La bonne bouffe Coréenne

I'm a big fan of all foods coming from Asia, but in recent years I've gotten particularly into the Korean. I think part of it is that there is no good Japanese food here in Montreal and we have only now started to get a nice little wave of interesting Chinese food in the Concordia ghetto (and most welcome that development is!). But there has always been one or two quality Korean restaurants here and we've been favouring them.

But I think another reason that I am favouring Korean food is because of the cold. I'm pulling this theory right out of my ass, but Korea has a real winter climate and many of their dishes are designed to have the best taste and be most comforting in the cold weather. I realized that today while having a hot ramyon soup (basically fancy ramen) at Miga. Korean food is served piping hot, with a special flat sipping spoon. It is also spicy, but not in an overwhelming way. Also, as soon as I walked in, they brought me a hot tea, not too strong. Sitting there, sipping away on my soup, listening to Radio-Classique, looking at the snowy day outside, I felt very warm and comforted.

The ramyon is an easy choice for new palates, but there are several other really delicious hot soups. I also like the little fried tofu balls to start out with at Miga.

Give them a try!

Miga is on Rachel and Rivard, just one block east of St.Denis. It's right across the street from Frite-Alors.

Two winter scenes: inside and out

This irresponsible bike owner helps us to see the total snow fall we've had so far this winter. The long term predictions for lots of snow and cold are looking good at this point!

The organization downstairs from us got creative and seasonal with their coffee station!

La chenillette me fait chier!

La famille Chenillette

The french of Québec can be quite elusive. Sometimes it seems that it's better to find out a bunch of words and then ask if they are the correct ones rather than just ask people what the word for something is. The relevant case in point is snow plow. Each winter, I ask people how you say snowplow and I never really get a solid answer. The most solid I've heard is "déneigeuse", but it seemed too literal. People also speak of the "chasse-neiges", but that refers to the entire range of snow-removing vehicles (and possibly non-vehicles as well).

Even more elusive is the word for the little guy that does the sidewalks. These, as my longtime readers will well know, are a favourite of mine. Little diesel smokers that tear up and down the sidewalks, mangling bikes, scaring pedestrians and (as we will see) smashing fences. Well I just learned about the word "Chenillette".

Un chenille is a caterpillar. It's also used to describe any tracked vehicle (like a tank or a snow plow). So you can say "une véhicule à chenille" or even use it as an adjective, "chenillé". So a chenillette is a little tracked vehicle and was used for those small, tracked gun cars in WWII as well as snow plows on mountains in France. I polled the office and only a few of the Québécois referred to the sidewalk plow as a chenillette, but definitely one or two of them did. Also, chenille is not pronounced shuh-nee, it's pronounced schneeyuh. And you can use it to refer to a tractor just like we do in english (though I'm not sure if that is because of the brand name; which may in turn come from their mode of transportation).



In this conversation, I also finally learned the word "la charrue" which means snowplow! Why was this a big secret? How come when I asked how you say snowplow in french, nobody just said charrue? It's so weird. In any case, une charrue is also a big old ugly woman and quite offensive. There is also the very good phrase "placer la charrue devant les boeufs" which is the french equivalent of placing the cart before the horse. Good to know!

La famille Charrue [does this go too far?]

The building I live in has a teeny front yard, which is the right and responsibility of the owner of the Rez-de-chaussée (ground floor). It has a small wooden fence in front of it and every year, because of the closeness of the sidewalk tree, it gets damaged by the chenillette, who has to maneuver closely by it. Last winter, our neighbour moved the fence's rail on the backside of the post to create another 4 inches of maneuvering room. She also put up some orange flags. So this summer, we went for the same. I did the work and also re-attached the missing vertical slats. The downstairs neighbour's daughter's boyfriend re-did her front gate entirely (and did quite a nice job; he was surprisingly handy).

I don't know if there was something exceptionally difficult or if we have a new chenillette driver, but after the very first snowfall, the dude just went absolutely hogwild, took out half the slats and an entire gate. And then last night, he took out half the slats on the other side. And despite that, he still can't seem to properly clear the sidewalk in front of our place. There remains a mound a good 10 inches above the rest of the sidewalk. I respect these guys and their work, but come on! How come we only lost a few slats in the last few winters and now all of a sudden the whole thing is taken out in the first snowfall? I did notice that the chenillette is red and I think the one last year was yellow, so it could be that this model is bigger in some way and harder to maneuver.

