Embracing Winter in Mont Tremblant

Go big or go home, as they say. Winter is here, and instead of hiding from it, I accepted the invitation of some friends to go to Mont Tremblant, a popular winter (and even summer) retreat about an hour and a half north of Montreal. My friends are renting a lovely country home there with a lovely fireplace even. So, I spent a couple of days taking mountain walks (my muscles still remember hills and I did quite good at the walks!), and relaxing with a cold beer in the evenings.

Rocking on the Maverick Meercat (Ubuntu10.10 for the Netbook)

So, I am no longer relying on Windows on my Acer Netbook in any way - I am a 100% Ubuntu user now on this little machine.

Drawbacks are only that I cannot run iTunes, or Photoshop (I refuse to use WINE).

Other than that, I am having a really great time using only Ubuntu on all 500 gigs of my hard drive. I was not able to merge the disk partitions before, so I formatted the entire drive, and re-installed Ubuntu Netbook from my bootable USB stick, and have been very happy for the last few days. While at first I did not like the new user interface, I have quickly come to appreciate its simplicity and minimalism.

I also really like the new, native photo manager, called Shotwell. Totally happy with my Ubuntu-only machine.

Here is a screenshot.

Embracing Winter in Mont Tremblant

Go big or go home, as they say. Winter is here, and instead of hiding from it, I accepted an invitation to go to Mont Tremblant, a popular winter (and even summer) retreat about an hour and a half north of Montreal. Some friends are renting a lovely country home there with a lovely fireplace even. So, I spent a couple of days taking mountain walks (my muscles still remember hills and I did quite good at the walks!), and relaxing with a cold beer, and warm wine, in the evenings.

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Shaking the Winter Blahs in Montreal

While Brian enjoys some downtime in the lovely non-Christian, non-Christmas celebrating land of Thailand, I find myself a tad overwhelmed by the need to shop and to wrap and to visit. And to put on coats and gloves and boots and scarves....

But alas, there is nothing I can do to get rid of the snow, and really the best thing would be to embrace it.

To that end, I am reading an inspiring ebook by David du Chemin, one of my favourite contemporary photography writers, called The Vision Driven Photographer. I am inspired by David's photography, and he writes in a simple, engaging, inspiring style. You can download his books for $5 each - a steal for me for sure - at www.craftandvisiton.com.

I have plans to go up north to Mont Tremblant on Boxing Day (Dec. 26) to spend the day and night at a friend's place. I hope then to exercise my photography skills and remember a few tricks and get a few decent winter shots!

I really am doing my best to engage winter in a lovely, warming embrace!

Brian's pic from Mai Khao Beach

Brian is enjoying his winter break in a warm, sunny and sandy place. He sent me a photo, taken with his iPhone, of a morning on Mai Khao Beach.

Mai Khao Beach

Ubuntu, Solo

So...as I mentioned, I finally missed Ubuntu too much to do without it, and was attempting to install it on my Win 7 netbook. Well, the install was not smooth at all. Probably due to the way Microsoft set up the Win 7 bootloader, Ubuntu did not see my primary OS. So, I partitioned in Windows using Acronis, setting aside 40 gbs for Ubuntu.

Then I installed Ubuntu, choosing the manual disk partition option, since ist still did not have an option to install alongside my existing os. I chose to install on the 40 gig space, thinking my other 460 gigs were still all windows. But then after install, I did not have the option of booting into windows at all - instead it went straight to Ubuntu.

After lots of questions and answers in the Ubuntu forums, realizing I didn't really have any vital data on the Windows partition, I just scrapped my dual -boot project, and am now running Ubuntu only on all 500 gigs of my HD on my little Acer Aspire One Netbook.

This is the first time I've run Ubuntu solely, not as a dual boot, play-only, OS - and I'm excited by the prospect!!

Christmas in a Christmassy Place

A very brief post this time,  just to say that Christmas has really snuck up on me, and I really am not at all in the holiday spirit. This is because for the past many years, I've not even bothered to acknowledge the holiday, and more often than not, I'd wake up on a beach in a gorgeous, Asian and non-Christian country,  and enjoy a breakfast beer.

This year I am determined to still enjoy the breakfast beer, and I plan to do my Christmas shopping tomorrow, and will be done by X-mas eve.

I am not going to go into a rant about the superficiality of the season, and I actually to wish I were in the spirit.

Finally Quiet

After worrying that I might not find serenity on this big island, I surely have... The warmest locals on the quietest stretch of beach I've ever found. Can't figure out how to upload pics from my iPhone to this blog yet, but will try again later... My ear seems to have healed some from the flight pressure changes, but it might just be the absence of sound here except birds and surf; will check later with tone generators! Tomorrow I'll ride to Phan Nga province, and take pics there too:)

What I Miss

I've been in Montreal for two and a half months now, and as things here move toward the festive, holiday season, and temperatures drop to minus 15 Celsius, I can't help think fondly of a few things I love about Japan.

