardins. When I first learned she was leaving via MySpace (she had sent out a bulletin to everyone on her friendlist), I was a bit puzzled. After all, this girl had pretty much become the face of the station over the last couple of years. She was the first VJ I ever remember seeing when I tuned into the station in the summer of 2004. From what she’s written, she has other things that she wanted to explore, so I wish her the best of luck.

It’ll be interesting to see what will happen with this new VJ Recherchée contest that they’re running to replace Iza. I had seriously frowned on Muchmusic’s American Idol meets the Real World reality show concept a couple of years back, so I’ve got my doubts about what they’ll come up with here. But that being said, Musique Plus has always had a way of conveying its own unique character over the airwaves so I’m optimistic that they’ll find someone decent. Still, the next girl has some pretty big shoes to fill!

I had hoped that someone would have been kind enough to post some clips of her last show on YouTube, but no one has been that slick yet. So instead, I’ll post one of the videos they played during Iza’s last show. Sorry to my readers who check out this blog via Facebook, but I don’t think that the embedded video will transfer through on the newsfeed, so you’ll have to come directly to my blogsite. The song is Chewing Gum Fraise by Numéro (featuring Omnikrom). Enjoy!

Maddy's on the Office!

One of my faithful readers, who identifies herself as Lina in the comments section from time to time, has dropped the not-so-subtle hint that my blog has been on a bit of a downward turn with the various bumps I’ve been enduring in the last month between work and school. So I decided I would try and be a bit more upbeat this time and let people in on what I consider to be good news. Granted, it’s not good news for me, specifically, but I’ll live vicariously through this one anyway.

A certain number of you out there know that, over the past few months, I’ve made friends via e-mail with a lovely actress named Maddy Curley. Admittedly, she’s not a household name at this point, so don’t be too distressed if you haven’t heard of her. Her most prominent role was as a supporting actress in the film Stick It (one of my guilty pleasures) as the up-and-coming gymnast, Mina. But what has she done lately?

The answer, dear readers, is that she has been keeping herself busy with independent and short film work that hasn’t hit wide distribution. However in a little over a week, she’ll be popping up in something a bit more mainstream: NBC’s comedy The Office! When she first mentioned it to me, she thought the episode was due to air on April 19, but later said it was April 26. So just to be safe, I’ll watch both weeks (to be honest, I never watch the show, but I'm making an exception for her sake). I’m not sure how much airtime she gets or how many lines, but it’s still cool nonetheless. Good job, Maddy!

So there you have it, folks: Positive news from Al on a Wednesday. Til next time…

***UPDATE April 27, 2007*** For those who tuned in to see Maddy on the show, I'm a bit bummed to say that they cut her scenes. Perhaps they'll show up eventually in the Deleted Scenes for the episode, but given that I'm in Canada, I won't be able to verify that. I'm still proud of her anyway!

the long weekend

Well, it’s all over except for the crying. I finished the second of my night courses last evening and, though I’m not nearly as confident of the outcome as I was about the French to English class, I’m thinking I should finish with a reasonably solid B. Of course anything could happen, so I may well finish with something ghastly like a C. There isn’t an A in the running, though, as I believe that was mathematically impossible. Oh well. Onwards and upwards, right?

Today is important as I’ve got an interview down the hill. I’ve been spending the last 20 minutes or so browsing the unit’s website to see what sort of knowledge I can glean from what they’ve chosen to post. It’s interesting, to be sure. I’m actually somewhat surprised that, in total, the female population of this particular institution is roughly twice the size of the male contingent, with the notable exception of the Faculty of Management, that seems to be an even split. I’m sure there are other interesting tidbits to be found here, but I don’t have the capacity to absorb it all in one sitting. I’ll have to come back later to check things out more thoroughly.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with my travel and social schedule, I just got back from a long weekend spent in the friendly confines of London, Ontario. It was definitely an interesting trip. I had rented a car from Enterprise for Thursday and, though I picked it up about 20 minutes late, was well on my way by 3:30pm or so. I had requested a Hyundai, but got stuck with a Kia. Should I do that again, I’ll upgrade the car if offered the Kia. That thing is a horrible highway car.

Anyway, I’m within rock’s throw from Belleville, a little less than half way to my destination, when I feel something weird. There was a momentary deceleration and a bit of a shift in the car’s direction. Nothing I couldn’t handle, though, but the cars around me started to pass me. Weird, I thought. Then an SUV pulled up beside me with some lunatic hanging out the window, waving and pointing at my car. I look and see him mouthing the words, “Dude, your tire is gone!!!” so after a quick moment of disbelief, I pull over. He was right. The tire was gone. All that remained were scraps of tire, a beat-up hubcap and shiny rims. A quick look at the clock and I knew I was in trouble. It was 7:30pm.

Now at this point, Fate decides to be nice to me. As I’m on the phone with Roadside Assistance, a CAA truck pulls up. We have a quick chat and the guy offers to change my tire and gives me directions to the nearest Canadian Tire store (my best hope for getting home since everything else would be closed). I gladly accept and make it to the store with about 45 minutes until closing time. All told, I lost about 2 hours or so, but I managed to roll up to my parents’ house around 1am Friday morning.