I really don't feel like fixing the fence every year. I had suggested just getting rid of it, but the downstairs neighbour said without a fence, you get way more dogs taking a shit and other stuff. Now I'm scheming of perhaps a removable fence, which we can just lift up and store in the backyard for the winter. Might be a cool project.

So to my francophone readers, what do you call the little sidewalk snowplows?

And for your visual pleasure and edification, here are some images of the damage:

Look at our stubbornly proud little reflecting flags, trying to so hard to be helpful and yet looking pretty guilty for their failure at this point. It's not your fault, guys! You did your best.

You can see how the snow rises here. Our fence was destroyed but they still didn't manage to clear the snow.

Well the gate itself is intact, but the entire post holding it in the ground has been sheared off.

It's the fencacolypse!

I tried to capture the mound here, where the plow didn't get down to the sidewalk. You can't really see the different levels, but you can see where the sidewalk is exposed on either side of it. This, combined with the excessive amount of leaves and garbage we accumulate relative to the rest of the block is starting to make me feel kind of paranoid.

Au printemps, mes amis!

I stepped out of my office in the very beginning of the way-too-early evening and heard the haunting cry far above me of a flock of geese heading south for the winter. It always amazes me when I think of those birds just flying together like that for days at a time, traveling such long distances, somehow knowing how to stay in formation.

Have a safe journey!

Get 'er done!

Good work fellas!


Also, saw these dudes through my office window, shoveling around on the roof, trying to find something buried under the snow, maybe another trapdoor or a leak. The snow makes more work for humans!

4-5 cm of snow

The word according to the meteorologists was that we were expecting 4-5 cm of snow overnight and partly throughout Monday. Instead it snowed and snowed all day Monday and all night and we got a pretty serious dump of over 30 cm. The city (and its citizens) was caught a bit off guard. They are saying the snow should be cleared off in at best 5 days (a tip of the hat to the always reliable Montreal City Weblog for that link). Only problem, we're supposed to be getting another 10+ cm next weekend! Bring it on! Man, the commute must have been a beast this morning!

This is what you see when your toque has blocked your hearing until it's too late while stumbling along the narrow rut of an uncleared sidewalk snow path. It's a stoned and drunk sidewalk snowplow operator barrelling up from behind you and he is stopping for nothing! Quickly find some balcony stairs or dive into the snowpile on the street side!

Phew, you just made it. And you happened to arrive at the foot of my stairs. What a pleasant suprise, a frail, shivering university lad! Why don't you come on in and warm yourself up some, sonny boy? That ferocious snowplow must have given you quite a scare. Here, have some hot chocolate. Go on, drink it up. Yes, that's right. Drink it all down. There's a lad. You're safe now...

I think I saw a dude stealing a bike yesterday

I was riding home for lunch and right on the corner of my block a dude was bent over a bike attached to the pole. When I stopped and looked to see what he was doing, I saw that he had a short piece of rebar and was using it to leverage out the U-lock. He was about 6' tall, with polarized glasses, a beard and a big hooded blue puffy coat. The bike was a newish, standard-quality silver mountain bike and there was a red helmet attached to it. It looked sort of feminine and he definitely did not. So I asked him why he was doing that (in french) and he said "I lost my keys" (in accented english). I stood and watched him and he definitely was watching me. I was maybe 20' away. He succeeded in breaking the lock. He picked up the rear fender he had knocked off and the helmet and quickly rode away. I followed him, but he lost me heading the wrong way on St. Laurent. He rode on to the sidewalk and since I am trying to abide by the law on my bike, I hesitated and got blocked by oncoming traffic.

This whole episode has left me with bad feelings. I really feel like I should have stopped him. The problem and most reasonable people agree with me, is that I had no way of knowing for sure that he was stealing the bike. It could have been his girlfriend's who lost her keys and he was pissed about having to go get it. But now looking back, I'm pretty sure the guy was a thief and I should have just jumped in and beat him with my own u-lock. It doubly bugs me because this was right on my block and it would have been a very good opportunity to send a message about where junkies and thieves should and should not feel comfortable getting up to their shenanigans. And finally, I'm bummed that the guy got away from me. There was a time when I could have stuck with him all the way to hell and back, but I'm getting older and careful and I was aware that I only had 45 minutes left on my lunch hour. If I had followed him to an address and it turned out the bike was stolen, then I could have left a sign on the pole and the police could have tracked the dude down.

So what should I do next time? Get more aggressive and ask more questions? Pretend I know whose bike it is? Just prevent anyone trying to unlock a bike with a piece of rebar as a general rule?