60 laps later!

I am so exhausted. This morning I was up at 5am. I don't know why, but I couldn't sleep past 5am. Not a big deal considering how I set my alarm clock for 5:45 anyway. I decided today is the day.

So after a quick breakfast (low fat, low carb, high protein) I headed to the pool for my first masters' swim in a while. I am so outta shape. I only managed to swim 60 laps, which is about 1500m. Not much. I used to swim about 4km. Argh! Oh well. So that was 14 hours ago and I can already feel my triceps, biceps, quads, lats, traps, etc. YIKES! I am going to one hurting number. So now, on top of this, I have to figure out what my training schedule is going to be like because I am going to be in that JBL triathlon, come hell or high water. I am going to give my self this week to get back into swimming and this weekend I'll take Brandon out for a ride (Brandon is my Specialized road bike!)

Other than that there really isn't much going on right now. BORING! I spent the weekend doing school work. Woo hoo! I am telling you, Management Frameworks are not that interesting.

My mother used to say : "If you don't have anything intelligent to say, don't say anything at all."

So... That's all folks!

Toronto Photos Are Here!!

Hey all! My brother finally sent me the pics from the weekend! I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.



Top Left : Micheal (Joel's Roomate)
Top Right : Me
Bottom Left : Marc (Joel's Roomate)
Bottom Right: Joel (my Brother)

Joel Climbing

My brother Joel doing some climbing at the MEC in Toronto

Me, climbing?

Here I am wall climbing at the MEC in Toronto.

CN Tower

Looking up to the CN Tower

Royal Alexandra Theatre

Here I am in front of the Roayl Alexandra Theatre before going to see Mamma Mia!

Photoblogging... what will they think of next?

Well well well. Photo Blogging is here! I am just testing this out. Here is a picture of Patrick (on the right) and me at my first Triathlon in Lac Beauport!

Mamma Mia!

Well, once again, I marvel at the technology that we are lucky enough to have in this day and age. Today’s blog is coming to you from seat 7F on West Jet flight 766 with service to Montreal. As I already commented previously, West Jet, has offered a smooth as butter flight, boarding and service. The main difference being that the French recording has been replaced by a French speaking flight attendant. She is definitely not a francophone but I definitely appreciate the fact that they have someone who speaks French on staff! Way to go West Jet!

So, my trip to Toronto is over. To be honest I am really looking forward to landing in Montreal. There is nothing like leaving your home to make you realize just how much you like it there. Don’t get me wrong, Toronto is a great city, and I am sure I will visit again sometime, but I am too much of a Montrealer to spend extended time away from my adopted home city.

An interesting thing happened this weekend. I actually got to relax. I forgot about work, forgot about school, and forgot about everything really. I got to spend time walking around and doing things I like without giving much attention to price or reason. I think is going to be my last attempt at self indulgence for a while. I need to bolt myself down and get serious about a lot of things in the very near future!

So what have I been up to this weekend? Well first things first.

Friday night!

I was greeted at the Airport by Michelle, Melissa and Joël (my little brodah, one of 3). When then went to some Irish pub in the Annex, had a beer, then walked around downtown T.O. I was really exhausted and decided to head on home and to bed around midnight. I slept like a baby.

Saturday!

Saturday morning we slowly awoke. Joël, Bruno and I went to eat a juice/vegetarian place somewhere across the street from Much Music studios. After some more walking around and grabbing a digital camera from Médiatique, we then ventured into Moutain Equipment Coop for a quick look around. Well, to our joy, they were offering free wall climbing to all their members that day. Joël and I watched little children climb up and figured we could do better than those little brats, so off we went. I got about ¾ of of the way up, and of course Joël made it all the way to the top. It was valiant effort nonetheless. It is very hard to climb walls. But I really enjoyed it. I think I might actually join a climbing club. JR has been bugging me to do it for a while now; maybe I will actually get around to doing it.

After wearing out our body climbing, a more relaxed afternoon was in order. Completely by chance, we came across the St-Alexandria Theatre, and there was a 2pm showing of Mamma Mia! with tickets available at the orchestra level. Well, 94$ x 2 later, were laughing and singing along with the cast enjoying what can only be described as one of the funniest, most entertaining musicals I have ever seen!!

I spent the rest of the evening relaxing, reading and surfing.

Sunday :

Sunday was spent wandering the streets of Toronto, but not before we had breakfast at the Pulp Kitchen, a vegan restaurant where Bruno works. I had a very delicious eggless omelette, complete with potatoes, salad and fair trade coffee.

Joël and went to see a movie, 13 going 30. A light comedy about a girl who, on her 13th birthday, wishes she was 30, and does get her wish. As you can tell, a masterpiece of Hollywood cinema again!

