Ha!

I just downloaded the Platimum Collection of Charles Aznavour and the Greatest Hits of Guns N' Roses... in the same session. I challenge iTunes to map musical preferences to MY profile.

:p

This is the song I'm listening to: Welcome to the Jungle, Guns N' Roses.

Sleep-Eat-Work-Eat-Work-Eat-Homework-Sleep

... and repeat!

This is the last stretch but boy it is hard! Fortunately, everything has to be handed in by 11:59 on December 8, so the semester is almost over. It's December 1 tomorrow? Yikes!

It snowed against last night and guess who shoveled the complex today? Nope, not me. NOBODY. Everything's melting and the weather is warming up, but it's a mess out there. Next year, we're hiring a contractor.

Pretty heavy!

Here are a few pictures of what my neighborhood looked like today, after getting 30 cm of snow. Sorry if some of them are dark, I took them early in the morning, just before stepping out to shovel the entire complex. Only took 1 hour 1/2 ;)

At least we can drink from the tap again :D


OMG!

7 a.m., here's what I'm looking at 

West 8th Street in Vancouver 

Yup! Lots of snow... 

Pretty

30 cm last night, another 10 today...

Books, computer, groceries, snow

Four words to describe my Saturday. Not much to say, except that I am making good progress on the business plan (our final assignment for both the Finance and Marketing class).

I thought I'd be smart today, avoid the rain (snow?) that they were announcing for Sunday and go grocery shopping. Well, you do not want to enter a grocery store on Saturday afternoon. Trust me on this one. It's not only having to deal with the fact that it's packed, that they left a few pallets (unpacked) that are blocking half of the isles, and that the woman in front of me is exchanging coupons for free wine glasses. It's having to deal with the guy behind me who is freaking out because the place is busy and the lineup at the cash is not moving. Honestly, I can deal with the rest. Him, he deserved to be smacked across the head.

And while I was walking back, navigating between rushed shoppers with my little red shopping cart, it started snowing. I should have stayed home.

Damn you, YouTube!

Someone posted videos from the Madonna Confessions Tour special that was playing on NBC last night.

There goes an hour ;)

She's incredible, 1000% entertainment and visuals, the woman is a machine! She also has amazing dancers on tour. Oh, I wish I was lucky as these two...

Must focus

I'm finding it hard these days to focus on whatever it is that I'm supposed to do. My brain seems to enjoy wandering between thoughts and ideas. A little bit like a four-year old. I think. But less Elmo, more UI design and interest groups.

So, here's a bit of a brain dump. I'm sharing a few recent discoveries with you, maybe if I write about them, they will stop interrupting my assignment-writing.

• Net Impact: I joined this organization last week. This is a network of leaders who are changing the world through business. Members are students and recent graduates from MBA or other Masters programs who want to have an impact. Net Impact has several interesting programs, such a board fellowships (where you sit on the board of a non-profit organization) and pro-bono work, also with non-profit.
• SustainableBusiness.com: Sustainable investments, company profiles, related news... I found this to be an interesting portal and signed up for their newsletter.
• PMI: I also joined this organization last week. This is the institute that manages the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification. I'm interested in pursuing this certification, maybe right after I finish the MBA and while I'm waiting for Annie to complete hers. Notice how failure is not an option ;)
• Springwise: You know the term "out-of-the-box" (Ok, you do, and it's overuse, but let me use this as a parallel). Well, Springwise showcases new business ideas that are not only out-of-the-box, but out the window, down the street, and halfway across town. People have some imagination! My favorite: Ello Mobile, which is giving 100% of its profits to charity, Ecoinsurance, a policy that tracks your CO2 emissions and gives rebates to low emitters, and a sustainable dance club. Who says you can't save the environment and have fun. Actually, I always wondered why gyms did not reuse the energy generated by cardio workouts. I'm sure you could plug some of the machines back into the club's power source and reduce energy consumption when the club is busy.

OK, I feel better.

BTW, water is still cloudy, more yellow than brown, but still undrinkable. It's been a week now.

How insane is this?

I just finished unpacking my small suitcase from Montreal. Normally, this takes a day, and that's with the large suitcase I bring for Christmas!

I have three main e-mail accounts and right now, all three are going through heavy traffic. My work account is, as usually, steadily spitting out questions, concerns, and requests for status reports. My school account is a collection of partial assignments (to be assembled), instructions, announcements, and sometimes great news (that's when we receive a past assignment that was recently graded). My Hotmail account, where I receive my personal e-mail, is filling quickly with Strata business and messages from friends to which I should eventually reply. Strata items are a little bit more heavy these days because our garage was broken into last Friday. They didn't break a door, they cut through the gate. $1,500 to fix. They didn't break locks on some of the storage lockers, they broke off handles and badly damaged some of the doors (probably around $500). They broke into one car. What did they ended up leaving with? As far as I know, someone's snowboarding equipment.

Theft is so frustrating, especially when damaged is caused to the property. Often, whatever we have to repair costs a lot more than whatever was stolen. And for what?

Stupid.

One word

I spent a great evening last night with Gerri, Lara, Charles, and Joe (who joined us after dinner). Charles' birthday was last week, Gerri's is this week, since both Lara and I are dealing with the heavy workload of the end of the semester, we tried to celebrate both birthdays on the same night.

Everyone met at my place for a glass of wine, then we headed out to Relish. This is the second time I eat at this restaurant and both times have been quite pleasant. Relish has four menus, Casual North American, Asian, Mediterranean (mostly Italian), and West Coast Fine Dining. Usually, when restaurants try to master too many types of cuisine, they never really do any one of them really well. Relish is an exception. Their menu is also reasonably priced and they have a varied wine selection. We had a wonderful dinner.

