Random Dispatches

Wen and I spent Thanksgiving in Montreal with a quick side jaunt to see the folks in Ottawa (Hi mum!).  We had a great time at both, but alas only took photos in Montreal.  Here are shots from around town.

Lunch at La Boite Gourmande (445 rue Laurier Est) - an old bank (complete with vault turned into store room for strollers) transformed into a communal cafeteria:

While Montreal may get grey winters, the locals are especially colourful- especially their art galleries:

The Atelier Punkt takes this to the extreme:

Montreal also has beautiful buildings and a fine, run-down charm:

If you visit, I recommend the Hotel St. Paul, dinner at L’Appartement and buy some fine Quebec-made clothes at Blank (think American Apparel if run by Quebecers [Ed: it is]).

Also, be sure to stop by Suite 88 for some chocolate.  The image below shows caramel, honey and green tea truffles, followed up with a lychee and ginger cone:

So there you go, Montreal in a nutshell, with a slightly gastronomic angle.

However, Quebec is home to much more food.  On the way to Ottawa we stopped in Rigaud for a poutine.  We went into this place:

This place was amazing!  (Alas, it doesn’t appear to have a name, but Rigaud only has one main street off the highway; it’s about 2 minutes in)  I ordered a smoked meat sandwich and a poutine; I won’t try and describe how good it was; you can just take a look instead:

J’adore la belle province!

Check out this wonderful item for sale in Chinatown:

So yesterday I ran the inaugural Rehoboth Marathon.  It was a whirlwind of a time.  In the course of 23 hours I drove over 400 miles to get there and back.  Minutes before I got to Delware there had been a freak snowstorm and I saw no fewer than 8 accidents over the course of 50 miles-5 of which were severe enough to shut the highway down.

But this is not a story about bad Delaware drivers, rather a really great marathon.  For those who don’t know, Rehoboth is a beach community.  There’s not much going on there after Labour Day, so they’ve decided to organize a marathon.

It was a charming experience-I’ve run three marathons before and each of them were large and urban (Vancouver, Stockholm and Philadelphia).  This was the exact opposite - there were only 97 marathon runners and maybe 200 half marathoners (contrast this with today’s Philadelphia marathon - 18,000 people!).  Moreover, this was truly a rural route - just look at all the green in the image below.

The race started on the Rehoboth boardwalk, literally just as the sun rose over the clouds on the horizon.  It was beautiful but cold: -3 Celcius at the start and there was snow on the boardwalk!

The race was basically a big exploration of Cape Henlopen State Park (pictures).  We ran into it and saw some sand dunes; then it was back through town and into some farmers’ fields (increasingly filled with McMansions - you can literally see the housing crisis here).  We then turned onto an old rail line that is now a running path; it was like running through a cathedral of trees.  From there, it was along a canal into the town of Lewes and then back down into the park from above.

We ran past old World War II fortifications - bunkers, towers and artillery - that have been reclaimed by the sand and pine trees.  Then we climbed a small hill (there was maybe 20 feet of elevation in this entire race), turned around and did it all in reverse.

Since there was no elevation, the biggest challenge was the wind off the Delaware Bay.  There was a ferocious breeze coming off of it.  You can sort of see this from my time/kilometer stats below (courtesy of my Garmin Forerunner):

It’s a little tough to tell from the data (message to Garmin: give users the ability to smooth out the spikes caused by losing contact with the GPS satellites), but basically there’s a difference of 1 minute/kilometer there, due entirely to the wind.

So, how’d I do?  My trip computer tells me I ran it in 3:27:30.  That’s a new personal best for me well south of my target time of 3:30, so I’m content.

Now I’ve got about 8 months off until I start training for next year’s New York City Marathon!

Update 1: The results are in.  I finished 58th out of 407, or 41st if you exclude relay participants.

Update 2: I forgot to mention that Delaware is home to a lot of migratory fowl.  And when I went to leave my hotel I had to wash Wendy’s car as a small army of birds had befouled it.  It looked like I had parked it underneath a pigeon-infested overpass, except that it had all happened in about 20 minutes.  Bad luck!

Personally, I’ve never really wanted to be Tom Cruise - with the exception of two moments.  The first was when he was rocketing around in an F-14 Tomcat in Top Gun.  The second was when he got to play with that really cool interface in Minority Report (and yes, I’m aware that this makes me a total geek):

I’ve known that if you get wealthy enough you can always buy a jet fighter (Larry Ellison and his son have mock dogfights over the Pacific), but how about that interface?

Today I found out that it might be coming a little sooner than the jet, thanks to Oblong Industries.  Check out this video of their G-Speak “spatial operating environment”.  Then you can compare it with the original Minority Report user interface.

Sometimes New York pulses with an energy unlike any other city I’ve seen.  Today has been one of those days.

Wendy and I got up this morning and went to our local cafe, Le Bergamote, for the best ham & cheese croissants in town.  The place was packed and the weather outside was furious - the wind was literally whipping the leaves off the trees:

We decided to hit up some galleries, starting with Pace Wildenstein to see the Richard Avedon exhibit.  The exhibit was almost exhausting in its scope: it contained photos of a shocking number of influential people from the 20th century.  From Bob Dylan to Marilyn Monroe to Dwight Eisenhower.

Literally, across the street the Matthew Marks gallery was exhibiting the latest work from Andreas Gursky.

Two blocks away, on 24th, Fredericks & Freiser had a show by Zak Smith.  If you’ve never heard of Zak Smith, I suggest you take a look at his portfolio.  It bursts with colour, detail and creativity; one wall of the gallery was covered with dozens of minute detailed drawings characterizing his history (which, by the way, is as colourful as his art).