Monday, we went for breakfast at "Hello Toast", and then we just ran around the city, sipping coffee. Yay Tim Horton!

I will put some pictures up as soon as I have a chance. The flight attendant just announced that we are landing. So, gotta go ya all!

Ok... So now what

Well hello from T.O..

I don't have much to report so far. I got here all in one piece and so far so good! The flight was fantastic!! THANK YOU WESTJET!! Honestly, I have never had a more enjoyable experience in aviation. What a fantastic airline! The staff was friendly, the ride was amazing, and they actually arrived 20 minutes early. The whole ticketing & boarding process was so efficient, I thought I was on a German train not a Canadian plane!! What really amazed me was how friendly the staff were, they actually smiled and looked like they enjoyed their jobs! They had team spirit! And the plane had leather seats for everyone. I had more leg room on Westjet than compared to any other air carrier I know. The only thing that slightly pissed me off is that the flight crew did not speak French. This is not acceptable for an airline flying out of Montreal. However, I will give credit to the co-pilot who did the captain's spiel in French, but that was the only French that did not come out of a cheesy recording. All the English stuff was done verbaly by the flight attendants. I found that a bit insulting, specially since the flight attendants did not instruct the anglos to be quiet, so you couldn't hear anything anyway. But, lets give them time, they have only recently been serving a bigger share of the French Canadian market.

You are probably wondering at this point why I am not writting my blog in French Since I feel so strongly about language issues... Ugh. Well, I will save that for another blog, another day. As a French-Canadian born outside of Québec, now living in Québec but visiting Toronto, boy do I ever have a thing or two say about the language issue. Starting with those idiots who mocked my brother and I while we were walking down Bloor St just because we were speaking in French. I'll probably have more to say about that later on this weekend.

So what should I do next. I think I might go visit the CN Tower tommorrow.

Have you guys checked out the Profanity Poll. So far, the NO side is winning by a significant margin. If you haven't voted yet, what are you waiting for... CLICK HERE.

Thanks for reading guys!

Warning, This Blog has been rated R!

OK. Some of you, do not like the four letter F word or the four letter S word very much. In fact, some of you dislike it so much that you took time to write me about it. Some of you might have even been offend by my choice of adjectives in some of my previous blogs. Well, I respect that. Its your opinion. However... I am not sure that changes anything for me. I can see how someone who only knows me through certain channels might be surprised by a more colorful usage of the English language. I do not run around the office, or any place for that matter, shooting my mouth off trying to offend people. So I guess the point I am trying to make is that, this blog, in some way is to me an art form. I like the idea of having my thoughts written down and having someone, anyone or you, reading them and then telling me what they think. I was thrilled to get such an eloquent response from one of the readers of the blog. Seriously, this person wrote me in a very nice way to tell me that she was disappointed and thought that such language was not warranted (I am paraphrasing).

In a way, she is right. She is right, because it can be considered offensive. I am certain to some people it is. But its not offensive to me. I don't think my mother would even be offended. Actually, I am sure she will tell me next time I talk to her because I did inviter her and her girlfriend to come visit my blog. In fact, I am very proud of my blog, I like how it looks, I like the content I have provided so far, so I am extremely pleased with the results. Now, this content. Should I abstain from using profanity. I wonder what you guys think. Well, here is an idea. Why don't you answer that question yourself. Click here to take my profanity poll. Do you think I should abstain from using profanity on my blog? Let me know what you think. The poll is 100% anonymous, I will not log your IP, or anything. The only think I will do is place a cookie on your machine so that I know you haven't voted a billion times.

In a couple of weeks, I will close the poll and we can see what you think. Ok.. Enough of that.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN. Yes boys and girls, I am taking my laptop and I am off to T.O. tomorrow. I am rewarding myself with a plane ticket as soon as my paycheck is deposited into my bank account later this evening, and I am flying to T.O. My brother says he will be happy to see me. I am going to ask James to borrow his digicamera, and we will be all set to go to Toronto. I will be blogging from Toronto! So I should have some interesting things to report while I am there. I am actually going to check to see if there is any SARS left. Hehehe.

So don't forget to vote!

Hi. My name is Gabriel and I am a geek.

Yes, the rumors are true, I am a geek. In fact, I am such a big geek that I have some geek news to share with you all. Today, after I got home from work, I tuned into TechTV, my absolute favorite TV Channel. Of course, its only available through digital TV providers, but it is well worth the cash. And to my great pleasure, they announced that WIL WHEATON will be hosting Call For Help on Friday the 21st and Monday the 24th of May 2004. Ok... I was so excited, I just had to share the news.

