Midnight in Paris

On Tuesday, July 26, 2011, I went to see the movie Midnight in Paris. This is the latest Woody Allen movie featuring Owen Wilson, Carla Bruni, Marion Cotillard, Rachel McAdams and whole bunch of other actors.

The story is about Wilson, who plays the character of Gil, a struggling writer and McAdams, Ines, the woman that he's about to marry. They are traveling in Paris as a holiday, but they are really piggy backing off of Ines' parents. One day after a dinner, while Ines goes dancing with Paul, a friend of hers, he walks through the streets of Paris. He sits down to rest for a bit and then he gets picked up by a car that transports him to Paris in the 1920s... Which he thinks is the golden era. He meets many people: Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, etc.

What happens? You'll have to watch the movie to find out. It was very good, however and I enjoyed this movie!

Mac OS X Lion and other ramblings

I was hoping not to have to use this venue to rant about a bad day, so soon after my last one, but clearly, that is not in the cards and someone is clearly making sure that I have another bad day. However, before I rant about that, I want to rant about the new Mac OS X Lion 10.7, the first Apple OS to be available digitally, etc. blah blah blah, the whole nine yards.

I hate it. When I use it, I feel like I am using Windows Vista, but a more stable version of it. First of all, it no longer supports Power PC applications... So... I can no longer play Diablo II on it... I was hoping that I could boot it in an old OS, but that is not possible. Once you upgrade to Lion, you're stuck. I want to book an appointment with a genius at the Apple store to have them restore it to Snow Leopard and then get my money back for it. $30 down the drain for no reason. Also, this new OS is really, really, really, really slow. It takes forever to boot up and many things don't make sense.

And now, my day.

It started off with me nearly missing the bus. Thank goodness the driver actually waited for me because he could have just taken off in my face. The driver tends to have a tendency to be early. The schedule says that the bus should be at the stop at 7:52 a.m., and he's usually there at 7:50 a.m.. Though two minutes doesn't seem like a big difference when you've got a school bag and a heavy bag full of teaching materials, it is a big difference!

The highlight of my day was probably that and my $1 Iced Coffee from McDonald's.

I was done my classes at 11:05 a.m., but students stayed and asked for help and clarifications. That's great, I don't mind that. However, by the time I was done, it was about 11:50 a.m., so I had missed the 11:45 a.m. bus. I was hoping to take the bus at 12:15 p.m.. However, the bus that I needed had an accident with a taxi... The taxi driver was impatient and tried to do a U-turn but ended up hitting the bumper of the bus I needed to get on. I had to wait 30 minutes for the next one. All other detours would have taken the same amount of time, since I either had to wait for the next correspondence elsewhere. My metro station is closed, so even if I walk, it still adds extra time.

I get home. I had authorized the concierge to come in and fix my toilet because he said that it needed repairs. I allowed him to come into the apartment to fix it while I was not there, as I had work. When I got home, I discovered that he didn't fix the toilet, but the bathtub. The stuff in my kitchen, for some really odd reason, were all moved around. My bathtub was filthy with construction debris... And, the concierge used my face cloth to clean excess silicone! Thank goodness this was just a cheap Dollarama face cloth and not an expensive Egyptian cotton, $50 face cloth with allergen free dye!

Then I had to go to the bank because I needed to make a stop payment on a cheque which was used to try and do business with ING Direct. $12.50 later, the stop payment is in effect for six months. I made sure I left earlier from my house for teaching aero-toning because I wanted to drop off the cheque, again, at the ING Cafe. The pick-up for their documents was at 4:00 p.m., so I had just missed the pick up. I get to the gym and there were only five people at my Aero-toning class. Also, my jeans ripped.

I'm hoping that tomorrow (or later today) will be better.

Larry Crowne

On Tuesday, July 19, 2011, I went to see the movie Larry Crowne featuring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts. This movie was also directed by Tom Hanks and written by Tom Hanks.

When I saw that, I was expecting a Hollywood-esque pretentious piece of crap. However, I was pleasantly surprised. I think it was a very well done movie. It won't be up for an Oscar, but it was quite good.

The story is about Larry Crowne, played by Tom Hanks, who has been a long standing employee at UMart, which is kind of like a Wal-Mart. He gets called into the employee lounge one day at work. He thought he was up for Employee of the month, but in reality, they are firing him.

We learn that there has been many other things that has happened to Larry in the past couple of years... A divorce, his children leaving him, him in a new house where the value is significantly devalued. So, after losing his job, he cannot really afford to make payments and he had to liquidate his assets. He decides that the reason that he was fired was because he had no college degree. We learn that Crowne went to the Navy right after he graduated from high school and he was there for 20 years. Then it puts him with UMart.

He goes back to school, meets a bunch of new friends, takes some interesting classes, etc. One of the classes that he takes is Communication 217, where he meets Ms. Tainot. He has an interesting first term where he learns a lot, in all of his classes.

How does this movie end? You'll have to watch it to find out. I usually don't watch Julia Roberts in films, but this one was very very entertaining and very funny. I especially enjoyed the tidbits from the perspective of educators. Since Ms. Tainot is a professor, we had some lines in there about teaching and students and it totally resonates with how I am feeling.

The idiots in Toronto are going to pay for it now...

I stumbled across this article today.

In the recent municipal elections, idiotic Torontonians voted in Rob Ford. He won on a slogan: "Stop the gravy train."

So now, he has paid for an expensive audit, and has a 774 million deficit. He has to cut the staff, because that's where 80% of the money is, to cover this. However, he is looking into cutting subsidized daycare and fluoride in Toronto's drinking water.