I miss:

• Onsen - the lovely hot spring spas where you lounge naked in a variety of deep baths (free of chlorine!!)


• The mild climate - I really don't think people were meant to live in sub-zero weather!


• Izakaya - the lovely, small, local Japanese pubs, especially the ones in the suburbs where no gaijin go!


• The shop-keepers I used to chat with, like the lovely ladies at the dry cleaner, or the old woman at the liquor shop

The Beginning of the End of a Dry Spell?

I have done, pretty much, nothing over the last two and a half months since leaving Japan. At least in Japan I was travelling and exploring and preparing for 'the big move'. Once here, I spent about a month adjusting to new things, getting back in touch with old friends, and participating in activities where I could make new ones. And of course, I was waiting for my big delivery from Japan.

And then....

I stalled.

I have been procrastinating pretty much since then, although enjoying my time doing little things like spending a week on a paid painting job (yay!), visiting a spa, doing dinner with friends, etc...

But I have not:

• Been maintaining my blogs


• Working on my new Joomla-run website


• Taking photos


• Working and developing my skills in Photoshop


• Working, period, except for the aforementioned week-long low-paid painting job

But this morning gives me hope that my dry spell is ending. I am currently working out how to install Ubuntu (again) on my Windows 7 netbook. As some may recall, I experienced a total hard disk failure last August or so, and had to replace the disk. I did not then install Ubuntu again, but realized last night that I was missing it quite a lot. So I started to install using the Windows Installer called WUBI. Which did not work no matter what. So, I figured to do a real install. That, it seems, did not want to work either, as it did not recognize my Windows OS. Seems that I have to shrink my windows volume first. I tried to do this, but had no luck as Windows decided it could only shrink the volume by 700 mb.Huh. So I am currently defragging, and will try to re-size again... Worst case scenario is that I lose all the data on my Windows side. No biggie as it is all backed up anyway.

On the job front, despite being told two days ago that I was not a good fit for a particular job, I am still feeling motivated and getting my cv out there. The big thing holding me back is my absolute lack of French. Anything I had thirteen years ago is now gone. I did start taking private lessons, but the teacher was - pardon my French - a real bitch. I was about to find another, better, more centrally located teacher, but a friend insists I could learn by just speaking more with him an others.

So that's what I'm doing - using French whenever I can, and not taking the easy (English!) way out.

Snow Photo

Truckloads of Snow

In case I wasn't quite certain that I was, indeed, back in Montreal, the 25cm of snow dumped on us, and the -10 degree weather, has reminded me.

I want to post pics - although cold, although disrupting traffic and general get-out ness, the newly fallen snow is quite beautiful.

My very short term goal is to definitely post a photo tomorrow! (Another reminder that I am back in the north, is that it is pitch black already, and not even 5p.m.

Cold, Snow, and Learning to Paint

In case I wasn't quite certain that I was, indeed, back in Montreal, the 25cm of snow dumped on us, and the -10 degree weather, has reminded me.

I want to post pics - although cold, although disrupting traffic and general get-out ness, the newly fallen snow is quite beautiful.

My very short term goal is to definitely post a photo tomorrow! (Another reminder that I am back in the north, is that it is pitch black already, and not even 5p.m.

In other news, although I am still among the unemployed, I have an interview at an agency next week, and, more fun than that, every day this week I was working on a temporary (but paying!) job as a painter's assistant. Sounds lame, but I had never even held a paintbrush before, so I am learning a lot this week, and was even praised for my work. I'm sure I won't be allowed to paint the first coat of straight lines or anything, but exciting just the same.

I took this in one of the newly painted rooms with my new iPod Touch (4th Gen), which I had to buy last week to replace my old one, which had become faulty, and then which I completely destroyed when trying to self-repair!

December 1st (w/PSE9)

As warm weather is holding out here, recent sunny days have brought a swarm of insects, caterpillars and spiders. While not as exotic as the 'Christmas Snake' of a few years ago, I am still excited at signs of life despite the late date!

I had a chance to be out of the office during the daylight hours, and snapped some shots with my iPhone... Later, playing with Photoshop Elements' 'Style Merge' I distilled these two keepers:

A big weaving spider was waiting at eye-level during my sunny lunch walk:

Mt. Fuji with the winter-indicating snow stripe at the one-third mark:

December in Montreal

Today is December 1st.

I do not know how time has slipped by me so quickly, or how it can already be December. But the weather here has been mild so far, and today it is 10 degrees Celsius. Even though it is raining, I intend to hit the streets for a long-delayed run and hopefully even get to the gym later.