The rest of the weekend was spent with family and friends (with the majority of time being spent at Chris and Rebecca’s house). I also managed to attend a service at Julie’s church. I’ll get into that another time. I hope everyone had a great Easter weekend! Til next time…

Updates from Al

Well, well, well… the last couple of weeks have been quite an adventure, to say the least. To begin, I would like to formally announce that I’m looking for work in and around Montreal. I got the news last week that there just isn’t any money in the budget to maintain my position, so at the end of the fiscal year (May 31) I’ll be handing in my keys and bidding a fond farewell to my little office space. While this is hardly the sort of news I wanted to hear, I was only ever promised a year here so getting an extra 2 and a half months is actually pretty decent. So if any of my readers know of any jobs for Anglophones out there (and though I shouldn’t NEED to emphasize this, I will anyway: NO CALL CENTRES), please feel free to drop me a line.

The next blow to the ol’ ego came last night in the form of a rather thin envelope from McGill’s Department of History. Contained therein was notice that I had been rejected from the Masters program and that my interest in the “highly competitive” program was appreciated. Um, thanks for that, I think… so I guess that clears up any fears I had about how I was going to pay for the MA, huh? Oh well. The next challenge awaits, I guess.

So let’s try and end off on a positive note, shall we? Last night I had the final exam for the French to English Translation course I’ve been blasting through this term. It’s hard to believe that 12 weeks have gone by so quickly, but evidently it has. Now I don’t know if I just got handed something different from everyone else in the room or if my classmates are just far more cautious than I am, but I was done that exam in record time. Sure, I had to look up the occasional word, but otherwise the translation seemed to write itself. All told, in a 90 minute exam, I was done in 45 minutes—and that includes the time I spent re-writing my rough draft! So either I tanked it or I rocked that baby til the break of dawn. We’ll be getting the results back next week, so I guess I’ll find out then if I’m as clever as I believe I am at the moment. Maybe I’ll get lucky on the English to French exam after Easter? Anything’s possible, right? Til next time…

Avril Lavigne, Supporter of Core French Currculum Reform

As I was reading through an article on Avril Lavigne’s new multilingual single “Girlfriend” and I couldn’t help but laugh. Apparently the folks in marketing thought it would be a brilliant move for her to record the chorus in 7 different languages in an attempt to further break through overseas. Not a bad idea. But that’s not the thing that made me laugh.

Y’see, one of the languages chosen for the song’s reworked chorus is French and, despite her VERY French name, Avril doesn’t speak a word of it. This led the journalist (Karen Bliss) into a line of questions that prompted Lavigne to lament the fact that her parents never put her in French immersion classes when she was younger. Considering she’s a high school dropout, I’m not really sure how much good any immersion program would have done for her.

Bliss then takes a timeout during the article to indict the current core French program, saying,

“Considering how Canadian students are required to take French classes from public to high school, it's ridiculous that one doesn't graduate with at least an ability to have a conversation en francais. The curriculum needs to be changed.”

Naturally, this was accompanied by an appropriately supportive quote from Napanee’s former pop punk princess:

“It's so bad," Lavigne agrees. “No one knows (it). Yeah, we had French class every grade, but we didn't do anything. It's not very good at all.”

I don’t disagree with the content of what she said; I just find it funny that anyone would try to use Avril as a means of promoting French language education. It brought to mind the words of the late, great comedian, Bill Hicks, who said,

“When did we start listening to prepubescent white girls? I must have missed that meeting.”

Let’s not hold Avril up as a role model for today’s youth, okay? If anything, she should be used as a warning to anyone thinking of dropping out of school. Yes, she made it. Good for her. But statistically speaking, you won’t make it, so stay in school so you can make something of yourself. But that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong. Til next time…

My Mind is Blank

We’ve hit March 15 and my mind is still a blank. My parents decided to take advantage of March Break this past week and drove up from London to see little ol’ me. As much as I hate to admit it, I do miss my family occasionally. Sure, it was pretty tight quarters, but it’s the price one pays to have visitors in a one bedroom apartment in Montreal. They were able to entertain themselves while I was at work, so I didn’t need to play tour guide.

I also got back the results of my English-to-French midterm and, while hardly spectacular, was well within the low ‘B’ range, which is fine by me at this point. This course was a good litmus test for me and my fluency in French. It showed me that, though I’ve got a reasonable grasp of the language, it’s going to take longer than the duration of this course for me to approach my own demanding performance standards with respect to mastery.

I also recently got the chance to attend a lecture by Sherry Simon, who wrote a book called Translating Montreal: Episodes in the Life of a Divided City (I just ordered a copy of it, by the way). Her observations have prompted me to read her book, since it seems that she took a different look at Translation. To her, translation becomes a tool of cultural contact and exploration (hmmm… sounds like a theme I can support) rather than a replacement of one text with another. I’m curious to see what direction she takes with it.

Alright, I’m off. Til next time…