And since we are on a geek mode today, I will also share this with you : GMAIL ROCKS. I have had a few weeks to test this web based email service, and my advice to you, is you better line up now to get your email account before its too late. Well actually, you can't line up right away because they are only offering it to a few thousand beta testers (HA HA), but you should put your name down on the waiting list ASAP. You would hate to miss the opportunity to have youname@gmail.com and be stuck with youname23432342@gmail.com.

Ok, why should you consider this email service? There are hundreds of really good services already available. You might even think that the web based email market does not need another email service. Well, I really believe that GMAIL is going to change how we view email and force Hotmail and Yahoo! to rethink what service they offer, and here is why:

• 1 GIGABYTE of space


• Keep all your emails forever


• Google Like searching


• Easy to use interface


• Fantastic Conversation tracking feature lets you group emails by topic


• Better than most email services that charge you for 100 megs of space


• Google adds are hardly noticeable and actually relevant to YOUR interests

So... Hurry hard, and point your browsers to http://gmail.google.com. Trust me on this one.

Gabriel

The laundry room occupation

I am sure you have all heard about the west-bank, Palestinians vs Jews vs the world, etc. I think that as a gay Acadian man, I know a thing or two about genocide. I know what its like to be part of an oppressed people... But this whole squatting in the homeland gets me so riled up and pissed off... ARGH! Anyway, that's not what I want to talk about today. What I would like to talk about, is the two very retarded looking gentlemen who decided that they were going to occupy my dryer today. You will see how these two topics related later. Keep reading...

So, the events of the last few weeks, finishing my second graduate class, work, funeral, etc, have led me to forsake some of my activities of daily living. Laundry, dishwashing, carpet cleaning, bed making and sometimes deodorant wearing have had to make way for more pressing matters. So, now that things seem to have calmed down a little bit, I decreed Sunday, today, my catch up day. I even went through my stack of mail that was sitting on the microwaves (yes, with an "s" because there are 2 microwaves stacked neatly one over the other, long story).

I got started on my laundry ritual after 1 hour of washing dishes. No, they are not all done, I just got really bored of washing dishes. I proceeded to the closet of doom and tried to make 3 piles of clothes: dirty white clothes, dirty dark clothes and clean clothes. I then stuffed all the dirty clothes clothes into my laundry bag. My laundry bag is actually a blue US Postal Service M-Bag that has FOREIGN MAIL written across it. I hauled my M-Bag down to the laundry room and begun my laundry. The wash cycle ended and then I moved the clothes from the washer to the dryer. No incidents yet. You need to understand something about my laundry ritual. I have carefully studied the art of doing laundry, and I have fined tuned my skills so I know, how much laundry the dryer can support and dry correctly on a 1.25$.

So... 40 minutes pass, down I go to fetch my pail of laundry. I get down there, as expected, there is 5 minutes left to the cycle. So I wait patiently, breathing in the fresh laundry smell. Then... I see, what can only be described as the most retarded looking Jewish guys I have ever seen. Now, they are not retarded because they are Jewish, they just happen to be Jewish and retarded. So... I am the only who has been doing laundry that day, so I wonder why these empty handed bozos are heading my way. They are looking very sheepish, and seem to be perturbed by the fact that I am standing in front of my clothes. The events that then ensued can only be compared to an Armistead Maupin novel. The weirdest looking one of two (bugley eyes, big mouth, big nose, disproportionate body, and frazzled brown curly hair) approached and spoke : "Uhm, we borrowed your machine". Ok... What the hell is this moron talking about. I said : "What do you mean you borrowed my machine?" Then the genius's friend repeated "We borrowed your machine, can you get out of the way please?" I had a surge of panic flow from my toes to my brain as I watched the weirdoes bend over, stop the dryer cycle, and rummage though my work clothes to fetch out an old, dirty, disgusting looking shoulder bag. Ok... The big mouth of destruction open up and then I yelled "You can't put your shit in other people's laundry!" They turned around, thanked me and proceeded back to the elevator. OH MY GOD I WAS SO MAD. This is insane! My work clothes!!!!! Thank god they didn't shove into the whites... But then again... ITS A BUCK AND 25 CENTS. Cheap bastards.

So, from now on, I am going to sit on top of my laundry like a hen on her eggs.

DAMN YOU CHEAP MORONS!

Funerals Suck

Wednesday morning JR's father passed away. We knew the day was comming but its never easy. Part of me is glad its finally over because now JR and his sisters can move on with their lives. Since thier mother passed away 18 months ago, its been hell for them. Taking care of their father through cancer and Alzheimers has been a very rough ride.

Last night at the viewing they all looked so exhausted. I think the most difficult part for me was watching JR going through all of this. He has not slept or eaten much in a week, and he looks so miserable. I don't know what to do to help. I have offered, but as usual he is too busy making sure everyone else is happy and taken care off to take care of himself.