Cutting fluoride in the drinking water? That's playing with the health of every Torontonian out there. Especially if he is going to be cutting back city employees, the public health department will be overworked, for sure.

I believe what he is proposing is very short-sighted... Cutting fluoride out of the drinking water is very very short sighted... It can (and probably will) cause more troubles which will cost money rather than save money... Not to mention that if you value the health of the citizens that voted you in, you cannot put a price on peoples' health... That's just like giving the middle finger to the people who voted you in...

Cutting the work force for the city will mean even longer waits for people for services... The wait already is not great, but what Rob Ford is now doing is going to make the wait even longer... Not to mention he has constantly shown his short-sightedness on many projects. He killed the proposed LRT routes to build a subway route... When most cities now are not building new lines at all... They are only building short extensions to existing lines. They are also investing in streetcars and LRT. These options are better for the environment, are more cost-effective in the building, but his lack of foresight has shown Torontonians that he will make decisions to cut in the short run to save money in the short term, but will be detrimental in the long run.

Did Torontonians not learn from the Mike Harris fiasco in 1995?

Beginners

On Tuesday, July 12, 2011, I went to see the movie Beginners, featuring Ewen McGregor, Christopher Plummer and Mélanie Laurent.

The story revolves around Oliver (McGregor) whose father, named Hal, has been diagnosed with cancer. Also, after four months of his former wife's death, he comes out of the closet as well.

Oliver deals with Hal's death, as well as helping him with his last days on Earth and meeting Anna (Laurent), all at the same time... We also see how Oliver deals with his relationship with Anna.

Another part of the movie is about Hal's involvement in the gay community after he comes out of the closet... From joining the gay book club to a gay group for older gay men, to helping out with the pride parade and placing a personals ad.

A great movie with great acting and character development. However, the story line is a tad slow.

Oh, the "talking" dog is also quite adorable. The doggie's name is Arthur and he is quite adorable.

More STM events

In an earlier post, I thought that it would have been interesting to start a new blog and document every time the STM did something stupid or wrong... But I never got it started... I guess I will just post here and add it to the plethora of postings about many things.

If I had a dime for every time a bus did not show up, or was early, or was late, I think I would be a millionaire by now... Or at least have enough money for All-you-can-eat sushi...

Yesterday, July 8, 2011, I was meeting a friend downtown. I needed to take the 66 bus downtown at 8:07 p.m.. I got to the stop and the bus was approaching. However, it took off in my face because "the driver didn't see me"... Even as I ran after it with my hands up in the air and the "What the fuck?!!" face on my head. There was a stop that was within running distance on this route, so I decided to run to the next stop. However, no avail. The traffic lights were against me. I was about three-quarters of the way there when the light turned green and the driver of this bus just took off like a driver in Mariokart.

Then today, July 9, 2011, I was on my way to work. Since I had an experience yesterday with the whole missing the bus thing, I decided that I would go earlier to the stop today, to avoid the bus being early... Especially since I count on this bus to make my connection to go teach my fitness class this morning. Guess what happens? The bus was early, once again. This time, screwing me over. I was not able to run after the bus this time because it was too fast and it came way too early... It was already well past the running distance for the next stop. So, I had to walk to the metro. Of course, the metro station that I normally would use is closed for the summer, because there are major renovations going on. I didn't bother with the shuttle service, I just walked to the metro station after the one I would normally use, since that's where the shuttle bus would take me anyway. Of course, I was about 15 minutes late getting to the gym and I started class late.

Why did I choose to avoid the shuttle, you ask? Well, the way that the STM decided to create the route of the shuttle to help service the metro station that is shut down is the following: They have a route that connects the station in question, the station after that, and two stations after that... Any normal person would think that you would create a shuttle that services the station before and the station after so that the people can take the shuttle to whichever station would be faster for them...

I have also given up on writing customer service. It appears that nothing gets done, even though I am assured that all of the comments are read and that people are dealt with. In fact, I had a driver tell me that I need to write customer service so that the STM knows, so that they can deal with the bad apples in the system.

The STM wants to invest in a system where there's a GPS on the bus, so that it shows the driver where he/she is along the route and whether he is ahead of schedule, on time or behind schedule. It also lets the clients know... I think this is a complete waste of money. It's never the driver's fault in Montreal for the STM. If they are early, it's not their fault. (It's supposedly their fault, but I have yet to see a driver be disciplined for it) If they are late, it's not their fault. If they don't show up, it's not their fault. So, with this system in place, it's not their fault if they are early or late, so why bother putting the system in place? Save the money and lower our fares, I say!

In fact, I am so annoyed about this that I am considering writing an editorial to one of the newspapers distributed in the metro and bus system.

Green Lantern

ON Tuesday, July 5, 2011, I went to see the movie Green Lantern featuring Ryan Reynolds, Mark Strong.

The movie is about Hal Jordan, who is a pilot. He screws up a major contract deal regarding some aircraft deal and causes a lot of trouble. Meanwhile on in universe far far away, some unsuspecting space beings land into the Lost Sector, where the evil Parallax was trapped. They fall into his chamber where he absorbs their souls and he is then strong enough to escape his prison. He goes after the Green Lantern who imprisoned him there and wounds him. This is Abin Sur who ejects into an escape pod and crash lands into Earth. Since his wounds are too great, he instructs his ring to find a worthy recipient and it finds Hal Jordan. What follows is an adventure of Hal learning about the ring, its powers, the threat of Parallex, how to defeat him and the other Green Lanterns on Oa and how they have to try and band together.

A fun movie to have watched. Very enjoyable and highly entertaining.