A second room in the gallery contained all the drawings from On The Road of Knives - a project between Smith and two other artists whereby they mail drawings to one another in an ongoing story (check out the link for the chronology).

A block further, on 25th, the Yossi Milo Gallery was showing Lise Safarti’s retrospective of photos she took in Russia while living there from 1991 to 2000.  It’s a complicated mixture of decaying factories, traditional wooden architecture and homosexual boys.  These may sound like three things that should never be juxtaposed, but Safarti creates a touching portrait of a nation going through profound changes post the collapse of communism.

As if this all the art wasn’t enough to overwhelm, there was more going on outside.

Underneath the High Line, a 3 ton steel sculpture you could walk through had just been installed.

The sky was clearing, meaning that fog could be seen tearing across the rooftops of building.

And on the corner of 24th and 10th, the largest crane I’ve ever seen was being used to take down a the crane and it looked as if the construction workers were literally walking in the sky:

Like I said, sometimes this city just crackles with energy.

I couldn’t help but notice all the chatter on Facebook today about Barack Obama’s election as the 44th President of the United States.  Here are a couple of status updates by my friends (who, it should be mentioned are overwhelmingly in the Obama demographic: highly educated, urban 25-35 year olds-but mostly not American):

ABC is raising a glass to the US voters with relief and a heartfelt thank-you

DEF can’t wait to see the White House occupied by an African-American family, as it should have been since 143 years ago

GHI (American) has renewed optimism with our new charismatic, unifying leader…

JKL (American) is glad he won’t have to listen to people in the middle east complain to him about US polotics [sic] for the next 4 years! 

MNO is impressed by America today.

PQR (American) is alternating between pinching herself and drinking champagne, pinching herself and drinking champagne….

STU (American) YES WE DID!

VWX is is [sic] hopeful that today is the dawn of a new era for the US and the world.

YZA thinks she picked a good year to establish permanent residency in the US! (and is happy 123 went blue).

BCD is OBAMA-licious.

EFG (American) is inspired to use her status line to congratulate Ohio (and the rest of you) on an election well done. Cleveland Baracks!

Here’s to the next four years:

And I apologize for the weak Star Wars pun in the title of this post.

In an era where every day seems to bring a new article about banks doing silly things (liar loans are my current favourite), it’s refreshing to learn about a bank that’s actually doing something great.  Unfortunately for those of us in North America, this bank is in India.

Technology Review has an article in this month’s issue - Upwardly Mobile - describing how banking is being brought to rural India.  A lot of it was stuff I’d heard before; basically payments via cellphones (it’s been done in the Phillipines for a while).  What was fascinating was this:

These women live in a village that is seven kilometers from the nearest bank.  However, there’s a bank in that town that trusts a local woman (she’s the government’s representative for aid work) and has given her a special machine to extend banking to the village.  The way it works is like this:

• She has a strong box where she stores money from people in the village
• When people want to deposit or withdraw money they sign into a special machine via their fingerprint
• The machine uses the cellphone network to send a message to the bank’s central computer
• The cash is issued from the strongbox and the user gets a receipt

The system isn’t perfect (what happens if everyone wants to withdraw at once?), but it solves the greatest need of the villagers: the ability to store sums of money for short periods of time.  I thought it a very elegant solution; read the article to get an understanding of the impact this could have if it is scaled up across the entire country.

I had an interesting experience the other day while shopping for groceries: I discovered a new fruit.  I’m not talking about some mild variation on apples (golden honey crisp granny smith…), rather something mind-blowing that I’d never seen before - the Buddha’s Hand citron.  The thing looks like a yellow octopus; here’s a shot of Wendy pretending to eat it:

I thought I new just about every interesting fruit out there, but this one was a pleasant suprise - until we tried eating it.  The darn thing tasted like a pithy lemon with little flavour.  I’m going to put it in the same category as Dragon Fruit: stunning until bitten into.

It’s been a busy week of culture here in New York.  On Monday, Wendy took me to the Lincoln Center to see La Traviata:

The opera was great, although I must admit I was exhausted at the end.  I think it may have had something to do with the fact that Wendy had dragged me to The Duchess the night before.  Two period pieces in a row is quite exhausting.  Next time I’ll go for Wagner.

Fortunately, it as the Knicks home opener against Miami on Wednesday night.  Scott and I went; here’s the opening tip-off:

Remarkably good game; New York was up by over 15 but Miami closed it and almost took the game in the final minute.  Of note: this is the only town that boos its own players.  Both Eddie Curry and Stephon Marbury were booed during introductions.  Ironically, later on the crowd was cheering “We want Steph” (neither Curry or Marbury played; the coach has benched them both).

I was going through an old German magazine the other day and came across this ad, which I thought worth sharing:

At first it doesn’t look like much.  I mean after all, it’s just a train set, right?  Actually, it’s a little more subtle than that.  It’s called the “Stop-den-castor-start-set” which would translate as “Stop the nuclear train beginner’s set”.  The ‘castor’ refers to a canister holding nuclear waste that was sent to Germany for reprocessing.  Every couple of years these are sent from France and there are inevitable riots and then more riots.  Here’s a photo from the 2006 installment:

If you look closely at the ad, you can see the following:

• A protester has tied himself to the tracks (top)
• In the middle are farm equipment (used to block the tracks) and protesters (carrying placards saying “We’re against this”)
• In the bottom is a sample of what the actual ‘castor’ looks like: a massive container mounted on a flatbed

I thought it a great ad and worth sharing.  The paper also gets a bonus for their slogan: “The traditional paper for the new philistines.”