For PinksandRoses

Here we go: my first fulfilled request! This one is for Pinksandroses, who I've never had the pleasure of meeting, but who is still a regular reader, which I'm pretty flattered by, honestly. Basically, the people I don't "know" are pretty much the best contributors to this blog. Which leads me to ask, where are you at, people like... Popester? Betty? Jo? Boat Night? Andrew Heining? Marina? Alexia? Ruru? Eschenroeders? even Hershel, you're not technically a first-hand friend, I know, but I'd still love to play a request for you. So, party people: let me know your requests, and I'll give you crappy versions of them. It's as simple as that. Now, for Pinksandroses (who I'll be referring to as Jessyca from now on) here's my just-learned-this-song rendition of Alive in this Moment, by Starfield. Party on.

DJ Mathematics


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(The picture is me and Karen Prager jamming at family camp in Maine a month ago. Even though it seems like a year ago.)

Here's the deal:
I'm going to bed. It's late and I was really excited about recording something tonight, but I realized the neighbors were probably asleep and so I couldn't exactly rock out. So I had to play something really quiet, and the only thing I could think of at the time was kind of sad and not the celebratory mood I wanted to announce that I finally got internet back in my apartment. But it's all you're getting tonight. The upshot is that it's a story, which is nice, I think. I'll remind you again tomorrow in more words, but quickly: send me song requests and I'll play them and post them for you. No joke. The song is Seven Curses by Bob Dylan. Goodnight, little bedbugs.

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Song 4, Friend of the Devil

Ok, my internet is still down, so I'm doing 2 things: learning patience and not posting much. In the meantime, I'm going to throw this one out there. It's 2 songs I recorded really quickly just now (that means go easy on me) and 2 pictures. While fall quickly moves in here in Québec, these are two shots of some of my favorite places to explore from the summer: the port, where I like to climb down onto the docks and read, and the artillery park. The latter shows my feet standing on a second-story doorway of an old armoury that drops off into space. I liked to climb up there with my guitar and play in the doorway in the air, cause I thought it was neat. At my feet are some tomatoes I bought down in the port market, and my journal (you know, my real journal). That's all for now. I'm busy making plans to go to China for a while at the end of October. I think I'd like to try Guangzhou. The first song is Friend of the Devil by the Grateful Dead.

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Song 3, The Tatler

Here's the second of those 2 songs. It's by Ry Cooder, who I heard playing it on some Saturday Night Live rerun from the 70's when he was the musical guest. I later heard Billy Bragg doing it too. Anyway, the take-home message is: you want a good relationship? Give it a little effort, dummy. That's Ry Cooder's message, I mean. I personally believe good relationships just happen by themselves. You know, luck, or something.

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Daniel Johnston

Tomorrow morning is the end of my first week of teaching at the National Assembly. I have a class of 4 people, a class of 3 and a class of 2. And the the first two days, only one person showed up to each one, making it a little more difficult to hold a conversation class. We got through it, though. I've started putting them through their paces and they'll all be using the past perfect with visiting dignitaries before you know it. Now if I can just get the Secretary General on Parliamentary Affairs to show up to class on time, we'll be all set. Yesterday I walked around town handing out c.v.s, trying to find a part-time job to supplement my teaching hours. I thought about applying at a store called Kama Sutra, but for obvious reasons, chickened out. I did, however, sneak into the Chateau Frontenac, which is a luxurious hotel, and just hang out in the luxurious lobby for a while (pictured here).
This week I'm grateful for:
Being employed
Buildings lit up at night
Talkative students
Having an apartment
The catholic Goodwill (Emmaüs) where I bought a phone, a radio, a bookcase, a book and a poster for 27$.

And to finish up, before I pack for a weekend visiting friends in Montreal, here's me singing a song by Daniel Johnston (thanks to PinksandRoses who showed me how to post it.)

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Love,
Matthew

Back in Québec. New job, new apartment, no food.

I arrived back in Québec after a month out of town that went like this:

Québec,
Boston, MA(2hrs),
Portland, ME(48hrs),
camp in Harrison, ME(2 weeks),
Ottawa(3 days),
New Haven, CT(5 days),
Montréal(24hrs),
back in Québec.

So I arrived Thursay afternoon, immediately started apartment-hunting, and 24 hours later, I'm sitting in my new bedroom in my new apartment on rue Saint-Olivier! Everything just came together. Pictured is the street where I live. Click on it, then on these: (a), (b). Life with my new roommate, Frédéric, should be interesting. He seems very different from me, in that meat-eating, hockey-loving, video-gaming, beer-drinking kind of way. I'm more the tofu-eating, figure-skating, guitar-playing, juice-drinking type. Fortunately, he's really nice, so I'm looking forward to the next months.

Interesting fact: after all that good food in New Haven with Laura and Indian food with Alexia in Montreal, today is my third day eating exclusively Ramen noodles (with the exception of a few stale biscuits). So I'm about to go to the market and get some food. Monday I give my first English class to the bureaucrats. I saw the class list and some of them are big shots, which is kind of funny. We'll see how it goes. I'm trying to decide how to go about testing high-powered civil servants on their verb tenses.

I Heart New Haven

My too-short visit to Laura in New Haven ends tomorrow. I visited the Destefano campaign office today and said hi to some people, specifically, Becky and Lauren (shout out). I love New Haven and I'm glad to visit it again. And by "New Haven", I don't mean "Yale". I mean Yale AND the fair and fascinating world that surrounds that bastion of Academe. And now, the restaurant roster. In the past four days, we've eaten:

-Japanese twice (Haya's on Trumbull)
-Ethiopian (Lalibela on Temple)
-Indian (Zaroka on York)
-Pizza (Pepe's on Wooster)
-Thai (Thai PanAsian on Chapel)
-and bubble tea from a new Vietnamese place.

Tomorrow morning I take a bus to Quebec city to start a new job: teaching English to bureaucrats at the National Assembly! For all the Americans who look at me quizzically and ask, "wait.. English?.. don't they speak English?" The answer is "no". Quebec is a francophone province and only 8.3 percent of its people are English mother-tongue, making me an (invisible) minority and explaining why our civil servants might need some English tutoring. Which works well for me. That's going to take me through October. After that I'm open to ideas or job offers, although I have a fancy that I'd like to go to China...