Then, we headed out to George, our repeat spot for an after-dinner drinks. We didn't stay out late, both Lara and I were looking at busy days today.

Lara talked about a book she was reading where the author was using one word to describe cities/countries around the world (can't remember the reference, I'll let you know if I find it). So we started thinking about words for Canadian cities. Montreal was "sexy", Toronto was "ambitious", Quebec city was "charming"... when it came to Vancouver, Charles came up with the best word: proper. I think "proper" reflects well our view of Vancouver. Mind you, I think the choice of word depends on where you come from and where you've lived.

This said, I don't think that our little group can claim "properness", if that's indeed how one would describe Vancouver. We were asked twice last night if we were from out of town. Gerri has lived here for over ten years, I've been here for four. But apparently, we do not come across as Vancouverites. Because we typically switch very rapidly from French to English and then back to French, most people can guess that we all come from Montreal, although our waiter last night thought we were from Paris. I think this speaks at length to how nicely dressed we all were ;)

My one word for Vancouver these days: rainy. Today's storm means we're probably stuck boiling our water for another few days. The color of the water had greatly improved yesterday, but I'm afraid that today's heavy rain is going to once again fill the reservoir with all kinds of sediments.

This is the song I'm listening to: When the Night Feels My Song, Bedouin Soundclash.

Brown water

Ever heard of a "boil water" advisory that impacts 2 million residents? Me neither. Welcome to BC Lower Mainland. So low that the crazy rain of yesterday displaced any dirt we had lying around and dumped it in our watermains. Yup, brown water. Yum. What is that I hear outside? It's raining again? And on Sunday, another bad storm?

How cold does it get in the winter in Montreal again?

Kidding aside, I'm counting myself pretty lucky. A lot of people are assessing damage to their properties today (flooding, trees through living rooms and roofs), some on the North Shore can't even get to their homes because of potential landslides.

Rain, rain is falling down...

... trees are crashing against houses, winds are bringing down buildings, and serious waves have managed to cancel the ferry service for most of the day. A lot of people are having forced candlelight dinners tonight.

I, am still wearing my pajama top and worked from home today. The storm was announced yesterday and I wasn't planning to go out if I didn't have to. I know... I'm a wimp. A wimp with sometimes smart ideas :-)

Strange...

I have this strange sensation that time rolled back four years and I'm living in Montreal again. After three days here, as I'm hanging around my parent's place, keeping company to my dad, my mind seems to have entered a time-warp and set me back to pre-Vancouver days. The fact that I have to fly back to BC tonight is almost surreal. Really? Where am I going?

Maybe this can be explained by the fact that I'm visiting while it's not Christmas, or not in the middle of July. I'm visiting during a normal weekend, when family members have to return to work on Monday, when we eat regular meals, chat about everyday things...

Or maybe I'm taking a mental break from school, the demands at work, and simply enjoying the company of my family. Yeah, that must be it.

One of my colleagues, before I left on Thursday, wished me a great trip to Montreal and told me to take lots of pictures. I took only four pictures, including one of a flower from a plant that flowers only for 24 hours. Since I've been hanging around my parent's place a lot (and since the weather was pretty crappy anyways), I don't know what kind of pictures I would have taken. I guess I'll try to do better at Christmas. Speaking of Christmas, Annie played a trick on me Saturday and started playing Christmas music. Can you understand the confusion? Christmas advertising on TV is already hitting full force, and now Jingle Bells (albeit a nice version of the song, but still). But it's not Christmas, I am just visiting on a rainy weekend in November. But am I really?

Surprise!!

Guess where I am? I decided to make a surprise visit to Montreal to see my dad (and mom and sis and bro) for the long weekend. I had arranged for Annie and Marc to pick me up at the airport, so the surprise was complete, mom and dad had no idea I was coming. It won't be a very long visit, I'm flying back to Vancouver Monday night. It's good to see the family.

World travelers

I don't have to search very far to figure out why some of the Saumier kids have been bit by the traveling bug. I've been receiving regular e-mails from my grandma who is celebrating the submission of her PhD by visiting a few neat places in Europe. She first visited Hungary (Budapest) to see some old friends, then she was off to Vienna, where she was met by my aunt, and now Prague. She told me that her hotel was right next to the Charles bridge. I know exactly where she is staying. In 2001, Annie celebrated the end of her bachelor with a three-month stint around Europe with her best friend. I was working at the time, but took two weeks off to meet them. We spent one week in Vienna and one week in Prague. That was my first time in Europe and I loved it!

More travel plans are in the works... Annie plans to start her MBA next September, but she will do a one-year intensive instead of taking the courses part-time. This mean we will both graduate around the same time. We've been thinking of a little tour around South-East Asia in September of 2008, backpacking and sight-seeing. It was a lot of fun in 2001, I'm looking forward to another trip with my sister.


Melissa and Annie in Vienna (2001)

Melissa in Prague (2001) 

Perks

Today, I really appreciated having a laptop and a VPN connection to work. It was brutal outside! I had already planned to work from home, our building was being inspected suite-by-suite to check the smoke and heat detectors. Great timing, as Vancouver (and most of the LowerMainland) was hit by heavy rain. I went to the corner store to grab some supplies for lunch and my pants were soaked almost to the knees. I WAS carrying an umbrella ;)

Sitting at my desk at home, it was just the same (access/speed) as sitting at the office. And I got a lot of work done :-)

Hard, soft

I was going to include a picture of myself dressed-up on Halloween (for about two hours) at work. I was a mechanic. However, the picture also prominently displays the logo of the company I am working for. I don't really want to take the chance of getting dooced.

Yesterday, I went for a facial at Skoah in Yaletown. I can get used to such nice pampering. I didn't get sucked into buying all kinds of expensive products... yet. I asked for a few samplers, so I could try the products for a few days. They kindly obliged.