Last night I got to meet the entire family and what seemed like all of Barbados. What an interesting buch of people. I couldn't believe they hung around the funeral home until the owners had to kick them out. JR and his sisters had been there all day were looking forward to getting some rest, specially LR2 who had just flew in from Europe that day.

The funeral service was very nice. I had never been to a protestant funeral before. All i knew of these ceremonies were the boring catholic crap i was forced into as a kid. I will admit the ceremony was very moving and much more interesting than a traditional catholic funeral. During the funeral, I thought alot about my mom and how lucky I am to have my parents alive. I also wondered what it must be like for JR not to have any parents anymore. It was very emotional for me, allthough I didnt know Mr R. personally, I was moved by what everyone was saying about him. I don't know if it was the sun shining through the windows, the hymns sung acapella, or the moment itself, but I could not help but cry thinking about how unfair life can be sometimes.

There has been a lot of death near me in the last little while. My friend ER lost her father a few weeks ago. My friend RL lost her 3 day old baby to a brain hemorrage last week. Now, I am genuinely concerned for my grandmother who is over 80 years old and was hospitalised 2 weeks ago after falling down in her special care home.

I have never had anyone close to me die. Today was the closest it has been. Through JR, I was able to get a glimpse of what that is like and I can tell you, its not easy. The next few months, perhaps even year or so, is not going to be easy for him. I dont know how I will help him. We will see I guess.

One amusing thing did happen today. I learned that wherever there is a bunch of Bajans, there will be food. And oh my god do Bajans ever love food. When it came time at the reception to chow down, I got out of the way and let them get to the buffet first! I saw women stuffing their purses with pastries, filling plates to take home, and people hogging the potato salad. But that does not compare to the lady I saw scoping out the other funeral receptions to see what other culinary delights were being served. She was politely escored out by the funeral director. As I was telling JR's sisters, I wonder what it would have been like if they served jerk chicken, cuckoo or fishcakes! (Bajan delicassys) Oh and in case you didnt know... A Bajan is a person from Barbados. (I didnt know that until recently)

Anyway...all good things must come to an end... And so must this blog entry.
Thanks for reading.

My TV Show - JOB

Well hello again. Its been a while but what can I say other than, Yeah, I am busy. So piss off.

Good things happen and I want to start off this blog by saying a big THANK YOU to the folks at Google for giving me access to their Gmail web email service! I have been waiting with bated breath for this to finally come on line!

Second good thing. I started my new job last week. I have moved up the corporate ladder and have become a Project Manager for a major aviation company as an employee for a major international consulting firm with a fat salary to boot. So hurrah for me!

And finally, the moment you have all been waiting for, the premiere of the reality show that I will be on was last night. Yes ladies and gentleman, I, Gabriel Robichaud, lowly little Acadian from Cap-Pelé, New-Brunswick CANADA will be appearing on the french language network Canal Vie. Soon, the same show will air in english on Life Network. So stay tuned!

But all good things must come to an end. My masters work is going well but I am swamped with work. I am just about to finish my second class. I found out today that the deadline for this class is on Tuesday the 12th and not Tuesday the 19th. FUCK. I am pissed because now my hole plan is screwed up and I am FUBAR because my whole planning is screwed up. This is why I need a PDA. Today I went and poked around and I think I found the PDA of my dreams: the HP IPAQ H1940. I have decided that I am abandoning the Palm OS after 4 years and 3 broken screens later, I think the Pocket PC family of os's has finally made it up to par.

I am trying desperately to motivate myself back to the pool and into training mode. Last year at this time I was training like crazy trying to prepare for the season's triathlons. This year, I have not set foot inside the gym since the last triathlon in September of 2003. P A T H E T I C ! ! Oh and did I mention the weight gain. I am not amused. I guess I really need to get my act in gear! I am very disgusted with myself. The worst part is that you feel like garbage when you don't work out. So I am going to try to get to the pool tomorrow morning. One step at a time. Tomorrow the pool, Thursday I will go running and Friday the pool and Saturday I will go road biking, YEAH! We will see I guess. Oh shit... How the hell am I going to finish the assignment with all this training! I am actually thinking of canceling my membership at the y and joining the heath club at work because that way I could at least do something on my lunch hour. I don't know.... We will see. I just hope that I can get back in the whole routine of working out.

Today

This morning I could not get out of bed. I was so tired. I ended up showing at work 20 minutes late, but I guess that doesn't matter much since I usually leave 30 minutes late, sometimes later. I had lunch with Sue-Marie again today, after which we went to Bureau en Gros to look at office supplies, hence the inspiration to get an IPAQ. The mood with her is much better now that sticky work situation has blown over. But I guess I shouldn't get used to it yet, there is always tons of fuel to throw on the work fire.

So that's all for today. Hopefully I will be back soon!